The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

Salvation for the Wicked

"Pathetic," Papyrus said, silhouetted on the windowsill by the pre-dawn sky, a hungry grin on his face.

"Papyrus? What are you doing here?" Faye broke through her surprise to speak first. "Didn't you stay behind in the Crystal Empire?"

"I'm not here for you, Butterfly." Papyrus dismissed her with a flick of a wing, focusing intently on Starlight. "Come on. Say my name..."

Starlight's shock congealed into an icy stare. "Why are you here?"

Papyrus shrugged. "Isn't it obvious? I'm here to ask that very question of you."

Starlight's gaze almost faltered. In the silence, Faye noticed Corsica lurking in the hallway just around a corner.

"Look at me," Papyrus hissed. "No claws. No chaos. Still a scumbag, but no signs of delirium or mania. I begged you for death, ripped you apart and threatened everything you held dear. And somehow, you look surprised to see me? So tell me, Starlight, why am I still here? And make it quick. I've been wondering this for so many years, I'm starting to feel like making my own answer."

Starlight looked as if her very existence was a contradiction. "...You wanted me to kill you. I just didn't feel like letting you win."

Papyrus actually deflated. "So that's really it, then. I suppose I was a fool to hope for anything more meaningful than that."

"Papyrus?" Corsica asked, stepping out from behind the corner with her eyes narrowed. "What's going on here?"

"That's High Prince Gazelle to you," Papyrus drawled, flinging a lazy hoof at her. "Murderous mastermind, soul eater, lord of a dead empire, singly responsible for destabilizing the east to the point where Chrysalis could tip it over and the sole saboteur of Starlight and her friends' old dream to settle down peacefully in Equestria. Unless you have a better explanation for how a backwater Riverfall colt could have the appearance, personality and memories of the biggest walking calamity in living memory than 'Starlight didn't feel like letting me win,' in which case I'm all ears..."

Faye felt a conflicting rush of emotions, but somehow, the dominant one came up as disappointment. Had there been a puzzle here she missed out on the chance to solve because Papyrus was annoying and she always tried her best to ignore him?

"Ohh," Corsica said, as if this all made perfect sense. "So that's why Egdelwonk hired you."

Papyrus flicked a feather at her.

"So let me get this straight," Faye pressed. "You're not just a Gazelle impersonator, but allegedly the real thing, even though you're clearly not a sphinx and also weren't even alive back then? And-"

"Of course you know each other," Starlight interrupted with a sigh, getting up to leave. "If you want to talk about this, do it without me. This was not how I wanted to start any day, now or for the rest of my life." She shot a glare at Papyrus over her shoulder. "If you try anything to ruin my life here, I can and will end you. You have no powers anymore, and even when you did, you know how that turned out."

Papyrus grinned. "Leaving me alone with your new friends? Imagine how differently things would have turned out if you trusted me this much all those years ago."

Starlight quickened her stride, so stiff it looked like she might fall over. She nearly collided with Spike as she rounded a corner.

"Woah!" Spike jumped out of the way, pulling a cart laden with pancakes. "Is everything alright up here? I heard some voices getting raised..." He squinted at Papyrus. "New guy? Should I know you?"

"He's not on Twilight's guest list, and he's definitely not on mine," Starlight said, resuming her retreat. "If you find any reason at all to banish him from the premises, or send him straight to Tartarus, you'll get no complaints from me."

She stalked off in a rush, leaving Spike glancing around, confused. "What was that about?"

"Old family friend," Papyrus explained, casting a reluctant gaze after Starlight. "Long story..."

Faye frowned, trying to get a deeper read on Papyrus than his flippant mask, but he was harder than most ponies to parse. She desperately wanted to pin him down and question him for hours, but if the premise of his story was true...

She glanced between him and Spike. High Prince Gazelle was supposed to be a notorious criminal as far as Equestria was concerned. Spike directly served one of Equestria's princesses. This situation could quickly go in a direction that involved Papyrus getting locked up far beyond her reach.

Did she really care, though?

Spike looked Papyrus up and down. "Should I go wake up Twilight to deal with this?" He glanced at Faye and Corsica. "Or is he a friend of yours? Because Starlight doesn't usually run off for no reason..."

"Don't bother," Papyrus said, raising a wing and leaning back against the open window. "I'm just on my way out anyway."

