Luna and the Tree Ponies

by McPoodle

Postscripts

Betwixt Silver and Gold 3:

Luna and the Tree Ponies

- Postscripts -

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Postscript by Celestia, written in the Year 36 of our joint reign:

Luna enchanted this scroll so it would last forever, and that spell still appears to be holding. She’s been reluctant to read it for several decades now, and I can’t say that I blame her.

There are certain subjects that are far too painful to discuss. At the time of the first visit by the “Ancients” (as I’ve come to call them), that particular subject was Megan “the Last” for myself, and Susan’s parents for them, with the sole exception of that day in the garden. So reticent were they in fact that to this day I am still not sure whether it is Susan’s mother or father who was the child of the Doctor.

Well, the TARDIS came to visit us once again, but this time when the Doctor emerged, he was accompanied by a human named Steven instead of his granddaughter. He tried to use talk of how he had duplicated the effect of the transformation spell with a cunning invention to distract attention away from the person who was no longer with him. He also spoke at great length about the humans he had traveled with over the years, and it was apparent that they had had a great effect on wearing down his once-perpetual distrust of his fellow men. Nevertheless, the loss of Susan was profound. On our side, of course, the forbidden subject was the matter of our parents, and the devastating war that followed.

Before they left, the Doctor gave us a present, a musical box carefully crafted to work in either of our two worlds, which, sadly to say, means that it barely worked at all. From the way he handled it and his inability to look us in the face, I’m convinced that it had been made by Susan before her mysterious fate overtook her. Unfortunately, this also means that we may never learn the meaning of the haunting song it plays on those occasions when it decides to work properly.

I have named the song “Mother Dear”, because when I hear it, I think of all we have lost: Megan, Susan, and especially all the mothers: Susan’s, ours, and oh, so many alicorns!

It is lonely now, so very lonely. Perhaps it is finally time to ignore my inner voice and follow Luna’s plea, to repopulate the land with our own creations, so they might bring balance to a world once again gone mad, and so they can carry on our dreams once we have succeeded in transforming this world into one where men can live, but we cannot.

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P.P.S. by Princess Celestia, written in the Year 5002:

It turns out that even a spell of perpetuity runs out if the spell caster stops caring about its preservation.

This story is now transcribed onto a new scroll, with a new spell cast upon it, by One who would like to keep it up to date. Unfortunately, We cannot reproduce any of the doodles that once adorned its borders. A pity, that. The ghosts looking up in fear at the falling rock, the charming stick figure of “The Tree Pony Last Megan”, and the simple but disturbing crack in the wall that Luna labeled “The Voice” now exist only in Our memory.

We are now halfway into the ten thousand years allotted to Us by the strange alien known only as the Doctor. He never returned after the last visit described above. We thought that rather rude, and so we cast a recalling spell upon the magical transformation invention he keeps in his blue shed.

Imagine our surprise when the spell succeeded in retrieving not one, but ten blue sheds, each of them occupied by a different Time Pony claiming to be the Doctor! It appears that the Doctor’s complex relationship with Time allows him to cheat death by regenerating his form at the point of mortal injury, and that strangely this fact makes the serial aspects of his lifespan accessible as separate entities. Of course, We are still trying to comprehend the whole “smaller on the outside” business of the blue shed, so this explanation may be equally far from the truth.

The collected adventures of the Doctor would fill a thousand scrolls, so suffice it to say that he has had a full life. Most of the Doctors were accompanied by Companions, individuals (usually Ancients) that he met on his journeys that wished to share in his adventures. This causes Us to reflect on Our relationship to Luna, and how close We might be to succumbing to the family curse if We did not have her company and advice. If only she would spend more of her days with Us, and less with her own counsel.

The Doctors and Companions stayed for several months, and eventually managed to wear out their welcome. They are all more or less contemptuous of authority, unfortunately, and fail to distinguish between the flawed authority of mortal governments and the enlightened perfection of the Divine Principality. Also, they have developed a bad habit of visiting and altering Equestria’s past, so that We were eventually forced to put a lock on the timestream and send them away.

