Back in April of 2012, a wonderful accident occurred. I wrote a pretentious story with a palpable first chapter, and it became an instant hint. Since I had no legitimate concept of what it meant to carry a "successful oneshot" on one's shoulders, I continued with my dream of fleshing Background Pony out into a full-fledged epic.

Unlike what some marsupials may think, I never intended Background Pony to be just a oneshot. I had every intention of making future chapters with the same formula crafted out by the first one; I simply constructed Chapter One to be shaped in such a fashion that if it was an utter bomb, it would stand on its own four legs in the event that I needed to abandon it.

To my surprise, it made marsupials orgasm in their web browsers. So, Tartarus yeah, I was gonna continue that sucker. I had established a general plot in my mind, and I knew about things that I had to touch up on: the state of Lyra's curse, how she built her cabin, her "first trip" into the unsung realm and the flashback exposition of how she got cursed by Nightmare Moon.

Now, I have a thing when it comes to formatting plot revelations. I space shiet out (no friggin' duh) and I tend to save the best for last. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to write the content of chapter three (the story of Lyra, Applejack, and the cabin) more than anything else. However, I felt it was important to re-apply the stylisms of chapter one in order to reinforce 1) the stuff Lyra gets away with under her curse and 2) the fact that the story was a great deal more about the journey than the destination.

To that end, I delayed writing the Applejack chapter and instead thought up chapter 2 as a way of showing Lyra blessing another pony's soul (like she blessed Derpy's and Dinky's in chapter 1) while at the same time making it clear that she wasn't *always* a calm, meditative, and collective soul. A major reaction to chapter 1 was that Lyra's character was provocative because she was so much at peace with the shittiness of her existence. I wanted to show that things hadn't always been peachy keen for her psyche, and she had to get to where she was after dealing with many obstacles.

There was one problem: Chapter One. "Melodious" was so dayum huge, so big, so successful, that I knew that there was nothing I could do to top it. So, I tried to do it anyways. I tried a little too dayum hard. Who am I kidding--I tried so fucking hard that I would have had better luck giving birth through my urethra than actually making a chapter nearly as competent as the first one.

Come to think of it, there was another problem. I began Background Pony in a state of rebellion. I felt that I didn't need any editors, and I was being all anti-Vimbert about it. In other words, I was letting my writer's high dictate the manner and speed at which I posted things.

And so it was that I slapped this garbage together, had the audacity to call it "chapter two," and rolled it onto the bone pale runway of my ponychan thread. I had every intention of letting marsupials comment on it for the better part of--oh--six pathetic hours. Or maybe not at all. I wanted to upload that chapter with a vengeance. And why not? I was suddenly a god of subscribers and feature boxes--mwahahaha.

And so it came to pass that the hero of the hour, theworstwriter, strolled into town, took one good look at my rough draft of chapter two, and quite humbly commented with the layman's equivalent of "Uhhhhhhhh yeah, no." I was giving him suspicious double-glances, my finger hanging hungrily over the "PUBLISH" button on fimfic like a leper prepared to scratch his own balls, when I quite literally paused and decided to give his wise words some respectful attention.

I went back through the chapter--as you're about to see here--and holy Buddha did it suck cactus tits. Lyra comes across as a mint green douchebag. There are WAY too many characters talking about nothing. Caramel is annoying as hell. The language is far more flowery than any moment in End of Ponies (if that can be imagined).

I've said it before, but for those of you who weren't there at the time, I'll say it again here. I owe theworstwriter for the success of Background Pony. If I had posted this chapter instead of the (slightly less crappy) version that now graces fimfiction, the story would have imploded in on itself. It would have been the Shyamalan movie of pony fiction.

All of that was avoided because, for the briefest of seconds, I actually remembered that I'm an idiotic lemur who needs to listen to editors who do what editors do... and that's help you fix your shit.

What happens to us between sleeping and waking? Every night, when the moon rises, we march like sheep into that deep darkness, not knowing what truth mechanizes the spaces between our heartbeats during such long and noble silence. Are we really the same ponies when we wake up? Or is what rises with the morning merely a carbon copy of the thinking creature that had laid itself down the evening before? What a strange homunculus that thing must be, a golem crafted after the flimsy blueprint of a slumbering soul's final thoughts, that it is no wonder that all of our ambitions, aspirations, and hopes are only residually pursued until the bitter end.

What, then, would we call our dreams? Are they the manifestations of regret? Are they the substance of all our attachments thrown into a searing crucible of mortal fear? Do we dream because we know of loss, of all its colorlessness, across which our wills and desires shatter like eggshells dashed against a brick wall?

I used to believe in these things. I saw the fall of night like the mistress of death. Dreaming was a threadbare, skittering whisper—like the flutter of gray wings or the curling legs of an overturned moth after a short and fruitless life of chasing the invisible purpose behind flame. When a pony is alone—and lucid—whilst cast before the great looming darkness of a world that forgets her, dreams serve nothing more than a dissonant overture to a symphony of screams.

It was with a very mad notion, then, that I once stumbled upon a miraculous epiphany: a dream is much like a song. Very often do ponies forget the title of the instrumental. On other occasions, ponies are even likely to forget the name of the composer. What is not lost between that impermeable gap of sleeping and waking is the tune, the indefinable voice that plays with our ears like a mother licks her newborn foal. And when we open our eyes to the golden glow of a new dawn, it is something more than our bodies that animates us, something that gives us the tempo to which our hearts can dance, something that makes us crawl out of our beds like a resurrected soul is blessed to climb out of a tomb.

