Part 2: Biographical
After not receiving an answer for such a long time, most ponies would have gotten nervous or uncomfortable or both. They might have made an inquiry or an inquiring noise to break the tension.
But Maud Pie wasn’t like most ponies. She was used to the darkness of caves, so the dim burn of the candles was practically a floodlight. She was used to discomfort, so the awkward kneeling position that wasn’t natural for anypony didn’t bother her. And she was used to her marefriend being a bit strange sometimes. She could have waited a long time.
But Starlight continued to not speak. Starlight continued to not do anything but stare at her, wide-eyed. So Maud knew she would have to say more words, because this was always meant to be the catalyst for a difficult conversation.
“I know we haven’t been officially dating for very long.” Maud said, holding her pose. “But we know each other so well after what we lived through together this past year. And I count us starting from our first date here.”
Starlight looked around to let herself realize that it was here. The flickering candlelight reflecting off of their faces reproduced themselves a hundredfold in the facets of the cut gems embedded in the walls. A thousand lights in a thousand mirrors. But she didn’t have to remind herself of the Oracle’s words to know that this was the moment. She would have to tell Maud. She would have to tell Maud everything and she hated every bit of it.
“Happy second anniversary.”
Starlight’s attention snapped back to Maud. Then to the ring she was holding up to her, with a setting of the most beautiful graymerald she had ever seen. Then to Maud again. She tried to squeak out a response.
“I…” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I— I want to say yes. But I can’t.” Another painfully awkward moment of silence passed, the pain itself being visible on Starlight’s face. “I have something to confess. I… I…—”
“You’re from the future. ” Maud said with no inflection in her voice. She put the ring away and sat down. “You replaced the Starlight that died under those rocks the moment you came here.“
“I— what!?” A million questions ran through Starlight’s mind, and to her horror she chose the worst one to ask first.
“How did you know?”
Maud answered in her monotone. “When the rockfall happened. There was a moment when I saw two of you. One collapsing under the falling rocks, the other on top.”
Starlight winced. She had thought she had timed that perfectly.
“It was only a moment. It would have been easy enough to dismiss it as a false memory from the trauma. But then you started doing strange things. Like the time you yelled at that small child at Twilight’s School of Friendship.”
“Yeah, I…” Starlight rubbed her neck with her hoof nervously. “That must have seemed weird at first.”
“We just thought you became evil again. Or the rocks hit your head harder than we thought. Until we found her letters to Tirek.”
Starlight frowned as she remembered what it took to convince Octavia the guidance counselor to look into it, and the trouble she had to rescue her from afterward.
“So… that’s when you knew?”
“That’s when I suspected.” Maud said. “Then I went back to that tunnel and found your body underneath the rock pile. That’s when I knew.”
Starlight backed up to cover her mouth with her hooves in horror, tears welling in her eyes.
“That— I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think—” Starlight sobbed out, “You must think I’m a monster!”
“No.” Maud said. “I did say I blocked off that tunnel forever. I can understand wanting to think your secret would stay buried. But I can get around it. I do it every lunaversary when I can, to leave a flower.” Starlight put her hooves down, frowning. Maud continued. “If you want, I can show you the next time I go. I made a really nice rock grave for your body. With pretty stones that I think you would have liked.“
“I—” Starlight didn’t know what to say. She tried to think through the timeline. “That must have been just before you went on that research trip. When you left Boulder at Pinkie’s.” What she didn’t say was that Pinkie petsitting Boulder became Starlight petsitting Boulder half the time.
“Yes.” Maud said. “I needed time to really be alone, to grieve. And think. Why you would come back in time to take your own place. Why you had the right memories of earlier that day. You must have been from the timeline where you survived the rockfall.”
Starlight cast her eyes to the ground.
“I am.”
“And if you’d come back to an earlier point and rescued yourself, some other Maud would live in a world with two Starlights, and I would have none.”
