//------------------------------// // In Which Cadence is Revealed to be a Nerd // Story: Whispering Stars // by Causal Quill //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle stared at a small bubbling fountain. The three layers of the fountain were short enough that the water appeared to be rising implausibly from its basin. It resided in the middle of a small stone table with curved stone benching around it. The installation was quite decorative, but the uncomfortable benches made it unpleasant to actually sit at the fountain’s table. Twilight sat upon it nonetheless. The fountain was interesting and calming. It seemed the right thing to be doing while she took a moment to reflect on a less calming recent experience. She had arranged to stay one week in Canterlot. For a personal friestudent(!) of the Princess and somepony with a royal stipend, it was a surprisingly complicated process. Now that she’d been here three days, things were becoming normal enough to escape the dregs of that complication. Some of the complications were just what you’d expect. A week away meant finding somepony else to watch the library. She couldn’t let gaps in her schedule become gaps in the library’s schedule. What if somepony wanted to reference a book but the library was closed? It’d be a total disaster! Twilight couldn’t bear the thought of being the pony who caused that to happen to somepony else. She had hired a temporary librarian. Spike had tried to get her to leave him with the job. She’d managed to weasel out of it without quite admitting that she thought he’d spend the whole time sleeping if she left him unsupervised. That was a hard conversation. Being honest with herself, she had to admit that Spike probably managed to read between the lines, and she was risking a grumpy dragon when she got back. She’d thought about getting one of her friends to do it. That would’ve minimized the resentful dragon factor while still making sure that the library stayed open. The problem there was that they all had lives of their own. She was pretty sure that only Applejack had any chance of taking a dull and unfamiliar job seriously. Applejack, who would of course insist on not taking money for it, nevermind that Sweet Apple Acres always had plans it was coming up short on bits for and couldn’t spare a week of unpaid work. Was it cheating to hire Big Macintosh? Spike liked him, so maybe he wouldn’t be too grumpy when she got back. They’d keep each other on task. Spike had the library knowledge. Big Macintosh had the work ethic. He was also patient, smart, and perennially popular in town. Maybe the draft pony could bring in a little more traffic than usual, too! That was an exciting thought. All those ponies learning the joy of books. She just hoped that taking money from her wouldn’t get Big Macintosh in trouble with Applejack. For that matter, hopefully it wouldn’t get her in trouble with Applejack, either. Some of the complications were less normal. Hay, some of them were things no normal pony would ever see coming. For some reason, a week in Canterlot inherently seemed to mean terrifying the aristocrats. Twilight had grown up completely surrounded by crazy rumors in Canterlot. Apparently, the Princess didn’t take many apprentices, and the stuffy nobles didn’t know how to handle something so dreadfully unusual. It was just a bunch of gossip and rumors. She did her best to act like she didn’t notice. Her last visit had actually gone off without a hitch, but she’d made the mistake of announcing this one well in advance. It felt like the courtesy was being punished. Maybe she did the announcement wrong. It practically took a concerted letter-writing campaign (for which she’d drafted Pinkie Pie and Rarity) just to bring Equestria back from the brink of revolt. She had tried to draft all her friends for it. Applejack and Rainbow Dash had collaboratively managed to write one letter before they got fed up and left, complaining loudly to each other about Canterlot and the government all the way. Twilight had checked the letter, then chucked it. Into the fireplace. Fluttershy had agonized through two letters across the course of three nights’ effort. They came out wonderfully. They’d almost certainly been the best of the letters, even. The problem was there’d been something of a premium on volume. Only Pinkie Pie and Rarity had kept up pace enough to be really helpful. Twilight hadn’t been able to proofread all of what they sent out, but the random sample she’d pulled had seemed okay. They only had to be better than nothing at all, right? A shiver went down Twilight’s spine as she thought about that. In hindsight... Maybe ‘better than nothing at all’ had been the wrong bar. Pinkie Pie