The Music of a Fallen Star
By: TheAspiringWriter93
“Morning, Music! Beautiful day, isn’t it?” A couple of young ponies merrily stated as they passed by an ancient Unicorn stallion in the nearly abandoned streets of Ponyville one clear morning. Princess Celestia had just started to lift her heavenly orb from the Eastern horizon, and as such, Ponyvillians were still sleeping peacefully in their beds. This meant that the trek from his house near the edge of town to Town Hall was an easy one, one he made on a daily basis ever since he moved to Ponyville, all those years ago.
While the Unicorn, Musical Elegy, was old (older than even he cared to admit), he made sure that he stayed far from useless. Every morning, he would wake up just before dawn and prepare for a long day of making music in the heart of town. He’d brush his teeth and mahogany coat, don his worn, brown bowler hat, grab an empty jar from a shelf and his trusty acoustic guitar and set out for the day, glancing at a picture frame as he passed, muttering a quick, “I love you”. And every day he’d sit near Town Hall with his guitar and empty jar and play the most beautiful songs you can imagine, one after another. Songs that made the listener weep with utter sadness, and others that made the listeners leap out of their seats and dance with joy. He enjoyed seeing the looks on the ponies’ faces whenever he finished a song. Every face held a smile, even the ones that had shed more tears than the pony could ever remember. They would drop some bits into his jar and trot away, feeling more than refreshed and a little misty-eyed.
By the end of the day, his jar would be full, and he would gather his things and make his way to the grocery store to restock the food pantry back home. Every once in a while, he would stop by Sugarcube Corner and treat himself to a light snack, despite the mare behind the counter insisting he try at least one of everything on the menu and bragging how she had made a point of doing so at least once a day. How that mare hadn’t gone into a sugar-induced coma yet was beyond him, but he’d smile and politely decline, prompting a smile from her in return. Then they would part ways and he would head home, guitar on his back and his jar and bags of groceries adrift in the air around him, held aloft by his fuchsia-colored magic. He would walk through his front door, unload his guitar and gently rest it against the wall, make dinner, then finally head to sleep.
This was his daily routine, one that he was happy with, as were many others.
Upon reaching his destination, a rusty bench in the middle of town, he set his jar down next to him, slung his guitar from over his shoulder, and with his magic began playing melody after beautiful melody. Almost as soon as he began, a small crowd had gathered to listen to the gentle twang of his guitar. Most were enraptured by his music. Others had tears in their eyes. Others, still, were swaying in time to the song’s graceful melody. But one thing was evident in the faces of everyone present: a smile. Bits were tossed into his jar, which he accepted with a sagely nod of his head as he continued playing.
This went on for some few hours before somepony sat down next to him. She was a mint-green mare with a lyre for a cutie mark. With nary a glance at him, she pulled out an instrument that matched the mark on her flank and began to pluck the strings, playing a beautiful tune to compliment his harmonious strumming. This happened from time to time. Never once did they speak to each other, but kept a mutual cordiality between the two of them. Before she’d leave, she’d drop a few bits into his jar, smile, and then trot off happily after her friends. During their impromptu duet, the tears would flow with greater frequency, as would the bits. He offered her a cut of his earnings once, but she vehemently refused, saying it would be wrong to take away from him that which he had earned. That was the only time they spoke.
Finally, the day began to draw to a close. Ponies had come and gone, leaving small, gold coins in his jar. Somepony even left a beautiful lily for him, which tasted simply divine.
Noticing the time, he bid the small gathering adieu, packed up his things, and trotted toward the grocery store.
He left the store a little later than usual that evening. He and the clerk had talked about music for a little while, after which she had insisted he take home a loaf of bread for free. By the time he had left the store, the sun had already set, and the moon was just above the horizon.
He was halfway home when he saw it; a bright flash of light in his peripherals caught his attention. Looking toward the source, he spotted a shooting star near the edge of the moon’s glow. He stopped and watched the star’s descent, noting that it was falling toward the Everfree Forest. He thought he was simply watching a cosmic body fly past their humble planet and paid it no mind, opting instead to continue on his trek home. At least, he would have, were it not for the star impacting the earth.
Eyes wide, he hefted his bags out of the air and onto his back, then took off at a brisk pace toward the forest.
