The pegasus violently turned to face the audience. Every muscle in his neck and body was tensely corded under his skin. His voice threatened to go hoarse as he wailed out his lyrics, while the lights above the stage strobed and the orchestra sustained a discordant shriek to reinforce his fragile and fragmenting mind. “Oh, arrow of time, how you've gone and wounded me! How could you do this, pin me to this point in history?!”
Snarling with disgust, River shouted: “You moral degenerate, don't you go and shirk the blame! You disgusting pervert, don't tell me you can feel no shame!”
Fayton gave an anguish roar and twisted away from her, the agony on his face at having to see her quite apparent. “Oh, time's arrowhead, it's struck me and lodged in my breast. No matter what I do, I can't heal this aching hole in my chest!”
“Don't pretend, you fool, that this is all right. You mighty, mighty fool! Don't say it's alright, just because you follow Solara's immoral rules!” The music swung up into a swell, and over the rising tide she sang, “That doesn't make it alright! It's day and night!”
The music abruptly and radically changed to a melodic hymn. The other unicorns, gathered in a semicircle around the two leads, tried to bring some calm and harmony to the scene. “Whatever happened to our happy home? What happened to this place we worked so hard to build? Oh, Solara, you've torn us apart! Torn down all these things that we have willed! Always hoped that we'd find a place, where we could live in sweetest harmony. But your heavy hoof divided us, your wicked ways have turned pony against pony.”
With a great cymbalic crash, the orchestra laid into a tortured, drawn-out reprise of the chorus to “Something Unnatural”. Fayton sounded like he was being gutted with a spear as he screamed: “Oh, it's something unnatural....”
“You got that right!” River shouted in a curt punctuation to his melody.
“....and it makes me shiver!” Fayton's voice cracked as he went into the upper registers. “But I'm in love....”
“Don't you dare say those words again!”
He stared into her eyes across the great gulf of the stage. “I'm so in love with you, River!” The music climaxed and then petered out, leaving the two of them in a torturous awkward silence. “I could never love you like I want,” Fayton sang softly over the void of sound. He opened his wings and took to flight, hovering over the stage. “So I'll love you the only way I know how.”
River took a step forward, the fury on her face softening. “Fayton....”
“The call for revolution went out, and all that's left is to answer it now.”
He flew away into the darkness of the wings. River turned away with a exasperated sigh. The gentle strains of the strings ran under her words, providing a sad undercurrent to her lyrics: “You poor little deluded fool, you're as different from me as the night is from the day. And just like the night is taken, Solara has warped your mind and she swept you away. But is this my fault, too? I can't help but ask if I'm partly to blame. Do you think that this is love, when all along I met your hard work with shame? Did I betray your instinct, that all you pegasi are bound to strive for, with the anger inside me, so that it warped your poor mind into an unnatural adore....ation? For somepony above your station? Oh, poor Fayton, the tyrant Solara has driven us all to ruin, and I live for the day when the sun is eclipsed by the moon!”
In the dark, Rarity gave Coco Pommel a sidelong glance, seeing her faithful assistant by the dim light from the stage, all the lines on her face filled with the etchings of light. You need to take care of your wards, if you want them to take care of you in return. That's how a society works.
A solitary piano took up the burden of the music, once more playing an accompaniment to the chorus of ponies gathered around River. “Whatever happened to our happy home? What happened to this place we worked so hard to build? Oh, Solara, you've torn us apart! Torn down all these things that we have willed! Always hoped that we'd find a place, where we could live in sweetest harmony. But your heavy hoof divided us, your wicked ways have turned pony against pony....” The twinkling piano finished its sad march and ended on an unresolved chord, and on that note the lights dropped out and the curtains fell on the sad, sad scene.
The house lights came back on. Intermission, Rarity thought. In the pit, the musicians launched into a soft intermission piece, muted enough to allow the audience to talk. And talk they did. The room filled to the ceiling with the buzz of conversation, some excited, some confused, and some very, very angry. The voices overlapped and fused into one wave of sound, which comprised every frequency, yet said nothing the ear could distinguish.
She leaned slightly closer to Coco and asked, “What do you think of it so far?”
Her assistant's eyes rolled around, first going to the stage, then the ponies all around them, before finally settling on Rarity. For a long, lingering moment, Coco studied in the expression in her face. Wondering what to say, perhaps?
“Well, go on,” Rarity said.
With a sharp intake of breath, Coco's eyes slid off Rarity and rested on the mass of ponies below. “I think the show holds some very important equine truths that society, um, needs to hear.”
“Mhmm. Now, what do you really think?”
Her eyes went immediately back to Rarity, and she shrank away on her seat slightly, as if overpowered by radiance. She swallowed down a lump in her throat, then said, “I wish it would be more....balanced in how it portrays....us.” Made bolder by Rarity's lack of anger, Coco's voice became firmer. “We're not all lazy and lack, uh, proper work ethic. Only some of us. Well, most of us. But you can't judge every single one of us by that.”
Rarity's thoughts returned to what Thorny Bends had said earlier, while she was in the hovercarriage. Rarity dwelled there for a moment before softly murmuring, “That's the price we pay.”
“Ma'am?”
Rarity roused herself. "Nothing. Nevermind." She stretched her forelegs, then slipped off her seat and twisted her spine until it gave a satisfying crack. She took a quick look at the socialites around her, saw none she particularly wanted to talk about the show with, and headed for the door.
Behind her, Sweetie Belle called, “Rarity!”
The fashionista spun around. She curled her face into a stern and ominous scowl and, by pure force of will, commanded the attention of the other socialites. “I told you not to move an inch after that disgraceful display, and I meant it. Now, sit down and be quiet.”