He let himself tip over backwards, out the window, and was gone.

---

On a hill in the distance that offered a good view of Twilight's castle, Discord lounged in a tree, crocheting a sweater with three front sleeves.

He watched idly as a figure swooped away from the castle, hugging the ground and beating a swift trajectory. Eventually, Papyrus crested the hill and landed, not bothering to straighten his mane.

Discord raised a single eyebrow. "I see you're still in one piece."

Papyrus shrugged. "Was that part ever in question? She couldn't kill me back then, she couldn't do it now." He sighed. "Still, I have to admit: that was less fun than I thought it would be."

Discord clacked his crochet needles together as he worked. "Were you really doing that for fun?"

"Among other reasons." Papyrus looked back at the castle. "But I'm lucky I don't care anymore about what she had to say. Because if I did, I would have been disappointed."

"Said the stallion who's clearly not disappointed," Discord lazily countered. "For someone who wasn't doing it for fun, to further a cause or because they cared, you certainly came a long way to give her a piece of your mind."

"Put a sock in it." Papyrus turned his back on Discord. "I still did care when I joined up with that crew for the mountain crossing. And perhaps we're just drawn to each other by morbid curiosity. But what really ticks me off is that someone so vindictive, so determined to get in the last word, and with so much power... is still, after all these years, a desolate slug. I deserved to have lost to someone who was going places in the world, didn't I?"

"Did you?" Discord asked, disinterested.

"Shut up. Who asked you?" Papyrus narrowed his eyes at the castle. "She could probably beat you to a pulp. She beat me. And what's she doing with all that power? Pressing her agenda, changing the world? I was ready to meet a hero or a conqueror or an angel or any number of paths an ambition like that could have taken someone down, and instead I heard the most feeble tirade about how the only reason she hasn't gone back to look for her friends is because she's too scared of having to show a little backbone! All that power, that fanatical determination, and she's squandering it!"

Discord kept on crocheting. "Sounds like someone's jealous."

"Better a world with someone in charge than one left to the aimless bickering of insignificant powers," Papyrus spat. "Say what you like about the mess I left behind, at least I tried to make of the world what I wanted. But why was she so dead-set on stopping me from having my way if she didn't have any plans of her own? Did she stop me purely out of spite? Was she a higher power, fated to oppose me? All I know for certain is what she's done with twenty years of uncontested supremacy: absolutely nothing."

Discord rolled his eyes. "So much for not caring about what she had to say."

Papyrus gritted his teeth.

"By the by," Discord added, "did you happen to get 'her blessing' on whatever it was you were planning on doing next? Because last I heard, that was the present rationale on risking the wrath of Starlight and Equestria's royalty alike, yet I'm still in the dark about whatever it is you're even planning."

Papyrus sighed. "Well, not killing me does count as implicit approval in certain jurisdictions. But I didn't happen to mention my plans, either." He looked away. "Why did I keep my memories? She brought back Gwendolyn, too, and she remembers nothing. But that's not the case for me. If we were meant to have a chance at normal lives, so be it. But how could that be the case when I remember every sin, every lie and every conquest? Even after finally facing her again, I can't understand a bit of what she was thinking."

Discord shrugged, returning to his crocheting.

---

When Faye finally found Starlight, full of pancakes and empty of answers, it was in the castle's kitchen, snacking on leftovers and looking like her thoughts were anywhere but here.

Starlight glanced up. "You again," she said, returning to her meal.

"Too soon?" Faye asked. "I can come back later. Just..."

"Just wanted to ask how I could be getting followed by an undead sphinx?" Starlight guessed. "Or did you already know about him?"

"I knew him," Faye said. "But I didn't know what he was. He knew a lot of strange stuff about the old Griffon Empire - or at least he claimed to - and was vague about how he knew it. But a historical figure coming back from the dead isn't my first guess for why someone would know about history." She hesitated. "He said you brought one of your friends back from the dead, too. Is that true? Can you really do that?"

Starlight sighed, and her ears fell. "The universe is never going to leave me alone, is it?"

Faye took a step back. "I can ask Twilight instead..."

"I've never brought someone back from the dead," Starlight said. "But I do have a different definition from most ponies of what counts as being all the way gone. And a different understanding of what it means to be alive, as well." She looked at her drink. "Life is fragile. It's for the best that you don't think too hard about where it comes from, or where it goes, or why anyone would want to meddle in those processes."

