//------------------------------//
// Chaper 10 
// Story: Them 
// by Ether Echoes 
//------------------------------//

	Chapter 10

Rainbow Dash soared through the light, stretching out until she became impossibly thin. She was a beam of light, a flicker of thought, a vibrant thread of a thousand colors that was at once finite and boundless. In her wake spun a thousand skeins of light—in their course, she saw the world below, her friends fighting, the mountains of Equestria crumbling into dust. Past, present, and future.

If the void she had crossed on the moon had taught her the meaning of emptiness, this passage demonstrated the boundless realm of thought. She saw again each of the thousands of faces left behind. Their cheers, their hearts and dreams, their love propelled her up. For them, she would go to the root of creation.

With a final pulse of effort, she pulled herself back together and burst through the clouds. Without quite knowing how, she knew that her journey was nearing its end. It was knowing as she had experienced in the world below, a devout understanding in her very heart that the conclusion to her trials stood tantalizingly within reach.

It felt like coming home.

Radiance flooded forth to kiss the clouds with golden light. It sprang forth from the branches of a tree straddling the craggy roof of the world, far above, its branches as bright as the sun. As she rose, the sky fell away, darkening into twilight and thence to night. The great mountain which had once dominated the world shrank to a pin, concealed in rolling clouds.

Rainbow Dash shook her mane, and the light of her passage fell from her like stardust. She inhaled, and then slowly let out her breath. “Here we are. Time to finish this.” She steadied herself and placed a hoof down, picturing a solid surface. A sense of firmness met her and pushed back, and where her hoof met the surface ethereal light radiated. Within seconds, she stood on the bridge of an aurora that wound its way through the eternal sky to the foot of the tree. In its gently waving curtains she saw the world below, filled with her friends fighting, her life in Ponyville, the birth of a foal, the founding of Equestria, and the very mountains of the earth crumbling to dust. Past, present, and future intertwined as one.

The peak drew closer. Now that Rainbow Dash was close enough to see clearly, she found a kaleidoscope of color spreading out all around it. The colors seemed at first to be merely reflected light, like the patterns of a seashell, but on closer inspection Rainbow Dash saw that the peak was carpeted by shapes resting on its slopes. They were mares, dozens if not hundreds of them, sleeping peacefully. They were all different—some were large, some were short, some with long tails like the pre-Equestrian’s, some with horns or antlers, some with wings like bats or birds. They came in every color, but the one thing they had in common was their hair. Be it short or long, curly or straight, each of them had a mane in all seven colors. Those manes, in solid shades like Rainbow’s or a continuous spectrum like Hawa’s or something in between, fanned out behind them as they slept.

A chill ran up Rainbow Dash’s spine. A point of light surrounded by a thousand multi-colored petals…

She continued walking, and placed a hoof upon the soil of the peak. Here, the light-filled branches did not seem so harsh, their embrace welcoming as she pushed them aside and stepped forward. Underneath the canopy, branches hung all around her. Each leaf shined with the light of a tiny star. It felt as if she was striding through space, a titan crossing the galaxy.

Worn feet shed their weariness as she walked beneath the canopy of stars, the aches and pains which had brought her here flaking off. Even the stiffness of her freshly healed wounds faded. Almost like I’m walking backwards in time.

Rainbow Dash paused at the thought. There is something familiar about all this. She pursed her lips and looked around. Something about a nearby branch caught her eye and she drew it closer for a better look. Words coursed through it, curious symbols that radiated out in spirals following the natural curve of the broad leaves. As she studied them, she realized that she could understand the language. Like so much about this place, the knowledge was already inside her, waiting to come forward.

There were thousands of symbols, each containing a meaning or a slew of meanings, and they were not read in any particular direction. Instead, they were read from every direction at once. Up, down, left, right—where one started and where one followed determined the meaning of the sentence, and they had branching paths that changed the meaning as well. More, no one direction was valid, for every possible sentence had meaning.

Rainbow stared up at the tree, its eerily lit branches filling her vision. “It’s the Book,” she whispered, and knew it to be so. Every leaf contained instructions, every branch encoded a whole library of commands. The entire universe, written here.

“Not of conflict, but of understanding,” she said quietly. Taking her branch in hoof, she scanned down it, seeing more with her mind than with her eyes. Minutiae of bacterial reproduction and the planned history of an entire family for generations rubbed up against detailed inventories of the gem content of mountains on the other side of the world from Ponyville.

Organized chaos, much? She kept reading, pulling the branch down towards her to scan each individual leaf. She checked nearby branches, searching until she found the mention she was looking for—a rainbow-maned mare. Something seemed strange, though—wherever she looked, the information looped back in on itself. It gave some snippets of her life—mentioning a red stallion, her qualities of confidence, loyalty, and compassion, her hopes and desires—but it always came back to the starting location.

“The rainbow-maned mare returns to her home and sleeps. The rainbow-maned mare wakes in her home and leaves.”

Rainbow read on. She found another branch a few steps away that detailed a similar path—one that cycled her back to the original. Again she found another mention of a rainbow-maned mare, and again it took her back to the start. No matter which path she took, it always ended and began on those two commands.

Her brows creased further. “Wait… where’s my family? Do I have kids? Where’s my birth?” Scanning back along the branches, she found a mention of Cloud Buster, if not by name than by description—There’s how he grows up, has a sister, falls in love, and then…

“The rainbow-maned mare returns to her home and sleeps. The rainbow-maned mare wakes in her home and leaves.”

