Inspiration Manifestation: Family At Nowhere
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic
"But instead, I let you become something awful."
Those were the last words Rarity heard. Her day had been beautiful, after reading the spell form the book Spike had given her, she had found herself with the power to create or alter anything with what she pictured in her mind.
She had improved Ponyville in such beautiful ways! She had also improved the ponies in many ways too! And there was Spike, giving her the support she needed to keep her inspired!
She had also completed years worth of dresses in one night. The lack of sleep did not distract her, she was an artist, and now she could translate what was in her mind into reality. She was free to express herself as never before!
She could make ANYTHING, she could make anything into anything. Such absolute freedom! It was intoxicating! She even made Spike a nice jeweled suit of armor, now he really was her little knight!
Rainbow Dash and Applejack, she had such beauty, she helped them finally share it with the world.
Naturally she was inspired a lot by the Crystal Empire, she had never forgotten its beauty, and had the new and improved crystal houses were truly a thing of beauty! The bright and shining streets, the beautiful ponies, it was wonderful!!!
She felt so excited! And so inspired! Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Canterlot! She knew Celestia would LOVE her improving the Capital! She could just imagine the look on Coco's face when she made Manehatten the city of dreams in fact and not just in name! Fillydelphia had been ravaged by Parasprites too, she knew they'd appreciate her making their city a thing of beauty as she had Ponyville!
If Sweetie Belle felt like putting on another play, Rarity would give her support that would make her costumes look trivial!
She could see it all! And she'd make it reality! He and her little Spickey-Wickey!
She would spread her gift to everypony!
Then Spike said those words. That her work had not improved things. And that his silence had let her become something awful.
Those were the last words Rarity had heard.
"Ugh. What a headache. Spike what is . . . Spike? SPIKE! Where are you? . . . And when did it get to be night?" Rarity shook her head.
"My, what a dreadful and dreary place." The green eyed Rarity said herself. "And . . . why isn't there any stars in the sky? And is that Luna's moon? I swear it looks even more barren and dull than when it lost the Mare In The Moon . . . I swear this place makes the Diamond Dogs' den look like a five-star hotel."
She seemed to be in a crater, surrounded by frost covered black rocks and what she could only described as 'so dark they glowed' blue rock veins . . . Rarity realized how that combination of words made no sense, but she couldn't interpret it any other way. That they pulsed almost like real veins wasn't something she tried to think about.
There was no wind. No noise at all.
"How in Equestria did I end up here? . . . Well, I'm going to get any answers just standing around here." Rarity shivered. "Blast it it's cold, when did it suddenly become Winter? It's not scheduled for several months yet! Ugh! What I wouldn't give for a sweeter right about now! OH RIGHT! Oh silly of me!"
She pictured the sweeter in her mind and . . . nothing?
"W-what?"
She tried again. But it was like the book's magic was gone . . . no, that wasn't right, it couldn't be. But . . . it was like there was nothing for her to call upon.
"Dear Celestia, what is going on?" Rarity whimpered.
"NEW ARRIVAL!" Said a melodically but hollow voice.
"SÍ! STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART WORLD AMIGA!" Said another voice with a Mexicolt accent.
"Think we'll actually be able to keep this one? I didn't even get to paint a picture of them." Said a third voice.
"Since when do you paint anymore amiga?"
"I could have had a blank canvas of them."
Rarity heard the voices, but didn't hear them, that didn't make sense either! It was like an echo, or a forgotten memory of an echo.
"Excuse me dears! My name is Miss Rarity Belle! And I am the greatest artist in all of Ponyville, could you please tell me where I am please?"
"Isn't this a song! She can still say her name!" A purple pegasus fluttered over the edge and landed, or maybe a faded after image of one.
"Only one? Better than nothing." Said the shadow of a yellow earth pony mare with a festive red mane.
The shadow of a pale pink pony with a rainbow colored mane looked at Rarity with an artist's eye. "You know, I think we might have gotten our hopes up."
"What hopes?" Said the pegasus.
