Goodbye Horses

by A Hoof-ful of Dust

Goodbye Horses

Another taxi buzzed past them in the street, eating up part of the climax of Babs' story.

"--And so I told him, you best step off, we out!"

Apple Bloom could stand it no longer.

"So Babs," she asked over the traffic, "what's being a stylist like?"

Babs hadn't said one word about her new cutie mark, a shiny pair of fancy sparkly scissors. It was like she didn't even know she had it.

Maybe she didn't, with the look she was giving Apple Bloom.

"Huh? A stylist?"

"Y'know? That cuts manes?" She mimed taking scissors to her hair with her hoof.

Babs glanced around at her flank. "Oh yeah. Yeah, I could see how you mighta thought that from the letter I sent," she said, her Manehattan accent turning her words almost into da letta. "Nah, those scissors are for cuttin somethin else." Dose scissas.

"Like what?" Apple Bloom asked. They looked like they wouldn't be good for cutting much else. They were kinda weird, but maybe you had kinda weird tools to work with if you were into fashion and style and stuff. Rarity certainly did.

"Lemme show ya." Babs paused to open up her saddlebag, where she retrieved a pair of scissors that looks similar (but not quite identical) to the ones on her cutie mark, and a knotted tangle of what looked like shimmering yarn. It came in all colors, everything you could find in a rainbow and then some, and trailed back into her bag. It seemed like it might go on in there forever.

"What is that?"

"The Weave of Life," she said, like that explained everything. "Well, a part of it." Paaht.

"What's--"

But Apple Bloom was cut off by some passing pony bumping into her from behind. If that had happened in Ponyville -- which was rare, but sometimes the marketplace got crowded -- she would have received an apology even before her breath was knocked out of here. Instead, the pony that knocked into her -- an unshaven stallion wearing a knit cap -- barely broke stride and barked at her: "Outta mah way, kid!"

"Watch where ya walkin, ya bum!" Babs yelled after him, but he was already halfway down the block. He probably didn't even hear over the traffic. "You aight?" she asked Apple Bloom.

"I'm fine." She adjusted the bow in her mane. "But what's that thing you've got? And what does it have to do with your cutie mark?"

"I'll show ya." A grin spread across Babs' face that Apple Bloom wasn't entirely comfortable with. "Lemme just... there."

She had fished a reddish-brown thread out of the pile, one that appeared to be connected to the mass of the tangle in only a few places. Babs made a couple of quick motions with her gleaming scissors, snip snip snip, and the thread fluttered to the pavement, freed. Its color faded, and it blended almost seamlessly with the sidewalk.

"And, just watch." She indicated to the rude pony halfway up the street.

Apple Bloom watched.

And the rude pony was crushed by a falling sofa.

It had fallen out of one of the high-rise apartment windows with a spray of glass. A young earth pony with a backwards cap on poked his head out of the broken window and said, "Oh man, oh dude, are you okay there dude?" but it was plain to Apple Bloom, even from this distance, that the dude was not okay. Two other walk-bys stopped and rushed to lift the sofa off him, one of them asking the other, "Is he...?"

"Uh-huh," Babs answered as she packed away the thread and scissors, although only Apple Bloom heard her. "He's dead."

"Dead?" she gasped, watching the flow of hoof traffic divert around the sofa, the two helpers, the colt and his friend who had bolted down the stairs and off the stoop, and the body. "But... but..."

"Like I said," Babs said, sounding as unconcerned as the rest of the travelers looked, "it's the Weave of Life. Everypony has a thread in it, and they're all wrapped up together. And when you cut one out, bzzt, that's it, yer outta the game."

Apple Bloom stared at Babs. A cold feeling was spreading from the pit of her stomach. Another pony nudged their way past her. She barely noticed. "You did that?"

"Well, me an the scissors, yeah."

"Just because he bumped into me?" She couldn't believe what she was saying. She couldn't believe what was happening. It was like another bad dream.

Babs shrugged. "Well, no. Not just that. He was probably a putz anyway, his thread was only tied in a couple-a places. He was probably on his was to jump off the Hooflyn Bridge or somethin."

