The Last Dreams of Pony Island

by horizon

Nostalgia

Nostalgia

My most precious Rosetta:

"The Nightmares say that dreams cannot lie,
but they have never heard the siren song
of the dream of Myinnkyun."
Do you like it?
When I write my history of the settlement,
I think that must be the opening line.

The colony has let so many down.

The Princesses chartered Myinnkyun
to spread friendship overseas,
but all that came of that dream
was six foalish idealists
in a circle of mud-huts,
until Petal Pusher realized
that the Maregui Archipelago
lay outside Qilinese waters
but close enough to prepare
the poppy-draughts they craved.

"Friendship!" came the cry,
"Friendship and profit!"
And the scent of easy bits
lured hundreds into our box-trap,
until the trade of poppy-draughts
to the natives for gemstones
angered the Mooken,
tripping the trigger
and snapping closed the gates
of the city walls.

Myinn-kyun, they call this place,
pony-island, but we ponies
huddle within our cage,
waves lapping at our hooves,
staring at the impenetrable jungle
of the island proper,

dreaming of the profit
we were promised,
dreaming of the friendship
we're told we're spreading,
as our neighbors vanish
into the ocean
in the dead of night.

We are not being told the truth
about Peridot's death, I fear.
It is not that the Nocturne
did not have their reasons
to lure the loathsome shrew
to where the kelpie
could pull her from the docks,
but why would Peridot
trust a Nocturne enough
to follow one anywhere?
I think there is some pony
with a guilty conscience,
and if the entire garrison
is caught up in pursuit
of the kelpie responsible,
no justice will be done.

As disturbing as it is
to invoke a scion of the Dark Princess,
lest one of them listen and appear,
perhaps Myinnkyun could do with a Nightmare
to uncover the truth.

But then,
what would my own dreams look like?
Would they see me as I am,
noble chronicler of history,
unafraid to chase the truth
an ocean away from Equestria,

Or would my skeletons
come tumbling out
from a thousand closets:
that I married you for money,
that I sleep with stallions
on my many expeditions,
that I falsified a discovery
to discredit Deep Digger?

Would some traitorous voice
blurt out to my inquisitor
that I find all Nocturnes
abominations of nature
and judge the Dark Princess
for twisting the bodies so
of all three noble tribes?

Would they smile a dark smile
upon learning that secret
and arrange a reason
to cast the blame on me?

That is the problem
with dreams, you see:
a dream cannot lie,
but what lives inside
may have precious little relation
to the truth we are here to seek.

With my deepest love always,

Nostalgia.

Comments

[journcy]

Oh my god I just realized that Nostalgia is literally speaking to the reader in those last few lines.

That is the problem
with dreams, you see:
a dream cannot lie,
but what lives inside
may have precious little relation
to the truth we are here to seek.

That's us. Oh man. Oh man

[MrNumbers]

I haven't read the synopsis. I know nothing about this story other than I trust the author explicitly with my complicity.

And, having scrolled down the first chapter to type this, I know it's going to be poetry.

I feel a historical memento, a 'before', comment should be warranted. Right now I feel the closest I can to emotionally neutral, and I have an inkling that this is about to change very rapidly, so let's document my descent into Something Else together, shall we?

Let's cross this bright new Horizon together.

[Lurks-no-More]

Equestrian Opium Wars in the background?

[horizon]

6425182

6427949
Well spotted. There were a great many tragedies of colonialism, and one of the major themes of this piece -- Leitmotifs, if you will -- was the devastation of having good intentions devolve into a broken dream.

6425615

[Thought Prism]

After CiG's recommendation, I had to give this a shot. And I tried, I really did, but I couldn't even bring myself to finish this first poem. Poetry isn't really my favorite literary genre, not even close, and now I know why.

Poetry is a terrible way to convey a narrative.

Sure, it's artistic, beautiful, and calls forth emotion more readily than ordinary prose, but for stories it's just confusing and weird. I'm sure this actually is exemplary for a series of poems, though, so no downvote from me today.

[horizon]

Please lay off the downvotes of 6435840, folks.

6435840
People bounce off of stories for a hundred reasons, so it's fine that you couldn't get into this one -- I appreciate you leaving a comment as to why, and being judicious with your voting. Obviously, given that I'm writing this story, I disagree about poetry's ability to carry a story (and the other responses to your post cover why), but I think we can have a reasonable disagreement about poetry as an art form, if that's a productive conversation to have. Otherwise, thank you for at least giving it a try.

The rest of this comment is not directed at you, Thought Prism, it's just me thinking out loud:

I really wish I had a better understanding of the switch that flips in people's brains when you take what amounts to regular prose and throw an extra few line breaks in.

That's not a poetry-hate thing,
it's universal:
readers simply
parse text differently
when you format prose
like poetry
(as you can see here).

Pony Island was formatted that way explicitly to take advantage of that effect -- I wanted the presentation to leave readers a little bit off-balance, to feel a little abstract and ethereal to match with the dream theme of the piece. But if I knew how to trigger that effect without poetry, you'd better believe I'd use it, because I guarantee you (from personal experience, and statistical analysis of the many poetry projects and prose projects I've been involved in here) that my views for this story are down by a factor of 5x or more, simply due to readers seeing vertically formatted text and their brains slamming on the brakes.

[Bad Horse]

I'm not sure this chapter should be here. The opium-wars part is a vital addition, but that could be thrown into another chapter with just a couple of lines. The rest feels like a summary of the story, telling instead of showing. Plus it's in rough shape poetically. There are some good bits,

"Friendship!" came the cry,
"Friendship and profit!"
And the scent of easy bits
lured hundreds into our box-trap,
until the trade of poppy-draughts
to the natives for gemstones
angered the Mooken,
tripping the trigger
and snapping closed the gates
of the city walls.

but some that seem not to have been edited at all for meter or brevity, or to use poetic imagery:

We are not being told the truth
about Peridot's death, I fear.
It is not that the Nocturne
did not have their reasons
to lure the loathsome shrew
to where the kelpie
could pull her from the docks,
but why would Peridot
trust a Nocturne enough
to follow one anywhere?

[Dark Nightshade]

Nocturne? Nocturne is in this?