The Encore of Clover the Clever

by Ice Star

Interlude Three

What I now know comes clearer than the ring of any morning bird, and through every memory cloaking me like dreams — even the ones devoid of all that is good and true. For now, I know that death is another chance, not a story's ending, and more personally I have been made of something carved just for me and more personal than any bell that could be hung in my heart in any dimension. Death offers an infinite future, as I shall be dead forever and am so close to gaining a forever-beginning at last. That is the stuff of this world of Paradise. I did not do what others did to me. When faced with being disabled and violated in many ways when I was too young to understand the ways of magic and of flesh, I did not make a cycle of my suffering. When I learned that my one and truest friend was in love with me in a way I could not understand or reciprocate, I kept her as my friend always. When faced with death by the windigo's magic, I made friends beyond my race and learned a spell that became uniquely my own.

All that was missing from me in life can be made whole here. Every memory of my life that contained cruelty still surrounds me with an intimacy greater than a bride's veil or my most ragged, well-worn cloak. I see them and recognize their wicked light — a concept I did not think could exist — and I their burdens ease themselves with the balms of soothing shadow. I am calmed by knowing that I have overcome every one of them, and that this journey through my being has shown me exactly who I am. In a world of gods, my atheism was a flaw, but I was as flawed as all mortals are and I still chose to do beyond what was good when the chances for my will to be exercised presented themselves. I refused to continue cycles of persecution. I did not assist Starswirl in the abuse of his other two Arcane Students — the godlings that both Elysium and I sense will have many adventures to come. I did not do anything that would allow the malice of his servant of the sparkling empire to spread to anypony, even if I never realized that my indirect gestures and refusal to engage still mattered.

Through the lingering love of Princess Platinum that I can now experience and know in a way that was never available to me before, I can see that Starswirl the Bearded did not destroy me. Though I had not the type of heart for romance, I still see that beyond the poisonous webs of castes, homophobia, and my own damaged psyche in life, I was somepony who was loveable. No matter what was done to me, I was the object of some of the most intensely heartsick pining from somepony who saw in me what I could not see in myself. I rejected a love I could not return from a place of authenticity, not prejudice.

Though I lived with disabilities that were forced on me, I tried my best to be generous with time and found myself unable to let matrices of social status cage my mind and rule it unwisely. With what little energy I had, I did try to make nice with both of the two godling sisters in the time that I knew them, though I was never their friend. I always knew that they were different from me and beyond my understanding, but I never bought into their existence as being those of freaks. I never treated anypony like a freak. Though I did not live long enough to have more than the most fleeting contact with the buffalo, horses, ponies of the south, and other creatures on the Eastern Continent, I never once let myself be swayed by the prejudice of species. Though I knew the Two Sisters more than most, I still never let myself find hatred or disdain for the Alicorns, who did not even have parents to sell them. I built Canterlote in peace and dealt with all of my friends in peace. I was the one who advocated the most for the breezies when old pegasus ways still had many of my feathered friends calling for them to be wiped out, claiming that they were too delicate to survive. I see now how right I was not to participate in showing any approval to the meetings that the Sun Sister has been inviting Platinum and the others to regarding conflict with our settlements and the buffalo. Though, perhaps my knowledge of Platinum will serve me well — she is aging and no war-mistress. As long as the Triarchy finds a way to fare without me, all will be well for Equestrians and buffalo alike.

With this re-experiencing of myself in all the glory I never knew I had, there is one last thing I can say: I am Clover! And at last, I am truly Clever!