and Rarity took it as an opportunity for rampant friend-making. A few stray hairs popped out of place in Twilight’s mane as she thought about the two of them. Which was worse: Pinkie Pie’s horrible informality, or Rarity’s polite schmoozing? No, no question. Definitely Rarity. Pinkie Pie was more likely to offend somepony, but at least they’d be distracted from worrying about Twilight. ‘Better than nothing’ had been fine with Pinkie. When it came to Rarity and high society though, nothing could stop the schmooze. Twilight’s ruminations were interrupted when Luna’s voice broke over the sound of the fountain and startled several birds into the air. Twilight blinked and rubbed her eyes, glad that nopony had been nearby to spot her staring aghast at the fountain. She hadn’t heard what was being said, but curiosity compelled her to head in the direction she’d heard the voice from. Luna wasn’t usually out in the gardens by daylight. This brought her close enough to hear who replied... which sent her into a gallop. “Cadence!” said Twilight as she rounded a wall of flowering shrubs. Cadence turned and saw a familiar face galloping towards her. She instantly broke off her conversation with Luna to approach Twilight in return. They shared a brief hug, broke apart, and went straight into, “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake!” The two of them laughed afterwards, and Twilight said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here!” “I told you we needed to meet up sometime when the fate of Equestria isn’t hanging in the balance. I heard you were coming to Canterlot. There didn’t seem to be any emergencies in the Empire, so I took a few days to clear my schedule and arrange for a train. Didn’t you get my letter saying I’d be here?” Cadence asked, tilting her head quizzically. Twilight frowned. “There were a lot of letters,” she said. “My friends handled more of them than I did. It must’ve gotten lost in the rush.” "No worries!” said Cadence, touching Twilight’s cheek as if to lift the frown into a smile by hoof. Twilight laughed and pushed said hoof away, shying back a step. “And since you met me here, we haven’t even lost any time. I heard from Luna that you’re researching the Fall of Nightmare Moon?” Twilight winced. Cadence had used a light tone, but still. ”I’m not researching the Fall of Nightmare Moon. Or at least, I didn’t think I was,” she said. “I wonder why Luna—err, begging your par—,” Twilight turned towards Luna to apologize for speaking as if the Moon Princess weren’t there. It turned out to not be a problem, since Luna wasn’t there. The apology stalled out. Glancing out where Luna had been standing before revealed very little. Where the Princess had stood there was now only a small bag that looked like it belonged to a royal gardener. “Did Princess Luna leave as soon as I showed up? I hope she’s not upset with me.” “No, she didn’t seem upset at all. Well. She was kind of generically frowny, but I’m pretty sure that’s just because it’s too bright and she hasn’t slept yet.” “It’s true she doesn’t usually stay up this late,” Twilight said, looking around confusedly. To say that Twilight hadn’t noticed Luna’s exit would be an understatement. Luna had vanished as silently and completely as if she’d never been there in the first place. For being such a loud presence sometimes, Luna really seemed to have a talent for melting away in the slightest shadow. “Huh.” Cadence laughed again and danced from one front hoof to the other. “She’s good at that!” said Cadence, responding to the thoughts written all over Twilight’s muzzle. “Hey, you know how we used to go for walks and study the different plant species? Let’s go check on a few of them,” she said, stepping past Twilight to gesture out in the direction of the center of the royal gardens, “Meanwhile, Celestia’s stories aren’t as unverifiable as you might expect.” The aura of Cadence’s magic drew attention to the bag that’d been unnoticed on the ground nearby, and she pulled a crystal out. She brought it in front of herself as she started to walk. Twilight hurried to catch up and then match pace with her. “So Pride and Tyranny really existed? What is that? Will it show us an image of them?” “You grew up around images of them, Twilight. Many of the paintings in the castle portray them how they looked back then, smaller, with the pink mane and the blue,” said Cadence. Then she looked thoughtful. “At least I think they do. Some of the castle staff say that Celestia claims she was just a foal at the time. It’s hard to imagine.” “She does. I think that might be the story she told me yesterday morning. It’s REALLY hard to imagine,” said Twilight. “I bet she was adorable! Oh, I should commission