The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards

by Cloud Ring

Chapter 61: Presence

☀️☀️☀️

Sunset Shimmer glanced around. What she saw was somewhat familiar, as at their cores all the ponies were mostly the same. Yet Plum Jam's soul was very special.

Plum's inner being was cozy, filled with a dim pink glow, the smell of baked goods, distant violin notes, and the feeling of coming home after an inappropriately overlong journey. Each of Sunset’s steps was rearranging the landscape: the pink sky mottled by milky stains gave way to glittering chandeliers of a giant ballroom; the room’s ceiling, in turn, morphed to a disorder of leafy branches and crowns only vaguely reminiscent of the Forest. Around her many calendars marked with dates from both past and future — including three main ones as well as some long forgotten on the surface — were windows and doors to a new joy.

That was a major difference from other ponies. Plum just… just didn't end. Wherever Sunset's gaze fell, there was only more Plum Jam and joy and life. Joy, together with the pony herself, burst out of Plum's body and flowed through bodies of other ponies far away; in ocean ships and laboratories, highrises of Metropoly and rural shores, or at self-chosen scenes of street performances in front of kind, attentive and easily amused listeners. Each of these ponies shared their main color and readiness to paint life with a spark of happiness; to be there as needed. They were different in souls and personal experiences. Still, inner joy and resolute aspiration to give a smile and get a smile was united over all of them; it spread far and wide over the land.

Here and now, however, Plum was next to Sunset, in the gazebo, under the low dome of the roof, and they could speak in private — assuming that Sunset would gather enough willpower to stop minding pink infinity around with all its innumerable celebrations.

They could speak; but Sunset continued to stare, ears tipped and eyes squinting. Now Sunset realized how strong her own presence was from the perspective of ponies who had a chance to see her full being — immense delight, awe and confusion.

Plum pushed a glass of sparkling pomegranate wine to her, drank from her own glass first, having taken them from her mane. She was sitting by Sunset’s side, right next to her, sharing the lively warmth — in a way the surface ponies have not even forgotten, but have not ever known for many generations.

Sunset was actually grateful for that.

"So you are an alien. You are the traveler who returns victorious,” Sunset pronounced, and it clearly wasn’t a question.

However, Plum Jam smiled and replied anyway, “No, Sunny. The traveler from the prophecy is, maybe, you after all. I— you're around now, and I'm Pinkie Pie, or maybe Plum Jam, a piece of the joy. You will leave, I will forget all that once again, but… it would be too much to remember anyway! Plum Jam will once again be just a pony, and you are more than just a pony, you are my guest, so next to you I — Pinkie Pie — can be big too. It's only polite! So, if there is such a traveler, it is you and me both. Tell me, do you like it?" Plum swept her hoof wide. The purple vortex in the sky changed its direction, nudged a bit, and in the outside world a rainbow without rain grew over the village at the very edge of the Great Desert; a cycle later, two denizens of the village, poets-to-be, future friends and rivals in a long time yet to come, will both write their first awkward rhythmic lines.

Sunset saw this, understood and felt how it will flow from now on: Pinkie Pie showed up her possessions, sincerely and openly. She feared neither envy nor resentment, nor a sneaky strike. This in itself was a lesson of a friendship unfulfilled.

Sunset nodded, "So you're always in the real world?"

"More or less, I never leave," Plum laughed like a whirlwind of golden sparkles, and her age was showing only in her appearance, but neither in tone nor mood. Plum's voice could belong to both a foal and an old nag, "When Twily said that it was time for us to leave, I listened — followed, too! — but without me it all went dark and empty. So, you should be among us too! I need you in the world — you are the most belated and most long-awaited. I miss your colors!"

"Oh?" Sunset asked warily. “Don't the ponies dream of getting rid of the Red?

