Crystal Ball
"I had no idea..."
Once again Twilight uttered these words in reference to Scootaloo, though not to anypony in particular. Or at least, the Seers didn't seem to fit to say anything in response. They once again donned their uncomfortable silence as Twilight, with noticeably shaky legs, meandered back to the red cushioned throne. Rather than taking a seat, she simply leaned against it, looking away from the Seers and instead at the wooden doors that served as the entrance to the chamber. Twilight could feel them staring at her.
"Your highness," Axiom started in his calm and placid voice, perhaps the voice of one that Twilight guessed had seen such tragedies several times before. "I gather that wasn't quite the most reassuring."
Twilight sighed. She didn't really want to address what she'd just seen. Not right then. The lingering emotion that the vision ended on was Scootaloo's joyful elation at having her mother with her, touching her; happiness laced with just a mild sense of confusion as Scootaloo's mother disappeared behind the blue blanket, Scootaloo's infantile mind unable to grasp that her parents were abandoning her. Maybe she thought it was a game. With the vision over, the pleasant sensation quickly eroded, replaced instead by Twilight's own emotional comprehension of what had transpired.
"I apologize," Archive blurted out as Twilight turned to face the Seers again. He looked surprised by his own exclamation, but he continued. "It took a while for me to fully grasp everything that whole moment entailed; I was mostly just keying in on the discussion about her being able to fly, but as soon as I heard their voices, I knew exactly what was coming next, and I just kept letting it play out..."
Twilight opened her mouth to quell the babbling Archive, but Axiom beat her to the punch. "Archive, there's hardly a need to apologize," he said. "Now, at least Twilight knows that Scootaloo can't fly."
His unvarnished phrasing stung the princess. "Yet," she added. "She can't fly yet."
The Seers, the sleeping Antenna naturally excluded, all grimaced and looked at each other. But they didn't say anything.
"I mean, I haven't done any research on it," Twilight continued, "but if Scootaloo's mother stopped with the steroids as soon as she found out about the foal, then though Scootaloo's wing growth might be stunted, she's still growing and—"
"Princess Twilight, sweetie?" Atlas began timidly, then appearing completely terrified as Twilight stopped speaking to look at her. "We... we have seen this happen before."
"Seen what happen before?" Twilight asked.
"What these sorts of drugs can do to foals. Unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies..."
"And?"
Perhaps Twilight's request for clarity came on too strongly, because the indifferent Axiom answered in Atlas' stead. "There have been cases where ponies of all types have regained full use of their races magical traits, but they are rare. Exceptionally rare," he added for emphasis. "Archive, in all of our time working together, how many ponies do you remember that recovered completely?"
Already feeling put under the spotlight for the unfortunate recollection he presented, Archive looked even more uncomfortable when he spoke. "Seven," he whispered hoarsely.
Twilight's ears drooped as she stared at her hooves against the crystalline floor. How many hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, of ponies had the Seers observed? Yet only seven made a full recovery. Twilight was a firm believer in probability and mathematics, and calculating even the low-end of "total ponies cataloged" in conjunction with "ponies on steroids" variables, the odds were low. Exceptionally low, just like how Axiom had said.
"I grant you, the possibility isn't very high," Twilight said, "but there is a possibility, isn't there? If I could just see into her future, just to know for sure—"
"No can do, Princess Twilight," Appear interrupted her this time, looking remarkably less intimidated than Atlas had been. "Princess Celestia made it very clear that we cannot show an Alicorn's future, or those with a strong emotional attachment to them. Not after what happened with her."
The gears in Twilight's head immediately started spinning. "Something happened with her?"
"It did, and it's entirely her business," Appear replied warily.
"Of course it is," Twilight said dismissively, "but you must have either shown her her future or somepony's future that was close to her in order for her to issue such an edict..."
Axiom sighed deeply; he must have known what Twilight was angling towards, but she didn't let his reaction stop her.
"...which means that you can show me, you just won't." Twilight finished with a dissatisfied huff.