a painting of when Pride and Tyranny met,” Cadence said exuberantly. Twilight shook her head. It was really hard to imagine Celestia as anything but huge. She focused on the crystal again. “I guess you haven’t heard the story directly, but you’ve heard the details secondhoof. If it doesn’t contain images of them, how does that crystal help verify Celestia’s crazy story?” “This is where I heard the story you heard, but I heard it from a different perspective. This crystal projects the sight and sound of Second Sight, an ancient crystal pony researcher who pioneered the recording crystals.” The hovering crystal moved to the far side of Twilight and then it lit up, projecting an image of a distinctly underfed crystal pony. Twilight quirked an eyebrow at the silent projected image walking with them. “She looks like she’s starving,” she said. “The Crystal Empire is in the cold, far north. Local magics keep it mostly ponyformed, but exceptional winters can overwhelm that. That means three years of expensive food imports and a lot of narrowing waistlines while we rebuild our agriculture. Second Sight recorded the contents of this particular crystal during just such a period of famine.” “Did she make it through okay?” asked Twilight. “Her life is very well preserved; she’s a minor hero in our history. She was fine. More than fine, actually; heavy exposure to crystal magics tripled her lifespan and made her exuberantly healthy for most of that.” Twilight’s eyes widened. “Wow! If that’s a normal side effect of crystal magics, it’s no wonder your capital is so shiny! You’re going to have no end of migrants.” Cadence laughed again and answered with a gleeful nod. “We’ll have our pick of Equestria’s best! The Crystal Empire always has,” she said. “At least, always since Second Sight accidentally figured out how to make it work while doing something unrelated. It’s not the best source of longevity known to ponykind, but it’s far and away the most accessible.” The Crystal Princess’ horn flared as she focused on the crystal again. There were a few staticy noises, and Twilight noticed the still-mostly-silent figure’s mouth start to move. Cadence was clearly trying to make it do something. Twilight wondered if she could help, and so she thought hard about what Cadence was doing to the recording crystal. She seemed to be trying to get the audio output working. Her head lowed as her mind churned with magic theory. She didn’t know anything about crystal magic specifically, but there were certain commonalities in underlying theory that applied, with the correct modifications, even across disparate classes of magic. “Celestia had a stationary crystal,” Twilight said. “Apparently one made in Sombra’s last days, or just after. This is an earlier recording crystal, like a prototype. Did the prototypes only work when kept in motion?” “Yes, sorry I’m having such trouble with this one,” said Cadence distractedly. “Might work if we galloped, but it’s hard to listen to historical lectures when you’re running... It might just be too old to use...” Cadence stopped flaring her horn. With its power source removed, the walking image of Second Sight vanished. The crystal princess took a deep breath and then said, “One of these days, I hope somepony comes up with a way to transfer old images into new crystals. We rarely lose anything—we can duplicate our records by breaking and regrowing them—but the older crystals have flaws in them that just grow right back into the new copies.” Twilight licked her lips and narrowed her eyes at the crystal floating next to the two. She put her muzzle right up against it as if a mere physical examination would make it give up its secrets. “Let me try.” “Sure, go ahead,” said Cadence. She sounded a little skeptical. Twilight didn’t let it bother her. She focused her magic on the crystal, turning its glow from Cadence’s blue aura to her own purple one. She pushed magic into it, delicately feeling out the structure of the crystal, and... barely penetrating it. Suddenly she understood why Cadence’s horn had flared out. “Ugh, this isn’t exactly the delicate piece of glass it looks like,” she complained as she poured more magic into it. The image of Second Sight flickered back into existence unstably beneath the hovering crystal as they kept walking. “Be careful, Twilight,” said Cadence, watching Second Sight’s appearance. The crystal started to whine, setting Cadence’s ears back. “Twilight, wait, this was a bad idea.” “No! I’ve almost got it... Ahha, this is misaligned.” There was a crunch as Twilight forcibly fixed a chunk of the crystal’s internal structure. A thin crack started to spread across the surface of the crystal, but the attention of the two ponies was