Picking his way over gnarled roots and broken branches, he looked up through the thick canopy of leaves every once in a while to confirm he was heading in the right direction; a thin trail of smoke hung in the air directly ahead of him.
He knew he was close to the point of impact not by the sight of the smoke, but by the sight of charred wood and glowing embers. Strangely enough, however, nothing smelled of smoke and burned forest. Instead, the air around him smelled of freshly fallen snow on a crisp winter’s morning. Pushing this to the back of his mind, he broke through the tree line into a clearing. Smoke rose from the center of a large crater in the middle of the clearing, and little blue fires dotted the ground here and there.
Slowly, carefully, he edged closer and closer to the lip of the crater, noticing the smell of snow was strongest here. Drawing near the edge of the crater, he peered over, expecting a glowing ball of ice and fire. What he found nearly stopped his ancient heart.
A small colt sat in the center of the crater, looking around as if confused.
He had a long, blonde mane and tail, the color of fresh lemons, and his coat was a pearl white. Musical Elegy cleared his throat softly, grabbing the colt’s attention. His ice-blue eyes were wide with bewilderment, and they held Musical’s gaze intently.
Several questions burned in his mind, each fighting to free themselves from his mental grip. Finally, one question won out in the end, flying out of his mouth before he had a chance to stop it.
“What are you?” he heard himself ask.
The colt simply tilted his head to one side, smiled slightly, and pointed a hoof at him.
No, not at him; next to him, near the tree line. Following his outstretched hoof, he turned his gaze toward the trees. There, near the shadows of the forest, was another foal. This one was a filly, and the colt’s opposite in looks. Where the colt was pearl white with blonde mane and tail, this filly was jet-black with dark brown mane and tail. Her eyes were a deep brown as well, nearly chocolate compared to her dirt colored hair and tail.
“There are two of you?” he thought to himself.
“How did you two get out here?” he said aloud. He found himself surprised when the dark filly spoke up.
“You know exactly how we got here, old one.” She said, sounding far older than she looked, though somewhat exasperated. “We come from a place not of this galaxy, but of another, far away from here. Our home was destroyed by a plague that infected our entire planet, draining the very life from our proud home and reducing it and all life on it to crumbling ruins. I fear that we are all that’s left of what once was a proud civilization.”
By this point, the pearl-colored colt had clambered from the hole and had all but skipped over to dark filly’s side.
“That’s terrible,” Musical said, hanging his head in respect and sorrow. “Is there anything I can do to help?” If he had simply left the two children here, he would never forgive himself if anything were to happen to them. He suddenly felt very protective of them, as if he were staring into the eyes of his grandchildren instead of complete strangers.
“Since we are here alone, I can only guess that we are, indeed, what is left. We have nowhere to go, and we cannot leave this place now.” As she spoke, the pearl-colored colt’s head snapped to look at the dark filly, and his eyes began to water, his lips began to tremble.
Musical Elegy took no longer than a second to decide what to do.
“No,” he said, conviction coloring his voice, making it stand out against the chill night air. “I cannot allow this to happen. You both should come with me. I’ll look after you.” The dark filly simply stared at the ancient stallion, genuinely shocked.
“You cannot be serious, old one. What makes you so certain of your choice?”
“Because a life is a life, no matter what form it takes. You need help and I have the means to help you. Therefore, there isn’t any reason why I shouldn’t help you.” He responded to her question with strikingly honesty and resolve. Her eyes simply widened further, then closed as she shook her head.
“You fool...” She muttered as she looked from the ancient stallion to the colt by her side. “Come, Snowy Dawn.”
Snowy Dawn gazed from the filly to Musical Elegy, before smiling widely and cantering up to his side. He gazed down to the colt, and couldn’t keep a smile from his face at the child’s blatant earnestness. He looked back to the dark filly. “What’s your name, child?”
“You may call me Silent Dusk.”
Weeks went by after that fateful, albeit strange night. Musical was able to explain the foal’s sudden appearance as his grandchildren staying with him due to their parents being on vacation. He would take them into town and let them wander while he played his guitar for the citizens of Ponyville.
One day, the bright pink mare from the confectionary shop had spotted the two children playing in a small flower patch and asked them who they were. Silent Dusk pointed to the ancient stallion and gave her the same explanation he had given to anypony who stopped to ask. Moments later, she had set up an impromptu welcoming party right there in the middle of the square, producing a confetti cannon and a large cake from seemingly nowhere. Musical Elegy watched, never faltering in his music, as she continued to sing and dance for them while they enjoyed their cake, clapping for her when she finished her routine, Snowy Dawn with unabashed glee and Silent Dusk with polite stoicism.
