Trip the Light Fantastic

by ponichaeism


5. RUBEDO

“Well, the sun one day will leave us all behind
Unexplainable sightings in the sky
Well, I hate to be the one to ruin the night
Right before your, right before your eyes”
-AWOLNation, Kill Your Heroes

"The knights of infinity are dancers and possess elevation."
-Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling


The Friendship Express running the Manehattan line rocked on its rails, tempting Vinyl Scratch away to dreamland, but the strung-out DJ was too wired from coffee and nerves to surrender to the dark and let what lay in her dreams take custody of her. Instead, she propped Mare and Her Symbols open on the train seat in front of her. She made an enormous effort to focus her itchy, unruly eyes on the little black and white signs, representing the words Equestrians communally used to convey meaning. Often she had to go back and reread when she realized she'd spaced out and hadn't comprehended great swathes of text, but she didn't care; she had plenty of time to waste and only dark, troubling thoughts to occupy her.
While absorbing the book, she had become a bit brain-blown simply trying to comprehend the basic process of translating written words into a string of sounds on a fundamental level. The book opened her eyes to that; each letter had only an arbitrary associations with the sound her vocal cords made. What tied one sound to one shape? Nothing but a collective, unconscious agreement. One thing was not like the other, yet in her mind they became the same. And language had its own basis in mathematics, just like music. A string of words were given a rigid internal logic and made to produce a particular meaning, an emotional or informational sum total in the mind of the listener or reader. And all of this was going on without a pony even realizing it, under their conscious thoughts. It was like Vinyl was stripping away the veneer covering the mundane world and seeing how it really, truly worked. It gave her a sense of comfort, even power, to possess that knowledge.
“Everypony is the hero of their own myth,” she mumbled to herself.
So what's my myth about? she thought.
I'm on a quest, she replied, as if it were common sense. To become the greatest dubstep DJ in all Equestria.
How does that make me a hero?
Well....
She couldn't think of anything. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep, but her mind was blank. She was so weary now. If anything, she felt less like a hero and more like a wanderer. A pilgrim out on the cold road, longing for the warm comforts of home. She flipped to the index and saw that, indeed, "The Seeker" was one of the character archetypes mentioned in the book.
I'm seeking fame with dubstep music, and that makes me heroic? Fine by me, but how do I reach the end of my quest?
The book, it seemed, held all the answers: 'In our fairy tales, the archetype of the dragon is omnipresent as an agent for catharsis. This beast acts as a symbolic representation of the wild, untamed unconscious mind common to all ponies. But conversely, the beast is at the same time our opposite. As our ancestors, wild horses, were quick to flee from predators, the dragon will instinctively fight to protect its treasure horde. Thus, it represents both us and not-us at the same time.'
Vinyl thought, Someone should tell that to the little dragon who's always following at Twilight Sparkle's hooves. She chuckled to herself.
'The dragon functions as a guardian of the destination or object that is the goal of the quest and offers the heroine or hero a chance to surmount the 'final test', an ultimate challenge to the skills, powers, and emotional maturity they have acquired in their journey. By winning the challenge they tame the dragon and bind it to their will, just as the fully developed pony will tame their unconscious mind and bring it into balance with their conscious self. Of course the archetypical dragon need not be an actual dragon, although that is by far the most popular, given their otherworldly nature, relative rarity, and our instinctual repulsion and aversion to its reptilian form, which can only be tempered by our rational higher thoughts.'
So before I finish my quest, I have to defeat the dragon. Great. So, what does a dragon guarding the gates of dubstep fame look like? Is it one of the other bands? The competition itself? What?
But the book just went on to say myths are made by the mythmakers, and 'their elements cannot be codified as some kind of list, from which we can pick and choose the essentials and derive some sort of universal meaning from them. The symbols we use to express ourselves as as much a part of us as they are of the world we live in.'
Vinyl sighed loudly, taking the opportunity to lift her goggles and rub her eyes.