"You of all ponies understand the importance of doing things by the book," Axiom told her, "and you also have the rare experience of trying to manipulate time to convey a message. Or try to, rather."
Twilight remembered the instance he was referring to with a blush on her face. After discovering the spell, she was visited by a much bedraggled future-self who warned her about her future... only for Twilight to inadvertently bring about the exact same circumstances that inevitably found herself becoming a much bedraggled nervous wreck.
"The future accounts for itself being seen, if that makes sense. Somehow, someway, and paradoxically, it does. Perhaps it's to do with the nature of expectations and beliefs, self-fulfilling prophecy and the like," he mused. "In any case, if you don't like what you see — and if the odds are anything to go by, you likely won't — you will inevitably try to change the future, and what you've seen will inevitably come to pass as a result despite your efforts to the contrary."
"W-what if I didn't do anything?" Twilight pleaded, knowing herself how lame that sounded.
"You couldn't not do anything," Alumni answered simply. "You and Princess Cadance are both princesses by virtue of your abilities to connect with others. Friendship and love, and caring for those close to you is a central part of who you are. Even just knowing what would, or wouldn't, happen and watching it play out would drive both of you to be... very unhappy."
"It's not about an event though," Twilight cried, "it's about who she is! Flying is a part of her, as both a pony, and as a pegasus! She just wants to know whether she'll ever be normal!"
"Normal?" Appear chuckled to himself. "Twilight, I'm blind. She," he gestured clumsily with his hoof towards Atlas next to him, "has zero, I mean ZERO, sense of direction."
"It's true," Atlas giggled, "I'd get lost in my own bedroom. I actually have been..."
"Alumni has pretty much no sense of who he is, doesn't even know who we're talking about now," Appear continued, and Twilight noticed that Alumni's face seem oddly blank at his mention, giving credence to Appear's statement. "Antenna has been asleep since she was born, Archive's short term memory is about as potent as a goldfish, and Audile..."
The pink pony waved cheerfully at Twilight, her marker and whiteboard obvious tokens of her inability to hear or speak.
"...Well, you can tell that much I'm sure. The only normal one here is Axiom, and as often as he spends with us, even that's debatable. So what is normal anyways?"
"I'm so sorry," Twilight uttered, shaking her head in disbelief. "Such a poor choice of words, I-I don't know what I was thinking..."
"Don't worry about it," Atlas offered gently. "We've all come to terms with our quirks and oddities. I know it seems hard to accept, but in time, Scootaloo will see and accept herself for how she's meant to be, airborne or not."
The platitude was meant to be a comfort, and by all accounts, it was a well-reasoned and effective one. But the mentions of acceptance and time conjured a notion in Twilight's head. A small, niggling, and potentially very uncomfortable notion.
"What did she see?" she asked, looking towards Archive.
"What did who see?" he asked in return, face awash in confusion.
"Who? Scootaloo's mother, I meant." Twilight tried to answer as gently as possible despite her frustration at Archive's memory issue.
"Scootaloo's mother..." There was a tingle in the air as Alumni closed his eyes in concentration, no doubt psychically channeling the relevant information to his friend. Archive's eyes widened almost immediately, and he glanced around nervously. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"Axiom said that the future, somehow, accounts for itself being seen. Does that mean that it becomes fixed? Inevitable?" Twilight pondered aloud.
"I did say that, Twilight," Axiom spoke with a sudden coolness to his voice. "But if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, I would ask that you please strongly reconsider before continuing."
Twilight knew the implications of what she was edging towards, but she carried on nonetheless. "Archive, please... you have to remember. What did you ponies show to her?"
Archive opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came forth. Twilight felt a compounding pang of guilt when she saw his increasingly anxious reaction, and lowered her eyes to stare at his hooves fidgeting upon his seat.
Axiom cleared his throat. "You've heard our gift, so to speak, being referred to in texts as 'the princess' blessing,' have you not?"
Twilight nodded her head slowly. Audile's marker squeaked as it danced across the whiteboard.
