As Cutie as a Button

by Scrucee

The Dark Horse

Blue Button awoke from his slumber with a headache. Unlike the other long sleep periods he had, this one was not intentional in the least. A light in the distance seemed to draw his attention. It was of a faint yellow colour, dimmer than usual. Was he dreaming? Was he seeing things? His aching body refused to move for a moment, and his willpower did not resist for a while. He gazed at the beacon, sitting alone in the darkness, the empty space. The light grew dimmer and dimmer, and as it receded, so did his consciousness, until the light burned out. So did he. Blue was a light in the dark, alone in the cold, the only company to him being his remorse, his failure to be a pony with a unique destiny. Tealeaf and the others had probably left him behind, seeing no use in him, sharing jokes and tales of their exploits together, sharing lunch, sharing the fact they truly possessed talents that actually worked. Blue Button slept once again, quietly.

His dreams were no gentle solace to him either, as the stallion was haunted by the nightmare of the day he apparently "earned" his cutie mark. It was a glorious event in the main courtyard of the town of Cliffside. The day of the Summer Sun Celebration was being enjoyed greatly by the town's residents, especially Blue Button. The little colt had been popular among the other foals, for he was widely known to be considerate and easy to get along with. If a young foal had a problem, big or small, he would be the pony to come to. He was honest, open and gentle with a soft, sweet voice that could melt even the cold hearts of the adult ponies. Tealeaf was unfortunate enough to share this fateful day with him, Arion too. The two had been bickering over who was the more gifted in ancient Equestrian history of them, and such sparring between the two was not uncommon.

"Oh come on, you know it must be me Tealeaf. Mage Meadowbrook is one of my best fields of study. I even got top in the class for it!"

"That's not true and you know it!"

"Oh yeah? Says who?"

"Me, you great big dolt!"

"I can't even believe you passed that exam on modern spell casting..."

Blue Button noticed how the intensity of these fights were increasing as the two became older. Tealeaf would even think of Blue Button as a sibling over her own real brother at times. Blue's heart would ache in pain when his best friend would say that in plain sight or earshot of Arion, as it was tearing him apart. So he hatched a plan, a devious yet masterfully brilliant plan. Once he had collected up the supplies he needed from Mr Trimmer, the local merchant, he set them up in the courtyard and waited for the two bickering siblings to arrive at the allotted time.

Once they had come, he started building a great design he had made of a gazebo on the land in the middle of the town courtyard. The two siblings would wonder why he asked them to help him, and when they did, he would place plank in Arion's hoof, and nails in Tealeaf's, and would ask them to help him build the great project he had been planning on. Whenever they would express boredom, he would tell them "You'll see it when we have finished." over and over. The ordeal lasted until sunset, and Luna's moon had almost been raised into the misty night sky by the time they had climbed down and stood back to admire their combined work.
The pale glow of the moon rested gently onto the collective toils of the ponies. And at this point, Blue Button would tell his friends the words that he would remember to this day.

"You're my family, and each other's family. If we work together, we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. Anything...If we help each other, love each other, trust in each other and be true to each other, we're more powerful and more happy than ever before. We live forever, together."

At that moment, after placing Arion's and Tealeaf's hoofs together, after their heartfelt hug and their gentle tears of joy and forgiveness, a mark, a blue button, became his destiny forever, and a light brighter than Celestia's warming sun or Luna's shimmering moon on his once bare flank, for a second, just a second, was the most happy experience of his life, or so he thought.

That's where the problems began, and never ended. The colt's cutie mark was his life, his very being, so much so that he was even named after his destiny. His fate was tied to the mark. For many, many moons, the colt attempted to be talented. He would build a building on his own, but it would never stand, collapsing on top of him. Every time he would see a project crumble, his destiny would fall with it, into a black, foreboding abyss. He had even dyed a streak his hair the same colour as the image in order to further attempt to be closer to his destiny, to own it, to show it was a part of him, out of childish delusion or wishful thinking, but this, like any other attempt, also failed.

From past to present, this is where the agonising journey of the false mark had taken him. He was alone, in the dark, inside a mountain haunted by creatures surrounded by the population of a society based upon talents and spreading your gifts throughout all of ponykind. Truly, this was the end of Blue's miserable existence as a pony with nothing special about him other than a frequent lateness to work and an utter absence of a destiny.

Author's Note:

This chapter of our hero's story further details his past, and the events in which he was disappointed with who he was, and who he was meant to be. Make sure you read between the lines of this chapter, as the secret of the cutie mark is hidden in the subtext, waiting to be found.