//------------------------------// // Clarity // Story: Figurehead // by Dapper Guy //------------------------------// My head swam as I felt the all too familiar sensation of vertigo take over my senses when I opened the door. The ground beneath me felt like glass, yet much firmer. All around me was infinite nothingness. I tried waving a hoof in front of my eyes but it was pointless, I was completely blind. In a vain attempt to gain my bearing, I tried to peer through the encompassing darkness but I couldn’t make head or tails of where I was. A small sliver of light flickered from somewhere up a head.. I trotted forward like a blind old mare, bumbling into the odd object or stubbing my hoof against something protruding from the ground. I tried feeling along the walls for some kind of switch or even a lantern to help me see but all of it seemed to be made from glass. Princess Luna had said that this was the dream of Twilight Sparkles, yet why would she be dreaming of some kind of cavern of glass? “Luna, I-“My voice cut off before I could even finish my sentence. Since I had arrived, Luna hadn’t spoken up. I waved my forelegs around like a mad mare, searching in vain to find the princess of the night. How could I not notice that Luna was gone since I started walking? Was this all a joke? Did Luna give up on me and see any point of continuing this dream venture? My heart dropped like a stone into the ocean as my fears crept over me. I felt my legs becoming weak as the severity of my plight started to dawn on me. I had come so far, but for what? What was the final outcome of this whole escapade for me? I pulled my head up. The light shining at the end of the tunnel was my only source of where I was supposed to go next. Well, best to get it over with, I said inwardly. The further along I went, the less objects I collided against until I was finally at the source of the light. At the very end of the tunnel, the light seeped through two square shapes, like two doors built into the walls. Mentally preparing myself for whatever could come next, I pushed against them. The two doors offered no resistance, parting before me as is they had opened on their own accord. The mysterious light shone forth with even greater intensity that I had to shield my eyes. Blinking away the spots from my vision, I stood in an entirely different room. It looked like everything was made of blue crystal. Odd, yet somehow familiar, I mused as I began to explore. A table of pure marble so finely cut even to my untrained eyes that it looked like the stone formed that way dominated the center of the crystal room. A queen sized mattress with violet Saddle Arabian sheets with purple tassels was placed against the wall. I ran my hoof over the top of the bed, the goose feather down letting it sink into the mattress like a cloud. A scent of lavender greeted my nose along with a small plume of purple smoke. It’s an aromatherapy bed, I realized. Everywhere I looked, my eyes soaked in the grandeur of this room. Greed and envy swirled around my mind, a hidden lust for the finer things in life settling in and a buried want for such things started to surface. Everything in here seemed so extravagant, magical beyond words even. It wouldn’t be wrong to call it a menagerie of the rich and noble life. So why is it that I feel my mane standing on end? I thought. Feelings of nostalgia tickled the back of my mind. The kind of sensation of having somepony from my childhood who I hadn’t seen in years decided just showed up at my doorstep. Why though, why does this room have such a pull on me? Mphhf! I double backed, my heart beginning to race at the sudden sound. My ears swiveled around, my senses aflame with fear. Mphhf! Another muffled squeak came from somewhere on the opposite side of the marble table. Walking on the tips of my hoofs, I gradually made my way over to a haphazardly stacked pile of books that enveloped one of the chairs around the table. The back part of the white marble chair was the only thing that could be seen beneath the heaping mass of books. Suddenly, a small movement knocked a few of the books off the outer layer. Cautiously, I began to pull the books off, one at a time. As I dug through the outer layer, my hoof struck something sharp beneath the layers of books, causing me to swear out loud in pain. A, pink amethyst protruded out, its flawless facets reflecting small rays onto the books around it. It was followed by several others, all lined up perfectly in a semi-circle. I started throwing the books with reckless abandonment now, the desire to know who was in this room hastened my efforts. That’s when I was greeted with the greatest shock I had experienced all night. Apprehension dawned on me as soon as saw it. A crown, one I knew all too well. Finely wrought gold with amethyst affixed to the top of each of its points. It seemed rather wiry and small when compared to either of the older princess’s royal dowry. I threw the books over my shoulders, the knowledge of who was here and remembering whose dream I was in. Small yelps became clearer, my desire to see the princess edging me on. This is who came to see, to talk with and to finally put everything right. I knew this was it. This had to be it. Eeep! When I had finally cleared away the rest of the books, my eyes nearly rolled out of my skull and onto the floor at what I saw next. A filly, a small purple filly blinked her eyes at me. She cowered away against the backrest of the chair, her small form swallowed by the vastness of the marble chair she sat in. A small streak of pink highlighted