"But did you also know it has been called 'the princess' curse'?'"
The alicorn nodded again, turning her neck to view a much more somber looking Axiom. He already appeared to be older than the other seers, but the grim expression on his face seemed to exacerbate his age even more. "I was curious how that came to be," she admitted.
"We made a choice very early on to bestow our visions to the other ponies while they slept. Dreams are a much more preferable way to experience emotional highlights of another ponies life, rather than while they were awake and could potentially endanger themselves. You'll notice that you have found yourself inadvertently collapsed on the floor from your throne while they commenced."
"Right, makes sense," Twilight said with a blush.
"Now, thanks to Archive and his uncanny memory, we can recall the past without issue," Axiom gestured towards Archive with a hoof, "the future is much more tenuous. Remember how we were still seeing Scootaloo's surges of emotion from the present, more or less, before we stopped? Like the flag waving tryouts, and her recent fight? There's a lot more approximation when trying to view the future. For better or worse, we show both the emotional peaks... and valleys."
"You can't control it?" Twilight asked incredulously. "Or be more precise about it?"
"To an extent, we can; but the timeline... it becomes very compressed. Like a blink of an eye in the span of eternity. And there are a myriad of moments like those in a ponies life, your highness, and I mean that literally. Even moreso in a younger pony's life, when they still have yet to learn to properly harness their emotions. A glass of spilled milk, if you'll pardon the idiom, can be overwhelming for them! Aiming for specificity is like trying to parse a few droplets of water from the rushing water in the Whitetail Rapids," Axiom explained with a noted defensive edge to his voice. Twilight couldn't blame him, not necessarily. After hearing just how imprecise their foresight seemed to be, she didn't quite understand how they could function as the psychic advisors that had warranted such secrecy.
"We're good, but we're not that good," Appear added meekly, earning a small collective laugh from the room at large.
"What we used to do long ago, and what we've been doing very recently again, was call upon the talents of Princess Luna to help," Axiom said.
"Princess Luna?" Twilight tilted her head. "Why?"
"She watches over the night, but also over the dreams of all the ponies in Equestria," he explained. " When she was young, she very bravely offered to take what we would see; our visions of the future, the good and the bad, and sift through them to find the relevant parts relating to the ponies earning their cutie marks. She would use what she learned from us to create a pleasant dream much more... palatable than the barrage of moments we would show."
"I didn't know that Luna did all of that," Twilight said in awe. "That's amazing."
"She takes no small measure of pride in the task. She quite loves the role she plays in helping ponies earn a name that's befitting of their destiny, and giving their parents a joyful glimpse into their foal's future. Though she does so much less frequently now than.. before."
The princess understood. Nightmare Moon probably had zero interest in helping in such matters during her stay on the moon.
"Naturally, we couldn't call upon her Princess Luna in her state," Axiom continued. "Celestia tried to fill in at first, with what her sister taught about dreams, but it was too much for her. Her guilt and grief over her sister's fate on top of ruling over Equestria by herself... wading through our sorrows to come to find the moments of joy was not something she could bring herself commit to for long."
There was a tapping of plastic on plastic, and the collective of ponies in the chamber turned to look at the white board floating in front of the pink Audile's now obscured face.
"And she was REALLY tired!"
Twilight tried to chuckle at the gesture of levity with the rest of the Seers, but found herself faltering. It was difficult to imagine her idol being so overwhelmed, but Twilight could scarcely hold Princess Celestia's decision against her. Twilight must have worn her doubts upon her countenance, because Atlas very quickly offered her yet another platitude.
"She's not ashamed of it," she started, "and you shouldn't feel ashamed for her. She wouldn't want that."
"I don't, not at all," Twilight assured her.
"Good. Princess Celestia tells us that she often tries to stress to you that she's only a pony too, though you often seem unwilling to see her as such."
Twilight felt a hot flush splash across her face, and promptly changed the subject.
"So what exactly does all this have to do with Scootaloo's mother?" She asked hastily.
