“They seem so near but so far, don’t they?”
On an ancient boat coasting ancient waves under an even more ancient moon, Feather and Jade found themselves stargazing. Constellations were the most ancient thing in the universe, older than all things prior.
There was a sort of irony to it, the fact they were the oldest but least changing. Constellations were timeless. Logic would dictate that things changed as they aged and improved over time. For something as grand as the night sky, time moved very slowly. Feather—with a bit of readjustment—spotted the major figures of the sky, almost identical to that of his own time.
The universe changes, and yet doesn’t. It didn’t seem to age, an entity which didn’t have a beginning or end, only substituents that grew, thrived, and died off. That did not mean the universe stopped; only a small part of it was taken away, replaced by something different that could do more and better things.
Perhaps stars needn’t change, because they don’t have a reason to. They’re what we long for. Stars don’t want to be anything else.
Crystal Jade had regressed into silence moments ago. She didn’t fight back now; at that instant, she was just like him, gazing at the heavens and the many worlds out there they didn’t know. Feather wondered if those strangers would’ve helped them. There was still no answer.
He didn’t have the words to describe that feeling, the gaps between stars so dark but definitely filled with something. It was comparable to empty metropolis’ roads; someone had to be there, despite appearing abandoned. It was though Jade was so lonely she asked the help of alien civilizations eons away. Her people seemed not to care.
Jade’s eyes cast downwards. A tear fell to streak her cheek, and though it was only one, Feather’s heart fell to his stomach at the sight. It would’ve hurt less had she been captured, held against her will by an enemy, not by some whom she ought to have trusted. Her own neighbors.
Treachery’s the worst sin, Feather mused, conviction deep. Of all the things a pony can do, teachery’s somehow the most damning. The most despicable. Homocide is distasteful, done overtime even more so, but murder out of trachery? Out of mistrust? From someone you’re supposed to love? It’s... life is fragile. It’s to go against that. Of a promise from one’s good will. A pony can’t have others if he can’t have himself.
Feather was interrupted from his thoughts as a thud hit the side of the craft. He glanced outwards to see they’d just docked on a port—by the edge of Tlekokalli’s main cluster of islands. A quick bang of the gangway hit the surface, several stallion warriors approaching them.
Her struggle returned as they picked her up and brought her to the port’s steady platform, another group of stallions already there waiting. Feather hastily made his way off before the gangway was retracted, watching what took place.
Feather breathed in and out in a haste, a shut jaw and heavy eyes plastering his face. He was tempted to look away.
They were wrapping a cloth around her muzzle to prevent her from talking, binding her hooves to keep her from escaping. It was unjust and unfair. Do you do that out of consideration? Is it some little mercy in this thing you’ll do to her? Do you even need that? The latter was a no; she struggled to escape and speak.
Though they gave her no blindfold. She had been allowed the dignity to gaze upon her home one last time.
Jade thrashed; Jade wailed; she muttered incomprehensible pleads of reason, her muffled expressions varying as her mood changed: from short silences of shock to moments of unbridled fury and rage, a surly determination so strong one would wonder why no miracle swooped down and saved her at that very instant.
She was afraid most of all. She was in the dark. She knew what was coming, a seemingly inevitability looming in the horizon, yet she didn’t know how—the pain, the horror, the final moments. It was like déjà vu, aware of what would happen but not a thing could be done about it. Knowing what would happen made it worse, a looming fear on the horizon. It couldn’t be stopped. It already happened.
She cowered, a haste in her breath and a shake in her sniffle. Feather only thought of one moment in his life when he seemed somewhat like that, but he knew that was nothing compared to the doom weighing Jade’s shoulders. They were offering her life.
Feather eyes reflected sorrow, and he wondered what must’ve gone through her head.
They seemed finished prepping her, hoisting her up to begin the procession. There would be no slowing it.
The port was near silent apart from frothing waves and creaky boats. As Feather followed them, he was made more aware of his surroundings. It was a scene straight out of imagination: an ancient port of wood and stone, illuminated with undying torch lights of red and orange, reflecting the dance of the inky black waves of a deep but oddly calming body of water, a little slice of the sea.
Said port transitioning into Tlekokalli, Feather paused for a moment in his small instant of wonder.
Tlekokalli, City of Kings, was an appropriate title for an even more regal city. The buildings seemed taller, canal waters soothed, priceless monuments peppered as common as merchant stands. Despite orange halos from gentle torchlight, the sky seemed the same clarity from the boat on blackened waves. He held a breath.
