As the world once again rushed away, I find myself standing in the world of my creation, hoping only to stave off more serious destruction.
The library once agin stands perfectly still, and the outside world along with it. The deafening silence again returns, as though the world had been hushed by a mountain of snow.
Stillness.
Silence.
Spike stood, apparently shocked at what he saw. No matter how calm the world of time may have been when you left it, the change is stark, and instantly recognizable.
Spike began to wander, waving his clam through the air, as if testing waters he had already been submerged within.
Much like his mentor, he turns to me and opens his mouth as if to speak, only to meet silence. He tries again, seeming to yell, but again, not a peep.
I walk over to him, and seems afraid, confused.
I cannot comfort him with my words, or even explain what is going on, so I do the next best thing, and motion him downstairs.
He follows closely behind, until he sees Twilight, and quickly rushes up to her, shouting in silence. He remembers that he cannot be heard, and instead stand in front of her, flailing his arms frantically.
Twilight does not respond.
Just as he is about to poke her, I swat his claw away with my hoof, and shake my head at him.
He mustn't touch her, lest he injure her in any way, even by accident.
I levitate my sketchpad and pencil over and begin to write,
She can't see you, Spike. She, and the rest of the world are frozen in time.
I show him the pad and he gives me an almost quizzical look, as if to say 'how?' or perhaps even 'why?'
Once again I begin to write,
This is my special talent. I can create gaps between seconds in time, and move about freely. It's how I switched the books
Spike quickly reads, and then nods, but still seems remarkably confused. He grabs the pad and pencil from my aura, and begins to write himself.
How and why am I here?
I levitate the pad and pencil back,
The papercut I gave you, it won't heal outside of my gaps. If it never heals, it may eventually kill you.
Spike held up his thumb, the trickle of blood already beginning to slow scab. He once again licked his wound clean, and saw that already, it had stopped bleeding.
He held it up proudly and smiled, showing his cut had already closed.
I shook my head, we couldn't go back, not yet.
Spike raised his eyebrow and mouthed 'Why?'
I write again,
We cannot go back until the cut is completely healed, even if it has stopped bleeding, what you have now will stay with you forever.
As I show him the note, his jaw drops, and frantically he gabs the pad and scribbles,
That could take days!!
On the contrary, it will take no time at all.
He gives me a 'smart ass' look and rolls his eyes before once again writing,
Well, it'll feel like days, what should we do in the meantime?
Do?
I had always been quite content with 'doing' very little, if not nothing. In scale to some of my longer gaps, this would be extremely short. I felt as though we should simply sit and wait. The world outside my own moves so very fast, and it was exhausting. Did the dragon know nothing of calm? Sure, occasionally I would read within my gaps, or even draw, but more than anything else, I would simply sit. Think.
I suppose to those who dwelled solely within the rushing world, to do nothing was tedious, boring. Not because it was not enjoyable, simply because it was a waste of time.
And to normal ponies, time was very, very precious. You could tell how precious it was by the ways they measured it, clocks, timers and alarms, all built to keep ponies on time. Entire monuments and towers to keep entire cities on time. Alarms so ponies would not 'waste' their time with such necessary acts as sleeping.
They were always in a hurry, seeking to pack as much as possible into a day, then a week, a month, a lifetime.
Could they imagine a life without this rush? Likely not, as they were all weighed down by an inexorable knowledge...
The knowledge their time on this world was finite.
I was somewhat lifted from this burden. Through my gift I had found never a need to hurry, or rush. I had all the time in the world at my disposal, what concerns did I have of being late or early? I had no watch, nor calendar, for to measure my life seemed not to live it.
But I knew I could not live eternally. I knew that every gap must close, and a new second must come to pass, then a minute, then a day. There was a reason Celestia limited each day, and reasons our lives must be finite.
For as I have seen in myself, to live forever would be the most horrendous waste of all, as every life must be limited.
This is what makes our time so precious.
I suddenly notice that Spike has vanished. I was so accustomed to being able to dwell within my own thoughts without external interaction that I had forgotten his presence. I look around the library, only to discover the door had been left open.
I can only he hope he has not changed anything yet.
As I gallop out the door, I quickly find him standing in the town square, making strange faces at the many townsfolk, then silently laughing.
I breathe a sigh of relief, thankful he has not yet found his way into a more troublesome predicament.
I gallop towards him, making sure he does not wander off again, and nudge him back to the library.
His face shows annoyance, but I do not yet know the damage I may cause, and I hope never to find out.
