Beyond One Lifetime
I once heard that the last breath is the sweetest. For me however, it’s highly overrated. Having it happen so many times can do that to you. While the time leading up to that breath may be an ordeal for us, it’s rather unremarkable unless we are directly threatened in that time, and so far throughout all of my lives that’s happened exactly once. That doesn't mean to say my life has been all smiles and rainbows. You don’t truly appreciate what you have until your life falls apart like our bodies do, and you force yourself out of the ashes that settle. As my last feather drops and my cycle is ready to begin again, my life flashes before my eyes. No, every life flashes before my eyes. It’s been quite the journey.
The very first thing I remember is a struggle. The shell that was once my home quickly became my prison, a wall between me and my first breath. Of course, it seems rather trivial at the time as I never knew any of my kind failing in this, but I had no intention of becoming the first. Fortunately, neither did I. The darkness I had known before that point was replaced with a blinding light, followed by my first look at my mother and father. Followed by the feel of their warm beaks against my tiny body. The feeling of first being alive is hard to put into words, even if it does take a lot of work to get there. When you’ve been in the dark for so long, you truly do appreciate the light. To me, it truly is a shame that our experiences of these things are never quite like the first time.
Besides my first birth, there is not much for me to say regarding my first lifetime. I was living in a nesting ground with around fifty of my kind, and it was truly a place to call home. It was a lush, calm island away from the eyes of those who would do us ill (the fact that they exist still baffles me). Most importantly, the waters here are clear and fresher that almost anything you would find anywhere else, and is more than plentiful enough to sustain all of us. The waters are the only thing that we can drink, and unless it is truly dire we only drink the purest and freshest water. That is why the thought of leaving never even occurred to anyone else living there. I guess I felt like it was time to experience another first in my life.
It seemed like fate had a strange way of granting my wishes, as I was soon to enter my first decline. Such times are never much fun for any of us, and furthermore they can be extremely dangerous. While even a premature death will simply invoke our rebirth again, it will take longer for us to be reborn, and we can only do so if our ashes are not scattered before. My parents explained all of this to me very well, which is why we need someone we trust to protect us while we moult and our strength wanes. If nothing else, I learned to appreciate the sanctuary we have during this time.
Fortunately, the payoff of our slow death is worth the wait. The feeling of coming to life once more is much like our very first birth, although not quite as significant. Although the elation is the same every time. Perhaps this is because of our time of mortal weakness before it, but in that one moment we feel like we can fly to the ends of Earth. For me, this was a feeling that would just not subside.
Naturally, they all tried to stop me. You don’t know what’s out there. We have everything we need here. Why put yourself in danger? None of us want to see you go. I heard those things from my kin more times that I care to remember. In the end, none of them could answer my question: what’s the point? Sure we were safe here and would be for the foreseeable future, but what are we living for? Sure, we literally could do this forever, but even then it still felt like a waste of time.
In the end, I made my decision. The others eventually accepted the fact that they could not sway me, even if none of them were ever tempted to come along with me. As they never hesitated to remind me, there were a myriad of risks to my plan, but there was no way any of us could know for sure. A few of the elders here remembered times before they came to our island, but it had been so long since then it was likely the places they remembered had since changed, and none of them remembered the way back there. I said my goodbyes, flew high into the sky, picked a bearing and flew off into the unknown.
After a few days of flying I was starting to see what my kin were talking about. The place I once called home was, if nothing else, free of worries. Over those days there was only endless ocean in every direction. Days came back and forth to the point where I lost track. The only thing on my mind at that point was finding some kind of land, or at least reef where I could rest before I proceeded. The thought of turning back occurred to me every once in a while, but it soon slipped my mind as I resolved not to let my wanderlust be for naught. A juvenile idea perhaps, but if nothing else I hoped I could find something to bring back, perhaps even find another place for us to call home. Truth be told, the lack of clean water certainly didn’t help. While I am certainly capable of surviving on sea water, the less said about those times the better. Not only is it difficult for even our kind to stomach, the less pure the water we drink is, the faster we progress to our decline. That only served to strengthen my resolve to press on. While I would not be in danger during my decline, it didn’t feel right to be alone as it ran its course. Even as the temptation to fly back gnawed harder on me, I pressed on regardless. I was sure my journey could not go fruitless forever.
