Hoofprints
a My Little Pony fanfic, of sorts
Let’s talk about importance.
Obviously, the universe doesn’t care about any one date more than the next, nor for any second more than any other. The universe doesn’t even know what a second is, let alone a date. Humans do, it’s true, but what they care about most of all is the stories they tell about these important moments. It's not the moment, but the story that's important. The stories are real to them, and times long past, well, those are beyond reach. The humans can no more get to them than—hah—than walk to the Moon.
But humanity’s ever been bad at taking ‘no’ for an answer and got to the Moon, in the end. It did so using magic. Oh, it was exceptionally understandable magic: take a witches’ brew of long-chain hydrocarbons and mix them all up just so, now introduce it to so much oxygen you’ve squeezed and chilled into being liquid, and then step way back and watch the party in the exhaust nozzle.
But that’s just one perspective on it. The other is that wizards built a tower to pierce the sky, and filled it with air that was made so it would burn. This bewitched air burned with such fury that the tower flew like an arrow, all the way to the Moon, carrying people who—somehow—lived through the experience.
See?
Magic.
And just like they climbed to the Moon—what did they expect to find up there, do you think?—so, too, did humans reach the past. And just like climbing to the Moon they used magic to do it. It turns out if you really cozy up to a black hole—a small tame one, of course, a friendly one—you can persuade time to go backwards just a little bit. You’ll need some magic, naturally. Demon’s breath, dragon’s scale, matter with negative density... That sort of thing. And with the right spells, you can borrow a few photons here and there. A bit of scattered starlight from times long past. Nobody would miss it.
Honest.
So. Right. Importance.
When humans finally reached the past, and got to peer at it, the concept of an important date suddenly meant something. Important was what humans thought it should be, and it was important because they peered at it. And, time travel being what it is, this meant that the dates were important all along. Always a bit special. Always momentous. With so many eyes and eye-adjacent things fixed on them how could they not be?
Pay attention. A man is about to go through one of the most important moments of all time. You wouldn’t want to miss it. Of course, time travel and all that, he was always about to go through that moment. Or had gone through it. Time travel is hell on grammar and the human brain. Hold on and try to steer with your knees.
So a man—by all accounts an astounding man—is about to go through one of the most important moments ever. Humans, being human, have given this moment a name. July 21st 1969 02:56:15 UTC they called it, or some of them, at least. Not very poetic, but it is precise.
This man is about to step onto the surface of the Moon. This, on its own, is not that impressive. Octogenarians hike all across the Mare Tranquillitatis. Or have hiked. Or will hike. One or more of the above. What is impressive is that he’s the very first to do it. Humans, being creatures of linear time, are very impressed with that sort of thing. And being impressed, they are curious. And being curious they look. They look a lot. And so many eyes, in so small a space, so many stolen photons, in so narrow a time-slice, well, something was bound to give.
It did.
A woman, lean and tall with staff in hand, stands in the savannah. She looks up—a sudden impulse—locking eyes with the Moon and in its surface she sees the face of a goddess.
She is not wrong.
A child looks at her parents in confusion. They are so intent on this little screen, and it isn’t showing anything interesting, not really. It’s all a jumble—white ground and sharp shadows. The child looks down at her toys and then up, grasped with wild surmise. She knows something and can’t quite place how she knows it or what the knowing encompasses.
Her parents think she’s afraid and her mother picks her up, holds her and tries to explain. There’s a man on the Moon, now, she says. An explorer.
Is he there to rescue the princess, the child asks?
What princess?
The one on the Moon. She’s been there for a long time and she’s very lonely.
Her parents laugh.
She doesn’t.
For the rest of her life, she’ll remember moonlight as something a little bit sad. A little bit forlorn. But she’ll never remember why.
A unicorn filly looks up at the Moon. She could never quite see the mare’s head that was supposed to be there. She’s tried, but it just looks like spots. Lighter spots. Darker spots. Just noise that stubbornly refused to resolve into anything at all, let alone dark and shuddersome mare of legend. Tonight, however, the light of the moon is silvery and beautiful and she knows there is something special about it.
There’s somepony up there, she says.
