Mirage on the Horizon

by Hope

Ch. 2 How have you been?

Eris slipped out of the dress that she had woken up in, as Spike burned a letter in his green fire, sending it off to Princess Luna.

“So what are we going to do?” Sweetie Belle sniffled.

“Well,” Eris sighed, “Mirage works by tricking people. I think we just need to set things right, make sure that your sister knows what is real. Then we’ll go check on the rest of my friends, because I have a bad feeling that--”

Eris stopped talking as the door opened again. This time, Apple Bloom walked in with barely a sound, her head low and not looking up at anyone as she slowly pushed the door closed behind her and sat down.

“Bloom?” Sweetie asked softly.

Bloom’s shoulders shook, and Sweetie went to her, hugging her before looking up at Eris.

“Yeah,” Eris sighed again. “Yeah that’s what I thought. Let’s get a move-on, Spike!”

They jogged out of the library, and into the town square of Ponyville.

All around them, the sun beat down with an unnatural heat on their shoulders as ponies walked through their actions of the day, numb and only half-aware of what they were doing.

Lyra was walking in a wide circle around Golden Oaks, and when she saw Eris she brightened and waved to her, exactly like she had done an hour ago.

“Hey Eris!”

“Morning, Lyra,” Eris said warily, watching Lyra walk by.

“Why are they… Mirage is making them do the same stuff over and over again?” Spike asked as he watched Primrose clip a rose, put it into a flower arrangement, then take it back out and clip it a tiny bit shorter, and put it back into the arrangement again and again.

“Yeah, they probably think they’re all doing their normal daily routine,” Eris said, grimacing as she took another step away from the library.

At once, every single pony in the town turned to face her and spoke in unison;

“Nice Dress!”

“Gah!” Eris gasped as she recoiled from the sudden attention of everypony, before she noticed that she was indeed wearing that dress again.

“Oh come on!” she groaned as everypony in the town just as abruptly resumed their day’s work, dispersing out into Ponyville.

“Okay, so Mirage really likes you in that dress,” Spike said flatly.

Eris groaned and charged on ahead, passing by townsponies until she reached the Carousel Boutique. Normally a shop full of joy and laughter, the windows were drawn and the door locked.

Eris knocked on the front door a few times before looking to Spike with a mischievous grin.

“Soooo I’ve been practicing my magic,” she started slowly.

“Uh oh,” Spike replied, taking a step backwards. “Uhhhh like… unlock a door magic?”

“Something like that, sure,” Eris said brightly as she turned and faced the door, holding her fingers in front of the lock before slowly and deliberately snapping her fingers.

Nothing happened.

“What were you trying to do?” Spike asked, taking a step closer again and eyeing the door cautiously.

“Well, I was hoping to turn the lock into sand, I figured Mirage might be fine with that since she likes sand or something,” Eris shrugged before wheeling back and kicking the door in with a resounding bang.

Spike flinched, but with the door open he followed Eris inside, eyes sharp for potential danger.

Strangely they found Rarity quite unbothered by the door being kicked in to her home, sitting at her sewing desk, very carefully and deliberately pouring coffee onto a sheet of white fabric.

“Hey there Rarity,” Eris said, trying to keep her tone happy and lighthearted.

“Hello, inconvenient reminder of how I have little to no agency in my life and will likely be hanging onto the coattails of a princess’s student until the day I die,” Rarity stated blandly, watching the coffee drip off her workbench.

Spike, stunned by the declaration, looked between Rarity and Eris with his mouth open in shock.

“Now, that’s not really… true,” Eris said, hands behind her back. “Your shop has nothing to do with me, and it’s quite impressive!”

“It’s a waste of time, is what it is,” Rarity declared, gesturing around at the clothes she’d carefully made. “Couture is dead, fashion is a lie, and anything I do shall be done a thousand times better by Badland folks working twice as hard for half the pay. Unless I manage to blackmail a fashion catalogue into carrying one of my lines, I will forever bask in my irrelevancy.”

“Wow you’re depressing like this,” Eris hissed, rubbing her head. “Alright, okay, so… So Mirage. You remember Mirage? Killed me a bunch of lifetimes ago?”

Rarity arched an eyebrow and nodded.

“She’s playing with your head,” Eris declared. “She’s making everything look terrible, so that you’ll give up on joy. Heck, she convinced you to cut off Sweetie Belle’s hair!”