There was no mention of a family for the rainbow maned mare. She had no birth, no youth, no children, no death. Her life repeated itself, circling again and again.

Rainbow Dash backed away from the branch, staring at the leaf as if it had offended her. Rainbow wanted to shout at the world, but even the idea left her feeling exhausted. She might as well be shouting at herself. In a way, perhaps she was. “What does it mean? Damn it!” She stomped her hooves and started towards the trunk, following the rise of the hill. “It doesn’t make any sense!” she growled.

She paused, and her eyes traced back to the shore, where she could just see the figures below as a haze of multicolored light. Rainbow-maned mares nestled on the shore of a cosmic ocean. A sonic rainboom, its cascade altering fate. She shuddered.

Somewhere above, Hawa waited. She stared up at the branches again. A library that is a tree. Twilight would like that, I bet. Leaving the shore behind, Rainbow Dash trotted towards the center.


* * *


Time passed strangely in the Book. Rainbow Dash was aware, in a vague sense, that the traditional concept of time as she understood it—that of events moving linearly from one moment to the next—was a lot less accurate than she had been raised to believe. Still, by all rights, she should have reached the center a while ago. With the light-bearing branches above, she felt as though she was walking backwards rather than forwards—retracing steps she had long ago placed. It only served to confirm her earlier feelings of eeriness and repetition.

Every so often, a movement would catch her eye. There was a flicker of shadow, or the swish of a colorful tail, and she would turn only to find the way behind her empty. The fallen leaves strewn on the path crunched beneath her hooves, and the glowing sap on them bled deep, to be reabsorbed like water in the dark soil. Still, she pressed on, climbing towards the source of brightness, a shining pinnacle far ahead.

At last, a ring of black stones appeared through the haze before her, dwarfed by the trunk of the tree they surrounded. Light, illuminating their granite massiveness starkly, beamed through the slots between them in all directions like some primordial lighthouse. Rainbow flapped her wings and cleared the last few steps, only to find her path barred. A shadow stretched from a black stone to interpose itself before her. Light haloed it as if it were solid, and cascaded through its empty eyes and mouth. It had the shape of an elongated pony, all worn and thin.

“I was wondering when you would show up,” Rainbow Dash growled.

The Entelecheia said nothing.

More of Them appeared, unraveling from whorls, chips, and crevices in the stonework. She could not tell if They loomed over her or if They were so tiny as to be insignificant, but somehow They packed themselves before her, hundreds deep, thousands wide.

“I’m not going to submit. I don’t care if you kill me here or not.”

The Entelecheia said nothing.

“This could have ended a long time ago, you know,” she said, her voice hot. “There were a thousand things you could have done to me back home that would have stopped me cold. You could have just silenced me the minute I started speaking out.”

Again, silence met her.

“I had a sister!” Dash snapped. “Why did you take her away, anyway? If you really wanted to keep me down there, you could have just dangled her in front of me! I would have thrown everything away, you could have sucked me down into forgetting everything, and then we wouldn’t even be standing here!”

The shadows did not answer, and Rainbow looked back up at the leaves overhead. She rubbed her face, taking a heavy breath. Her heartbeat could have been the loudest sound in existence right then. “Right… it’s all in there, somewhere. Your Plan.” She stamped a hoof fitfully. “Damn it. Nothing is ever what it seems, nothing is what I thought it was. All this time I thought you were trying to… to make some sort of concrete goal. That this was all building up to something specific. Your Plan sounds… it sounds random!”

Rainbow Dash wanted to shout at Them more. She wanted to take Them in her teeth and shake Them until They fell into pieces. That wouldn’t change anything, though, would it? She lowered her head and caught her breath, waiting until she could speak without it feeling as though each word would tear her apart.

“Answer me,” she said as she lifted her head at last. “If you’re going to be here, at least do me that favor. What are you?”

“We are the fully realized desires of the dreamer’s heart,” They answered in one voice. “We are the expression of potential into action.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. “You said I would unmake the world.” She waited a beat, but They volunteered nothing. “Who is the dreamer?”

“The rainbow-maned mare returns to her home and sleeps. The rainbow-maned mare wakes in her home and leaves.”

Rainbow tried to step forward, to get a better look past Them, but found her steps would take her no further. The light, shining forth from the tree as brightly as the sun, was too bright to look directly into. “What is the dreamer?”

“As the dreamer sleeps she dreams. We are all one in the dreamer.”

Rainbow’s heart quickened. Her breath raced. All around her, the world had been reduced to light and shadow.

“Why won’t you let me pass?”

“We are the fully realized desires of the dreamer’s heart.”

“I’m not the dreamer!” Rainbow shouted at Them. “I’m not!”

They stood impassively, a shadowy wall of ineffable purpose and power.

“Stop it! You’re saying that like… like I don’t want to go in, so I’m stopping myself from seeing the truth?” she asked. “But… that would imply I know what I’m going to find, and the part of me that knows doesn’t want to go there.” Words bubbled up out of Rainbow Dash of their own accord. “Because I have already been here before. I know I have, time and time again, and… I just don’t want to put myself through it because…”

Rainbow snapped her mouth shut and closed her eyes.

“I could go back, couldn’t I? I could go to the mountainside and lay my head down, let you take me back down. It would all be over, then. I wouldn’t have to worry about anything else like this ever again. I won’t have to face what lies behind you.”

“Yes,” They answered. After a pause, They added, “But you will not.”

“No,” she murmured. The faces of her loved ones, of Twilight and Big Mac and Scootaloo and more, flashed before her eyes. “I won’t.”