“Yeah, that…” Starlight paused. “That’s right. When Princess Twilight Sparkle found this timeline spurring out from ours, it’s… hard to explain, but the moment was frozen. I— this Starlight was already a goner, and if we picked another point to send me to, this timeline would have continued, and this Starlight would have died anyway.” Starlight was confused. “But all that was based on a lot of top secret time travel spell research, how could you possibly know that?“
“I didn’t.” Maud said flatly. “I just knew something like that had to be true. The Starlight I knew wouldn’t just let somepony die if she could stop it, even if it was just a past version of herself.”
Starlight wasn’t sure if she could agree with Maud’s high assessment of herself.
“But I—” Starlight paused. “It was still wrong to not tell—”
“Of course it was.” Maud agreed. “It’s still wrong. I want you to tell everypony the truth, even if it will hurt them a lot. But I didn’t tell anypony either, even after I found the body.”
“That’s not the same…”
“Maybe. But I knew you wouldn’t do all this for no reason. I knew you came back for something important. Then it was obvious what it was. The Oracle. The mission to the Zebra Lands.”
Starlight nodded hesitantly.
“The rest of us thought it was really strange how Princess Celestia chose us instead of Twilight and her friends. But you never seemed to be confused or hesitant about it.“
“Yeah.” Starlight admitted. “Princess Twilight Sparkle and I planned it back in my timeline.” Though in truth, nearly all of it was Princess Twilight Sparkle explaining the plan to Starlight.
“Do you still not want to talk about what the Oracle said to you?”
Starlight was silent. Maud continued.
“You were really upset. Then after your meeting with Princess Celestia… She seemed sad, but not worried. She seemed sad for you, specifically.“
Starlight was still silent.
“My guess is that something happens in the future that threatens your Equestria. Princess Celestia wasn’t worried since She could prevent it now, but it was too late for your world. That’s why you were so sad, and why you didn’t go back after your mission was done.”
“No, that… that’s not it.” Starlight’s voice was filled with dread. “My world’s fine. I just can’t go back until the timeline catches up, so I have to stay here until then, stay here through…”
Starlight was barely holding herself together.
“I just— We tried everything— I wanted to— I wanted to say— I wanted to tell— I just didn’t know how— I’m so, so, so sorry—”
“Starlight.” Maud interrupted, worried. “You’re not making any sense.”
“You’re dying, Maud!” Starlight burst out, surprising herself. She covered her mouth with her hooves again.
Maud blinked, confused. “I feel fine.”
“Of course!” Starlight squeaked out. “And you will, for another two years or so… Then it…”
Starlight didn’t seem to want to finish the sentence.
“What’s wrong with me?” Maud asked.
“It’s a…” Starlight tried to pull herself together. “It’s a prion disease. At some point you ingested something that mimicked a protein your body uses to maintain the cells of your thaumamotor nerves. But it was shaped wrong, and it spread, slowly accumulating in your thaumamotor system until… Until the symptoms started showing. You suddenly started getting so weak, you couldn’t break even the softest of rocks anymore with your hoof. Then you started walking funny. Then you couldn’t walk at all. Then…”
Starlight stopped, pained.
“We did everything. Princess Twilight Sparkle pulled together a team of the best scientists in Equestria, stopping a whole bunch of other research projects just to focus on this. Sunburst and I spent so many sleepless nights, learning more about it than either of us ever wanted to know. Memorizing all those new words. But we never got anywhere close to a cure.”
Maud was listening with that same expressionless look on her face she always did. Starlight continued.
“Then, a few moons after the… your… funeral, Princess Twilight Sparkle told me what She found in the Royal Archives. A time travel spell, but one where we could choose between different spurs to go back to. Not far back enough to before when you first got the disease, but far back enough to get to the Zebra Lands in time to ask the Oracle.”
“Oh.” Maud realized. “So you asked Her if there was a cure. And She said no. That’s why you were so upset.”
Starlight nodded silently, her eyes fixed on Maud’s expression. It was still expressionless.
“So it wasn’t your world ending.”
Starlight wanted to but did not say that what the Oracle told her meant that her world was ending. Just not in the way Maud had thought. But she didn’t, because this wasn’t about her.
“So, two more years?” Maud asked.
Starlight frowned. She expected Maud’s reaction to be subdued, but not this much. “Three years. The first symptoms start in about two.”
Maud looked away. She was silent for a bit, thinking to herself. She turned back, still without betraying any emotion.
