Mark of the Hourglass

by Starsong

Worlds Apart

I was not in the Ponyville that I remembered. I should have recognized sooner when the laughter had gone from the air. How the very nature of magic seemed to twist and fall into a perverted state of being. No. There was nothing evil about this. It was just that we happened to be in the wrong place, the wrong time.

Rainbow Dash had urgently pointed us towards Canterlot. Or I should say, where Canterlot used to be. The entire mountain and surrounding countryside looked as if someone had taken a once beautiful painting and ripped the canvas clean open. There was void and white and tendrils of what remained of reality. While before we could only see the strange effects of this phenomenon, now, it was crumbling before our very eyes.

“They can't be gone.” Rainbow Dash scowled. “They have to be there somewhere in that mess of.... of...”

“Rainbow,” said Twilight. “Don't. Stay here. I can fix this. I can come up with something...”

Rainbow Dash whipped about. “Can you? I believe in you Twilight, but if you can fix this, then I need to go and find the princess. And Fluttershy. If they're out there somewhere, suffering... if something happens to me... then that just means I expect you to bring us all back.”

“There's got to be a better way,” said Twilight. “You can help me...”

“Help you what? Sort books? Twilight, I don't understand much of magic to begin with. This is way beyond me. All I know is that someone needs my help. I'm going to do what I know I can do...”

And she turned to face the cerulean sky. What could she do with her wings alone? What was she thinking? But then, I imagine that in the same situation, I'd want to do the same thing. Go where her friends had gone. Where they might be trapped and alone. And maybe, just maybe be able to help them. That's the kind of pony I'd like to be.

“I'm putting my faith in you, Twilight,” said Rainbow Dash. When she looked back there were fresh tears in her eyes. “When all of this is over, I bet Pinkie will throw a big party for us all.”

Twilight forced a smile. “Alright, Rainbow.”

Rainbow Dash vaulted into the air. I could feel the force of her wings as she shot towards Canterlot, or what had used to be there. I could see her body split and refract into every shade of color, and then form again. We didn't see her cease to be, or perish, so much as shrink on the horizon until there was nothing left. She could have been fine, for all I knew.

Ponyville became more quiet. The occasional foal would peer out from a window and their mother would pull them back. But there were even less concerned parents and curious children around than there should have been. Flakes of reality were coming off all around us.

Twilight sat down on a center of grass and hung her head in thought. “The princess had time to tell me something. Something she thought would be useful... ah! Come on. We have to go back to the library.”

“Where else?” I managed to laugh. Someone had to. The space beyond Ponyville was starting to look an empty tablet. Blank fields of white and dust.

The inside of the library was in a surprising amount of disarray, in spite of Spike's efforts to stack and file the results of Twilight's previous excursion. As soon as we came in the door, the young dragon leapt on her leg and hugged on tight.

“Twilight! What's going on?”

“It's nothing, Spike,” said Twilight, but she didn't dislodge him. She lowered her head and pressed her neck against his. “Don't worry.”

“You've got that look that says something bad is about to happen,” insisted Spike. “I'm not going to go upstairs and sleep it off or anything. You're going to need an assistant, right?”

He shot me a look and I gave an amiable shrug. I was in no shape to play secretary. Twilight opened her mouth and closed it again, her motherly instincts deflected at first glance. Then she tapped her hoof. “Alright, then. You know the big hourglass upstairs? Bring that down.”

Spike raised an eyebrow and flicked off a little salute. “Aye aye, Twilight!”

He hurried off and the sound of shuffling and scattering objects began to reach us from above. Twilight mirrored them by sweeping the central table clean. I contributed, of course. All boys have the natural talent to make a mess, and so I descended with gusto, sweeping my hooves across books and pens and empty cups and everything in sight. Twilight tilted her head at me as the whole pile crashed to the floor.

“I have to help somehow, right?”

“You've provided at least one clue,” she assured me. “But I still don't get it. Why didn't I see anything at Fluttershy's place? Was it because you'd come into contact with the magic before? No magic is that powerful! What was Celestia trying to say... there are too many questions. I have to start at the beginning.”

She put her head on the table. Spike clomped downstairs, awkwardly carrying an hourglass at least twice his size-- a feat only made manageable by his draconic strength and his grasping claws. He waddled over and set it down in front of us with a thud.

“Anything else, Twilight?” he asked dutifully, wiping his brow,

“Just stay here,” she said. “I'll let you know.”

She tilted her head and grasped the hourglass, a beautiful spire of wood and glass, with the glow her magic and began to twist it. To reset it.

“When did this all begin?”

The hourglass turned. She released it with utmost care and the sand began to fall through the neck of the glass. We watched in silence as the grains fell. Before they could strike the bottom, they dissolved into silver light one at a time. I looked at Twilight, still casting her spell. Twilight stared back at me.

“What?” I wondered, but my voice was distorted. I couldn't hear anything even though she and Spike still spoke. The library seemed worlds away, mute, and the silver light leaking through the hourglass was wrapping around me now. It felt like a warm blanket, easing me to sleep after a long winter's day. I fought with all my might to maintain consciousness.

The library responded by shattering like a mirror, leaving me alone in an endless expanse of white.