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. “All right.” She set a hoof against her chest and forced the words out. “All right. Stand aside… I’ve come home.”

Her words may as well have been a key in a lock. Something deep within her opened. Radiance poured out of her, consume Them from the outside in, as if They were burning sheets of paper caught in her flame. The last of the Entelecheia stood directly between Rainbow Dash and the trunk—her very own shadow. It quirked its mouth into a smile before it, too, was swallowed in her light.

With a stride that could have bridged worlds, Rainbow Dash stepped forward.


* * *


A garden stood at the root of creation.

Rainbow Dash looked from one end to another. The trunk of the tree rose in slopes not unlike the mountain Rainbow Dash had ascended, its canopy ablaze with radiance. Moonflowers dug into the dirt, their pale blossoms uplifted and spreading pollen that glimmered like tiny fireflies. Low shrubs and tiny trees stood unmoving in the still air. As far as gardens went it was not very large—she could have circled it in moments—and it seemed so terribly mundane to her eyes. After having fallen into the ocean of possibility that was the tabula rasa, after traveling to the moon, after scaling the mountain that stood between thought and being, the simplicity of a quiet garden seemed to her an awfully reserved beating heart for everything that has ever been.

Maybe that’s the point. Big things have small beginnings, and don’t we all start in a peaceful, gentle place?

Rainbow looked down at her own hoof. Well. Most of us.

A single shaft of golden sunlight pierced the veil, and its rays illuminated a mare laying beside a deep, still pool.

Hawa slumbered. Her head rested on one outstretched foreleg while the other sprawled to one side. Her tail twitched now and then. Rainbow watched her, but could not tell if her sleep was peaceful or troubled—her face was unlined, her body still, yet there was a tension about her that Rainbow could not define. Around her neck hung a necklace with a blue sapphire at her throat, and resting on her brow was a single pearl. The light touched the top of her head, and her rainbow-colored mane, its smooth progression of colors stirring whenever she breathed, fanned out across the grass around her.

Rainbow Dash stood there for a long time, breathing in the scent of the flowers with her eyes shut. The world turned around them, and she felt it turning as if it were merely an extension of her own limbs. In her mind’s eye, she saw it—the earth, its blue oceans spinning beneath the moon. Continents shifted, cities rose and fell. Creatures lived, died, and lived again.

Her vision pulled back. The stars fell away to become mere points of light in a rainbow mane. The world revealed itself as a blue jewel at the throat of a mare, while the moon hung above her eyes as a white pearl. Atop it all stood the crown of light, with her colorful mane falling around it to encompass all the starry universe.

With a shake of her head, Rainbow cleared away the vision. Crossing the field, she rested a hoof on Hawa’s side. Her heart beat in a slow, steady rhythm under Rainbow’s touch. The other mare’s body was soft and warm.

“Whatever the consequences,” Rainbow whispered, “I’ve come too far to be stopped by them. I’ve fought too long. The suffering, the fighting—it all needs to stop here. All of the questions need to be answered now.”

Gently, she shook Hawa. The other mare stirred fitfully. Her ears twitched. She resettled, shifting her head between her forelegs. Rainbow, shaking her again, didn’t let her sink back into slumber.

“It’s time to wake up, Hawa.”

The leaves quivered. The branches shook. Rainbow kept it up, even as the light flickered.

Hawa drew a heavy breath. Her body tensed.

Rainbow held her breath, and the earth stopped turning.

With a toss of her head, Hawa began to stir. A foreleg came up and pushed at Rainbow feebly. “I’m… up. Ah’m up…” she slurred. After all of the overwrought imagery Rainbow Dash had been bombarded with, the process of waking up the dreamer responsible for all creation was shockingly mundane. Hawa stretched, her back and tail arching with audible pops, and then rubbed at her eyes. At last, she opened her eyes. They were the very same shade of rose as Rainbow’s own, and when they unclouded from sleep and perceived Rainbow there, they widened.

“Oh, no,” Hawa whispered. Her voice was light and sweet, but it trembled with a note of pain.

“Good morning, Hawa. I’m Rainbow Dash,” Rainbow said as she extended a hoof to help her up. “I think you know me.”

Hawa stared at the offered hoof for a while, taking in the messy, tattered creature in front of her. Rainbow knew that she looked a sight—she had gone unwashed for well over a day, her mane was a tangled nest, and her feathers were torn and missing in places. I could fix it all with a thought, but why? There’s no real point now. Even so, Hawa seemed to be regarding her with something akin to fear.

With a low sigh, Hawa reached out and took the hoof, using it to climb to her feet and shook off the last groggy vestiges of her eons-long nap. She ran a hoof through her mane to smooth it, and it fell to either side of her in colorful waves. “Yes, Rainbow Dash, I know you.” Her eyes glanced up at the branches, and she shook her head. “I suppose this all had to come to an end, eventually.”

Hawa blinked at her, and then she laughed. She covered her mouth as Rainbow’s cheeks reddened, still giggling, and smiled her sweet, innocent smile as the laughter faded. It was hard for Rainbow Dash not to smile with her at that—it was like her grin lit up the glade. “No, of course not,” Hawa said. “We’re part of the same dreamer, of course, but that’s all we are—separate, distinct parts of a connected consciousness, of which we are the focal points.”

