To Bring Light to Eternal Darkness

by scifipony

Propriety

How I earned these? Really?

I did say I would answer any one question.

I never wanted to nor asked for nor dreamed of earning these. You don't ask for nightmares. It took plenty of work and cost me everything. The best place to begin telling the story of how circumstance destroyed the pony I was and hammered me into the pony I'd become, I guess, would be the day I read something I shouldn't have in public...

#

I trotted through the broken night with a quarter-bale of alfalfa and a bag of salad herbs in my magic. Night had lasted more than two days by then. It didn't bother me much because while my breath puffed as little clouds in the chill air, the scent of an impending frost smelled festive when combined with the wood smoke drifting lazily from the foundry chimney. Also, the street cloak that propriety demanded all mares wear protected me from the cold.

I'd seen far longer stretches without the sun.

My horseshoes clicked on the cobbled road that led from the earth pony caravan market through the center of town. As I approached the gnarled central posting tree, I saw milling stallions nattering away, their horns creating firefly orbs of white, gold, crimson, and emerald as they gestured and argued. Some wore heavy blue-cloth work vests. The elders wore purple or gold silk. Some resilient fellows wore nothing but their cutie marks. On days like today, I appreciated the warmth of my cloak; I appreciated it less on sunny days, especially after two days without night.

Somepony had enchanted the branch above the bulletin board to cast a brilliant white glow to illuminate a notice lettered on yellowed parchment. The four silvery diamond-studded darts that tacked the announcement to the wood certified it was endorsed by Queen Platinum.

I imprudently slowed. You see, I knew how to read and once you learn that trick it's really hard to control the magic. Words speak in your head unbidden, and I wasn't a shy filly to look away. Doubly cursed if you heard my Da talk about it: neither illiterate nor shy.

The broadside read, "This decree, endorsed by Her Majesty the Queen of Her Dominion of Unicornia, from the Collegiate of Mages, herein commands that a'noon of the coming day all unicorns with magic strong shall submit bodily to examination for thaumaturgy and predilection to matters celestial in the pressing matter of day and night."

I spotted further details in smaller print, but as I came to a halt to squint, somepony yelled, "You! Mare! What's your name?"

I glanced and saw a shadowed red-robed stallion step out of the night, a propoli, a member of the propriety police.

"Staring at stallions—" he continued, making everypony look at me.

I didn't bother to be outraged by the accusation. None of the stallions were older colts and none were cute; all males my age were in school or toiling in their father's wood shop, gristmill, or smithy. No. I bolted.

He hadn't expected that. Mares are raised to be timid. But timid is not in my nature, so I ran and he didn't give chase until I'd galloped down the first street. Ponies jumped from my path, warned by the clatter of my hooves. By the time I heard him shout "Stop!" a block behind me, I skidded around a corner.

I found the spice market, an alley between wooden buildings with golden fabric draped between roofs to ward off the sun—when there was sun. It bustled with mares in dark mares-cloaks identical to mine except by the stealthiest of flourishes, like a chocolate spider-lace hem, or a black button that might be considered indecorous if used in profusion, or some fabric color between the indigo of my cloak and coal black. Mares and fillies flocked around stalls that sold fragrant black pepper, golden-brown sumac, red cinnamon, and a profusion of custom mixes like "Sky-fire Chili Soup Delight", beside stalls that sold gem encrusted silver and gold jewelry, and others selling gleaming copper pots and pans. Gray threads of sandalwood smoke and other incense wafted in the air to swirl as I passed. Most of the sellers were themselves mares.

I threw my load behind a stall with a thump. Nopony, not even the few stallion purveyors, said a word.

I had bent down to lower myself so I was no taller than the average mare by the time the propoli arrived. One look at the huffing red-robed stallion muted everypony in a wave down the alley to the next street. We all stared…

And continued to stare as the stallion quickly stalked down the alley, momentarily in my face then past me, trailing a scent of having eaten too much garlic, and out.

One mare said, "He should get himself a useful job."