Octavia had so far spent the entire journey sitting across from Vinyl without uttering a sound, but she finally broke and said, in a particularly snooty and condescending manner, “I never took you for such an avid reader.”
As Vinyl Scratch buried herself in the book again she replied, “Never found a book that interested me like this one.”
“Don't get so wrapped up in reading you forget to go to your little competition,” Octavia said coldly, her every word a dagger.
“I'll be sure not to,” Vinyl muttered, struggling to keep a lid on her anger.
By the time the sky grew dark, Vinyl's eyes watered so bad the words became an incoherent mess. The irresistible rock and roll of the carriage rolling on its rails cooed to her about the wonders of sleep, but Vinyl refused the call. She jumped to her legs, ignoring Octavia's stare, and wandered down the aisle. She walked along the train until she came to the very rear, threw the door open, and stepped out onto the rear balcony. The air rushing past was tainted by the salty smell of the sea, a brisk and briny scent that filled her nostrils. The wind whipped her spiky blue locks in front of her eyes and made them twist in the wind.
She stared back the way she'd come, and the path that had led her here. Everything was moving so fast now, and it frightened her, especially the way the sun was setting directly atop the place she'd come from. The gathering darkness was swarming towards it, ready to swallow it up.
The rhythm of the chugging train spoke to her, and she absently whistled a melancholy melody on top of it as her thoughts wandered to the dome of stars overhead, divided between the fire and the darkness. Suddenly, she froze. It had been the Song, she was utterly convinced. She'd whistled it without even realizing it. But no matter how hard she tried to remember the notes she'd just whistled, she found her memory lacking.
It was two seconds ago!
But it was a blur, perhaps from the long hours without sleep, or maybe....
Maybe I still remember it, deep down, she thought, her heart fluttering. Maybe something doesn't want me to remember how it goes.
That's crazy. Why wouldn't I want to? I've spent my whole life trying to remember how it goes!
As she started to panic, a dizzy spell struck her full-force, making the world gray out. As she swooned she grabbed the railing to stop from sinking to her knees. The dizziness, at least, she could be sure was from the lack of sleep.
“Vinyl,” a voice said.
“What?!” she snapped.
She wheeled around to find Octavia standing in the doorway of the carriage, stunned into silence. Then she backed away, one hoof daintily lifted off the ground. Her face hardened into a mask of supreme condescension.
The cellist said, “Well, if you're going to be so rude--”
“Well, hey, I guess what goes around comes around, eh, Octavia?"
“Why, I never--!”
“--had a record deal? With that attitude, no surprise." Although Vinyl didn't wholly understand the book yet, it gave her a sudden and beautiful insight into what was going on in her roommate's head. The DJ wielded her tongue like a sword to cut to the heart of the matter. There would be no quarter tonight, because she found she'd run out of mercy. "Though the awful music you play probably doesn't help. You wanna sit back and snipe at me, all because dubstep is the future of music, be my guest. I know what this is: you're jealous of me, so you try and bring me down to make up for how pathetic you secretly think you are. Well, keep playing your little violin, and we'll see where it gets you, huh?”
Tears brimmed in Octavia's eyes, but the sight of the prissy pony cut down to size was nectar to the DJ, even as a part of her loathed herself for reveling in her spiteful satisfaction. Before Octavia could come up with something to say, Vinyl Scratch shoved her way past the cellist. But as she blew through the door and into the rocking train car, she asked herself if she was running from Octavia, or her own self.
She couldn't come up with an answer to that.


A bleary-eyed Vinyl waited at the door of the carriage as the train rolled to a stop, the steps flush with the floor of the Manehattan platform. As the conductor threw the door open, he hollered, “End of the line!” Vinyl climbed down the steps and walked alongside the train until she came to the luggage compartment where her equipment was stashed, magicked it open, and lifted her cart out and onto the platform. She was aware of Octavia standing nearby, but did nothing to acknowledge her presence. The open gate leading to the city called out to Vinyl, whispering for her to merrily scarper off and leave Octavia behind. That would show her, she thought. But in the end, she refused to give in to the spite generated by her untamed horse instincts. She had to master her instinctual self, after all. Emotional maturity, and all that. So she secured her wagon around her middle and walked past the cellist.