"I think I've got a pretty good idea of that already," Faye pointed out, remembering Lilith's determination to find a new way to create more batponies, and her own desperation to save Ansel and Corsica from the avalanche.

"Most ponies have wanted to," Starlight said. "Have you ever known someone who was pregnant, or had very young foals?"

Faye frowned. "Not closely, no."

"Life comes from other life," Starlight said. "You had parents. Even someone like me had parents. Creating new people is something only done by the most powerful of creator gods... or by most of the creatures in the world, living their ordinary lives and starting families. It's both miraculous and mundane, two sources that are as different as you can possibly imagine... but only until you try to imagine otherwise. What if Princess Luna, in creating batponies, was playing by the same set of rules through which millions of other ponies in this world were born? What if you could understand those rules? What if the formation of a soul, if its process of bonding to a new body growing inside a womb, was something you could interact with and manipulate?"

Faye listened, still.

"I can't tell you where new souls come from," Starlight went on. "And I can't tell you where they go when their body dies and the time comes to move on. But I do know how to interrupt that flow, tether them to this world and hold onto them without needing a body. And I know how to put them back together again, and how to give an old soul to a new infant body instead of allowing nature to take its course. It's not healthy knowledge to fixate on. Thinking too hard about using it, you'd only be standing in the way of time's inevitable course. But in Gazelle's case, he was under a curse. He had lost everything. He wanted to die. And I just didn't want to let it end that way."

"So you killed him, and then captured his soul?" Faye asked. "And... then he was born again in Riverfall?"

"I gave it to a friend whom I trusted to use it well," Starlight said. "And not just him. His sister, too."

Faye looked at the floor in thought. Being able to do a thing like that... Where would it end? You could save someone from certain death, but would have to be present to do it. And to put them back together, you'd have to wait decades for them to grow up again. Or was there a way to do it if you still had their original body?

"Fugue, you see, is a locus of my power," a memory of Coda's voice said. "Touching it would expose you to the raw emotional suction that contains feelings within me, the power of which is great enough that it could very well devour your soul in its entirety. Of course, should that happen, I would possess all the necessary pieces to put you back together again, so you would be alright in the end aside from a brief experience of being dead."

Had Coda been speaking accurately there? Could what she described work on the same principle as what Starlight just said she could do? Presumably, whatever Starlight did was done using her Flame of Harmony powers... but, as a changeling queen, was there a chance Faye could do it too?

She had a degree of control over Halcyon, after all, who was potentially a piece of her own soul. What if she could do that to others? Applying the principle Coda had warned her about, in which a changeling queen's emotional suction could theoretically tear her apart by separating-

Faye squeezed her eyes shut, trying to halt that train of thought. Starlight was right. She probably was missing dozens of pieces, but it really was possible for a sufficiently special pony to figure out how to cheat death. Or maybe she wasn't, given what had really happened two and a half years ago, the side of the truth she had still never shared with Halcyon...

Either way, changeling queens were a product of the blunders of mortal scientists. If she thought of herself as a tool to be used by other ponies, rather than a pony herself - which was probably how Coda's cult thought of Coda when creating her - then anyone could do this.

What would the world look like if every last one of its ponies could stand in the way of death like that? She didn't know anyone who wouldn't jump at the opportunity, but everything would be completely different. And just trying to imagine how felt wrong, in some way.

...Actually, she did know one pony who would try to turn down the opportunity. Starlight.

"I think I get it," Faye said, looking up at last. "Why you feel like you're on a slippery slope, and if you dig too deep or reach too far, the things you let yourself reach for will grow faster than your ability to obtain them and you'll never know peace. Because if you can save your best friend that way, why not save an acquaintance? Why not save anyone around you? Why not make an effort to be in as many places as possible, to predict the future so you'll always be where you're needed? And that's just one of the things you can do. Isn't it?"

"Sounds like you do." Starlight bowed her head. "And then?"

"...But listen to yourself for a moment." Faye straightened up. "Do you realize how reasonable you just made it sound, cheating death? Like you can just decide you want to do this, and boom, you find a way?"