The artist pony did an imitation of a recording of a laugh. "Got me there! I thought we had our whinny princess back. But I think our new arrival might be just trash."
"HEY! THERE IS NO NEED TO BE RUDE!"
"We're ALL trash amiga."
"I'm saying that she's not nothing, she's LESS than nothing."
"Excuse me! But it's very rude to talk about a mare who is standing right in front of you! And I am not 'less than nothing' and it's asinine to call a pony such and is no way to open up a proper greeting. You should introduce yourself properly to a pony you've just met."
The three did their fake laugh. Three more emerged from the edge of the crater, than more, and more, Rarity realized she was surrounded.
"False alarm amigas, she not a retcon, she's not 'erased', she's not even a shadow."
"She has a beautiful mane though, I want to comb it, over and over, and over." Said a white shadow of an earth pony with blue eyes, with tail that was several shades of blond with purple, teal, pink, and orange for her tail.
"You don't want anything." The purple pegasus shadow.
"Not true. And I can PRETEND I want something though! Let's try some of those juicy memories inside her!"
Rarity paled. "Now now! I don't know what you mean! But I can just SHARE lots of interesting memories with you if you want! There's no need to act like changelings!"
They began to close in around her.
An high-pitched earth piercing scream echoed across the wasteland, and Rarity felt herself grabbed from behind and was lifted up into the black sky, she saw who was carrying her had a yellow coat and a pink mane.
"F-Fluttershy?" Rarity tried to look up but couldn't get a view as her hopeful rescuer flew at high speed towards several stacks of black stones, the winged shadows following right behind her, but her rescuer proved more angle even if followed with a single minded dauntlessness.
Rarity would have lost her lunch if she had eaten all day from the dizzying twists and turns they took, finally her carrier knocked one of the piles over and lost their pursuers in the dust cloud.
Rarity got a look at the landscape. It went on forever, she saw a black ocean in the distance. Scattered here and there were clutches of houses, all of them looking so dreadfully barren that it was hard to imagine anypony having ever lived in them.
There was a massive desert in the opposite direction of the black ocean, that looked just as lifeless and empty. And everywhere, littered about the frozen still land where shadows of ponies, dragons, zebra, and creatures that Rarity had only heard described to her, like humans.
Finally, they landed, at the base of a hill with a snaking trail with dead grass. The hill had a steep cliff on all sides except the trail, and overlooked a gorge.
Her rescuer finally let her go and Rarity turned to thank her. She gasped.
"FLUTTERSHY?! BUT-HOW?"
It was Fluttershy. But not Fluttershy. It was Flutterbat.
Her mutated friend just shrugged. She made several animalistic sounds, and tilted her head to the top of the hill, and without a word began to trot up the hill. Flutterbat turned her head at Rarity as the unicorn just stood there and then tossed her head a bit to encourage her to follow.
"But Fluttershy, Twilight cured you! Fluttershy where are we? What happened? Where is everypony else?"
Flutterbat snorted and fluttered behind her and pushed her foreword.
"No need to be pushy Flutterhy, I'm going."
Satisfied, Flutterbat lead the newcomer up the hill.
It was the last ponies she suspected to find waiting for her at the top.
"Cheerilee? Big Macintosh?! Please forgive my manners but where in Celestia's name are we? And what happened to poor Fluttershy?!" Rarity pointed at the pegasus, Rarity was ready to cry.
Rarity noticed the two were holding hooves, they were looking at each other, then Cheerilee looked at her old school friend.
Cheerilee sighed. "Welcome Rarity. I'm sorry to see a piece of you here."
"'A piece of me?' Cheerilee you're not making any sense! And what does this have to do with Fluttershy?"
The bat pony rolled her eyes.
Cheerilee spoke. "I'm sorry Rarity, there is no kind way to put this. Rarity . . . everything goes somewhere. Lost objects. Unfinished songs. Faded dreams. Forgotten memories. Nothing truly disappears. It can be remade into another form, that's how magic creates things from mana. But it's never truly ceases to exist. When we think something is 'gone', it has to be somewhere it has 'gone to'."
