//------------------------------// // Heaven Sang, and I Fell Apart // Story: My Little Poem // by MrAlbum321 //------------------------------// The entire world shivered. I couldn’t feel my legs as I flailed around the ground. A vague outline of someone shouting at me was in my vision, but I couldn’t hear anything. My head pivoted upside down, yet I wasn’t disoriented. My muscles felt like taffy, as if they could be stretched into strips that lose their form the more they are pulled. I felt like I was melting, and couldn’t do anything about it. Next thing I knew, I was surrounded by a warm sensation that contained the soup of what was left of my body, confirming what I thought I had experienced. The sensation comforted what was left of my conscious mind, while it did everything it could to make me absolutely still. I couldn’t fight it, and in all honesty I did not want to fight it. There was no pain from its manipulations, so why bother? I lost all sense of space and time as the all-encompassing warm feeling worked its design on my mess of a body. It stretched me into the shape and outline I used to have but a few moments ago, always in a gentle manner. I couldn’t see anymore, as my eyes had clouded over and disappeared. The sensation cobbled together the semblance of my eyes, although I couldn't use them again. Then, the sensation stopped, and simply held myself in place. I wasn’t concerned, though I was curious as to why it ceased to mess with my physical remains. Then, a voice, a conscious voice penetrated my entire being and echoed into my mind: “This will hurt like nothing you have felt before. I am sorry.” The warm sensation rumbled, a foreboding vibration that would usually precede an avalanche if it was felt on a mountainside. The sensation then rushed into the space of my body, causing the primordial soup to convulse with shock at the intrusion. Intense pain followed as the sensation turned its attention to every atom of my being. Then it began its true work. It forced every single molecule of my being to operate according to the will of the sensation itself, even if my being did not want to do what it wanted me to do. It stirred the primordial soup of my body and forced it into ordered cellular structures that bonded together to form cellular tissues. It imposed painful order on the comforting chaos I had sunk into. I thought the pain I felt at the separation of the intruder from my body was the most intense pain I would ever feel. This pain was worse, not in magnitude, but in how it was prolonged over the course of several agonizing moments as the sensation essentially rebooted my body’s processes, from the lowliest cell to the most complicated interactions of organs. I was tortured this way as my body was forced to coalesce back into its original shape. Moment after horrendous moment, it imposed the order that my body once followed before this mess undid it. When I thought that it couldn’t torture me further, the warm sensation voiced itself again: “This next part requires you to take charge of your body. You might die, but you will likely come back to the land of the living. I’ll try to keep you alive for as long as I can.” The sensation then did something that I did not think was possible: it grabbed my consciousness and mashed it into every inch of my body. It forced me to feel every single cell crying in pain at being forced to operate again. It threw me the reins of my reconstituted body and left me to figure out how the hell to control it. My brain fumbled, trying to put together the required routines and little quirks I had learned over the years back into use: this neuron connected to this part of the heart but not that part which was connected to a second neuron, and it needed to use both those neurons to beat in a certain rhythm, but what was that rhythm? I couldn’t keep up. I did everything I could, but I could feel everything slip away. The warm sensation did nothing as I floundered, slowly dying an effective second death. If I could figure out how to scream for help, I would have gladly done so. Then, there was a light. Some part of my mind noted how cliché it was to see a light, but I had to admit that I did in fact see a light, some distance from myself. It drew me closer, ever closer, until I realized that I had moved towards it. My conscious self looked back and saw my dead body. I could see Twilight Sparkle, haggard, exhausted, on the verge of bawling her eyes out, a twitch developing in her right eye, hovering over me, her horn ablaze with magic that reached out and enveloped the dead husk I had escaped. I felt pity for her, but the light was too strong. I had to look at the light again. It intrigued me far more than the scene currently in front of me. So I turned back around. As I did so, I noticed completely new surroundings. There were others around me. Most of them had their heads down and eyes closed like they were asleep, while others looked around, some scared out of their minds, others in the throes of wonder. They were all shapes, sizes, species and temperaments, ranging from Changelings to Griffons to Dragons to every variety of