“Twilight...?” I said, scared for the first time I could remember. My only company then was the distant echoes of my voice.

#

There was nothing that I feared more than that loneliness. Even being struck down by the lightning a few days ago would have suited me a bit better. Yet there I stood in the center of some comfortable void. No pain. No torment. Just the nagging feeling of comfort and sleepiness.

It had to have been trying to erase me.

And Twilight, what was she doing when I disappeared? Was she alright? Was that the spell that she had cast responsibie for banishing me? Maybe that was the problem... but no, she would have said something. She would have known somehow that I would have gone along with it. Even if it meant being faced with this.

She had to be out there, somewhere, trying her best.

“Twilight!”

I called again. The sound of my voice kept echoing in spite of the blank state of the world. Then kept calling back to me.

Twilight... Twilight... Twilight!

“What is it?” said Twilight.

I looked up. It was the middle of Canterlot, bustling with well-dressed ponies and a few bedraggled students. Twilight Sparkle somehow always managed to toe the line between both.

“Mfm...” I tried to speak, then realized that there was a freshly bundled book in my mouth. I offered it out and she took it, obligingly. “You dropped this,” I managed, with my mouth free.

She hadn't, of course, and wouldn't realize until later that it was my clever way of giving her something with little fuss.

“Thanks,” she said. “I'm in a bit of a hurry, though.”

“Mind if I walk with you?” I practically beamed. “I have to go there anyway.”

Twilight lifted an eyebrow. “Where? I haven't even said where I'm going yet.”

“The castle, right?” I ventured. Given her path, gait, and the time of day, it was fairly likely that she was going there anyway. And if I was wrong, well, no harm.

She smiled. “Yeah, okay. But just so you know, I'm not going to get you an audience with the Princess or anything.”

I cast my mane back and came to a slow trot. “Oh, no, I think I could do that if I wanted to anyway...”

Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes. We walked together, parting our way through the mild-mannered crowd as we went. Smooth paved roads. Marble steps. All leading up to the heart of Equestria.

She looked over at me and said something, her voice far away, eyes full of concern.

“I'm sorry?” I responded, tipping my ear up.

“You should be! It's your fault.”

I stared blankly at Twilight's friends, who'd managed to corner me alone in Sugarcube Corner. Somewhere in my stomach I felt the vertigo I should have associated with being whipped from one location to another. My decisions didn't feel quite my own, like I was watching my own life unfold. Was that because I was dead? Were these my lost memories?

“I didn't do anything,” I said, ears drooping. Clearly a mistake.

Rainbow Dash bucked me hard in the face, and would have done more to me, sprawled across the floor, if Rarity and Applejack hadn't held her back. “What didn't you do?” she spat. “If she wasn't trying so hard to impress you, she wouldn't have gotten broken her leg! She never tries to impress anyone.”

“'cept maybe the Princess,” muttered Applejack, but this did not help my case at all.

“What's the deal with you and her, anyway?” Rainbow Dash continued.

I blinked. A bit of blood seeped out of my lips from the kick, but the pain couldn't seem quite to push through to me.

“I know ya'll are a fine pony and all,” said Applejack, nudging herself between me and Dash, “but it might be better for everyone if you leave Twi alone for a while. You know what I'm sayin'?”

“I...” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can't do that...”

“Sure you can,” said Twilight, giving me an encouraging shove. “Stop being so negative. You're smarter than you think you are.”

Things got odder. I was a lot younger at that point. Barely more than a colt and I felt like I had shrunk a fair bit to boot. And then there were the books in front of me. Lots of books. The one open in front of me seemed to be sitting on a chapter about organic carbon. Chemistry. I looked at the other books. Math, history, literature... every topic imaginable sprawled across the library table.

“You want to go to the Canterlot college, right?”

“That's just for unicorns,” I sighed, shoving the book away. “It hurts my head to look at this much information.”

“You'll get used to it,” she assured me. “It is mostly unicorns that go to school there, yes, but you wouldn't be the first earth pony to pull it off. I said I'd help you, so I'm not going to give up! Now, what's the next question...?”

The scene shifted again. Then again. They started to come too fast for me to parse. Sometimes there was Twilight, and her friends, and sometimes there wasn't. A flood of emotion hit me like a wagon caravan to the face. Ponyville, Canterlot, Manehattan, Las Pegasus, Luna forbid. Sights, sounds, feelings, voices... days when our families had grown old and we watched them through our own fading gaze. Nights when we struggled for our lives. Times when we all went our separate ways and life went on. But they seemed to lead one place.

“Twilight...” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. I couldn't block out the images. I fell to my belly and held my hooves over my head.

“What?” she answered back in a myriad of voices, in every emotion. Joy, sadness, love, hate, amusement, anger...

“Make it stop,” I pleaded. “What do I do?”

“Just hang on. You can do anything you want to, right...?”

Could I? If she said so, maybe it was true. Maybe all I had to do was concentrate my thoughts on one time and place. But what...?

“Don't come back,” they said. All the Twilights.

But I was beyond reason at that point. I turned my thoughts and my imagination back to the moment where it had all began. I ran as hard as I could, and blocked out everything else.

Comments

[Triskadecaimè]

"I fell to my belly and held my hooves over my hands."
Perhaps you mean head?

Interesting story so far.