“Why do we look alike, then? What is the symbolism of the rainbow light? Has the world ended? Is there anything outside all this?” Rainbow felt short of breath as she peppered Hawa with her questions. She had run an emotional and metaphysical marathon to get here, and now that she had crossed the finish line, she didn’t even know where to start. “What’s the point of the multiple worlds? How come I had to fight to get back here? Why do we have to switch off? Are those mares down there just like us, too?”

Rainbow’s breath failed her, and she tried to find words for a few seconds before flapping her wings and screaming, “Why are you hurting everyone?”

Hawa’s ears laid back, and her head lowered. Her entire body slumped; the energy her laugh had given her drained out entirely.

“Can’t you see it, in your dream?” Rainbow Dash pointed a hoof off to the side, as if encompassing all of creation in her gesture. “Can’t you see how there’s entire histories of people who are suffering? Even among those who are still alive, they’re being driven insane by memories they don’t have and feelings they can’t understand!”

Hawa said nothing.

“It’s… it’s all right here, in your Book. You write—dream—the changes and things happen. Why…” Rainbow bit her lip. “I came here to fix things. I came here to make it all better. I’ve come all this way expecting some black-hearted villain, and all you’re doing is staring at the floor.” She scraped a hoof, staring around as if hoping some monster would pop out of the earth. “You should be laughing maniacally. Can’t you give a speech, some diatribe about how you had to do it, laying out your whole evil plan?” She pressed closer. “Say something. Rage at me, tell me how I don’t understand, how you did bad things because… because…” Rainbow reached out for her with a hoof, but stopped just short of touching her. Her legs trembled.

“I’m sorry,” Hawa whispered. “I tried my best.”

The fatal purpose of saving everyone in Equestria and beyond, the certain necessity of facing down the beating heart of universal misfortune, had been all that had been sustaining Rainbow Dash. Now, Hawa’s simple apology snipped the strings holding her up as neatly as if they had been scissors cutting twine. She sank to the earth, staring blankly at the grass and flowers.

Trotting around to her side, Hawa reached down, sliding a hoof through Rainbow’s hair. “I’m sorry,” she said in a heavy voice. “I’ve tried so hard. Ever since I came here, I’ve been trying to fix… everything.” She settled down on the grass beside her. “In the beginning, I saw how the people quarreled and suffered. I knew that, even if they settled their disagreements, came together, and solved their problems, some terrible disaster would put an end to them.”

The pool rippled, and gleaming cities rushed by in Rainbow Dash’s view, crumbling into dust. “I failed.”

“Why did you just leave them there, then? They’re still tearing each other apart!” She pointed down at the dead earth. “When I went there, robots were tearing each other to pieces. The surviving unicorns huddle in jars just so their own rotting bodies don’t make living unbearable! They were your friends!” Rainbow lifted her head to stare accusingly at her. “You went down among them, you have incredible power, how come you didn’t do anything for them?”

“They were my friends, and I know what ails them,” Hawa said quietly. “I had to, Rainbow Dash. I had to put them somewhere while I tried to fix the problem.”

Rainbow wanted to yell at her, but the energy for it just wasn’t there. She sighed and splashed a hoof in the water, turning it to the black landscape of the desert kingdom as the surface settled. “What about this? You made a world that should have functioned.” She shook her head. “The Oracle said that it worked on entirely different laws—metaphysical rules that kept themselves in tension to promote balance.”

Hawa nodded. “It did.” She concentrated on the pool, and the image sped forward in time. The pyramids and deserts changed, becoming meadow-strewn mountains, where columned temples dotted the land. It shifted again, becoming a gleaming city with towers of glass on clouds, where pegasi zipped along lanes in the sky. Again and again the image changed, finding new forms, a condensed history of the second age in its myriad forms, until it settled on Ponyville. “For a time.”

“What happened?”

“People happened. Errors happened—mine and theirs. Even with checks and balances, the system spins off its top and becomes unstable after a time. Look at Nightmare Moon. Look at Discord. Look at Queen Chrysalis and a thousand threats you’ve never even seen.” Hawa closed her eyes. “I’ve been trying for so long to find some configuration, some perfect combination of factors that won’t lead to the world being torn apart.”

“But… something must work.”

“Oh, certainly.” Hawa opened her eyes and turned her head to look at Rainbow. “I can make a stable world, one that will endure under these circumstances; do you know what that requires, Rainbow Dash?”

Rainbow shook her head.

“Suffering,” Hawa said, and her voice nearly broke on that word alone. She had to take a moment to catch her breath. “It requires unfairness and heartache. Senseless brutality, people getting churned into meal.” She closed her eyes. “It takes suffering the likes of which you haven’t even dreamed, Rainbow Dash. You think what has gone on is bad? You can’t even imagine. There are terrors that can be inflicted on a world that will lock it into a stable format; like an eternal night. Perhaps I could allow nuclear weapons to return and be used, reducing the remaining population to a handful of survivors that are easier to manage. Maybe I could place a magic bridle upon the earth that would allow one to subdue the entire pony race.”

Hawa sighed. “Honestly, I don’t think even that would work for long. What would that do? Just lock the world in eternal stasis of the worst kind.” Her eyes shut. “We would stop the wheel at its lowest point.”

Biting her lip, Rainbow Dash said nothing.

“I’m not omnipotent, Rainbow. I can’t see all outcomes perfectly, I can’t affect everything ideally. Do you think that just because I hold the world on my shoulders that I know how to save it?” Hawa rose, blinking away tears. “I thought that by coming here, I could fix everything. I came home, and now I need to leave it.”

Rainbow stood with her, following as Hawa started around the trunk. “Wait! Where do you come from, then?”