Plum's smile waned a bit, “Strife, blind rage, reckless passion and irresistible yearning are needed too in the palette. Of course, we have Black's doubt, Blue's temptations and White's righteous anger... but that's not it. All that is Pinkie Pie does believe that over time ponies will find feelings and love for both of you, the Red and you too — they will adore you, but for now… we need to move it, move it! You were frozen for too long," She tilted her glass slightly towards Sunset, "For you to succeed. So that you become a binary Moon and good sisters!”

Sunset sipped from her glass with a smile, and after a moment sweet dizziness came over her; Sunset rose slowly into the air — no wings, no magic — and floated into the sky towards the misty disc of the Red.

⊛⊛⊛

If ever she wanted to, Gentle Touch had no chance to tell how many ponies were on the shore nearby when shadows of the Six stirred in the souls of Heralds and of younger ponies, and went away from their bearers.

This number was definitely not an integer. For example, Black Moon stood next to Plum Jam — wet, shivering, hopeful Plum Jam. But at the same time, there was Blacklight, and a few steps away Twilight Starfall, or Sparkle, as she asked them to address her; slightly translucent, sparkling in the same way as Plum's wet fur, but throughout the body. They three were, in Gentle's eyes, one; their web had been, obviously, shared between them. With Sparkle around Black Moon's outward appearance changed; She was distinctly younger and shorter, and compared with Sparkle, She did not seem to be a superior being, rather an older sister.

Twilight went deep into reading Dispassion’s black notebook that Solid Line kept close as Dispassion once asked to, and the white stones of destruction gently sank into the snow, far away from the crater, without a sound. Gentle noted when the Moons made their final decision; still They said nothing about that.

Other ponies lost their singularity too. Not far from Gentle, an orange pony in a wide-brimmed Stetson hat stood up. There was not even a trace of pain when she left Gentle’s body as a cloud of dense multi-colored vapor. She exhaled, chewing on an impossibly bright green blade of grass, “Every time Ah return here, y’all dug yourself deeper in like a scared mole rat. Let’s get the business done, share a glass or two and let your worries be out, ya hear?”

There were no fireworks, no heartfelt speeches other than that. The shadows spread along the shore, not straying far from the living. A silvery path of ghostly light stretched into the sky — from Plum Jam's chest to the disc of the Red, — and Twilight returned the notebook to Solid Line with a curt nod, "Those are good remarks, I'll think about it."

But in this peace and quietude, under the even sound of the tide, Gentle understood more and more clearly what they were doing.

They were helping those banished from the heavens to return there.

And with each beat, the same question arose more and more clearly in her head, no matter how many times Gentle replied Yes, and Yes again.

Is this what you want, for sure?

A beat of quiet uncertainty that came every time Gentle had been asked about what was actually beyond her knowledge or feelings; this time it was recurrent, returning again and again. Once again, her side, tinted subtly off where the ray of the Red once touched her coat, had been pressed by a weak pain. She closed her eyes, glancing at Cursory, the one without any shadows, and realized that the pegasus, too, is being asked, and that she too neither has an answer nor is at all prepared for such questioning. Moons were, as always, inscrutable.

She thought about ‘Guiding Starfall-TX’ and asked Cursory for it; Gentle Touch was given the bottle without being asked any question. Only eye contact and a nod that meant "It's good that you took this decision upon yourself."

The Red was getting clearer in the sky, Sunset climbed higher and higher up the ghostly silver stairs. The ‘Starfall’ tasted like a mint of frozen stars as it does in all the histories, and Gentle sat under a sprawling oak with leaves piercing green and told her foal, Good Intention, a story of a turning point in her life. A story about how many, many rounds ago they stopped on the ocean and did not dive; how the Black Moon helped them weave a false memory — a memory in which Sunset Shimmer allegedly refused to even speak to them. About how the Red, full of rage and anger, nevertheless agreed to remove the curse in its whimsy — but only from a quarter of the team while the rest died anyway over a course of a few lusters. How she was in mourning for Cursory Streak for a full round straight, and how she is sure now that she did the right thing. “Otherwise you would not have been born. You are the most precious remnant that I have now after your father also left. "

She did not tell her son about a recent strange letter from Faraway Storm, the second survivor, “Don't blame yourself. In any case, had you tried to do things her way, the Departed would have terminated the Moons already."