Satisfied she had taken charge of the situation, had saved face in front of all those vicious social climbers who would clamber over her corpse if she should show even a bit of weakness, Rarity walked out onto the marble hallway. Clusters of ponies had gathered together to chatter, their drinks levitating at their sides. Black suit jackets with muted ties for the stallions, white dresses and fine pearl jewelry for the mares. All cut from the same cloth. Every pony scrambled to look more ostentatious than the pony next to them, while still staying safely within the acceptable margins of style. They took no risks, not a single one of them, until somepony else showed them the way. She recognized a few of her own dresses, but nothing she particularly cared for. There was always a demand for this sort of safe and boring dress outfit, and it was the financial backbone that let her imagination run wild on her more fanciful dresses.
She headed to the balcony overlooking the lobby, where even more ponies milling around and talked. She lingered a moment by the railing to listen to the undercurrent of fear, worry, and anger the rush of voices possessed about the declaration of love Fayton had made.
“Enjoying the show?”
Startled, Rarity looked over her shoulder. Fancy Pants walked to her side with a slow, casual gait, clearly meant to communicate he was a pony who took his time and sauntered at his own pace; his dark-blue velvet vest, orange cravat, and white dress shirt with bell-bottoms reinforced his casual disregard. He gave her one of his sly and secret smiles as he stepped into the spot beside her, keeping his eyes pointedly fixed on the ponies over the railing, who milled around the main floor of the lobby.
“I was a little bored for most of the first act,” she admitted. Something about Fancy Pants' casual disregard for the opinion of other ponies made her feel at ease, as if she shouldn't care what he thought, either. “I won't say it's better, but it's certainly more interesting now.”
“They seem angry, some of them,” he said, sweeping a foreleg out at the sea of ponies below. “But they'll return for the second act. They always do. It's just pony nature, to want to see every story work out for the best. A happy resolution to an unhappy shock, all tied up in a neat little bow - something I'm sure you're familiar with.”
“As a fashionista, you mean?” She looked at him.
“Yes, there's that." He met her eyes and gave her a mad grin. "There's also that scandalous dress you're wearing, too.”
Suddenly self-conscious, Rarity asked, “What do you mean by that?”
“Don't play coy with me. The only reason a pony wears a dress like that is to shock the small-minded.”
She looked down the length of her body, frantically searching for anything that could be misconstrued as scandalous. “Wh-what do you mean?!”
“Look at the seams,” he said, leaning close to her ear to whispered as he pointed out the looping stitches on her flank. “Fashioned to resemble wings. And down there.” He pointed to the oval-shaped loops on the hemline. “Like the petals of a flower, rising from their stems. You did design this dress yourself, correct?”
Rarity stared in astonishment, every blink heavy against her eyes. “I....did, yes. I n-never noticed anything of the sort before!” But he was right; once she saw it, it was impossible to unsee. Her dress had all the markings of the other two races subtly worked into its design. No, more, than that: it implied alicorn status. And there was only one alicorn in the world. “I didn't do it on purpose,” she mumbled.
“Of course you didn't,” he said jovially. “Not consciously. But somewhere, deep in your mind, you knew perfectly well what you were doing. I can see it in your eyes, on your face. Even if you can't. You want to let everypony else know how you feel. You're screaming out your little broadcast to the world at large.”
Filled with horror, she slowly lifted her head to look him in the eye, terrified he would turn her into the Midnight Guard, but all he did was wink back at her. She whipped her head around and put her eyes forward again, taking in the lobby below.
“Luckily, the ponies who would turn you in to the Midnight Guard are too crude and boorish to notice it. No, they rarely see anything they don't want to see. Their subconscious refuses to let them. But you! You are so very different, my dear. And like with art, I enjoy ponies who are different." He leaned close until his lips were almost touching her ear. She felt a hoof ruffling her dress. Well, he's certainly straightforward! she thought angrily, but then realized he had stuck something down into her dress, something that now nestled against her side. It felt like....a magazine? He whispered, "Perhaps I'll see you at my gallery one of these days, hmm?”
“S-sure.”
He pulled back and held his head up straight. “Enjoy the rest of the show,” he said.
With that, Fancy Pants walked away. Rarity snuck a glance over her shoulder and saw an an orange earth pony some twenty feet away, watching the whole scene. When Fancy Pants walked past him, the earth pony fell in alongside his master. They talked as they walked alongside the balcony.
Rarity headed for the bathroom, attempting to stifle the dread creeping under her skin and coat. All those eyes around her, watching her all the time, taking pictures of her. What if one of them saw the dress for what it was?
So what? she thought. I've made my opinion on earth pony rights very clear by now.
But this went beyond earth pony rights – it was her very image, the one she worked so hard to control and cultivate that was being ruined. This dress, it-it flaunts the basic standards of racial decency! And worse, I didn't intend this at all! I didn't control it, didn't choose it. My mind and body are revolting against me!
She shoved open the door to the filly's room, drawing the eye of the other mares carefully attending to their make-up in the long mirror over the gleaming white sinks set into black marble. Her throat felt heavy and stick as she swallowed the lump in her throat down and slowed her frenzied pace. She walked into the nearest open stall, shut and locked the door, and reached into her dress to pull the magazine out. It had a bleary photograph on its black-and-white cover, and the text slanted unnaturally. Obviously it had been made on the cheap. Ploughshare, the name read.
The underground magazine. The illegal magazine.
A note had been taped to the front: 'In case you get bored.'
I should rip it into pieces and flush the pieces away, she thought. And then I should rip all the seams out of this dress.
Why, though? She couldn't quite answer. A parade of excuses went through her mind, telling her that if the other socialites found out, they would despise her. So? I already despise them. As long as I'm not caught, who would ever know?
