Rivers of Babylon

by A Hoof-ful of Dust

The words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts

Starshine sat quietly in the crowd, listening to the three ponies in the debate both advance their own economic plan and subtly ridicule those of their opponents. She thought the most conservative of the three put up the best argument, but she would wait until the debate centered around foreign policy to decide if he would earn her vote.

Though the tyrant Twilight Sparkle had never been brought to trial for her crimes, there was no way she could regain supreme political authority over Equestria. The period following her disappearance had been volatile and turbulent, but the democratic system that had emerged was flourishing, stronger than anything Starshine could have imagined coming from Twilight's reign. After thousands of years, Equestria was finally governed by those who were most affected by her government: her ponies.

Thoughts of Twilight Sparkle that had been crossed Starshine's mind rarely, but they did surface around election time. She thought Twilight would be proud of her little ponies, even if they were her little ponies no longer.

-/-

One pink pony offered her hoof to the other, pulling her up onto the highest flat of the mesa. The pair stood facing each other for a moment, catching their respective breaths, then together turned to look out over the expanse of the desert. Far from the ground, patterns in the dry dirt were visible, swirling and flowing around the jutting rock formations, beautiful in their own barren way.

"What did I... tell you?" Pink said, her chest still heaving.

"Alright." Mina wipe the sweat from her brow. "This might not have been... such a dumb idea after all."

They both sat on the edge of the giant stone edifice and dangled their hooves over the edge. This was how most of their adventures ended (and there were a surprising amount of adventures two ponies could go on in an endless desert): without words, the two of them sharing the moment in silence. Pink had long since stopped wishing for another pony to tell about her experiences; just having them, and knowing she would remember them, was enough.

"This is nice, isn't it?" she said.

"Shut up, Pink," Mina said, and playfully shoved into her shoulder. "You'll spoil the moment."

"...Hey, Mina?"

"Yeah?"

"What's the sun doing?"

"It looks like it's setting."

"Has it ever done that before?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Huh. Strange."

"Strange."

-/-

All of Equestria, it seemed, had turned out for the funeral of Princess Twilight Sparkle. All of Equestria, and Rainbow Dash.

She had outlived Princess Luna and Princess Celestia, but even being can alicorn whose special talent was magic didn't grant immortality. Rainbow wandered through the crowd, studying the grieving faces. It seemed strange, none of these ponies having been alive -- or even their parents, or parents' parents, and so on -- when Twilight was just the new librarian in Ponyville. They would be sad for her passing, but they would forget her over time -- first the little details, then the big ones, and then eventually Twilight Sparkle would just be a footnote in history. Rainbow didn't think it was possible, but ponies had started to forget that it had been Celestia and Luna and not Twilight who had controlled the sun and moon; it was a point of trivia instead of a fact of life.

It was the same way for all ponies that came and went, though on a much smaller scale. They would be a part of the world, and then die, and then be memories for their descendant, and then mysterious figures in paintings that nopony living had spoken to, and then... gone. Rainbow had, after many years, given up on anypony in Ponyville sensing her, and had traveled Equestria, following families for a generation or two. It passed the time. And they all went the same way: there, not there, forgotten.

It's the present that's important. The having experiences, the living. The living you do, not what anypony thinks of it.

"Hey," Rainbow said to herself, using her voice for the first time in centuries, "what's that light...?"

-/-

"Alright, that's enough."

Both the prisoners and the officer towering over them turned to look at Fluttershy.

"I'm taking them off your hooves to be patched up," she continued. "All of them."

"They're enemy combatants," the officer said, aiming for a tone of overpowering menace and authority, "with valuable information."

Fluttershy, having seen more ponies die than anypony who had ever held a weapon in the endless war, was more of a veteran than this sadist, and wasn't intimidated in the slightest. "And did you beat it out of them yet?"

The officer remained silent, but his eyes said his interrogation hadn't made any headway.

"Then they're coming to the infirmary," Fluttershy said with one narrowed eye, "or they not going to live long enough to ever tell you anything."

And that was the end of that discussion.

In the infirmary, one of the prisoners said something at Fluttershy in her strange atonal language. "She says compassion makes you weak," the other prisoner told her. "We wouldn't waste supplies on ponies who allowed themselves to be captured, let alone on the enemy."

In a way, they were right. Compassion was a weakness. It left you open to pain, and when there was so much of it every day it was a natural response to try and shut it out, to kill off any sense of kindness so you could go on. Fluttershy had seen other docs come and go that had let themselves go dead inside; the thousand-yard stare on a soldier was unnerving, but on a medic it was dangerous. Once they got it, they couldn't do their job with any kind of drive or accuracy. They started to slip. And then they got sense home. It was the greatest irony: to work you have to go numb, but once you went numb, you couldn't work.

And so Fluttershy held on to kindness, in spite of all she'd seen. She wouldn't shut herself off, numb herself up, because that meant being sent home and that meant not saving lives of those who would otherwise die. She was willing to take the pain, if it meant she could keep doing that.

She said nothing, and applied bandages to the prisoners' wounds.

-/-

"Well," Applejack told the two headstones, "I'm gettin' ready to plant a seed in the ground, and start a family of my own." She blinked. Twice. Three times. She wasn't crying. "Your little girl's gotten married." She took a deep breath. "...I hope you'd be proud o' me," she finished.

"I'm sure they would be," came a voice from behind her.

Applejack turned to see her aunt striding up the path in the empty cemetery.

"You looked beautiful, you know," she continued. "Probably the only time you'll willingly wear a dress in your life."

Applejack smiled and chuckled. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is."

"You're as stubborn as your mother. And just as big-hearted as your father. You're going to make a good life for yourself out here."