stolen when the crystal pony took a breath and they heard it. Twilight and Cadence looked at the Second Sight projection as it said loudly and cheerfully, “Hello, star ponies!” The exclamation was punctuated by a grinding, shattering noise as the new fissues in the crystal caused it to slide apart in Twilight’s grip. The image of the thin crystal pony flickered out again. “Oh no! Your crystal, I’m so sorry!” Twilight said as she tried to push the chunks of the crystal back together again. The two of them stopped walking. “No, don’t grind them!” said Cadence. The chunks of the crystal flickered blue as she took them away. “Don’t worry about it. I can grow these into a new crystal for tomorrow. Err, maybe several new crystals. I’ve got a feeling this isn’t the last one we’re going to shatter.” “Oh... Okay,” said Twilight, still embarrassed. “Hey... before the crystal shattered, why did Second Sight say ‘Hello, star ponies’?” Cadence blushed. “Well, Second Sight was kind of... eccentric. She was convinced that the stars were ponies, that they were reading her crystals, and that they were the most important audience she’d ever have. So, err, all the crystals she recorded are addressed to the ‘star ponies’.” Twilight blinked, and then said brightly, “Well! Far be it from me to deny another culture’s heroes. Actually, I think I want to hear more!” Cadence frowned at Twilight for a moment before she started giggling. “You will, just not today. Hey, there’s a secluded fountain not far from where we are. Secret hedge path, completely surrounded by high green walls. The gardeners think they’re the only ones who know about it, but Auntie Celestia and I used to use the stone table in there for seclusion at lunchtime. Lemme show you.” The idea of using the royal garden’s stone tables for actual meals made Twilight wonder if all the other alicorns had iron butts. The promise of a secluded fountain and a garden secret kept her from voicing that complaint as she followed after Cadence. On the topic of garden secrets... Now that she’d been away from it for a few years and was visiting again, Canterlot had a funny way of seeming larger on the inside than on the outside. Spotted in the distance, the castle seemed almost small in the way it hugged the mountain, but not only was there an entire city attached to it, the grounds themselves always seemed to be hiding some new thing. Somehow she’d never noticed the scale mismatch when she was growing up. It was like a weirdness censor applying to the ponies who were most used to it. Maybe it really was bigger on the inside than the outside. When Discord had her and her friends galloping through the royal mazes, the mazes had certainly been getting bigger and more exaggerated by the minute. Cadence’s Crystal Palace, supported on grand archways and barely touching the ground at all, similarly had stairways the geometry of which could only have put them burrowing into the ground. Someday, some member of the Crystal Palace Staff was going to find themselves giving directions to a visitor. These directions would jaunt cheerily across two walls and an inverted staircase, and nopony would notice anything wrong with that. Except the visitor. They’d get lost and spend two days exploring the endless stairways. They’d eventually stumble through a secret portal to Chrysalis’ dark mirror of the Palace, where they’d discover a plot to harvest the love and unity of the Crystal Ponies. Twilight stopped and rubbed at her horn. Where’d all that come from? She shook off the pall of weird thoughts. It was probably best not to think too much about Chrysalis while Cadence was nearby. Just as Twilight stopped, Cadence broke off of the main garden path and walked around a corner towards what was (of course!) a dead end. As Twilight caught up, she saw Cadence walking in front of a statue. It wasn’t at the back of the dead end, but off to the side. The pink pony placed her hooves on it and pushed. After a moment of initial resistance, it slid back along a track, disappearing into the hedges. After thoughts like those, the revelation that the ‘secret hedge path’ was accessed by a rolling statue almost seemed banal. The path burrowed claustrophobically into the middle of some thick hedges. It was neither wide nor tall. Twilight’s horn brushed the top. Slightly larger and bearing twice as much horn, Cadence had to duck to avoid getting snagged. “I can’t imagine Celestia coming through here,” commented Twilight. “She’d have to crawl.” “She did!” Twilight tried to tell her imagination to try harder. Her imagination failed, and as a means of distracting Twilight from its failure, it pointed out to her that all she could see of Cadence in these cramped quarters were