"I explained this to you earlier," Starlight sighed. "That's how my power works. If I have a goal I'm pursuing, it can't become impossible... with the exception of wanting to do nothing and be left alone. It doesn't come with a guarantee I can get there. Usually, I'll only make it halfway before the goalposts are moved again. But for me, there's always a way."

"We need that power," Faye said. "Stopping Chrysalis and the windigoes? Rekindling the Kindness flame? We need a way forward. Starlight, please..."

"I want to be alone right now," Starlight grunted. "I've had an unpleasant morning, and you already have your way. Go visit Laughter with Twilight and Rainbow Dash. They've got no compulsions about going back there..."

Faye gritted her teeth, turned around and walked away.

---

Panting from the run there, Corsica crested a hill on Ponyville's outskirts, fairly sure it was the place she had seen Papyrus stop in the distance. Odds were, he wouldn't still be there, and she really didn't feel like burning a use of her talent to change that. But as long as she framed this in her mind as a little morning exercise, it was still possible to push herself to get there.

And there he was. She checked herself to ensure she hadn't accidentally used her talent anyway, but felt mostly sort of fine.

"Well, well," Papyrus said, leaning against a tree. "Not every day you come looking for me on purpose."

"Excuse you, I was just out for a morning run," Corsica countered. "Not my fault I ran into your supposedly-undead corpse." She leaned on one leg. "So were you just taking the 'I'm Gazelle' joke to a slightly worrying level in order to torment an already unstable unicorn, or are you actually a forty-something stallion pretending to be a teenager for kicks and giggles?"

"What's it to you?" Papyrus asked. "Frankly, I've got nothing to lose from just telling you, but I'm slightly sour that meeting wasn't a bit more eventful and not in a particularly friendly mood."

"You need to sling some dirty insults, I can give as good as I get," Corsica offered. "I just wanna know whether I might be on any intelligence agencies' lists of suspected bad guys for associating with you."

Papyrus kicked a leg. "You got on that the moment Egdelwonk hired you, I'm afraid. Regardless, you're a chauvinistic dandy with a dumb mane. And you're fat, too."

"Somewhere between not applicable and false," Corsica said. "You're a nerd who can't bench fifty pounds and has never kissed a mare. Feel any better?"

"Guilty as charged. And somehow, I do!" Papyrus grinned. "So, gonna ask the obvious question?"

"I already did," Corsica pointed out. "And you changed the subject."

Papyrus whistled innocently.

"Gazelle?" Corsica raised an eyebrow. "And if so, how?"

"That's what they all say," Papyrus groaned. "Are you really going to make me tell my second life's story to you? What's in this for me?"

"If you keep dragging this out, I could go ask Starlight instead," Corsica pointed out. "She clearly had something to do with it."

Papyrus sighed. "I'm a Riverfall colt. Second youngest out of a brood of five. Single mother, which is ordinary there, actually raised by her instead of in a community pool, which isn't. I like boats, martial arts, scary stories, spicy food, singing loudly in the streets at night, and my favorite color is purple. When I was thirteen, I got written up in school for convincing every other student in my class to mirror their seating arrangement for a day and then gaslighting the teacher to make them think we had always been that way. My first-"

"I didn't actually want your life's story," Corsica interrupted. "Just the part about who you used to be, and how that connects with the scrawny bum you are now."

Papyrus looked at her with lidded eyes. "Then you shouldn't have been so passive-aggressive when I offered to tell you my life's story."

"Forget this," Corsica said, turning to leave. "I'll go hear it from Starlight instead."

"I've got no clue how I was reincarnated," Papyrus called out as she was leaving. "I didn't even find out that's what this was until I left home for Ironridge."

"See?" Corsica turned around with a smirk. "That wasn't so difficult." Her face straightened, and she sat down. "What do you mean?"

Papyrus sighed. "My birth was a documented event, with papers. One of the few in Riverfall that ever was, so be grateful. In hindsight, everyone must have known I was going to be special, and was paying attention from before the beginning."

Corsica settled in, no longer making jabs now that she was finally getting somewhere.

"I have one younger sister," Papyrus went on. "A year and a half my junior. Adorable thing, very precious. At some point between her birth and me being old enough to speak properly, I started having a recurring nightmare in which she turned to dust right before my eyes, over and over again."

"You remember something from when you were that young?" Corsica raised an eyebrow.