As we return to the library, I again inspect his finger. Curiously, it seems to have healed almost completely.
Spike seems confused by this fact as well, but quickly shrugs, mouthing something before flexing and smiling proudly.
I do not know if this is the work of the gaps, or if dragon scales simply heal more quickly than pony flesh, but whatever the reason, I am glad the wound is gone.
Do you feel any pain? I write, and he simply shakes his head 'no'.
Is it sensitive at all? He prods his cut with another finger, bending it a few times, and again, shakes his head 'no'.
Then hold on.
And the world comes rushing back.
Draconian healing I'm guessing? (I.e dragons heal faster)
Okay. Problem solved. Now the conflict is kind of… over with. But I foresee another in the future! Considering how Twilight can't keep a secret if her life depended on it, she'll tell SOMEBODY about the power (Hey, I trust Spike), and they're gonna want him to abuse it. Calling it right now.
That was quick. Both chapter and the healing XD
I wonder if Celestia aware of time magic that can do this. It would make sense for her to ensure that such knowledge wouldn't be written down, thus the reason Clockwork didn't find anything on the subject.
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I think it is because the time within the gaps has no meaning, and therefore things can happen faster or slower than one would expect.
Holycrapthischapter'sawesomedon'tstop. A couple fixes are needed though.
their* Also, in that same line...Earth? I don't know about that, try "their time on this planet". That seems to fit better, in my opinion. Keep up the great work though, I love seeing your work!
YAY!
I wonder what happens when Celestia or Luna finds out about his skillset.
Hmm... Without time, you essentially become immortal. I am not surprised his wound closed immediately. In between time, you become deathless, and you achieve something higher than mortality. Therefore, he would become unkillable, as death can only come with time...
My god. Clockwork is like a pony Wolverine, minus the claws. He cannot die as long as he can return to his gap, which is whenever he wants...
Unless of course, someone decides to cut off his head. While Wolverine can survive that, I doubt this pony can.
Papercut of DETH no longer deadly xD
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I think maybe it just healed like that because, as Clockwork stated before, there is so sense of time in the gap. So it makes sense that it doesn't follow the ordinary rules of the passing time.
'claw'
Anyway, the healing thing is pretty interesting. I wonder how wounds created in time's world would act within the gaps.
Absolutely riveting. This is a truly profound thing you've written, and I hope you realize that. Just in the words I've read so far I've thought more about existence and the 'other side,' for lack of a better term, than I have in... well, forever. You've pulled my focus away from myself and my daily struggles into a place where I can sit quietly and just contemplate. There's no real purpose or direction to the contemplation, but that makes it all the more magical, and for that I thank you.
"The meaning for anything is simply to provide meaning to its contrast" will stick with me for a very long time. Keep up the phenomenal work.
*Sniff* its so good *sniff* you need to become a full time writer.
This is so fucking interesting.
You should jump into gaps of your own and write this story quicker than we can read it, so that we are never left waiting.
But... Spike healed while in the gaps... His cells performed functions, the wound sealed, he grew in body and mind by an almost immeasurable amount... And he grew that much closer to the time he would die.
And for all of this, time passed. Each second within the gap is a second off the timeline of the host. If you spend half of your hundred years in the gaps, you'd only be fifty in this world on the day your body gave out...
My goodness the implications brought up by this chapter are astounding.
4134369 except aging does not occur in the gaps, so no, not really.
If you want to be logical about how living beings work within the gaps, perhaps first you should consider the fact that bodies need oxygen, food, drink, sleep, none of which seem to be necessary in the gaps. There's also the whole physics being on pause, like light, gravity, the force that holds everything together and stops atoms from passing through each other, they all become irrelevant in the gaps as nothing can technically travel, what moves within the gaps is not limited by the physical laws of the normal timeline. REALISTICALLY he'd be both blind, unable to move and suffocate, as light is not travelling and therefore not entering his eyes, air is not moving so he cannot breath it nor should any matter be reactive or movable as momentum is a function of mass and velocity, and velocity is relative to time which doesn't technically exist within the gap. There's also the case of bacteria and living organisms, if he goes into the gap with the, they jump off him, and he returns to the normal timeline, there's a paradox of something living being left behind, which could exist forever in that gap, grow and expand infinitely and consume and change the whole universe, or something along those lines. There's many more issues that arise but i think i've said enough.
So for your reading pleasure, i advise you disregard everything you know about the real world, for this is not a story about such, it's about magical talking technicolour horses.