hindquarters. Every tiny gap in the hedges let through a shaft of sunlight, and countless mottled lights played across— Twilight managed to cut the thought off, only to find herself imagining Celestia showing her the path and crawling along in front of her. Suddenly her imagination found the prompt usable(!?). Twilight dropped her head and pushed her horn into the dirt path underhoof. She wasn’t even sure what she was doing. She just knew it was either this or teleport away in a panic. Cadence’s hoofsteps stopped as soon as Twilight’s did. “Twilight? You okay back there? It’s a little tight in here, I don’t think I can turn around without hurting the hedges.” Twilight laughed nervously and said, “I’m fine. I’m not... I mean, I still can’t imagine it! I’ll, err, take your word for it! Yes! New topic time.” She was blushing. She felt naked, and she didn’t look up. Okay, so she was always naked, but normally it was something one didn’t notice. “You don’t sound like you’re okay. I’d rather tear the hedges than leave you hurt.” “I’m not hurt. I don’t like this path, but it didn’t hurt me,” said Twilight. She lifted her head and decided to stare at the green plant walls of the hedge-tunnel. “Let’s just... keep moving. And talking. Maybe some other historical story?” "I can do that. I’ve been reading a lot of Crystal History lately. I’d tell you the story in the crystal itself, but Second Sight herself tells it better. How about the Invention of Writing? It happened in the Crystal Empire.” “That’d be great!” said Twilight. Her enthusiasm was entirely sincere. Standard histories considered writing to have been first invented in the region now governed by Saddle Arabia, and dissenting history sources were always exciting. Maybe the story would even be good enough to get rid of the blush by the time they got to the fountain and table at the end of the path. Twilight intended to pass this off as an attack of claustrophobia if she could. Hope springs eternal... The two got moving again, Cadence speaking as they did. Well, before we get too far, I want to say that I didn’t live these histories. Everything I can tell you comes from long after the founding of the Crystal Empire. It was sorted out by a mix of oral history and archaeology. When the Empire was first founded, it wasn’t literate! It is the world’s only continuous state confirmed to predate written language. The stability of the Crystal Empire has been tremendously preservative. We’ve always had a strong, defensive military and a climate that keeps out threats, even a few big ones. Discord himself stayed away. Our capital has never suffered a direct attack by anything but King Sombra, and even Sombra’s original rise to power was political rather than forceful. The libraries of the Crystal Empire are wonderful sources of history. Pssst. That means you really need to find an excuse to spend a month in the capital someday. “What are you hinting at?” Twilight asked. “I’m not hinting at anything. I like to think I’m being quite blunt!” said Cadence cheerfully, just before she turned to the side and stepped through a gap in the hedge. There was nothing sealing this side of the hedge path. The hidden area was revealed to contain a very small fountain and a very large stone table. Not large in the sense of being meant for seating many ponies. It looked rather like a table that one might seat only two ponies at, and then play chess upon. It was just very large. The two stone chairs were proportional to the table. Celestia, with difficulty, might be able to use it for its intended purpose. Nopony else came to mind. Twilight couldn’t see the top from the ground; she wondered if it was already set with chess pieces as part of the sculpture. In any case, the table dwarfed the fountain, which was clearly a design that would’ve been grandiose, all arcing water streams and complicated structure. It would’ve been grandiose, if only it weren’t the size of a bird bath. The fountain didn’t even have a pedestal. It was a watery tripping hazard with delusions of grandeur. Twilight walked over to the two items that played centerpiece to the hidden area of the garden and stared at them. “This violates my expectations,” she said flatly. “Said the steward to the secretary,” replied Princess Cadence in an odd tone. Twilight’s blush returned with full force as her mind fitted that exchange directly to a dirty joke. Cadence laughed. “I mean literally, as it was commissioned jointly by the then-Castle Steward and Cabinet Secretary. Celestia loved it though. She ordered the sculptor’s commission doubled. Having it sealed off behind a thick hedge was the steward’s revenge.” Twilight looked contemplatively up at the table, and then shook her