The train to Ponyville can’t go fast enough. When it stops, Cinnamon barrels out, breaking wooden panels. Others call on her, though the village itself is asleep; hooves ball up into fists to rage against the intruder.
She sees the cottage. Within, a little light hangs on.
Anarchy sits alone inside. The light in the fireplace, reduced to just the little candle on a familiar office desk. Cinnamon asks her for a little walk outside.
“I once wondered,” she begins, lying on a hole in the concrete wall, a partition between the highway and the La Loma Cemetery on Earth, another universe's universe. The wind breezes with clarity, hovering over empty roads and sidewalks; orange streetlights blaze against her vision like a blinding fog, not helped by the lingering smoke of invisible jeepneys and pigs roasted on spits.
“Once wondered about what?”
“I… don’t know. I just… keep… wanting to find something to say. I didn’t know. Just anything to be here… get an ending, but I don't want an ending...”
The landscape shifts, the foreign downtown melting into the cozy suburbs of Canterlot City. A crowd assembles at the staircase of Canterlot High, both humans and Equestrians. Magical lasers light up the sky, shooting out of the horse statue’s portal. The light dissipates, unveiling the skyscrapers of Ponyville so many years ahead, hollow without light nor life. The chatter of creatures, the noise of machinery, the buzz of magic every unicorn hears but keeps to the back of their mind like background radiation—nothing but nothing. Yet though every light is off, the stars still shine, the sky clear as day. Everything bites in the cold, save for the warmth of Anarchy’s paw that doesn’t seem intent on letting go.
“Like. Ann… I didn’t want… I should’ve done more, Anarchy. Said more. Talked to you more. I heard a lot about this being beaten…”
“Maybe. Maybe not. At least he kept you thinking positive until the very end. You saw his last message, didn’t you?”
“Of course, I did, but…”
Anarchy turns her head to the firmament above. A majestic purple, a deep dark blue sinking ever upward.
“Wait, didn’t you say this part wasn’t canon?”
“It wasn’t,” Anarchy answers, showing off a loose tooth. “But Dad told me he liked it so much that we’d work backwards to this time, make it a family moment. Some lore to hint at, plant seeds of. At least you’d have made it here, Cinny.” Then Anarchy fixes her gaze on Cinnamon. “You're the analytical type, but I’m a pony of chaos, spawn of Discord and Fluttershy. And hey, you’re an uplifted farm horse from a magical curiosity. Between the two of us, what is canon?”
Their laughter is cut short by a boat floating their way. Behind it, though light years away, a tiny star illuminates the night sky, dispersing the darkness.
“Already?” Cinnamon asks.
Anarchy nods. “Already.”
“But what about the cottage?”
“You read the last chapter, didn’t you? Even if it’s canon now, but I still have a lot of fuel left in me.” She grips the edge of the boat; it rocks, gently, while Anarchy throws out a gas can. “You… everyone helped. The lights may be off here, but everyone’s got photos. More than just the fan art, I know I’d still be out there, on digital pages, but more importantly, I’d be out there in your heads and hearts, in what’ll be left behind.”
She hops over to rest in the wooden vessel, swaying in the wind that no longer moved. “I know I’m not him. You know that. I’m my father’s brand of chaos. Whatever Comma’s doing with me won’t exactly be the Anarchy my creator envisioned. I can’t be your substitute, Cinnamon. I can say all the things about moving on, but Cinny…” Any possibility for a smile fades out, leaving Cinnamon to double-take. “I know you didn’t come here for a lecture.”
“No, no… no, I just want to be with you, just a little longer. It shouldn’t be over…”
Tripping onto the boat, hopping over a seat just to be with her, she buries her face into her neck, hugged by Anarchy, burning streams rushing out of her eyes. Tighter she holds her, to keep her tangible and real in her hooves. A slipping away, all of a sudden, on a fateful night that ignorance kept her from the painful waking—
“There, there,” Ann says, patting her on the back. “As long as I’m out there, my journey won’t ever end… and hey, you still remember me. I’ll be there. My family and friends will be there. Always. Say hi to them for me.”
No words, only sobs, a confused throat, trying to trash the boat, only for Ann to rip her hooves out of her life. But they cling on to her, desperate, for her dear life.
The hours blend in. The moon never falls. A cold wind breaks the two of them into shivers. It has been days now. The boat never leaves.
“Promise me… you’ll have fun, Cinny? For your sake and mine? You used to be so fun…”
“It was a little curiosity that got me in trouble for a bit.”
“But we wouldn’t have met without it. Without that passion you had once before. I wouldn’t let you live like a dead man walking. Just… promise me that, at least? Won’t you, Comma?”
“I’m not Comma.”
“You might as well be.”
She bends to hug Cinnamon one more time, one more hug resting on top of a mountain of a million hugs missed.
Anarchy standing firm within, the boat floats away, lifting itself higher into a hole in the sky.
“Hey, hey, you forgot the candle! Give it to me! I’ll pass!”
Then, great winds rip it off her hooves, rips her off of the boat. She tumbles down onto vaporizing grass, the soil being lifted up as gravity fluctuated and the stars gave into a symphony of supernovas. The heavens rip themselves open, folding and closing a cosmic scroll that stretches across time and space. The horizon tears itself apart, the earth below breaks, the stars flood her vision from up and down. The lights flicker back on for the final moment, joining the visual chorus of an all-white collapse.
“Cinnamon, get out of here!”
Unknown voices melt until she can recognize them, hooves grabbing her by the legs, dragging her out of the universe’s final throes, bright destruction blending into the rainbow colors of the space that hid between worlds, the portals’ limbo.
She hurls, retches on the polished floor, vertigo kicking in from the inter-dimensional ride back home. Pushed forward, is told to that she’ll be given a car, trip back to her house, where Cookie and Oakley and the rest of her friends wait.
A look back, however, grants her a deactivated portal frame. Unplugged, yet preserved.
The night sky bothers her, the moon bathing her in soft silver while she stumbles to the front door, already open with Cookie and Oakley waiting. There is the telling that they know what happened, of Anarchy journeying somewhere past time and space.
She hugs them tighter. Cinnamon doesn’t let them go. Never does as they lead her up the stairs, bathe her clean from tears and snot and vomit, puts her to bed, but she sits up, adamant, never letting go of those hooves, of beating and breathing signs of life, their faces moving, their souls still burning, fellow flames having burned with her for decades ever since they awoke upon rolling hills and a morning to herald, to celebrate, their arrival upon the world.
“I… I don’t want to let you go… a-all of you…” Tears stain and strain her once again upon a dozen times, but Oakley brings tissue and Cookie sits by her. “I’ll be with you… more and more… I just…”
The last thing to be remembered is a vague blubbering before she sleeps.
In a dream, behind a door lies an infinite hallway of shadow save for a blazing candle. Anarchy steps into frame, and colors return, tangible and holdable and they are crisp to the touch. Grass grows and flowers flourish from her hoofsteps and from Cinnamon’s; the scents of crashing ocean and a bountiful forest send them grace.
Outside a humble tent, they sit by two rocks prepared for them. Thus does Anarchy begin, “So, wanna hear a story? Then you tell me yours!”
Cinnamon looks up at her. Her fangs, her bat wings, her eerie resemblance to Fluttershy… and a halo, she imagines, around her as a morning sun forms in the sky, made of the candle’s blaze, departing from her thoughts. But though short-lived is the morning and evening falls upon them, Anarchy still sits, still asks with eagerness.
She can only reply, with good cheer, “Sure, Ann! ”
And the candle is passed.