//------------------------------// // A Princess of Equestria // Story: Moments // by Bad Horse //------------------------------// “May Flower,” I say, in a new voice, my own in timbre and yet entirely different in tone, “run home to your parents. And apologize to your brother.” She stops and stares for a moment, but my new voice brooks no delay. She scurries off. It’s a beautiful day. My mental checklist is memorized. My schedule is tight, but I’ve rehearsed every step. I’ll need almost every pony in Ponyville, and they’ll help gladly, because they’ll take one look at me and see that I know what I’m doing and why. This is what I was born to do. Curtains up. I hold my head up and my chin in. There’s a spring in my step as I head for Town Hall, halting every pony I meet and ordering them to assemble there. Some stop to argue, some to laugh, but I look in their eyes and they forget what they were going to say. I smile, and point with my horn in the direction they are to go, and they go. Celestia should see me now. Outside Town Hall, I speak to the crowd assembled in the square: “My dear ponies. A wise pony once said that you should live each moment of your life as if you would be forced to re-live it again and again, for all eternity.” They scratch their heads and stare. “How horrible it would be,” I say, “to live through an endless cycle of panic and terror, braying at the sky over and over. So let us not panic.” My voice sings, clear and untroubled. Some ponies listen to my words; some listen to my voice. They relax their worry-stretched necks and slow their restless milling. “How horrible it would be,” I say, “to spend an eternity in blissful ignorance of your fate, always denied the chance to face it with dignity. And how terrible for me, to watch. So I will not lie to you.” I turn and point my nose at the star. “That bright light in the sky is a rock, smaller than the moon but bigger than a mountain, and it is falling on us. Celestia and Luna gave their lives to turn it aside, but it didn’t turn." A chorus of babbling voices arises, but I raise my hoof, and they are stilled. “We can’t save ourselves,” I tell them, “but we will try to save some small part of Equestria. Grass. Moss. Trees. So that someday, someone will come out of the oceans and crawl over that moss and eat that grass under the shade of those trees.” Some ponies flick their ears and wrinkle their noses in confusion, but I know to move on rather than try to explain. “If you would spend your last minutes to help me build a world for someone, someday far away, who will never dream that you existed, stay. If not, go in peace.” Below me, a hundred manes toss, two hundred ears flick back and forth, a hundred final decisions are made. Before the spell is broken and the babbling begins anew, I order, “Farmers and earth ponies, meet Applejack on the porch of the dry goods store. Pegasi, see Rainbow, over there, in the middle of the town square. Unicorns, come to me. Fillies and colts, Pinkie Pie over there by the fountain has something for you to do. And you, Mr. Bags,” I add, catching the eye of a stout, dappled earth pony with streaks of gray peeking out from under his top hat. “Unlock the vault. I need every safe deposit box in the bank emptied. Bring them to me here. We’re going to fill them with treasure.” Ponies begin moving in different directions, spilling out from the town square as if a giant had just emptied a box of brightly-colored marbles over it. Some leave. Most do not. They bump and eddy around each other but eventually coalesce into four different swarms descending on four different ponies. I keep an eye on each group, checking Old Time’s pocket-watch each time I see their hooves halt and their heads and ears raise attentively. We’re right on schedule. I turn to instruct my unicorns. A herd of unicorns, I remember, is called a “blessing”. A stream of earth ponies rolls wheelbarrows and carts from the door of the dry goods store to dump their contents at my feet: burlap bags of corn, beans, and grass and carrot seeds. The bank staff ponies work quickly, forming a line and passing safety deposit boxes up from the vault to drop them onto the dirt in front of me. A clerk grasps the handle of one in her mouth and swings it upside down, grinning; hundreds of bits scatter and roll across the hard-packed dirt. I set my unicorns to work filling the empty boxes with a new kind of treasure: bright platinum flax seeds, silver grains of wheat, polished golden kernels of corn. No; not treasure—treasure is worth nothing until someone finds it. I will save these tiny ones, my littlest Equestrians, even if their quiet lives inspire no thoughts more complex than brief disorientation in an ant that had found its path clear the day before. I don’t need them to remember or pity me. I just need them to live. Life. I’ve saved lives before. I never thought I’d have to save Life itself. If we fail, the universe will still have an abundance of seconds, but be empty of moments. “Let’s get dirty!” I hear Pinkie say in the distance, followed by a high-pitched cheer. The unicorns mix the different kinds of seeds thoroughly in each box. When the boxes are full, they close and lock them. Those