80 Days 'Til the World's Farthest Shore

by Cynewulf

Magic and Timetables

The Traveler stopped her story abruptly.

I am unsure what I intended to do in that moment. Move closer, as if to comfort her? As if I could comfort her? Perhaps I wanted to be a little nearer the fire, chilled by her words or more rightly by the draft that is a feature of every building built near the Angbius Pass? Whatever I intended, she shivered and caught my eyes, arresting any movement I might have made.

“Things got harder from there,” she said slowly. Thickly. “Just… in general. Everything. We fell behind, we risked death from a myriad causes. We met and left many behind. Gaining the Gladios Pass, just a few days south of here? That took us enough gold to buy this little hamlet, and even then it seemed like the local strongman was tempted to kill us to get whatever we had left on us. My old clothes were lost to time and the weather, replaced twice. This? I got this on day thirty-one, when we crossed from the cold, dry steppe into the wet, frozen permafrost.”

I nodded dumbly. What else could I say? She looked so… so… I am unsure. Sad, I suppose. But what a weak word that is.

“I dreamt of those men dangling, legs kicking, for weeks. I think perhaps I shall see them gripping at the noose again tonight, each one in his own microcosm of agony. No air, no ground. Having lived his whole life with both in abundance.”

“I… I’m sorry,” I said, spinelessly.

She managed to smile at me. “You did nothing wrong.”

And yet I felt as if I had. As if I had tied them up, as if by merely living in my country I bore the weight of its violence upon my shoulders. It was and is a foolish thing. I was a fool.

“I know. But I am still sorry that it occurred.”

She sighed. “As am I.”

There was a moment where I wished fervently that I could reach out and do something. Anything. There are many moments and were many moments that I wished I could by mere touch or word mend some cracked thing, some wounded thing, but the times I can do so is rare. What might I have done? Is it a delusion to think that a light touch upon her shoulder, another soft word, might have changed anything? Or that she might have, what, cried? Released the avalanche of her sorrow?

And what did I know of that sorrow? What sorrow had I felt? It was isolated and I was small and it was vast and distant. The Princess was a name, the dead less than that.

“Anyway,” she said, coughing briefly before continuing, “the Princess…”

֎ ֎ ֎

The Princess. Let’s talk about her, shall we? Just for a moment.

While I collect myself.

Our Princess Twilight Sparkle, of fairest Equestria, was and is a woman out of time and out of place. In some ways, she seemed positively normal. Foreign though she was, she recognized and understood mundane things and spoke the common tongue with a decent Midlander accent, or at least a good approximation thereof, and her manners were impeccable.

Impeccable, but old fashioned. So much of what she did was anachronistic. One moment, acting almost like a modern woman of the new age, caring little for decorum and whether or not it was decent for a woman to do this or that. The next moment? Flustered over some liberty I or others have taken. Never angry, simply embarrassed. She dressed in the style of a century ago when I met her, and even thereafter when I tried to bring her into the new world she adamantly insisted on simple, functional clothing. I understood the appeal, to be honest. Only my own upbringing fed into my own mild interest. Mother insisted I dress the part of a noted man of the City.

She did not seem to mind spending money, only insisting that I keep detailed records which she then did not seem to find interesting apart from ensuring everything was orderly. At first, I put this down to a simple case of noble life—those who do not understand the value of money in relation to effort often have no appreciation for how it is spent. But I could not dismiss it as carelessness, at least not entirely.

For it was not simply money she seemed utterly disinterested in. She dressed for comfort and for utility more than for appearance, and placed little stock in appearance as a whole. If anything, she seemed either indifferent or ignorant to what sorts of things one knew a gentleman by, as if the whole concept was foreign to her. Which, I suppose, it was. To an extent.

There is so much I do not know, and I knew even less then.

What she cared most for was home, followed swiftly by magic.

In the days before the gallows, we talked of magic. In the days after, where we more often lapsed into a sad, burdened silence—or a weary silence, or a focused silence, or a companionable silence—we did not talk of magic as much. But in the days after, Twilight Sparkle began to teach me in ways she had not before.

I learned a branch of magic that she called telekinesis, which I will not show you here. What prestidigtation can do with illusions, Twilight and I did in truth. Every night, we worked. She spoke softly, slowly. Mostly she watched.

And I tried. I tried so hard to show her I could learn.

I just did not want her to think that I was baggage. Dead weight. I didn’t want her to think that I would fail her. Because, as we rode and walked alone on the northern roads heading for the great passes I realized that I had never really made many connections. I had acquiantances, but not friends. I had family, but I had become colder towards them—I had seen their foibles and imagined them as deep flaws. I had teachers and mentors, but even there with time to think it became easier to see how I must appear to them. Overeager. Nervous. Without personality.

But the Princess? She had everything I lacked. I did not wish her for a moment to wish for my departure.