"Don't try too hard to understand it," Papyrus encouraged. "You'll hurt your brain. Now, it turns out the original Gazelle had a little sister too, and she died in exactly the same way I saw in my nightmares. Poof. Turned to dust. It was arguably the most traumatic event in his entire life, beating out the time his parents were assassinated, or the time Valey and Starlight beat him to a well-deserved bloody pulp and left him in the bottom of a muddy ditch, or even the time he learned in a forbidden library that all sphinxes were gods on the same level as Garsheeva, and her regime was merely structured in a way to prevent them from amassing the power to challenge her. All of those were moments that also started cropping up in my nightmares."

Corsica nodded. "That's rough, buddy."

"The older I got, the more varied those dreams became," Papyrus explained. "Or perhaps they were varied from the beginning, and I was too young to remember all but the most important. I always kept quiet about these, though. Younger me was cunning enough to realize that dreams like these weren't normal, and it was better to hide something like that from everyone else in my life. Now, Riverfall didn't have the kinds of resources I needed to realize I was dreaming about the life of a historical figure, especially since the post-collapse Empire was such a difficult place to study. But I noticed other things that were amiss."

Corsica listened, noting that he actually seemed to enjoy telling this.

"For one, there was a doctor from Ironridge who came to give my sister and I monthly check-ups," Papyrus carried on. "Compulsive note-taker. Asked all sorts of bizarre questions, which in hindsight must have been psychological exams to see if we had any sort of the mania or personality flips emblematic of sphinxes. But that's what made me even more certain I was special, because he paid the same kind of attention to my sister, and I'm all but certain she suffered none of these dream-memories I relived my past life through."

He waved a hoof. "Anyway, one day I did what all Riverfall colts who think they're something special do, and hoofed it for Ironridge. And soon I found myself being stealthily stalked by a pegasus with a familiar demeanor who called herself Unless. You know who Unless really is, right?"

Corsica raised an eyebrow. "Valey?"

"See, you're smart," Papyrus said. "Or she told you. Probably the latter. I had some memory-dreams on my side, and rustled her faster than you can blink. And the threat of spilling the beans on her double identity was good enough to prompt an exchange of information, and lo and behold, here I am now."

Corsica looked him up and down. "Huh."

"Before you ask, I wasn't supposed to keep my memories," Papyrus told her, pointing a hoof at her forehead. "No one has figured that one out yet, not even me... unless Starlight knows, but I doubt she's telling. My sister didn't keep hers. She doesn't even recognize the name 'Gwendolyn'. If I didn't remember, perhaps this would be a blessing, a chance to live a life out from under the shadow of my old body and station. For her, it certainly is, and that's why she's back in Riverfall, not allowed to be a part of this adventure."

"So Valey stomped you in your old life, knew who you were after you came back, and still hung out with you in the dumpster corps?" Corsica asked, skeptical. "All the history I've heard made it sound like you two didn't get along. Not that I've heard all that much."

Papyrus shrugged. "We had an understanding, back in Ironridge. She kept a close eye on me to ensure I wouldn't do anything truly psychotic, and I... didn't do anything truly psychotic. Unfortunately, mystery reincarnation can't cure being a jerk, but sphinxes were substantially worse than that. These things..." He patted his special talent. "For ponies, they're a sign of your greatest strength. For sphinxes, they were a sign of your greatest weakness. It was every sphinx's lot in life to inevitably sabotage that which they cared most about in their pursuit of it. The ones that went down in history as good rulers had flaws that merely stayed out of the way of that. And the ones that didn't were numerous."

"What's yours do?" Corsica asked.

Papyrus gave her a sly grin. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Not if it's going to involve doing this old dance again," Corsica pushed back. "So are you glossing over the part of how you actually came back because you don't know, or just want to listen to me asking twenty-eight more times?"

Papyrus raised an eyebrow. "Why? Got a dead somebody you'd want to bring back, sans memories, as your biological child? That's kind of weird, don't you think?"

Corsica frowned. "No. I'm just curious. This isn't exactly something that normally happens."

Papyrus gave her a wink. "Perfect, because if you did it would still be impossible for multiple reasons. Besides, kids these days have too much trouble deciding what they're doing to do with their lives when they haven't been given an undeserved second chance at it. No need to foist that burden on more of us."

After a moment, he added, "Speaking of which, if you were me, what would you do next?"