“It could be worse. How did I get it?”
Starlight sighed, pained. “Certain magical rocks contain the prion you got sometimes, but they’re rare, and you only find them in exotic places. They can only really be introduced into your body by ingestion. And with all your research trips, and the way you…” Starlight couldn’t finish.
Maud chuckled lightly, which was a strange reaction. Not the least because it was so rare to hear Maud chuckle.
“Growing up on the farm, there were times I didn’t want to eat my rocks at dinner. The texture just bothered me sometimes. My mom always made sure that if I didn’t eat my rocks, I wouldn’t get any rock candy for dessert. But I never liked rock candy anyway.”
She smiled, another rarity.
“Then I started my rocktorate. My advisor thought it was really great that I grew up on a rock farm and was used to eating rocks. Said that rocktologists had gotten soft over the years, less into rocks and more into paper. Even writing up research guidelines that discouraged eating unknown rocks on expeditions. Even though that’s still the best way to determine the alkali content on the spot.”
She looked at Starlight.
“Both of them said the same thing. ‘Eating a rock never killed anypony.’ Well, I showed them.”
Starlight didn’t say anything. Maud continued.
“That was a joke, by the way. You were supposed to laugh.”
“Oh, Maud… I—” Starlight frowned. “I can’t really laugh right now…”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s not a very good set so far. I’m really dying on stage.”
That got a short laugh, followed by a guilty frown.
“I—” Starlight started.
“Don’t.” Maud interrupted. “Never apologize for laughing when I’m trying to get you to laugh. I’ve always loved your laugh.”
It was far from the first time Maud had said that to her, but Starlight’s heart still melted.
“I just don’t understand how you can be so…” Starlight searched for the words. “I don’t know. If I were you I would be sad and angry and— “
“I am sad about it.” Maud confirmed. “But I’m not angry. What would I be angry against?”
“Oh, I don’t know! The world? Rocks?” Starlight realized how self-indulgent what she would say sounded, but said it anyway. “Me?… I could have told you all this a year ago. You could have at least known what the stakes are. You could have had another year of… preparing…“
Maud looked at her.
“Would it make you feel better if I told you that had I known, I wouldn’t have spent my time any differently?”
“Maud… You really shouldn’t be trying to make me feel better right now…” Tears welled up in her eyes again. “You should be… focusing on you.”
“I’m doing all I can about that.” Maud insisted. “I try not to get upset or sad about things I can’t control. This is one of them.”
Maud turned to look down the tunnel, which if she went down far enough, she would see a branch closed off by caution tape and a warning written in her own hoofwriting. She spoke.
“In a way, I've always been jealous of the other Starlight. She was here one moment, gone the next. No time to realize it. In the world inside her mind, the one that’s now gone forever, she never died. That’s the closest we ever get to immortality.“
Starlight dreaded that she could not give Maud even that. The disease would make its progression known and clear for moons before finally taking her.
“Of course I’m sad. Three years isn’t enough. There will still be so much more I’d want to learn about rocks. So much more time I’d want to spend with the ponies I love.” She turned to look at Starlight meaningfully. “But three hundred years wouldn’t be enough, either. I’d say the exact same thing.” She blinked. “I’ll have to take some comfort in that.”
Starlight still didn’t know what to say. Why wasn’t she saying anything?
“What was my life like? The other me? The one you knew. Before she died.”
“Oh!” Starlight lit up. She could at least talk about this, and memorialize the Maud she knew. “She was amazing. Because she was you, and you’re amazing. She… She didn’t go on any grand adventure like we did. She kept living where you do now, just outside Ponyville. Researching rocks. Spending time with her friends, like Trixie, and Sunburst, and… me. Sometimes she’d do a stand-up set that nopony would understand. Sometimes she’d visit her family back at the farm. Sometimes she’d go on research trips. Always with Boulder.”
“Sounds like a nice life.” Maud sounded content.
“It was!” Starlight agreed sadly. “She also had a coltfriend. Mudbriar. He was… strange. But in a way similar to how you’re strange. You two really understood each other. You…” Starlight frowned. “You never met him in this timeline, because of how everything changed. I…” Starlight cast her gaze down. “I sometimes feel like I stole you from him.”