That was the moment that decided it. She would keep the magazine, keep the dress the way it was, and go to Fancy Pants's gallery as soon as possible. She already hated these high society idiots she was surrounded by. Why should she care what they thought when she was alone or with like-minded ponies as well? And the thought of walking among them while displaying her contempt in a way they would never notice thrilled her. She stuffed the magazine back into her dress, right against her heart, and down low enough that the skirt would hide it. After flushing the toilet so as not to draw any attention, she walked to the mirror, right between two other mares adjusting their make-up.
But, on closer inspection, the stitching on the dress wasn't nearly as obvious as Fancy Pants had made it out to be. The stitches blended in perfectly in with the fabric, even in the harsh lighting of the bathroom. In the dark auditorium it would be completely indistinguishable.
The blue mare with wispy white hair standing next to Rarity gave her a look.
“Spilled my drink,” Rarity explained. “Luckily, I didn't get any on my dress.”
“Hmm. Good thing, too. I think it's a very beautiful dress.”
Rarity took a look at the socialite's own. Smiling at the mare, she asked, “Rarefaction?”
“Why, yes. Do you like their dresses?”
Rarity gave her a smile and leaned close to whisper: “I should. I own the company.”
The blue mare's expression changed into one of complete and utter delight. She stood up straight and adjusted her composure; Rarity knew the telltale signs of a social climber when she saw one. The blue mare's haughtiness morphed subtly, adopting a tone of inclusion, as if to sneer at everypony else while reassuring Rarity that she, too, was part of the elite.
Let's see if she notices anything out of the ordinary, Rarity thought.
“What do you think of the show? Isn't Blockbuster just the most supreme actor of the stage? Ash is simply the best character in the entire play!”
Ash is an idiot and a follower, Twilight thought. He doesn't have a single thought that River didn't have first.
She swayed in the confines of the bathroom stall, surrounded by the inane chatter of all those gossipy fools cluttering up her theater. A place for genuine art, not their vulgarity. She raised the bottle to her lips, then tilted her head back and took another quick swig. The cider burned against her tongue and stung the back of her throat, then worked its way down to her stomach and sent a soothing warm tingle through her body. Smiling in satisfaction, she rocked back on her hooves. A gentle sigh of relief escaped her.
“The other characters are utterly forgettable,” that maddening – and maddeningly familiar – voice announced. Where Twilight had heard it before, she couldn't say; it was lost in the blur of her senses spinning around her. The voice moved towards the door, announcing, “But Blockbuster just breathes such vivid life into his creation!”
Where have I heard that voice before?!
Nowhere. All these useless mares sound the same. They are the same, in fact. They're mass produced, like....like all those cans and boxes in the supermarket.
Twilight capped the cider bottle on her third attempt and slipped the bottle back into her saddlebag, nestling it near the bottom to keep it safe and safely out of sight. Time to face the crowd again. She used her magic to flush the toilet so she didn't arouse any suspicion, then pushed the door open. It nearly swung into the face of another mare gossiping with her socialite friend about some mare named Rarity, who had apparently just left the bathroom, and a sister she had who was out of control. Twilight couldn't care less. She washed her hooves, then headed for the door and out into the lobby, focusing intently on not stumbling around like a common drunk.
Intermission. Great. One whole hour of idealizing interracial romance left to go. All the unicorns who had a hoof in putting on this show are sick. Traitors to their race. Urg, just the thought of kissing an earth pony, with those misshapen muzzles and ungainly large fetlocks and bulging flanks, just makes me want to throw up.
She came to the base of the stairs and lingered there a while, readying herself for the climb. She stared down at the carpet underhoof as she went up, concentrating very hard on putting each leg where it needed to go, but on the way up, when she was almost at the top, her head clouded up from the cider and her thoughts wandered.
Interracial romance is disgusting--!
The point of her horn slammed into something. She rebounded and nearly lost her hoofing. For one dizzying moment, as her heart pounded into action and made her shake harder and faster, she thought she was going to fall and braced herself for the impact. But before she went down, a foreleg reached out to steady her. A very secure foreleg, tight with muscle.
“Whoa, you okay?”
She turned her eyes upwards and saw, waiting for her at the top of the stairs, a breathtaking stallion of the shade most glorious of that saffron bright that the wizened old tomes said shaded the sky when Solara's orb made its descent; he was a perfect complement to broadening twilight not only in that regard, but also in that fortuity had conspired to light half his face while the other half was rendered in a very alluring darkness, a torrid shadow that beckoned her to make the descent into the stormy seas of his eyes. The ambient light, in its magnanimity, caressed the strong sure lines emboldening his face and highlighting the noble sculpt of his muzzle. His stature was proud and erect, with concealed power hidden in every movement like a stormcloud waiting to burst and unleash the steaming rain of rapturous passion.
Get a hold of yourself, Twilight. There's no need to go all purple prose about him, she thought, lying to herself most grievously. He's just....some stallion.
But alas, caught by surprise as she was, she neglected to notice the most apropos distinction between the two of them: his lack of a horn. Shuddering with revulsion and swallowing down the bile rising in her throat, Twilight violently jerked free of his grip and shoved her way past him. She tried to move at fast as she could, but her own traitorous body hobbled her, both from the cider and from the shock of the orange stallion's striking appearance.
“Get away from me,” she snapped as she passed him. “You filthy dirt-eater.”
When she had taken a few drunken paces past him, he called, “I'm not an earth pony.”
Twilight brought herself to an uneasy stop, her knees buckling quite badly, so that she had to command them to lock in place to stop from falling over. Her nostrils flared as she drew in one calming breath after another. Then she turned her head ponderously over her shoulder, refusing to go too fast, to appear too eager. When he came back into sight, standing sullenly where he had been, she saw he told her the truth: he had been a pegasus. Once.
“So what?” she asked, sneering. “What's the difference?”
“There is no difference,” he said quaintly, with a peculiar tone and a faint smile that hinted at some irony known only to himself. “To you, I mean.”
“You're absolutely right,” she said.