Our routine we kept as much as we could, even in the heights of the mountains. I made or scrounged breakfast. We ate with light conversation and coffee, if I could manage it, and if she wished to ride or stroll with her hair braided I often obliged before preparing for travel. I led the way in the morning, being the one to handle the talking and the exchange of money more times than not. Twilight Sparkle was a wonderful woman, but she was culturally blind. Lunch, and then more travel. When we stopped, I found or made dinner and then magic, conversation, and then bed. When we were in inns, and she would bathe, I often sat beside the door and talked to her about small things, nothings really, and helped her dry and brush her hair. I didn’t have to do these things, but I found I wanted to more and more. I liked being useful. I liked being on top of things.

Our journey called for us to make the journey in eighty days. Do you recall that I left off how my Princess knew where to go? Surely that’s been a sticking point.

Well. It was for me as well, though I wished not to say anything. She had pieced her route together from clues in the book I had found.

When I heard this I despaired of success. Finding a myth based on clues from a book of lore as old and frail as that one had been? It was a recipe for bitter, cold disappointment and little else. But I could not deny her. I had come this far. What else was left?

I did wonder, a few times in the mountains as the steppes and the snow gave way to jagged dagger points of rock, why on earth I had ever agreed. Probably, if I were honest, because of the mental image of Twilight Sparkle trying to haggle her price of passage with a caravan was almost physically painful.

Eighty days. In eighty days, we would hit the end of the window. The window itself for the well to be open was apparently only three days—days seventy-seven through eighty, she repeated over and over when we discussed it.

How do you know it will even be there? Let alone work, I asked.

In her reading, she had felt the resonances between her own experience and what she knew of the universe in its brilliance with what she read. “They” got too much correct for the well to be fake, she insisted several times.

But the clues to its location were so vague, I reminded her.

And every time she would roll her eyes and say something about “scanning” and “auras”. “Signatures”. I was not entirely sure what she meant. In theory, it was possible to feel magic being used. One could even actively search for magic-in-use or active enchantments, but to just… to somehow find magic not being used? Dormant or passive magic?

Twilight Sparkle, as I’ve said, was not one to play by the rules as I knew them.

But I said that magic was her second priority, did I not? In reality, one thing lay beneath all of Twilight Sparkle’s thoughts and deeds so far as I knew them. That one thing was home. Her home, her Equestria, the denizens of that land that she knew and loved. She talked of them and their world every night, usually at my prompting.

I would say—tell me, Princess, a tale of your land.

And she would. I heard dozens. I had gathered that her country was ruled by two sisters already, but she told me of their natures and habits. I learned that the eldest who rode or ruled the sun—her command of our language would falter from time to time—loved taking tea in the royal gardens and taught her student in her private quarters. She told me in quiet tones of the younger sister, who ruled the night and who cast the stars like diamonds into the waiting embrace of the sky. How she would delight in her own music and in the offerings of her subject’s: music, song, art, all brought by their creators to be shown in the galleries of Eveningtide.

The Princess told me about the little town where her mentor and liege had sent her when she’d become an adult, and of the great magical evils which she faced. Of friends that she sorely missed.

She described her students to me, half a dozen at least. In her eyes I could see much the same look as sat in the gaze of my own teacher, and in those times I felt very small.

Some travelers are moved by promises of profit, or by the promise of grand sights to see and splendid food to eat. Some travel because they had to, because something terrible lay behind. To escape an old life, to find a new one, to seek out some secret, or just to wander. I’ve seen so many travelers, and I’ve seen as many reasons. I had my own. But hers were bordering on monomania.

Home. Home. Home. It called to her.

I asked her once how she had come into our land, half humoring her and half wondering what strange tale she might tell me.

And she stiffened and said, I do not wish to speak of it. Not yet.

And when I asked her, Princess, how long until you arrive at home?

She told me, too long. It has already been too long. The day I left it was too long. When first I stepped off the shore, I lost so much and only now do I realize it, here in your world.

I was never sure exactly what to think about all of it. I’ve given you the impression that I believed her with all of my heart, but that was not true. At first… at first I believed her in the way one believes in a hand grasping down to pull you from danger. It was a mixture of necessity and confusion to believe in her bizarre story, for if I did not then I had nothing. With every conversation, I found her farther and farther ahead of any scholar of the magical arts any nation of earth can muster. I remember how, even before we had left, she had talked casually of ninth order transmutations. You can be easily forgiven if you do not know what that means, for many do not. Few have succeeded in even wrapping their limited faculties around the almost surrealistic thinking required to think on the molecular level in such a way as to competently perform such magic, and yet to her it was simply another topic.

But on most days, I think that I humored her more than I believed. The alternatives did not seem very compelling, usually. Madness? She seemed remarkably lucid, though I confess I know little of the budding arts of Psycho-theoretics that so fascinated my peers. If she were a charlatan…

I did think it, a few times. Even as I enjoyed her tales around our fire on the road, or sitting in a tavern bedroom, occasionally she would claim some grand thing and I would resist the urge to scoff. Magical artifacts that draw their might from bonds of affection? For that matter, raising the sun and guiding the moon? Myth and legend, obviously. A tale told to ensure the loyalty of the masses, surely. I expected any moment for her to smirk and reveal the truth of the matter, yet all the while she remained earnest.