Feather shook his head. Jade, your priority is Jade right now. Sighting them a couple hoofsteps away, he trotted nearer to hear little conversations play out from the locals.
There were throngs of ponies out this evening, infrequent but lounging still. Tlekokalli truly never slept, for there was always somepony that decided to keep awake. There lingered quiet conversations, hushed as they attempted to not stare, under the shroud of a conspiracy: that’s the mare who’s about to get sacrificed, whether she liked it or not, a deed that needed to be done regardless of circumstance.
Jade, still bound and muzzled, seemed to have tired herself out, stopping her struggle, or it may be the fact she noted these conversations taking place. Shame and distrust appeared on her face.
As she avoided the glances of late night wanderers and their half-concealed stares—some even full on—Feather noticed something so strange it ought be conjecture: it was though she knew these ponies personally, saying her unofficial farewells to them one last time.
She kept her glances mostly low as the stallions marched down the main road. Feather did spot her taking occasional peeks at her surroundings. The more she did, the more an impending doom flickered her eyes. The clock was ticking, and no amount of bleating or wailing would change that.
All hope had been thrown out the window, or at least her hope for her home. They wouldn’t save her. They didn’t spare those sacrifices before, they wouldn’t save her now. Only a once-in-a-lifetime hero could have saved her. That didn’t come. Feather was close to being that, but so far. It brought him hopelessness.
They stopped before the vast city square. Could I have saved her? Be a dashing hero in comic books that always ended happily? Feather wondered if he could’ve swung from a rope that hung from one of these floating islands, whisking her away into some distant land. Rescue her from her own home. His hopelessness was replaced with great melancholy. I wish I was your hero.
They walked until floating steps appeared before them, and they began their ascent up to that central island. With every step Feather took, his heart beat a little faster, adrenaline nearly bursting from his hooves.
Breathtaking. That was the only word he had, breathtaking. It reminded him of the orange of the Bocoltán skyline during nighttime; he truly was in this now, a city alive when he had first found it lost and broken.
Jade gazed back at the city too, pondering why they didn’t come to save her and how beautiful it was at the same time. A potent cocktail of emotions must have warred inside her head. She didn’t fight back her bonds any longer, for perhaps her thoughts were enough to preoccupy her caged soul.
They reached the island's surface. Feather took a few steps then stopped.
It was most definitely uncanny when Feather’s mind made subconscious tangents between his hazy memory and what laid before him. The plants, the grass, the temple obfuscated, even the little pebbles that made the pathway: it was exactly as he had seen it, Feather swore it was. It had to have been protected from the tragedy of time, a tale of destruction the city below fared not well in the future.
Her eyes. They reflected both unaccepting anxiety and mellow melancholy as she peered back at Tlekokalli for the last time. Jade knew this was the last time she’d see it, though she unknowingly stared at Feather too, slightly blocking her view. He only stood there as she was engulfed by the darkness of the temple. It was the last moment she’d been touched by moonlight.
Only dim torches illuminated the interior when Feather followed inside. It was though whatever gods these ponies praised needed the dark to come out, for they were shy beings that could only be interfaced if one was alone, cut off from the constraints of light—a ghost, a spirit, a vagabond wanderer across planes of existence, through seams of realities.
Jade again struggled and moaned lecherously as they descended the steps of that gaping mouth on the floor, down into the depths of an ocean that knew no sunlight. It was as if the belly of the beast.
Darkness. Somehow, when Feather caught glimpses of the steps beyond them, he was greeted with the same darkness that stared when he and his two friends took the courage to descend these very steps themselves. Despite knowing what’s down there, despite already having gone through this, he was hit with the same claustrophobia and anxiety. What laid down there struck primal fear to all, regardless of inner strength.
The portal. The same portal. Purple and twisting, the reflective tapestry that mimicked calm oceans leered back at the ponies. It dominated the silence the dingy room contained so well, a feeling of desolate hope which many others prior must’ve felt. As they stepped in, Jade became a little closer to those who were offered to the heavens as sacrifice.
A star.
It was the only thing Feather saw in an otherwise empty universe, a spheroid of plasma bound together in the constraints of its own gravity. He saw how infrequent solar flares moved at astronomical speeds, capable of taking an entire planet to its knees. He saw how the swirling twists and turns of the stellar waves moved across its own gaseous, undefined surface, moving and commingling with cooler sunspots.
Could he call it sunspots? He didn’t know if this was the sun; it could have been any other star that existed in the cosmos. Little Feather wondered if it was a star that existed at all.