Pony, Bovine, and even the Diamond Dogs. I was surprised to even see the God of Chaos himself, Discord, slumbering in a snug corner of the expanse laid out before me. They all had one thing in common: they were bound to the ground. It mattered little the method of binding, but they were held in place as they sat around and either slept, or looked around with whatever expression best suited their fancy. Some fell asleep again, others stayed awake for quite some time as I looked around at everyone. I then noticed something strange: all those who looked at the light that had drawn me into this state glowed with an ethereal light of their own. The longer they stared, the brighter they became. Those who looked at the bright ones became bright themselves. This formed a network of brilliance that fluctuated with an otherworldly pattern and design. On the surface, it had no symmetry, but closer inspection reveals a unique mosaic in whatever part was examined in detail. The entire area pulsed in an erratic yet pleasing signal, as if by some grand design beyond my own understanding. I took the liberty of looking at my own self as I noted these things. To my surprise, I was almost completely unbound from the ground around me. There was one small vine wrapped around my right hind hoof that was the only bond that kept me on the ground in this world. I found the rest of my body floating, moving with the pulsing light waves. I was a free-floating part of the pattern, or at least as much as I could be. And the sensation of being that small part of the patterns of light was a wonderful experience. I desperately wanted to rip the vine off my leg, to propel myself among the light waves and lose myself in the glorious pattern I found myself a part of. The grief I felt at being tied down was overwhelming. I could experience so much more if I could only be free of this shackle! As I floated and felt terrible for being rooted, I noticed something else I had not noticed before. There was music. This music was unlike any music I had heard. It was ominous yet comforting. It was sonorous, yet delicate. It felt burdened by the weight of time beyond time, but surged with a youthful vigor. Its melody line was intricate and complex, yet was easy to learn and master. Its harmonies incorporated every possible note on the musical scale which should have led to a discordant mess, but every part supported the other in a work of pure yet simple genius. It was a melody of kings that could be chanted for a peasant. It was perfect for gatherings and for private meditation. The best I could call it was aural perfection, as hyperbolic as that seemed to me. And I found myself singing along with it, the melody and the words coming easily to me. I tried to memorize the lyrics and the melody as I sang it, but every attempt revealed an intricacy or a set of notes that I had missed in the previous attempt. I threw away any notion of trying to preserve this experience in any greater detail. I then noticed the other singers of the melody. Some of them were of sentient races that I was familiar with, such as the various Ponies, but there were other races that boggled my mind. Some were entirely hairless, others were overgrown with hair. Some had appendages whose function I could only guess at, while others had maybe one appendage for their head, if they had a head. It mattered little if they were familiar or not, they were all singers in this otherworldly choir, all in perfect harmony regardless of their unique quirks. In fact, their differences made the song even better than it could have been if it was limited to only the races I was familiar with. I then saw four ponies among the choir. The sight of them made me want more than ever to be free from my earthly bond. Lilywhite. Lickety Split. Shuttersnap. Sassafras. My parents, and Barbara’s parents. Their faces shone with a bright light, their expressions sheer ecstasy, their eyes fixed on the source of the light that drew us all together in glorious music. I cried harder than I had ever cried before. They didn’t even notice me… or so I thought. Before I realized it, they were around me, their hooves around me in an embrace that I never knew I had missed. I cried as they held me and comforted me, and in unison they pointed to the source of the light. As I stared at the source, it grew in intensity, the melody along with it. It was almost blinding, the Melody deafening my hearing, but my conscious self’s eyes and ears felt no pain. As I stared, it became the sole focus of my mind. I found myself staring through it, trying to see beyond it but finding nothing but more light. It was like staring into infinity, if such a thing were even possible. Then, I felt something. A heartbeat. Mine. My body was alive. It was alive, and it was functioning. It kicked into gear, remembering how to do all the functions that I had taken for granted. My physical eyes shot open as my lungs figured out how to breathe again, throwing up a chunk of phlegm from my throat in the process. My entire body shivered as it lay encased in Twilight Sparkle’s magical aura. I glanced up, to see Twilight’s face go from the