She turned her tail to him and walked back into the theater, making a valiant attempt not to lurch from side to side out here, where all the pathetic wretches could see her in her moment of weakness and chatter to each other about a pony who was far better than they would ever be. By the time she reached the doorway, she was shaking very badly indeed. She convinced herself it was only the booze, but deep inside her, far below all all the thoughts she was aware of, a twisting and burning agony pricked her heart. And it wasn't from revulsion. She took a quick glance back and saw, not without unconscious delight, that the stallion stood in profile, not aware of her. She had a moment to study his sturdy body and firm form. And study she did, in great detail.
You're disgusting, she thought. You're the real traitor to our race.
Her breath and pulse continued to quicken, until she couldn't stand the agony raging inside her anymore. She turned away from the temptation of degeneracy and darted through the doorway, every beat of her heart like a nail being driven into her chest. This....this lack of self-control. That's how Solara worked. She preyed on ponies by forcing awful ideas down their throats until they started to believe them. And here she was, entering the theater where she hoped to drown these torturous thoughts, only to see them paraded out in full view of everypony. Why should she willingly subject herself to anymore of this? I need to have hope. Hope that everything will work out for the best. And that I'll come through it all the stronger. She slipped down the row along the back wall of the theater, towards to her seat. That disgusting little yellow pegasus glanced up briefly as Twilight squeezed past, but thankfully her eyes returned to the stage after the briefest of glances.
That's right, Twilight thought. Don't you dare look at me.
Twilight dropped into her seat, sighing as she relaxed and took the weight off her weary legs. The theater was still dark, and it wasn't quite showtime yet. The cider buzzed as it worked its way through her body, relaxing all her nerves. These seats felt so soft now....
"....so the dirt-eater says, 'I read in A History of Dragons that the last dragon was hunted down in the year 401.' So I say, 'That's amazing!' She says, 'It is?' And then I look her right in the eye, and give her a great big pause, and then I announce, 'Yes! I had no idea you could read!'"
As they stood near the bar off to one side of the lobby, the blue mare brayed laughter so hard she nearly spilled her drink. Rarity chuckled along with the joke while secretly wanting to throw the contents of her cup into the mare's face and walk away. She didn't know what was worse: that the mare thought the joke was the height of hilarity, or that Rarity wouldn't realize it had been stolen straight from The Galloping Gossips, only with 'dirt-eater' instead of 'Rose'. There's nothing inside this mare, Rarity thought. She's all surface, nothing more than an affectation for the benefit of the ponies she wants to impress.
Rarity's thoughts returned to Trotten Pullet's bravura solo performance.
'It don't mattah none, if she be sad oh blue, cuz carryin' her burden is jus' what Ahm heer ta do.'
....such power, such emotion, breaking through the fourth wall. She would be a star of the stage, if she weren't an earth pony.
Then make her one, she thought to herself. Make her a star. You have the capital to make it happen. Ask her to perform at your millennial gala.
Overcome with confidence, she finished off her drink and put the empty glass back on the bar. "Well, it's been lovely chatting, but I'm dreadfully sorry. I must dash. I have some business I must attend to before the show starts again."
"Where are you going?"
"Um, backstage."
The other mare's eyes lit up with a gleam as starstruck as the night sky. Rarity instantly knew she should have said something, anything else, but it was too late now.
"You can get backstage?"
"Well, not officially, but....they wouldn't dare turn me away."
The other mare slipped a foreleg around Rarity's neck. "Let's go, then!"
Ugh, why didn't I come up with an excuse to get rid of her? She and the other mare walked towards a roped-off area marked 'Staff only'. The blue mare mumbled something to herself under her breath, something that sounded like, "Just remember when to strut and you won't be in a rut," over and over again. Rarity saw a familiar face up ahead, standing near the velvet ropes blocking off the corridor.
"Yes, yes, I know," the concierge said, "but she offered us fifty million bits! The owners are always going on and on about how unprofitable this theater is. If I had turned her down, they would have fired me anyway! It was such a small thing, anyway. What was I do to?"
"Is there a problem?" Rarity asked.
The concierge jumped a foot straight up into the air and spun away from another familiar face. General Praetor Mace, in his Civil Force uniform, gave Rarity a look that had very little of the comfort he had showed her earlier. The two soldiers who had flanked the door stood behind him.
"Miss Rarity," Mace said with a cold courtesy. "I see you're still expanding your investments. Into the theater market this time."
She met him with a matching iced calm. "It was just a donation, from a patron of the arts."
"Quite a large donation," he said.
"I have a very large love for the arts."
"And yet, not a very large love for the pillars of society."
"Is there a law against allowing an earth pony to use the front door?"
"Not in those exact words," he admitted. "Although that can change very easily."
"Well, if it does, do be sure and send me a memo. Are we done here?"
The general gave the concierge a fiery glare, then sucked in a breath and faced Rarity again. "We're done. For now. But something tells me this isn't over yet. Just so you know, I'm going to be sticking around until the show ends, to make sure the law is given its proper due. Come on, boys." He brushed his way past Rarity and led his troops out the door of the theater.
"M-m-miss Rarity," the concierge said. "How pleasant to see you."
"Hello. I was wondering, if it wouldn't be too much of a bother, if my friend and I could just pop backstage for a bit and meet the actors?"
The concierge's face turned red at the mention of 'too much of a bother'. "Aha, well, you see, the play will start up again soon, and...."
"Please?" Rarity batted her eyelashes at him.
He turned an even deeper shade of red, then barked out, "Fine. That will be fine. Rush!" A young unicorn with a red vest, barely more than a colt, popped his head out of a doorway. The concierge said, "Rush, would you please escort the mare backstage? If you need me, I'll be in my office." He ran away as fast as he could without attracting any undue attention.
In a squeaky voice, Rush said, “Hey, wait a minute. You-you're....”