It was a lonely thing, drifting through an indeterminable vastness of space. It must’ve been so bright that, from here, it couldn’t have seen any of its far away brethren, any galaxies in the sky barely moving. This star would never meet with any other, perhaps only one in the future so distant.
Ironic. That’s what it was. The light of a star made it so that it blinded itself from seeing anything out there, and so it didn’t know what that was. Not truly.
It was a horrifying thought, the fact that all stars were like that. They didn’t know there were other stars out there, their siblings. For all Feather knew, this star must’ve thought that it was the only one of its kind. The only thing in existence apart from the space it inhabited.
Was it worth it? Was it worth living this way?
“Why?” Little Feather questioned no one in particular.
“It’d be a shame if they weren’t here, hm?”
Little Feather shrugged. “I mean, I guess. But wouldn’t that make it... a lonely life? It would take forever for one of these stars to even come close to anything out there.”
A silence. It was the silence of a deep ponder, of a calculated but honest thought.
“What do you see when you look back at this celestial object before you?”
Feather took a deep ponder, too, noting again of all the features it had: the solar flares, the dark spots on its surface, the heat it radiated throughout the cold desolation of space-time. It was matter, it was light, it was great, it was...
“Small,” Feather said. To look at a star and acknowledge its size was one thing, to recognize the expanse of nothingness an innumerable amount of times larger around it was another. “It’s a small thing.”
“Small, you say? That’s oddly interesting. Why would you think that?”
He looked into the nothingness. “Because there’s more than... It’s big, but it’s small. There’s so much more out there. I... There's more to life than what we do all day.
“I got... lost. I didn’t know how big that forest was. I didn’t... I didn’t realize that even stars like these were small compared to all the other things out there. They’re so far apart. They’re so far apart.”
Little Feather’s tone was sadder than he expected. The silence afterwards, even more so.
“Let me show you something, but you will have to help me here.”
Feather glanced back at the star. “What do I have to do?”
“Step back.”
He took a step back.
“More. You’ll need to step far back for me to show you.”
Little Feather turned and sauntered an easy cadence, turning into a light gallop, turning into a determined run. Feather finally stopped when he was told—an eternity’s passing. Had it been a hundred years or a thousand?
It didn’t matter. When he looked back at the star, it was a mere spot in the cosmos, one of many that dotted the tapestry of space-time. It was a sight to behold, the heavenly arrangement of nebulas and galaxies, stars and their planets, black holes and migrating masses of gas that spread the universe like a contemporary painting.
“You are right, they are indeed apart, more far apart than you could ever imagine. It would take innumerable lifetimes for these stars to even come close, for galaxies to combine and merge.”
A moment of quiet awashed them.
“You may not remember this; I don’t think you’ll even remember me, but let me tell you regardless.
“We may seem lonely, we may seem distant, but there are tangents which touch all things. We expect to have one neighbor when in reality we have a hundred, we meet with one person when in reality we have met with a thousand others. Even if you cannot see it, even if you cannot peel back reality’s fabric, there is an energy that unites all things.”
Feather turned to face the voice. “Why did you save me?”
The masked mare returned a cold gaze. It then turned to one of compassion.
“We’re stars that somehow got close. You have me, and I have you.”
The moon was even colder, and it was bright as it was red.
The sky bled the blood of sacrifices’ past, from ponies who either offered themselves willingly or absolutely rejected the idea—the mere notion they would not only have their lives taken against their will but under the name of gods? Could they be sacrificial martyrs if they were unwilling; was their blood worth any more than the ones who were?
A non-existent breeze hit them, buffeting Feather as he observed the desolation. It was as dead as he had first found it, a landscape of no trees and no fauna, not a spec of life or even so much as bacteria or viruses, half-living, half-alive. There was no room for leeches in a place without anything to leech on to.
The ponies carrying her placed Jade on some sort of portable throne, two poles extending down its ends for easier hoisting, oriental and flamboyant in its design: feathers, prints of jaguars, exotic fabrics and rich silk. It was the throne of a king. A throne of royalty.
She was now the royal of this throne, the queen that the people praised for she would be their savior, the sustenance of the sun. Jade was bound to it, both figuratively and literally; her destiny was to be offered to the gods.
Jade struggled again in her newfound place, in a throne she was forced to sit on. She was, from this point on, truly the sacrifice. There would be no replacement, no exchange. She would summit the mountain and never return to its base alive.
Having ensured her security and the rigidity of the structure, the group of stallions reached under and hoisted the regal throne on their withers. At that moment, Jade looked upon the world as if she were the unwilling leader of a nation broken and scarred, the unwilling doer of an inevitable deed.