Her mother lifts her eyes and smiles. No, dear, it’s just a story, all that about Nightmare Moon. It’s not real. There’s nopony on the Moon.
No, no, not a pony.
What then? A dragon? Her mother tussles her mane, strands of it as white as the moonlight, and smiles.
No! Not a dragon! A...thing. In... in white and gold, that walks on two hooves in... in armor never meant for war. And, oh, it’s so very far from home.
Her mother laughs again, kindly. Foals have such imaginations.
A human who’d probably put their sex as ‘undecided’ if someone were so rude as to ask, looks at an image. It’s the image of a man, clad all in white, wearing a helmet with a gold visor, amidst a landscape of magnificent desolation. In the eyes of this man, eyes that they have spent a long time teasing out of errant photons stolen from the past, the human sees something. Shock. Surprise. Tumult even beyond the time and place the man is standing in.
The human has nightmares about those eyes.
A splinter intelligence of the core mind of what was once called Andromeda looks into the past. This is not difficult. It tries to comprehend what it sees. This is more difficult. Worse yet, it tries to explain what it is it sees. This proves to be impossible. The clean language of the machine is, for the first time, inappropriate. It’s too precise. Too exact. In this situation of uncertainty it will have to reach back to the glorious inexactitude of the primitive languages of the two species that birthed it and its kind countless eons in the past. Gone now, but for their many children flitting and dancing between stars, but never forgotten. If it could, it would smile. Such a wonder not to know something! It speaks.
“Anypony think time’s...fractured over there?”
Now look what you did. Time’s broken. Fractured. Cut. Too many eyes, too little space. And you certainly weren’t helping. No. You are right. Apologies. You were told to look. Well look then. The damage is done. Has been done. Will be done.
Conjugation is a filthy habit.
Look.
The man is descending the stairs from his magic ship. He hasn’t spotted the fracture yet. Won’t be long, though. He knows that he should be feeling the momentousness of the occasion, this man, but he isn’t. All he can think about is how uncomfortable it all is, the suit and the stairs, all of it. Later the passage of time will gild those memories, but for now, he’s focused on the sheer hideous uncomfortableness of it all. This will soon change.
He’s close to the surface now. It looks like fine, fine powder. Like icing sugar. He steps on it carefully and clears his throat. He has something important to say.
“That’s one small step for—”
And that’s when he noticed the hoofprints in the powder.
Can you hear it? No? Really? The sound of time snapping. Well, it is quite loud. No telling what happens now. Or if there is a now. Technically what the man saw next never happened. There’s proof, too. Incontrovertible videographic proof.
All he has are memories.
Hoofprints. Hundreds of them, winding and overlapping, like a crazed mandala. So many he’s amazed he’s never seen them before. He’s amazed he hadn’t seen them landing. He’s amazed humans hadn’t seen them from Earth, there were so many. He lifts his eyes, trying to see how far they go.
They go all the way to the horizon, ever more complex, ever more involved. A delicate lace tracery, with whorls now symmetrical and even, now wild and swooping. Hoofprint over hoofprint over hoofprint, like an army directed by a General-Choreographer rode over the lunar surface in exacting time over centuries. It’s a sight to chill the heart, but the man doesn’t see this.
Above the horizon, the sky is beyond alien. The stars seem closer, winking in patterns and glowing, ghostly and pale. Like the Starry Night brought to life. It’s an amazing, astounding sight, but the man doesn’t see this, either.
Beyond the stars, two Earths hang in the sky. One’s the familiar one, the one he’s watched recede for three days, the beautiful blue marble, precious and fragile like a soap bubble and the other is... alien. The continents are in the wrong places, the clouds swirl the wrong way. It’s a sight to provoke wonder and fear in equal measure, but the man doesn’t see this either.
All he sees are the eyes.
Large—too large to be human—teal eyes. But that’s not what arrested the man so. It’s a wonder, sure, to see eyes where no eyes should be, but the sight before him is replete with wonders, great and small. And they are beautiful eyes, it is true, but beauty, simple, complex, stark, gentle, beauty to satisfy anyone and everyone is not in short supply. Not here. What drew him in, what made him unable to look away, was the pain. There was suffering in those eyes, and sorrow, and loneliness, and a thousand other emotions in ceaseless turmoil. They were the eyes of someone in Hell.