her mane with two tiny wings fluttering feebly on her sides. A dull knob of a tiny purple horn poked out from underneath the crown. Her large eyes looked up at me, terrified but with a sense of intrigue. “Hello,” gurgled out the tiny alicorn filly timidly. “I’m Twilight, who are you?” I nearly fainted dead away. Twilight Sparkle, a school aged filly version of herself, was sitting down in front of me in her bedroom. Out of everything I had seen in the previous dreams tonight, this one struck me the hardest. To see the perfect princess that Ponyville held in such high esteem, now a foal with a childish lisp to her voice, I felt my mind drawing a blank. “I’m Mayor Mare," I dumbly replied. Twilight tried to stand up, but fell face forward into the seat of the chair. The crown looked absurdly large on the filly’s tiny head. Undoubtedly it was the reason that was throwing off her balance. I reached out to her, slowly, as to not startle her. Twilight let out a sharp squeal, retreating away from my extended hoof like a hot poker. “No! Don’t! I don’t need anypony’s help,” she yelped. She threw her hooves onto the crown, clasping it like it was a cherished toy that no pony else was allowed to touch. I was shocked to see Twilight’s reaction. Did she honestly care that deeply for the crown? Was she that committed to her position as a princess? “Twilight that crown is much too big for your head. Why are you wearing it?” The little alicorn pointed a hoof up to the ceiling. Up above us was a giant portrait of Celestia’s face, its eyes looking down on us. She wore a sincere look on her face but a small chill ran down my spine as if the solar princess was there with us, looming over us like a bird of prey. “Why do you have a painting of Celestia above you Twilight?” I asked, my eyes never straying away from the painting. Twilight sank into the chair, the crown sliding down over her muzzle. “Cause she’s watching me.” Her voice was so meek I would’ve mistaken it for Fluttershy. “I’m sorry, what did you say Twilight?” “She’s watching me.” Celestia was watching her? As long as I had known Twilight, she had always hung onto Celestia’s word as if they were literally law. That incident with the Smarty Pants doll was still fresh in memory. “Twilight, why do you think Celestia is watching you?” Twilight pulled back the crown, nearly falling on her back. Instinctively, I shot a hoof out catching her by her foreleg. It looked like she was about to squirm out of my grasp but decided to let me help her. “Cause she made me a princess and she’s gotta make sure I act like a princess now,” Twilight innocently replied. Small droplets of water began to form near the edges of her eyes. “I got to show her I can be a princess just like her. That’s why I don’t want anypony to help me,” continued Twilight. “I don’t want to disappoint Celestia.” A twinge of sympathy welled up inside of me. I never really took into consideration of Celestia’s expectations for Twilight. Twilight took some of the smallest things to heart and here in her dreams, it was becoming painfully obvious of how she saw herself. “Twilight, perhaps we should talk on the bed?” I offered. “That chair doesn’t look that comfortable to sit on and talk to somepony.” Twilight remained silent for a while until finally nodding her head in agreement. She began to get up, her movements clumsy and slow. When she reached the end of the chair, she peered down over the edge like she looking down the side of Neighagra Falls. “Here.” I laid down infront of the chair, waiting for the little filly to jump on my back. “But, I can’t I’m a princess, I need to-“ “Twilight,” I interrupted, cutting the little alicorn’s speech short. “I think that just this once, you can take a helping hoof. I won’t tell anypony.” “Not even Celestia?” she asked. It was almost too adorable to bear. “My lips are sealed.” I felt the little filly’s weight on my back as she leapt out of the chair. I decided that the bed would have more than enough room for the both of us to talk. Letting my royal passenger off, I pulled myself up on the bed to talk with her face to face. A small silence began started to fester between us, neither one of us even attempting to speak. “I’m sorry,” Twilight finally said. “Sorry?” Out of everything she could say, why was she giving me an apology? “Why are you sorry, Twilight?” “I’m a princess now, I should know how to address everypony,” she muttered. “You don’t have to be a princess right now, Twilight,” I said reassuringly. Twilight tried to look up at me but the crown atop of her head kept dropping down covering her face. “You don’t have to wear that crown right now.” Twilight stared at me as if I had slapped her across the face. “I can’t! I have to wear it or else who knows I’m a princess?” Despite this conversation not progressing much further from where we started, I began to grasp the real situation of what I was witnessing. She was so edgy, defense. One word did, however, repeated itself overr and over again without fail. “Twilight,” I began, bracing myself for the inevitable outcome. “Are you upset because you’re a princess?” Twilight visibly shook from head to hoof. “No.” It was obvious to even me that she was lying. On more than once occasion, I had to deal with Cutie Mark Crusader's legal guardians. I knew how to tell when a filly was trying to slip something past me. “Twilight, you can trust me. I won’t tell anypony.” Twilight withdrew her hooves underneath her, making her look like a little purple marshmallow with a crown on her head. “Everypony expects to be princess. I don’t know