The days I believed her, I wanted so badly to see the world that she saw when the far-off look was in her eye and a fey mood was on her. Other days, I wanted only to keep her safe and sound and be there at the end, whatever it was we found. And many days I did think we would find nothing, or even worse than nothing, a forgotten ruin with no power that destroyed even the illusion that the truth could be found if only one returned.

But, where has the time gone? Funny, I asked myself that upon the road many times. We made good time until the brigands, you see, but afterwards the roads grew less cared for and soon there were no stone roads for carriages. There was only the old horse trails, and then the mountains.

We lost a week on the first pass. Finding a guide, hiring said guide, going at that guide’s leisurely pace… and it got worse as time went on.

We hired horses eventually. The Princess was never very comfortable with riding, for all my attempts to teach her better horsemanship. I suppose some never grow accustomed to it. Or, if I am honest, it had something to do with her strange origins.

Those horses carried us the forty seven days we spent in Imperial territory. They trotted through towns and galloped hard from shouting rebels asking what cause or house we served. They bore packs that grew increasingly light as time went on.

Near the Empire’s northern frontier I lost my books to a spectacular blizzard. My horse, who I’d named Elara, fell out from under me and slid down a snowdrift and into a small ravine. Only fortune kept me from falling with her, and fortune came in the form of Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Equestria. My lady fell more than leapt from her horse, stumbling after me in the snow, and with a great pull of her “telekinesis” she ripped me from the saddle. Yet it was almost not enough.

I remember hanging there, clinging to the ledge, clawing at the snow. My hands burned, as if my futile fists clung to hot coals. My legs burned, my chest burned. I felt hot, and all around me was whiteness and whistling—no, howling—wind. Nothing met my eyes at first but the bland, gray and white sky, blank with a thousand thousand swirling, dancing dervish-snowflakes. I thought, very clearly and calmly, that this was it. I had come far—forty two days, at that point—but this was the end. I could go no further. Whatever was awaiting my lady at the end of her trip, I would not see it. And I hoped, I fervently hoped, not for salvation but that it might be painless.

I said that I humored my lady as much as I believed her, did I not? Yet, for a moment, as in my confusion and pain I waited for my grip to finally give, I felt suddenly light. I thought at first that I had died and simply not noticed. I let go, puzzled, and I did not fall.

I flew.

I dipped, just for a moment, and then was raised. My body glowed violet, and when I crested the ridge, I saw her. Twilight Sparkle, her eyes aflame, raising me as if from the grave itself to set my unsure feet on solid ground. When she let go, I stumbled forward and caught myself on burning hands and simply… stared at the snow. I’m unsure what I said. It was all the rush and excitement, but I remember that she thought nothing of her power to lift and manipulate matter even then. It was merely another tool to her. She was concerned for me.

I was concerned for her.

I believed her, from then on. I had to. Because I had almost died, and she had saved me. You’ll find this out one day. Or you won’t, how should I know? But if you do, you’ll understand. IT didn’t matter if she was mad or a liar. I would follow her wherever she went.

And I did. I followed her all the way to the End.

Comments

[horizon]

I believed her, from then on. I had to. Because I had almost died, and she had saved me. You’ll find this out one day. Or you won’t, how should I know? But if you do, you’ll understand.

I hope you'll forgive an old pagan saying so — because I mean this sincerely, and with respect, and I don't want to be taken amiss — but I think there's more of (the Christian) God in this story's Twilight Sparkle than I've seen in many churches, and there's a spiritual sentiment buried in this paragraph in particular that I understand on a level difficult to articulate.

[Black_lightening]

7503328 let a new church be born. the church of twilight sparkle XD

in all seriousness though. i know exactly what you mean.

[PresentPerfect]

So this is an older Twilight? Interesting.

[Queensarrow]

7540332
Temple of Friendship. Someones ahead of you.

It's actually an omake type thing from another story

[Seraphimus]

And yet I felt as if I had. As if I had tied them up, as if by merely living in my country I bore the weight of its violence upon my shoulders. It was and is a foolish thing. I was a fool.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

I believed her, from then on. I had to. Because I had almost died, and she had saved me. You’ll find this out one day. Or you won’t, how should I know? But if you do, you’ll understand. IT didn’t matter if she was mad or a liar. I would follow her wherever she went.

And this is a line with such power. Something I understand very dearly from both sides.

[RoyalBardofCanterlot]

Seeing Twilight through the narrator's eyes makes her seem so mysterious and powerful. I wonder how she left Equestria?

[Cynewulf]

9861229
this may sound flippant, but: she walked.

[Mr Swanky Hat]

9861232

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

[The Scarlett Mare]

Absolutely breathtaking
I'm having a blast reading this dramatically out loud