“I’m not a suitcase, Starlight.” Maud said. “I can’t be stolen from anypony. I’ve never even heard of Mudbriar before right now, and that’s okay. And it’s not like I didn’t find a partner who understood me.”
Starlight again didn’t know how to react. Maud sighed internally.
“What happened to Boulder?”
“Mudbriar adopted him. It was really sweet. He gets along great with his new sibling, Twiggy.” Starlight smiled.
“I’m sure he does.” Maud smiled. She took Boulder out of her frock and looked at him for a while. Then she looked at Starlight.
“Boulder says he wants you to adopt him when I die.”
A lump formed in Starlight’s throat on hearing that definitive “when”.
“Of course! I will—” Starlight suppressed a sob. “Boulder will live the best life a chunk of basalt ever could!” Starlight meant it. She had tears in her eyes.
Instead of responding, Maud looked at Boulder some more. Then she smiled.
“He believes you.”
Maud put Boulder away and looked at Starlight again, who was wiping away her tears.
“Tell me about my funeral.”
“Oh, it…” Starlight kept trying to suppress a sob. “It was a beautiful day. I-I hated that, actually. The sky had no right to be so happy on a day like that. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask the local weather team to change it.“
“I’m glad it was a nice day.” Maud said. Starlight teared up. Of course she would say that.
“We were all there. Me, Trixie, Sunburst, your family… I’ve never seen Pinkie so sad. Marble was so angry at the world. Limestone didn’t talk for weeks after.”
Maud looked more pained by those words than anything else she had heard so far.
“Mudbriar gave the eulogy. Which I assumed would be disastrous but—” Starlight sobbed. “He really was moving, in his own way. He really did love you.” Starlight paused. “Or… her. The other you.”
“Time travel is confusing, isn’t it?”
Starlight smiled and nodded sadly at that. “Then we laid you to rest in the bog, just like your will said, because—”
“It provides an aquatic, anoxic environment full of high-mineral sediment without being exposed to seismic activity and thus is most conducive to intact fossil formation.” Maud supplied.
“Yes! Exactly.” Starlight laugh-sobbed at Maud being so herself. “Then Pinkie played a traditional yak funeral dirge on the yovidaphone. But all I could think of was how glad I was for you, that you finally got to become what you loved the most.”
“Oh.” Maud blinked. “That’s disappointing.”
“Oh, right!” Starlight realized. “She’s not so great at it now, but by then she really was good at the yovidaphone, er, will be—”
“No.” Maud interrupted. “It’s disappointing that you’ve known me for so long but still don’t know what a fossil is.”
“What?” Starlight blinked.
Maud explained. “No part of a fossil is composed of the original material of the body. The flesh rots away almost instantly, of course. But even though bones are the rocks that live in our bodies, their calcium, too, will break down over enough time. They just happen to last long enough for minerals to form and fill in the holes within the structure. The bones are just a cast. What replaces them is the fossil.”
Maud paused for a moment.
“It will be like that with us. I’ll be gone soon, but you’ll live for a long time after that. The hole I leave behind will be filled. But it will be filled in a way that you can tell I was there from the shape, even if no part of me actually exists anymore.” She blinked. “But I guess then you’ll die too, and even that shape will be gone. This isn’t a very good analogy.”
“Maud, I…” Starlight tried to say something. “I will never let that hole be filled.”
“I hope you do. But if you don’t, I hope it’s not for my sake. I won’t exist anymore.”
Starlight said nothing. Maud could see it. Starlight sinking back into her own silence and guilt and sadness. She hated it whenever she saw it. She saw it a lot. She said something.
“There are upsides to this, you know.”
“Really?” Starlight asked, cautious.
“Yes.” Maud said. “I won’t have to keep a budget past my funeral. I can really run wild with my expenses. Maybe even buy a new rock pick.“
Starlight chuckled at that and immediately regretted it, then immediately regretted her regret, remembering what Maud had said earlier.
“There’s also this paper title I want to get past the editors at the Acta Rocktologica. They always refused, saying a rock pun had no place in their publication, no matter how good it was. But if it’s going to be the definitive capstone of my illustrious research career, I might be able to convince them.”
