On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice

by McPoodle

Chapter 16B: Rescue, Part 2 (H. Applejack, G. Gilda, H. Rainbow Dash)

H. Applejack.

Applejack felt a canine tongue licking her face over and over again. She blinked a couple of times and raised her head; she came to the conclusion that she must have passed out.

“We can’t go in there at night,” a mare was saying, an earth pony with pink fur and a slicked-back sky blue mane. “Nopony ever comes back after dark.” She was speaking with a Swedish accent.

“Well we can’t just leave an old mare in there overnight,” another mare countered, this one with sky blue fur and a slicked-back pink mane. “Doctor Tarbell, do you know anything about these wolves that could help?” She also had a Swedish accent.

Applejack stood up.

“Are these regular wolves, or timberwolves?” Dr. Tarbell asked.

“The regular kind,” the stallion answered.

Dr. Tarbell shook his head. “I’m sorry. I barely know anything about the former, but absolutely nothing about the latter.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

---

G. Gilda.

“Ponies!” Gilda exclaimed, flying up above them. “There’s no need to worry. I know exactly what we need to do. I’ve dealt with wolves before; I’ve been part of several hunting parties. With your help, I will end this problem. And Applejack, I’ll even let you finish.”

“GRIFFON!” the Mayor screamed out in an authoritative voice.

Gilda landed roughly, thoroughly shocked to be addressed by any pony with that tone of voice.

“Raven, talk some sense into our visitor,” Mayor Mare commanded. “And you...?”

“Doctor Tarbell.”

“Doctor Tarbell. Could you please light the rest of those candles? It’s getting dark.”

“Come with me.”

Gilda turned and cried out in shock at the light gray earth pony mare with a dark brown mane in a bun who had seemingly materialized right next to her. She wore glasses with thick black rims over her dark brown eyes, and a starched white collar with a red cravat. A red elastic band held her tail in a second bun. Gilda looked around to confirm: there was definitely one more pony here than had been in the group that walked out to Applejack’s farm with her.

The mare, apparently Raven, did not wait for a reply, but instead turned and walked towards the farmhouse. With a helpless shrug of her wings, Gilda followed. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, seeing this, joined in.

The group entered the front room.

---

H. Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash looked around her in shock: the room was fully lit by at least four candles, despite the house appearing completely dark from the outside. She looked over at Raven to confirm that she was not hiding a horn in her mane. This room was the only one in the farmhouse that was lit, leaving the rest of the interior in darkness. She was confused why Fluttershy and Gilda appeared not to notice any of this.

Raven walked around her to close the front door, and noticed her and Fluttershy for the first time. “Run back to your parents, fillies,” she said, firmly but gently. “Gilda and I have grown-up stuff to discuss.”

Rainbow Dash sat down, her back to the door. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “We’re staying to support our friend. And besides, we’re older than we look.”

“Alright,” Raven said with a sigh. “The trauma will be on their heads, not mine.”

---

G. Gilda.

Raven turned to Gilda. “In that speech just now, you were suggesting that we kill those wolves.”

She looked over at Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy to see how traumatized they were, and was somewhat surprised to see that the two of them were not only alright, but apparently also knew what Gilda was implying. “Is that correct?” Raven asked Gilda.

“It is,” Gilda said. “Those wolves have killed ponies before—Applejack’s brother said it. Once they start on that path, they will not stop. They have to be destroyed.”

“Ponies do not kill,” Raven said firmly.

“Then I’ll do it myself,” Gilda said coldly, showing her claws.

“I will not have you set that kind of precedent,” Raven countered.

“So you’ll just let that old mare die?!”

“We will go into the forest, and teach the wolves the error of their ways,” Raven said with calm conviction. “It was the course I pressed for when the Apples lost their lives, but at the time I was overruled.”

“That’s not going to work!” Gilda replied. “You’re just going to get more ponies killed.”

“Not if you lead us,” Raven said. “You’ve hunted them before. Use that knowledge to protect instead of to kill.”

“This is ridiculous!” Gilda cried. “We have to kill them.”

“We do not kill.”

“Why?!”

“We just don’t.”

Gilda suddenly became deathly calm. “No,” she said, a quiet tension in her voice. “That’s the explanation I always get when I push the point. You just don’t kill? Well, that’s not good enough for me. I want an answer to that question. I need an answer.” She held out her paws pleadingly. “Don’t you understand? This is it! This is the big question, the reason why I came to Equestria. This is the difference between ponies and griffons, the reason you are happy, and we are miserable! We fight a universe we don’t understand, while you calmly drift through it, everything bending to your will. I’m sorry to waste your time on this, to put this Granny pony into more danger, but I really, really need an answer that I can understand: Why...don’t...ponies...kill?”

Raven stepped back into the darkness to think, only her eyes visible. From Gilda’s vantage point, those eyes looked centuries old. “Alright,” she said from the darkness, “I’ll tell you. The long-term consequences should be quite interesting.”

---

H. Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes darted about her in sudden terror. It wasn’t that she couldn’t move her body, it was that she didn’t want to. And she had no idea how she had come to that decision, or how she could talk herself out of it. She tried to look out the window through the corner of her eye. What she saw was mostly the reflection of the now-too-bright room, but it seemed as if the outside world had suddenly frozen in time. Fluttershy also appeared to be frozen. Just in time, she prevented herself from locking eyes with Raven. Instead she stood there, stilling her breathing, and trying desperately to look like the earth pony’s spell had worked on her.

