My fur bristles, charged with magic. The bright colors of the ponies before me blur and shift toward the red; my own lavender appears sky-blue, while the blue sky thickens into a green-yellow haze. I swallow reflexively, bracing my eardrums against the sudden increase in air pressure as I appear at the far end of Cartwheel Lane in Ponyville with an audible pop, completely drained of magic. A moment ago, an age ago, I was in Canterlot.
An earth pony filly stands at the edge of the street not ten paces away and looks up at me, her head low to the ground. Her name is May Flower. She loves balloon animals and coloring books, but I haven’t got either.
“Well, hello there,” I say, flashing my best princess smile. “What are you up to?”
“I’m looking for four-leaf clovers,” she tells me, and pokes at the weeds that have sprung up around the edges of somepony’s house.
“The south side of the street is the lucky side,” I tell her. I point to a patch of weeds on the other side of the street where I know there is a clonal colony of four-leaf clovers.
“Really?”
I nod. She hesitates, crosses the street. Unexpected teleportation, I always find, lends one credibility. Or maybe it’s the crown. I head off down the street. Before I reach the corner I hear her cry of delight behind me, and I feel the thrill of knowing I made her little moment of joy possible.
It’s a beautiful day, and I’m grateful for that. It makes my task easier. I stroll down the street, smiling and greeting ponies as I pass, with a carefully chosen question or lie for each. “Afternoon, Holly Copter. I heard your daughter was brilliant in the school play yesterday! Good to see you, Chatter Box. May I call on you this evening after dinner? I want to ask your opinion about something. Derpy! I saw your poem in the Gazette and read it to Luna, and she loved it!” Head up, chin in, remember to smile. Celestia made it look so easy.
I banter with Old Times while I browse his selection of antique watches. “This one,” I say, “is my favorite. Look at the quality of the engraving on the back.”
His eyes brighten. “I did that inscription, I did. Spent all day at it. The customer never picked it up.”
I buy it, telling him I’ll treasure it forever. When I leave he’s still smiling. Years of close-up work have made him nearsighted. He can’t see me give the watch to a young colt who’s been standing outside all along, looking through the window at the display case.
It’s a difficult optimization problem because the objective function can’t be defined without resolving some long-standing philosophical questions about utility and utility distributions. Measuring my impact is hard enough—how should I compare Old Times’ quiet smile to the colt’s squeal of glee? Is enjoyment proportional to brain capacity? Does it diminish with old age? You see the difficulty.
I stop in at Sugarcube Corner and examine the bear claws and eclairs carefully, ooh-ing and ah-ing while Mrs. Cake watches proudly. I buy a dozen of each and leave. I work my way over to Beech Avenue, handing out pastries to everypony I meet. I’m not hungry.
The distribution of pastries can be an analogy for the distribution of happiness. Suppose that Pinkie Pie enjoys pastries twice as much as any other pony—a reasonable supposition. Should I maximize happiness by giving her all of the pastries? This, on a larger scale, is the problem I face. Some ponies are far out of my way, in less-densely populated areas. Were I to visit them, I could visit fewer total ponies in twenty-three minutes. Does that mean I should never visit them?
I don’t visit Pinkie Pie. I can’t make her happier than she already is. Fluttershy is too far out on the edge of town. Rarity takes the news badly. Applejack doesn’t approve of my methods.
Sometimes friendship means keeping your burdens to yourself.
Celestia should see me now. I know where everypony is and just what each of them needs to hear to give them one moment of happiness. For these twenty-three minutes, I am all-knowing.
At no point do I mention or look at the new star dangling above us, sparkling like a sword point even at midday, slicing a gash in the eastern sky. There are ponies standing in the street, staring at it. When they see my lack of concern, they shrug their shoulders and go about their business. If the sky were falling, surely I of all ponies would be shouting.
Nopony asks about the princesses. The other princesses, I mean. I avoid the ones who would. But there’s one I can't avoid.
“Twi!” Rainbow shouts from above, and I step to the left. An instant later her hooves slam to the ground to my right. She’s in my face immediately. “What’s up? What happened? We got a plan?”
I shrug. “I’m working on one.”
“What about Celestia and Luna? What’d they do?”
I breathe in. I breathe out.
“They tried,” I say.
Rainbow stares at me.
“Rainbow,” I say, and now I finally look at the star. It glistens white against the blue sky, like a pustule seeping through the skin of the firmament. “Remember when I told you there was no point flying out to meet it?”
“Yeah?”
“I was wrong.”
“I’m on it!” she says, and moments later she’s disappeared into the sky, camouflaged by her own fur. She has no way of knowing that it’s still further away than the moon. But it isn’t pointless. It’ll give her something to do. That’s her kind of happiness.
There’s one lie in particular that I’d always wanted to tell, and I see the little orange filly I need to tell it to racing towards me on her scooter, right on time. I flag her down with an eclair and she skids to a stop in a cloud of dust.
“How’s your practicing going?” I ask her as she begins ravaging the eclair. She stops chewing. She’s wondering how I knew about her secret wing-exercises outside town.
She swallows. “Dunno,” she says, looking down.