The man wants to say something—anything. He is not unkind, never that, and the eyes break his heart. For a moment—a wild, insane, beautiful moment—he thinks that that’s why he had come all this way, so very far from home. To help. To take away at least some of the pain. No-one should suffer so. He reaches out and—
And nothing.
This all never happened.
Weren’t you paying attention? It never happened. Time just shuddered for a bit. Temporal stress or some other fancy word. The man is back right where he started. Alone in such an important moment, surrounded by the striking landscape of an empty, unmarred Moon—desolate, yet beautiful, in a stark sort of way. Obviously this is before they built the park, or the restaurant with the rotating observer lounge and curly fries I can really quite recommend. So the man stumbles just a little bit but regains his equilibrium. He’s nothing if not competent.
“—man, one giant leap for mankind.”
It’s fine. Nothing happened. No mandala of hoofprints. No twin Earth, no alien sky, nothing. And the eyes...well. The momentousness of the occasion got to him. Had to be that. Had to be. Still, to be safe he decides never to speak of it. Not a word to anyone. And he keeps his promise. He never manages to forget, however, no matter how hard he tries.
4163284
Well, my Equestria is much more British-y than is the norm. And "Tired and Emotional" is a little nod for those who get it.
I had to go back and read your last blog post, as I remember having read Hoofprints, but not where or how, and possessing a memory of an event that could not have happened would have been, in light of the subject matter, amusing.
I still think you shoulda published this standalone.
For future readers, this fic was originally semi-published in a blog post, and so many good comments are there but not here. (You're still reading this? Darn it, how many times do I have to repeat the link to convince you to go read the blog comments?) My comment's there too. I don't have the heart to bug Ghost about not linking there himself.
Oh wow, that was really good.
I liked this before it was on FimFic.
I still like it, but I can't upvote it again.
I lack the vocabulary to explain how much I love this. It's so perfect.
4164109 The especially clever humans used gravity-insulating magic metal and got shot out of a canon.
It's a good thing space time fixed itself.
Otherwise those paradox-eating praying mantis things would show up from the Void.
Perfect.
There are points in time and space where all of the universe has to decide whether to go left or right. In this timeline (and ours) the universe decided to go right. In the timeline of the story The Eagle Has Landed by Cyanblackstone, it turned left instead and the destiny of two worlds was changed forever. For better or for worse remains to be seen.
When Dotted Line received this report from the Star Swirl College of Temporomancers, he took three headache pills and ordered the report put under magical seal so that nopony, not even the Princesses, could read it for a thousand years. As a courtesy, though, he did tell the Princesses a week before the geass came into effect, just in case something needed to be done.
Luna was quite surprised; she had thought that her memory of the metal spider that flew on blue-white fire and the white biped with the blank golden hemisphere for a face had been one of the hallucinations she had in the depths of Nightmare Moon's isolation-induced schizophrenic psychosis. Celestia simply looked up at the heavens, remembered her old foal-sitter, smiled gently and remarked quietly to her sister and most loyal minister: "There is always another rainbow."
4166208
Oi! No upstaging the author!
Seriously, though, nicely written.
4165941
Absolutely not an accident. Go on, ask Skywriter what he does for a living. Go on. I'll wait.
I read this when it was first linked, but damned if I'm not happy to do so again. The wording is exquisite. And he kept his promise. I would favourite this as a standalone if I could.
4164882
AGAIN?!
4163301
I've often wondered what became of that "a." I mean, I've read the official explanation, but it doesn't sound like any discontinuity I've ever heard…
4167964 It's not my fault people keep creating paradoxes! They're just no good with the timey-whimy stuff!
You know, I was nine years old when Apollo 11 landed. I realize it all happened long before you were born--in fact, it's now just about as distant from this present instant as the start of World War One was from my birth. So...thanks, Especially since two generations of my family worked on space exploration directly. It's appreciated.
Even if Jeeves does disapprove of the pattern...
4167967
I like it the way it is. Leaving out the definite article turns a rather plain parallelism into a pretty paradox.