Life is a very impossible thing, bleak and dark and dastardly at every turn. But something in the cold void of night—something as black if not blacker than death itself—slips a tune into our meaty hearts as a gardener plants a seed in inert soil. What grows from our dreams is a symphony, at times an orchestra that has no artist. And like that orchestra, we blossom against the nothingness, until our search—our growth—becomes life itself, becomes something impossible, like remembering the name of a musician that you were never introduced to, only to learn that it was yourself the whole time.

I do very much love to dream. Does that make me mad? I daresay, it makes me alive.

It was the eve of the Summer Sun Celebration. All of Equestria teetered felicitously upon the brink of the year's most honored festival. Nowhere was this more exemplified than in Ponyville, a humble little town that bathed in the shadow of the Canterlotlian Mountains. As the last day before the annual event lingered into the waning afternoon, colorful citizens dashed about, setting up the last bits of decorations and fireworks in anticipation of the night that was to come.

The final sun of the spring equinox sank slowly towards the horizon, casting a crimson glow over the streets and courtyards of the quaint little village. In the scarlet penumbra of the afternoon's dying rays, several patches of flickering amber dotted the lengths of Ponyville, marking where large bonfires had been erected and lit ablaze in accordance with Summer Sun tradition. Many disparate groups of ponies—young and old alike—gathered with their loved ones and huddled about the toasty flames. They looked forward to a night's length of fireworks, stories, and activities that would keep them awake through the darkness as they anticipated the first sunrise of the summer solstice.

One such group huddled in a circle around a burning pyre of wood no less than twenty meters from Town Hall. The deep red hues of the sunset glistened across the coats of seven ponies as they sat in the company of each other's murmurs and laughter. Gentle music wafted through the open air of the village, tickling their ears pleasantly as they drank in the communal electricity that danced in the wind from bonfire to bonfire. As the sun continued to set, painting the sky from red to purple to violet in the advent of night, an eighth pony shuffled tiredly up to the burning pyre to join the other seven.

“Well...” Ambrosia exhaled, hoisting an hard hat off her ivory mane and plopping down on her exhausted haunches. “That certainly took a lot longer than it did last year, and we don't even have the Princess visiting us this summer! Heh... What gives?”

“Heeheehee,” Blossomforth giggled from where she squatted next to Thunderlane. “Just relax and enjoy the fire, Ambrosia.”

“As much as I love being consoled by Ponyville's Pegasus Clique,” Ambrosia wiped her brow with a hoof and squatted low. “I really can't relax until four days from now, when my crew and I will have taken everything down. I swear, Ponyville ponies have no concept of subtlety. If y'all party half as hard as you did last year, I might as well just switch to demolition.”

“Who can blame us, Ambrosia?” Bon Bon remarked. She and Sparkler sat on a log, toasting marshmallows before the dancing flames. “It's been a long year. So many of us just want to unwind.”

“You and the other workers did a fine job, Ambrosia,” Candy Mane added, glancing over from her side of the burning circle. She gave a soft smile that complemented the music swimming delightfully between the group. “I especially like the effort you went through to make the stage in downtown so perfect. The Forging of Equestria play should be fantastic this year.”

“Heh, whatever.” Ambrosia yawned and smiled thankfully as Sparkler passed her a marshmallow on a stick. “As long as Cheerilee's schoolfoals don't tear everything down. I'm still getting over what those three little scamps did at the stage we built outside the schoolhouse months ago.”

“I was there for that,” Candy Mane remarked. She looked across the flames towards the other ponies in the group. “It was a talent show, right? Anypony remember the award the that the last act won?”

“'Best Legion of Discord,'” Wind Whistler stated. She chuckled and leaned daintily against the weight of her coltfriend, Caramel, beside her. “On account of all the chaos they were wreaking. Did you know that just last week those three kids nearly set fire to the post office?”

“Something about earning a 'paper recycling cutie mark,'” Caramel uttered in a grumbling voice.

“Heeheehee... Yeah.” Wind Whistler smiled. “They're a rambunctious bunch of fillies, but you gotta admire them for their persistence.”

“I'll admire them once they quit speeding left and right through downtown,” Sparkler muttered, turning her marshmallow over until every white contour was burnt a golden brown. “They nearly ran over my hooves twice this month. Normally, I don't mind—but when I'm trotting across Ponyville with my little daughter in tow, I don't find it so funny.”

“She's having a sleepover with my niece,” Bon Bon interjected with a smile. “Luna knows, they're probably already asleep by now. Heehehee... We figure that next year will be their first chance to try staying awake for the whole night before the Summer Sun Raising. Right, Sparkler?”

“It's a shame that they missed it last year when Princess Celestia was here,” Blossomforth said. “I remember when I was a little filly. It was my greatest dream to see the Princess with my own eyes.”

“Speak for yourselves,” Ambrosia took a bite of her marshmallow, gulped, and smirked. “When I was a filly, I wanted nothing more than to engineer a bridge across the Blue Valley Estuary.”

“I've got my work cut out for me here in Ponyville.” Ambrosia said with a sigh. “Don't get me wrong, it pays well—for a construction gig. But, I swear, I've lost more sleep working in this town than in any other village of Equestria. This year especially! Dear Celestia above!”

Ambrosia squinted fixedly at her. “Do I need to spell it out for you, candy-maker? An Ursa Minor attack, a rampaging green dragon, the return of Discord—and don't get me started on the whole parasprite ordeal!”

Thunderlane whistled while Blossomforth winced beside him. “Yeah, I guess I didn't think much of it,” he remarked with a crooked grin. “But you've had a lot on your hooves, Ambrosia. It's no wonder you look so exhausted.”

“If I had known that I would be having to rebuild so many buildings in so little time with so little planning...” Ambrosia's words melted in the flames as did her tired eyesight. The sky darkened to a dull purple as her coat glistened in the amber haze before her. The music was a soothing current, and she smiled into the crest of the next wave of chords. “Give me another one of them marshmallows. This is going to be a long night.”