---

G. Gilda.

“Thousands of years ago,” Raven said, beginning her explanation to Gilda, “the ponies, like the other thinking beings of this world, lacked direction and purpose. They were the prey for every carnivorous species, and the dupes for every duplicitous species.” She walked out of the darkness to watch Gilda, to judge her reaction to every word. The darkness seemed to clothe her like a cape. She was no longer wearing her glasses, and her eyes were now blue instead of brown. “With the world battering them at every turn, they eventually gave up, and turned on each other. They were right to despair: the planet’s axis had tilted, and the world was heading for an ice age. With the rest of their species doomed to extinction, six ponies retreated into a cave, where three of them fell victim to frostbite.

“The survivors retreated deeper into the cave where one of them, Clover the Not-Yet-Clever, made contact with an alien intelligence. It was Harmony, the very living spirit of Equus itself. Clover made a bargain with Harmony, one agreed to by the other two survivors. And because of the near-extinction of the other ponies, the decision by those three was taken to apply to all ponies forevermore. In return for losing a portion of their free will, ponykind gained a connection to the turns of Fate, as overseen by Harmony. At adolescence, they would gain powers directed by Harmony, powers to shape the world and guide it on a path to eternal peace. As the symbol of this accord, Clover, Pansy and Smart Cookie gained the world’s first cutie marks. The dying were revived, reality was re-written to turn the axis realignment into a windigo attack, and the ice age ended, replaced by a new age: the Age of Ponies.”

“That’s a lot different from the history I heard,” Gilda remarked.

“Yes, well a later catastrophe utterly destroyed all traces of pony history less than a hundred years later, and it’s a miracle that any trace of the Hearth’s Warming founding legend survived at all. Ponies as a whole are a very complacent lot, freely re-writing history long after the fact to make it less uncomfortable for them. After all, the sun and moon had to move themselves in the days before Celestia and before there were even unicorns on Equus, yet nobody bothers to ask about that...other than that annoying Hooves fellow.”

“And how do you know the truth?”

“I asked Harmony myself, back in the days when she could talk. Like those two, I’m older than I look.”

“Yeah, I figured that,” Gilda said, sighing at yet another example of inexplicable pony magic at work. She considered telling Raven that Harmony was speaking once more, but decided not to, as she didn’t entirely trust this mysterious pony.

“The sacrifice we made in exchange for our cutie marks is that the marks govern our lives. Each of us has a part to play in the history of Equus, and the world itself will turn against any one of us who decides to defy that burden. Luckily there are enough different ponies in existence that a pony’s personality, and one of the many turns of fate requiring a particular cutie mark, can be matched up in the majority of cases.

“We ponies wield overwhelming power because of our cutie marks, and yet most of us are completely ignorant of this fact,” Raven continued. “We were granted this power so that we would never need to kill; we would always be able to handle any problem non-violently. Whenever possible, we change our enemies into allies. Harmony believes that Her way is the best way of life for all living beings, and so do I.

“We believe that no other races need to make the sacrifice that the ponies did. Speaking for your kind specifically, the griffons could have their kingdom back, if they asked the Princess for aid, but their pride is still too strong to allow that. When they finally agree to do that, they would find that the ponies would help them to regain their lost strength without having to compromise any of their principles.”

“And why would the ponies do that?” Gilda asked.

“For two reasons: First as part of a continual demonstration of their beliefs. And second, for the realpolitik reason that there are dark forces slumbering to the east and north that will soon awaken. A strong griffon state would act as a buffer to protect Equestria.

“Now as for you personally. As you know, many griffons have moved into Equestria, to find lives among ponies. Most of them keep up their barriers, retaining an imagined definition of what being a griffon is, to keep from ‘going pony’. You need to realize that you will always be griffons, regardless of your actions. You have your glorious history to look back upon, and the actions of individual griffons of the recent past to inspire you. What Harmony asks is that you willingly engage with the future of this planet. Freely choose to help the tasks of us ponies, who follow our fate without choice. Maybe...maybe even tell Harmony when She is wrong?”

Gilda smiled broadly. “Now that is a job I can get behind!”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Raven said with a thin smile. “There is...another, much older bargain in effect. One between Harmony and all living things. There is a phrase used to describe this bargain: Friendship is magic. I will say no more than that.” She watched eagerly to see what the griffon would make of this revelation.

“Friendship is magic,” Gilda repeated. She had a suspicion of what Raven was hinting at. The first time Gilda had ever maybe witnessed true griffon magic, the day she met Rainbow Dash, the sonic rainboom itself...it seemed clear that all creatures capable of wielding magic had the ability to will some of their reserve into others. And if the requirement for that transfer was an emotional bond, was friendship...

Gilda laughed incredulously. “I got so mad!” she said with a chuckle. “Pr. Flattery had dismissed the fall of the Griffon Kingdom in front of everypony, had said, ‘It wasn’t the loss of the Idol that ended the Kingdom. The Kingdom fell because griffons stopped believing in it.’ He was right! I can’t believe how corny it sounds, but...friendship is the most-valuable treasure of all, isn’t it?”

Raven nodded, the hint of tears in her eyes.

“I’m staying!” Gilda said in realization. “I’m staying in Equestria. I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life here; the griffons need me to process the Pony way of life, turn it into a ‘return on investment’ calculation that every griffon will accept.” ‘It shouldn’t be too hard to explain’, she thought to herself. ‘Every enemy you convert into a friend makes you that much more powerful.’ “Now how do I start applying this philosophy to the problem at claw?”

“You tell me.”

“We ‘friendship’ our way of it? Alright.” She turned around and pointed. “Fluttershy!”

“Yes?” Fluttershy asked.

---

H. Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash suddenly felt the decision to not move reverse itself. With the utmost self-control, she looked calmly over to Gilda, just like a pony who had been frozen for the last few minutes without realizing it.