“If you're coming,” she said gruffly, “come on.”
By the time they arrived at their hotel room it was six o'clock, giving Octavia plenty of time to wallow in sullen silence while Vinyl went over the battered copy of sheet music holding her hopes and dreams. Octavia got out her cello and started to play; each and every screech ratcheted Vinyl's already frazzled nerves up into the stratosphere. She tried to focus on the notation, but hers was an ache that went down into her bones. Every thrum of the cello strings twisted the knife in deeper.
“Can you stop that?!” she snapped.
“As you may recall, I am supposed to give an audition,” Octavia said stiffly.
Half from a desire to practice her music, and half from a flurry of overwhelming, uncontrollable spite, Vinyl set up her synthesizer. She cracked her neck, glared at the defiant Octavia, then hit the button that'd start the backing track she'd programmed into it. The beats came through the amp as hard and heavy as they could with the volume turned down to 2. Her stuttering, brutal gated lead quickly drowned out the cello's screeching and all that annoying old music that sounded the same to Vinyl. In response, Octavia really laid into the strings, and its sharp squeal was like a flaming poker in Vinyl's ears. Turning the volume on the amp up and up, she pounded on the keys harder.
I'll show her what real music sounds like.
They fought for dominance of the room's soundscape, creating a neverending cycle of clashing notes and migraine-inducing disharmony. But Octavia refused to back down and acknowledge Vinyl was right, so the DJ was forced to keep at it until somepony from the hotel knocked on their door and asked them to either stop playing or leave. Vinyl glared daggers at Octavia for getting her into trouble; she had no doubt Octavia thought the same, even though it was completely Octavia's fault for wanting to annoy Vinyl with all that cello screeching.
Vinyl had just finished downing her third cup of coffee from the complimentary coffee maker when she checked the clock and saw it was time to go. Magically dragging her wagon through the door behind her, she called, “When you fail, I hope you don't screw up too bad.”
Before Octavia could answer, Vinyl Scratch slammed the door. As she went down the hallway, she grinned to herself.


The irresistible pounding of some of the heaviest dubstep Vinyl had ever heard rocked the street under her hooves. A sign sticking out of the first floor of a five-story building glowed neon red, emblazoned with the words 'Hoofbeats'. Below it, a line of ponies stretched away from the unassuming brick facade of the nightclub. Their manes were as crazy as her own, and many wore wild sunglasses or goggles. Glowsticks were everywhere, and bobbed up and down in the dark like the lightcones ponies use to guide airships on the landing strip. The whole scene was like a runway, and to Vinyl's eyes it seemed like she was coming home to her people at last. She swaggered up to the husky bouncer and magically lifted her acceptance letter up where he could read it. After scowling at it for a moment, he nodded slightly and stepped aside so she could enter. Inside it was dark and hot, reminding her of the Veldvet Club. But whereas the music at the zebra joint had been a primal work of irresistable propulsion, here it gained power from its juddering defiance to offer anything so smooth and fluid an experience. It was almost frustrating in a way, and that made it all the more powerful.
She skirted the moshing crowd and approached a hanging sign with “BEST YOUNG DJ APPLICANTS” on it. Once the staff saw her letter they waved her through a door into a cream-colored waiting room crowded with other competitors. She set her equipment down and poured herself a coffee from the machine. It went down her gullet and settled in her stomach, which itched for just a little more, to settle her nerves. But she resisted; she didn't want to go overboard and reach the point where caffeine would put her to sleep.
A pony from the club with a clipboard approached her and asked for her invitation, then her name.
“DJ-P0N3,” she replied.
“Hometown?”
After briefly considering the truth, that she was from the sticks, Vinyl lied and said, “Fillydelphia.”
“You're number 23. Remember that.”