"This is where 'the princess' curse' comes into effect," Axiom told her. "For the next one thousand years, our visions were bestowed upon thousands ponies that asked to know of their foal's cutie marks each Newborn Celebration Day. Only, without Luna to help shape them into pleasant, hopeful, and inspiring dreams, the parents experienced the whole gamut of emotions."
Twilight's lip curled downward into a frown. "The good and the bad," she said quietly.
Axiom nodded solemnly. "If the foal's lives were to be fraught with hardship, the parents called our visions nightmares and warned others to stay away. The other end of the spectrum, predictably, did the opposite. It had a lot to do with economic stature, sadly; the more common working class was dissuaded from the princess' blessing until it was virtually forgotten, while the more well-to-do carried on with the tradition among themselves."
"Like my parents did with me and my brother," Twilight said, feeling another pang of guilt when she realized that she had really not wanted for anything as a filly.
"Not you," Archive piped up. "Just your brother. They would have gleaned very little about you anyways, given how early you bonded with Cadance. I believe that Twilight Velvet and Night Light were just more assured as parents after raising Shining Armor. Or perhaps they just wanted to be surprised. A lot of parents used to object to our knowledge on that basis alone. If you ever wondered, that might explain your more traditional family name compared to your sibling."
"I never thought to ask Mom or Dad about that before. I just sort of accepted it..." she trailed off, thinking again about her charmed home life that she had also taken for granted.
Perhaps it was his untold years of experience at seeing conclusions, but the remarkably perceptive Axiom seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.
"Your parents worked hard to provide for you two. Take pride in that. Self authoring and publishing books is no small feat," he said, referring to the alicorn's parents and their line of work. "Neither is becoming an athletics physician. And neither is becoming a Wonderbolt cadet. Or a real-estate accountant."
"You're talking about Scootaloo's family," Twilight stated glumly, reminded of Scootaloo's parents aspirations from the vision.
"Her biological one," he corrected her. "So, now that you know some of the potential pitfalls of the Cabinet of Seers, would you like to ask Archive what her mother saw?"
Twilight blinked and nodded her head slowly.
Archive bit his lip once more, and hesitated before he answered. "It... it wasn't good," he said plainly.
"Scootaloo has a rough lot in life, your highness," Alumni spoke up. "Being orphaned isn't good for a pony's self esteem, as you can imagine. Precocious as she is, she's often wondered why. What could she have possibly done being so young that made her parents reject her? And when her wings failed to grow like her pegasus peers, it compounded those thoughts even more." He paused for a second, a small, almost imperceptible current filling the room. Alumni turned to look at Archive, then to Axiom.
"...She," Archive said with a pained look of realization on his face, his eyes watering. "When she was at her lowest... she often wondered if her parents knew that something was wrong with her. If they knew that she would never fly, and didn't want the shame of having a daughter like that."
The room was utterly silent for a moment, but Twilight could feel it in the air. The faint prickling of guilt emanating from the shared thoughts of the Seers.
"And now to address your inference, Twilight," Axiom said with a sigh. "Scootaloo isn't alone in her train of thought. You think that because of the troubled life we showed Scootaloo's parents, that we pushed them to abandon her. That her circumstance is our fault."
That was, of course, what Twilight was thinking. She didn't mean for it to come across as accusatory as Axiom had stated, but perhaps the Seers could tell anyways. Emotions and feelings were their specialty, after all.
"It doesn't do to dwell on the hypothetical," Axiom told her calmly.
"And yet, she does, every single day. Haven't you ever wondered?" Twilight asked, her voice shaking. "If the future accounts for itself being seen, then her mother glimpsing Scootaloo's future sealed her fate, didn't it?"
"It's would be easy to make that assumption," Axiom said gravely. "It's a true chicken-or-egg paradox, isn't it?" He asked the question with genuine uncertainty, before his tone drifted back to that of a marked surety. "But it doesn't factor in choice. Scootaloo's mother chose to ask for the princess' blessing, yes. But she also chose to use steroids. She chose to go to that party, and she chose to—" he paused for a moment "—behave irresponsibly with Scootaloo's father."
