Local

by Seer

Night Owl - III

Today I went to the market.

I waded through the crowds and it was like they were parting around me. They always part around me. I’ve described this before, you know what I’m talking about at this point. Pages and pages of endless descriptions of the way that this place and I are immiscible.

Sometimes, when I look back at the last few months of entries, half-blitzed on cheap red wine because what else is there to do, I find myself struggling to breathe. But it’s not a lack of breath from panic, it’s a lack of desire to breathe, or maybe lack of drive is more apt. I would have thought that it should be a low, pressing feeling, but it’s stunningly sharp and acute. It feels like an excavation and it feels like that because I realise far from the stares and whispers is the abject lack of change.

I always go to the market, I always find ponies staring at me. I always notice them and have them look away when I look up like we’re engaged in some foals’ game.

And it always keeps going. It never stops. It’s like time simply forgot about me and doomed me to repeat the death march of isolated blatancy down into the town proper. To fetch more quills or ink or more likely wine and chocolate and rich food. I am fatter, I am greedier, I consume more, I stuff myself in a hedonistic rush to dull the muted, subtle knife.

That’s what I’ve noticed about Ponyville. It’s not an ambush, it’s not an assassination. The stares and whispers are attrition, it’s a place that grinds you down because it’s not satisfied by merely making you alienated, it alienates you in a boring way.

For months, I’ve been lonely, I’ve felt rejected, hated. Like the subject of a thousand swirling lies and rumours of curses and interlopers, peered at through frosted glass, through two way mirrors. I’ve felt like I’m losing my sanity until the point that I’m not sure I would recognise sanity were it returned to me and through it all I’ve felt endlessly, interminably fucking bored.

That’s how they win. Because whatever big secret I’m unfit to know. Whatever unspoken agreement there might be, I think the boredom has ravaged my mind to the point that I could never unravel the riddle were all the pieces presented to me.

But today?

Today, when I went to stock up on the necessary booze to get me through another night of this, I looked around for a moment. And I don’t even really know why I did it? I guess there’s still the temptation to check that it’s still happening. And even that is dull. In some ways that’s the greatest trick of this place. The absolute rejection of change stops you from even getting used to what’s happening. Boring with the added sting of hope that maybe this time someone would stop and smile or not look at you at all.

And wouldn’t you believe it.

Today, something changed.

Because a set of eyes did remain locked on mine. A set of unmistakable, blue eyes, piercing through the crowd like a lighthouse through fog.

She was staring at me with that look of perfect, self-assured calm she always has. Like there was no way I could have missed her. And she was right, wasn’t she? Of course I was going to see her.

Because out here in the sea, she’s been my life raft. She’s been the sole thing that has provided some link to this place. Some tether to keep me grounded and she always comes up to say hello when we see each other because we’re friends.

But today, she simply gave me that cocksure gaze of hers, an eyebrow raised and smirk knowing and teasing. And before I could call out to her the crowd flowed in like liquid and swallowed her, stealing her away.

And then she was gone, and I was alone again.

She’d seen me. She knew the way I was struggling at the moment with crowds and stares and loneliness because I’d told her this so many times.

I’d confided in her and she had simply evaporated back into Ponyville. It was the most beautiful, agonising reminder of where she came from, and where I came from, and where we were, and who we were.

I’m home now. Of course I’m home because I’m writing in this diary again, the thing they’ll read when I finally crack and see all the frayed scribblings of the delusional mess I’ve become. And they’ll analyse it and say ‘Poor Night Owl, she couldn’t take the strain and boredom and the loneliness and the second-guessing and the alienation and the secrets and whispers and stares and she simply cooked up some ridiculous scenario about the town all peering at her and hiding some grand secret because the alternative was that all along the problem has just been her.’

‘And who could take that?’

And maybe they’d be right?! But, the funny thing is, to the delusional mare, it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not, it feels real. And that means it’s real to me.

It is real.

I am not stupid, I have never been stupid.

I cracked open my wine the second I got in, the sun hadn’t even gone below the horizon yet.

I sat down and really analysed everything going through me right now.

Because something different had happened at last! The sting of an active betrayal is so wonderfully blatant amid the muted backdrop of grey, boring loneliness. An act of genuine antagonism in the middle of all this pedestrian disdain? Some fleeting moment of apparent acknowledgement that something is happening here? That there is some great secret as opposed to simple contentment to leave me shut out and helpless?