Bon Bon handed her one and glanced at the rest of the group. “Well, I, for one, see this Celebration as a chance to relax. After twelve months of craziness, I'd say we've earned it. Erm...” She blushed and smiled Ambrosia's way. “Most of us, at least.”

“Here here,” Ambrosia returned and chomped immediately on the marshmallow, too impatient to toast it.

“A lot of scary things happened,” Bon Bon continued. “Discord's little 'week of chaos' was almost enough to drive me batty, but we all pulled through. We trotted through adversity like good ponies. Even though Celestia's off raising the Sun in Baltimare this year, I think this is gonna be our biggest Summer Sun Celebration ever. I can't wait to see what sort of things we get to celebrate next year.”

Caramel's face was a sullen thing. He stared into the flames, oblivious to the harmonic undulations of the music as he murmured, “Seriously, guys. Things are getting crazier and crazier around here lately. Dragons running amok, parasprites eating everything to bits, cutie pox outbreaks, cider shortages—has this really been a year that's been worth celebrating?”

“All things considered, Caramel,” Candy Mane spoke, “I think it has been. If the Elements of Harmony hadn't been around in our very own town to drive away both Nightmare Moon and Discord—”

“You want to know what happened while Discord was in power?” Caramel's blue eyes knifed sharply across the fire-lit faces staring back at him. “I was turned gray and forced to chase after my mom and dad with an apple cannon. I don't even know I had it within myself to build a cannon that shoots apples, and somehow his chaos magic made me turn on my own family like a possessed monster.” He sighed and shook his head. “No, I don't care to think about the next Summer Sun Celebration in Ponyville, because I'm not going to be around for it.”

This summoned a sharp gasp from his circle of friends. Blossomforth held a hoof over her mouth. Bon Bon dropped her marshmallows. Sparkler and Ambrosia exchanged curious glances.

“Seriously, dude, what gives?” Thunderlane squinted across the flames. “You picked an awkward time to pull our legs...”

“It's no joke,” Caramel returned with a brief frown. “We're moving away in a few months.”

“Sweety...” Wind Whistler gulped and leaned into Caramel. “I thought we decided that we weren’t going to tell everypony until—”

“What's the point in delaying the truth?” Caramel replied. Upon seeing the sad look on Wind Whistler's face, he placated her with a gentle nuzzle while speaking aside to the group, “This is supposed to be a night of fun and festivities. I figured it would soften the blow of the announcement, not that it comes as any surprise.” He stared solidly at the other six once more. “Windy and I are moving to Trottingham before Hearth's Warming.”

“But...” Blossomforth's freckled face was sad and pale. Her ears drooped, no longer reveling in the sweet music. “How could you think of moving away from all of us?”

“How could you afford it?” Sparkler drawled. Bon Bon elbowed her sharply. Sparkler merely rubbed her leg and returned a glare.

“What choice do we have?” Caramel said. “Ponyville is a virtual disaster area, and it only gets worse with each week! Buildings crumble at a moment's notice—you can just ask Ambrosia about that! Then we have Diamond Dogs knocking on our back door, Timberwolves chomping at the bit to drag us away to the Everfree Forest, and gigantic serpents within a stone's throw of the river! And I know how much everypony worships the ground that the living Elements of Harmony trot on, but have any of you really... really taken a step back and looked at the big picture? The fact that the wielders of the Elements are here is a major invitation for trouble.”

Candy Mane smiled. “I've always seen it as though we're living in a place full of adventure!”

“Well I don't like adventures!” Caramel retorted. He sighed and spoke a bit more calmly. “Not when adventures nearly destroy my home, threaten my family, and shatter my peace of mind! As a matter of fact, I'm downright scared that one of these days I'll wake up to find that Windy's been abducted or kidnapped or turned gray by a magical chaos god.”

Wind Whistler nuzzled Caramel back and smiled apologetically at the circle of fire-lit ponies. “We talked and talked about this decision for a while, and I... I have to agree with Caramel here. Ever since the Summer Sun Celebration of last year, I've been a nervous wreck. I can't walk the streets of Ponyville in the daytime without fear that a swarm of parasprites is going to attack me or something. I just... I just don't know what happened to make this town so crazy these last twelve months, but I get the feeling that things aren't going to change for the better. I mean—yes—I think it's great that we've remained in one piece this far, but I can do without all the craziness, y'know?”

“But does that mean you have to move away?” Blossomforth's voice squeaked. Her eyes were soft and round as she said, “Windy, you and Caramel are our friends! We love having you around! Things wouldn't be the same without you!”

“What difference would it make if we go?” Caramel exclaimed. “This town is a powder keg! Next thing we know, we'll learn that this place was built right on top of Tartarus!”

“Don't you dare!” Caramel pointed with a threatening hoof. He cleared his throat and spoke a bit more calmly, “If you ponies had the mind, you'd be doing the same thing we are and getting the heck out of this place!”

“Have you both really thought about this?” Thunderlane asked, his eyes sharp and inquisitive. “I mean really thought about it? A little bit of fear and uncertainty isn't worth leaving the ponies who love you, if you ask me.”

“To be frank, Thunderlane, I'm surprised you and Blossomforth haven't considered the idea yourself,” Caramel bluntly exclaimed. His voice broke through the music, injecting an angry cacophony to the awkward scene. “Do you ever think of the future? Do you ever think of having kids? Do you ever think of raising foals in an environment like this?”

Thunderlane and Blossomforth exchanged nervous glances in the bonfire's glow, shifting uncomfortably at the idea.