“I’m sure it will be the best rocktology paper anypony’s ever written.”
Maud knew that Starlight had no way of being able to tell that, but truly believed it anyway. Maud appreciated that. She smiled at her, which made Starlight take notice.
“There’s one more. Even the awful Starlight Glimmer wouldn’t be so villainous as to dismiss the marriage proposal of a dying mare without a second thought.“
Starlight took a second to process it.
“Wait, you’re still thinking of…”
“Not like I intended. I have one condition to add. But yes.”
Starlight frowned.
“After all this? How could…” Starlight paused, swallowing her words. She didn’t want to be self-indulgent again and ask How could you not hate me? Instead, she said,
“How could you just go on with this? How could you look at me the same way?“
Maud didn’t answer her directly.
“Do you know that we’re rising right now?”
Starlight was taken aback by the non-sequitur.
“N-no?”
Maud began infodumping. “Twenty thousand years ago, most of the land of Equestria was underneath a glacier. Half the continent was. It was huge.” Maud spread her forelegs as if to indicate the massive size. “And heavy. It pressed down on the land underneath for thousands of years.”
She planted her forelegs on the ground and bent forward, as if to demonstrate. Starlight couldn’t help but smile at the uncharacteristic animation.
“Then the climate shifted and got warmer. The glaciers melted. The pressure was gone. The land began to rise.”
She slowly stood up, straightening her forelegs.
“It’s called isostatic rebound. It’s pretty weak here, since we were not too deep into the glacier. Maybe a hoofnail every century. The effects are stronger up north, like in Whinnyapolis.”
She looked at Starlight.
“But it’s happening. It’s one of the fastest, too. Cycles last only for millennia. The plate tectonics that created the Crystal Mountains and the Ghastly Gorge play out over millions of years. Entire species will live and die before they even notice. Including ours.”
She looked at Starlight.
“It should make my life feel small. How even if I lived as long as an alicorn, I would never get to personally witness what I study. But I choose to let it comfort me instead. Whenever I feel like I’m in the presence and mercy of a powerful being whose world I will never understand, I remind myself that even they can’t stop the continents from drifting.“
Starlight took a second to realize what she meant.
“Is that how you see me?”
“You almost destroyed Equestria with the power of your magic once.”
Starlight cringed. She had done that, hadn’t she?
“Nopony should have that much power.” The unicorn said. “Nopony deserves it. Especially me.”
“No, you don’t.” Maud agreed. “But you have it. So much of it that it makes your name wrong.” Starlight was taken aback as Maud took her hoof in hers. “You are not starlight, but the star that produces it. I can feel it. All the power coursing underneath your skin. And you use it to do what? Try to save me. Maybe I shouldn’t but I can’t help but find that romantic.”
Starlight looked at her with a pained expression. Maud didn’t seem to be affected.
“I choose to focus on that, and not on the time travel or the lies or your past of enslaving villages and inadvertently causing genocides because I choose to be happy with you. But you don’t, do you?”
Maud sighed, and let go of her hoof. “Starlight. This is important. It’s what made dating you the most difficult. But it’s also why there’s a last upside to all of this. If things hadn’t happened exactly the way it did, we wouldn’t have happened. Would we?”
Maud’s rare use of emphasis got her to take notice. Starlight was silent.
“You pushed me away for moons. After everything we were going through together in the Zebra Lands. You only kissed me the day after you met the Oracle.”
Starlight considered it her greatest moment of weakness. The worst thing she had ever done.
“I thought it was because you were sad about your world. That made me sad, that that is what it took. But now, I know that wasn’t it. It was worse. Worse than even pity for a dying mare.”
Maud knew her too well.
“You only did it because you thought it wouldn’t make you happy.”
It was true. It was because Maud had become a poisoned chalice for her to drink. Every kiss and caress coming with an aftertaste of future betrayal and pain.
It was worse than that. It was true about everything in her life. It was why she had let the first Maud slip away after that rockfall. The rockfall didn’t matter. She would never have allowed herself to accept a relationship with somepony so obviously compatible with her.