I lean over and touch her with one wing. “Scootaloo”, I tell her in my most serious voice, without blinking once, “you will fly someday. I promise.”
Her cheeks redden. “Aw, heck,” she says, kicking the dirt, “I’m not worried about it.” But I know that determined look in her eyes. She kicks the scooter around and heads back towards the edge of town, even faster than she came.
Up ahead is the eastern market, on the edge of town. Applejack is at her stall. I can smell her granny’s pies from here. I turn left on Oak and bypass the market. I don’t want to see Applejack today. But that means going past Apple Bloom, who begged her to come to the market with her today but got bored and is now wandering the adjacent streets.
“Twilight,” she says, rushing up to me with a frown on her face. “What’s goin’ on? You run off to Canterlot a week ago to fix up this here stranger star. Now it’s bigger’n ever, and you’re walking around town, jabberin’ and gabbin’ like you were on holiday!”
“Apple Bloom,” I tell her, “you worry too much.”
“You said it was a hunk of rock bigger than the Everfree Forest!”
“Well,” I say, “I was wrong! Good thing, huh?” The corners of my mouth feel heavy.
“But what is it? And what’re you gonna do about it?”
I bend over and ruffle her mane. “Let me tell you something I only learned recently. I used to be afraid of all kinds of things going wrong. I’d sit up late reading books about history, then lie awake in bed worrying about famines and plagues and wars and all kinds of things, yes, even asteroids. And you know what?”
She waits. Smart kid. Knows the question is rhetorical.
“The most dangerous thing, Apple Bloom—the thing you have to worry about the most—is being unhappy right at this moment.”
She frowns, and waits some more.
“A famous philosopher once said that you should live your life as if you would be forced to re-live it again and again, for all eternity. Every moment spent in unhappiness is a little death, Apple Bloom. A wolf or an asteroid can only kill you once, but a worrisome mind kills you a little bit every moment of your life. So let me worry about the star.”
She seems unconvinced, but I’m out of time and hurry on. I don’t think my talk with Apple Bloom ever helps, yet I keep trying. She’s a smart kid. She should see the logic of it.
I’ve done a perfect job, again. I’ve flattered sixty-two ponies, relieved forty-seven anxieties and twenty-four deep-seated fears, and given out one hundred ninety-seven smiles, two dozen pastries, and seventeen small thrills of satsifaction.
I move faster now; there are no crowds out here. I hurry around the curve of Pinwheel Way and turn right on Orchard. Moss grows in the darkness under the oaks by the side of the road. In ten seconds Big Macintosh will come by, pulling a wagonload of hay back from town. The star is burning through the sky like a hot bulb through an old celluloid film that’s been paused.
Nopony else is in view. I stand in the road and stop him, knowing already how badly this will go.
“Big Macintosh,” I say, half-commanding, half-pleading. “I need your help.” I’ve unhitched the traces from him before he realizes what I’m saying.
“Sure, Princess,” he says.
“Please call me Twilight,” I say. I hop over the roadside ditch, landing on moss. “Come here.”
He flicks an ear, then follows. He lopes over the ditch like a cat, muscles rippling. I waste seconds just staring at him. My Macintosh. I know his scent like my own. I’ve re-learned anatomy just from leaning my head against him and feeling his muscles move against it. He stands and tilts his head at a pony he knows only as his princess and his sister’s friend.
This will sound terrible, but I’ve never tried to give Big Mac his one moment, except in clumsy and selfish ways. He seems… above that. I read a book by an ancient Eastern philosopher who said, finally, that true wisdom is to neither delight in this or that thing, nor despair at this or that other thing, but to take what comes and say only, “Yes.”
Or “Yup,” as the case may be. In the end, Equestria’s greatest philosopher was this silent hulk of a farmer. Who would’ve thought it?
I draw myself up to my new, improved full height and try not to shiver.
“I need a hug,” I say.
He blinks, and over his shoulder the star surges four point five miles nearer.
“Please, Big Mac. Please. I’m so tired.”
He chews his lip and says nothing, but I know now I can come close and lay my head on his shoulder. He reaches out automatically and wraps one tree-limb of a foreleg around me. I lean back and sigh, letting all my weight fall back on his chest, and now I finally begin to shake.
He nickers and softly stamps one leg, but stays put. He recognizes an animal in distress. Knows better than to try to talk me out of it. He shushes me, though I’m hardly crying at all, and pulls me closer.
I’m letting him down. It’s a terrible thing when your gods fall to pieces before your eyes. But I’m so tired. I don’t want to be a god anymore. They should’ve chosen somepony else. Somepony who could be a god for a full twenty-three minutes. I shudder, and he strokes my mane. His body folds over me, bigger than the star, bigger than the sky. I breathe in musk and sweat and hay and feel the warmth of his body, his chest rising and falling, alive, still alive. I’ve saved him one more time.
I nestle under his chin and try to form happy pictures in my head: Leaning out over the rails of the bridge into Ponyville, watching fish leap upstream over the riffling shallows where generations of foals have dropped stones to watch them splash. Lying back on the musty cotton cushions of my favorite chair, reading by the light of my horn and the pulsing glow from the library fireplace, a mug of hot cider on the end table, low rasping dragon-snores drifting down from upstairs.