“I do raise my foal here,” Sparkler spoke up. She briefly glared across the way at Caramel. “And I for one know that Ponyville is manageable because—in spite of all of the craziness—we make it manageable. All of us. What else are we expected to do?” Her eyes glistened evocatively from the flames. “Should we run away? Should we give up on such a happy life that Ponyville's allowed us?”

“Sparkler, Windy and I are leaving Ponyville to find that happy life. Because—I'm telling you—it ain't here,” he muttered while Wind Whistler leaned sadly against him. “You are all great friends, and we love you to death. But living in this town, month after month, with one thing stacked upon another—it's just not worth it! You have to be a lunatic to find peace and quiet in this place.”

Just then, the music stopped. Everypony blinked in curiosity, until a voice replaced the melody with a hum as warm as the flames between them. “Sounds like somepony's mad.”

All eight equines looked around, confused. Finally, Caramel's eyes were the first to find me. “What was that?” he asked with an angry face of incredulity.

I smiled back at him. I was leaning against a wooden post to the side of the group, hovering my lyre just centimeters before my face. I reached up with both hooves and lowered the hood of my sweatjacket down from over my horn. “It must be oh so delightful to be mad, to be a ceiling without a floor, a fish without an ocean, so that the horrid absurdity of the moment lends a frightened pony the freedom to give up a true gift before it has the chance to shine. The sturdiest asylums in life are the ones built by our own fears, and patrolled by our countless regrets. Such a sad fate, that it's downright silly! At least an open grave has a rich, earthen smell to it, hmm?”

“Oh! My apologies. Heeheehee—I should remember my place. Ahem. Please.” I leaned back against the wooden post and began telekinetically strumming the strings of my lyre once more. “Do continue your celebrations. It's my role to serenade such jubilant festivities, not curtail them.”

“No, you have us all curious!” Candy Mane spoke up. I could spot her scarlet eyes peering at me through the matching tongues of the flickering pyre. “What were you trying to say?”

“That's the funny thing about saying,” I smirked to myself as I attacked each melodic note with soft rigor. I knew that, once again, I was about to become a happy hypocrite. “A pony can try her best, and still not convey anything. I prefer tossing music at others. Unlike sentences, tunes very rarely get thrown back, on account of listeners devouring them so ravenously.”

“Well, thanks for the music, if nothing else,” Bon Bon said with a nervous smile. “I hardly even realized somepony was performing it until you spoke.”

“Yes, well...” Caramel grumbled and gazed once more into the fire. “Just add another plank of crazy to the burning pile.”

I could hear Caramel grinding his teeth from meters away. “Just what are you trying to prove?! My friends and I were only trying to enjoy ourselves—”

“Were you?” I opened my eyes, and the combined gaze of eight ponies met me across the amber halo of light. “Were you really? The last time I checked, this wasn't the industrial district of Stalliongrad. The funny thing about complaining is that it's so easy to do. I dunno about you ponies, but I much rather indulge in a challenge, like doing ballet in a hail-storm, or sneezing while your eyes are open. Heeheehee—I almost went blind trying that last one!”

Sparkler glanced over at Bon Bon with a raised eyebrow. “Does anypony know if Screw Loose has a sister?” Bon Bon shrugged.

“I've never seen you in Ponyville before,” Caramel remarked, his glare a frozen thing as it studied me. Funny how the most handsome of stallions are the most temperamental. The debonair lengths of him ended where his vocal cords began. “It's tradition to be in your hometown when the Summer Sun Celebration hits. What's a unicorn like you doing on the road?”

“Oh, but I am home!” I grinned wide. My lyre was dominating the conversation; my voice simply provided the backup chorus. “And I assure you, this town did not become my home out of obligation or enslavement, in spite of the circumstances.”

I merely continued, “But I chose Ponyville to be my home. I chose its gold-thatched rooftops. I chose its smiling citizens, its beautiful and playful children. I chose its flower gardens and lush parks. I chose its ancient bell tower and antique windmill. I chose the glittering sparkles of light that shimmer off the hillside as the sun rises over a crisp spring horizon. I chose the soft porcelain slopes of snow that blanket the fields on a Hearth's Warming Eve.”

My chords danced around my tongue. The last vestiges of the day were dying, but this was not a threnody. No, that I would practice later, on my lonesome, when even celebration itself was asleep. I realized that I was already dreaming, talking in a fanciful state of sleep, standing on all four hooves as bonfires burned like laughing stars all around me.

“Yes. I choose life. For Ponyville is nothing short of life. It is frightening and random at times, as the slings and arrows of existence so often are. But in the end, it is beautiful, just as life itself is. And when I give my final breath... I expect it to be a sigh of praise, and not of defeat, in spite of the cold and frigid darkness that is to come. To face a sunless eternity with exultation is courageous, and yet it is also the very crux of a lunatic's dream. But I wouldn't have it any other way. To settle for less is not so much living as it is existing, and I would much rather live dangerously in Ponyville than exist safely in the richest mansion of Trottingham. I may not know the craziness that tomorrow brings, but I find it rather dull to sacrifice the joys of the present for the boring security of the future. A memory is only a shadow once it's been lived, drained of all its flavor. So I ask you, as sincerely as a musician can eke sound from a fractured rock, are you mad?”

Wind Whistler placed a gentle hoof on Caramel's shoulder, calming him. Turning towards me, she smiled serenely and said, “You're certainly rather poetic, and we really appreciate your music. But even you can't deny that things have been rather... hectic in this city over the past year.” She bit her lip, her brown eyes darting towards the flames briefly. “I've had some great times in this village, but it's getting to the point that I can hardly bear it. I have to say goodbye to Ponyville.”