Once again We are alone, while surrounded by life. The ponies are locked into their customs and superstitions, and the dragons continue to resist our attempts to extend the name “Equestria” from the Principality to the planet we share (We are also adverse to their suggestion that We name the planet “Draconia” instead). Luna drifts further from Our understanding with every passing century.

The music box finally fell apart, but We I had a replacement made, that faithfully plays “Mother Dear” every time it is opened.

I still don’t know the words to that song.

---

P.P.P.S. by Tia, written in the year 6028:

I am a foal. The answer was before me all along, but I ignored it, and look how my family has suffered as a result. Where will it end? And how can I possibly keep her from knowing?

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P.P.P.P.S. by Tia, written in the year 7014:

That’s a lot of P’s.

Luna has returned.

Luna is free.

That last fact I owe to six incredible ponies who embody the Elements of Harmony so perfectly that their actions shame me at times into being a better goddess to my subjects, my little ponies.

As an example, let me cite the case of the Element of Laughter, an earth pony named Pinkie Pie. Jokes are inexplicable things that cease to be funny the moment they are explained, and so it is with Pinkie Pie: she is completely inexplicable.

Today she wrote Luna and me this letter. Maybe someday we will understand it:

Dear Princesses Luna and Celestia:

As goddesses, you not only know everything that ever happened, but also everything that’s going to happen, right?

So that means that you already know about that secret thing we’re keeping from you, but you’re not mad because you also know that Twilight is going to send you a letter explaining everything.

So I thought, if you already know about the secret, and you already know about Twilight’s letter of next week, why should I wait until next week to lend you one of my secret CDs, when I can just give it to you now! That way, I don’t have to send it by post or by dragon-belch (bleh! smelly CD!), and you can give it back to me after you’ve listened to track 11. That’s the song that Luna’s music box plays, right? The one that she never wants anypony else to hear, right? But you’ve always wanted to know what the words are, Celestia, so now you’ll know.

Although come to think of it, if you two were really gods, then you’d already know that, right?

Yours in Perpetual Pinkness,

--Pinkie Pie

The letter was accompanied by a compact disc. An actual Ancient-manufactured compact disc, millennia old and simultaneously brand new. How did Pinkie Pie get her hooves on such an object? Furthermore, how does she know about the music box, when neither Luna nor I have listened to it for hundreds if not thousands of years? I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. To borrow and lightly mangle a phrase that I by all rights shouldn’t know, “Of all the Pinkie Pies in the universe, she’s the Pinkie Pie-iest.”

The Compact Disc Player is one of about a million Ancient inventions that perished at the end of the Second Age. A few discs survived in a vault. Those discs were destroyed by my order, during an unfortunate fit of paranoia awhile back. Like I said, I have much to learn from the Elements of Harmony. A unicorn inventor recreated the CD player and started manufacturing new CDs, under slightly suspicious circumstances. Perhaps I will wait a week before investigating.

So then, here is the answer to a seven-thousand-year old mystery, the lyrics of my song of loss, taken from track 11 of a CD called simply “1”, and sung by some bugs:

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shadow hanging over me
Oh yesterday, came suddenly

Why she, had to go
I don’t know she wouldn’t say
I said, something wrong
Now I long for yesterday

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Why she, had to go I don’t know
She wouldn’t say
I said, something wrong
Now I long for yesterday

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday.

I must admit, it was a slight relief to finally know.

---

P.P.P.P.P.S. by Luna:

A “slight relief”, she says? Balderdash. She cried like a baby.

---

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Author’s Note:

I am a science fiction kind of guy. I’ll enjoy The Lord of the Rings as much as anybody else, but if you present me the choice between mediocre fantasy and mediocre science fiction to read, I’ll pick the SF every time. It is for that reason I had the following tiny problem with My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:

My Little Pony: Equestria is an Earth-analogue world of talking ponies.