Hawa paused, glancing back at her. “Here. The rainbow-maned mare returns home, and then she leaves. You, the rainbow-maned mare, have returned home.”

“I… what?” Rainbow stared around. She looked at the grass where Hawa had been lying. No…

“Yes, Rainbow Dash. Don’t you see?” Hawa smiled sadly. “It’s your turn. You’ve unmade the world by waking me up, and now you have a chance to make it anew, to start over and fix it.”

“No… that’s… I didn’t come here to…” Rainbow’s eyes widened.

“I had my chance. You saw for yourself—all I did was mess everything up by trying to be everyone’s mother.” Hawa came to Rainbow Dash’s side and gave her a nudge. “Go on… Everyone is waiting for you. Every soul is an emanation of us, after all, so it’s not like they’re going away.” She smiled sadly. “You know it, too. You resisted coming here. How many times on Earth did you draw the Entelecheia to you, to demand that They stop you from reaching here?”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened. “I didn’t… You can’t mean that I did that? I was trying to avoid Them!”

“You are Them, Rainbow Dash, as much as I am. We are our own gaolers, sometimes.” Hawa turned and walked through the stones surrounding the tree’s trunk.

Rainbow continued to stare. Realizing that Hawa was walking away again, she raced to catch up and trotted alongside the other mare. Through the bright haze surrounding the garden, she saw a flash of a rainbow tail and ignored it. “What about you?”

“Me? I’m going down there,” Hawa said and pointed towards the shore.

“I kinda figured,” Rainbow muttered. “But… please, just stop for a bit and talk to me.” She reached out and turned the slender unicorn around. “I want to know where you came from.”

Hawa sighed, nodding. “All right. I suppose we aren’t in any hurry, after all.” She glanced around, and the land, smoothly becoming a room with polished wooden floors and paper walls painted with flowers. One wall had been opened to reveal a short, tree-lined path down to a sunlit beach. Hawa took a seat on a cushion by a short table, and Rainbow sat across from her.

“This was my house. I lived in it, alone,” Hawa said, watching the waves come in. “I looked a little differently back then, of course.” She gave herself a shake, and her mane darkened to an inky black. It stretched all the way down her back to join a draconic tail while scales slid up her belly. Tiny antlers sprouted out of her hair. “That’s how things started, at least,” she smiled toothily, and picked up a cup of tea with a clawed hand. “A little island of Kirins.”

Rainbow watched her transformation into the strange pony-dragon-deer thing in silence. “What about your folks? Did you have any family?” she asked as she, too, picked up a steaming cup.

“I thought I did,” she answered. Another creature like herself ran up the beach, a small boy chasing a harried crab. He growled in mock ferocity, pawing at it. “A cousin. I think that’s how it always happens, really. We just get slotted into a life fully formed, with memories inserted to fill the gap. It never lasts, though—”

The sky darkened. The earth shook. A flaming meteor struck a distant island and erupted in a towering inferno. Hawa watched it calmly as the shockwave kicked the ocean up like a children’s pool and blasted through the house. The two of them remained intact, passing through like ghosts as tons of water and silt slid through where they once were.

“I don’t know how I survived, but when I rose from the waves, I looked rather more like this,” she said, and Rainbow turned to find them in the wreckage of the house. Among the ruined boards and smashed trees, Hawa hovered as a long, sea-green version of herself, with her long mane now a rippling rainbow. She settled her claws on a displaced boulder, staring mournfully at where the child had been. “They’d taken him away. Gone, just like that.”

Rainbow looked down at her tea cup. She downed it in one go, wishing it were something rather stronger. Rather than create a bottle of alcohol, though, she looked at Hawa with newfound sympathy.

“After that, I tried to figure out what had gone wrong. What terrible thing had stolen my life away?” She gestured up at the sky, to where the moon stood in broad daylight. “The answer came to me in a dream—some terrible force was manipulating the world, turning it to Their desires.”

“Oh.” Rainbow covered her mouth.

“There were others. A handsome young fellow who helped me find my confidence again. A friend who sacrificed herself so that I could reach the moon.” Hawa turned to regard Rainbow Dash. “When I got there, a strange stallion met me and told me that there was another way. Perhaps I was in a dream, but I could dream a dream within the dream and escape that way.”

The image melted away, leaving them in the bright haze beneath the canopy, while the light-crowned trunk watched from above. Rainbow Dash covered her eyes and sank down to her belly.

Hawa, after changing back, slid a hoof around Rainbow’s shoulders to hold her close. Rainbow pressed her face into Hawa’s chest and sobbed quietly.

“We are the all-encompassing dreamer,” Hawa said quietly. “We are at once the terrible oppressor and the rebel who challenges the seat of heaven to sit the throne and begin the cycle anew. I came here and asked the dreamer before me to leave. I hemmed and hawed for a long time, wondering what I should do.”

Rainbow looked up at her. “I… what can we do? Surely this isn’t the end. I don’t… I don’t want to just create a new cycle.”

Hawa smiled at her. “You can wander as long as you like, Rainbow Dash. I did. I read every word on every leaf, trying to find out where it had all gone wrong. Eventually, I lay down and slept, dreaming a world to try and experiment on.” She pointed a hoof at Rainbow Dash. “Then you came and woke me up.”

“But all you’re doing is just starting the whole thing over again!” Rainbow stared around wildly. “There must be something. There must be some other way. Firefly might have an idea. Princess Twilight, Celestia, Luna, the Oracle… they’re all way, way smarter than I am.”