“As well as you should,” I nodded, my chords filling the purple haze of the falling evening. “And all your friends as well.”

“Huh?” Wind Whistler blinked, then giggled nervously. “But—I don't understand! Surely, they're not all leaving too!”

The eight ponies murmured in confusion. Their expressions darted left and right, just as swiftly as the flickering movement of the bonfire's flame. It was Ambrosia who eventually spoke up.

“Do you really think it's the town hall, the courtyard, the multiple shops, or any of the surrounding houses that make up this city?” I briefly experienced a wave of cold. Pausing my music, I glanced up towards the horizon. There was still a lasting sliver of red sunlight; the moon was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't time yet. “If you made a granite replica of every building in this place, mimicked its timelessness, and placed it upon the holy ground of the Alicorn Sisters' foaling, I could visit that monument and still not find a single square centimeter of the town that I first fell in love with. Hmmm... No. Ponyville is more like a choir, and every single one of you is singing in it—whether you know it or not. It's a dream too sacred to end, and as soon as one of you leaves, that would be a defeat too sad to write laments for. It'd be like waking early from an enchanted slumber. I know what that's like. Or—at least—I almost did, until someone looked up into my eyes and saved me.”

“Hmmm...” I tongued the inside of my mouth, as if in some futile battle with a smile that was flying at me from halfway across the globe. “Tell me... has anypony here heard the Tale of the Mad Pony?”

“Ugh, bards.” Sparkler rolled her eyes. “A-bit-a-bushel, I swear to Luna.”

“Nnngh... Come on, Windy.” Caramel started to get up. “Let's find us another pile of burning wood.”

“No, wait... Please...” Wind Whistler ushered him back down to a squatting position beside her. She smiled pleasantly my way. “I want to hear this. We’re here to celebrate this night and its experience, aren’t we?”

“Hehehe...” I grinned. Surely my teeth must have been glinting as I resumed a soft melody with my lyre. “My feelings exactly.”

“Now this should be interesting.” Thunderlane smirked as he and Blossomforth scooted towards my side of the bonfire. Candy Mane and Ambrosia followed. Soon Bon Bon and Sparkler were leaning their ears my way.

There is no better audience than an innocent one, and there is no better challenge than to keep them innocent through to the end of the story.

I levitated the lyre higher, casting my music across the darkening heights of Ponyville's misty ceiling above us. Soon, the melodies were resonating across the heart of the courtyard, so that the many ponies seated around the neighboring bonfires were also glancing my way, gradually joining the small crowd of fortunate souls that I had so intimately collected.

“Long ago, in a tiny town like this one, during a Summer Sun Celebration as tranquil and beautiful as Ponyville has ever had, there was a pony—a stranger—visiting from far away. And while every other was soul celebrating and rejoicing in the annual festivities that had blessed their city, this one pony was alone, for she had discovered something... and it was starting to make her quite mad...

“She wasn't mad at first, though. Initially, she was perplexed, quite comically flummoxed. It started when she ran into a nurse who had treated her in the nearby hospital for a concussion, only the medical pony had no recollection of her. It became even more startling when the two ponies who had discovered her lying unconscious in the street the night before treated her as if she was once more a perfect stranger. Then there were little things—haunting and subtle—like celebrating ponies waving at her twice, or shop vendors greeting her multiple times in a row. Soon, the pony could only come to one conclusion: none of the equines in town were remembering a single detail about her.

“'But you saw me just last night!' the pony exclaimed to the two blinking, disbelieving citizens standing in front of her. 'I was collapsed in the middle of the street. My head was pounding, I was freezing cold, and you helped carry me to the hospital! How could you possibly say you've never met me before?!'

“The two ponies merely shook their heads. In fear, they backtrotted away from the pony, as if she was diseased. While the festive villagers danced and played in the Summer Sun Celebration around the pony, she began to think that perhaps she was indeed afflicted.

“'But you treated me just this morning!' the pony shouted, losing her breath, nearly tripping over the hooves of the startled nurse she had stumbled into off-duty. 'You had found nothing wrong with me! Could there be something wrong with me now?! Am I hallucinating for some reason?!'

“The nurse had a look of pity, but buried beneath the shallow surface of that was an increasingly familiar expression of confusion. She offered to help the pony across the festival to the nearest health tent, but the pony realized that history was repeating itself, and far too soon to be natural.

“It was at this point that the pony's spirit turned to anger, as a confused victim’s psyche is likely to do—at first—when facing insurmountable nonsense. 'What's wrong with all of you?!' she growled, thrashed her hooves, overturned a brightly-colored sign or two. 'This is the Summer Sun Celebration! Not April Foals! If this is some kind of cruel joke, then quit it!'

“It didn't occur to her how ridiculous it would be for an entire village to be playing an atrocious prank on her, and yet there she hovered—weightless and adrift in a sea of confused and frightened eyes. But all too soon, those eyes dissipated, disappeared, like waves rippling out from her helpless splashing. It was too improbable to imagine that the ponies simply couldn't comprehend her situation. The only logical truth was that they didn't care. This was already enough to make any equine mad. The pony, however, decided at the moment to settle for furious.

“She ran through the streets, enraged, pounding her hooves over colored sand art, thrashing her limbs against vendor stands full of celestial trinkets, screaming at the top of her lungs. 'This isn't funny!' she hollered. 'Somepony, anypony, listen to me! Pay attention to me!' She was trying to sound menacing, but with each successive hour that went by, hardly a pony paid heed to the havoc she was wreaking. It was then that she started to panic, to whine, to mew like a kitten that had lost its mother in a cyclone. 'Please! Please, somepony, anypony!' she yelled and spat, exchanging screams with sobs like two stallions might shovel dirt into a grave. 'I'm here! Look at me! Listen to me! I beg you!'