For the exact same reasons, it’s why she had let Trixie slip away, though she took more years than Maud did to realize it and try to move on.
It’s why she accepted becoming Headmare for Twilight’s school. A lifetime of running someone else’s pet project. A project she had started her involvement in due to a sense of obligation more than anything. A job she could do well, find satisfaction in, and never be happy doing. It was perfect.
It’s why she did the evil things she had done, despite knowing that they were wrong. Because that way, the whole world would see who she was. Not as a supervillain, but as somepony who didn’t deserve happiness.
It’s why had the Oracle given her the cure, and she had saved Maud, she would have then kept pushing her away until she slipped away, too.
“I don’t understand.” Starlight would have been in tears, but she felt somehow too sad for them. “If you felt this way, why would you want more of me?”
“Because once in a while, you would mess up. You would let yourself be happy. I would have to work hard to make it happen, and it would only last a moment. But that made everything worth it. And maybe that’s not healthy. But that’s how I feel.”
There were those moments, when Starlight smiled in a way that was lived-in and not at least partially covering up her own guilt and pain. When a caress or a kiss was what Starlight had wanted, and not just done because Starlight thought Maud would like it. Most of all there were the moments just after waking up, still too disoriented to realize who she was and what she had done, when she looked at the sleeping form of the earth mare and felt a fleeting sense of peace.
“But I’m not a martyr.” Maud said. “I proposed to you because I didn’t mind that deal. On the timescale of a lifetime, it didn’t matter. But if I only have two to three years, I don’t want to spend so much of it working so hard.“
She fixed Starlight with a serious look.
“I’m going to propose to you again. But this is what I’m really asking. Will you let yourself be happy with me? If any part of you doubts that you can, please say no. Please.”
Of course, Starlight knew what this was. It was another poisoned chalice. Every moment of happiness she felt for the next three years wouldn’t just be an ephemeral moment, blowing away in the breeze. Every ounce of joy would be added to a balance to be paid in full in regret starting from the moment when the symptoms start showing, past the point when Maud’s body is laid down in the bog for a second time, and beyond. Every stolen pleasure another layer on the built-up glacier pressing down on the land, the resulting isostatic rebound of pain unstoppable, and continuing to expand long after the last trace of the glacier had melted away.
She knew that Maud must know this. She was glad. It meant that Maud was finally doing something just for herself. Demanding more of her than the other way around. Starlight would let herself be happy. This would make Maud happy. Then Maud would die. Then the happiness would destroy her. Maud and Starlight would both get what they deserved. The perfect plan.
Maud proposed. Starlight gave her answer.
Three years later, she gave a beautiful eulogy at a somber ceremony on the edge of a bog.
A few moons after that, the bridge to her original timeline, the future of the one we know, opened back up. She crossed over, and told her friends and Princess Twilight Sparkle about everything that happened. About how there was never anything anypony could have done to save Maud after all. About how Starlight had tried her best to make Maud’s last years as happy as possible. It wasn’t just words. She had objects to give as well.
A poster advertising a sold-out run of a Las Pegasus magic show. A tome translating the fundamentals of Zebra potionology to the Equestrian thaumaturgical system. Happily received by a mare and a stallion who had both traded in their old careers for new ones, and had added parenthood to it besides.
An old piece of paper, creased and wrinkled from years of use. Distinctly written on in two phases: A checklist of goals and activities written in a very precise hoof, with a scattering of neat X’s. Said X’s overwhelmingly outnumbered by a preponderance of sloppily-scribbled checks, as well as new checked-off items added to the list in that same messy script, all the way down the page and onto the back. Mudbriar gave a rare smile as he read it.
Then an abstruse cipher of black and white squares densely filling several pages. An answer to an equally abstruse series of logical predicates that both Starlight and the Zebra translator had struggled through for hours at the Oracle. The way Princess Twilight Sparkle’s face looked as She scanned through them… “Scanned” really seemed to be the right word, rather than “read”. But whatever She was doing, Starlight felt a gruesome chill as She did it. As if she had just gotten a taste of what Maud had felt. Of being in the presence and mercy of a powerful being whose world she would never understand.