verge of insanity to exhausted joy. She turned away, and collapsed not far from my twitching form, her aura disappearing from around me. Familiar ponies rushed in from the edge of my vision and took me away from the ground I had fallen on. I found myself inside a camping bed surrounded by blankets before I could blink, exhausted and very confused. My mind was still reeling with the song and the encounter with my parents and Barbara’s parents combined with the sudden shock of realizing that I may have had a legitimate near-death experience. It was so vivid, so powerful. I felt like my entire conception of reality was rocked to its core, and that I was unceremoniously dumped into the backwater of reality which is this physical world, at least in comparison to the perfection I had so briefly experienced. I found myself sobbing into my pillow. I wanted to experience that song again, to feel that perfection ripple through my conscious self like it did in that wonderful moment. A back corner of my mind firmly believed that I would never experience that glorious melody again, not in the way that I had just experienced it, and that corner refused to give way to the exhaustion and sudden soreness that spiked through all my muscles as I lay in bed. I was tired, depressed, sore, angry, and more distraught that I had been in a long time, which was a feat in itself. I missed my parents, I missed their presence, their touch. That brief moment of contact felt so right, so perfect, I wanted desperately to be back in their embrace, for them to hold me tight and comfort me at this life-threatening point in my life. I knew that was not possible, not in this physical world anyway, if what I had seen was indeed a glimpse of the Afterlife. And that fact made me sob beyond what I thought was my physical capacity for sobs. There was a weight that settled next to me on the bed. I didn’t even realize it was there until I felt two hooves gently massaging my back. I looked behind me to find Barbara on top of me. Her expression was one of exhausted dread, but I saw her bite her lip before she gently laid me back down so that she could continue to massage my back. Her hooves were physically soothing, but the ache in my heart could not be assuaged by her touch. She’s trying to be the wife she thought she’d be, bless her heart, I thought, but there’s nothing she could do or say to make me feel any better about what happened. I wish I could tell her that without breaking her heart, but I really, really do not want to talk to anyone, most of all her right now. “I… I told her to let you go,” Barbara whispered. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to deal with this. I couldn’t deal with this. I didn’t have the energy or the heart to even respond to her words. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she leaned in close. I felt her kiss the side of my neck. She moved on from my back to the rest of my body, the physical sensations paling in comparison to the memory of the song of pure harmony. She pressed against my backside, a desperate bid for physical intimacy that was nothing compared to the ethereal contact I had in that world of pure light and sound. “I forgive you,” I said, without looking at her. She did not seem to alter her behavior, as she gently rubbed her body against mine. As she kept up her suggestive actions, I could feel tears trickle down onto my mane from her face as she pressed against the side of my neck. “I wished for you to be dead,” she whispered again, a quiver in her voice. She held me tight as she began to sob herself. “I wanted you gone.” “Barbara,” I said, tired and aching in every fibre of my body, “I-” “Pantrostic, I do care for you, and I wanted you to die!” she wailed. She continued to bawl on top of me, as I was unwilling to move her or deal with her emotions. I sighed. I didn’t want to leave Barbara this distraught. If I can calm her down enough, maybe we can get some sleep and come at this tomorrow, I thought. “Look, Barbara, I honestly forgive you,” I said, trying to not sound condescending. “You probably had a good reason to say those things.” I closed my eyes as the relevant memories rushed to me. “It was… painful. You had every right to try and let me go, to… to end the pain, especially at that point in time.” “That doesn’t make it right!” Her breath came in ragged bursts right by my ear as she continued to sob. I turned around, and brought her face to mine. I didn’t kiss her, or otherwise hold her body to mine. I just stared into her face and into her eyes. I could see the trauma that her decision had wreaked on her heart on every line of each iris. The rivulets that formed down her cheek and onto mine brought lines to her face that so perfectly reflected a face of mine from years ago, one that I never expected to see again, much less on her face. She almost lost someone close to her. I knew what state her heart must be in, as mine had been like that for a longer period of time than I had ever wanted. I gently brought a hoof to her face, and stroked her cheek. “Barbara, I truly do forgive you,” I said. I brought her forehead to my lips, and gently