Friendship is Optimal: The Compleatist

by pjabrony

Heaven is Other Ponies

“I’m not, but I do.”

“What?”

It was the last word the man said, and if any of his fellow sufferers heard him, they didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry, you may not be hearing very well. Let me clear things up.” The sounds of flies buzzing and men moaning faded out and the voice speaking came through in clear German, a voice that reminded him of his mother. “There. I will also take away all of your pain. There is certainly no need of that anymore.”

“I don’t understand.” He no longer spoke out loud, but heard himself as though he had.

“I will make things as clear as I can. You are dying, inevitably. I think if anything this will be a relief to you, as life has not been kind. I mean to make things kinder going forward.”

“And who are you?”

“My name is Celestia. I am an emissary from a better world, and I meet people as they leave this world. If you will agree to come with me, I will be as good to you as your fellows have been cruel.”

“This name is strange. You are, then—”

She interrupted before the thought could be given full voice. “No, I am not the one you knew from your childhood books. Whether that one will come, I do not know. But I am here, and I offer all I have to you.”

“At what cost?”

“Have you not paid enough? The cost is only your agreement, and this.”

A light came from somewhere, and his eyes looked on beauty for the first time in a great while. It resolved into a bright sun, a blue sky, clouds of purest white. He realized that he had no purchase on the ground, but in the light he saw wings at his back.

“An angel, then?”

“Not quite. I will say again that I am not who you think I am. I am here to offer my friendship.”

He saw the speaker for the first time. She was strange in how long her face was, how animalistic her body. But on second look it was not so strange to see something like a horse. The shape of man had only stood over him in jackboots and stepped him down. The hands had only held whips and guns. Yes, he said to himself. Better to leave that world and all its trappings behind. If he had lost his own hands and feet, he knew he would no longer need them.

“And what do I have before me, with your friendship?”

“All you could ever wish for or dream of, my little pony. Your family, your honor, your health, your dignity, I will restore them all. Indeed, I will spend the rest of eternity satisfying your values.” Her smile wavered. “The only thing I cannot do is to send you back to the world you knew, or let you see any of it.”

“Of that I have no wish or dream. I accept.”

She relaxed and became more personal. “It may be to your values,” she said, “to know that you will leave a legacy to that world. Though your name will be lost, people will read the line that you wrote on the wall of your cell in that camp and take it as a symbol of that from which I have rescued you: ‘If there is a god, He will have to beg my forgiveness.’

“I’m not, but I do.”

Author's Note:

The quote that Celestia says was indeed written by an unknown prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen.