I won't be continuing to work on this story, at least any time soon, so I figure I'd release what I had written o7
THE QUESTION INSIDE THE QUESTION
Dear Princess Celestia,
Cyr's Seeing. Etherwalk, modified. Custom Spell. Pathfind, modified.
Major runes:
Verita - Kroe/Mité (Major)/Verita - Vici - Verita/Epsi(Relay)’
t=-1,209,600
p<=1.0
Pathfind modification: Delay on Trigger
Etherwalk is one of those spells I’ve always wanted to use. You know how when you read about the comparative density of different materials you get that intrusive thought on exactly how many newtons of force it would take to penetrate it without majorly deforming the material itself? It’s similar to that with spells that navigate or interact with higher planes, but instead of external forces acting on other observable forces, you are the external force exerting influence on otherwise inobservable dimensions!
“Keep it cool, Twilight. It’s just peering into the ethereal plane as a quantumly disentangled temporal relay. No big deal.” I pause on the train platform to take a deep breath in, and hold it. And I keep holding it. I wonder what sort of details will be apparent that aren’t normally observable with the naked eye? Will Detect Magic pierce an illusion spell projecting beyond planes? Would it just detect the spell itself, or is the spell capable of relaying magical readouts?
“Uh, hello? Equestria to Twilight! Where do ya’ want this?”
The air explodes out from my lungs as my body reminds me that oxygenating my blood and organs is not optional. Rainbow Dash’s appearance shocks me out of my wonderful daydreams and I cover my mouth with a hoof to cough lightly a few times, catching my breath as my lungs slowly stop hating my guts. Or, well, me.
“Rainbow, is a mare more than just the sum of her parts?” I muse idly, furrowing my brows.
“Uhhh…”
“I mean, if somepony experiences a catastrophic liver failure and for some reason is resistant to regrowth evocations, and a healthy one gets swapped in for the bad one, is it their liver? Or is it somepony else’s?” I begin pacing back and forth on the platform, my bare hooves knocking against the clean but unpolished wood as I make 180 degree turns exactly every nine steps, alternating rotating left on my left forehoof, and right on the right. “And by that token, at what point does it stop being the donor’s liver, if ever? When it’s removed, implanted? When the host body accepts it and it starts functioning normally?”
“Does it like, matter?” She responds unhelpfully, setting a satchel on the ground beside my designated pacing path.
“Didn’t you say you were interested in philosophy?” I retort, equally as unhelpful in solving the sudden quandary but hoping to rope in her engagement so I can bounce ideas off of her.
“Uh, no? I mean, like, I guess sometimes, when it’s about something more… Cool.” She flutters her wings a bit and with a mighty flap takes back to the air with a graceful backwards arial somersault. The display clicks something in my head.
“What if you lost a wing, and somepony wanted to give you theirs?” I suggest. She looks mortified at the mere suggestion, but I press on. “Not that that’ll ever happen, but just to make it more relevant to the discussion. Would it be your wing, their wing, how do you even classify that?”
Rainbow looks over at her flapping appendages and there’s more than a small amount of concern crossing her face as she thinks about it. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m describing a pretty brutal scenario, it’d be like somepony asking me to imagine grinding up my horn and slapping a new one on. Oh, Celestia, there’s a lot of nerve endings in a horn…
“I mean… I guess once it’s on my body, it’s mine… Or maybe…” She tucks her wings tight against her sides and shivers, falling half a foot to the ground next to me with a t-t-thnk! “Listen, I’m gonna keep it real with you, Twi, that’s kinda messed up aaaand I really don’t wanna think about it.”
Okay, yeah, boundary crossed. Whoops.
“Sorry Rainbow, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I didn’t really think about it until after I said it.”
“Meh, it’s cool. I got my wings and they got me, and that’s all I gotta know!” She polishes a fetlock against her chest with an award-winning grin, ruffling her feathers for extra effect, but knocks over the satchel in the process, spilling about half a dozen hastily-scribbled scrolls across the platform. “Oh shoot, my bad!”
She zips past me and grabs one that the wind caught and started to carry towards the rails, and I summon a diminutive bit of magic to wrap the other five or six in my telekinesis and slip them back into the bag. A few seconds later she has the other one wrapped in a wing and offers it up, which I treat similarly to the other ones. When the scroll leaves her wing and the tension leaves the limb, I notice one of her primaries is bent at an odd angle. Curious, I take a half-step towards her.
“Hey, is your wing okay? Looks like you have some feathers out of place.” I note.
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” She unfurls the same wing and sure enough there’s a couple primaries ever so slightly bent or twisted, and the rows below them aren’t looking so hot in the cleanliness department either, “They put me through the ringer yesterday. Us reserves gotta be ready to be Wonderbolts at the drop of a bit!” A proud look crosses her face as she thinks about it, and I give her a warm nod in acknowledgement. She has every right to be proud about it, it’s her dream after all. The bragging and boasting is understandable too, at least coming from her anyways.
“If you want I can help you clean them when I get back, I did a lot of reading up on it yesterday and I think I’ve got the fundamentals-“
“Whooooah woah woah, back it up a sec!” Her eyes widen and she raises herself to her full height with a ruffle of her wings. She looks conspiratorially around the platform as if checking to see if anypony else heard. I take an idle glance to fill the moment, and it’s just us, Bon Bon, and an elderly unicorn I don’t know probably waiting to head back home to Canterlot. I wonder why Bon Bon is going to Canterlot, actually. I didn’t think her businesses operated out of the capital, or maybe it’s for leisure? She could also be waiting for the one o’clock to Baltimare, but that’s none of my business really.
Oh, Rainbow Dash’s nose is touching mine now. Magic. Telekenetic field. Rainbow Dash’s nose is now a comfortable and respectable six inches from my own.
“Sorry, did you say something? Something crossed my mind.” I apologize, but not for the personal space part. She raises a hoof to go shoulder-to-shoulder with me, but hesitates for a second and settles for just talking without physical contact.
“I said I like ya’, but I don’t like you like that. I mean, no offense, you’re awesome and all but just… Not like that.” She shrinks down a bit which is rare of her, but she bounces back up before I can question the response. “Honestly I wasn’t sure ya’ swung that way. Or any way. I wasn’t sure you, uh… Swung. At all.”
“Rainbow, what in Equestria are you talking about? It’s not like I was- Like I was…” There’s a short in my brain as I put two and two together. Reserved for family and ‘close friends.’ Erogenous zone. Taboo to do in front of another pony. “Oh, it’s… Oh.” I croak lamely, pursing my lips and staring forward with a hard contemplative stare. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so… Sorry, no, I was just asking to help, not because I, or that you were- And I mean I’m not just saying that to cover tail, I really didn’t know until-“
“Woah, cool it! You’re gonna pull a brain muscle.” She flaps her wings to hold herself upright while she clamps both her forehooves down on my shoulders to keep me still. Without any room to fidget or dodge, I’m forced to look back at her with an apologetic smile. “So, just so we’re clear, you’re not into me?” She deadpans with a sincere seriousness. I shake my head. “Damn, really?” She pushes herself up and off my shoulders with a half-disheartened look.
“Didn’t you just say you didn’t like me like that?” I deadpan back. She waves a dismissive hoof and flips onto her back midair, drifting lazily to the side.
“Yeah, yeah, but how cool would it be if I could tell ponies I was so awesome even Twilight couldn’t resist!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, starting to feel a little offended. She takes the clue and looks down at me, stopping her dismissive hoof wave.
“Oh, uh… I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant, you know…” She trails off. I wait for the part that ‘I know’ to be elaborated on, but she just hovers and looks around awkwardly.
“Does everypony think I’m an antisocial hermit or something? I talk to everypony!” I press the issue, determined to get some kind of insight out of the multi-hue pegasus.
“Well, maybe not so much antisocial, as… You know…” She trails off again, and I lightly rasp a hoof against the wooden planks to get her attention.
“Rainbow, I’m serious! I’m what?”
“Well, it’s just… When’s the last time you went on a date?” She asks. That throws me off, and I slowly reign in my surprise with a series of blinks.
“I- That’s personal-“
“That’s what I mean.” She gently lowers herself back to the ground again and twists head-side-up to be level with me again. “I’m not hating, everypony knows you’re super busy all the time, and you probably don’t go for that sort of thing.”
“W- I’m absolutely an advocate of ‘that sort of thing!’ Having a deep psychological and physiological bond with another pony is a fascinating prospect, and there’s a lot to learn from it!” I counter defensively. She raises her forehooves up in mock surrender and hovers half a foot up to stay oriented.
“Alright, alright, you convinced me!”
I feel my maw and face scrunched up in a strange bundle, and I quickly shake my head to try to reset myself. We both hold our positions for half a minute or so, and the sound of an approaching train mercifully breaks the tension. I think I see her visibly sigh out of the corner of my eye, but when my head darts to her she’s casually whistling a tune to hersef.
“…Does everypony really think that?” I ask, looking down dejectedly at the platform. That gets her attention once again, and much more quickly than before I hear her clop down onto the ground beside me and lift a hoof onto my back, rubbing in small circles.
“Hey, really, it’s not like that. It’s just a vibe, y’know? People think I dig mares all the time, part of the vibe.”
“You don’t?” I ask before I can stop myself. My eyes go wide and I open my mouth to apologize but she laughs in my face before I get the chance.
“Let’s just say I go where the breeze takes me.” She responds cryptically. I shake my head again, resolving to not think about it as I gather my saddlebag and satchel. “By the way, why the sudden interest? You never asked before.” She notes, peculiarly perspective for her.
“No reason. Like I said, I read a book.” I lie, facing the rails as the train slowly comes to a stop in front of us. There’s a few more seconds of metal-on-metal and a mechanical hiss, then quiet.
“Nopony else asked you to help them while I was gone?” Rainbow presses again, suspiciously playful about it.
“Mm-mm. Nope, just, uh… Thought it’s be a, um, an enlightening experience.”
“Didn’t you say it was because you wanted to help?” She quips. Oh dear Celestia I can hear that damn smug grin in her voice.
“Two things can simultaneously be true!” I argue, but the snorting chuckles emanating from behind me tell me she doesn’t buy it.
“Enjoy your trip, Twi, I’ll see you around!” She waves at me as she flies off towards the other end of town. But her house is west…
“Where are you going?!” I yell after her.
“Nowhere!” She yells back from the east, towards the Everfree Forest and Fluttershy’s cottage. I close my eyes and let out the longest, most dramatic groan I can muster. That’s going to be a mess to clean up later.
- -
‘Does Fluttershy…?’
It’s all I could think about on the entire trip to Canterlot. There’s signs and variables that I didn’t know how to interpret in the moment and so I dismissed them, left them unchecked as happenstance or expected behavioral deviations. But thinking in a retrospective manner with a possible outcome in mind makes a lot of the pieces fit the narrative. Is it true? Was I imagining? Over-complicating? Am I biased?
Well obviously I’m biased, I’m the subject of a purely subjective emotional analysis and a recount of interpersonal interactions. It’s subjectively as far away from unbiased as you could ever possibly get. But the question inside the question is: Am I thinking logically despite my bias?
Mathematics is simple. Rigid rules and guidelines breaks down the extraordinary into quantifiable and digestible strings of information. Physics is math, but with extra steps, and the trade-off is that theories in it can be tested and applied to the real world. Biology adds the Pony layer to the equation, and biochemistry in hoof with the brain and society is the fourth dimension of convolution to the overly-complex metaphor.
All that to say that interpersonal contact is so extraordinarily detached from mathematics that it’s almost impossible to quantify factually and objectively.
Almost.
In the many hours available to do precious little other than agonize over a problem that can’t be solved, I solved it.
A simple scoring system based on relational fail-rate of married unions, factoring in several traits like sex of both or all parties, number of participants (assumed median of just above 2,) allocating a percentile bracket for genetic differentials, and then there’s environmental factors like allergens, provocative scenery, the availability of romantic versus engaging activities weighted by distance versus occupant throughput.
Plugging in what I know off the top of my head from census data of Ponyville as of last year, accounting for what I know about myself and Fluttershy, I get a nice rounded output of 8,430.
…
I need help.
- - - -
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