Don't Make a Shadow of Yourself

by Ice Star

Walpurgisnacht Wednesday

Did I ever tell you I went to Germaneigh once? Of course, I did not, because it was after I lost you. And whose fault is that? That's right. I can wait. Sunburst, you know I'll wait for you to admit it to me. I could wait until the world ended with what you left me, and right where you left me. Right on my front door. I tell you all my stories now, and I think I do a good job at trying. You know I can't pull everything out of my head, not with the way it is. I will go into the dark spots I know are there; I can write it like that and make it sound like I didn't realize I wasn't the starry brightness I was named for. I'm going to enlighten everypony, yes. You know I will. Sunburst, I'm still a shadow surrounded by fireflies and I can't believe I didn't know that for so long. How could I live like that, with no one telling me the world was night time until I did? Until you made me?

Back to waiting.

Yes. Back to that.

You don't know how long I've been waiting.

I'm not as cruel as you, or your desires to put such terrible inequality between us. I'll tell you. I'll tell you about my trip to Germaneigh. Since then, I have never been farther south. I do not want to spend all my years cantering across every southern country below Equestria. Below Saddle Arabia, Mustainia, Prance, and everywhere else. Don't go to Prance, it is far too expensive a place and filled with material things and wicked art. As an aside, could you imagine how beautiful the world would be without art? I think that it would finally be at peace with itself if we removed such a grotesquely unequal form of expression, stopping all this nonsense about talents or value when realism must reign. You don't need to know about the train, except that this was the one time I had been on one. I hated it. You can't know just how much I hated it because you weren't there, and if you had been I would have had somepony to talk to. Everything would always be better and fairer if you had been there.

I wouldn't have been stuck in a third-class passenger car with strangers and reminders that I could have been somewhere better. The thought that someponies had better places to stay was even more awful than the ride. How did they cope with themselves, knowing how evil they are? Third class means I had to sleep on those overly soft cushy fold-out bench-beds. Nopony who makes those cars has ever gotten the memo that there are ponies in the world who like firm mattresses. I had to hold my own hooves tight enough to leave marks on myself every day because I was stuck on a train. On a trip spanning two continents. For a trip that lasted weeks. Did you know how much I was shaking? No, you didn't. You abandoned me. Did you know how it was like to be smothered in a stale car with strangers and how hard it was to breathe like that? And eat such subpar food? Or how loud train whistles are?

And that passports are gods-damned expensive?

OF COURSE YOU DON'T! YOU WEREN'T THERE! YOU PROBABLY HAD A FIRST-CLASS AND ALL EXPENSES PAID CAR WHEN YOU WERE SHIPPED OFF TO CANTERLOT!

I stayed in northern Germaneigh, and was lucky that I didn't have to waste bits on a pocket dictionary. I kept to the tourist town where the station was and explored the bilingual, bi-cultural slice of Elsewhere. I lived my life outside of myself. For once, I was able to get lost in that instead of being lost. Now, you've always known how much I hated to hear other-talk and babble. That's all languages are. It sends such aches throughout me knowing how deeply they divide us. Claiming that they're in any way enriching us or adding to meaningless status like heritage is no excuse for their existence, not when their eradication could make all of our lives easier.

I found a used bookshop, one of those musty places filled with antiques and even mustier, old-fashioned excuses for ponies. The kind that nopony should have to listen to. I pushed away all kinds of cookbooks, old dramas, and histories of the gods until I found the many old volumes containing the tales of us mortals. Two of them stuck out more to me. Let me tell you about one of them.

The spine was old and battered. The text was all peeling off. It was the decay of what was once ornamental that really caught my eyes, totally not that it was lost at the bottom of the bargain bin. The whole thing was little more than a discarded piece, doomed by the overproduction of what we call creativity and art, something we have foolishly deemed valuable. When I read, I want tales of real things, and I don't mean the deeds of gods and royals. It's only by misfortune that those have to be real. I want to read about ponies as angry as myself, because I know that to cast stones as those who build their castle above you (or live in a castle at all) cannot be wrong. Really, my dearest Sunny, how can anypony who says such bold words really be brushed off as inflammatory? Anything that sparks a moral outrage or protests like that can't be so bad.