It was like a knife in the chest. Like a white hot serrated-edged blade directly into the heart, cauterising and reopening wounds with every micrometre of movement. It left me breathless, it left me grasping my stomach, tears streaming down my face and heaving with laughter.

Because it was horrific and it was different. It was the first time in months I hadn’t been bored, and it was worse than boredom had ever been.

I’m still chuckling now. I’m still crying.

Maybe she had other things to do? Maybe she didn’t even see me? Maybe she wasn’t even there at all? Maybe I’m not here?

Maybe none of this is even real?

And that makes me laugh even more, because that’s how they get you, isn’t it Night Owl?

I wonder what they’ll say when they read this.

Too little sanity, too little grip.

Too much self-mythologising.

Too much poetry.

I need another drink.

---

I read the labels of wine bottles,

Before I take out corks,

I can’t shake the sophomoric tendency to compare the red to blood,

I can’t place the tastes,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

In some desperate attempt to see what other ponies can feel,

I read notes about muted tones of berries,

Dark notes of chocolate and vanilla,

Summer fruits and cultivated grapes,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

Before I knock back glass after glass,

Quicker than could ever leave any taste,

Because I’ve tried too many times,

I’ve tried to find the notes from the labels,

I’ve tried to hunt down the subtle flavours,

But all is lost to me now,

I wonder if it could have ever been found,

Maybe my taste buds have all gone,

Burned away by attrition,

Maybe I was simply born without them,

I can’t taste anything other than wine,

Some bitterness that I don’t understand how others can find deeper meaning in,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

Because I want to know what others have,

And I look at them tasting wine,

And wish that everyone would be like me,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

But I only drink to get drunk.

---

When I was younger, I remember the way I used to interact with ponies. I don’t think I’d recognise myself if I were to somehow visit her. I wonder, so often, what she’d think of me now? In some ways I thank Celestia that I changed. What the hell would we even be if we stopped evolving when we were sixteen, or eighteen, or twenty?

But then I think back to my days at university, and to how assertive I could be. I remember arguments where I used to really stand up for myself. I remember the way I used to bristle until I’d gotten my point across. A big part of me wonders these days whether I’m glad to be different now.

My whole life has vanished in the fog of memories that I’ve lost. I am astonished by how fragile we are. I marvel at how flimsy the museum of my past experiences is, and how it all collapses into unreliable anecdote and embellished fabel. Like a folk story. Like the poems passed down by aural tradition by our forebears around weak fires they conjured to stave off the jaws of bears.

My whole life has felt like the last eight or so years for so long. And, in all that time, I’ve always felt like I was living on borrowed time. Like I’ve been constantly near-death. How in the world did this get so fragile? Where are those stories from when we were young? Of amazing careers and fulfilling social lives?

Where did it all go?

To anyone who might find this journal, amid the remains I worry I might leave, you might be wondering what in Celestia’s name the relevance of this aside is.

The answer is all too simple.

I’m drunk again.

Of course I am.

Of course I am.

And yet, I still meant everything I said. I have felt like I’ve been in the crushing suffocation of the sarcophagus of near-death for so, so long now.

The question, though, is when should you be concerned? Is it when you feel like you’re skirting the edges of life, or is it when you no longer care that you are? There is an exhaustion to self-examination.

Panic that life is nearly over. Relish that life is meaningless pain anyway, and Ponyville is a monument to meaningless pain.

Life is a speck of dust on a stray sunbeam. I am Night Owl. I am nothing. All I am is all I’ve ever been constrained in this form. I am drunk again, I am panicking, I am terrifyingly physical, I am nothing but the dream of a slumbering madman.

Why won’t it stop? Why will it never start?

The thing with a diary is that I am, I was recording it all for myself.

Why would I need to note down the minutia of feelings I’ve been dealing with for years now? For someone to find? To inspire anyone with my litany pedestrian neurorses that everyone else would already be familiar with?

Don’t make me laugh.

I was a confident young mare.

I am a shell of a grown-up now. A shell of a whole pony, so lacking in the drive that I see in everyone but myself. They would have strode up to the ponies who stare and ripped off whatever mask obscures the nature of this place.