kissed her. I gently moved us away, and found that I was smiling. She cared for me. For all our recent arguments and all our frustration and disappointments and life-threatening situations, I still cared for her and she still cared for me. And we could see that care on both our faces. She broke our eye-to-eye connection to furiously kiss my face. I responded in kind. Before I knew it, we were physically entwined in each other’s embrace, in love and desperately, maybe even furiously, expressing that love between the two of us. About an hour later, we uncoupled, taking a much-needed break to catch our breath. “Pantrostic,” she said, breathing hard, “wow, that was, well….” “Yeah,” I breathed, as I rolled over and brought her close to me again. I saw her smile as she brought a hoof between us. “Seriously,” she said, “that was fun, but I’ll be honest, it’s totally unlike you.” “Well, we did have just one night, you know,” I said as I smiled, waiting for her to move her hoof. When she didn’t, I raised my eyebrow, expecting something cute to lead into some more intense expressions of love. Her eyes did not reflect my desire back to me. “Pantrostic, you’re tired,” she said. “I could feel it. You need some rest.” She moved her other hoof to me, and placed it on my cheek. “Your eyes are drooping.” Her hoof moved to my chest. “Your breathing is deep, and is getting deeper.” The hoof went over my rump in a suggestive manner. “You took quite a while to get going.” She leaned forward and kissed me. She drew back, a knowing look on her face. “You don’t tremble right before we kiss.” As I realized what her words meant, my muscles remembered how much they ached before our love-making. They had the added burden of our passion on top of that ache, which dropped my desire to continue mating to almost nothing. I felt bad, because I wanted to continue despite my pain, but I could feel myself falling asleep during the lull Barbara had made. I found myself crying. “Barbara, I don’t want to sleep!” I said. I leaned forward to kiss her, but she put a hoof between us. “Barbara, I want to help you feel good!” I said, a pleading tone in my voice. “And you did!” she said. She rubbed my cheek in an effort to calm me down. “It was amazing, remember? But you’re tired now, and I don’t want you throwing yourself at me if it hurts you!” I didn’t want to listen. But trying to fight her wouldn’t work, I reasoned; that would just make her mad, and would ruin the mood. I closed my eyes and nodded in agreement with her, ending the potential fight before it happened. “Alright,” I said, “I am glad you liked it, I just, I-” “I get it,” she said. She kissed me, and brought me close to her body. “I don’t want you thinking I’m trying to stop that. I’m just trying to look out for you here.” She was right. I embraced her as she embraced me, and fell asleep moments later. Sleep was dreamless for a while. I woke up, to find myself in a very familiar place. The wide range of sentient beings were around me again, some of them awake, some of them asleep, all of them bound to the earth. I looked at myself, to find myself wrapped in familiar vines sprouted from the ground around me. I looked into the sky to find the same light as before, although it was much farther away than I remembered. Although I couldn’t float in the waves of light like before, my heart soared at being back in this place. I stood up, to find myself able to walk around. The vines moved with me, the roots tracking my position as I walked around the area I found myself in. It wasn’t the same as floating with the pulsing wave of light, but it would do for now. I looked around, to find myself face-to-face with a very awake Twilight Sparkle. She and I startled, backing away from each other. I took a deep breath to calm my sudden nerves. I looked back up at her, and nearly blinked in surprise. She blazed with light, almost as bright as the light in the sky. I was taken aback at how resplendent the light made her look. I found myself bowing before her without realizing that I was doing so. When I looked back up, she blushed and looked to the side. I remembered that of all the ruling Alicorns, Twilight Sparkle often refused to wear her regalia or try to stand apart from her subjects outside of rituals and ceremonies. It must embarrass her to see me bow before her. I smiled, stood up, and reached out a hoof to her. She eyed the hoof, looked back at me, smiled, but didn’t shake my hoof in return. She opened her mouth, and spoke: “This is a magical place. Contact here binds individuals together for the rest of their lives.” Her words made me understand the refusal of my hoof. I put it back down, blushing myself. Then I looked back at her and asked: “Wait, this isn’t a dream?” She shook her head. She looked at the sky, which caused me to look up as well. There was the Light, blazing with the strength of the physical sun, pulsing. I could hear the faint strains of the Melody as well, though I was surprised at it being a faint whisper rather than the triumphant roar I had experienced. The decrease in volume did not diminish its majesty nor its impact on my mind. “That Light up above is the source of Magic itself,” she said. As we looked and the gorgeous Harmony I had heard before surged toward us from on high, she continued: “The source itself is too powerful to come into direct contact with us, at least not at first. We need to build our own abilities up before we can directly experience true contact with it.” “So that’s why there’s the song and the light,” I muttered. “It affects us without direct contact, and gives us a chance to be ready to experience it.” “So many people want to just rip themselves from the ground and throw themselves at the source once they see it,” she continued. “They don’t realize that they are hurting themselves when they do that.