head with a laugh of her own. “When you said you used the table for seclusion at lunchtime, I just expected that meant you could eat on it.” “Nope!” The table being useless to them, the two ponies sat down on opposite sides of the small fountain. Cadence resumed her earlier words. “As I was saying... You really need to spend a month in the capital. We have no end of knowledge that was completely lost. Even where things weren’t lost, we have an irreplicable perspective on them. The thousand-year displacement is just a huge opportunity. It’s not just old things being new again, they’re getting new uses too. History is the new font of innovation in Equestria.” “So... you want me to come to the Crystal Empire and do comparative historical research for you?” “Huh? Oh! I guess I was making it sound like that. No, I want you to come to the Crystal Empire so I can spend time with you. Although with how much history I’ve been reading lately myself... We could be study buddies!” said Cadence brightly. Twilight went wide-eyed, her heart suddenly beating faster. “!” “Twilight? You okay?” Twilight wiped her cheek with a hoof. Having won her secret battle against the mighty armies of the yes-dance and having even defeated the devious assassins of squee, she forced her expression into a rapt normality. “Just... just continue, I’ll be fine.” Speaking of libraries, I said I was going was going to talk about the invention of writing. That means the world’s first author. Second Sight’s story was going to be about the ascension of the second Crystal Princess, history’s first mortal ruler. I’m going to have to cover a few steps of that just for background, but I’ll try to leave most of the story for Second Sight to tell. Celestia—sorry, Pride—was the first Crystal Empress. She was Empress Pride. It’s her fault that it’s called an Empire at all; I believe she’s embarrassed about it. She was showered constantly with gratitude for freeing her people from the torments of the other greater spirits. Yet she was not a good leader; variously demanding and inattentive. It was something like this... “Empress Pride!” said Chancellor, um, Diamond. “Chancellor Um Diamond?” “You know, Celestia told me you liked to interrupt these stories.” “I stopped that when she told me to stop.” “That’s not what she said.” “She baited me!” Chancellor Diamond said, “Empress Pride! Your supplicants wish your guidance in agriculture! Although we are grateful to be so far from the other spirits, the starry skies shed no warmth upon us, and the weather here is dangerous and harsh. Edible plants are in short supply.” “Your concerns are heard. I will create crystal berry bushes for you that you can find sustenance even amidst snow and darkness.” And so she did create those bushes... five of them. They were not exceptionally productive bushes, and it was many harvests before enough seedstock had been saved that they could be used for food. The answer was correct, but inadequate. Nevertheless, Pride proclaimed, “Your problem is solved! For providing this service, you must acknowledge my sister Tyranny as a Crystal Princess and defer to her as you do to me.” Tyranny was the first Crystal Princess and she was just as useless a leader as Pride. She misused what deference she got... but you’ll hear that story tomorrow. When the refugee groups finally decided that Pride had given them nothing to be grateful for since she freed them, and that no amount of gratitude was worth raising up a useless leader, Pride resorted to academia. Her efforts became the foundation of crystal pony magical traditions. She had a great many attentive students. She was far better at the insular study of magic than she had been at leading. Her stubborn—arguably reckless—use of alicorn magics to address mundane problems burned new channels of magic into reality and became imitable by others. The existence of her students was barely more than an accident. The flow of attention was unidirectional. Her students were formed chiefly of those who disagreed with having taken her out of power, those who insisted that she was still much to be admired, those who... didn’t notice that talking to Pride and actually communicating with her were different things. She talked plenty. She even seemed to listen when you talked to her. She just wouldn’t remember later. At best, if you said something interesting, she might notice the ideas even as she forgot all about the person who said them. One of the oldest names you may ever find in a book was part of just such a forgotten conversation. History knows him as ‘Cryoglyph the Ice Writer’. Celestia doesn’t know him as anything. I once asked her; she told me that she’s pretty sure something like it happened, and she