For a while it felt like it would, but our sense of time tends to get somewhat distorted. It was probably inevitable that if I flew long enough, I would find dry land. When I actually did, there was more of it than I had ever seen before. Mountains, plains, valleys, as far as the eye could see. Any direction I flew, there was more of it. Most importantly of all, there were lakes and rivers. I remembered myself and got to work finding the kind of water I remembered from my home.
I had a hunch that this would be no easy task, otherwise some of my kin would have come with me, but I soon dawned upon me how much I took the water source at home for granted. I must have searched thousands different places, from the very highest of mountains to the smallest of ponds, I could never quite find that one exquisite source like the one from my home. It was at that point that I truly started to miss home.
The dreams certainly didn’t help. I saw them, my mother and father. All the others, too. I tried to tell myself that I couldn’t possibly have stayed there forever, but every time I reached out to them in vain I couldn’t help but wonder if I made the right choice. For all the time I had, the possibility that I would never see any of them again never even occurred to me. I was doing this for them, right? To find another place for us to call home. That was what I told myself at the time.
As it turned out, my problems were only just beginning. All that water I drank had taken its toll on my body, and I could already feel my strength waning. It seems I was to pay for my wanderlust in the worst way possible: to begin my decline alone. This time of weakness was not lost on the wildlife that I found myself surrounded by, as a beast many times my size chose this moment to strike. My best efforts to avoid its assault were for naught as what remained of my power barely managed to phase the creature, and despite its immense size it was still capable of staying on my tail. I tried not to think of what would happen if my ashes ended up scattered as I desperately evaded the beast’s onslaught. As my strength faded completely, an amazing flash of light was the last thing I saw before everything faded to nothing.
To fear death for the first time in your life is one of the few things I would prefer not to remember, but it is something I believe I would carry with me forever even if were not able to remember back to the very beginning. If nothing else, I learned to appreciate what I still had at that point.
When I returned to my senses, I found myself in enclosed in large bright walls. At first I thought I was imprisoned, but the next thing to grab my attention was the lack of anything connected to the upper walls. Not that is mattered at that point, my feathers had already started to fall off en masse, and flight was for the time an impossibility. I knew that I had not arrived here by chance, and soon found the real source of my situation: a being coated in white and bright pink. I knew that at that point my fate was in this creature’s whims, so I felt lucky that it was merciful. I sense that I was trying to communicate with me, but I could not possibly understand what she was saying. However, even I could sense an underlying sadness in its voice, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. Was she concerned with my fate? Well, whatever she was certainly in for a surprise.
She tried to help me over the next few days, feeding me whatever she could find, even though I refused to eat any of it. As persistent as she was, she couldn’t possibly have known that only the purest of water will do, and any attempts to help only made it worse. Only the passage of time could truly help me now. Like all rebirths, it couldn’t come soon enough. As I burst out of my ashes in glorious flame, my body itched to fly the skies again and leave that place. In the end, I knew that that creature saved me, and I should at least say goodbye. I owed whatever she was that much.
As I came down to say goodbye whatever way I could, she stayed perfectly silent for a few seconds. Then she seemed to laugh softly. I admit was intrigued by this behaviour, so I decided to climb up onto the horn protruding from its head. That only seemed to make her laugh more. At the time, I did not understand, so I simply left her one of my newly grown feathers, and took to the sky, making sure to remember the place I left behind. I hoped one day I could return to the one who showed my kindness outside of my own kind.
I resolved to renew my search, but inevitably found myself hesitating more and more as time went by. I found myself thinking more and more of my kin I left behind, even though I had long since left them behind, and of course that fateful encounter. The memories of those times stuck with my both in my waking hours and my sleep. I was also much more wary of any more hostile encounters, especially as I drew closer to my next inevitable decline. The temptation to give up grew on me, especially as my efforts continued to be for naught. The words “too late” mean practically nothing to us, so what was the harm in stopping for a while? The only question was where I would go.