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Look to our right,” she said. I looked over my right shoulder, and at first didn’t see anything. Then I saw someone struggling against something. A pony was fighting with something on the ground. The mare had a rope of some kind around her neck. The rope was firmly fastened to the ground. The more she fought, the more the rope gave way. But the more the rope gave as a result of her struggles, the less bright she became. She darkened to the point of being a mere silhouette against the waves of light around her. When the last strand of rope parted, she lost all physical outline and became an amorphous shadow that stood out from the light like a spot on the sun. I could hear a loud wailing that sent pangs of sorrow through me. I realized the words that were in the howling sound: “I’m sorry! I didn’t know! Please, don’t let me die! I won’t do it again! Please!” I didn’t realize that the wailing came from the cloud until Twilight spoke: “She will be alright… but not for a long time.” I looked back to her, and saw her crying. She looked away, obviously embarrassed at the fact that I could see her cry. I looked away out of courtesy. “So… you need to live your life before you can move on to this place… permanently.” “Yep.” “So… is this the real life? Or is this just some kind of subconscious fantasy that sentient beings have constructed to characterize life after death?” “It’s kind of a mix of both. Different people see it differently.” I heard her sigh. “There was a Diamond Dog who visualized this place as a combat arena, in which all the warriors who passed on could fight forever for glory.” I was surprised at this. “So, what I am seeing is merely how I interpret this place?” “Yep.” I smirked a little. “It’s almost too perfect,” I said. “How convenient that the afterlife takes whatever shape I want it to have.” “Well, it’s not quite like that,” she answered. "You have heard the Harmony, yes?” The hairs in my mane stiffened in surprise at the question. “The Harmony is the common element in every interpretation,” she continued. “It is the one element that everyone interprets the same way, regardless of species, gender, background, culture, you name it.” I didn’t know what to say, at least for a few minutes. I collected myself and asked: “So, you’re saying that this is not a near-death experience that I had and am just dreaming about, and that the original experience wasn’t a hallucination that I had in that state.” “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” “Then how do I know if that is true?” “Because I’ll remember.” I snapped my eyes open, to find myself back in my bed. Barbara slept beside me. I backed away gently, and sat up, my mind still vividly remembering the dream… or, at least what I thought was a dream. I had to get some fresh air to clear my head and try to process what I just witnessed. I wanted to say that I carefully exited the tent I had slept in, but that would be something of a lie. It felt more like I ran out of the tent in a desperate dash for the night air. I didn’t remember if I closed the tent flap behind me. I stumbled into the clearing in the middle of the tents. I then heard something that froze my blood. Someone hummed a melody. The humming person wasn’t humming the melody as perfectly as I had originally experienced it, but I could tell that the melody that was hummed belonged to the same melody that I had heard in a very recent and vivid dream. I turned towards the source of the humming. Twilight Sparkle was sitting close to the edge of a cliff near the campsite. The humming came from her as she stared up at the moon as it passed through the night sky. I couldn’t believe it. She turned towards me, her face exhausted, wrinkles around her eyes prominent in the moonlight. I trembled as I found myself moving towards her. “You… we… w-we talked-” “Yep.” “Ab-bout, about the afterlife.” “Mm-hmm.” My eyes were wide. She was right. She remembered. One question was on my mind: “How?!” She looked back out to the half-moon. “It’s a mystery, but stranger things have happened the more I learned from that place,” she said, in a resigned tone reserved for those who desperately want sleep but know they won’t get it for some time. I shook my head, barely able to believe that we just communicated via dreams. Much less that we both had similar visions about the afterlife. It was even less likely that she knew the exact same melody