//------------------------------// // The Garden Out of Time // Story: Lost Cities // by Cold in Gardez //------------------------------// "Then the Laudomia of the dead and that of the unborn are like the two bulbs of an hourglass which is not turned over; each passage between birth and death is a grain of sand that passes the neck, and there will be a last inhabitant of Laudomia born, a last grain to fall, which is now at the top of the pile, waiting." - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities There is a river in a valley. It flows slowly at the pinnacle of summer, after weeks of heat and evening storms that filled the valley with thunder but not much rain. Insects dart across its still surface, leaving behind trails of expanding circles, like a stone skipping endlessly upon the water. They fill the air with their buzz, a low ceaseless drone that combines with the heat to lull ponies into peaceful naps along the shore. There are no ponies here today. They rarely venture this far south from the settled lands around Canterlot. Twenty centuries have passed since the Age of Migration ended, and only the most adventurous of ponies, those dedicated wanderers and wayward souls, bother to cross the wild badlands in search of their ancient ancestral homes.The few who do are pegasi, of course, and they have little appreciation for the valley and its treasures. And so, like every other day, the river does its river thing, and the insects do theirs, and the wind teases them both, and the trees along the banks rise in stately majesty as far as the eye can see, until the sweeping wings of mountains lift from the forest floor a dozen miles away to take a jagged bite from the sky. The forest is thick and choking with life. Sycamores and willows, those lovers of water, line the river banks. Further in, swamp oaks compete for space with ashes and the occasional maple. Their trunks are pillars, and they turn the dark world beneath the canopy into a cathedral, extending without depth into the distant shadows. The ground, where it can be seen beneath growths of wild roses, honeysuckle and countless wildflowers, is soft with the accumulation of last season’s leaves. They are brown and crunch beneath the hooves. Between two nearby trees, a spider has crafted its web. The gossamer spiral is anchored at three points: one on each tree, and one on a curious stone tangled in their entwining roots. The stone is the size of an apple. It is shaped like a foal. * * * A few hundred yards away, there is a small ravine carved out by a thin stream that diverted from its path centuries ago when an elm collapsed in a storm. The tree has long since rotted away, but the stream never returned to its original flow. A deep pool fills the basin where the elm’s roots once dug. A stone pillar juts from the surface of the pool. It is smooth and circular in cross-section, and its skin has been decorated with carvings of climbing vines. Real leaves now cover much of these designs, as though the forest had used them for a template in its own growth. The top of the pillar is broken. Whatever it once supported is lost, as is much of the rest of Lith, the largest city ever to exist in Equestria. * * * The forest is not natural. It pretends it is, and in another thousand years the last traces of earth pony presence may finally wear away, leaving nature to run its course. Or maybe not. The earth ponies’ presence, like everything about them, is durable. It does not blow away in the wind, or burn itself out like a candle. It endures. It is like stone. So for today at least, the forest still bends to the will of its long-dead masters. The signs are small but visible to those who know where to look. Amidst the random growth, a line of trees grows in a perfect row for a hundred yards. Every tree is the same – an osage orange, grown to monstrous proportions with the passage of centuries. Their trucks are riddled with thorns as long as a unicorn’s horn, and the branches above them are gravid with countless fruits. Plants with no business in a forest fill the space around the trees. Wild maize and sunflowers crowd together in bright patches beneath holes in the canopy. Blueberries have taken over a marshy bit of land near a slow stream. They fill the air with their sweet scent. Once the osage oranges were simple hedge trees, marking the boundary of a small farm on the city’s outskirts. They were smaller then, little more than shrubs. Time and the last command they received from their masters – Grow! – have turned them into giants. All except the last tree at the end of the row. It is smaller than the others, as though it had not changed since it was a shrub. Its leaves do not blow in the wind. Its branches do not sway. They are all made of stone. * * * Further up the valley, the first ruins begin to appear. They are overgrown, and only their bones peek out from the roots of trees growing atop them. Here, a stone cornice carved with a leaflike frieze. There, a set of marble stairs lead down into packed earth. Fragments of broken stone litter the forest like fallen leaves. The remains of a cobblestone road sometimes appear where rain has washed away dirt and detritus. The stones are fractured and discolored, and they no longer provide an easy path between the buildings. Better to walk alongside the road, and use it as a guide, than trust your ankles to its treacherous path. A row of tall, misshapen junipers marches alongside the stones, and once, before the