Another chimed in, "Like digging ditches!"

"His wife probably terrorizes him; takes it out on us," said a third.

A wave of laughter cantered through the crowd, along with the sound of beads and necklaces clattering. Most mares wore their wealth, unlike me; I had none. The bustle returned, annoyance vanquished. The activity drew the citrusy-woody scent of frankincense my way.

I grabbed my bale and the herbs. I bowed to Rose Hips, the tea purveyor, and saw her soft smile and twinkling magenta eyes in the hood of her cloak, illuminated wanly by her ruddy magic.

Before leaving the way I came, I looked down the alley. I didn't meet Da's amber eyes even though he looked up the alley from his kiosk selling wooden dishes at the end. Even in the everlasting night, his snow-white fur and the golden aura projected by his horn—both so much like mine—were hard to miss, as was his frown.

#

I slammed open the gate to the family compound and skidded to a halt, breathing rapidly outside of our small wooden house. The family was fortunate enough to have a mud-brick wall around our meager crumb of town property, but Da had never made enough to improve on his wife's dowry of a simple traveling factor's lodging in a distant arid land.

A wan light flickered in a window.

No, no, no, I thought, worried I'd been recognized and beaten home, wishing I'd been quieter. Then again, I'd heard that many of the propoli were cracked-toothed old codgers and just maybe a bit deaf. A good mare didn't get noticed by anypony, so I didn't know for sure.

I lowered the bale and salad bag to the ground as I crept to the window and peered through the wavy smoked glass.

"Summer Daze!" I cried loudly. My baby brother looked up from his book to the window before I rushed inside.

"What are you doing home?" He lay by a flickering candle, a copybook open before him.

I was ten minutes older than my brother, but those ten minutes made all the difference in his health and stature, considering the circumstances of our birth. In comparison, I made him look like a runt. Well… I actually did that to most everypony, but in his case he was below average in most every measure. We shared a long horn of eight turns, but he had a peculiar coat of sunflower-yellow fur that stuck up in bristles, which accentuated his spindly legs.

And then there was this:

"I got a headache," he said, hiding his nut-brown eyes under a fan of lime-green bangs with a hoof, nudging his ebony-rimmed spectacles which then fell to the earthen floor. He slid a folded twine-bound sheaf of paper towards me. "But I got to bring home another treatise."

He opened his copybook to a page written in his flowing horn calligraphy. It read, "Magical Escapements."

"Escapements?"

"Like the ticking parts of a clock. Catseye Marble is teaching how to make spells last longer and how to trigger one on cue, but everypony's horn-lights flicker too much. It gives me a migraine." He massaged the pink blaze between his eyes.

I glanced at the dancing flame of a crooked bayberry oil candle I'd made last week as I said, "But really, you were just having trouble understanding what he was trying to teach?"

He sighed as I tossed my cloak aside and thumped down on the floor in my cotton shift. Besides giving us life, Mare bequeathed us one other thing: our name. I was Sunny, with a blazing white coat and a pink mane, and he was Summer with a yellow coat and a lime-green mane—but we both were also named "Daze."

That described him more than I, though Da would disagree. (If anypony should wonder, "Daze" is short for "dazzling," not "dazed.")

Yet, unlike me, Summer Daze was certifiably brilliant—once he understood or cared to understand. But never with practical magic. Never that! He could not levitate. He couldn't even cast Illuminate. If he had to heat a rock or shiver on a cold night, he'd shiver. The phosphorous-sulfur match he'd lit the candle with lay blackened on the floor and displayed tooth marks.

He'd solved the problem of being bullied by the colts at school—because he had long written with a pen in his mouth long after everypony else had learned to levitate theirs—by learning Dictation. The convoluted spell enchanted a quill to read his lips and transcribe what he said. Of course, using Dictation meant stuff often came out phonetic. It was worse if he didn't understand the word, said the wrong word, or muttered to himself.

It created the situation where together we learned to read, and I learned to proofread. I loved him for this and much more.