While I was possible for me to retrace my journey back home, that would force me to go back to all the places I had already been. The thought of having to make the journey across the sea did not appeal to me much either. As I felt my body start to grow weaker, I made my way back to that place I narrowly avoided death. As soon as I came close something else caught my attention: a large structure appeared in the mountains since I left. When I found the place I had been reborn before was now devoid of life, the new place I found was obviously the next best place to search.
The place was much more vast up close, and what’s more there were countless others similar to the one I met before. They were a myriad of different colours, and some of them were slightly different. Some of them only had wings like me, while others only had a horn. A few even had neither, which I found strange. As far as I tried to search, none of them possessed both of them, which bothered me as my time was starting to run out as it were. My frustration was cut short as I felt an amazing power emanating from the top of the buildings. There she was again. I was sure of it. Only this time it she looked different from before. She was slightly larger than before, and instead of just the pink I remembered from before, there was a spectrum of different colours coming from her body, and it seemed...alive. What was even more unbelievable was the fact that as she summoned her mysterious power, the very sky itself seemed to move. Or at least, the bodies in the sky. I had to meet her one more time. Would she even remember me?
Why did I even ask something like that anyway? It’s not like most beings see more than one of us in their lifetime, let alone every day. When she saw me, she laughed the way I remembered from so long ago, and I felt I could do the same. She even kept that feather I gave to her back then, and even as my own feathers started to wither and fall away, the one I gave away had kept all of its luster. The significance of that was not lost on either of us.
That was how an unlikely, yet amazing friendship between us began. We spent the longest time I have ever known together, and that is saying something. Yet somehow neither of us seemed to grow bored of it. Whenever she was not busy with her own kind, we would find all kinds of fun things to do. It started out as a way to stave off boredom, but soon enough we were having the time of our lives, finding ways to one-up each other. It never seemed to get old, finding one of them minding their own business. Sometimes I’d explode in a blast of flames behind them, which would evoke a number of different responses, ranging from running away screaming to chasing after me. Other times I would stalk behind them and see how long it would take for them to notice. I was amazed by the number of times I could roost on their back and they would just continue their business. Maybe they just decided to humour me, but that somehow only made it even funnier. I fondly remember some of the looks of the others that would pass by and notice what I was doing. My favourite game of all was when we tried to hide from each other. Both of us seemed to be difficult as possible to conceal, so it was a test of our creativity as much as anything else. I remember she went as far as to hide behind one of the great waterfalls. I wish I had thought of that first, even if getting completely soaked isn’t the most pleasant experience for us.
With all the fun good times we had together, I sometimes wished it would never end. That somehow only served to distract me from the truth. It eventually reached the point that I could no longer ignore it: it probably wasn’t going to end. The companion I made was utterly immune to the ravages of time, at least as far as I could tell. And that definitely was not a trait common to her kind. In fact, every single one of the others I knew for a time all succumbed to age, going grey and eventually leaving to pass on. None of them ever seemed to upset about this though, nor did they resent my friend for being as ageless as myself. I figured at the time that they had chosen to accept their fate, and that their end was inevitable. Even as they did, their kind as a whole would continue to prosper and grow, finding more places to call their own. Even if they couldn’t avoid their end, there was much that many of them could be proud of in their own lives.
That, and the lives my companion and I shared were not all it was cracked up to be. I eventually learned this the hard way. Many times when there was no one else around, I found her crying to herself, not because I recently burned through another cage (something I was sure I had made clear before). I spent countless days wondering what the problem was before I eventually stumbled onto the truth. There was another close to her long ago, and she had since gone. I assumed that she passed away, but time never seemed to ease her pain any. As I noticed it more and more, the dreams I remembered started to return. There was no denying that I missed my family, along with the rest of my kind. I had to find them, even if I'd since completely lost sight of my original mission.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to tell my friend about my plans, so I waited for my next rebirth and left behind a few of my new feathers as a gift. I had my doubts that was the best way to say it, but since we could not speak to each other, it seemed the best thing I could leave behind.