"What do you mean?" Corsica shrugged.

"Well, I've just completed my new life's goal," Papyrus pointed out. "First I was trying to figure out why I was having those dreams, and once I did, I wanted to find Starlight and ask her what could have possibly possessed her to spare me. After all, I didn't have any other plans, and if she had some plan for me, that would save me the trouble of deciding what to do with myself. But she doesn't. And my goal in my previous life - paving the way for my sister to have a perfect existence - is basically already accomplished, too. Sphinxes toiled for two thousand years to break free from the curse of their existence, Garsheeva included, and Starlight solved it just like that, because she couldn't stand the idea of me getting to go out on my own terms."

Corsica nodded.

"So what next?" Papyrus shrugged. "I've got no continent-spanning inheritance, no god powers, and no psychosis to sabotage whatever I apply myself to. I've also had the clock wound back nicely on my lifespan, have plenty of potent skills, am irredeemably rude, and would instantly be imprisoned anywhere in Equestria or the Griffon Empire if I could manage to convince the wrong person I really am who I am. What do I do with myself?"

"What do you do with yourself?" Corsica leaned in. "Assuming you're telling the truth about all this, which, you're just crazy enough that I believe it..."

Papyrus preened a wing. "Well, theoretically, I could go take over the Griffon Empire a second time. I did it once before, after all, and now unification could actually be a good thing. Or I could stay here and pester Starlight, because the idea of someone as passive as her getting the last word really rubs my feathers the wrong way. Or I could wander the world in search of a new cause, perhaps try to clean up some loose ends from my previous life. No ideas from you, eh?"

"Sorry." Corsica shrugged. "My first idea would be for you to go stop the war between Ironridge and Yakyakistan, but that's probably out of your league."

Papyrus groaned. "That would be my first idea too, but for once I might be a little outmatched. Just a bit. It does sound fun though." He licked his lips.

"By the way," Corsica said. "Still Papyrus? Or Gazelle, now that you've put this out there?"

"Still Papyrus, if you please," Papyrus replied. "Dreams or no, I feel at least some disconnect my old life, and jokes aside my old name has some unfortunate baggage in these lands. Although, come to think of it, I do love calling Senescey by her old name, so I suppose I couldn't blame you too much if you had a slip of the tongue..."

"Nah. Unlike you, I respect my friends' names." Corsica stood up. "...Is this the first time you've ever told anyone all this, by the way?"

"Of course." Papyrus yawned. "I couldn't very well go telling anyone my goals and motives before I've fulfilled them. Don't you remember Egdelwonk's code of conduct?"

Corsica raised an eyebrow. "You still care about that?"

Papyrus chuckled. "It's more useful than it sounds. Run along now. I'm sure you have plenty of stuff more interesting to do than getting harassed by me, and I've finished my story, which means I need a new way to entertain myself."

"Right," Corsica said, trotting away. "I'll leave you to it..."

Comments

[RoboRed]

On a hill in the distance that offered a good view of Twilight's castle, Discord lounged in a tree, crocheting a sweater with three front sleeves.

Honetly I kinda would've expected Discord to be crocheting a sweater back into a ball of yarn or maybe back into the wool of a sheep rotating in mid-air or something but I guess this works too.

"What's it to you?" Papyrus asked. "Frankly, I've got nothing to lose from just telling you, but I'm slightly sour that meeting wasn't a bit more eventful and not in a particularly friendly moon."

Didn't you mean for that to be "mood"?

And soon I found myself being stealthily stalked by a pegasus with a familiar demeanor who called herself Unless. You know who Unless really is, right?"

Corsica raised an eyebrow. "Valey?"

"See, you're smart," Papyrus said. "Or she told you. Probably the latter. I had some memory-dreams on my side, and rustled her faster than you can blink. And the threat of spilling the beans on her double identity was good enough to prompt an exchange of information, and lo and behold, here I am now."

Ah. So that's it, then.

Man, what a crazy, twisted life Gazelle's wound up with in this world. But it looks like he and his sister just got the mother of all cosmic saving throws - hope he makes some good of it.

[KMCA]

I do love calling Senescey by her old name, so I suppose I couldn't blame you too much if you had a slip of the tongue..."

And I hope keep doing so as I cannot for the life of me seem to remember which sister is which... Seriously, I'm on the verge of making a post-it note or something.