Finally her show ended, and she left the foals to continue playing, bouncing away as if she were made of some form of elastic, rather than flesh and blood. How she was so energetic always puzzled the old stallion, but he never dwelt on the subject.
Snowy Dawn trotted up to him and, balanced on one hoof, held out a piece of cake on a small plate. Musical Elegy looked from the cake to Snowy’s eyes. “For me?” he asked of the child.
The smile on the foal’s face only grew as he nodded his head in earnest. Setting his guitar down, he smiled and began to eat as Silent Dusk kept to her namesake, creeping up on quiet hooves and sitting with the two males to eat in the tranquility that was the hustle and bustle of Ponyville in the early afternoon.
It was three days later when tragedy struck. Musical Elegy was just finishing his morning preparations when he heard a curious sound. Glancing around his tiny house, his first thought was that one of the window panes must have had a crack in it, for there was a sound not unlike the whistling of wind through wood. It was only after he checked the three windows his house possessed that he realized: the sound wasn’t coming from outside; it was coming from inside.
He shot from his dining room to his bedroom, where the foal’s makeshift beds were. He rushed to Snowy Dawn’s side and breathed a sigh of relief to find the colt fast asleep, utterly untroubled by anything. But just as his heart felt lighter at the sight, it instantly dropped to his hooves at another thought.
“Please, no…” he though to himself, though he already knew the answer to his silent plea. He slowly turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
Silent Dusk lay in her bed, her sheets plastered to her body with sweat and the entire bed shuddering with her violent shivers. He turned around and placed a hoof against her forehead, only to instantly pull away as if burned. What struck him as completely odd, however, was the fact that even though he felt burned, she didn’t feel hot. Rather, she felt cold. Fear gripped his limbs, forcing him out of his house and barreling down the path to town, Redheart’s name on his lips.
Days went by with little change. Every day, Musical would fetch medical supplies from Redheart, and every night was spent sleeplessly keeping vigil over the ill-stricken filly. Even Zecora, the local medicine mare living in the forest, offered the expertise of her craft, but to no avail. Nothing they tried had any lasting effect on Silent Dusk. One medicine might help for an hour or two, but soon whatever illness she had would return, stronger than before, and completely immune to any previous cures.
Finally at his wits’ end, he sat down in a corner of the foals’ room, utterly defeated, and began tuning his guitar. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the nearly catatonic filly stir slightly. He jumped up, sprinting to her and leaving his guitar forgotten on the other side of the room, and looked at her directly, but she was no longer moving. Her breathing still came in short, ragged bursts, but something was different about her. Her shivering was the most prominent difference in its’ lessening frequency. Whereas before, the vibrations from her shuddering could be felt into the floor, now the only way he was able to sense her shivers at all was by looking at her.
He reached forward and slowly stroked her mane, perplexed. He felt a hoof tap his leg and he looked down to see Snowy Dawn staring at him with pleading eyes.
“I wish I knew what to do, little one. I’ve tried everything, from modern medicine, to shaman witchcraft, to actual sorcery. Nothing works. I fear nothing will work,” he said with a sad, weary sigh. Snowy pursed his lips for a moment, and then left the room. Musical Elegy sighed again and looked back to Silent Dusk. Moments later, he heard hoofsteps returning, punctuated every so often by the sound of wood scraping against wood. Turning around, he saw Snowy backpedal toward him, the neck of his guitar held firmly, yet gently between his teeth. He set the guitar down next to him and uttered a single phrase:
“Play your songs for her. Save her. Save us.”
This gave Musical pause. Never before had the little colt said anything to anypony. Not even the pink baker could get more than a smile from him or a frown when she left him, like most everypony she met, utterly confused.
Nevertheless, he gave in, picking up his guitar in his aura and setting himself down on his haunches near Silent Dusk. With a silent prayer to Celestia, Luna, and whoever else may have been watching over them, he began to play like never before.