Applejack sized her aunt in a fierce hug, her tears flowing freely. "I'm sorry for--" she started to say, but Valencia cut her off.

"It's okay," she said, patting Applejack's back. "I forgive you."

"Even if I was the most willful, stubborn filly to ever grace Manehatten?"

Her aunt held her close.

"Family forgives," she said.

-/-

"Say, you look sorta nice, all prettied up like that," Rock Cutter said with a lopsided grin. "You should do it more often, reminds me of when we were first dating."

"You don't scrub up so bad yourself," Rarity said, returning his sly grin. It did feel nice to get out of the house with her mane nice and her good dress. Maybe they could do it more often. And my, did that stallion look good in a suit.

From the crowd of former students leaving the stage, Garnet found her parents and rushed up to them, excited grin beaming on her face, mortarboard perched on her head.

"Congratulations, sweetie," Rock said.

Rarity hugged her daughter, the fresh graduate of Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

"You're the best thing I ever did," she whispered into her ear.

-/-

Six ponies emerged from the dark cave. Fluttershy rubbed her eye as she stepped into the sunlight.

"Where are we?" Applejack asked.

"Canterlot," Twilight said, pointing to the spire of Canterlot Castle visible in the distance. "Or, close enough to it, anyway."

"Ha!" Rainbow exclaimed. "See? Magic tree for the win! Why does nopony ever listen to me?" She landed on the ground. "C'mon, zap us home, Twilight."

"I thought we could walk it," Twilight said. "It's not far, and I wouldn't mind a little deviation from the schedule if it's for something like this. Who's game?"

"Ooh! Me! Me me me me!" Pinkie zipped around the group fast enough to look like she was in two places at once.

"Sure, we can hoof it," Applejack said. "Feels like I haven't spent any time at all with you girls in ages. Don't quite feel myself when I don't."

"Me either," said Rarity as she started to walk. "These are the moments little that are the most important, after all."

Comments

[Walabio]

> “ -- when Twilight was just the new library in Ponyville.”Twilight’s not a library, ¡silly! Ya know she’s not a library, ¿right?

Maybe, you should change that to “librarian”.

[A Hoof-ful of Dust]

4044018
Fixed!

[GreyNoise]

In Chapter 2

You're the disguise to shoe the rest of the world

Anyway, this was pretty good. It doesn't feel much like anything was actually resolved so much as it was six short, unconnected vignettes, but the vignettes were quite powerful for what they were. Thanks for writing.

[A Hoof-ful of Dust]

4071424
And corrected.

I'm not sure there's really a way to get a solid resolution in such an 'it was all a dream' scenario, but I tried to suggest at least that a little of each pony's experiences stays with them even if they don't fully remember it, from the last scene. Might go back and tighten up some of the wording there to make it more obvious, I was in a bit of a rush when I wrote the last chapter.

[devas]

need a bit of touch-up and editing, but aside from that it's awesome, and I have no idea why it's so unappreciated.

Imma signal boost this.

[A Hoof-ful of Dust]

4090957
4090994
4091037
I swear I didn't write these comments down some time last week and find a way to post them from another account when I was feeling a little grouchy that the dopey string of dick jokes I knocked out in forty minutes for the WTG after this one was getting a lot more attention. Feels pretty good to be vindicated like that.

I can see the reasons this story goes unnoticed -- there's that lone Alt. Universe tag, which might be the last popular of all the story tags, and my stubborn refusal to use coherent cover images or titles is probably a thing. The description doesn't say outright what's in the tin, and once you actually start reading the story it doesn't make itself immediately clear what exactly is going on. And, I dunno, I don't think the majority of people reading colourful horse fanfiction are actively looking for halfway-symbolic introspection -- stories that don't bring the cute, the feels, or the grimdark antithesis of the default bright shiny setting tend to routinely get left out in the cold.

But that's alright, all in all, because I did what I wanted to do with the story, and that's good, and it's even better if it manages to find a small audience that really dig it (as opposed to a wide audience that just +1 it and move along).

[A Hoof-ful of Dust]

4404676
Yes. There may or may not be a East Haysia for the real Equestria to go to war with, though.

[BoundlessImagination]

4095155

Perhaps what deters readers right now is the 'Gore' tag. Trust me, nothing in here counts as gore.

I think gore might be blacklisted by default as well.

[A Hoof-ful of Dust]

5803268
Much like the sex tag, gore is very much an "I'll know it when I see it" type affair. It's not very explicit, no, but I do have Fluttershy with face all ripped up and eye missing from a grenade explosion, which is definitely beyond what canon could ever get away with, thus tag.

[BoundlessImagination]

5804784

Very well. The tags you put on your stories are your prerogative, but I still don't agree.

The 'Gore' tag is prescribed for "explicit description of violence/grotesque imagery", and I don't think that applies to this.

The right side of her face was covered in scar tissue...

one long and jagged gash still stitched together

The wound was clean, though...

...the socket was stuffed with gauze...

The flesh visible around the edges was inflamed and angry.

Perhaps I've become too accustomed to gore taken to the extreme, but I do believe there are dozens of popular stories here on Fimfiction that deserve the 'Gore' tag by these standards, yet remain untagged.

There was no explicit description of the incident itself, only elegant imagery that allows a reader to imagine themselves in such a situation with little effort.

[redsquirrel456]

"Me either," said Rarity as she started to walk. "These are the moments little that are the most important, after all."

*"These are the little moments" I think it's supposed to be

Other than that, simply amazing story I'm sorry I didn't read earlier. A very interesting look into what each of these ponies actually "needs" to learn in life.