"And what part was Catseye Marble covering when you left?" I asked, sliding the book between us.

He tapped the temple of his glasses with a hoof to flip them into the air and catch them on his nose, then pointed.

We studied together until Da dropped the quarter-bale of hay on the floor behind me. As I jumped up, he plopped the net bag of salad herbs on top.

He said, "I found this outside."

"I'm sorry," I said, glancing at Summer who turned a page with a hoof, not even noticing Da. "I got distracted."

We stared at my baby brother. He was unique. I had to learn what he needed to learn in order to to teach him, and when he understood and intuited the arcane implications, he taught me in return, as best I could understand impractical magic. Twins. Two bodies, one brain.

"I wish—" Da began. He never liked the situation.

I looked down into his amber eyes and repeated his favorite saying. "Wishes do nothing except make the wisher crazy."

Da sighed. He accepted the situation as best he could.

Mare had died an hour after giving birth, leaving Da with no extended family and no means other than his wood carving trade. He never said it, never would say it, and I never asked, but I sensed he was glad my brother and I shared a quest for knowledge, though it made me as peculiar a mare as my asocial baby brother was a peculiar stallion.

Da said, "Umbra was the propoli chasing you."

Him. Young. Wealthy—enough so that his family owned a slave. I shuddered at the idea, but some ponies were cold... You could consider him handsome if you liked the dark horsey type; I preferred pastel ponies. Everypony said he wanted to run the town, but the town elders wouldn't let him.

Da turned over the salad herbs. "He said you had carrots in your bag. I told him you hate carrots."

I looked at the carrots and chuckled.

"It's not funny! You are hard to mistake even in the dark and I'm not even sure if you've stopped growing! Stallions are noticing you're different. And I don't mean just extraordinarily tall. I won't be able to afford to pay for you to be married if this keeps up."

I raised my chin and walked snapping my tail to the tables where a basket contained the dark black spoons and bowls I'd carved this morning. While we often worked with juniper, cedar, and acacia that grew in the nearby mountains, the ebony Da traded for was exceptionally hard to work even with enchanted steel chisels and gouges, but I could carve most any pattern. I never explained to Da that I only used metal tools for the final finishing work and instead used magic, heat, and water to pretreat and distort the wood. I suspected he'd say I was taking shortcuts or compromising the quality of our work. I always produced more than Da could imagine getting; between us we made a good living, though I knew we could do better. "We aren't hurting."

"Dowries are jewelry, bits of silver or gold, or—" he waved a hoof "—houses, not spoons. Please don't make yourself too expensive. You don't want to be a second wife or never married."

I tilted my head side-to-side thinking I liked "never," but I understood Da's narrow-eyed glare, grabbed the salad and the bale and trotted to the kitchen to make supper.

Comments

[ph00tbag]

"We shared a long horn of eight turns"

Oooooh, I love the little bit of cultural education this line provides. The use of unfamiliar terminology in a context where its meaning is clear cements it in the mind so much more firmly than if it were merely told to me. This is merely one example of the lush worldbuilding of this story. I'm not sure how I feel about the supposition that the Equestria of Queen Platinum was so misogynistic, though it does present some very interesting narrative opportunities. I look forward to seeing where this story goes.

[Ice Star]

I'm curious to see how this one plays out, and how Luna ties in. Will read further.

[PresentPerfect]

Oh shit, this is cool. o.o I'm getting serious Handmaiden's Tale vibes. :D

[scifipony]

9723754
Thank you for the compliment! Not modeled after the show, but there is a certain zeitgeist feminist writers like me plug into.

[Skulljack17]

We stared at my baby brother. He was unique. I had to learn what he needed to learn in order to to teach him, and when he understood and intuited the arcane implications, he taught me in return, as best I could understand impractical magic. Twins. Two bodies, one brain.

Two! Two to's! Ah ah ah aaaahh! A nice beginning for this story, and it has me wondering just where it will go from here.

[vectorVll]