Instead I hear again a ringing in my ears. I smell the ozone wake of powerful magics, gag on the vapors of burnt hair and boiled fat. I see charred hunks of flesh spattered across ancient oak benches. Something dark drips patiently from the crystal chandelier high above. In the center of the chamber, acrid smoke drifts from eight blackened hooves, still hissing steam, fused to the cracked marble tile like burnt-out candle stubs. Glossy rivulets, frozen now, run from their ridgelines to pool on the floor. They look soft, like wax.
“Hush, now,” Big Mac whispers.
His voice rumbles like a wagon, so deep I can feel his ribcage vibrate, and it stills my trembling. I breathe in the cool confidence of his voice. I hold my breath, blink the tears away, then exhale deliberately. I feel the steady bass thumping of his heart, and try to slow my own racing heart to match it. I fit perfectly in the hollow of his embrace. It feels like the earth itself has risen up and drawn me into its bosom. Nothing can hurt me. I close my eyes. For a full minute I breathe in and breathe out and think of nothing.
In the distance I hear the clop of hooves. I look up. His eyes have turned to the star.
In a second he’ll notice that it’s growing visibly now, and I’ll lose him. I can already hear shouts from the direction of the village. I lift my muzzle towards his. It’s a million miles away. He hasn’t noticed yet. My neck angles upwards, pointing my mouth towards his. His eyes look down at me and widen as I reach the halfway point. His neck muscles tighten and begin pulling back, but I’m almost there, don’t hesitate now, Princess, push onward, push those technically virgin lips up against the soft, surprised “O” of his mouth. Take a tiny breath. Now push just a little more.
Now it’s him who shivers, jerking his neck back, but I stay with him, matching his trajectory and speed precisely, our lips locked, seal unbroken. There—there! Just for a moment, suspended between surprise and shock, he stops, and pushes his lips and tongue back against mine. For one moment he is mine. I’m not imagining it.
This is my moment.
And it’s gone. He falls away from me, catching himself with a quick sidestep. His mouth hangs open. I smile hopelessly as he backs away. I’ve kissed his lips a thousand times. I’ve never been kissed.
I never learn how long he would have stood there, what would have happened. At my feet, a patch of road fades into a second shadow, dim and hazy. The star is as large as the sun now, swallowing up the sky. We can feel its heat. Somewhere far above, Rainbow is streaking out to meet it. My heart swells with pride to be her friend, to have given her this moment.
I wonder what it will look like.
I know exactly what it will look like. I computed the time of impact and the exact spot where it will strike in the brushlands southeast of Appaloosa. I've plotted its altitude, azimuth, absolute magnitude, and angular diameter for up to 1/1000th of a second before impact (logarithmic in time to impact).
But I wonder what it will look like.
Bottle Cap and Ginger Gold gallop by, eyes on the star. “The orchard!” Macintosh says, all awkwardness forgotten. He jumps to his feet and rushes back towards his farm, as though he could save his trees from a million billion tons of nickel and iron by throwing burlap over them.
I understand completely.
If only I’d said something to him before, yesterday, now a hundred years ago. Twenty-three minutes is not enough, not with him. Believe me. I’ve tried all of the techniques recommended in six different books on dating and seduction.
I can’t let him die like that, running panicked, eyes white, head thrown back staring at the sky, braying like a frightened animal. So I stand and summon what little magic I’ve gathered since I arrived, pulling it into my horn. I wrap it around space and time and twist, until I’m looking back at all the Twilight Sparkles I’ve been, trailing out behind me in time like a thousand-legged centipede. There is nothing ahead of me.
I reach back as far as I can, to the Twilight Sparkle at the bottom of that cliff of magical energy I fell down when I teleported to Ponyville, which rises like a dam and bars me from every-me further back. I unleash the spell that will save everypony, the only way that I can.
My fur bristles, charged with magic. The bright colors of the ponies before me blur and shift red; the blue sky thickens into a green-yellow haze. I swallow reflexively, bracing my eardrums against the sudden air pressure as I appear at the far end of Cartwheel Lane in Ponyville with an audible pop, completely drained of magic. A moment ago, an age and twenty-three minutes ago, I was in Canterlot.
An earth pony filly stares up at me. She is looking for four-leaf clovers among the patches of weeds that spring up next to the houses. I point her to a patch on the other side of the street and head off down the street. Before I reach the corner I hear her cry of delight behind me, and I feel the thrill of knowing I made her little moment of joy possible.
It’s a beautiful day. I stroll down the street, greeting ponies as I pass. They smile, they talk, they still breathe, their hearts still pump blood. In just under twenty-one minutes I’ll close my eyes and rest in Big Mac’s embrace. Until then, I have work to do.
Someday I’ll find the right words. Maybe some especially clever lie. Or, maybe, the truth. Someday he’ll stay, and hold me, and I’ll fall asleep in the nest of his legs and chest, smiling. I don't know what will happen then.