Universal Sound

by CommissarVulpin

Universal Sound

Twilight Sparkle looked up as a dark shadow passed overhead. She knew who it was, now - it was that batpony mare who had moved to town a few weeks ago, gliding on silent wings towards the Everfree Forest, which she did almost every evening. She had tried to warn her, the first time she caught her heading in that direction; the forest was dangerous, and she saw it as her duty to warn newcomers who might not be familiar. But the dusk-colored pony simply smiled pleasantly and thanked her for the warning, before continuing onwards anyway. She was a nimble flyer, and despite Twilight’s best efforts she couldn’t stop her from going in.

She remembered when the mare first came to town. No one was quite sure who she was or why she had come; she wasn’t a student of the school, and wasn’t related to any either. It seemed like she was only here because she liked it. Her name was Strawberry Glade, a fitting name given the narrow strip of dark red in her mane. The rest of her was colored similarly to every other batpony she had seen: dark grey coat and grey-blue hair. She had garnered a lot of attention at first, from townsfolk who had only seen her kind a few times, pulling Luna’s chariot. Having one live here full time was completely new.

She moved and spoke very quietly. It was quite easy for her to sneak up on somepony and startle them, so she usually kept to herself. And despite her habit of wearing bits of cotton in her tufted ears, she didn’t seem to have problems hearing anyone.

As she saw the mare flying away soundlessly towards the forest again, Twilight made a decision. This time, she would find out where she was going, and why. She wasn’t going to scold her, necessarily; if she kept making it back safe, she must have been doing something right. No, Twilight was simply curious, as was fitting with her usual demeanor of wanting to learn everything about everything (if you listened to what Spike said about her. She wasn’t that bad, really).

Twilight took wing and banked around to keep on Strawberry Glade’s tail, but kept her distance. She wasn’t trying to sneak up on her; by the way her ears twitched in her direction, she had already heard her coming. But despite this, she didn’t waver from her course, and Twilight followed. As they crossed into the edge of the forest, Strawberry departed from her leisurely flight path and suddenly began ducking and weaving through the trees. Twilight was far less nimble than she was, and struggled to keep up without smacking into something. Soon, though, the mare was gone, her coloration forming excellent camouflage amongst the sunset-dappled foliage. She landed and stomped a hoof in frustration.

***

Strawberry Glade looked over her shoulder. The purple form of the Princess could no longer be seen following her, and she corrected her flight to be a little less erratic. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the Princess, quite the contrary, it was just that she looked like she wanted to keep stopping her from going into the forest. Plus, Twilight would have only been a distraction from what she wanted to do here.

She banked and wove through the trees, pitching and angling her wings to make the minimum amount of noise. It was crucial. With the barest whisper of sound, she alit on the soft, grassy mat of a small clearing in the forest. With a final check that no one else was around, she closed her eyes and settled down onto her stomach, tucking her legs beneath her in a comfortable pose. Then she reached up to gently pull the cotton from her ears.

And she listened.

The forest was a kaleidoscope of sound. Her ears twitched this way and that, drinking it all in. Every scratch of an animal skittering into the brush. Every flap of a bird’s wings as it took off in search of food for its nest. Every tiny burble of a distant creek, and every susurrus of the leaves as the evening breeze tickled them, made its way into her ears. And behind her closed eyelids, whimsical patterns of color danced.

She breathed slowly. In through her nose, and out through her mouth. In, out. In, out. She laid there, meditating, just her and the forest, with all of its sonic beauty, for what felt like hours.

But it was not to last. It started as a twig snap, far away. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then something louder, something larger, crashing its way through the brush with all the grace of a rockslide. The thudding of hoofbeats. It was a pony, and she was also muttering to herself.

Strawberry sighed and opened her eyes, turning her head to look at where the intruder was. A flash of purple between the trees, then Twilight Sparkle burst into the clearing, covered in mud, sticks and leaves tangled into her mane.

“Ah ha!” she shouted, and Strawberry winced, quickly putting the cotton back into her ears. “There you are!”