I desperately traced back my steps from my travels all that time ago. My memories of those times were clear enough when I focused hard enough, but the places had not remained static, especially with all the time that passed since I last visited. Some places were worn down by the elements, while others had been built up by the creatures that inhabited the lands. One time I swear the same beast that nearly ended my life had come back to finish the job, but it was just my imagination. I hope.
Soon enough my great journey brought me to endless water that I could barely stomach, but for the first time in my life I felt a real sense of urgency. What would they say when I returned? Had any more phoenixes been born since I left? Could they forgive me for leaving for so long? I could not delay, even if that meant the unpleasantness of drinking that water. I pressed on tirelessly, even as water I had to drink pushed me through my current cycle. When I finally found my old home, my entire world screeched to a halt.
Time was far crueller to my old home than any other place, or even the limits of my imagination. Everything that I could call home was gone. The trees were reduced to ashes. The spring of pure water were down to the last few drops. Worst of all, my family and the rest of my kin had disappeared without a trace.
I screamed. I shouted. I called out to the heavens. And finally, I cried. The shock of everything forced me to my next rebirth. Only this time, I did not feel any exhilaration. I only felt cold. Had nature done this, or some terrible predator? I would never know, and nor did I have any way of knowing if there were any survivors, or where they went. I was faced with the possibility that I was the only one left. I knew I had to survive at only cost, and just one home left.
I left a single circle of my feathers on that place I had been born for the first time, and set off to the one place where my fondest memories still lie. I hoped I could make some new ones and forget about everything I found. Time would heal my deep wounds eventually, right? When I got there however, my old friend surprised me with a trick I hadn’t expected even in my lifetime.
“Hello, my friend.” That voice was unmistakable, and stranger still it seemed to have no source, coming from inside my own head. Not only that, it was the first time I could understand it perfectly. Not only that, but she could feel every one of my thoughts as well. It seemed she had found a way to break the very last barrier between us. At the time, that was exactly what I needed: someone to hear my voice. I told her everything about me, from the place I was born to the way we are reborn. It ended on my fateful journey home, followed by tears. She patiently listened to every last bit of it, and when I got to the bitter end she pressed her face up against mine. It was at the point I remembered what it was like to feel warm.
Of course, I heard everything about her life as well. She was Princess Celestia, sovereign of the kingdom of Equestria and its pony subjects. How they all worked together to prosper and grow, all without the need for violence. And eventually I learned of her sister, Luna. They once lived together in harmony like the rest of her people, until her sister finally had enough and started a rebellion, ultimately being sealed on the moon. She hoped with all of her heart that her sister would be able to return one day and they could reconcile, like I never could. To this day, I do not understand how it is she managed to become as timeless as myself, but I finally understood why. She did not want all of the time in the world. She needed it.
I immediately offered to stay there with her until her sister finally returned, on the condition that she found a way to get me the pure water my kind so loved. Up to that point I accepted whatever I was given so avoid putting her off, but if I was going to wait that long I preferred to have as few declines as possible. She said that was fine, as long as I didn’t burn through any more cages. Though I did make the point that I didn’t like not being able to fly if I could help it She realised that she never even asked for my name. Even the thought of it brought me back to my old home and my parents, which I was sure I would never see again. So she asked if I would like a new one: “Philomena”. It seemed fitting enough, so I accepted.
She found a solution even sooner that I expected. As it turned out, there were sources of water deep underground where the minerals and other elements combine to make a truly exquisite drink. At least that was what I was told. All that mattered was it kept my feathers young and robust for as long as possible. It also made excellent tea apparently, not that I knew anything about that.
So it began, the two us standing together against the test of time. Celestia taught me more about ponies, some of the things they loved to do and the places they called home. There was Canterlot where I lived most of my many lives, and then there was Manehattan, Trottingham, the Crystal Empire, and eventually Ponyville. I didn’t really mind where I was, as long as we were together. We still had our fun of course, as there were always some new ponies to fall for our tricks. We even flew alongside each other sometimes as the sun slipped out of the sky, and the darkness crept in. Even this felt like it came to an end far too soon.