His usual repertoire consisted of songs that could move a pony’s soul with little effort, be it with glee or sorrow. The song he played in that tiny room could easily have moved the sun and moon of it's own accord. He had no doubt that he could have moved the cosmos in its entirety if he wanted to. The chords that rang forth rose and fell in time with his heartbeat, happy and jubilant one moment and forlorn and melancholy the next. After what felt like an eternity, he brought his masterpiece to an end, resting his guitar against Silent Dusk’s bedside and moving to look at her. What he hadn't noticed until then was that throughout the entire performance, Silent had not only stopped shivering, but had also begun to regain her darker complexion.
Reaching a hoof tentatively forward, he grazed her head softly. In the space of the few minutes the song lasted, her fever had not only broken, but had returned to a more normal temperature. He found himself chuckling as he gazed at her, spellbound by her rapid recovery. Under his loving caress, her eyes slowly fluttered open and looked directly at him. Her breath still haggard, she nodded once, before closing her eyes and falling into the first peaceful sleep she had had in days.
Musical looked from her to Snowy Dawn, who sat next to him with tears falling freely from his face.
“If you only knew…” he managed to say before sobbing. Musical Elegy sat with him and rubbed his back for a few moments, helping him weather his own, personal storm of emotions. Finally, when the sobs subsided, Snowy looked into his face.
“We have been to many different places before here, never once having the opportunity to stay, but getting glances of the different places as we passed. We have seen works of art that your soul would never comprehend yet still marvel at. We have smelled fragrances as pleasant as to leave the mind numb and the heart speechless. But never before have we heard music that could make the gods weep with unbridled joy. Fear not for her, old one. The magic in your song shall make her whole again, as it made me.”
Snowy smiled once more, tears still falling down his features, before looking at Silent Dusk once more.
Something nudged at the back of Musical’s mind, though…
“You said ‘save us,’” he said slowly. “What did you mean, ‘us’?”
“Simply put, we are linked, she and I. Like two halves of a whole, or two neutron stars circling each other in their eternal orbit. She cannot exist without me, and I cannot exist without her, in every sense of the word. She is my sister-self, born of the same lineage as me and sharing everything I have. We have… had… a word for it, but I’m afraid that knowledge has been lost with the rest of my kind. Even if I knew the words, I doubt you would be able to understand any of them,” he finished his explanation with a shake of his head, then sighed. “That doesn’t matter now, though. What matters is that she will be fine. I can feel it in her soul, in my being,” he looked Musical in the eye. “And we have you to thank.”
Musical sat with this strange foal, entranced by his words, absorbing every detail.
“Get going, you two! You don’t want to be late for school!”
“Yeah, yeah, we get it! We’re going!
Musical Elegy stood with his guitar on his run-down porch staring down the road at two young foals that were galloping full-tilt towards town. After explaining to Nurse Redheart and Mayor Mare about the situation that took place in his home barely a year ago, Mayor Mare had decided to let the foals stay in town under his care; Cheerily had even allowed them to be enrolled in regular classes, much to the surprise of the old stallion. The mare from the confectionary threw them another welcome party, the librarian offered to tutor them in anything they desired to know about, and even the young mare who ran the boutique in town offered to make them clothes of her own design, among other ponies who wanted to help them ease into life in Ponyville.
He laughed as Silent Dusk called over her shoulder as she ran. Once they rounded a corner and were gone from sight, he trotted back inside his home to collect his things. He stopped as he bent low to retrieve his bowler hat, which had fallen off of his coat-rack near the door again from the foals’ antics. A frame caught his eye, one that had been sitting on a small table near the door for nearly a year. There, framed for all to see, was a picture of a much younger Musical Elegy with a beautiful young mare with a cream-colored coat and blonde mane and tail. Perched precariously from her head was a worn Stetson, scuffs and scratches adorning nearly every facet of the beloved head-wear.
But this wasn’t the picture that had caught his eye.
Sitting next to this frame was a much larger one. This one held a picture of Musical Elegy as he was now. Flanking him on either side were two young foals; one had a nearly pearl-white coat with lemon-colored mane and tail, while the other was the physical opposite of the other, sporting a jet-black coat with dark brown mane and tail. All three of them were smiling from ear to ear, their happiness captured on film to be preserved through the ages.
A single tear ran down the length of Musical Elegy’s muzzle, stopping beneath his smile before falling to the wooden floorboards at his hooves. He smiled before trotting out of his home and locking the door behind him.