Me: Um...alright, I can buy that. I’ve certainly seen stranger concepts for a series.

MLP: It is ruled by a pair of pony goddesses.

Me: ...fine, whatever.

MLP: One goddess causes the sun to rise each morning.

Me: Well unless the series is lying to us, that would mean that the Sun is revolving around the Earth. The Earth is being orbited by a world 333,000 times more massive than it is.

MLP: It’s magic!

Me: Nnnrgghh...no, wait, I can wrap my head around this. She’s a goddess, right? So she just uses her immense power to keep the bigger world orbiting the smaller. A factor of a third of a million is not that impossible. OK, I can accept that. What else have you got?

MLP: The other heavenly sister causes the moon to rise each night.

Me: Easy-peasy!

MLP: Along with the heavens.

Me: What? WHAT?! She causes...the entire universe...to revolve around the Earth? Once every 24 hours?

MLP: Eeyup.

Me: That’s impossible! The universe is 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more massive than the Earth! (That’s five hundred octillion, or a 5 with 29 zeroes after it.) It’s 78 billion light years across. For it to rotate once every 24 hours would mean that the outer edge of the universe is moving at 2.33 million times the speed of light! No. No, I can’t accept that. Not here, not there, not anywhere!

MLP: Are you quoting Green Eggs and Ham?

Me: Shut up.

---

Now you might want to argue that in creating Equestria we don’t have to bring along the whole universe, that surely a plain old Ptolemaic solar system, with its sphere of fixed stars, is adequate. And to that argument I reply, “But what about Doctor Whooves?” Where’s the fun of having him in there if you can’t bring along all of the aliens that go with him?

And so I hereby propose an alternate cosmology for the series. And put it in the mouth of a cute little pony.

And devised a series of increasingly-less believable explanations of why this Equestria ended up with a solar system outwardly identical to Earth’s, down to the constellations, which is utter and complete balderdash...

Shut up.

---

Credits:

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is copyright Hasbro, with due respects to Lauren Faust for her brilliant re-imagining of the franchise. The characters of Luna, Celestia and Pinkie Pie are borrowed from that source, although any fault in their interpretations is entirely my own. The First Doctor and his companions Susan and Steven Purvis are from the program Doctor Who and are the property of the BBC. Finally, “Yesterday” is copyright Lennon—McCartney.

Comments

[kingtiger666]

The song was Yesterday. For some reason I was expecting it to be Hey Jude, but this is actually much better.

[Litho]

Why is it that all fic-writers use "X and I" where it should be "X and me"?

Other than that, a very nice story . Though I have not wathched Doctor Who, so a lot of it is lost on me.

[McPoodle]

1141561

Misinformed English teachers with rulers to rap you on your knuckles for using the forbidden phrase "X and me". That's my excuse.

[Derpmind]

Or the planet just needs help turning.

I always like good gooey world-building, and this is that Sci-Fi explanation that I didn't know I was looking for. Even though magically navigating some erratic orbits is much more plausible, it takes spheres to put a fantasy universe in a giant ball.

[djthomp]

Holy crap, I love this backstory and world building.

[bitshoptyler]

Full disclosure, I didn't really like this story that much. It didn't have much of a plot at all, was written wholly as an excuse to explain a question you had, and nothing really happened the whole time. That said, I still liked it and respected it. Somewhat.

Also, Doctor Who and the Daleks. Even if I still hate Susan, I don't see enough references to that.

[McPoodle]

2382151

I referenced Dr. Who and the Daleks, the movie with Peter Cushing? When? I mean, I never even got around to seeing that.

Maybe I should. I've seen most everything else Who from that period.

[bitshoptyler]

2382612 That was mostly my fault. Most people remember her as the character from the movie, not from the first season, so I figured you had too.

Edit: You're making me realize how long it's been since I've seen that movie. Never really watched the earlier seasons, just read the books.

[McPoodle]

2384191

Oh no, this is definitely the Susan from the series. Note her slight psychic ability in finding Luna.