"Yes, but—"
"But what she didn't choose, Princess Twilight, is to ever come back to her daughter. Neither of her parents did, not in the way Scootaloo had expected."
Twilight was sputtering incoherently. Her gambit to try and guilt the Seers into "fixing their mistake" was not going at all like she had hoped. And Axiom wasn't wrong about anything he was telling her. "I—but— who are her parents anyways?" Twilight fired off in desperation, eager to get something anything that would help.
Alumni opened his mouth to answer before a firm tingle pervaded the air.
"Does it matter now? What would you do if you knew?" Axiom queried.
Twilight thought that she had made great strides in communicating with ponies since her lonely days in the library, being able to use reason and logic to try and steer the answers to questions before she had asked them. But the countless years in Eres, vicariously living out the lives in countless other ponies... Axiom seemed to know just what to say to dispute her arguments. It was frightening.
"They haven't forgotten the filly they abandoned, I assure you," he said. "Her mother hasn't forgotten what curse she afflicted her daughter with certainly. They both made token gestures, but they both know it isn't enough. They both feel shame for their cowardice, but their fear of confronting their own 'mistake' is too great for either to overcome. Trust us, we know," he said all of this with a fierce quietude. "And finding them wouldn't help with her inability to fly. That's what you asked us about, wasn't it? Why should her familial woes be of concern to you?"
Appear coughed from his seat. "Hey, uh, buddy, maybe ease up a little?" Twilight offered him a grateful glance from her teary eyes before she remembered that he couldn't see it.
"This is why Celestia asked us to refrain from showing those futures," Axiom explained coldly. "Caring too much about the feelings of your subjects only complicates—"
"Subjects?" Twilight asked incredulously, her own fear and regret morphing to a pulsing anger. "Her name is Scootaloo. And do I care for her feelings?" She hesitated for only a second, doing her best to take stock of her emotional inventory as her temper flared. "Yes... Yes I do."
"Perhaps the emotional attachment in your relationship wasn't as one sided as you supposed," Axiom suggested thoughtfully, his acidity all but gone, replaced again by his soft and quiet demeanor. As if he had called Twilight's bluff just so she would admit just how much Twilight had grown to care for Scootaloo over the last few days. Twilight felt like a foal, and was not at all pleased about it.
"So what? Is that so wrong to want for her to be happy? To help relieve her of doubts that have plagued her since her 'precocious' foalhood, just like you said?"
"No," Axiom replied simply. "But becoming this concerned with one filly that asked you for help sets a dangerous precedent. Within one week, Celestia had to stop sorting through the feelings of ponies. Not just because it was painful, though it certainly was. But because she knew she couldn't stop all of them from hurting. And that hurt her, just like it's hurting you right now for Scootaloo."
He was dead on, and Twilight knew it. She knew she should have relented and accepted his answer. But she could see the look of disappointment on Scootaloo's face already. That the one favor she asked of Twilight couldn't be fulfilled. And the filly would go back to lamenting her tiny, stupid wings while still hoping beyond hope for that one day when they would finally do what they were made to do. All because these ponies refused to do her one small favor. And for what? Some centuries old rule? Celestia was just a pony, like she so often tried reiterate, and maybe this was just another mistake. Like a feedback loop, Twilight's thoughts perpetuated even more indignation. She could feel her anger floating around in the air, like a haze, trapped in the crystalline chamber, and desperate for release. Twilight obliged.
"She just wants to know if she'll ever fly!" she shouted, "it's not like the fate of the world depends on her knowing that!"
Then something happened. Her rage vanished instantly, replaced by the absolute definition of unfeeling. Like her emotions had been removed completely. She supposed she should have been frightened, but it was impossible.
"Not for all," a small female voice whispered seemingly from the air itself. It was quiet, soft, almost inaudible, yet somehow magnified to be positively deafening. "Not for all, but for some."