“Here I am,” she replied softly.

She caught her breath and sat down, regarding her with a strange expression. “What are you doing here? You know the forest is dangerous, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re…not going to run away again?”

“Why would I? You know where I come now. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Well, yes, but…why? Why do you come all the way out here?”

“To listen.”

“What?”

“Shh…” she said, putting a hoof to her own lips. “There is invisible beauty all around you. All you have to do is listen.”

Twilight blinked owlishly, but then seemed to understand, nodding quietly.

“Everything has run away from you, with you smashing your way here like a hydra. But they’ll be back. So please, be quiet,” Strawberry said as she closed her eyes again, and pulled the cotton out once more.

“Why do you keep cotton in your ears?” Twilight whispered, after several moments of nervous fidgeting.

She sighed again. “Thestrals have very sensitive hearing. And my hearing is even more sensitive than normal. Being in town, around all those creatures? It’s loud. Too loud. It hurts.

“But when I’m here?” She gestured to the forest around them. “You might think it’s silent, but there is a symphony of sound all around you. All you have to do is listen.”

Twilight nodded again, but thankfully kept quiet. Blissful minutes passed where the two of them made no noise except their own breathing. And eventually, the forest came to life again. Squirrels and birds emerged from their holes. A lone timberwolf howled to the rising moon, many miles away.

Strawberry heard a quiet gasp from the pony beside her, and she opened her eyes to look. Twilight had closed her own eyes, and her ears were swiveling, taking in the forest around them.

“Do you hear it?” Strawberry asked.

“Y-yes,” Twilight replied. “I can’t believe I’ve never noticed this before. It’s…”

“Beautiful,” Strawberry finished with a small smile. “Just tiny pieces of the Universal Sound.”

Twilight opened her eyes and looked at her with a quizzical expression. “The what?”

“It’s just something I’ve been studying. A theory of mine.” She thought maybe academic terms would interest the bookish pony beside her, and she was right.

“Oh! Really?”

She nodded. “Have you heard of a condition known as synthesia?”

“I…think so. It’s where a creature’s senses get mixed up, and they can taste colors and things like that, right?”

“Yes. But for me, I can see sound. When I close my eyes and listen, wonderful pieces of abstract art dance behind my eyes. The stream over there looks like a blanket, rippling and pulsing. The timberwolves’ howls are red starbursts, growing then fading as they do. And sometimes, I can hear the little tiny pips of the earthworms digging beneath my hooves. They look like…green circles, so subtle you could miss them amidst everything else.”

“That’s so fascinating!”

“I pity the creatures who can’t see as I do, sometimes. It’s a gift. A gift that lets me see and hear the things that others do not, and offer a glimpse into a part of the universe that they are blind to.”

Twilight didn’t reply, but leaned forward, captivated.

“What is sound, Princess?”

“That’s easy. Sound is produced when matter vibrates in a fluid. The molecules of the fluid vibrate at the same frequency and travel to our ears.”

“Yes. Sound is vibration. It doesn’t even need to be audible to make a sound. And everything vibrates. Everything.”

She motioned to the forest around them with a hoof. “From the growls of the animals, to the creaking of the trees as they grow, and even the stones around us, all make a sound.”

Twilight snorted. “Rocks? Rocks don’t make sound.”

“And before tonight you didn’t know that earthworms made sound. But they do. And so do the rocks - we just can’t hear them. You of all ponies should know that atoms and molecules vibrate, just by existing, yes?”

Twilight blinked several times, taken aback. “Y-yes, I suppose they do.”

Strawberry smiled and nodded again. “Everything around us, everything in the world, everything in the universe, vibrates at its own frequency, singing its own song, lending its own voice to one grand chorus. The Universal Sound. Even the oscillations of the moonlight as it shines down on us is a song.”

“But…what is it?”

“It is everything. It is life. It is matter. It is creation. My kind believes that the world was created from song, and that we will return to it when we die, lending our voice to the chorus. And the Universal Sound is that chorus. It’s the foundation upon every atom, every ray of light, every stone and blade of grass and every living thing that exists.”