"Cheerilee, forgive me for my pushiness, but please, where are you going with this?"
"Rarity . . . have you ever heard about a pony, who while enchanted, but still acting without direct orders from the enchanter? Were aware of their surroundings, made decisions, but didn't remember a thing when the enchanted was lifted?"
"Well . . . there was you and Big Macintosh with the love poison, sorry again for Sweetie Belle's behavior that day, she meant well. And poor Fluttershy when she LAST became . . .THAT!"
The Flutterbat looked at her indignantly.
"Sorry Fluttershy! I didn't mean anything rude! I apologize! It's just . . . I don't know what's going at all!" Rarity felt the tears now.
"Rarity . . ." Cheerilee said slowly, "What happened before you came here?"
Rarity recounted her tale, going into concise detail, Cheerilee asked her questions more than once.
"Yer here Rarity." Big Mac suddenly spoke, surprising all present. "Because ya ain't Rarity."
"WHAT?! That's absurd! Not Rarity? What am I then a changeling?!"
"Nope. Ya imprinted on Rarity, yer Rarity's memories of when she was enchanted by that book you talked about, her heart and mind rejected them because they didn't match up how she normally is. Ya could say ya are the spell, naw, that's too simple. Yer the Rarity that existed between when the spell was done, and the Rarity that ceased ta be when the spell was broken. This here place is full of us! Enchantments. Charm spells. Ya name it, any time somepony doesn't remember what they did while bein' magically shabanged."
Rarity felt weak. "Then . . .those, ponies I saw before?"
"Nope. They're . . . ya could call'em after images maybe, impressions of ponies who got plucked out of the world fer one reason or another. They ain't ponies."
"This . . . this is all dream."
Flutterbat slapped her and hissed at her angrily.
Cheerilee translated. "She's saying the sooner you realize this isn't a dream, the better. The shadows of existence, that's what they're called, look down on us. They say we're not 'real' even by their standards. But we do have memories, something ripe and juicy for them, helps them forget for a little while they're just hallow shells."
" . . . Have you been thinking of a way to . . . get home?"
"If Rarity ever somehow remembers what she did . . . yes . . . but . . . don't get your hopes up . . .that . . . pretty much never happens." Big Mac said.
Flutterbat hissed again, and made a complex dance with her wings.
Cheerilee said, "She says that we don't have homes. The only things that end up here? Are things that don't have a place. Don't have a home. We don't even have an afterlife. We're not allowed into Tartarus or Elysium. This place is for, 'left over' or maybe it's better say 'never left', since we don't have a place to return from."
"And you . . you've all been here since . . . since those days?" Rarity admitted, she had given it a first thought, after all, her friends were not themselves when enchanted, so there was no need to dwell on it. Now she knew who had been instead.
They all nodded.
"I'm sorry." Rarity whispered.
Cheerilee hugged her. "So am I."
Rarity tensed expecting a ambush . . . not came . . . Cheerilee just hugged her, holding Big Mac's hoof still.
"What . . . what do you do here?"
"Remember mostly, it's all lost memories like us can do really," Big Mac said. "Don't worry 'bout bein' hungry or thirsty or goin' ta the little filly's room . .. memories ain't know fer that either."
"So . . . you don't get shocked . . . know that . . . draconequi live here."
"WHAT?" Rarity pulled out of the hug. "You mean Discord is here?! This is all one of his games isn't it?!"
Cheerilee shook her head, "I'm sorry Rarity, it isn't. And . . . good or bad . . . I haven't seen him here. But creatures like him . . . but they never seem to bother us . . . they take note of us even less than they do the existence shadows. What's more real? A shadow or a memory after all."
Rarity narrowed her eyes, and looked at Flutterbat, "Well you're certainly more real than those . . . things . . . You didn't have to risk yourself to help me, you didn't have to put yourself in danger to rescue me. You did that of your own choice. And that makes you more of a pony than they are."
Flutterbat smiled, trotted over to Rarity and nuzzled her and folded her leathery wings around her. She purred like a kitten almost. Rarity hesitated, then hugged her back.