Then joy. Elation. Jubilation even! Every single feeling synonymous for 'happy' that Twilight and her plethora of thesauruses could muster exploded within Twilight at once. Her eyes tearing up, she could see the Seers staring at her in cheerful disbelief before the room vanished into the now-familiar blackness preceding a vision.
"What's going on?" Twilight asked with a stifled laugh, hoping that they could still hear her.
"It's Antenna," Axiom thoughts echoed within her, "she must want you to see something. Everypony, get to it!"
Five variations of "yes" sounded at once within Twilight's mind.
"Location is set, somewhere between Winsome Falls and Whitetail Woods. But goodness me, we're moving quick!" Atlas's voice chimed, "Appear?"
The blackness gave way to a brilliant blue, blinding Twilight's eyes. White clouds were blazing past her on the right as green forest blurred below her. But immediately in front of Twilight, outstretched before her, were not her purple forelegs. Instead, smaller orange hooves pushed forward, as if to try and pierce the sky itself. As fast as she was going, she very well could have.
Can this be? Is this—
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahooooooooooooo!" Scootaloo's voice left her mouth and joined the rushing of the wind as the vision's soundscape came roaring to life in Twilight's ears.
It is!
"She sure sounds excited, huh, Twilight?" Audile's voice sounded.
Scootaloo's wings buzzed frantically, ripping through through the air. She could feel pressure in her stomach as she soared above Equestria, the smallest hint of anxiety overwhelmed by the sheer ecstasy of everything else. She felt like the luckiest, happiest pony that there ever was!
Yes! Yes, Yes, Yes! She's flying! Scootaloo's flying, she's—
A very real thud against her very real chin interrupted Twilight's parade of celebration. The visuals went first, then the ceasing of the howling air was replaced by her own voice echoing the word "ow!" around the crystalline chamber. She was quite a ways away from her throne at the center of the room where she had started. She was also down on the floor, her chin smarting as she lay in an undignified heap.
"What happened?" She asked with a smile, the feeling of happiness still quite prominently infecting her despite her unflattering position.
Atlas giggled at the question. "You were celebrating right along with Scootaloo, Twilight."
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Thank you so much for the chapter
This story was one of my favorites
The chicken-and-egg paradox, next to Scootaloo. Um...
Congratulations on getting a new chapter out. *hugs* DOn't lose heart. I managed to finish Pony POV Series and you can complete this.
Ohh ohh ohh!!!! Yes!! Time for a reread.
...it's Dash holding her up, isn't it?
Congrats on getting a new chapter out! This is wonderful! Time for a re-read. Your storytelling skills are amazing.
Woot!! Recaught up and ready for more!
9384895
Or maybe Twilight.
Yay, new chapter!!!
I can't wait for more and I'm so proud of you for writing this out.
Yay! A new chapter. At this rate, the story may end before Scootaloo becomes a grandmother.
Teasing aside though, I am glad to see this story back in action. And I feel like a hypocrite for saying that, considering that I haven't touched Nighty Night Scootaloo in a while. But I have a few other projects that I'm working on. One of them is converting a fanfic into script format for a YouTube audio drama.
Unfortunately, this is not good news for Miss Scootaloo.
BETTER THAN CANON!
EDIT: Blah blah blah let's not try to guess plotlines in the comments sections, Isseus! Let the nice reader tell their story. Yes.
And that writer better write more soon or I'ma come and haunt them. 8 months hiatus shall not be allowed.
Still, gotta say, what a wild, emotional trip this story has been. I've had tears in my eyes a few times, but also the widest, dumbest smiles. What I like most is that despite hardship and bad times, Scootaloo is hopefully headed for a happy ending that she surely deserves!
I was imagining how Twilight's conversation might go...
This story is supposed to take place before Twilight's Kingdom, correct? If that's the case, why has it already been established that Twilight is the Princess of Friendship? I mean, I know that she has been that since she became a Princess, but that wasn't actually established until Twilight's Kingdom, where she discovered her role as a Princess. Even if the seers knew this fact, why didn't Twilight question that assertion?
Did I just find a continuity error?