“Every shout and every bellow was absorbed into the crowd. Each time she made her mayhem, a flimsy column of gasping ponies would brighten, rise, and fall back down to their routine like blanket sheets tossed over a broad bed. It was with furious desperation, then, that the pony took the next step, and pushed over a torch-lit lamppost that ignited the wooden stage erected in the center of town. Dozens of citizens ran—desperate—to put out the flames. She stood in the middle of the conflagration, shouting boastfully of her horrible deed. And for once, it worked. She practically cried in joy as a pair of police stallions hoisted her off to the jailhouse on the far side of town.

“Her heart sang. She had finally found an audience, even if it took her becoming an arsonist to win them. Just as they were locking her away in a barred cell, the pony spun around to thank them, only to receive blank looks and dazed expressions as penance. The officers suddenly looked at her as if she was a lost child, apologized vehemently for their 'mistake,' and swiftly ushered her back out into the streets. She was too busy recovering from her shock from that turn of events that she barely realized that the stage in the center of town had been completely renovated, as if she had never set fire to it in the first place. As the Summer Sun celebrators frolicked and giggled around her, it occurred to the pony that perhaps she had never committed arson... and yet she had, a very impossible thing.

“She went mad that night. Not when she slept, nor when she woke up, but somewhere in between—in the world of dreaming—she discovered her insanity, for the landscape of her fractured mind was nowhere near as bizarre as the world she was suddenly flung into. In the midst of her own fitful nocturne, she spun herself down the web of fresh and painful memories. Every time she had tried talking to a villager, she had been forgotten within a span of minutes. Every time she tried to buy a bite to eat, the food would go missing as the waiter or salespony lost track of her order. Every time she tried renting a room in a hotel for the night, the innkeeper would stumble in on her and toss her out like a freeloading bum.

“The pony had only one last recourse—the final gossamer strand of her sanity left to snap—and that was to go to the library in the center of town the following morning and visit the only soul that she knew, the one equine in the entire village that was the sole reason for her coming there to begin with. When she knocked on the door, the pony's heart jumped for joy at the sight of her friend's face... until her friend's face stared at her blankly.

“Losing the love of a friend is like a death that has no funeral. Entire galaxies have dissolved over the eons and even they are worthless things. The pony realized she was still dreaming, only the dream had consumed her from the inside out. No living thing should face a reality like that, to be an island with no sea—only the perpetual blackness of apathy, encompassing. You can be pummeled to a bloody pulp, have your eyes and ears pulled from their sockets, and have every nerve in your body paralyzed forevermore. That would still not be as numb and hopeless a fate as being ignored forever.

“Of course she went mad. Wouldn't you go mad? Wouldn't you too dance through the streets, whooping and howling, filling the air with your righteous hysteria? Wouldn't you also toss sobs against laughter and see what rained down from the resulting explosion? Wouldn't you, like her, try counting all of the worthless pieces of you crumbling to the floor, put them in a hat, and beg every pony you saw to reach in and tell you what they drew because you no longer had a clue?

“Ponies aren't born to be alone. It's just not in our blood. We attract to one another. We are cohesive: like water. The void of the universe exists only because we are here in the center to point in all directions away from ourselves and label that which is missing, that which is more cold and frightening than a winter's night, that which hungers for us because it can never understand—as we understand—what it means to be warm, to be happy, to be whole.

“The mad pony could no longer be warm. There was nothing left in her to keep whole, for she had no other soul to recognize her anguish long enough to acknowledge the spirit that it was tortuously tethered to. She tried becoming something recognizable—if not to the villagers' joy, then to their despair—as she turned violent and shattered shop vendors apart, tossed over effigies to the alicorn Bringer of the Sun, and screamed out every obscenity she had the poor grace to learn in her young life. Each flare of drama was like a lit matchstick tossed into a deep well, and the black waters were rising in tandem with her hyperventilating lungs.

“For three days, the mad pony descended into the depths of her nightmare. While the Summer Sun Celebration praised the world for its gift of life, she discovered a brand new darkness, an ocean of oblivion that she once knew as a foal—when she heard strange noises outside her window and sobbed until the morning came to shatter the shadows back into hiding. Only, now she was the one who was hidden. Now she was the cause of those sobs, as well as the vessel. The shadows were her only companions, the only ones she could afford—as hunger and cold attacked her from all angles. Only the shadows granted any sense of familiarity, and it had a very, very stale taste to it. She suddenly knew what it would feel like to subsist on ashes forever, an inexplicable scavenger of a world that had died in freeze frame all around her. All that the black-and-white photograph needed was her signature, a surrender to the fate that was squeezing every sob out of her lungs as the sudden cold was squeezing shivers from her limbs. She knew the bright morning was bound to come, like her foalish self once dreamed of, but there would be no waking from this dream. She was deader than dead forever.

“How do you wake from an endless dream? She pondered upon this for hours, with bloodshot eyes and sore limbs, all of which failed her constantly in the abandoned alleyways of town while the Celebration was being wrapped up all around her. It occurred to her that her entire concept of nonexistence was a skewed thing. Death never ended her, it only made her lonelier. After all, she had died hundreds of times since the Celebration began. When she woke up to the two ponies dragging her to the hospital, that was the first death. When she was being treated by the nurse and promptly forgotten, that was the second death. Every pony that looked at her twice was another. Every time something she had done was ignored, it piled up the bodycount. The officers who hoisted her off to jail only to free her was a veritable massacre, and soon she was bound to die again—countless times—as her legacy was reborn, like a waking child in bed, only for that bright morning to be curtailed, aborted, tossed off a cliff as she too would be flung back into the bleak world of her nightmare, smelling more and more like the corpse that she felt festering deep inside.