wishes she had paid a little more attention when it did. I think she believes she could’ve been a good friend to the legendary Ice Writer, instead of just a footnote in his life. Cryoglyph had a great many great ideas. One day he went to Pride. “Time takes all of my ideas from me,” he said to her. “Your mind does not seem so grandly different. How can you bear to spend so much time thinking and teaching when you know that time will take it all away?” In her usual style, Pride’s solution to the problem was correct, but incomplete. “When I wish to preserve my thoughts, I make them part of the world around me,” she told Cryoglyph. “If I think of a rock and wish the thought to last, I create that rock.” Pride summoned a rock out of thin air and gave it to Cryoglyph. Cryoglyph, who could not create rocks, was confused as he took the rock. He studied the rock constantly for days. He tried hard to think of what Pride could possibly have been trying to tell him. He could think of rocks. Could he create rocks? No. No, he could not create rocks. “He wasn’t a unicorn, then. He would’ve just practiced until he created the rock. What kind of pony was Cryoglyph?” “I think he was actually a gryphon. This story is too prehistoric to be sure of any of the details, though I’m pretty sure nopony in life ever called him ‘Cryoglyph the Ice Writer’.” “Wait, now that you say it again, that suddenly sounds familiar. ‘The Ice Writer’ is one of the old unsolved mysteries in archaeology. It’s this pony—or gryphon, I guess—who carved a great many untranslatable hieroglyphs into glaciers.” “They’re not untranslatable to the Crystal Empire. In fact...” The solution to the puzzle came when a frustrated Cryoglyph suddenly threw the rock as hard as he could. It hit a nearby ice flow that had blocked off some deeper paths in the caves where he lived. With a huge crack, a chunk of the ice fractured and split off! Cryoglyph stared at the damaged wall, and he said to himself, “I thought about anger, and that thought caused me to throw the rock. Throwing the rock damaged the wall. The damage to the wall makes my anger part of the world.” Now Cryoglyph had a new thing to think about: the damage to the wall. As long as the wall was damaged, his anger was part of the world. Just as holding the rock made it easy to think about the rock and remember the thoughts associated with it, looking at the wall made it easy to think about the anger and remember it. The gryphon carved a wooden bowl for himself and went to his pony friends. He asked if anypony had a source of clean, clear water. Once he found water clean enough that it would freeze into clear, pure ice, he filled the bowl and set it out to freeze. He used his claws to carve an image of the rock into the ice, and brought it to Pride. Cryoglyph said to Pride, “Look. I have thought about a rock, and I have made a rock to preserve those thoughts.” He gave her rock back to her. “Hm, so you did,” said Pride. “Yet was this all the thoughts you had on the rock?” She held up her rock and gestured to it as she continued, “The rock I made will last forever. The rock you made will melt if you hold it too close to my coat.” Pride had not yet found her connection to the sun. The unicorns had not yet invented it. Yet much as Celestia still does today, she already radiated more heat than a regular pony. Cryoglyph quickly took his rock-carved ice bowl outside where it would be safe. When he came back, he said, “I have less to work with than you. What did you mean by ‘was it all the thoughts I had’?” “When I think about a rock and create that rock, my rock is everything I was thinking when I made that rock. If you show your rock to someone else, will they think about the same things you thought?” “What did she mean by ‘my rock is everything I was thinking’? Does the Crystal Empire actually have the rock from this story?” “We do! It’s in a museum. I’ll show it to you next time you visit. As near as we can tell, Pride was simply wrong about what she said. It’s just a rock.” “In this story, you present Cryoglyph as hearing things and going off to think hard about them. It’s like he was taking Pride’s every word as being... deeply meaningful. Yet when Celestia used the name Pride, she was supposedly rather young. Maybe Pride wasn’t wrong about the rock being the sum total of her thoughts on that rock. Maybe she was just thinking very literally, and you already said she didn’t see this conversation as important. So the rock was, in fact, her entire thoughts about that rock.” “Does that really sound like the Celestia you know?” “No! Celestia, if she were ever in a conversation like that... I mean, she’d rather say nothing at all than be that shallow. Yet her students, back