“The filly’s got to learn the world’s a cold and painful place,” Rarity declared as she picked up the chopped-off mane from the wastebasket and let the hairs fall slowly like snow back into it, as Spike and Eris watched.

Then Eris lost it.

She growled as she stepped up to the workbench, wrenching it to the side causing Rarity to yelp and scurry backwards.

“This is such incredibly pompous self-centered Bull Crap!” Eris roared. “Mirage is messing with your head, and you have to believe me. You just have to, because you got this far! If you can’t be joyful that’s fine, but I know that you don’t want to hurt people! You don’t want to hurt your sister! This can’t be the Rarity I know, because the Rarity I know knew that joy wasn’t about everything being perfect, but it was about trying anyway!”

Eris held out her hand and snapped her fingers, putting all her urgency and emotions into it, as the power flowed out from her, a burst of rainbow magic sweeping through Rarity.

For a moment, everything was fire and heat, the world wavering around them while Rarity fell slow-motion through a flame so bright it was hard to look at directly.

Then Eris was standing in a cottage among the sycamore trees, and her blood ran cold.

"Mirage?" Eris whispered as she spun, taking in the simple home that was barely a memory in her distant past.

But noone else was there, until she opened the door and looked outside.

A soft afternoon rain shower, as ordinary as a summer afternoon, was sprinkling over the trees, sunshine gleaming through the canopy of trees and off the slick grass.

Out in a small clearing, a white earth pony was dancing, her pink mane wet with the rainfall as she laughed and laughed and laughed.

Eris blinked as she snapped out of the vision, but the echoing laughter refused to leave her, until Eris realized the sound came from Rarity. Rarity was laughing, a soft joyful sound as she held up the coffee soaked fabric in her magic.

"Coffee coutour!” she exclaimed in joy, twirling about on the spot before her eyes snapped back to the stunned form of Eris. “Oh darling, I'm so sorry! I must find Sweetie, I'll set this right, she's the most important pony in my life!"

"The library," Eris said quietly. "Apple Bloom too. I should check on AJ."

"Oh, should I come along and help?" Rarity asked, frowning with worry.

"No," Eris said quickly, without raising her voice. "No, I need to do this."

As Eris walked outside, she passed her hand over the doorframe, making it repair itself, though her eyes remained focused on the road ahead.

"When did you learn how to do that?" Spike asked, following behind her.

Eris paused and looked at her hand, frowning a little before looking back at Spike.

"I don't know," she admitted in a whisper.

Comments

[Casketbase77]

Gah! How did I miss this fic's initial update?? No time to waste; I should've left thoughts on this chapter back when it was first published.

When Sweetie Belle lamented Rarity telling her she "wasn't real," I thought it was a Sweetie Bot moment. As in Sweetie is a robot in this continuity, who is nurtured when the world is normal but shunned after Mirage alters her surrogate sister's brain.

Obviously this chapter proves I was jumping the gun with that assumed reference. Hope I'm forgiven, because this is a wacky plot in an AU that is already kinda wacky by default. Onto things that actually happen in the story.

The repeated 'Hey Eris' mantra got delightfully sinister the more often it was repeated. Reality is explicitly untrustworthy in this fic, and when we get an actual reliable element its something uncanny and malicious. Excellent tone establishment. Ditto for the sand motif that matches Mirage's name, sun powers, and presumably smothering attitude towards the everypony in general.

Speaking of Mirage, its a curious choice to keep her unseen and unheard two whole chapters in. Certainly her villainy is noticeable via the effects of her spellcasting and the obvious dread Eris feels while spouting exposition about her, Even so, this is a big contrast from Father Time's fic. He got his hooves dirty immediately.

The past-life romance angle is another odd choice, but its clearly something that will be paid of thematically later on. The "Nice Dress" (another creepy line) is symbolic of Mirage's infatuation, so something will most definitely happen to it as Eris and Mirage's antagonism ramps up.

Speaking of symbolic props, Rarity's coffee is probably important thematic foreshadowing. When she's depressed, she pours it on her fabric and wallows in the fragility of prettiness. After Eris (literally) snaps her out of it though, Rarity thinks the stain is a bold artistic choice. This little change of perspective between "its ruined' and "its now good in its own way" probably applies to Mirage's explicitly broken mind. And also to her alleged ex-romance with Eris. Perspective may be Mirage's weapon, but that sword might cut both ways in the story's climax. Will have to see what plays out.

[Hope]

11007541
I love this analysis of the story so far, and I can't wait for more! hehehe