“It was no longer a matter of living or not living. She had to assault the dream—that damnable masquerade of misery—and then the freezing would stop, the hunger would stop, the emptiness would stop. What lay beyond the last breath of slumber may have been blacker than black, but the pony suddenly realized that oblivion was harmless to a soul no longer possessed with the ability to see.

“The Celebration had come and gone. All of the festive decorations had been removed from the center of town. It was late in the evening; citizens were getting ready to sleep. She was getting ready to sleep too.

“Then, all of the sudden, one of two earth ponies glanced up from where they were bundling equipment and saw her on the fourth story ledge of town hall. The stallion immediately gasped, his sapphire eyes full of shock and horror, the same violently real expression that she had tried so hard to summon days before. Only, now it was too late. Regardless, he waved a hoof at her while shouting towards his comrade.

“'Oh dear Celestia! Quick, go fetch a pegasus—anypony that can fly!' As his buddy galloped off in a desperate breath, he trotted boldly to the edge of the building and peered up at her. 'Ma'am, I don't know what you're going through and I can't pretend to, but please—this can't possibly be the answer. There's got to be another way!'

“But the mad pony was past reasoning with. If her tears weren't evidence enough, then perhaps her disheveled mane and muddied coat spoke volumes to the shocked stallion below. 'Just stop! Just stop talking!' she shrieked, her teeth shattering. It was the beginning of summer, and yet she felt as though a great blizzard was pelting her through to the bone. It must have been the cruel world's last attempt to prolong her torture, and she was no longer stupid enough to settle for it. 'Your words are meaningless! They mean nothing! Soon you won't even remember me! I'm as good as dead—I should be dead already!'

“'No! Don't say that! Nopony deserves to die needlessly!' He reached a hoof towards her from afar, as if history could rewrite itself and give him wings or a horn to save her body where he was helpless to salvage her soul. 'I promise that we won't forget you! Just walk away from the ledge and let us talk to you!'

“'There's nothing you can promise me that won't get swallowed in time!' she said, hiccuping, struggling to maintain her breaths. Her soul teetered upon the brink and threatened to pull her body along with it. Ponies who fall in their dreams were never known to hit the ground. She was more than ready to test that theory. 'This village means nothing to me! It's a prison! Nothing more! Nothing!'

“'Look...' the earth pony below raised both of his front hooves and spoke calmly, soothingly, though his shivers briefly matched hers. 'Even if everything is as horrible and as bad as you believe it is, this isn't going to solve it! This isn't going to make anything better! You need to have faith and step away from the edge! Don't allow yourself to go before your time!'

“Finally, the mad pony had heard enough. 'Why?!' she spat down at him, furiously. 'Why shouldn't I just jump?! Why shouldn't I just end the nightmare once and for all?!'

“He looked up at her, but it was a different stallion somehow, or so she noticed him for the first time—as so many of the villagers had noticed her for the first time, only to forget. Only this time, there would be no forgetting, and she realized it was because she was the means of that memory, a power that she always had, but was only now echoing in the cave of her punishing situation. Perhaps it was the drooping of his ears, or the soft shape of his lips, or the glossing over of his sapphire eyes. Whatever the case, he spoke to her, and a part of the mad pony that she thought she had left with her sanity suddenly felt him scratching the insides of her mind, like a tune that woke a foal slowly from a dark, dark dream, with words that weren't in fact meaningless... for they were merely the accompaniment to a chorus as old as time:

Because you are so special, so precious, and this world would be a lot less worth enjoying if you chose to leave it.

“The mad pony was silent. She stared down at the stallion. He was a perfect stranger. He didn't know her, and in a matter of minutes he never would again, and yet that didn't stop him from appealing to the deepest part of her, the part of her that was still warm, for in so few words he had reminded the mad pony that that part of her was in fact still there. In mere seconds, he would very well have made her... or remade her, for the very simple fact that he could, and wanted to. He was the one who was precious, for he didn't know that in a matter of time he himself would be gone, nothing more than a mere shadow burned against the walls of the mad pony's beleaguered mind.

“And it was then that she realized how selfish she had been in her anguish and despair. She was not the one dying multiple times, over and over again. These ponies—these beautiful villagers were the ones dying repeatedly. They were nothing more than amnesiac shades of their past hosts, paper facades of souls that once graced the earth with the right to bear every thought that crossed their mind into righteous permanence, but couldn't because the mad pony was there to bring their dreams to an end.

“The entire village was dying, with ponies falling left and right into oblivion, for she—a cursed pony—had the blatant audacity to gallop across their lives and impart her pestilence upon them. And there were so many of them, countless ponies who briefly laughed and smiled at her, far too many to dig graves for, only to sing songs of—like the vibrating tune coming to life in the back of her head—a chorus that repeated itself louder and louder with each heartbeat, for hers was pulsating for the stallion's, for his priceless words that would soon rocket their way into oblivion far faster than she could ever jump her pitiful self. All of these ponies' faces were snapshots, joyous and beautiful until the end of time, like she had every ability to be, if only she was courageous, if only she was mad—mad for the sake of making a life out of a nightmare and discovering the colors hidden within.

“Before this epiphany finished illuminating her more than any sunrise ever could, a cold chill ran across her body, and she knew that something that was briefly there was lost forever, because the stallion was already starting to blink dazedly like a waking infant in his crib. But as the stallion's dream ended, and his tears disappeared, they rediscovered themselves in her eyes. She smiled for the first time in days, and teetered upon the edge of the buildingside.”

All eight ponies gazed, mesmerized, at the edge of their wooden seats. The fire burned brilliantly between them, but they could just as well have been blind to it.