of us who know any kind of drying, freezing, locking, sealing, or protective spell bind them more tightly shut against the years to come. I estimate the locked steel boxes by themselves will last ten years in water, up to thousands on dry land, before they rust away and spill their huddled refugees out onto a world more hospitable than ours is about to become. More earth ponies come back from their farms with bushel baskets full of grains, fruits, and seeds of every type. Big Mac comes pulling the same wagon I have huddled under so many times, brimming with an improbable number of baskets full of apple seeds. He comes to a stop before me and hesitates before passing them down. “Take good care of ‘em,” he says. I take a basket of his seeds down from the wagon. He peers over my shoulder, trembling with masculine concern and helplessness, as I tuck them gently into place in a row of open boxes, nestled among walnuts and pea-pods. It's not what I wanted, yet I can’t help but smile. Here come the fillies and colts, with little red wagons, boxes, and bags full of dirt. Fine, rich soil from the fields. Hard clay from the town square. Sandy dirt from the school’s playground. Oozy smelly mud from the bog (by special request). Each ounce has billions of bacteria. If they have an earthworm cocoon or a cicada larva hidden inside, so much the better. Others come bringing leaves torn from weeds, with beetle and butterfly eggs glued to their underside. We dump any jewelry and gold coins still hiding in the corners of safety deposit boxes onto the ground, and pack them to the rim with dirt or leaves. “Not both,” I tell them. “Keep the eggs clean.” The ants will have to fend for themselves. Their queens are buried too deep, too well-protected for my foragers. I reach out and gently grasp a cockroach as it scuttles for the darkness under my hoof. I lift it back into its box and shut the lid. “Eeugh!” Applejack groans as she passes, pushing an empty cart back to the store. “Twilight, don’t save them things!” “They’re hardy,” I say firmly. “And they’re important. That’s what all the books were for, Applejack. Seeing the big picture, knowing the importance of the biggest things and the smallest—that’s my job. It’s what princesses do.” I flash her a smile, a little wider than a proper princess should. “At least, when our friends remind us to.” “Got those books you asked for,” Spike says on my left, groaning under the weight of a stack of them. A heavy load for Spike, but still pathetically few. I spent a dozen cycles just choosing which to save. “Oh, thank goodness, Spike. You don’t—you know how much they mean to me.” We stack them inside rubberized mailbags that I’ve brought for that purpose, and I pull the drawstrings tight and then cast a sealing spell, making the bags waterproof and airtight. “Now, please, Spike, put them in the bank vault,” I tell him. More for my ease of mind than any good they’ll do, I suppose. My initial plans had ponies trucking cartloads in from the library. But a princess must look after the living, and the yet-to-live, not the dead. He raises an eyebrow, and I answer his question before he can ask it: “The bags are to protect them from the banker, not from the elements.” That’s not a complete explanation, but it’s all he’s going to get. I try to stay focused, but can’t help but watch over my shoulder as Big Mac wraps his forelegs around Fluttershy and begins to cry. She strokes his mane and hushes him, then gently but firmly tells him that it’s time for her to go. Soon the last of the pegasi have taken off, in all different directions, each bearing an enchanted metal box full of the magic of life. The remaining boxes have gone back down into the vault, tucked into bed for their long sleep, cradled in the rows of drawers lining each wall. I hear the crash of the bank vault’s doors. I told Money Bags that there’s only half an hour’s air in there, and that it’s important to keep the interior dry, but he always shuts himself inside anyway. I hope he doesn’t damage the books. It’s a very small vault. My unicorns stand with their heads down and their sides heaving, sweat on their brows, spent with spellcasting. My power, too, is spent. No more turning back. I stand up and look at the star. The star is very bright now. I bear it no enmity. It's a piteous thing, falling alone through the emptiness of space, rushing blindly toward its own oblivion. I ponder again: Would it have been a mercy to let my ponies finish like the comet, in ignorant bliss? I look around me and see them standing side by side, muzzles and flanks brushing each other. Some look at the star; some look at each other. Most are crying. Big Mac breathes in and out heavily, raising his head high and taking it all in, the way I've often seen him do at the end of a good day's work. No, I decide, with certainty this time. “Will it hurt?” Sweetie Belle asks me as she huddles against her sister. I long to tell her it won't, but I don't want, after all this, to end on a lie. “Only for a moment,” I say finally. I also weep. It’s fitting to cry for my people. But I will not look away. I will stand with my head high and watch it come. In this moment, I am a Princess of Equestria.