It was a book of Equestrian history, and it was as far from Equestria could be. Once I had taken it with me to my room at a local inn, I could see why. The book was older than everypony in our old village combined, and the name of the publisher had been so methodically removed. Some of the pages were damaged with ancient-looking burns, and the pages crediting the authors in the back of the book had been torn away partially. Those foul, yellowed pages had the names of pretentious ponies in academia stricken so forcefully. If you saw those tears, you knew it would be on purpose too. I'm used to finding secondhoof books that have been mistreated in bookshops, but none with such an intent against them as this one had.

I checked the names of some of these scholars in registries at the local library. They all lost their positions at Equestrian universities of archeology and history shortly after this book was published, and all of them emigrated to Germaneigh. With enough work, I managed to uncover the book's complete title, translate it to Germane, and found it in a list of books that are banned in Equestria! Can you believe it?! Princess Celestia herself has banned books just like this, and what for you might ask?

For telling the strangest tale of history, one that nopony has heard before. There isn't an Equestrian historian alive who would attest to these things or sanction the content. No school could ever get way with agreeing with these statements. And now they're all mine to read! In my book, old artifacts from the time when Equestria was still a united triarchy under Puddinghead, Hurricane, and Platinum are used to illustrate a culture of the Tribal Era that nopony has ever heard of before! When have you ever heard stories (ones derived from journals and artifacts I've never heard of) of earth ponies being enslaved by the other two tribes for more than just food? If somepony told you that they were sold off as obvious chattel, would you believe them? Princess Celestia sure seems glad we didn't. Or, what about how the pegasus tribe put literal foals in their legions like it was nothing?

Remember how we were told in school that before magical prodigies were welcome and the presence of the gods civilized the world again, there was a long period of dark ages when magic wasn't accepted? Unicorn ponies without magical schooling but suspicious amounts of raw talent were brutalized in nations like old Prancia, Trotland, the Ottomare Empire, Cotlhuacan, and old Germaneigh. They were deemed witches and warlocks, called foul and terrible names that matched their ugly natures and cruel powers before they were done away with for their crimes against ponykind. In this book, unicorn ponies weren't burning hideous bringers of gloom and doom; the creatures they burned alive were no more than talented, downtrodden youth and maidens with great inborn power and no record of schooling... or anypony to defend them from any accusations of wrongdoing. While I am all for getting rid of the unequal and all their displays of power and think this tradition could be brought back again, I have to disagree with some of the methods and authority used to carry out these deeds. This book has taught me so much about the things that can be masked with light, and I will cherish the lessons it has given me.

Sunburst, did you know that in Germaneigh there is a holiday similar to Nightmare Night that celebrates these old burnings in the springtime? It is called Walpurgisnacht, and the night is filled with revelry, effigy burning, and dark humor. I wonder if one day, I could visit again, with a Princess Celestia dummy just for that occasion. That's certainly something nopony could ever get away within Equestria. With old relics like her done away with, think of all that could emerge from the ashes. You would never have to choose anypony else, or anything else ever again. We will be together again in a life like that, I just know it.

P.S. I forgot to tell you this, but I know you'll get a laugh out of it. Remember how you used to be scared that every Nightmare Night, Nightmare Moon would emerge from under your bed and gobble you up as soon as you took off your costume? Well, if anything in this book is to be believed, then Nightmare Moon was actually real! Ha! Could you imagine anypony believing far-fetched hogwash like that? Clearly, there are some stories snuffed out by the princess and hidden by her, but a pony like me who is aware and awake unlike the rest of these UTTER SHEEP can't be fooled by something so farfetched.

Author's Note:

Writing a delusional commie horse can be fun.

Comments

[FoolAmongTheStars]

I think Sunburst would be the first to cry out against the destruction of a book...until he saw that it was propaganda and kindly throw it aside where no pony could read it (still might be an interesting historical record of the time though).
And what about the second one? Does is contain the spell she needs to achieve her crazy dream? For the sake of Equestria let's hope not...

[Ice Star]

10217018
Oops, I somehow missed your comment when it was first posted! Very sorry about that.

I think Sunburst would be the first to cry out against the destruction of a book...until he saw that it was propaganda and kindly throw it aside where no pony could read it (still might be an interesting historical record of the time though).

The book wasn't actually propaganda, Starlight is just crazy. The part where it mentions Nightmare moon/Princess Luna is the part that really touches on that.

And what about the second one? Does is contain the spell she needs to achieve her crazy dream? For the sake of Equestria let's hope not...

That's for the next chapter.