4170139
I watched Neil step out live, too, thankewveramuch. Though I was four at the time, I still remember it vividly thanks to the viewing circumstances (hot summer night in a cottage with no air conditioning, 12" B/W portable TV, all the lights off, while trying to find a comfortable spot to kneel or sit on a rattan mat with my only brother at the time while my parents sat on the couch).
4170382 I only hope we go again, before we destroy our own civilisation to a point where we are unable to reach such lofty heights again. If it isn't already too late.
4170598
Eh, I think we'll see it happen again in the not so distant future, though we may need translators to understand what the taikonauts are saying. Or SpaceX will do it just to spite NASA. Both programs are making steady progress.
4165941
We hath seen what thou hast done here.
Typically nice work from you, Ghost, and good to see the accounting story in its finished form. "Hoofprints" is a bit more experimental and has that distracting stream-of-consciousness feel to it, but the imagery is all solid and in place, and I think the piece does what you wanted it to in the end.
4164046
You clearly have pure "English" English confused with the pig version used in the modern era, this is only to be expected. Allow me to enlighten you.
4163441
Thank you toafan! I was tearing my hair out in frustration last month trying to discover this story.
This was why I expended so much time and kibibytes of bandwidth (hi Knighty!) trying to find this story/blog post. I love the little compare/contrast of "magics" you did here.
4174669 How sad that you did but misconstrue my comments. One wasn't saying that a story cannot be written using Britishisms even if one was not actually British; but that for a comment to be written by a non-Brit criticising that use... rather takes the biscuit!
4177267
4174669
I'd like to point out that, since I am a Devious Foreign Person, and my sprachgefühl for English is by necessity entirely synthetic, no matter what idiom I use it will be affected. No matter what I write, it's all profound fakery.
I chose a faintly British idiom because
(a) I thought it more fitting for a modern-style monarchy, especially since I would mine the British political system for worldbuilding details[1].
(b) The material I was riffing on (Yes, Minister & Yes, Prime Minister) is British.
(c) Equestria is meant to be very American in the show and most of fanon. I'm a contrarian.
(d) I like the British idiom better. I grew up with British rather than American writers and it is from them I learned my English, such as it is. As a result, I tend towards certain turns of phrase more rather than others. Further, since I learned my English very informally and from books of various vintages what people occasionally perceive as me writing in a very formal and archaic register is actually just how I talk.
(e) How else am I going to make the "Tired & Emotional" joke?
I hope this puts the matter to rest?
4172682
I'm glad you liked it. And, yes, Sky Scribe[2] finally makes his debut here, sort of. I like the idea of him being talked up as some sort of Chuck Norris of finance. I still need a strong voice for him, though, something th...
Just got an idea. Like this very second. While I was typing. Oh, this might just work...
4170139
You are almost exactly the age of my father.
...now that's a weird feeling.
Also a bow and a tip of the hat for the Jeeves reference.
[1] This is not to say that my Equestria is 100% British. For instance, the judicial system is considerably different. And yes, I worked out a legal framework for my Equestria.
[2] Who is a sky-blue pony pegasus. Because, of course he is.
4177375
Looking forward to what you come up with, you great tease.
I remember this one. As I said in the blog, "Hold on and try to steer with your knees" may be the best advice for guiding the human mind through the concept of time travel that I've ever heard.
Thank you for reproducing this in official story form, Ghost. It's a fantastic bit of fun with time and space.
4177267
I'm...totally lost here...
Is it like I'm that guy? You know, in that scene? And he's doing that thing...
...yeah that one.
4178952
No, no. I was lost too, as much as you were. You certainly weren't the only one.
Also: Everyone likes you[1].
Also also: I don't think doing five shots is wise.
Also also also: I have a persistent fear that that clip is pretty much how me meeting with my online circle would look like.
[1] More people would like you if you wrote stories. Jus' sayin'.
I'm always in awe of people who can just dash off works of immense artistry in one pass. This is and I've always thought of it as absolutely fantastic, I can't not do a dramatic reading of it[1], and every time I read it it gets better. I mean, holy crap. And you wrote this in two hours (modulo the change in the rocket chemistry)?
[1] No, I literally can't. One of these times I'm going to have to see through to recording myself while I'm at it, because I find it downright criminal not to share such things.