She comforted herself as Maud did. Even Princess Twilight Sparkle could not stop the continents from drifting. One last gift from her dearly departed wife.
But no, not quite the last one. The real last gift was this. Yes, Starlight did feel all of the pain that she had expected from Maud’s death. All of it and more, and the pain, unlike the happiness, never stopped. But she didn’t feel regret. Not in the slightest bit. It was as if something was built in those years that transcended mere happiness and sadness. Something that was more important, that she would be able to carry for the rest of her days.
So the proposal was not, after all, another poisoned chalice. Maud had not been greedy even once in the time she had known her. And the gift was one that she could never repay, because the giver was dead. She would have to live with that.
She had a second round of goodbyes with all of her friends and family. She crossed back over the bridge to her new home. The portal between timelines shut behind her, never to be opened again.
She could have stayed in her original timeline, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t know how the rest of her life would go. But she knew how she wanted it to end, and for that she needed to be in the timeline with her Maud. The timeline where she had found happiness, lost it, and gained something even more precious.
Millions of years passed.
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This was my first indication that something was off.
Oh man...
Well, this was a gut-punch to Starlight and myself. The explanation that follows makes sense, but even if Maud hadn't seen the two Starlights, I think she would have known. Nothing gets past her. The quiet ones pick up on a lot. They always do. Maud doesn't waste time or energy on unnecessary speech, so all that focus goes elsewhere. Plus, y'know, love.
Huh... I wonder what this Starlight was doing if she had Octavia take her place as guidance counselor? Nice callback to A Horse Shoe-In, though.
This shouldn't make me want to cry, but it does.
The emotion here is so raw and visceral...
“It’s a prion disease.
Fuck, I wasn't expecting that. Prion diseases terrify me in a way that not much else does, even considering a global pandemic and the health issues family/friends have gone through. Something about it just being a protein strand gone awry (that, unlike cancer, has no treatment) is so relentlessly... unfair. Like, not to devolve the comments into my own feelings on, uh, a lot of big-picture stuff, but this is just one of many things about life that strikes me to the core. Poor Maud.
Y'know, you can zoom-out and describe love in the same way that you described Starlight's reaction to the rockfall, but just like those lines didn't capture what happened to her or Maud after, these lines perfectly describe love. Love cannot be conceptualized or explained in a way that is any more satisfying than paragraphs like this.
"Three years. The first symptoms start in about two.”
The suffering...
The jokes Maud cracked a bit after these were funny, and I felt awful for laughing at them. Good job.
Okay, fine, fine. You made me cry. Are you happy now?
I guess I needed it...
Damn, this is almost reverence. My silly spiritual heart can't get enough.
... This bit. Yeah. Thanks for writing this. I... it helps with something.
God, thank you. Thank you for getting this about Starlight. This is why she's such a fantastic character to write/watch/read about. So many writers I've on here have just attributed her flaws to "Haha commie horse have anger problem" or "Hahaha commie horse listened to emo music and read pony Marx," but that's not it. Starlight fundamentally doesn't love or accept herself, especially in light of her wrongdoings, and that drives so many of her decisions.
To borrow some of your phrasing in your comments on Tempest: Hey, look, I know writing is hard and getting ideas is like pulling teeth... But can you stop looking into my life and stealing bits of my soul for your fic? Seems pretty fuckin' rude without an attribution.
Oh no, I'm gonna start crying again.
I feel like this is one of the most profound things I've read in a long while. And something I personally needed.
I don't want to quote every single line in this chapter, but I hope you know that I loved every word.
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I co-sign all of this. But now I will have to figure out how to actually cash this emotional check in the Zebra Lands adventure fic I’m going to write.
Not quite nailed it down yet, but at the minimum, Future Starlight’s plan in the past would require her to be free to do the mission, so at the very least she would have to refuse the guidance counselor post. And thanks! I’m glad Octavia got one more chance to speak in that episode before the show died, rip.
I literally lie in bed bawling my eyes out because I thought up a sad line or scene in a fic I’m not even planning to write for months in the future! And I cried a lot for this fic. So you are in good company there.