It’s a truly brilliant pain, to realise you’re the problem,

Because I’m Night Owl, and I couldn’t possible leverage any greater understanding of this fucking hell hole. Because it is. Ponyville is a nightmare, its residents are nightmares in turn. The only refuse is this island, this port in the storm, and isn’t that hilarious? That they make the isolation the only safety you have? They alienate you, and make you crave it. Surely there has to be some appreciation for their sick, disgusting methods around somewhere?

Maybe, among all the indictment, I could provide that much-needed credit for all the evil they’ve worked. I feel like they deserve it.

I worry I deserve it.

Rarity’s transition from friend of mine to subtle, grinning maleficent presence dancing in my periphery was as flawless as one would expect from her. As she could only ever be.

I recall a story of a pony who was lost in a land they could never understand. Hopelessly tossed by the riptide of the thrall of those who called it home. Mad Hatters, Red Queens, a cursed wasteland beyond a looking glass of clawing madness. I remember a grinning, feline creature, wide eyes and predatory smile lasting long after its body vanished against the backdrop, leaving only the blight of the nightmares it inspired steeping in its grinning expression lasting long after all physical memory dissipated.

Does that make sense? Does that story even exist? Does my story even exist?

I am Night Owl.

I was a somebody.

I self medicate with booze.

Why do I get like this when I’m drunk? It’s pathetic. It’s the only time I feel like a real pony.

My friend has fucking abandoned me. I don’t remember the last time she actually properly spoke to me. She is a chameleon of eyes, something more akin to smoke than an organic being with flesh and veins and sweat and blood.

Ghostlike, a phantom. A mind-reader, exquisitely homing in on the exposed bits of my guts nearest the nerve.

I guess that’s how Rarity feels to me these days, as her tangibility becomes smoke between mad grasping hooves and all that’s left is the pain of her teasing glare.

The town is insane.

Rarity is composed, mocking. She vanishes into crowds and bites her lip, almost sultry were it not for the pain left in her wake after she dematerialises. She is insane.

And, dear diary, I worry that I’m insane too.

Isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?

---

This is a dream about dying of thirst in an oasis,

This is a dream about never having been born,

About living forever and ever,

This is a dream about your pain,

It is a drop in an ocean,

You are nothing but a drop in an ocean,

You are nothing but a whisper in a cyclone,

This is a dream about dying,

This is a dream about the aftermath of your death,

This is a dream about the pathetic, animal imperfection we all thrash around in,

This is nothing but a vision,

This is nothing but a fleeting thought,

This is only the lingering pain that life represents,

This is nothing but a dream about the unimportance of it all and the twin comfort and fear that induces,

This is me,

This is Night Owl,

Keep it on the up and up,

Maybe one day I’ll be there with you,

I’m away now.

---

Hello.

I don't know why I said that, there's no need to introduce myself, this was the kind of thing I got over right when I started writing like this.

And yet, here I am again. Isn't that fitting?

But anyway, I should probably get to the point. I'm so sick of talking, I've talked enough already.

I'm tired of writing this diary.

I read through a few of these entries tonight.

I’ve not been able to get any wine. I just didn't feel like I could face another trip into that narket. I feel like I’m sober for the first time in so, so long.

I’ve made a decision, it feels significant.

Tonight, I’m going to go to Rarity’s house and ask her, point blank, what’s happening here.

I’m going to ask her why she’s started staring at me too.

Why all the times we talk, she feels insincere and mocking.

I’m going to ask her why she doesn’t seem to like me anymore.

I’m going to go to Carousel Boutique, and I’m going to get my answers no matter what.

And you know what? While I wouldn't say I feel good, I feel like I've made some kind of progress.

It feels like the end of something, maybe even like a beginning.

It feels like I might be about to come to some kind of understanding about this place, about myself.

After all, they can’t take anymore from me.

I’d say wish me luck, diary, but you’re just a book.

This whole time, you’ve only been a book.

There's never been anything between us, this was never a conversation. This was a mare by herself, talking to no-one.

It's all just words on a page.

I guess that means that all I’ve written in you is just a story now.

I hope there’s some happy ending to be salvaged in all this.

I’ll be seeing you.

---

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There is nothing for us here.

Get out while you can.

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---

Twilight stared at the final page of the diary.

It was a harsh deviation from the pages she’d been reading. Night Owl’s transcription spell, potentially in some reflection of the fraying of her fraught mind, had been getting increasingly harsh and ragged in its writing.

Ink blotted the pages, margins were full of frantically scribbled, paranoid notes.