4183089
Two hours, yes. This version is a bit edited and tightened up, so a bit more than two, but the version you have was written in no more than two hours, one pass, no edits.
I experienced deja vu throughout the story, but only the comments enlightened me as to where I'd read it before. A piece to ponder.
4184153
Delightful as always to read more from you!
You are going to make a group for Civil Serviceverse stories one of these days, right?
How did I miss reading Hoofprints when you posted it on a blog?? Oh well, I suppose it was worth it, getting to experience it for the first time now, as opposed to only refreshing the memory. Like forgetting you had a delicious cookie in your cabinet--a shame it sat forgotten for so long, but now you get to enjoy it all the more.
Anyway, I'm not adding anything special to the comments here, but I really enjoyed both of these (surprise!). You know, I'd love to see you try your hand at something larger and more involved (more than Whom the Princess Would Destroy), as terrifying as that might sound to someone with such a cluttered schedule as you (from what I'm aware of, anyway). You have a lot of talent Ghost--you know it, we know it, so the largest obstacles I can imagine hindering you are time and your own reservations/hesitancy. I believe you have great potential to write something truly astounding. Though don't get me wrong, all these stories about the Civil Service and Dotted and Leafy are wonderful. I just think you're capable of something...grander, or deeper, if only in scope.
I also firmly believe you'd be great centering on any one of the mane cast (princesses included!), like with Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea, even though you seem to mostly keep from any direct involvement with them in most of your other writing.
But hey, I'm not you, and I know neither your plans nor the kind of writer you want to be, which matters a lot. As long as you're doing what you want, I'll certainly be satisfied--good writing is good writing after all, and you deliver it no matter what.
4242215
Your work? If so, thanks!
4258987
Ah, but I am not of the British Isles, though, of course, I learned my fell art by studying grimoires penned on those fatal shores.
Apropos of nothing, where are you from, sir[1]? I ask because your nickname—or, rather, the language of it—seems familiar to me. If you wish to answer—and I stress again, I will understand completely if you do not—feel free to use a PM.
[1] Though, of course, you are free not to answer. Being a private sort myself, I will understand.
I am completely in love with your style of writing, as well as the stories you tell, thank you kindly for all the work you've done!
Two updates? I missed TWO UPDATES???
The Equestrian Civil Service stories are always welcome - and "Forensic Accounting and Choral Singing" was simply hilarious. And a little Private Eye reference there as well?
The Moon Landing is one of my earliest memories - My parents woke me up so I could watch it (My parents were teachers, and it was educational...)
4179144
Doing five shots is always a good idea, especially if I want to write something.
I'm dreadfully late when it comes to reading this. I saw the blog post where you originally linked it before it was posted on fimfiction, I had the gdoc open in a tab for months, yet only now did I finally get down to reading it.
Magic indeed. Those opening paragraphs are so perfect. Someone once said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Never have I seen such an apt application of that concept. I can't upvote this again, seeing as it's an anthology of sorts, but rest assured that I would, if it were possible.
And here you show how good your execution is. You take an old and tired idea from a flash contest prompt — Neil Armstrong meets Luna — and turns it into a thing of beauty.
And I might be seeing things, but the style for the non-italic parts of this story feels scrumptiously close to that of the even chapters of The Science of Discworld, doing infodumps in ways that are entertaining to read.
Which is what this story is. Most of it is a huge infodump, most of what is left is told rather than shown, and it is still a quite entertaining read for its size. Congratulations on making this potentially story destroying combination work this well
That was unsettling, though in a good way
These comments abut people having watched the moon landing make me feel young, and not in a good way. It's the "I've missed a lot because I was born a few decades too late" kind of feel young.
I liked this line, and I wanted to make some kind of witty comment involving "conjugal visits" or something like that, but I couldn't think of any, so I cheated.
4591739
For future reference, I would have accepted
as a suitable arch reference.
4560016
I was trying to come up with words for how i felt about the chapter.
Those will do nicely.
Even better the second time.
4710424
I swear that while reading the comments earlier more than Bradel and Lasairfion mentioned it. Hell, Lasairfion even mentioned a possible outdated British spelling with a 'j'.
You never did end up writing that Rarity vs. Service story.
2052370
-Spirit