//------------------------------// // Old Truths // Story: A Spark on the Wind // by ChudoJogurt //------------------------------// It was five to noon, and by the Town Hall on Two Sisters Plaza, the crowd was already gathering, as Discord snapped his fingers right in front of Twilight’s face. "What?" The Princess shook her head, trying to chase away both the ghosts of the past and heavy thoughts of the future and looked at the spirit of disharmony. His snakelike body coiled about, conforming to impossible shapes as he looked at her with a perpetual sly little smirk. The only true constant in her life – Discord, the eternal spirit of chaos. Irony so thick it actually hurt. He was always there, and he was always Discord, whether he was her worst enemy or a shaky ally but hundred of years ago, now or thousand years since he would always be there, to deliver another blow. To plant seeds of doubt, to make her question her friendship, to sow discord and mistrust – in short, to ensure that everything goes as wrong as possible. Or “to make things more fun” as she assumed he would put it. At least for now, it seemed, it was not the time for his sudden, yet inevitable betrayal… but, she guessed, it was as good a time as ever if he would so choose. Princess sighed. "What do you want, Discord? Whatever it is that you wanted to say – speak your piece and leave. I’m in no mood to amuse you." She walked right through him, not bothering to walk around, and his form turned to smoke to let her through, coalescing back behind her. "Well, well, well. My little Princess, watching you is all the entertainment I could possibly need. This Byronic visage, the stern look you give me over your spectacles (very sharp by the way, these glasses are so totally you), the solemn gait that just speaks of all the duties and obligations you carry. Priceless, I tell you!" Twilight just kept walking. She knew that the only reason Discord was with her here and now, was the opportunity to make her hurt. Ignoring him was her best defence. "So, no snappy comebacks today? Such a pity. I am sure, Pinkie would find something to say." This was almost too much. Twilight stopped, and turned around, and peered at the draconequus coiled around her. If he expected her to break down, he would be sorely disappointed. Perhaps some time ago that would be exactly what she would do, bawling like a foal, or shouting at him to go away. Now, all she did was shrug, and resume trotting along. "I have never bothered to spare enough energy to despise you as much as you deserve, Discord. I know that you don’t care about me, but Pinkie was Fluttershy’s friend too. You could at least respect her memory today." "Respect?!" Discord was almost pleased by this slip of her tongue, "Moi? My little princess, you like none other should know that my very nature makes it impossible to respect anything. Dear sweet Celestia, I’d probably lose my job I ever did." "Precisely. Just like I always told Fluttershy. Only she would always ask to give you one second chance after another. But you – you never cared about her." "But that is a lie. Tsk, tsk, and you call yourself a Princess. For shame." His voice suddenly lost all of its mad cheer, "I loved my only friend dearly. But she is gone now. And I am not. And I will always be, and I will never be anything but me." "That’s exactly what I am talking about." finally losing her temper, Twilight struck the path with such a force that paving stones cracked, "'Me, me, me'– that is all you are capable of thinking about. Nothing but yourself!" "Such hurtful accusations, eh? But may I then ask, how are you wallowing in self-pity all the way over here? When all of the Pinkie’s friends are gathering over there." he pointed towards the plaza, Ponyville, the clock that was not two minutes away from striking noon. "Your precious Pinkie Pie had family and friends you know. So why then, when they need their Princess, the one, that mind you, has known Pinkie longer and better than anyone alive, you are not there to console and support them?" "Because… " another sigh escaped Twilight’s lips. Talking with Discord always felt like treading across quicksand - no matter how you tried to avoid it, it would inevitably drag you down and suffocate you. "Because I have lost too many of them. I thought… I was afraid, I even hoped that it would become easier with time, but it just doesn’t. Every time it hurts more and more… I can’t..." “Me, me, me,” Discord interrupted her, his tone even more poisonous than usual. "Well, I’ve done this thing for quite a bit longer than you, or your precious Celestia for that matter, and believe you me, nobody cares about your swollen ego or your incessant self-pitying. Do you really think it is you who got the short end of the stick? Eternal youth, incredible magical powers, adoration of thousands upon thousands of ponies all across Equestria… your friends did not get that option, you big crybaby. All they got is a great big eternal nothing and a nice stone to mark where their bodies lie." Twilight ground her teeth in frustration, and her horn caught aflame when she called on her magic. "You know, Discord, I have hypothesised for some time now that I don’t even need the Elements of Harmony to turn you to stone. And you really, really tempt me to test that theory now.” "What?" Discord finally took notice of Twilight words. "Ooh, well isn’t someone testy!", he tried her horn with his clawed finger and immediately pulled it back, burned by the magical aura. "Well, my little Princess, if you do believe you drew the short straw here, why don’t you use that spell on yourself, hm? Just picture it – a nice small statue in some garden somewhere – by the Fluttershy’s cottage, maybe? I might even come visit, dust off the cobwebs from time to time. No duties, no obligations. No friends that leave you. Just peace and quiet… forever." Even if threatened by Princess' magic, he just smiled a mirthless smile and looked at