Vinyl nodded, and the pony moved off and asked the same question of a pony so young he was nearly a colt, with green hair in upright spikes and a shredded, stained white shirt. When prompted for his name, he replied with “DJ”, followed by an animal and then a very rude word. Vinyl spied a patch on his saddlebag that declared “I hate everypony!”
When she moved off, bobbing her head to the muffled dubstep, the walls closed in around her and the crowded room started to wear on her. Her hooves stumbled, and she leaned heavily on her wagon. She thought she was too wired to sleep, but nonetheless felt the dark chasm of sleep opening wide to engulf her. She pledged to stay standing to ward it off. It was only a momentary dizzy spell, she told herself. Soon it would pass, and she'd be good to go until the competition ended.
Her hooves slipped a little bit and she slid down the wall slightly, but she shook her head and regained her footing....for a little while, anyway. But the tireless hands of sleep were not stilled for long, and they made a move to snatch her again. She staggered through the throng for the coffee machine and poured another cup, but as she feared, once her tongue and throat stopped burning the coffee only made her drowsier. Trudging across the room, another pony accidentally bumped her and drove her off-balance and onto a couch. She struggled to stand up, but it was no use; the makeshift bed had it talons in her and was dragging her down.


Through the twisting and turning labyrinth, Vinyl Scratch ran. The Elements of Harmony hung uselessly on her head, jostling with every stride she took, until she tripped on a loose stone and the tiara flew off. It clattered on the ground behind her, but in her blind panic she got back up and kept running. It was useless anyway. What was the point?
“Help!” she called, but there wasn't anyone else in the maze but the colt, the one she was supposed to be rescuing. Some heroine she was.
Behind her, she heard the hooves of the other Vinyl Scratch hitting the ground. The guardian of the labyrinth was coming for her. As before, her pace was measured, yet she still somehow kept stride with Vinyl. No matter which way Vinyl ran, the darkness deepened. Of course it would; the light had been from the Elements of Harmony, and she'd lost them. Not that they'd worked, anyway. Now she would die in this shadowy maze, just another pilgrim who'd fallen by the wayside, never to reach her destination.
“Help me!” the colt's cry echoed.
When Vinyl galloped around the next corner, she realized she couldn't hear the guardian's hooves anymore. Slowing to a trot, she glanced back. She was alone. Heaving for breath, she looked around for anything useful, but all she noticed was the repeated motif of Twilight Sparkle's chord diagram carved into the damp stone walls mortared by earth; again, it looked familiar, but she hardly had time to think where she'd seen it before. The light was nearly gone now. How long would she be lost in darkness, she wondered? How much longer must her journey go on for? How much farther must she go? All she wanted was to rest, because she was so tired now. If she turned back, would she find her home? Or was her home her destination, and the wilderness behind her?
She didn't know. All she knew was that she was lost, and she needed somepony to help her find her way out.
“Hello, Vinyl.”
The DJ reared back so fast her head hit the low ceiling and rained dribs and drabs of dirt down. As she grayed out her legs buckled, and she sank to the hard stone floor. She raised her eyes as the princess of the night stepped from the shadows, carrying herself with a slow, graceful regality. Her horn glowed with an ethereal light.
“Still in the dark, I see,” Luna said.
Sprawled out on the ground, Vinyl lifted her head and then cocked it. “I never even thought....”
“To cast an illumination spell?” the princess asked, her voice overflowing with infinite wisdom and grace. “It seems obvious now, of course, but in the heat of the moment such things often have a way of escaping us. Especially in dreams, for dreams have a logic that is not of the physical world."
“Am I dreaming?”
Luna nodded. “For some time now I have heard you crying out for help in your sleep, night after night, begging to be freed from this dungeon you've built for yourself.”
“Save me,” Vinyl pleaded.
“I cannot do that. Though these motifs repeat throughout all ponykind, you are the one who has constructed this place from them. Everything contained in here is yours and yours alone. However, as an outsider I can shine a light, so to speak.”