I have a feeling I might feel the same way about life as you do. The relentless unfairness is just… *sigh*, you know? Like a puzzle piece that just doesn’t fit.
Thank you so much. I cannot think of a higher compliment I could receive. This really means a lot to me.
This might be an equally high compliment in a way. I really tried to capture the combination of Maud’s stoicness, wit, and love for Starlight in those jokes, and I’m really, really glad that it came through for you. :)
Yes. :) I am very happy. Crying happy tears.
:)
I’m really glad it does. It’s something meaningful to me as well.
Anti-communism really robs people of their humanity and I say that as a decidedly ex-communist. Starlight is a beautiful magical gay horse who deserves to be able to love and forgive herself.
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I love that you loved every word, and especially that it gave you something you needed. I put in a lot of thought, effort, and myself into this, and was afraid it would sink into the depths without being seen. But I feel as if my writing is seen now with your comment, and that is very precious to me. Thank you so much for reading.
Fuck.
I can't say much that wouldn't be an echo of GfG's earlier comment, but still. Holy damn do you write insanely well. Every single story of yours I've ever read has been an absolute banger, every word. I'm glad you think you'll continue. You deserve the world for it.
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Thank you so much! Comments like this really keep me going
TIME TRAVEL. How to make a story I'm already enjoying even more fun!
And also heartbreaking, jeez.
I have a friend who says that Starlight Glimmer is boring and pointless as a character, that she's just an inferior clone of Sunset who took Sunset's place in the spotlight.
Stories like this prove how wrong that interpretation of her is. How she's so much a character in her own right, and one I can identify with in almost as many ways as I identify with Sunset and Twilight. Specifically here, the pushing away. It's so easy to push away the things that make you happy, when you're convinced in your core that you don't deserve happiness, that anything that does bring you said happiness isn't something you deserve.
Yet here she was seeking to save Maud's life anyway, knowing that if she did successfully cure Maud, she'd have pushed Maud away. Damning herself even as she tries to get some happiness by beating herself up over it saying she stole Maud from Mudbriar. Just... everything about Starlight's actions make so much sense and inform her so well as a character.
And god but I wish I could have Maud's perspective if I were told I was going to die in three years and there was nothing I could do about it. Instead of wasting time on angsting she immediately sought out that which would bring her the most joy, and that was being with Starlight. Even knowing she wasn't the same Starlight, she was there with her anyway.
It hurt so much, seeing the mention of the eulogy. Hurt even more when she briefly went back to her old timeline only to come back to this one after all. Makes me wonder if she ended up with anyone else after that. Maybe she went after Trixie to have what she could've had before and didn't?
We'll never know, because millions of years have passed. And now it's time for the final chapter.
Well... shit, Bike. This bombshell so soon after the first chapter? You monster.
I haven't even gone into the time travel bits!
I see what you did there with Twilight, Bike. Nice touch, highlighting Her majesty.
Aw. Nothing just, this was adorable.
And so was this! Great moments all around.
I really like the exchange here. Very in-character for Maud and Boulder.
I love how this inverts Limestone and Marble. Such an easy swap done so well.
My inner palaeontologist is squeeing at this. Perfect.
It's incredible how you weave this into the story so well. I love it.
So many great lines and this one's no different aaaaaa
oh.
Damn. Beautiful as always, Bike.
Oh, that was a perfect mix of bittersweet. I'm a sucker for love stories with that level of devotion between the characters and the prose really sold this kind of high concept love story. Maud's characterization is truly unique in this and I love how fleshed out she feels. The tiny pieces of her speech and mannerisms that sell me on this different but still canon feeling character.
The mix of science elevates the whole story from mere romance to this high concept idea of immortality, devotion, bonds and everything in between. It's sci-fi without *being* it, at least in the traditional sense, and it's hard to not enjoy the absolute banger analogies and unique syntax. The story just has such a unique *voice* to it that makes it really stand out.
It's heartwrenching and warming to read and an absolute cauldron of different emotions.
Also, I enjoy the time travel mechanics in this. The idea of making a parallel timeline that is adjacent and distinct instead of closing the loop. It works for this and doesn't feel wrong with the back mechanics of how it works which is a good sign that its a good time travel mechanic.