She looked at the couple. "So, you really understand everything she's saying?"
"She can't express it words, when she first arrived, she was just raw instinct, but . . . that isn't all she is. Though it took a while to learn the language she was using," Cheerilee said.
"I'm not giving up on escaping this place."
"Ya'd be a shadow of ya gave up that easily Rarity," Big Mac said.
Cheerilee sighed, "Rarity, we'd all leave if we could, but the whole reason we're here is because we have nowhere to go back to. We don't exist."
"Now YOU are sounding like those things-"
"HEY!"
"Sorry Big Mac darling." Rarity slowly stroked Flutterbat's mane. "But if we can think and feel, if we can remember, if we can make our own choices. Then we exist. We have hearts."
"We're not quite those ponies . . . I remember all my students, I remember loving them, I remember all my hopes and dreams, my family, but I don't fell despair at never being able to see them again. If I was really Cheerilee, I'd have never stopped crying. Never seeing Scootaloo and her friends earn their cutie marks? Never being able to get Diamond Tiara to see hurting her classmates was wrong? Not seeing the wonderful adults my students would become? If I can't break down in tears at never seeing that, then I have no right to claim I have a life of a pony name Cheerilee."
Cheerilee began shaking. And Rarity realized, Sweetie Belle, Spike, her friends . . . she truly was separated from them, even in death she was separated from them but . . . she didn't matter because there was another Rarity with them right now. She would not be missed. And Rarity realized in spite of herself she wasn't crying. She couldn't cry at not crying.
"I don't care."
"Rarity?"
"I may not be able to cry, but I still love Sweetie Belle, maybe I can't express it, but I can still feel it. And the world I wanted to make FOR everypony? I still think it would have been beautiful. I still think I could have improved pony's lives. I choose to believe!"
Unseen by the living memories, on an outcropping a short distance away was a shadow of a pony with a puzzle and magnifying glass cutie mark.
"Choose to believe..." Puzzlemint whispered.
Rarity pointed at Flutterbat, "The other said when you first arrived here you were just blind instinct! But you CHOSE to come and help me, you CHOSE to risk yourself and help me. You're angry when insulted, you don't like seeing me sad, that isn't the blind instincts of an animal."
Flutterbat looked at her in surprise and awe.
Rarity looked at the couple, "Cheerilee, Big Mac, Sweetie Belle told me that under the love poison you could only talk about each other, only cared about each other, didn't think about your friends or family at all. But you've been talking to me, explaining things to me . . . I don't care what this horrible empty place is. I don't care what you say we are or what those things say we are. If we capable of growing and changing, that makes us alive. Even if this entire place is dead, we're still alive!"
Flutterbat hugged her wings and gave out a chitter and hiss.
"'For the good it does in a place like this." Cheerilee translated.
"Then why hadn't any of you given up? Did I show up JUST AFTER all of you? No? Then why?" Rarity struck a dramatic pose lifted her head towards the sky. "Because . . . where there are friends, there's meaning! And eternity isn't so bad!" She looked at the three warmly, "If you have somepony to share it with."
She held out her hoof. The other three looked at each other, and each put their hoof to hers.
Flutterbat made a soft purr.
"We've been friends since grade-school Rarity, I won't stop being friends now."
"I agree. As long as ya've got friends with ya. Then ya ain't pointless. And ya know yer real. Jump, cause ya know yer friends will be there to catch ya."
They hugged.
A little shadow felt intoxicating hope radiate off them.
+++
"So no sign of them Puzzlemint?"
"None Starsong, they'ved moved on, and Tatzlwurm are now infesting the place. We don't dare go there now."
"Well, we have all eternity to find them in an infinite plane of existence, time is on our side."
"Maybe we should try making our own memories again."
"We're shadows of existence, we can create nothing."
"We can at least try, we already don't exist, Entropy can't do worse to us. The first step to doing is believe-ing."
"WHAT did you just say?" Triplet Treat gasped in awe.
"N-nothing. Nothing important. But if we have forever, if we already don't exist, if it doesn't matter if we hope or despair, why be afraid?"