“Shine a light on what?”
“On you. There is so much we cannot see about ourselves, as I myself once learned, to my eternal regret...." She lowered her head, her face etched with grief. "....and the regret of all Equestria, unfortunately.”
Vinyl picked herself up and dusted herself off. “What can't I see?”
Luna shook her head. “That's for you to discover. As I mentioned, I can only shine a light on it. Do you see the contradiction yet? Because that is the key.”
“The contradiction?”
“In what I've said.”
Vinyl thought for a moment, then said, “You're the princess of the night, but you shine a light.”
The princess nodded. “Very astute. In night there is light, and in sun there is shadow.” Her eyes went to the symbol on the wall. “It looks familiar, does it not?”
“I don't know where it's from, though.”
“Yes you do, you just don't see it yet. You don't want to see it.”
“Why wouldn't I want to see it?” Vinyl asked, through the princess of the night merely narrowed her eyes, and Vinyl took the hint. She asked, “Alright, so where's it from?”
Luna maneuvered so she stood in front of the wall, covering half of the diagram. “You still don't see it?”
What's she talking about? Of course I don't. Maybe it'd help if she moved--
And then it struck Vinyl Scratch. She levitated a piece of chalk into the air. Drawing on the wall, she made a loping “S”-shape that curved through the “Z” formed by the three chords, and the image was complete. The others flanking it altered themselves likewise. Then she added in the two dots, the light in the dark and the dark in the light.
“It's the symbol on the Equestrian flag,” she uttered.
“Yes. The musical chord is connected to the mathematical chord by its name. The mathematical chord is connected to the emblem by its shape. All three are symbols for the same thing, just transposed into different forms. That is the key.”
“So what does it mean?”
Luna locked her blue eyes on Vinyl. “But you already know. All you have to do is discover what you know.”
Vinyl's old schoolmarm stepped from the shadows and explained, “It stands for a unity of opposites. Whenever two opposites interact there is power in it, like the pull of the moon on the tides, or the attraction of a certain young colt you're passing notes to, Miss Scratch.” She disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Power in opposites,” Vinyl muttered. “But what's my opposite? Is it a dragon?”
She looked to Princess Luna, but the princess just shook her head and explained, “I can only shine a light.”
Vinyl mumbled, “Light in the darkness. Light and darkness. They depend on one another?”
“Total darkness is incomprehensible without light to compare it to, just as the unity of reality is incomprehensible because we cannot compare it to anything. We can only talk of things when they are divided, yet every pony strives for wholeness and completeness.”
“The unity of reality?”
“The symbol represents the natural harmony of the universe. We're all connected to the fundamental unity where divisions break down. When we're awake everything seems to be divided, but that is an illusion, a quirk of the physical world. Occasionally, however, the deeper order manifests itself through meaningful coincidences."
"I thought you could only shine a light?" Vinyl asked sarcastically.
"You read about all this in Mare and Her Symbols,” Luna replied. "It lingers in your mind. I'm just bringing it out of your memories."
“Oh, yeah," Vinyl said, her cheeks flushed.
"All this knowledge is swirling around your subconscious, only occasionally lapping up on the shores of your consciousness. It is up to you to dive down and retrieve it."
Vinyl frowned. "All this stuff about a connection....is it true?”
“You already know it's true. You can sense that I am real, and you have no other way of explaining how another pony can be present in your mind other than an unconscious connection between ponies. Like drops of water in an ocean. Our minds are bridged, allowing each of us to construct this dream from our thoughts as they conflate and flow together.”
“So everything really is the same thing, if you go back far enough? Including us?”
Luna nodded in confirmation. “And we all strive to return to that unity. But sometimes we are waylaid, not by spooks and specters, but simply by the parts of ourselves we don't like. Our fears, in other words. What is it you fear, Vinyl? The thing that is keeping you chained?”
Vinyl started to ask what she meant, but instead decided to look inward. Dive down into the depths. And once she glimpsed what lay on the seabed of her mind, her mouth dropped open at the sheer, staggering incredulousness of it all.