She fluffed her mare and flashed her eyelashes at him. “Why yes, I am. I do so love the show, and I was wondering if you could take me backstage?”
He grinned and stepped aside for her and the blue mare. Another admirer, Rarity thought. As they walked down the hall, he spouted anecdotes about the Chariot, but Rarity wasn't listening. She was going over everything she would say. He led them through the backstage, where all the unused props and scenery were left lying around. Here a column, there a piece of fence, strewn haphazardly around the exposed red bricks and iron girders of backstage; they were like lone monuments sticking out of the sands of the desert. And all the ponies, half in stage crew t-shirts and half in costume, were all nomads making their way through a different play every six months.
I've really been listening to too much Thorny Bends, Rarity thought.
The blue mare gasped, and Rarity followed her eyes to see Blockbuster rehearsing with a copy of his script. She squealed to herself and tore away from Rarity and the usher. But she slowed down as she approached, smoothed out her dress, and then causally wandered over to the actor.
“Tell me, if you'd be so kind,” Rarity said, “where's Trotten Pullit? I would very much like to meet her.”
His bumbling attempt to charm Rarity melted into sneering condescension. "The dirt-eater? Why?"
"I have a....business proposition for her."
“She's over there,” the usher said. He nodded through the crowd, to the spot where Trotten Pullit was relaxing on a crate. As they came closer, Rush said, “Hey, dirt-eater."
When he spoke, Trotten Pullit instinctively snapped to attention. The look on her face plainly spelled out she was fretting about what she'd done to deserve being punished. “Yes, sir?” she asked.
“For some moon-forsaken reason, a pony wants to talk to you you.” He waved a foreleg at Rarity.
“Thank you,” Rarity said. “You've been very useful. You can go now.”
The usher's ears fell. Plainly he hadn't expected to be brushed aside so soon. He opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it and slunk away across the backstage.
"I'm Rarity," she said. "I own Rarefaction Industries." An awkward silence settled over them, despite the stage crews bustling and the actors rehearsing. All of that faded into the background as the unicorn and the earth pony stared at one another. “I-I thought your song was beautiful,” Rarity finally said.
Trotten Pullet's eyes narrowed slightly. She was on the lookout for a catch, but she didn't dare defy a unicorn. Rarity wanted to reach out, to reassure her and tell her she wasn't going to hurt her, but her vocabulary had momentarily deserted her.
“Thank you, ma'am,” Trotten said courteously. “But it wasn't mine. I just sang it.”
“You made it yours, though,” Rarity insisted. "You-you poured your soul into it."
Uncomfortable, Trotten asked with the utmost propriety, “Is there anything I can do for you, ma'am?”
Rarity paused for a moment while she marshaled her conviction. She said, “I'm throwing a celebration in honor of the thousandth year of eternal night. Would you like to attend?”
“Celebration?” Trotten asked in confusion. “You want me to come?”
“As a performer,” Rarity said. “To sing. Or....whatever it is you want to perform. I consider myself more of a patron of artists than the arts, so I'm not terribly picky.”
A desperate longing illuminated Trotten's eyes, some instinctive desire to accept immediately. But there was an equally strong streak of caution there, the kind of caution instilled by deep and lasting scars. She asked, “Won't it just be unicorns there?”
“And pegasi.” I know. It'll freak them out, she thought gleefully. Then she kicked herself. She wasn't doing this to mess with her peers, she was doing it because it was the decent thing to do. Obviously it was. But suddenly, she hoped she was doing this for all the right reasons, and not just using them as some vague justification her mind had cooked up to cut the ponies she hated down to size.
Would it matter? A good deed is a good deed, regardless. No, no, I'm being completely altruistic.
“It's my party and I liked your song,” she said, a touch more boldly and defensively than she wished. “Watching your performance, I felt something....real. Something true. I very much liked what I heard. It was beautiful. Now, would you like me to book you, or not?”
Dazed, the earth pony said, “Al-alright.”
“Excellent," Rarity said, adopting the same tone she used for company meetings. It made her feel more comfortable that way. "Meet me in the lobby after the show and we'll discuss it further, at my leisure.” Rarity left the earth pony standing there, and she got to wondering if her generosity knew no bounds. She was halfway to the door when she noticed the blue mare with the wispy white hair sobbing softly to herself in the corner.
"What's wrong?" Rarity asked.
"He wouldn't even look twice at me," she moaned. "I strutted and strutted, just like Blanche Shockley said, but he just told me to go away. Me. He said I wasn't worth knowing." She pulled at the fringe of her dress, then dropped it and turned her teary eyes to Rarity. "What was the point of buying your stupid dress, then? I demand a refund!"
"You'll have to talk to the store you bought it from. I don't handle that personally, sorry."
"Oh, I will? You can blow millions of dollars on a dirt-eater, but I, a unicorn, buy your dress to make my dreams come true, and it doesn't work, and suddenly you don't have any money?"
"It's my money, if you'll recall. I can spend it however I wish."
"You're a traitor to your race," the mare sneered.
"You know," Rarity snapped, "I'm tempted to say that the reason your life isn't working out like you planned is because a pretty dress is no match for your awful attitude, but then I remember the ponies I deal with each and every day, and all of a sudden I'm stumped as to why those hideous ponies would shun somepony equally contemptible."
Rarity turned on her hoof and stormed off the stage, leaving the crying mare behind. She's not worth it, Rarity thought.
A sudden commotion on stage roused Twilight. I must have drifted off, she thought. She sat up in her seat, wondering what she had missed, but the only thing onstage was a light shining through the slit between the curtains. It poured out and rolled across the empty seats. There was no audience, not anymore. Twilight was the only pony in the room. Even the orchestra pit was empty and silent, but from far off she could still hear music. An impassioned high-pitched aria. Coming from behind the curtains, she realized. The light and the music seemed as one. She rose from her seat and walked down the aisle, gliding so unnaturally smoothly. Time slowed down around her, distorted and distended as if she were gliding in an aquarium. All she saw shimmered and glimmered. The whole world was watery and insubstantial, like a bubble, except for that light shining through the curtains. Shining from beyond.