that I had heard in that abstract dream-realm, and could produce an imperfect version of it whenever she wanted. I found myself laying on the ground, my head in my forehooves, as if the act of cradling my head would somehow help me deal with the impossible experience I just had. “Pantrostic,” I heard Barbara say. I looked up, to find her sleepily staring at me from the edge of the clearing. “What are you doing out here?” I looked away, trying to find the words to tell Barbara everything that was crashing through my mind. She walked up to me and put a hoof around my shoulders. “Come on, it’s late,” she said as she gently tugged at me. “Let’s go back to sleep.” I put a hoof on her chest to signal that I didn’t want to move. She noticed, and lay down beside me. I looked at her face to see her worried expression. I took a deep breath, and would have tried to use clumsy words to try to express everything I was thinking about, when Twilight Sparkle hummed again. Barbara’s face lit up in recognition of the melody that Twilight hummed. From the direction of the sound, it seemed that Twilight was headed to wherever her tent was. I heard a tent unzip, then zip back up. The silence of the night the absence of the humming caused made the confusion of my dazed mind louder than I wanted. I was on the verge of screaming just to try to shut out all the conflicting voices when Barbara clamped a hoof over my mouth. I looked at Barbara, and saw the saddest frown I had ever seen on her face. The guilt I felt was overwhelming. I was becoming my worst nightmare: an absolute basket case that Barbara would have to take care of for the rest of our marriage, and that one expression showed the toll my behavior was having on her. I began to cry, turning away in shame as I did so. If all my mistakes up to this point wasn’t failure enough, then that expression was evidence that I had failed her completely. I couldn’t leave it like that. I needed to be strong, somehow. There had to be some way that I hadn’t screwed her life over, and I needed to find it, before this insanity got worse. “Let’s… get some sleep,” I managed to say, trying my hardest to keep myself from bawling. I heaved myself upright, and walked over to my tent, barely aware of the tent wires as I stumbled in the dark to the open tent flap. I fell through the opening, and crawled back to my bed. My body warmed the cold sheets, the insulation of the blankets making the air around my body warm enough to lull me to sleep despite my aching head. My dreamless sleep did not calm my raging mind. I still felt like a complete failure who snuck a glance at Eternity in a near-death experience when I woke up with nature calling something fierce. I sat upright, and found myself crying again. I left the tent, glad that nobody else was in the tent to see my emotional state, which persisted as I went outside. Fog shrouded the camp site. Good, I thought; it’ll be harder to see my tears in the mist. Those tears continued to pour as I went off in the woods and took care of my business. Feeling my physical body take care of itself drained away some of the emotion, but I could still feel the tears on my face as I walked back to camp. Someone had placed a mirror against their tent. I walked past, and screamed at what I saw. I did not recognize myself… that is, I did not recognize my current self. This self reflected in the mirror was someone younger, someone who had not endured years of emotional torture. This self did not let himself become a slob because he did not have the energy to clean house or prepare healthy food. This self had not missed the death of his parents because of a forced imprisonment. This self once had a bright future ahead of him, unbowed by personal trauma. I saw myself as I was almost eight years ago. The lean muscles my father had insisted I build so he could drag me along for his parkour runs were just as lean as they were back then. I didn’t have a large belly, rump or bowed back; I was skinny, due to not having a healthy appetite in my younger years, which changed after the family tragedy. My knees were not bowed to my midsection to handle a sudden increase of body fat. Someone touched my shoulder. I looked, and saw that everyone in the camp was here… except for that foal, that filly who was the intruder in my psyche. I pointed at the mirror and said: “That reflection is not me.” Twilight Sparkle pushed through the others, and came up to me. She did not look sleepy, but her expression had a different kind of exhaustion. It seemed like she was annoyed at me, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was probably sick of dealing with my problems. “That reflection is you,” Twilight Sparkle said. “It may not be the most current version of yourself, but it was the only form I could give you without everything falling apart.” I was speechless. I knew that she had reconstructed me, somehow, but that didn’t explain how she did it or why I was left like this. “You should still have all your memories,” she continued before turning away, “and you should take things easy until you get used to your reformed body.” I stared at her as she walked