I'm the dragon, she realized.
“Right you are,” said a dark voice from right behind her.
She spun to face her dragon. The guardian of the labyrinth grabbed her, throttled her, and drove her to the ground.
“Help me,” Vinyl called out, just as the colt trapped in the labyrinth yelled the same thing.
He's part of me too, she realized. Everything in here is a part of me. But what is he? My....childhood innocence or something?
Luna loomed over the guardian's shoulder, but did nothing. The almighty princess of the night was powerless against Vinyl Scratch's demons. Vinyl reached out for her, but her hoof groped at the air uselessly.
“When in doubt,” Luna said, “remember this: you are number 23.”
Despite being throttled, Vinyl blinked in confusion. “What?”
“Number 23,” Luna repeated.
Suddenly, the labyrinth started shaking. The walls crumbled. Keystones fell from the arched corridor's ceiling, followed by dirt and dust. The floor cracked underhoof. From the fissures poured in a bright, almost infinite light, and she fell down into it, entwined with her dragon.
Flapping her graceful wings to stay aloft, Princess Luna called, “You are number--!”


“--23!” the stallion trying to rouse Vinyl said. “Hey, number 23, wake up! You're on soon.”
She thrashed for something to grab hold of to stop herself falling, until she realized she wasn't. Blinking against the dingy light of the club's waiting room, she lifted her head off the couch and looked around. The haze reluctantly lifted from her mind, and all the thoughts that'd occupied it while she dreamed dissolved into nothingness.
The competition! she thought suddenly, jerking upright.
She magically dragged her wagon after her as she headed for the dance floor. The crowd was moshing to the last DJ before Vinyl, whose turgid, behemoth-ine beat was broken occasionally by a rapid flurry of stabbing notes.
This is it, she thought, her heart pounding. Sweat poured down her face, both from trepidation and the heat of hundreds of ponies dancing together. This is my place, and these are my people.
She stood near the stage, watching the mass union of the mosh. She watched her people thrash and throw themselves into the shuddering beat, relishing the abrupt time changes. They moved as one herd, and they became whole.
They're not, she suddenly thought, shocking herself.
She looked at the other ponies moshing to the broken beat. Where she expected to see the joy of unity on their flushed, sweating faces, she saw nothing but anger and fury. They reveled in the fundamental discord of the music. She did too, so she wasn't sure why this was such an eye-opening revelation now. But she'd spent so long trying to find this place and these people, and yet now that she was here....
Where was the communion? The joining into one? Everything was so broken, and nothing more than the dubstep. It pounded into her head like a jackhammer. She felt the walls closing in, herding the other moshers around her. She couldn't run free and wild. Her heart beat faster, but unlike the dubstep it didn't switch up its pace every few seconds. Dubstep wasn't complete; it defied wholeness with its every note.
But I love dubstep! It's the future of music!
The beat wasn't satisfying her anymore, though. It had always seemed like it was, but....perhaps she'd just convinced herself it was satisfying without even realizing it wasn't. She felt like she was a wild pony being herded towards a cliff, and it was all she could do to struggle against going over the edge.
Well, I'm here, she thought, and I'm about to go up on stage.
She pulled out the sheet music to refresh her memory, but she got a terrible shock. There, right next to the scribbled title, was the mathematical diagram she'd seen in Twilight Sparkle's library, doodled absently during a lull in her late night odyssey to finish the song. The symbol she now realized was on Equestria's flag. And when she had finished writing the song, what title had she unthinkingly scrawled down, simply because it fit the brutal, lumbering, serpentine oscillation of the tempo?
“I Am the Dragon”.
She approached the cliff, and everything inside her screamed out that she didn't want to see what was down below. She didn't want to go over the edge. But on another level she was back in the labyrinth of her dreams, plunging deeper into the maze to rescue the lost little colt. Her mind was in two places at once, going in opposite directions. Which way should she go? Which path should she take?