her, waiting. Twilight released the magic, dousing her aura. The conversation had suddenly left her numb and exhausted – as expected from Discord. "Just say what you’ve wanted to say, Discord, and be gone." "Oh my, we are already here. Well, I guess it really is time for me to go." The Princess looked ahead at the Ponyville spread at the foot of the hill they were standing on, the distant clock tower was preparing to strike noon. Discord was already disappearing into the thin air, with only his hand and mouth staying behind. "By the way, besides the pleasant small talk, I came here to give this to you.” With a snap of his disembodied fingers, a small object fell towards the grass. Grasping it in her magic, she had examined a small brass mechanism "And this is…?" "Oh, just a small little something I’ve borrowed from your lab, hope you don’t mind. I’m sure you’ll figure it out in a jiffy." Before she could answer, the sound of the bell rang from the clock tower answered by the shot of the party cannon, and the spirit of chaos disappeared completely before Twilight momentarily distracted by the fireworks and the confetti, could ask him anything. She looked at the mechanism again, all cogwheels and bolts and pieces of springs… she almost remembered what it was that she held in her magic, when she heard the familiar bouncing sound behind her… *** …clock tower behind her whole again, the edges of the chronovore filling the sky above, seeking hungrily. Barely fitting now into the three dimensions of space they stretched towards her, Pinkie, the party cannon, houses around and all of the town. Half-remembering, half-guessing, Twilight figured out what she had to do and before the needles touched the clocktower again, she closed her eyes in concentrating on what little magic she had left. She pulled out the piece of the mechanism from her gown – its brass a perfect match for the mechanism of the clock tower as it would be in hundreds of years from now when the tower would have fallen apart under its own weight. The same tower that was still standing now, making the shard she was holding impossible, yet existing. Putting everything she had left in the last spell, she channelled her magic through the brass of the mechanism and sent a wave of pure space-time paradox, sparkling like a firework rocket, to pierce the side of the monster. In the moment of silence that followed, Twilight had almost thought that she was mistaken, that epiphany she had was nothing but a mirage born of her desperation. But then she noticed that for the first time since skies have broken apart, the chronovore's edges were receding. The whole volume of its monstrous body was folding into itself, collapsing into a dimension orthogonal to the normal world, and within a second that lasted an eternity, with a ringing shriek that ripped the silence apart, it was finally gone. It took Twilight several attempts to get up on her hooves as she tried in vain to put the events of the day back into a chronological order. No matter how hard she struggled to figure out what was supposed to follow what, somehow causes and effects kept switching places in her memories. At least she could be almost sure that now was actually the present, and that things would proceed in a more orderly manner in the future. Or so she hoped. Time was piecing itself back together, a straight arrow from “before” to the “after”. "Whee! Best party EVER!" Pinkie propped her up as the legs were about to give up from underneath a tired Princess, distracting her from her existential contemplation. “But what happened? How did you done it?” "Well, it’s really simple once you figure it out. You see, chronovores don’t really control the temporal flow, they merely create a local superposition of time-space continuum entanglements that … let me draw you a graph, it’s just basic differential calculus, really." "Nononono!” Pinkie grabbed her head in mock-agony. “TMI, TMI!" Twilight poked her friend in her pink side and laughed at her antics. "Alright, alright. Doesn't really matter anymore, anyway. Come on, we have to find something." "Wait, wait. We came to a party, so we cannot leave without actually partying. Look, everypony is coming back here!" Looking around, she knew that Pinkie was right. The first ponies she had teleported away were slowly coming back, confused and afraid. She looked herself over. Her gown was in tatters, one of her horseshoes cracked, another - lost altogether, her glasses barely holding on her face on a bent and cracked frame, but it really did not matter. She had almost teleported on the stage (that somehow was intact again), to try to tell everypony what had happened and that the danger had passed, but Pinkie was already there. "Come on everypony, don't be shy! What is it, a funeral? It's time to par-tay!" The crowd buzzed in surprise. Some of the older ponies were trying to explain something to the younger ones, but no one listened to anyone, too surprised by the recent events. She completed her teleportation spell, appearing by Pinkie's side on the stage in a lavender flash, and everyone immediately fell into silence, letting their Princess speak. "Friends. Too much has happened today for me to explain now. Please let's set it aside for the time being. We know why we are all here, and we all remember how our miss mayor wanted her farewell party. So LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!" "Huzzah!" Pinkie jumped at least three yards into the air, falling on the fuse of the party cannon. As the wave of confetti and streamers covered the plaza and the one-pony orchestra started to play, the crowd fell back in confusion. But soon the first of the guests began to move with the music, and then some more joined it, and soon everypony and mule and griffon and other creature of every shape and size was mixing together, dancing, singing, drinking, all the way to dawn. And Twilight was with them. She laughed, sang silly songs, and played the games