forest grew above them, they may have provided the path with shade. One of the ruins is larger than the rest. It slumps in a heap of broken rock, and though it has collapsed upon itself, it is still as tall as some of the trees. The road leads up to the ruins and vanishes into them. A pair of statues flank the end of the road at the foot of the ruins. Two earth ponies, both stallions, and wearing ornate metal armor that would have weighed hundreds of pounds, were it real. They do not appear to even notice the weight. Whatever sculptor carved the statues was obsessed with realism. Every buckle in their armor, every lock of their mane, every hidden muscle beneath their stone skin, every eyelash, they have all been rendered perfectly. They look alive, for all that they are stone. The centuries of wind and rain have done nothing to weather away the fanatic detail in which they were rendered. Beyond the collapsed ruin, another faded road slides through the forest as straight as an arrow. It ignores the trees whose roots have torn it apart, leaving stones scattered among the fallen leaves. Far behind, the river can no longer be heard over the rustle of the trees in the wind. * * * Lith was the first city the ponies founded after their retreat from the north. It once held unicorns and pegasi as well as earth ponies, in the early golden days before the old hatreds reemerged. The pegasi were the first to leave. The skies called to them, as they had in the old days, and within a few generations not a single pegasus remained in the garden city. For centuries, they made their homes in the clouds above Lith, and in a sense remained neighbors with their earth pony and unicorn cousins. But without a solid anchor they eventually drifted, as pegasi are wont to do, and in time they left to build new cities in the clouds. When the unicorns left, they took nearly half the earth ponies of Lith with them. They promised a new homeland, built with magic and wonder, far to the west. The earth ponies who remained often wondered, in their final years, if they had erred in keeping to their roots. Centuries later, when tales of the Heartspire trickled back, as like an ashen river through a cinder door, they counted their blessings instead. * * * The ruins are closer together further into the forest, and not as ruined either. The roofs have collapsed from most, but their walls still stand, doors and windows looking both in and out at nature’s slow triumph. There is nothing that resembles the remains of a farm here. Marble slabs, some overturned, some still level, form wide avenues between the ruins. What might have once been a fountain stands in the center of a wide open area. Its basin is filled with dirt and life now. A lone pony sits near the fountain, staring at its climbing vines as if in contemplation. Her stone mane is frozen like a flag in the wind. Her abdomen is swollen, and an observer might be forgiven for assuming she was just starting to show the early stages of a first pregnancy. She is either several months from becoming a mother, or a thousand years overdue, depending on your perspective. * * * Near the center of the city, the buildings are still complete. A few are seemingly pristine, as though they had not sat, empty and abandoned, for a dozen centuries or more. The trees and vines that grow around them do so respectfully, providing the walls with shelter and shade, rather than tearing them apart. The largest of the vines, the eldest, are grey and hard. They already sink into the fossil timelessness that engulfs the city. Elaborate friezes decorate the high cornices. Earth ponies, carved marching in single file along the relief, carry with them the bounty of the fields. They carry their harvest along wide city street toward what can only be a palace, low and humble it may be compared with modern Canterlot. In the highest room of the palace, a pair of tall unicorns overlook the scene. Faint shapes that may have been wings are carved alongside them. The earliest records of Celestia and Luna’s lives date from Lith’s golden era. They were not gods, then, or even rulers. For generations, they were simply the only non-earth ponies to live in the city, and by dint of that fact alone were the subject of curiosity and admiration. Even with the passage of centuries, they never presumed to challenge the authority of the Stone Queens over their people. If there was a specific event that led the Sisters to depart Lith, it has been lost to time. What is known is that the greater part of the city, over a million souls, simply left one day, migrating north across the badlands toward the fabled Everfree plains. In the highest of the ruins, situated atop a hill in the center of the city, a stone throne occupies the top tier of a pedestal. The court it presides over is filled with guards, all frozen at attention. Some have closed their eyes; others remain open, yet still unseeing. Around the throne is gathered a family. The eldest, the matriarch, sits at its foot. A rough rock crown, easily weighing hundreds of pounds, is centered upon her forehead. Pressed up against her, all embracing, are a stallion and three foals. None have moved in a thousand years. Only a few ponies remained in Lith after Celestia and Luna departed. They were not enough to fill such a huge city, and over the decades their numbers slowly dwindled. With each year, more and more accepted their fate. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. And stone to stone.