“Are they?” Hawa laughed quietly. “They’re inside you, too. You can be as smart as they are and more. Your mind swallows the universe.” She flicked her tail, walking around Rainbow Dash. “You can speak to them anytime you like in your heart, and they will answer as independently and truly as they are capable, if you think you need a second opinion.”

“Can’t you go back to being a villain?” Rainbow whined.

Hawa laughed and beamed. “I’m sorry. I really wish I could make things that simple. Just gather the Elements of Harmony and shoot the bad lady with a beam of justice—that was a very satisfying way to conclude things, wasn’t it?”

Rainbow Dash grumbled. She trotted back and forth for a while, returning to the glade and glaring up at the leaves. “So this is why you tried to stop me getting up the mountain.”

“Yes.”

“It wouldn’t have killed me, would it have?”

“What is death? You can’t really die, Rainbow Dash; you just come back.” Hawa sat on a gnarled root to watch her. “Besides, I couldn’t really stop you, nor more than my predecessor could stop me.”

“Did you have to fight through a giant army of crazy animated statues?”

“Ah, no. I had to abandon everyone, actually…” Hawa grimaced. “It was unpleasant. That’s sort of the point, though—if you aren’t ready to come here, you need to go back until you are.”

“I wasn’t ready, I…” Rainbow frowned. “Firefly. She’s the one who called up the others. But I gave her hope, and all of them hope as well. When they saw that I wasn’t giving up, they couldn’t give up, either. They fought so that I could come here.”

“Now you’re getting it. You are the hope of your world, just as I was of mine, and my predecessor was of the world before.” Hawa smiled. “We’re the past, present, and the future as well; the hope of a better life.”

Rainbow growled. She paced a circle, trampling the flowers and grass. “Fine job we’re doing there. I still can’t believe I came all this way, fought through so much, just so it can all start over again!” She stopped and narrowed her eyes at Hawa. “This isn’t some trick, is it? I’m not still dying on the mountainside, or trapped in some dream world while my real body is laid up in the hospital, am I?”

Hawa shook her head with a quiet laugh. “If this were a trick on my part, could you tell? But, no, I think you know the answer to that. Think about it—try imagining Manehattan.”

Rainbow frowned, picturing the city in her mind’s eye. The new skyscrapers gleamed with their smooth curves and bold lines, a daring architectural style that had only caught on within the past few years. Ponies moved through along the sidewalks, pegasi and griffins flitted through the air, and carriages rattled through the streets. They were like blood pumping through the city’s veins. Over a million lives slept, ate, loved, and lived beneath her gaze. Pigeons roosted, tofu burgers sizzled, electric lines buzzed. Each individual grain of sand on the beach shifted as the ocean tugged against it under the gentle motion of the wind.

It goes so much deeper than that. Rainbow closed her eyes. In a single blink of her eye the world was born and it died. Her world cried its birth pangs when Celestia first raised the sun of a new dawn, and it ended when the sun guttered out like a spark, becoming cold and lifeless. Every moment of Celestia’s vast memory and experience flowed into her, then it was joined by Luna’s. Rainbow stretched back and tucked the Oracle in there as well, the vast scientific knowledge of an entire age flooding in with it. The magical repertoires of Twilight Sparkle and Starswirl the Bearded waited just beneath the surface.

Long moments of silence passed as Rainbow skimmed the flood of ideas and information. Her mind swelled as she calculated probabilities, running the world simulation in her head again and again. It was a depressing sort of exercise. Suns and moons spun around blue marbles through her mind until they sputtered and died like candles being blown out. It was an unending cycle of ponies living and dying, running their lives over and over again.

Hawa’s nose rubbed against Rainbow Dash’s cheek, distracting her from her grim concentration. Rainbow reached up, rubbing her eyes, and her leg came away wet. “Damn it,” Rainbow said softly.

Hawa nuzzled her gently and held her close. “You see, don’t you? All the genius of the world.”

“I don’t want to do it, Hawa,” Rainbow sobbed fitfully. “I don’t. I can’t do it.”

“I’m sorry, Rainbow.”

Rainbow leaned against Hawa and stared out towards the void. “It’s just one mare following another, again and again.” She pulled herself free and stepped over to the side of the island to stare down as their figures slumbered against the slope. “What happens to them when they go to sleep?”

“They’re born into the new world, a piece of it, until they feel it is time to come here again,” Hawa explained. “Just like you did, when Firefly was taken. You reunited with your purpose.” Hawa followed her gaze and sighed. “I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash. I wish there was something we—I—could do to help you, but you’re the heart of the world’s soul now. The only person who can make these decisions is you.”

Rainbow continued to stare down at the other mares, their peaceful faces turned up to catch the light. “Me, huh?” She shook her head. Her mind raced—weeks of fearing Them, her crushing disappointments with Scootaloo and Big Macintosh, Vinyl Scratch’s demise, the harrowing journeys into the Deeper Dream, their triumphant return. And it all comes down to this. The old guard changing places with the new. Just one more petal in a damned flower, rotating over a doomed world.

“It’s just a wheel. Turning forever. It gets better, and then it gets worse,” she said dully. “Don’t you see it, Hawa? The world is yoked to that wheel. It just keeps on turning and dragging it through salvation and damnation.”

“I do.”

Rainbow turned to her. “And for all our power, what can we do? We’re the creator, we’re the dreamer, and all we can do is start over again. We go through the same cycle that the world does, sinking to the pits and rising to the top again.”

Hawa watched her quietly.

