Moments

by Bad Horse


Death and chocolate

“May Flower,” I say, “run home to your parents.”

She backs away, startled, then stands there up against the house’s stucco wall with wide-open eyes. I hurry towards town. Things will be different this time. No more lies. I’ll show my hand and let the cards fall where they may.

Or is that a mixed metaphor? I mean, they both involve cards, so it’s a re-use of the same metaphor, but I can’t both hold the cards and let them fall. There should be a term for an incompatible conjunction of statements using the same metaphor.

Anyway. Brutal honesty. I’ll finally respect everypony as the mature, intelligent ponies that they are.

I halt every pony I come across and tell them to meet at Town Hall. Most continue on their way.

“Mrs. Cake,” I say, dashing into Sugarcube corner, “would you tell Pinkie to please meet me at Town Hall? You come, too. Bring everyone. And bring everything chocolate.”

Mrs. Cake nods and pops a flat cardboard box open, then pauses, one hoof on the display case. “Baked goods, or…”

All the chocolate,” I say grimly. “We’re going to need it.”

Pinkie herself bounds down the stairs. “Oh, Twilight! I’m so glad you finally decided to say something!”

I shut my gaping mouth and shake my mane. I’d stop to talk, but the look in her eyes says she already knows. I hurry outside to meet Rainbow.

“Twi!” she shouts from above.

“Rainbow!” I shout back. “Get Fluttershy, and Applejack, and Spike, and… get everypony you can to come to Town Hall right now!

“I’m on it!” she says, and moments later she’s disappeared into the sky.

On the second floor of Town Hall, sitting behind her desk, the Mayor nods and says, “I’ll be down in a minute, Princess. I just have to fill in some signatures on this contract.”

I smile, and lower my head. There’s a flash, and desk and papers collapse into a pile of ash. As I head back down the stairs, I hear the Mayor gasp and a pen hitting the floor behind me. A crowd has gathered by the time I drag the podium out onto the little stage. The Cakes are off to one side with the portable stand they use at festivals, looking bewildered behind a stack of melting eclairs.

“Mares and gentlecolts,” I say, but the star is very bright now, and the milling crowd’s rumbling and mumbling drowns me out. Mayor Mare stumbles out onto the stage behind me and blinks in the light of two suns, one bright, one dim but waxing.

“Mares and gentlecolts,” I try again.

A shrill, piercing wolf-whistle shrieks down on us from above.

Silence.

“Thanks, Rainbow!” I say.

“No problem!” she says with a wink, and settles on the roof of the dry-goods store across the street.

I clear my throat. “Mares and gentlecolts. I’m afraid have some bad news for you.”

My words hit the crowd, and I see heads turn toward each other as the ripples spread. The murmuring begins again.

“What’s Celestia doing about that star?” a voice calls out.

“Celestia and Luna are dead,” I tell them. “But that’s not the bad news.”

Well. That got their attention.

What’s the right way to tell an anxious crowd that they’re all about to die?

“We’re all going to die!” another voice shouts.

“Yes,” I say gratefully, “that’s it, precisely. We are all going to die, in about fifteen minutes. I suggest you get together with your friends and loved ones, and… and have some of this delicious chocolate from the Cakes, it’s got phenylethylamine...” My words are lost in the dust and roar of a hundred ponies galloping off in different directions.

“Somepony help me!” I hear Pinkie call. “I can’t eat all these cupcakes by myself before the world ends!”

I don’t even wait for the end. I wrap my magic around space and time and twist. My fur bristles, charged with magic, and—