What was she doing? Why was she going towards it? Wouldn't the heat and light evaporate this whole watery world? Take away everything she knew?
Maybe the world behind the curtains is more substantial than this one, she thought. More real.
She passed through the orchestra pit. All the instruments lay silent, nopony present to make music from them. She would have tried, but she was only one pony. How could she make an entire orchestra's worth of music? She let them rest and headed for the music that needed no instrument. She climbed atop a grand piano and jumped over to the stage; her hooves made sharp thwacks on the laminated wood floor. She glided to the opening between curtains, feeling the light and heat grow more and more intense as it hit her face and threatened to evaporate her. But she went on, because maybe she didn't need her face and body after all. She plunged into the thick curtains, pushing through them like the stories about soldiers in Grazembezi traveling through the dense jungle foliage.
But when she emerged, however, she was shocked to find a tribal village behind the curtains. A zebra village, made of round huts with conical thatched rooftops and little freestanding shelves made of gnarled sticks. Clumps of parched yellow grass arose from mats, strewn around artfully to give the impression of a savannah. At the far end of the stage was another set of curtains, and Twilight saw the light was actually coming from there, yet curiously it was no more or less bright than it had been. She crossed the artificial village and rammed her way through the curtains, only to arrive in yet another layer of the stage sandwiched between two sets of curtains. This time, it was distinctly Roanan. Marble columns with cracks running down them stood in a semi-circle around the small and stark and very angular marble buildings. A fluttering red banner adorned with twin laurel leaves hung down the side of the tallest building.
Again, the light came not from in here, but the new set of curtains on the other side of the stage.
How deep does this go?!
Quicker now, Twilight galloped to the third set of curtains and ran through them at full speed. But, to her dismay, she only found herself in yet another slice of the world at large. Cath-Hay this time, as the bright red and yellow pagodas with curling corners and an expertly crafted little plastic garden set on a fake moss platform informed her. She scarcely took the time to take it in before she was on her way again, towards the light that neither dimmed nor grew stronger. But when she emerged from the curtains a fourth time, something so odd happened it made her stop in her tracks. She was back in the zebra village again, but instead of little shelves made of sticks, there was the Cath-Hayan garden.
Where am I? Grazembezi or Cath-Hay?
She couldn't tell; the two settings conflicted with each other. Lied to her. To reconcile the confusion, she went through the curtains yet again, only to now arrive in a world where the Roanan temples had taken the place of the huts. But the Cath-Hayan garden was still there. The conflict between worlds still existed. She went through another layer, towards the light at the end, but in this new world all three of the settings had been superimposed over one another, cluttering up the stage into a confusing nightmare.
“Roanan columns and pagodas don't go together!” she shouted. “Why can't any of these just be like real life?!”
Twilight took to flight again, on and on into the curtains, not bothering to look. Out of the corner of her eye, she became aware of the jumbled mess of sets crumbling to dust, stricken by the forces of entropy. The further she got into the tunnel of nested worlds, the faster she ran, until at last she realized her hooves no longer struck wood, but the soft crunch of sand. She slowed down and caught her breath, and as she did she gazed at the wood grain of the stage. It had morphed into a desert that covered the conflicting pieces of the three very different worlds. They all listed to the side, blasted and half-covered with sand. The stage itself had consumed them, because only the stage itself was truly real. These props were just relics, buried by the desert of the real itself, waiting for some wanderer to come across them, excavate them, offer conjecture about their significance.
Symbols mean something.
The thought appeared in her head with no warning, and on the surface it seemed so self-explanatory as to be childish. But the more she thought about it, the more apropos it was, and the more surreal her thoughts turned. A symbol had meaning. Another symbol had a different meaning. If two symbols with different meanings were juxtaposed, like Roanan columns and Cath-Hayan pagodas, then what did that mean? Did they cancel each other out? Was one objectively truer than the other?
Depends on the context.
But what was 'context' but an array of symbols? More and more symbols, repeating into infinity, surrounding Twilight every moment of every day. However, symbols had to be consistent to reinforce one another. That was key. They had to add up into one overall picture. Incongruous symbols violated the sanctity of the context. Shook the pony mind. Forced it to snap itself out of its slumber and adopt a defensive stance, so that it could piece together the truth and resolve the tension. Because the pony brain thrived on stability. A stable life means security as part of the entrenched herd, free from predators and from scarcity of resources. Part of stability was the unity of symbols and their meaning. Symbols allowed ponies to know where they stood. Let them know how to navigate their way through this world, to orient themselves. The big picture, in other words. This was all about preserving the big picture. It was about making sure nothing violated the willing suspension of disbelief, not only in the world of the stage, but in real life as well.
Twilight realized there was still one more curtain left to go through. In the inner recesses of her heart, she felt the absolute certainty this was the final curtain, which, when lifted, would reveal all the secrets. She crept closer, feeling the heat and the light and the music grow stronger. The light had reduced this, the closest layer to it, into a desert of meaningless symbols; what would it do to her? She shielded her eyes against the brilliance and reached out with a trembling hoof. Griping the edge in her fetlock, she took a deep and steadying breath, then tore the curtain away and revealed the backstage area behind the world.
A swirling orb of fire dominated the back reaches of the stage. Its flames were the energy source for all the machinery in the wings, the lights and the ropes, the trap doors. That's not possible! The moon is the fountainhead of Luna's divine power. Why is the sun back here, driving everything?
But despite her initial shock and confusion, the orb had a kind of hypnotic quality. She stared up in awe at the flames dancing across the sun's surface. Its perverse beauty had an undeniable fascination. Twilight raised a hoof towards the event horizon, the outer radius that divided the outer glow of its radiance from the overwhelming power generating it....