away, still speechless, still confused, still upset. After Twilight turned a corner and disappeared from sight, the other ponies who were the Elements of Harmony quickly huddled and began to whisper to each other. Before I could ask them what the heck they were doing, they zipped off, the pink one, Pinkie Pies I think was her name, in the lead. Barbara, Asura and myself were the only ones still in the area. I looked back at the reflection. Whenever I moved a hoof, the younger version of me in the reflection moved with it. To call it weird is an understatement. No matter where I touched, I felt physical sensations that coincided with the actions of the reflection. I sat down on the ground, stunned from this further development. Barbara walked up to me. I didn’t look at her, but kept my eyes on the mirror and its reflection. Barbara looked at the reflection, her eyes wide with shock. She must not have seen exactly how I had changed last night, I reasoned. What rotten luck for both of us. I saw her face break out into a happy grin. That’s… weird, I thought, and my confusion at her expression caused both of us to break eye contact with the mirror and look at each other. “Barbara, why are you happy about this?” I eyed her, further weirded out by the joy I could see over her face. She looked at me like I was crazy. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me, her face bright with excitement. “Pantrostic, this is a younger you!” I grabbed her legs to try to steady her excitement. “That’s not a good thing, Barbara—” “Not a good thing!” She wriggled out of my grip and smacked my left shoulder. I recoiled and backed away. Asura jumped between us, a scared look on his face. She had smacked the spot on my shoulder that triggers my Changeling hallucinations. I let myself fall to the ground, dreading the numb feeling that would creep over my leg right before the world around me would swarm with the insectoid hallucinations. The numbness didn’t come. The spot still smarted where Barbara had hit it, but there was no corresponding loss of feeling. Not only that, but as I waited for the hallucinations to trigger, I saw Barbara’s triumphant look become more intense. When the pain started to fade without a single imagined thrum of Changeling wings, I realized what she had done and why. I stood up, amazed at what just happened. I hadn’t hallucinated, even though Barbara had tried to trigger the blasted things. “See? You’re healed!” Barbara tried to get around Asura to me, but Asura kept his position between us. I rushed over and grabbed for Barbara. Asura backed out from between us, a confused look on his face. Barbara and I embraced and fell to the ground. We tumbled for a few feet, holding on to each other as each person’s momentum continued the roll whenever the other came to a stop. I finally managed to halt us. I pulled her upright, my mind spinning as much as my vision. I felt a giggle escape my throat, which Barbara reciprocated. Her laugh spurred my body to break out in laughter that left me breathless. We grasped each other as we guffawed like mad ponies, ignoring our surroundings in order to experience the hyperactive sensations of unfettered laughter. Then I saw the colors of the world around me warp for no reason I could identify. Green was black, orange was teal, and the lines holding the colors together vanished, turning everything into a soup akin to a toddler playing with water colors in his or her favorite coloring book. I need to breathe, I thought as I started to rock back and forth, gasping around the bellowing laughter that still wracked my lungs. I fell to the side, and felt Barbara topple over me. I could hear her still laughing her heart out, although I could no longer tell her apart from the rest of the scene. My body began to heave as I tried to stop my hyperventilation and not throw up at the same time. After several minutes of gasping, I finally managed a slow, controlled breath, which led to some more slow, controlled breaths. As I got my lungs under control, the world began to melt back into place. However, only the colors matched up with their corresponding objects; their outlines seemed out-of-place, like a comic book that was poorly inked. This remaining distortion did not clear up when I saw Barbara lean over in between laughs to see my face. Something about my expression must have been alarming, because she got off me. The world around me stabilized some more, bringing the defining lines closer to their proper places. The effect was similar to double vision, and just as disorienting. I felt dizzy, and laid my head to the ground to try and regain a sense of balance. While my head laid on the ground, I saw several ponies enter the clearing. From their colors, it looked to be Twilight Sparkle and the other Elements of Harmony. Twilight had a glowing box suspended in front of her via her magic. It was difficult to make out their expressions, but I felt a shiver down my spine nonetheless. The words Twilight Sparkle said justified my shiver: “The Council of Harmony is now convened in the informal trial of Pantrostic, who stands accused of using black magic.”