It was that fateful night meant to be the shortest, only to become the longest I could ever remember. Celestia had still not returned long after she was supposed to, or her sun. I could feel the sense of unease among the other ponies where I lived, and I suppressed the urge to go out and find her. If something happened to her, I had to ensure the phoenixes lived on, as much as that notion pained me. When we started to lose hope, the sun finally took its rightful place in the sky, and Celestia returned with her sister after a thousand long years. She was not quite how Celestia described her so many times, but I never saw her more elated in all the time I knew her. Luna unsurprisingly chose to hide herself away from the country she tried to seize twice, and for a time I almost never saw Celestia.
While I did not see what happened between the two sisters, I waiting to see her again. After all, a little more time waiting wouldn’t hurt, least of all for myself. When she finally had the time to speak to me, she said exactly what I expected: I had completed my end of the deal, and I could go now. Instead of dealing with the idea that I had nowhere to go at this point, I told her I wished to stay at least for one more rebirth. What followed was probably the most interesting decline of my life.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have pulled such an extreme prank so far from home on a complete stranger, but in my defence none of it would have happened if at least one of the ponies involved was a little bit more upfront about what was going on. It’s kind of funny really, I looked like I was dying when really I was having the time of my life. When I came back to life, I was so embarrassed I could die. It was an enlightening experience if nothing else. I still don’t quite believe that my would-be caretaker was responsible for saving Celestia along with the rest of Equestria, but if Fluttershy could forgive me after what I did, she had a far more noble heart than most. That was when I finally realised this was the true power of ponykind. I never saw the so-called elements of harmony, but at that point I felt them. I hope my parting gift reflected how I felt.
That experience was giving me more second thoughts about leaving Equestria that I was already having, but something happened that night I could not possibly have foreseen. I had the first dream in a long time, not of my kin or the times I remember with Celestia. In fact, it was not of anything I recognised. I was shrouded in darkness for the longest time, until I came across a shadowy figure. It never revealed itself to me, and said just one thing.
“Thank you.”
It was a while before I understood the significance of that, not least because my life was about to speed up in a way beyond my dreams as wild as that one.
Before my plans to find try and find my kin even began, they somehow decided to come to me. Not one, but two other phoenixes were been searching for a place to call home. After waiting so long to see another of my kind, I had no intention of letting them slip by. Though they definitely did not make it easy. They were suspicious that I trusted another non-phoenix the way I did, especially through so many declines, but they were at least willing to hear me out. Even they could not ignore the source of exquisite water I knew about underground, and they knew all too well that it was almost impossible to find that kind of water elsewhere. In the end they agreed to settle down near to where the cave holding the water was. They must have been together for a long time before that, as they chose to lay their eggs not long after they made their home here.
Funny how that turned out. My mission somehow completed itself before it even began. In fact, it was only a success because I was still there in Equestria. Those two could so easily have missed that perfect source of water had I not told them. I wanted to find the perfect place to meet with my kin, and only now did I realise I was already there. Now I knew that there were others of my kind still out there, it made more sense for may to stay here and await their return. That might just have been an excuse to stay with Celestia and the other friends I had made, but I feel Equestria is truly my home, and nothing will take that away from me. Not with so many ponies here to defend it.
As I return in yet another blaze of glory, my story draws to a close. It must have been forty or so years since the time Equestria’s sovereignship became whole again. In fact, since that time two more have joined their number. In the end however they chose not to make their stand against time like the first two. If it were not for my experiences with them I may not have understood why, but having until the end of time is as much as curse as it is a blessing. I do not regret having it one bit, but only because it was a gift I could give to others.
Those who could have taken it but didn’t, did so because they value the bonds they have made too much. Time will wither away their bodies, but not their virtues. They all have so many things worth fighting and suffering for, and thanks to them I do as well. I fear it will be many more years before I find one of my kin comes along that I can bond with, and of course it will take many of our cycles before we can give life to phoenixes of our own. Even so, I will wait as long as it takes here, as I would not miss a moment here in Equestria for the world.