and ate the sweet cake. She shot magical fireworks and told tall tales of their adventures and life. And was merely happy. *** But time was back to its inexorable march forwards, and thus it inevitably came to the moment when they had to go. The first colours of dawn lit Equestria's sky, as far away in Canterlot, Celestia raised the sun and started the new day. It was the glint of the first rays of the morning off the brass that allowed Twilight to find the very thing she was hoping to spot for the most of the night - not that she had a lot of attention to spare from the party. She really had no doubts that when the time would come, she would inevitably find the piece of the old clockwork lying in the grass. She took Pinkie aside, prying her out of a group of her new friends, and took her back up the hill where she had met her yesterday. They kept up the inconsequential small talk until Twilight recognised the place. "Pinkie," she stopped the barrage of her friend's chattering. "Hmm?" Pinkie used a pause to finish up another milkshake, despite probably eating and drinking at least twice her own weight within the last few hours. "Pinkie, you cannot imagine how happy I was to see you again. I should’ve told you that… that this wasn't just a party.. it was... well it was your..." "What, you thought my funeral would be some sombre bore-fest? Hah! No way!" "And it doesn’t bother you?!" "Duh, of course not. I am not a silly-filly like you. It was exactly as I wanted it in my will. And it was amazing - with the party cannon, and the giant cake, and the chronovore attack..." "Huh. I..." "What?" "I didn't want you to know when we came. I thought it would be really hard on you." "But why, Twilley? We all get what we get. Me, and the girls, and even you, silly. Whatever happened here, I have a whole life ahead of me to live, and that's what will always stay with me. That itself would be more than enough, BUT..." she raised her hoof in the air dramatically, "it also will stay with you. And all of those who came here today. And everyone who knows them. While you are all here, it was worth it." Twilight just hugged her friend, unable to say another word, and they stood there in the light of the dawn until Twilight knew that the time had come. Reluctantly releasing Pinkie from her embrace, she levitated the bit of the mechanism from her gown and gave it to her friend. “Souvenirs, neat-o." she grabbed it in her mouth and in a single flick of her neck hid it somewhere in the depth of her mane. “Thanks a bunch Twilley, but what is it?” "Just give it to the other me. When the time comes, she will know." "What? This whole time there was another you, and you never introduced me? Twy?" Pinkie looked around trying to find her friend, but Twilight was already veiled behind the Invisibility spell, and at the top of the hill, by the edge of the Everfree Forest, Pinkie was alone. As she was about to call out to her friend again, a lavender flash lit up the dim morning, and from outside time and space, a slightly singed and much younger Princess Twilight Sparkle had appeared, falling on the grass. Younger Twilight stood up unsteadily, looking around, and instantly spotted a confused Pinkie Pie. "Thank Celestia you are here! Come on, Pinkie, we have to go. You have no idea how much time I spent to... Just tell me you didn't touch anything! The smallest change in the time can lead to a cascade of effects..." Never pausing her speech, she grabbed Pinkie and with a final flash of lavender, both of them were gone. *** Twilight - the old and tired Twilight - was walking slowly downhill. She half-expected to see Discord again - perhaps he would appear to demand his praise for saving her, or maybe for an "I told you so" he seemed to enjoy, or perhaps to try to aggravate her again… But the spirit of chaos remained unpredictable and so she stayed alone for now. She looked down at the town below. Celestia had raised the sun high enough, and the dawn surely had now turned into mid-morning, but the party just kept on going. If anyone knew how to get the party started it was Pinkie Pie after all.... It was then that she realised with surprise, that she no longer felt the familiar dull heartache when she remembered her friend. All her friends, all that they've shared, all the moments they had - both happy and sad, all that was in the past and that she could never get back - all of it was as close to her heart at it had ever been, and yet she felt not the pain of regret and mourning, but a steady feeling of warmth. She could have returned to the party below. Keep celebrating, maybe even attempt to dance again, and just keep being another guest at the gathering. Maybe meet someone new, or learn something about those beings that came from outside this world to give their farewells to Pinkie or places they came from… But no, her problems would not be resolved as easily. She still was a Princess, and still a heavy burden of eternity and obligation weighted her down. She was not yet ready to get close to somepony, to make new friends, nor could she afford the time for that. However... she was the Dean of the University of Magic. Even if now her position mostly involved administrative and research duties with an occasional lecture... she could probably find the time to get some students of her own. She smiled to herself. She had finally understood why, so long ago, Celestia had chosen her and Princess Cadence, and probably many others as well, from the incalculable numbers of her subjects, to be her personal student. Accepting all of today's events, all the craziness and fear and excitement, from the first second to the last, whatever order they came in, she took in the last gaze of Ponyville below, of green grass and morning sunlight, the clock tower that stood high above the town, and belated fireworks in the blue sky, she closed her eyes and cast a Teleportation spell. *** Everything may change, yet nothing is truly lost. *** FIN.