//------------------------------//
// The Big Picture 
// Story: Innavedr 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

	A colt stepped forward from the group, looking up at me with eyes like mirrors to the stars beyond.  I saw my image eclipsed by the enormity of his pupils, and I wondered if I had the strength to see what he—what all of them had been programmed to see.

"If it is your wish to witness... then it is your wish to know," he said.  "As it is your wish to live and die... to die and live... to become whole by becoming apart."

"I was placed in this world to assist in acquiring this knowledge," I said.  "I know it.  I'm convinced of it now."

"Hemennujusen krellumtiel gruxan eljunbyro balakuk hajan," a filly chanted, drawing my attention.  "With shattered eyes would she who is only a part of endurance's rebirth attempt this venture."

I closed my eyes to the sequencing of stars, feeling a wave of cold slice through me like a blizzard.  When I looked at them again, my mind's eyes were leaking.  I spoke past the pain to say, "Then allow m-me to come together again, in the only way I can afford..."

"Mensunjin resukuktiel hrassul, eljunbyro," said one of the colts as all twelve children formed a circle around the miniature pond.  "You far more brave than us, eljunbyro.  There must be great fear in you to make a stranger pierce this deep into the ether."

I softly said, "Love has its place in fate as well."

They had no response to this.  Instead, they narrowed their eyes, staring into a fixed point above the pond.  I felt the universe spinning around me.  Through my peripheral vision, I caught the stars rotating at an alarming rate.  The lavender glow heated up, so that an orange aura shimmered beyond the furthest reaches of the ring's curved horizon.

A chant emanated from the mouths of the twelve foals, high-pitched yet resonating like drums of dead skin:  "Morru bessu varankai urohingr.  Morru bessu varankai urohingr..."

I stood before them, my eyes so affixed to their ritual, that I barely noticed the otherworldly event transpiring in front of me.  Without a single splash, the surface of the lake lifted up and rotated like an enormous coin.  I watched as the rippling surface faced down towards a flat space of pure stone.  Undulating liquid brimmed along the edge of the body, trickling upwards towards the stars in a misty haze.  Between the twelve sequencers, the upside-down pond lifted a good meter and a half off the ground.

"Rise," one of them said, her voice reverberating across the liquid portal.  "Take wing as they did... as they all did... in the world before worlds."

I gazed at her, at all of them.  Nervously, I trotted forward, my ears flicking as I trotted through the drizzling mist.  At last, I stood beneath the pond.  My head tilted up, and all I saw beyond was a copper haze past the quivering veil.  I reached up.  I stood up my hind quarters and stretched, pushing one hoof through the pond and then the other.  I was just starting to feel my way into the miasma when the basin plunged towards me... only I plunged towards it.

I was swimming, falling up, roaring through the waters like a torpedo.  I felt the urge to scream, so I did.  My lungs didn't drown.  The currents had turned to air, rippling through my mane as I rocketed down a tunnel of nebulae, a birth canal of stars and cosmic dust.  Then, within the center of a swirling haze of glittering light, I saw ruby red flame.  My body roasted as I plunged through it.  The urge to scream came and went, for in a blink I was on the other side.  My ears rang with the clicks of sprockets and the grinding of gears.  I spun around in my flight, gasping at an array of intestinal machinery.  The ruby light of the flame permeated every crevice of the engine, and beyond the levers and conveyors I saw bodies moving, darting left and right on bright, lively wings.  Then, there was a flash, invigorating and warm.  There were crevices in the ceiling, for they were letting the light in.

They were everywhere; some of them danced around me like breathing, laughing comets.  Together we plunged through the machine layer and into the fragrant air of the world.  I saw plains of golden metal and platinum sediment.  A heavenly paradise rolled beneath me, covered from horizon to horizon with magnificent cities of polished silver, with misty havens floating in the sky like weightless marble metropolises.

A squadron of wing ponies surged past me, their bodies clad in armor that flickered with unbridled energy.  I twirled in an attempt to gaze after them.  From where I floated, I saw their bodies disappearing into the purple haze of the universe beyond.  Dangling in the cosmos, several enormous bodies floated: humongous strips of land, so large that they possessed gravity as much as they possessed life.  I saw green continents and blue oceans brimming on either sides of the flat planes.  They collectively floated towards our world, eleven in all.  At first, I feared that we would crash, but then—like obedient foals—the flat worlds floated into place.

The air sang with bellicose glory, and I saw the horizons east and west of me bending.  The floating cities and the glittering palaces shifted to accomodate an incalculable shift in topography.  Soon, the world was no longer flat, for it had bent into a gracious curve.  When I gazed towards the heavens, I realized that the other realms were doing this too.

Soon, I was bulleting towards them.  My ears rang with metallic glory as I skimmed over the curved pieces joining loudly with one another.  Soon, the twelve strips had become one, forming a singular ring of curved worlds, bathed in endless cosmos.  Past the layer where I had started, I soared over world after world, each with a uniquely varying geography, a blissfully heterogenous biodome.

Gone were the pegasi that had made my heart sing, and in their place were creatures no less wonderous, living in tranquility and mutual piece, each occupying a different part of the ring in the pursuit of truth and serenity.  I saw them in their habitats, building cities, growing farms.  Some of them crawled on all fours... on all sixes and eights.  Some swam in oceans, others stood bipedally and made song.  A cornucopia of worlds, species, and civilizations greeted me, an entire ring spinning and brimming with twelve variations of life.

Everything was whole.  Everything was as it should be.

And then... everything shattered.  I felt an alarming sound in my ear, like the high-pitched squeal of terrified children.  The ring reeled, and explosions went off at every continental coupling.

"What?!" I shrieked into the sudden abyss where I was being flung.  "What is it, children?!  What's happening?"

I heard nothing, for the shouts were muffled.  The ring vanished under a great blue shadow.  Water collected suddenly around my ears, and the air that I was breathing turned once more to pondwater. I gasped and gargled... then sank into the depths of that shadow, feeling her wrath and coldness enveloping me like a shroud...