The Encore of Clover the Clever

by Ice Star

Prologue

Elysium cast one last glance at the fountain burbling in the alcove. The crystalline tunnels of her palace that integrated into the mountain like one coat of paint dripping and rolling onto another were made all the more beautiful by this piece. It was one of many scattered throughout Paradise Estate. These were the fountains of review, where she could see the less personal and powerful droughts of the memories of the dead. She did not have the memory orbs of her partner — as she still called them — at her disposal. She only collected the various copies of memories that her magical abilities allowed when a creature was judged as hers to keep. With Elysium, the psyche and collective experience of the living could be distilled into reusable draughts for viewing, and to be used over and over again in tandem with her fountains.

She loved to review the character of her subjects, even when they were those she hadn't spoken to in some time. To see their view in the water's spray with the rainbow of light and to hear their thoughts and words mixed with the burble of the water was as good as any invitation that she needed to see an old friend. And yet, Elysium was not watching the watery show of the life of any of the souls she called her friend. She was looking for somepony.

Somepony good enough.

A soul among souls who could fit what she had in mind.

A deep sight left her body. She stared into the empty hall, whose stone shelves and spaces were filled with glittering bottles of all shapes and styles, as well as destroyed and lost artifacts of life that had made their way to her. The mare was naturally a good finder as much as she was a judge of souls. She was the maker of the draughts of hope and overcoming that offered the judged their last chance for the self-realization that may have been deprived of them in life. Such an ambrosiac miracle elixir only could exist by her hoof and magic — and only in this realm. She was always one to treasure those who could be helped by it and welcome them into her eternal kingdom.

But lately, she needed somepony for something special. And no amount of memory reviewings or potions had shown her a soul fit for what she needed. None of her projections of light, her brews, or her spells had found anypony who had already died that could be suited for what Elysium valued most. That was the problem with the needs of immortals — when they could not help themselves, or each other, there was the chance that a mortal might do.

There were only all the mortals that had yet to be born and die to possibly fulfill her hopes — and the chance that such a mortal might never win the unpredictable genetic gambit to secure existence.

And her hope had an age limit.