No! she thought suddenly, drawing her foreleg back. It hypnotizes and it burns and-and it scorches the land and....Solara used it to enslave ponykind. Be strong, Twilight. Strong like River Wilde. Don't give in to the temptation of degeneracy! Don't betray your civilization!
She chewed her lip as her hoof wavered at the fringe of the sun.
But how can something so beautiful be so wrong?
Twilight's hoof pierced the event horizon, and the incandescence poured around her, over her, through her. She reached out to embrace it.
“FIRE!”
Twilight woke with a gasp and jerked upright in her seat. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was, or why she was there. This didn't look like her bedroom. But through the buzzing in her head, it all started to come back to her. She looked down at the stage, where ponies in heavy golden armor and snarling golden dragon helms ringed River Wilde, who darted to and fro in panic.
They chanted their solemn refrain again: “FIRE!”
She rubbed her face and wiped away the beads of sweat dotting her forehead. Just a dream, she thought, as the real world settled back into place and she settled back into her place inside it.
Though she was slow to awaken, her mind blossomed to the potent symbolism of the faceless golden horde harassing River down below. It all unfolded in an instant, like it had existed preformed in her mind, only waiting for the proper moment to bring itself to her attention, fully-formed. This was not only a war against Solara, but a war for the future itself. River, from a quaint but relatively modern frontier plantation, was struggling against ponies in heavy armor, dragon helms, and vivid orange tabards, symbolizing the distant past. The age of fire, and of Solara Invictus. Two time periods were dueling for supremacy: the past and the present.
“FIRE!” the choral horde chanted.
“Oh, the fire burns and it rages!” River wailed.
“FIRE!”
“Oh, all for the war that she wages!”
To the tune of a discordant war march, with each chord a stab in the ears, more armored ponies tromped across the stage hefting heavy crates on their backs. They broke into the circle around River and upended their cargo at the protagonist's hooves. Although Twilight knew it was just a story, and could tell from the way they landed that they were just props made of plastic, she still got a visceral shock when hundreds and hundreds of books tumbled end over end and filled the center of the circle.
Her jaw gaped in awe. No, they can't burn all those books! They just can't!
“FIRE!”
“You can't stop the message!”
“FIRE!”
“You can't stop the presage!”
The rear of the stage exploded in a dazzling display of light, so bright it made Twilight shield her eyes. A winged mare was faintly visible in the fiery maelstrom. “Burn it all!” the mare's demonic voice commanded.
“FIRE!” the armored ponies chanted.
From the stage, a half-ring of fire erupted and surrounded River. She reared back in panic and twirled around to seek out some way to escape, but found nothing. The stagecraft was all-too-apparent to Twilight, but she couldn't resist the illusion. The threat to the books was what sold it to her. She couldn't look away with all those precious books at stake. She bit her hoof. As the evil mare cackled, her soldiers turned and walked away from the raging inferno, leaving River alone with the raging fire and the mare who controlled it.
No! Twilight thought. The books!
A rebel yell broke through the war march and dashed the evil music to pieces: “River!” The war cry filled the auditorium. The orchestra swelled in a triumphant ascending chord progression as a spotlight revealed Fayton, his wings arched out proudly, standing on a jagged rock decorating the stage. The familiar sigil of Luna's moon lay on the tabard he wore over his armor.
“Fayton!” River cried.
The pegasus brimmed with confidence and determination. How much did I miss? Twilight wondered, but before she could think on it further, Fayton leapt into action and swooped towards the ring of fire. With a nimble dive, he landed beside her and threw her onto his back. “Hold on tight, River, because here we go!”
“But Fayton, can your wings carry us both? Can you carry the weight of the two of us?”
“Been thinking about what it's all worth. Life and love and duty and all that. And I've made a few observations. The only purpose to life is in duty, to be followed without reservation. Don't you see it needed to be this way?! I needed to run from my love for you, because in running away from myself, I found out what I'm supposed to do.”
“What?!”
“Fight for you, like any true pegasus would! It's time to do what a real pegasus should!”
With that, he took to the air and arced up and over the rim of the circle of flames. But it was all-too-apparent that he couldn't carry their combined weight, because he couldn't fly high enough to avoid his legs and his underside being scorched by the fire. He screamed in agony and dropped to the stage again, smoke rising from his armor. The pegasus beside Twilight gave a little squeak of terror. River hit the ground and rolled away, then picked herself up and ran to Fayton's side. She cradled him, and his head rolled back until he was looking up at her.
“Look at what you've done, you silly little colt,” River sang, smiling through her tears. “You've got your brand-new armor all scuffed up and dinged. Now we'll have to go back to the princess of the night, and she won't want to hear how it's been all singed.”
“Never let it be said that we were the geniuses behind this operation,” Fayton croaked.
“No, you're just the heart and the mighty soul of ponykind's salvation.”
The music shifted into a slow, sorrow-tinged reprise of “Who is Lily Gild?” Fayton craned his head around and looked at the raging fire and the books fueling it. “Well, hey, would ya look at that sight inglorious,” Fayton sang softly. “It cuts to the heart that she'd be so vainglorious.”
“All the great speeches that the great ponies spoke. All of our history has now gone up in smoke. All our knowledge is over the precipice!”
“Let it go, then, because it's lost to the abyss. But that's not the end, not as long as we're alive. In every time and place, our stories always thrive. So fill the world up to replace the old.”
“We'll start with the saga of Sir Fayton the Bold. In our brightest hour, how glorious he rode! For the rest of time, that's all that she wrote....”