if ‘m doing anything wrong or right.” She looked up at me with glittering eyes. “Do you ever feel like everything you did wasn’t what everypony wanted?” That question was like a blow to the head. Everything, to me, for the past few months seemed to be a complete train wreck. I tried passing new laws but nopony would listen. No until Twilight has decided to step in and begin running the show. They hung onto her words, revering her like a miniature Celestia. Now, I find myself taking with the princess who has her own self-doubts. “Yes, Twilight,” I answered honestly. “I think nopony wants me around anymore.” I felt a small head rest itself on my foreleg. Twilight has snuck up on me without me ever realizing. “Yeah. Sometimes I think everypony just says I’m amazing because I’m a princess.” She shot a look of disgust at the crown she wore. “Nopony sees me as Twilight anymore. They just see a princess.” “What about your friends? Doesn’t even Rainbow Dash say something?” Out of all of Twilight’s close knit friends, Rainbow Dash was always the most verbose one of the mix. She never had a problem about letting everypony know her opinion. Ever. “Yeah but even my friends are acting different around me now.” Twilight pulled the crown off of her head, starring at the golden reflection of herself. “I feel like nopony wants Twilight around anymore. They just want princess Twilight now.” I pulled the crown out of her hoofs and tossed it on the far side of the bed. Before she could even protest, I pulled her close to my barrel. “Twilight,” I said as I began to sob. “Never think like that again.” The little filly laid her head on my shoulder, as I continued to sob. “You’ve done so much good, and I’ve been so selfish about how you’ve been the one everypony looks towards to save them.” I released Twilight from my grasp, letting the little alicorn regain some much needed air after being grabbed by a lunatic mare. “Twilight, I’m sorry.” Twilight continued to look at me confused as the words began to fumble from my mouth. “All this time, I thought you had just been reveling in the attention of Ponyville. That you just wanted to show off your title as a princess.” Two small hoofs wrapped themselves around my midsection. Twilight’s smile made my heart melt into a puddle. Hugging Twilight to my barrel again, with less force this time of course, the little alicorn’s warmth melted away the sadness inside of me. “I think I finally understand now.” Twilight’s quizzical look was almost too much to bear. “What’s that?” she asked. “They don’t give a damn about me, Celestia,” roared Past-Luna. The smaller alicorn threw herself to the ground, her body shivering from the inner turmoil raging within her. “I see how they treat your as their true ruler. How they worship the ground where your hooves tread.” “That even though we think that we’ve been caste out of everyone’s mind, we shouldn’t feel that everypony has forgotten us.” I felt the warmth beginning to intensify, like an old furnace roaring back to life. “We may not always see it but everypony out there does care about you even if it’s not always so obvious to see. If we doubt ourselves, we can’t help anypony else.” Krrrrrkkk… My eyes flew up to the ceiling. Small hair line cracks began to form on the enormous painting of Celestia. The paint beginning to darken, the colors starting to dull, giving it an aged look. “But I’m still a princess, Mayor,” Twilight said, oblivious to the rapid decay of her perfect mentor’s painting. “I can’t stop being a princess or I’ll let everypony down. Princess Celestia has never let anypony down.” “And why, Captain Blueblood, should I truly care for such paltry problems?” Past-Celestia weakly replied. “I have sacrificed so much for them, yet like a swarm of locusts, their insatiable demands can never be quelled. I want nothing to do with such selfish ponies.” “Celestia is not perfect Twilight,” I replied. Twilight feel onto her back in shock, staring at me like I was Discord himself. “She’s made mistakes before as a princess and ponies honestly forget that. No pony is perfect and no pony should expect perfection from her. We should try and do all that we can but never take a pony, even a princess at that, for granted.” Krrgghhhh. The painting above us deteriorated faster. Small flakes of paint and shards of wood began to drop and dissolve into dust. Between the increasing amounts of gaps within Celestia’s greying image, light began to pour through the open spaces. A small tug on my mane brought my attention back to Twilight. “What about me, mayor?” This time Twilight’s voice sounded like her normal self, not the soft spoken filly one I heard when I first arrived here. “Why is it that you want to help me while you have all of this hatred of me?” A small tear trailed down my cheek as I continued to drink myself into a drunken stupor. I fell so empty, useless as time passed me by. I can see the gap widening between me and the ponies around me as the Elements grew into the public figures that everypony could come to depend on. Soon, I was just another face in the crowd as the Elements of Harmony started to shine brighter and brighter. For the first time, in a grand long time, I could see clearly. I understood it all so well now. What Luna was trying to show me, the hidden message within their failures in history. The final pieces of the grand puzzle fell in place. “I wanted to feel the love and admiration that you had, Twilight. I wanted for everypony to see me as I was before you became the apple of everypony’s eye.” “It never crossed my mind why you were always