I'm the dragon of my nightmares, she thought. I'm the one keeping myself from being a hero. My unconscious is holding me back.
But why?! Why don't I want to find the Song? There has to be a reason.
And as the broken beat of the dubstep pounded into her skull, she quickly approached both the cliff and the center of the maze. Her heart wrenched in her chest. She gazed out at the moshers, the ones losing themselves to the music. Something in their unconscious minds must want them to revel in the misery the schizophrenic, brain-busting mash-up offered. And it had to be something in her mind, too. Why didn't her subconscious want her to be at peace? Why didn't it want her to be whole? Why did it compel her to remain broken?
The cliff was dangerously close now, and her wild feral pony self fought against it every step of the way; yet she was also close to the colt screaming for help, and she was determined to go the distance and rescue him.
Whenever two opposites interact, she thought, there is power in that interaction.
She glimpsed what lay beyond the cliff and saw a Thought down there, while at the same time she glimpsed the colt at the center of the maze. But in denying the Thought in the cliff, she was also denying the colt in the maze, and the conflict was tearing her mind and her heart to shreds.
No, she thought vehemently.
But that burning desire to find the lost little colt was stronger, and she headed for the edge of the cliff, no matter how hard the guardian of her subconscious pulled her reins back.
Why don't I want to find the Song?! she demanded to know.
It was do-or-die now. The stress and mental anguish caused tears to roll her down her cheeks. She trembled on her hooves, shaking her head from side to side ever so slightly to deny where she was destined to go. She could either turn away, or take the leap. And in one moment of absolute clarity, she gave in and chose to leap.
Because without this pain, how will I keep making music?
She sucked in a breath as the matter was laid bare before her. There it was. The guardian of the labyrinth was the guise, the mask, the image she assumed when she spun her discs, and it had harnessed the power of her unconscious fears to protect itself, because all her music was about her quest to find the Song and the frustration and anger that she hadn't found it. Remove that tension of opposites and what would she write music about? She would be whole, but she would have nothing to make art about. As much as she hated to admit it, her unconscious mind was addicted to the misery and the heartache. How could she take her quest away from herself and still write about it? Where would her inspiration come from?
But just as quickly she thought: Everything is connected. Everypony wants to be whole.
Inspiration surrounded her, but she'd never seen it for what it was. The loss of the Song had been the only thing she'd known, so she hadn't ever had anything to compare it to. But obsessing over that loss had only blinded her to everything else. She knew now what she had to do.
She only hoped it wasn't too late.
Magically pulling her wagon along behind her, she ran out of the club just as the Emcee called out for competitor number 23. Competitor? she thought. I don't want to be a warrior anymore. I want peace.
Bursting out onto the sidewalk, she ignored the bouncer and the crowd as she looked for a sign, any sign. That's when she glimpsed a hooded figure ambling up the sidewalk towards her. A striped foreleg reached up and pulled the hood back. Two zebra eyes seemed to transmit the mysteries of the universe through the space between them. Rather than shocking or surprising, the sight of Zecora fit that one particular moment so well it became obscenely appropriate. It ceased to be a simple moment of time and became a Moment, where everything came together in perfect clarity before Vinyl's eyes. As if she were still in a dream, she calmly walked over.
"Why are you here?" Vinyl asked.
"It was your princess of the night who told me of your plight," the shaman said. "Though I am not of ponykind, I welcome her into my mind, for it is the universe's will she carries out. A servant of the cosmos I would never doubt. We conversed warmly while I slept, and I learned many things I did not know yet. Last night, she told me that when the time comes...." She grinned. "You would need somepony to play the drums."
Everything still felt dreamlike to Vinyl, but suddenly she wondered what the difference was. After all, her senses told her dreams were absolutely real while she was in them, the same senses that told her the city around her now was real life. Could she trust her senses as well as she thought she could? Maybe not. Right then and there, it seemed to her as if that one Moment of time and space was speaking to her through its attendant signs and symbols.
Perhaps it was time she listened.