And then, apparently after she’d gone to see Rarity that night, the final page was neat, composed. Two sentences, directly telling Twilight to do what she’d feared she had to.

To run away from Ponyville.

She placed the diary down gently, terrified of damaging this account by a pony that felt so much like her sister now, and reached a hoof to her cheek.

She immediately felt the tears that had been running freely from her eyes.

Twilight thought back to that famous conundrum, the one that had been coming to her more and more frequently these days.

What if there was a paranoid pony, who thought the whole world was watching them? Who thought everyone was in on it, spying on them and plotting against them?

What would they do if they finally found the room with all the notes on them? All the plans everyone had been making? What would they do if they finally found irrevocable proof that they were right. If the terrifying conspiracy that occupied their thoughts in every waking moment was one hundred percent true?

Would they be happy, as the story always seemed to go?

Or would they be terrified and feel small, wounded by the realisation of all their worst fears?

The thought stayed with Twilight long into the night.

Comments

[Zhafran]

Poor Night Owl...

Rip Friendship with Rarity and ponies in general.

If it went too long, Discord will be a problem (assuming if this story is taking us that far)

And Celestia, she better be informed somehow, Twilight was (or maybe still) her student and the Element of Magic. She or literally anything must stop this insanity.

Else the future of Equestria is at risk.

[MacArthurite]

That last entry gave me goosebumps, excellent work.

Also, the comparison of Rarity to the Cheshire Cat was as fitting as it was chilling.

[Coranth]

The whole atmosphere of this story seems... off... like there's this creeping dread or something just around the corner. Is it Twilight herself that makes the story this way; her point of view, is she crazy? Or is there something just... unsettling about Ponyville? I can't put my finger on what... but there's just... it feels really creepy...

[GaPJaxie]

An excellent story! Next update soon please.

[StalwartHeart]

I adore this story! Such an incredibly engaging mystery and the stakes are so personal and intangible yet extremely high.

I want to spew all these theories all over the comments, but regardless of the "payoff" or answers, if we even get them, the story itself and journey to get there is so, so good, I feel the journey really does eclipse the destination. That's pretty much unheard of in mysteries and thrillers. It's so strongly character driven.

Like the question, "why are ponies staring at Twilight, are they even doing that?" isn't as important as "Why doesn't Twilight confront the ponies staring? Why doesn't she ask Celestia or her family for help? Why doesn't she leave?" She has been calling Ponyville a mainland, surrounded by a sea. But maybe it's more that she's in a giant fishbowl. Whether or not that fishbowl has someone tending to the plantlife, the gravel and stone decorations, the ph levels and the species of fish, well. I have my suspicions, but mostly, I am just as desperate to know as Twilight is, why she can't seem to jump out.

[King Eraser]

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There is nothing for us here.

Get out while you can.

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Never has something so simple yet so terrifying as blank space scared me.

[Ralyx]

I've had a few hypotheses (though the two conversational references to 'our God' helped narrow them down), but the biggest missing element feels like, well, the Elements. I can't recall any direct reference to them in this story, but several events from Season One were mentioned, so their existence seems a safe assumption. The canon cast had a whole host of imperfections, of course, but it's hard to imagine the Elements working with someone as knowingly, maliciously sinister as Rarity has turned out to be.

[zx29b]

10881361
My problem with that theory is the bizarre, non-euclidean symbols that Twilight notices around town. Remember early on when Rarity asked Twilight whether or not she liked the mind-bending design. Hyper-dimensional weirdness is not really in the changeling idiom. It's more like a Lovecraft thing, a cult that worships some extra-worldly horror. Perhaps, given the time frame that this is set in, it is a new take on Discord, similar to Monochromatic's version but more sinister.

[SigmasonicX]

Really nice and moody chapter. These journal entries have been good, but I'm also glad we're back to Twilight. Now to see what she chooses to do.

[spoonlol]

That last page gave me chills. I reallllyyyy, wanna see what’s in Rarity’s house now. By god this is getting so good

[StalwartHeart]

10881500

I am stretching a lot with that one, mind. But this fic has established a lot of other noteworthy deviations from the original MLP:FiM plotline. Plus, it wouldn’t be just changelings, but changelings led by Rarity. Artistic, creative Rarity. Rarity who so well observes and learns from others, maybe even their magic.