there trying to help everypony. That you didn’t do this out of vanity, but in all honesty, out of the goodness of your own heart.” My elation grew stronger as the lingering remnants of despair burned away inside. The filly’s small form began to lengthen and rapidly grow until finally Twilight stood at her taller than average mare size. She folded her legs underneath her, her wings splayed out by her sides. “Mayor, I’m sorry too,” said Twilight. “I took control of so many situations without ever realizing what I was doing. Smarty Pants, the duel with Trixie, the visit from my future self, I thought I knew what I was doing.” “There’s one thing I honestly lacked that you have, Mayor. Experience.” Twilight got off the bed, craning her head back to look up at the ceiling, narrowing her eyes at the painting of Celestia. “Every day I would see ponies turning to Celestia for guidance, to solve their problem. I wanted to be like that.” Grrrgghhhhhh-krsssh! The frame holding up the painting of Celestia above us finally gave away. The deafening sound of the immense timbers finally shattering shook me to my core. Chunks of wood, the size of my head rained down, disintegrating before touching our heads. With the frame gone, the painting fell quickly afterwards. Smoke trailing behind it as the regal face of Celestia began to burn and turn to dust. The painting of Celestia turned into nothingness, fading away into small wisps of smoke blown away in an unseen wind. Light shone throughout the room where the painting had previously hung. The room was bathed in golden light, illuminating everything. The crystal walls began to shine with a brilliance that beyond words. I got off of the bed and walked into the middle of the room, taking in the beauty of Twilight’s castle. Odd how I looked at it every day but never noticed its true beauty. I felt the blood rushing up to my face as Twilight hugged me close. “Mayor,” said Twilight, “Thank you.” Nodding my head, I left through the door I came in. I could feel a sudden shift in the air as soon as I placed a hoof the doorway. The door slammed behind me but my mind was focused on the scene in front of me. A long hallway of pure white with one solitary door at the other end with my cutie mark etched in an old wooden door. Will this lead me back to my own dream? I thought to myself. Luna did say that Twilight’s dream would be my last one tonight. “It is the portal for which you shall return to your own mind, fair mayor.” Princess Luna stood at the end of the hallway. I walked down at an easy pace, wondering to myself on what would happen next. Did I learn anything from all of this? Seeing the princesses, except Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, each at the lowest points of their lives and fighting their own battles inside. What was this all supposed to accomplish? “An astute observation and essential question, Mayor,” commented Luna. I had forgotten my thought echoed out in the dream world, giving her a sheepish smile. “There is something you can do, and I have not doubts that you are the one who can succeed where we have failed.” Luna pushed open my dream door, letting a gust of stale air wash over us. I followed after her silently as she continued to talk. To my greatest surprise, I found myself in my office. However, it was just like new. The paint on the walls looked like it was just given a new coat. My shelves were rid of any dust and the pictures were clean of any dirt from their frames. It looked even better than the day when I had taken office. I walked up to my desk, letting my hoof trace over the polished surface. No flaws or any signs of imperfections could be seen in the dull light of the room. It felt so right to sit behind in my office again. I have finally put all of those thoughts of being worthless behind. But now a new fear crept into my head. “But how can I hope to change something that the princesses couldn’t?” A look of melancholy grew on Luna’s muzzle as we came face to face with each other. She drew in a deep breath and leaned over my desk. “You have seen it yourself mayor. My sister and I are not omniscient as you once thought,” Luna said haggardly. “We wish to see a change in Equestria but our ponies fear such things. They wish to see us remain on the throne forever but such a state of affairs will not be able to sustain our nation forever. For us to grow, we must change with the times.” I tapped a hoof against my chin, my brain awhirl with possible ideas. “I think,” I started as a smile began to show itself on my muzzle, “that I have a solution to both our problems, Luna.” When I finished explaining my plan, I doubt that even Celestia’s brightest day couldn’t have compared to the brilliance of Luna’s joy. “Mayor, I believe that thou have devised the perfect means in which we change Equestria.” The light outside my dream office windows began shine bright, as if the sun had finally decided to explode. “It would seem our time is up, mayor. Please make sure that you will relay your idea to Twilight. I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear such news.” I felt myself becoming heavier and heavier, the light overwhelming my senses. I woke up with a start. My grey mane with small splotches of pink, my natural mane color starting to show itself, fell over my face. Pushing it out of the way, I ran to my study and began writing everything out. This would be my legacy, this would be what defines me and most importantly, this would go down in the history books. When ponies would read it, it would be about how one pony changed Equestria.