It was agony, their slow walk to the base of the pyramid. They took their time, ceremonial, uptight, for—to them—their deities were watching. This was dedicated to them. To Jade, this was the end of her life. To gods, this was any other usual day.
Finally reaching the pyramid’s base, the stallions began the summit up the slope on seemingly never-ending steps. As Feather followed their tail, he realized that had been the last time Jade felt the ground’s touch and stood on her own. She was nearing death as they rose.
For a moment, Jade looked to be at peace, a calm surrender washing over her. Did it come on its own, or was it something she called upon inside of her, a reassuring thought that there would be nothing left and that it might be okay?
No, she wouldn’t think like that. She fought for her life. Feather knew she believed in that. She was strong; her eyes reflected both that strength, yet it also reflected a solemn inevitability that no matter how strong she was, no matter how determined she could be, Death would keep knocking on her already opened door.
As they ascended the steps further, Feather tried to console her, thinking of some catharsis to alleviate her pain, but he couldn’t think of the words. How would he convince her she was going to be okay when he already knew what was going to happen? The clock was ticking louder, and the more he thought of kind and gentle reassurances, the more he didn’t say them.
Her door to death opened completely and Feather’s clock rang its alarm as they arrived at the pyramid’s peak. They overlooked the gloom of this warped dimension, stark in its contrast between beauty and lethality. Vast openness and concealed secrets of ancient alien worlds awaited from above, out of view but watching.
They took hold of her and undid the bonds, restraining her with force as she struggled once again, squirming to resist the stallions’ hooves. Once again, they outnumbered her many to one; it wasn’t even a battle. They wordlessly placed her on the chacmool, tying her four limbs with ropes to the four edges of the rectangular slab, exposing her chest and belly upwards to the heavens.
The stallions waited on one side, their jobs complete. They didn’t do so much as remove the cloth wrapped around her muzzle. Jade would have no last words, and even if she had, no one would know what they were. Not now or ever.
A priest stood there. He nodded to the stallions as they bowed; they thereafter made their move to descend the steps, leaving Feather alone with only the two of them. He was an aged stallion, unhearing and unfazed of Jade’s muffled begs and hushed panic attack, her breaths dampening the cloth substantially.
Feather saw it—the ornamental blade he had touched with his own hooves—on the small slab. It was uncanny; the weapon was in the same place, at almost the exact same angle as he’d found it.
The priest gently picked it up and walked over to her, Jade’s breathing and struggle becoming more frantic at the sight of the perfectly sharp blade.
The priest muttered a few words: some prayer, an incantation Feather didn’t understand. Jade seemed to be having none of it, for she thrashed and raved moreso, moaning and beseeching for a stop of this nonsense, a halt to this unnecessary charade.
Feather didn’t move. He couldn’t. What could he do? This was it. This was the moment, and two sides of a war conflicted in his brain: she could be saved and there’s nothing you could do. What was it?
His wings flared out in gripping anticipation as the priest raised the blade high above Crystal Jade’s chest, yelling to the heavens the last words of his prayer. He tensed, driving the blade downwards.
Feather instinctively looked away. In a split second before his wings covered his vision, he saw her kick and jerk upwards in an attempt to escape her bounds, the blade missing her chest completely. Feather didn’t want to see what had happened, for her screams tortured his hearing, ugly and loud.
It wouldn’t stop. Her screaming wouldn’t stop. They were of agony, of one being burnt alive, of one being buried alive. It was hell. It was of excruciating pain.
Feather sniffled as he put his wings firm on his face and temples, too scared of what went on. He heard the screaming turn into ragged breaths before transitioning into complete silence. It was the loudest scream of all.
Silence. Jade was right again. There was only the quiet of a lifeless husk.
She was dead for sure.
He heard awful sounds of the priest doing something to her body. Was he taking her heart out? The sound of something hurling down the pyramid’s slopes echoed in his ears.
Feather was alone. He had the priest, sure, but he was alone.
He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to see anything ever again. This pain he could somehow feel, this wrong he felt in his soul. The tangent, the string of his heart was being slapped over and over again, risking breaking to be cut off from any and all things.
Who was he at that moment? Could he call himself Feather Dew? This was too horrifying of a situation for him to care anymore.
For the first time in what seemed to be a lifetime, Feather felt the loneliness of being in that tree trunk cavity, the makeshift grave for his forever lost body and his more so forever lost soul.
He remembered that voice. He remembered it now. It had come to him, convinced him to go on, that life was worth fighting for. How? How could he move on from what he’s seen?
“Open your eyes.”