She asks Twilight what she thinks of them; maybe she honestly doesn’t realize how they look to a pony, to her they really are beautiful.

Additionally, non-euclidian is just geometry on a curved/spherical surface. All physical shapes on earth are non-euclidian. This image could still be totally possible to re-create without breaking any dimensions or mathematical rules. It’s just overly complex, optical illusiony of 3D space, and very, very ugly to Twilight.

I think it would tie nicely into Celestia’s advice to Twilight. To check her sources. This Twilight has not encountered changelings, but maybe one of her books covers them.

And I like that if the answer is Changeling!Queen!Rarity, it doesn’t actually have to be sinister in nature, insofar as how she is treating Twilight. She is being extra guarded because she doesn’t want Twilight to leave, to reject her.

[LeylaQuartz]

I need more popcorn. Now Twilight knows.

[Black516]

10879253
It's 100% Ponyville. Twilight and Night Owl always say "Thank Celestia", while Rarity and others from Ponyville say "Thank our god". That was a dead giveaway from pretty early on.
Could be a Changeling god, but it doesn't make sense for Changelings to gaslight and isolate single ponies like they do in Ponyville.
My guess is on a cult of an insane/insanity god, with Rarity being a priest, future vessel or the god itself.
Might be a cult of Discord, but the Discord from the show would probably think this whole thing is too boring and not worth the time.

Great story btw. It's one of those stories that feels more like a book that just so happens to have ponies in it, instead of being a fanfiction of a cartoon.
I don't know why, but just by having ponies in it, I feel like I can connect easier to the story.
Anyway, the story is very well thought out and the writing is excellent. It's not for everyone, but it deserves a lot more attention than it gets.

[Ice Star]

You are trying to make me obsess over each update, aren't you?

Stinky.

[zx29b]

10899389
I have one more guess as to what is going on. It could be a particularly brutal trial by fire. Both Twilight and Night Owl got sent to Ponyville to be the town librarian. Why? Could it legitimately be a friendship lesson engineered by Celestia herself with Rarity as her most faithful student administering the big test? Could how Twilight reacts to the weirdness of Rarity's cult be the metric by which the enigmatic princess determines Twilight's suitability for the role of the leader of the elements of harmony? Will Twilight seek friendship at all costs, or will she turn herself into a paranoid recluse the way that Night Owl did?

The thing that made me think of this is that Celestia had such a small presence at the beginning of the story and gave Twilight such a vague assignment. It is--as it has always been--easy to imagine her as a surprise puppet master like Alphonse van Worden's father in <i>The Manuscript Found In Saragossa</i> just because of how briefly she appears and how pivotal her role is when you actually consider it. Celestia is, after all, entirely why Twilight (and the questionably helpful Spike for that matter) is in Ponyville. She is also potentially Twilight's salvation. Consider how Night Owl encourages Twilight to run, presumably back to Celestia in Canterlot. I am guessing that to do so would be to fail the test. Celestia needs an active agent, not a needy sycophant.

But, hey, I am just spitballing. This is like reading an Agatha Christie novel and guessing at who done it, which was always a blast.

[Finndelta12]

I hope this comes back or we at least get an account of how it was supposed to go. Ultimately this is free so what we see is what we get lol

[Seer]

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There will definitely be a conclusion to this, I've just been dealing with writer's block
However the story is mapped out and I have absolutely no intention of not finishing it, I just don't want to write it when I'm not in a place to give it the justice it deserves. Rest assured there will be a conclusion though!

[Finndelta12]

11073418
Whoot
really is incredible and I have already got some friends to read it
absolute masterclass of writing

[Random oddity]

I find this story to be absolutely incredible! Will you ever update it this year?

[Aitchel_Xesskh]

Dead story

[Seer]

11275465
Not so, I can see why it would look like that but rest assured the piece is being worked on and will be concluded

[Cupid]

This story is fantastic so far!

[overdue]

11275483
thank you

[Autumnlotus]

11275483
Is this still be being worked on? Been a few months with no updates.

[Spherical seal]

A little worried when I seeing it has not been updated for a long time.Lovecraft-style story almost made me afraid to go to the Bathroom.Really want to see the next chapter.

[Neskazhun]

10880200
My browser’s reader mode ate the second paragraph of that, so I had more of a laugh as I double checked the text, wondering how the absolute f --
I hope Seer does continue this.

[samble]

11809225
It's updated! +