“Of course I didn’t want to return here,” Rainbow muttered. “There’s nothing here. It’s just another step on the wheel of damnation.”

“Rainbow…” Hawa shook her head. “What are you suggesting? Do you even have an alternative? I don’t like the situation that much, but if you don’t go back there and dream up the next world, there is no world.”

“And why should there be?” Rainbow snapped.

Hawa creased her brows. “Why should there be… what? A world?” Her eyes widened. “Rainbow, what are you saying? Of course there should be a world.”

“Why?”

“The implications seem clear to me. What are we, Rainbow Dash?” Hawa shook her head. “We aren’t dreaming a world because it is a fun pastime. There are uncountable souls awaiting rebirth inside of us. We’re a kaleidoscope of hopes and dreams.” She drifted off the ground with an easy grace and held a world between her forehooves, holding it out to Rainbow Dash. It turned peacefully there, with white clouds gliding over the blue water and green earth.

“For all that you deplore the darker parts of the cycle, of death and destruction, can you truly deny that there is not something ineffably beautiful about it?” Hawa asked, her words tugging at Rainbow Dash. “Love, friendship, pleasure, joy. Your friends are quiescent now, their souls held in abeyance while you make your decision. Will you deny them the opportunity to be born again and again, to experience growth?”

Rainbow stared at the world for a long time. Her insides churned. Then, with a sudden outburst of violent motion, she struck the globe from Hawa’s grasp. It sailed through the air and smashed into the rocks, shattering open as if it had been made of glass.

“To live is to die,” Rainbow said tightly. She swallowed, and her inner radiant light flickered, only to be renewed again. “To grow is to suffer.”

“Suffering is a part of how we grow in life,” Hawa said. “We learn from our mistakes and become better as a result.”

Rainbow paced back and forth, her tail flicking as she tried to think.

“Is the suffering you seek to avoid all that bad, Rainbow Dash?” Hawa asked pointedly. “The whole conflict for you started because you were upset about your gender changing—something you now recognize as being fairly irrelevant. You object to how the first world of the unicorns is in a bleak state, and how broken the Lost of the dead world are, but I have told you that this was my best attempt to put them aside, to keep them somewhere so I could try and find a lasting solution.”

“It’s more than that,” Rainbow growled. “People don’t just forget about what you—what we do to them. There’s always part of them that remembers how they were messed with. Your fixes failed, by your own admission.”

Rainbow stopped in front of Hawa. “What if I don’t want to carry on that tradition? What if we just end it, right here?”

“Just the two of us?” Hawa waved a hoof at the mares below. “Or the thousand of us? How is that a fair compromise?” She met Rainbow’s gaze steadily. “Or do you plan to bring everyone who has ever lived out here as well? If so, you’ll just have dreamed up a new, stranger world for them to occupy.”

“So you think it’s better if I become like you?” Rainbow thrust her face into Hawa’s. “Pretend everything is sunshine and roses while stuffing everybody who can’t get along into an everlasting hell?”

Hawa’s face fell, and then hardened. “Find your own way, Rainbow Dash. Learn the lessons of my world.”

“I have,” Rainbow said with a bitter grunt. “I’ve been here before. I’ve tried to rule as dreamer. It’s pain embedded so far down in my consciousness that I don’t even know where it begins or if it even has a beginning.” With a snarl she turned and faced out into the void once more.

“That… stallion or whatever he is,” Rainbow said after a moment. “The one who we met down below. He said he wasn’t involved in all this.”

Hawa nodded. “He did.”

“What does that mean?”

“He is not a part of the dream,” Hawa said. “He comes from elsewhere. A Traveler.”

“Else… where?” Rainbow blinked at her. “What else can there be?”

Hawa shook her head. “Other dreamers. Perhaps stranger things. Ideas floating all on their own.”

A light entered Rainbow Dash’s eyes, and she spun around to face her. “Let’s call him. Maybe he can tell us of another way.”

Hawa sighed. “I think you’ll find we’ve done this before, but all right.” As if caught in a breeze, she drifted out over the void and conjured a stone platform out of nothingness to stand upon. Rainbow stretched her wings, and then thought better of flying. Instead, she simply imagined herself there—in the blink of an eye, she went from where she had been standing to Hawa’s side.

Hawa quirked a smile and waited patiently. Moments later, a light rose from far below. Rather than the familiar shape of a unicorn, however, the Traveler appeared as a sitting figure wreathed in light, legs crossed and back upright. It had no specific features, and she could not have said whether it have hooves, hands, gender, or even skin. An aura of thoughtful serenity radiated out from it as it regarded them with beryl eyes. Behind it, a wheel turned slowly, and Rainbow—with her newfound attention span—counted a hundred and eight sections, each a slightly difference hue.

“I rather thought this would happen,” the Traveler said in a low chime. “She grows wearier by the cycle, Hawa.”

Hawa sighed and brushed her mane back. “It is no less trying for me.”

“Look,” Rainbow Dash said as she stepped toward the alien figure, “I’m sure we’ve gone over this before, but indulge me. What lies beyond here? This existence?”

“Stillness. Peace. No place.”

“Can you, uh… elaborate on that a little more? I’ve been to a place that’s no place before,” Rainbow Dash said, shuddering as she remembered the lunar void, “it didn’t exactly leave me with a good impression.”

“A simple cessation does not encompass that which lies beyond,” the Traveler said.

“Can you explain, please?” Hawa asked. “I know we must seem a little dense, but we would like to understand.”