"You can't know that... he might've had a family, or, or..."

She shrugged again. "Not much of one. Come on, fuggetaboutit, there's this calzone place a few blocks from here I gotta show ya."

And then she started walking, like it was normal to just kill ponies by cutting a magic thread.

Apple Bloom followed Babs in silence past a few buildings, past the sofa and the commotion and the corpse. An ambulance had arrived at the scene. Babs muttered, "Shoulda called the coroner instead." Da corahna.

When they were at least a block away from the accident (was it really an accident, though?), Apple Bloom felt brave enough to speak again.

"So... how do you decide who... um, how do you pick?" she asked tentatively.

"It's easy enough. You just gotta pick away where the Weave gets messy. Keep it clean. Ain't nothin to it."

"But, who put you in charge of it?"

"I dunno. Who put Princess Celestia in charge of the sun?"

Apple Bloom paused in her step a moment, then had to trot to catch up to Babs. "That's not the same thing."

"Yeah it is. The sun's gotta come up. Ponies gotta die. Somepony's gotta be in charge-a all that."

"But, why? Why can't it be, y'know, natural?"

Babs stopped and looked at her. "This is natural. Nature don't give a rat's if ya young or old or if ya lived a good life or a bad one. Nature don't care. You don't matter to nature. None-a us do."

"What happens if you just stop? What happens if you throw the scissors away?"

Babs shook her head. "Can't do that. In the end, every thread's gotta be cut to make room for somethin. Yours. Mine. This guy," she said, indicating a passing pony with a tie, who swiveled his head around to glare at her.

Apple Bloom looked at the scissors of Babs' flank, remembering the hungry way the real item had cut surgically into the thread, and how it had drained of its color once unconnected to the other living threads. "What do you think comes after?" she asked, and swallowed. "After you cut a thread away?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe a new thread starts in the Weave. Maybe whoever died goes to a higher plane of existence that we can't comprehend with our limited brains, and they understand why they did the things they did in life and they're free to explore wonders of the universe that we'll never see even in our most deepest dreams.

"Or maybe they just become worm food. Who knows. Come on, the calzone place is right up here!"

-/-

Apple Bloom was in a fog all the way back to the Crusader's clubhouse.

"How was Manehattan?" squeaked Sweetie Belle.

"And what about Babs?" asked Scootaloo. "Does she like being a mane stylist?"

"It was great," Apple Bloom lied, "and she likes it fine."

Author's Note:

"Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus, a rather eerie and existential song, is better known as "that song from The Silence of the Lambs that Buffalo Bill dances to".

Comments

[Ethereal Shadow]

Yep, I like this.
But something is nagging at me all the same to think about Hercules by Disney, the grim reaper from folklore and a TV show about how a girl died by a falling satellite and came back as one among many others popped into my head for this story.
I can't imagine as to why.

[Foals Errand]

...Wow. Can't say much more then that. Brilliant.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Anybody else having problems actually giving this a rating?

Anyway, interesting take on such an old myth. Really think Babs should have ascended if she'd gotten that type of duty/power, but that's a nit-pick. Her just being the chosen wielder of the scissors and weave makes sense.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Babs the Norn? I love it. Though the idea of giving a child, especially a child who's been bullied, power over death seems kind of worrisome. Still, Babs wouldn't have gotten that mark if she couldn't use her abilities responsibly. Or so I hope.

Still, I do love the idea of earth ponies and their magic being intimately tied to the cycle of life and death. Thank you for a look at some of the implications of the concept.

[silvadel]

So what happens if you cut that thread? Points at Celestia's....

[i_am_the_jam]

Or Diamond Tiara's...

[Norm De Plume]

6254542

The show you might be thinking of is Dead Like Me, where the girl in question was killed by a falling toilet seat from the Mir space station. (She's not thrilled with that indignity.)