I lowered the levitating lyre to my hooves and leaned against the wooden post. I waited, like a glacier crumbling slowly through an immeasurable age. My smile was even more patient, enticing them.

It was Blossomforth, of course, who was the first to murmur, “What happened?”

“Finish the story, girl!” Wind Whistler exclaimed, practically trembling. “Did she jump or didn't she?”

I adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie and calmly gazed back at the group. I tossed at them, “Would you?”

They were speechless. Any words would fail them. That's when I realized—as I always do—that we were finally in communion.

“You can complain about this town,” I said in a voice as gentle as my grin. I felt the shadows of other ponies peering in from nearby groups as I continued, “You can gripe about the troubles that afflict you on a weekly basis, about the dangers that briefly encumber your regular routine. But know this—what makes this town is more than incidental adventure, more than the rise and banishment of chaotic demigods, more than curses and blessings cancelling each other out to make poetry. This town is you, a very precious allotment of souls, souls that love each other, souls that give to each other, and it is worth living for.” I took a deep breath and hugged my lyre to chest. “Just like everything is worth living for, so long as you have the ability to live it, so long as you can prolong the life of something so precious. Because to choose to do anything else is to choose to end something that can never be fully explored or understood otherwise.”

The ponies around the flame murmured quietly amidst themselves. Their breaths were deep things, inhaling more warmth than what the bonfires could give them. Little could they see the pale sheen rising over the edge of the black sky as the darkness of night came upon us. I saw it, of course, and so I spoke quickly to outrace the cold.

“Live,” I told them. “Live, and do so together, no matter how mad the notion may seem, no matter all the craziness it takes to stomach it. Live in this town, for you have built a paradise for yourselves here, and there is music to be discovered, like a harmony lying beyond the golden veil of a half-forgotten dream. And the joy of waking is always yours to have so long as you're humming the song together, so long as you're looking at life for all you can rejoice in, and not for all its baser shades—for even that is easily hidden by the radiance we give to each other, which is far more brilliant than ever an alicorn goddess is capable of wielding. After all, this town would be a lot less enjoyable if you left it, and it would ruin the chorus... not just for me—heeheehee—but for yourselves.”

Something lit up the edges of their eyes. I could sing of that bright, pale orb in my sleep, and I knew that I had been doing just that for a solid year. The eve of the Summer Sun Celebration was over, and I announced it with a shiver and a cloud of vapor escaping my trembling lips.

“I'll never stop dreaming,” I said, though my words were replaced by the strings of a lyre, as if they formed a beacon from across the universe, the faithful yet meaningless eulogy of a righteous sentry. “I'll always remember you.”

Sparks crackled and died in the bonfire, like a brief color in everypony's eyes. They all blinked as one, for night had fallen. Darkness encompassed the bright islands of amber flame, and the equine souls clung to each other with their mutual silence.

“If you'll excuse me,” Sparkler's droning voice broke the stillness, though it was wavering. “I need to go.”

“Huh?” Bon Bon was still dazed. She looked up at her companion. “Where to?”

Sparkler paused in mid-stride. She turned and smiled for the first time that night. “I'm going to go and wake up Star Sprite.” She gulped and ran a hoof through her mane. “It's going to be a gorgeous celebration. She deserves to see it. I don't care how young she is.”

Slowly, Bon Bon returned the smile. “I'll have some marshmallows toasted for when you both return.”

Sparkler left, and that was when the first of the fireworks exploded across the night's sky. The remaining seven ponies looked up, awestruck, their hearts pulsating with the bright plumes of rainbow pyrotechnics, like the percussion to a hidden song they were discovering with each twitch of their eyes. Foals danced wildly between the bonfires, shouting with glee in a futile attempt to match the volume of the dashing explosions overhead.

As the light show continued, Wind Whistler heard a shuddering breath to her side. She glanced over towards Caramel with a concerned expression. “Sweety?” she implored. “What is it?”

“I... I'm not sure,” he replied. His face was soft, and a single tear fell from his sapphire eyes. “I'm just... glad to be here. Glad to be alive.” He swallowed hard and easily tore his gaze from the fireworks to fill his vision with her instead. “How else would I be spending this moment right now with you?”

Her returning smile was as gentle as the nuzzling she gave his neck. “Love you too, ya sap.”

Across the bonfire, Blossomforth and Thunderlane stared at the couple. Soon, they exchanged tender gazes and leaned against each other in a blessed mimic of their friends, all the while watching the fireworks above. Ambrosia and Candy Mane giggled over memories of past Celebrations while Bon Bon fumbled for more marshmallows.

Ponyville had become a strobing sensation of amber flame and rainbow explosions. Ponies danced in the streets—fillies, colts, mares, and stallions alike—all mutually promising to stay awake through to the next morning, when it was up to their patron Princess to bring forth a literal glow to the world that mirrored the prancing joy in their hearts. They were so busy with their festivities that hardly a soul noticed one pony marching through the heart of the event, a pony who was not lit up by the bonfires, a pony to whom the fireworks gave no shadow. She paused halfway through trotting out of the center of town, looking over her shoulder.

For a moment she saw—or thought she saw—a trail of her own hoofprints disappearing behind her in the bright moonlight, at an even pace. Upon such a dreamlike sight, she did what only a mad pony would do.

If all I care about in life is the imprints I make in this world, then the most I'll ever leave is a grave.

Background Pony
II - “Lunatic's Dream”

by shortskirtsandexplosions
Special thanks to: the FATHOMLESS VOID OF THE UNIVERSE MWAHAHAHA--no seriously, I’ll fill this up later
Cover pic by Spotlight:

Short Scraps and Explosions

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Background Pony - The Original Chapter 2