In the end, Twilight thought, it all comes back around to books. Books are pure knowledge, stamped in ink. Thoughts of great minds, feelings of great heroes, communicated across time. Theater is empheremal; ponies rehearse and use technology and electricity made by other ponies to bring a script to life. Otherwise theater doesn't exist. But this musical acknowledges that. Despite the spectacle it produces, it's proudly proclaims the power of books.
In watching the pegasus's death play out, Twilight couldn't quite say the theater was powerless. A tremendous sense of relief was generated by the impact of his death. That tightening knot slipped loose. The tension in Twilight was gone as the conflict of interracial romance neatly worked itself out, and despite how real or unreal it might be, that was good enough for her.
No, this can't be happening! Fluttershy thought. He has to get up! They can't kill Fayton off!
But on the far-distant stage, way down below, a dying breath wheezed from his lips: “Oh, it's something unnatural, and I wish I knew it sooner, but it'll be alright, because I'm so in love with this lunar....” He broke out into a violent coughing fit. His head wobbled up and down in a rapid flurry. When it calmed, he struggled to speak, but his voice was very hoarse. River leaned closer to listen to him.
His jaw clenched, Fayton spat out: “The dawn of this lunar age.”
And with that, it was over. Awestruck, Fluttershy watched that guardian of the night go limp in River's forelegs. His noble life was extinguished like a candle.
How could they do this to Fluttershy? Finally, here was somepony who understood her fear and terror at this world, and the cruel ponies behind the musical had to take him away. How would she be able to face the world tomorrow?
But a sudden and, until now, undiscovered wellspring of calmness and assurance sprang up inside her. Deep in her mind, some part of her had surveyed the shape of the musical. The layout of the action. At once the truth was revealed to her, and it fit together pleasantly well. You'll do it the same way Fayton did: be brave, despite the fear, and plunge on into danger like every good pegasus does. Danger isn't just on some distant battlefield; it also means braving the things that terrify you in everyday life. Let Fayton's example guide you and it'll be alright. It doesn't matter how scared you are. If you do your duty everypony will think you're a brave pony anyway. They don't know what's going on in your head.
But what if I get hurt? Emotionally, or....worse.
They wouldn't call it a 'sacrifice' if you didn't lose anything, would they? And putting aside your personal failings for the good of your nation is the noblest sacrifice there is.
She sank down in her seat, mulling over this turn of events, but down below Brownie Bay took the stage to join the vengeful River Wilde as she cradled Fayton's corpse. Fluttershy pushed the morbid thoughts from her mind for now, because she could use a laugh after this tragedy of epic proportions.
“The tryant Solara Invictus has driven us all to ruin,” an angry River Wilde sang, signaling the start of a new song, and the coming confrontation. “But I live for the day the sun is eclipsed by the moon! It's time that we took up the fight for natural rule. It's time to take the fight to the tyrant most cruel!"
"It's time," Hammer said, checking his pocketwatch.
"Are....are you sure?" Applejack asked. She shivered and huddled in the little cul de sac at the end of the alleyway, while he lifted up the tarp over the wagon. She heard a little twist and a click. Such a small thing, barely audible. And yet it meant the fuse was lit; the whole cart would go up in flames in just thirty minutes. And if she hadn't got it into place by then, so would she.
“Well?” Hammer asked.
For mah family, she thought. “I'm ready."
“Good.”
Applejack harnessed herself to the bomb once more, and once Hammer made sure they were clear, led her out of the alleyway. The glow of the theater district and its marquees was bright, a raging inferno that took up the street ahead. She hoped the explosives in the cart wouldn't catch fire and ignite from the blaze. They certainly felt restless and ready to destroy her. As she started to walk, time distorted until it was stretched thin and became less than real. She stole glances at the the pony next to her, that fiery stallion with anger in his heart. The neon lights set flame to his scarred face, blazing blue and red and green and yellow. He was going up in flames, and she couldn't help him. There wasn't a choice she could make to save him. And on the contrary, he could destroy her easily, set fire to her and watch her burn if he knew the thoughts she had locked up inside her head.
Think about who you're doing this for: Big Mac, Apple Bloom, Granny Smith. The thought of Granny Smith gave Applejack the strength to go on. She had to make a better life for her family, no matter the cost.
Applejack rounded the final corner, and there the Chariot come into view. Her destination. She lingered on the sidewalk, unable to take her eyes off that crossroads of her life. Could she, would she, should she go through with it? Knowing what would happen in the end? Again, she desperately wished they had arrested her at the checkpoint and taken this terrible, terrible sould-rending pain away. Taken this awful act out of her hooves and forced her not to go through with it. The cart was obviously carrying a large quantity of explosives. The documents were blatant fakes. Surely the Colonel knew that before she waved Applejack through. And yet Applejack had been given the all-clear to blow up a chunk of the unicorn sectors.
It boggled Applejack's mind.
She couldn't go through with this. It would bring the force down on her own kind, just like Big Mac predicted. But she had to go through with it all the same, because Hammer was staring at her. Under the cloak, his sullen eyes burned and brimmed with fury. How could she refuse to follow through with this when those angry eyes pierced her skin like spears? So many eyes surrounding her, all of them on her, commanding and demanding her, every moment of every day. Pushing and pulling her like some massive tidal force, back and forth. And if she tried to swim against it, they would all tear her apart. There was no way out. No way but sweet, blessed death, and it was looking more and more appealing by the moment.
“You know where I'll be waiting,” Hammer said.
He turned and walked away, his black cloak melting into the darkness of an alleyway. Now she was alone with her burden. She sighed and turned to the Chariot, starting the long march into the shadow of death and misery that hung over the theater like a stormcloud on the horizon.
Perched on a rooftop like a bird of prey, the Colonel pulled her pocketwatch out of her jacket by its chain. Bomb was armed at 9:33pm. Assuming my intel is right, it's a thirty minute timer. So....10:03pm. She spread her wings and flew to the next rooftop, keeping her eyes fixed on the deadly cargo down below.