"Terminated the Moons already.” and that's it, not a word more, just a signature. Of course it didn't make any sense — how could Moons be terminated?

She began to comb the mane of her dark blue-eyed foal, once again remembered Cursory with a twitch of ingrained sadness, and woke up with a head heavy and spinning; snowed sandy soil tried to rear up under her hooves, and the anxious look of Cursory Streak, beloved and loving, was accompanied by words the sense of which she could not catch up to, and she did not know which of the two non-matching sets of her memories she wanted to choose, because both were true, but it was necessary to decide right there which is the lie that never actually happened; either here and now, or—

The memory was not an instant. The memory was her life that now went away dissolving in Is-Not. Trips to the fair, accidental and non-accidental love interests, foalbirth thrice attempted for, neither of those ending well, patients saved and patients lost, the inescapable care of Blue Moon, who visited her at least thrice a round, the gradual return of her old age and the habit of living with it, a stallion who loved her in spite of—

She remembered the last beats of the vision and dropped the bottle. It shattered with a sharp ring of glass.

“The Moons… they will…”

There was no time to fiddle with a disobedient tongue.

Gentle Touch closed her eyes and imprinted all her feelings, as a whole picture without any sorting but not missing a single thread, right into Cursory Streak. Fear — for Moons, for themselves, for the team. An unknown threat, something nameless that lurks close by ready to strike; a doubt about Storm; a longing for the future, a guilt of betrayal and weakness.

Cursory staggered, but got her bearings in three beats and shouted out what Gentle didn't have the strength to do, “Electra, Desire, Flame — stop! Storm and her team are likely the threat!”

Black Moon turned around and asked, “What?.. I see no moves from immortals.”

But Her shield was already raised, despite the obvious disbelief in Her voice; after Black Moon, a dim glow enveloped the other two Apexes; Gentle tried to find Storm with her sight, through the fog in her eyes and confusion, and saw her dragging Plum Jam into a submarine moored off the coast, and with Blacklight and Dartline hurrying after them; if they were saying anything, Gentle could not hear or understand a word.

Cursory exhaled, smiled, and began to explain, “Gentle Touch drank ‘Guiding Starfall’, she saw another future and—”

—the endless darkness fell from the heavens onto the ocean shore, and the light of the Moons flickered and went out.

Comments

[Numinos]

Oh wow. Amazing chapter.

So, Mane 6 definitely existed at some kind of past there. And are still somewhere near, at least in part, as aspects. Pinkie is still being Pinkie even in this multidimensional future : )

That cliffhanger at the end though... Intriguing.

[Koekelbag]

Joy, together with the pony itself, burst out of Plum's body and flowed through bodies of other ponies far away; in ocean ships and laboratories, highrises of Metropoly and rural shores, or at self-chosen scenes of street performances in front of kind, attentive and easily amused listeners. Each of these ponies shared their main color and readiness to paint life with a spark of happiness; to be there as needed. They were different in souls and personal experiences. Still, inner joy and resolute aspiration to give a smile and get a smile was united over all of them; it spread far and wide over the land.

...Oh, Oh! Was Sharp Cut also one of those ponies then, explaining why the conversations with Pinkie through Pink were possible? And also, Pinkie never had a shadow herself (or her shadow was just divided among all those ponies)?

[Cloud Ring]

11020903
Exactly! Pinkie Pie just can't leave anypony hanging. Sharp Cut is the part of 'universal' Pinkie-ness, specifically aligned to the Red to befriend it, be next to it and ease the passage of unending time. Of course, Sharp Cut is crazy and clearly referent to PInkamena — but then Pinkie can afford a little madness. Being a part of a whole, Sharp Cut could reach other parts of the whole, especially as she is immaterial in the first place, the same way as the Red belongs to Is-Not.