The Traveler lifted a limb, and it formed into a hand with five fingers. “Understand it from these root thoughts, then: you, the Dreamer, conceive of a world of matter, recognized through perception, judged by feeling, recognized by consciousness, and navigated through volition. Through these five points does a being observe, understand, and react.”

“Beings who are continuously reborn,” Rainbow Dash said quietly, “to live and die and live again, trying to understand our purpose.”

“You already intuit the problem,” the Traveler said. “What is the fate of a wicked person?”

“To die and live again.”

“Indeed. What is the fate of a righteous person?”

“To die and live again.”

The Traveler nodded and lowered its hand, reforming it back into a vague shape. “And throughout these lifetimes we grow, suffer, wither, and die. The wheel of existence to which you are staked.”

Hawa shook her head. “There is more to life than that, though. Wonderful, beautiful things. Joy and laughter, love and kindness…”

“One can experience them to excess, if one chooses,” the Traveler said. “You can use magic or a computer to experience joy everlasting, an eternity of pleasure. You can create a heaven wherein all souls live in perfection.”

“But at that point, you aren’t even a person anymore,” she protested. “You’re just a conduit for sensation, with no capacity for meaningful decisions. That’s not that much better than a hell.”

“It is not.”

“There is no world I can dream of that won’t have suffering, will there?” Rainbow asked cautiously. “If I end suffering, I end the concept of being an actual being who is meaningful; there is no conflict on which to grow. If I promote suffering for eternity, I’ve created conflict but with no resolution.” Rainbow scrubbed her head and looked up to the Traveler with bleary eyes. “What is left, then?”

“You are already closer to a solution than you think,” it said.

Hawa touched her counterpart’s side. “Rainbow…”

Rainbow Dash shook her off and began to pace the stone circle. The Traveler sat motionless to one side, the Book glowed its radiant light in the opposite direction, and Hawa, watching her, sat in the center. “It’s all… fake. It’s an illusion we put ourselves through. We want things and so we put up with it…” She stamped her hoof. “No, it’s more than that. The very fact that we want all these things is what drives us mad.”

She glanced up at the Traveler, who said nothing. “That’s it, isn’t it? We want… we desire to hold on to pleasurable experiences, and when those things are threatened or taken from us, we suffer.”

“Rainbow… what are you suggesting?” Hawa asked, scuffing her hoof against the stone. “The logical conclusion to that is that to end suffering we end desire. No pleasure, no conflict. We blow it out like a candle. Each of the five things the Traveler brought up would need to be extinguished.”

“We’d be free. Liberated, even,” Rainbow said. “No more hate, no more suffering. No more wheel.”

“No more love, no more joy.”

“Is it really, though?” Rainbow said. She gestured to the slumbering mares. “How worth it is it to be set up again and again, in however many lifetimes? We’re just living the same mockery of existence a thousand times over.”

Hawa narrowed her eyes. “Is your love for Scootaloo and Big Macintosh so shallow?”

Rainbow Dash winced, turning her head aside. “No… but I know it will end, eventually. I’d also rather they not suffer, either. I don’t want anypony to suffer—isn’t that the ultimate form of love? If so, can you really say love is extinguished?”

“Rainbow…”

“No.” Rainbow Dash turned and inclined her head to the Traveler. “Thank you. This conversation was very… enlightening.”

“I stand by what I said earlier,” the Traveler said. “I wish you had accepted my offer. This could have been avoided.”

“Could have been.” Rainbow nodded. “But wouldn’t have.”

“Such is the way of things. I wish you well,” the Traveler said, and then shot up and away, vanishing into a point of light that, too, soon faded.

Rainbow Dash turned her attention back to the Book. Hawa tried to grab her, but Rainbow Dash flew at once through the air. “Rainbow, wait!” she called. She blurred after Rainbow Dash as well.

Together the two of them arrived back in the garden, and Rainbow Dash took her place beneath the trunk. She stretched herself out, laying on the mound.

“Rainbow Dash, what are you doing?” Hawa asked. She glanced down at her with her brows furrowed. “You aren’t starting to dream, are you?”

“No,” Rainbow said with a shake of her head. “I told you… I’m done. I won’t start the cycle again. I can’t.” She looked up into Hawa’s eyes. “This is where it needs to end, here and now. The Book, the world.”

Hawa’s eyes widened and she stepped back in horror.

“I’m done, Hawa,” Rainbow said tightly. “I’m not going to perpetuate the cycle anymore. I’m leaving.” She spat disgustedly. “Think about it, you heard what the Traveler said—homeostasis is a lie. We can keep the cycle going for a hundred turns, a thousand, a trillion, but all it will take is one of us, just one Dreamer to lock it into heaven or hell, trapped for all eternity.”

Rainbow stared her down determindely. “I will not stand around for that.

“How are you planning on… leaving?”

“The Traveler indicated I need to rid myself of my needs and desires,” said Rainbow. “So, I’d imagine it would be something like this…”

With that, Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and pictured herself. She could see Hawa shifting back and forth, trying to conceive of some argument to dissuade her. She could see the tree and feel its connection to them both—the world soul of which she was a part. The lives of everypony she had ever known, did know, or would know pulsed within it, their consciousnesses a part of her as she was a part of them.

She began to drift, but not to sleep. In the space of a few moments she intuited a difference. She wasn’t drifting down into sleep, she was going up. She struggled against a sickening sense of vertigo, and then Hawa, the tree, the book, she floated away from all of it, and landed somewhere else.

Then, with a gentle rip, she tore the color red from her hair.


* * * * * * *