Of all the ponies to unearth the lost history of Equestria, Hitch Trailblazer considers himself more an accessory to Sunny Starscout's breadth—and depth—of knowledge. Still, he knows just as well as her that there are more parts of the old world left behind than any would dare to know.
Alone on patrol one afternoon, Hitch discovers that some of that lost history can talk.
Written for The G5 Bingo contest. Unedited coverart originally by dodsie. If you like my work, consider donating to my Ko-Fi.
Chapters (1)
I liked this. Villains and monsters always have the best wisdom at the end of the line.
that was a very nice read. I actually felt sorry for the Chimara, though am also not surprsed when Hitch returned she was gone. Will there be more?
At the end of the day, one can often learn more about the world from their enemies than they can their friends. That's probably a quote from someone famous, but I wouldn't know. This is essentially that. Had Catrina been healthy and full of Vigor, they'd have been having a much different conversation.
Hmm, now that is an interesting survivor. Was she awakened more by the sudden jolt of new magic, and then finding her old body too wanting to keep going at all that? Also implies that only 1000 years have passed between one era and the next, which is a lot longer than G4 makes it sound. That said, it's a good story, and doesn't try to 'fill in the gaps' that I've seen from others, more imply the continuity we'd all like to see. Nothing definitive, nothing set in stone, just, these people lived, and they lived in big ways that shaped the heavens.
It's... quite saddening to get so little from the end of a life. We may not be meant to live in the past, but so much is lost that would be good for us to know, to have some glimpse of the experience, and to carry forward. These flickers of connection hurt the most because they're just so... incomplete.
We shouldn't bury ourselves in the past, but it would be good to know it regardless, both for ourselves and for those who lived it to give us what we have now.
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I've long been a fan of how writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Hayao Miyazaki managed to write stories with antagonists who were not simply unsympathetic villains or monsters pitted against a do-good hero, but complex characters with their own histories and (typically) valid reasons for pursuing goals in conflict with the protagonist.
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I'm not sure! At least, not in G5. I did want to write something about her existence in G4 and interacting with a certain someone(s). It might be fun to do some more stuff with the diadem in G5 now that Hitch and Sunny have it
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idk if Catrina is a canon name for the chimera from that one episode or if you just made it up for the one here but that's very cute and i like it
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since season 8's finale did bring up the concept that magical creatures (including chimeras) revert to their non-magical composites from a lack of magic, that's actually a really good question. I'm more of a fan of playing magical creatures as if they're their own separate species, and while I thought that concept introduced in the s8 finale was really neat, I'd personally lean more towards either this specific chimera reverting to her nonmagical constitutes much later, or merely growing gradually weaker as and after the magic left Equestria, and the returning of the magic + the wound simply not being enough. As for the amount of time that has passed, i like to break up eras of equestria's history into millennium blocks—pre-banishment, post-banishment, post-return, G5. Actual canon likely disagrees with me and i'm okay with that! the magic of fanfic and all that
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one of the hardest things about living is that you're always moving forward but looking back. we live in an era where every detail, no matter how minute or mundane, is recorded—so much so that even the large events become unimpressive. with so much to catalog and study, it's difficult not to get lost in it, especially when things have gone unresolved. even so, we can't get everything (yet). the amount of details of life that go unnoticed or end up lost upon the death is unfathomable. sometimes it feels like it might be better to never get attached to anything at all (you could make a religion out of that!), but I also think that is a way to cope with how so much of life is out of our personal control—and how so much of it is within it.
a lot of times we cannot control how long people will be in our lives. even if it's just a flicker, if there's something that you can carry forward and pass on yourself, well...
i write a lot of stories about the struggle to let go of or the experience of being subsumed within the past because it's something i struggle with. mementos of childhood, photographs of the dead, reminders of how this world used to be and no longer is often make me uncomfortable. I still don't know how to fully deal with it! usually i just reread slaughterhouse five and sob on my bedroom floor
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It actually is. If you look her up on the Wiki, her name is Catrina the Chimera.
Huh, I didn't know you were still around. It's been a while, friend.
Schlork.
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same to you, komrad! Zdraviya zhelayu! i will be here until i die
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good to know, i'm always a sucker for a pun (good or bad) I'm not certain if this particular chimera is catrina, but there's no reason she couldn't be (other than that she met both apple bloom and applejack without eating them, of course)
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Catrina is intelligent enough to know when she's outmatched. Even with three heads.
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I have this image in my head of Sunny putting it on and then seeing into the past through the eyes of its past owner, and thus seeing past events
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Catrina is also the name of a G1 villain, though she was the same race as Capper instead of a Chimera
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I gotta add you on Discord.
This is a great one, Regi.
Exactly I still think that hitch is related to Fluttershy because both of them had the same ability
Wow this was a pretty interesting and very sad story seeing the chimera looking so weak and hurt at the same time and knowing to the fact they are dying as well and even hitch felt sorry for them he wanted to save them and he wanted to get some help but once he returned with Sunny they were gone knowing they probably just left and probably died somewhere deep in the forest it was a sad conclusion for those creatures and even giving head a lesson about holding a grudge against somebody can lead you to misery this was a pretty good story keep up the good work
aw, you didn't tell me you had a new one Reg.
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not a bad idea! i was probably going to write something focused on how the previous owner obtained it, but when i do get to more G5 content, I'm certainly not finished with it
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that was one of the things i really liked in the movie, especially giving that power to an earth pony
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i need to get in the better habit of advertising my stuff in your server (glad u liked it tho 
)
i'm sorry
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if you wanna use my idea feel free
First G5 fic I've actually read and damn this is good, perfectly captures that melancholic vibe of "we've lost so much we aren't even sure what we had to begin with"
The mane6 becoming legends and fading from common knowledge honestly makes me wonder if ponies know about Celestia and Luna, let alone if they remember Cadence or Flurry
Huh. Wasn't expecting that to be who Hitch found. I never even stopped to consider their expected lifespan.
Enthralling.
Uhm…. If I may, five have survived. Apple Bloom and Applejack being the other two
You can has review!
Man, this is kinda depressing. Ya, life goes on, but still.
That being said, a very well written story. Also, because this is nagging at me, is G5 actually a continuation of G4?
Haven't finished the G5 season that's out so there's little to say about Sprout and if he's going to be forgiven whatsoever, but given the date, the movie might be enough.
I feel a sense of emptiness from reading this. Luna, once a proud and powerful alicorn Princess, is pretty much an historical anecdote despite her important role. There's... Like a pointlessness to it all, how the artifacts are only as powerful as we believe them to be. A dying creature, an apex predator, now a footnote from the past, both the most important thing Hitch could ever meet and just a mundane monster of the week thing. Reminds me of an aging relative, who had accomplished so many great things, shared so many experiences, now condensed in sentences. Life distilled...
I've read this only once so my taste might be off, but it leaves me with this sort of plastic hope? What we left behind was so rich in its mediocrity and magnificence, and what we are going towards to seems so empty by comparison yet it is so much faster, brighter than before. It's not your first piece dealing with loss, but this one has an impact. Pop culture or personal? I don't know.
In any case, I've enjoyed this, but I don't know yet what to make of this chimera. If you allow it, I'll try to come back if I'm to read it again. Your work (baring your shitposts aha) sometimes has this horrible sting of hopelessness, and sometimes it gives way to... lingering sadness and a desire to go beyond? Wish I could express it better, blah.
Good horsewords.
Powerful stuff
other stuff that would probably fit better would be multiple songs by Dead Can Dance or The Seer Returns by Swans.