in the Early Crystal Empire, took every word like it held some deep wisdom on the shape of reality. Ponies still do that in today. I do. I... I guess I’m kind of like Cryoglyph. But Celestia is more than Pride was. Her words matter, they aren’t just accidents. Celestia deserves the devotion.” “Celestia is more than Pride was because Pride spoke from invincible ignorance, unwilling to believe she didn’t understand things already. Fortunately, it often happened that clever students could make much of her folly...” Cryoglyph went away thinking about what Pride had said about showing their rocks to others, and if he thought she was wrong about her rock being perfectly insightful to others, he didn’t let it show. He went back to his cave with its damaged, icy wall. He stared at the damaged wall. He said to himself, “I can make my thoughts part of the world. That makes them last longer, but doesn’t share them. I can talk about my thoughts to others. That shares them, but doesn’t make them last.” He set his rock down at the base of the damaged wall. Then he set down the ice bowl next to the rock. “It takes fewer words to explain the connection between these three objects if they’re near each other. Maybe the secret to preserving my thoughts and sharing them at once is to arrange a great many objects together.” ”He looked at his claws. He looked at the wall of the ice. And that, as near as the Crystal Empire can put together, is the origin of the Ice Writer, history’s first writer!” “Neat!” said Twilight Sparkle, clapping her hooves together. She looked down at her notebook, forgotten on the ground next to her. The studious alicorn startled. She’d gotten so wrapped up in the story she’d forgotten to record it. The history of writing was exciting! “So the first writings were representational images arranged near each other in an orderly way,” she said, bending over her notebook as her magic whisked a quill across it. “There aren’t enough of Cryoglyph’s works left to account for much history, though. I thought I was aware of all the major expressions.” “Cryoglyph is another one of my kingdom’s cultural heroes, even more ancient than Second Sight... and also, he was much more obsessive than you know about, along with being freakishly cold-resistant,” said Cadence. “He turned entire glaciers into scrimshaw plates trying to work out the best way to record his thoughts for others. There were entire ‘ice libraries’ stored in never-warming caves. Most of the areas he worked over got excavated and moved wholly into climate-controlled warehouses for study by archaeolinguists over a millenia ago.” “Warehouses, plural? It sounds like the work of a large group, not one gryphon, no matter how obsessive. Oh! Since all of those warehouses were in the Crystal Empire when Sombra cursed it to vanish...” said Twilight without looking up from her writing. “You got it! The Cryoglyph translations vanished with the rest of my nation. Even if the specific singular Cryoglyph is just a myth or a figurehead, we still call him the father of literacy. Sometimes even ‘the first Crystal Historian’. Now, all that talking has made my throat hurt. Let’s go get ice cream.” Twilight continued writing feverishly. Cadence watched fondly for some time, until fondness faded into impatient hoof-tapping. Finally she levitated out three bits and started chasing the quill tip with them, getting closer and closer without actually touching it or the ink until Twilight finally stopped and looked up at her with a glare. Cadence just smiled at her and spun the three bits around the quill. “Ice cream, Twilight. Come back to the modern world, have some modern sweets.” Twilight’s expression softened and she glanced between Cadence and what she’d been writing... noticing that she’d faithfully transcribed ‘all that talking is making my throat hurt. Let’s go get ice cream.’ without noticing that she’d written it at the time, and that after that she’d spun off immediately into taking more notes about the story. She gave an embarrassed chuckle and picked up her notebook in her telekinesis, packing it away in her saddlebag. “Right! Ice cream. Actually, what about milkshakes?” asked Twilight, covering her embarrassment by talking fast. “There’s a shake shoppe in Canterlot I’ve been meaning to go to for years now. It’s still around. Oh! Is Shiny here with you? He wanted to go there too.” Cadence laughed and nodded. “Fine, let’s go get my husband and bore his ears off talking about archaeolinguistics. At least he’ll get a shake out of it,” she said with a grin. Twilight grinned back. “Let’s make sure he’s sitting between us so he can’t escape!” The two of them laughed and schemed as they headed back into the garden proper.