Not bad, although if there's a pony to cut, there should be ponies to spin and weave, shouldn't there? (Oh dear, the Manehattan CMC branch is all Fates)

[berrytone]

I love your stories

[nightwalker]

Certainly one of your interesting dark stories. I love how Babs just views it as a job. And yeah, it does remind me of Dead Like Me, exempt the protagonist enjoys her work (so far).

[QueenMoriarty]

I notice that sometimes you write Babs's lines with her accent, like 'none-a us', but other times you write the Manehattan version outside the quotations and put normal English in its place. I'd suggest going full Manehattan on her voice.

Otherwise, good story, very creepy.

[A Hoof-ful of Dust]

6254824
It was probably the new system that hides the rating before a story has 15 votes.

6254971
Well, death is a little capricious and chaotic. There's not really much reason to it. I think the threads kind of govern themselves, there just has to be someone to do the actual physical work of trimming away the deadwood.

6255177
You'd have a pretty hard time cutting through it. And it'd probably make big parts of the rest of the tangle fall apart. Best not to mess with that one.

6254542
6255401
Dead Like Me was amazing for the first season. Executive meddling turned it into being just run-of-the-mill quirky television, though. Like a lot of shows that existed prior to Netflix and the after-effects of television like The Wire, it was ahead of its time.

Also, I'd forgotten about the Manehattan branch of the CMC; maybe they are the other Fates. I did imagine there are ponies to weave and measure out there, but that Babs didn't know them.

6256969
Suggestion noted, but I do plan on leaving her accent the way it is; the separate italics are for words that are unusual, that would break the flow if they were written phonetically. Not the way I'd always handle an accent, but for something short where there's supposed to be some distance between one character and another, it seems okay.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

6259105

It was probably the new system that hides the rating before a story has 15 votes.

Oh~h, so that's what happened. Thanks for the info, I was starting to wonder if I'd missed something and apparently I had.

[QueenMoriarty]

6259105 I suppose for the sake of flow that's a good way to handle it.

[felisimar]

Wow, it is certainly an interesting idea.

[PoneFanatic]

Well then.

[Mother3Forever]

...That's...wow. Babs is apparently gifted with Shinigami Eyes, or something similar...only instead of just WATCHING....she has to be responsible for it.

[Enduring Man-Child]

This is the second Babs'-sinister-cutie-mark story I've read in just the past few days. Is this going to be a thing?

Omnipinkie will stop her!

[Friendship_is_SpongeBob]

That kinda reminds me of the Three Fates in Greek Mythology. Actually, that EXACTLY reminds me of the Three fates in Greek Mythology. Babs is a Fate? Who knew?

[Friendship_is_SpongeBob]

6260409
Mmm-hmm. Yep. You JUST read that. I know. Hard to believe

6254531
Me too!!!!! It's different from anything else I've ever read.

6255177
.....
Oh god.

[North]

Wow...I have to applaud Babs. If I'd had that talent, I would probably have gone full-blown Kira mode by then.

[Fluttercheer]

Wow, very interesting idea! There are only two submissions for this WTGs (three if my attempt to write something for it wouldn't have failed ), but at least the niveau is very high.
I wonder where Babs got the Weave of Life? That's the only qualm I have with this story. She must have gotten it from somewhere.
Did she find it and cut out a part of it out of curiosity, a pony nearby her died and then she got her cutie mark? And if it was like that, how did her destiny ensure that the weave would find it's way to her?
That story leaves a lot of open questions. Which is usually not a bad thing, but I think this story would profit from it if these questions would get explained.

[Fluttercheer]

6255360

CUT IT!

6281875

If it makes Equus a better place..... I'm sure it would be without the two terrible bullies.
*cuts the threads of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon*

[20 Percent More Brony]

Welp, this story earned its dark tag.

[Anchus Definy]

Goodbye hores

[PresentPerfect]

what in the hell @_@

[Themaskedferret]

Oof, that's a beautiful and spooky one.

[StubobNumbers]

Look up the tv series "Dead Like Me". I recommend it.

[Mockingbirb]

HA HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHA
I guess I just convinced someone that I have a sick sense of humor.