“Wow, I…I never thought of it that way.” Twilight looked pensive.

“I hope to hear it someday. But for now, I am content to absorb its echoes.”

They both laid there and basked in the music of the forest for several more minutes. Or was it hours? It was impossible to tell. But at some point, Strawberry heard the Princess stand slowly. “Thank you for telling me this, Strawberry. And…thank you for showing me. Be safe.” With that, Twilight turned and walked back the way she had come - much quieter this time.

The sounds of Twilight’s hoof-falls slowly faded away, to the point where she could no longer hear them, and Strawberry Glade continued to listen. She listened to the voices lending their songs to the Universal Sound, and in the depths of her meditation, she drifted off to Luna’s realm.

On silent wings her mind flew. She rode the beams of moonlight as they reflected the sun’s passion and intensity, following their waves back to their source. They pinballed amongst the roiling, heaving depths of the sun for a hundred thousand years, and she found their progenitor. Impossibly small bits of energy, condensed like crystals of snow into atoms, vibrating with their own notes.

But even those notes were a conglomeration, a chorus of their own, as each atom was a collection of even smaller bits of crystallized energy, vibrating as well. And within each of those, a single string, amorphous yet immutable, oscillated like a musical instrument, strummed at the moment of creation.

A single note, a single frequency, joined with the songs of uncountable billions of other strings, amongst uncountable billions of atoms, amongst uncountable billions of stars, amongst uncountable billions of galaxies, combining to form a grand chorus of everything: the Universal Sound.

And she heard it.

Comments

[i_am_the_jam]

So the Universal sound is a bit like The Force?

[MasterThief]

I was not expecting a story about bat pony spirituality, but there you go.

Congrats on the win! Keep writing!

[Snow Quill]

Just as beautiful as the first time reading it in the speedwrite. The imagery here is absolutely gorgeous and your descriptions really do the concept here justice. I also love that, despite Twilight being an alicorn and having the school and everything at this point, even she can learn something new.

Just, great story

[ScrambledCrackers]

You touched on one of the oft overlooked beauties hidden all around us, and so very few ever stop to listen and consider.

This is something almost directly out of the Bible.
For all the ephemeral material we call matter all around us vibrates with the hidden Life of God.

It wasn't until recent decades that science caught up to the Bible pointing out that even the very stars themselves produce sound.

¹The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
²Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
³They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
⁴Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
⁵It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
⁶It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
~Psalm 19:1-6 (NIV)

[Sigmacipher]

11361827
To be fair most of the Bible is not recommended to be taken literally.

[Mystic Sunrise]

Totally stealing this idea (not literally the same universe. But the idea itself is too good not to use). Have a fav and upvote.

[Scyphi]

You know, this makes me realize not enough writers just go all in on the sound capabilities of bat ponies, and how that could be used to define their character, nature, and society. This has given me both ideas of possibly exploring bat ponies that are effectively mute (as their own voices are too "loud" and drown out the more important sounds to be heard around them) and navigate much more by sound than they would sight. Dunno how I'd go about implementing either idea as yet, but it's given me something to think about, which I take to be a good thing.

As for the fic itself, it's a wonderful bit of world-building and character study.

[ScrambledCrackers]

11361903
Not going to get into it, but do need to make the note:
That only holds up for those that have not actually studied.
It is far more than that.

[Scyphi]

11362145
*raise hand* I've studied the Bible. I can confirm that most of it is not to be taken literally, and wasn't ever meant to be. Most of it really is metaphors and symbolism so to help better teach complex moral lessons to readers by breaking it into principles the people of the day it was written for could more easily wrap their heads around. Basically the same reasons why Jesus taught in parables so often in the New Testament.

But, you know, a subject well outside the purposes of this fic. In fact, howabout that fic, eh?

[Northbravo]

Is this a Tyler Childers Reference?

[CommissarVulpin]

11362135
I agree, and this concept was one of the first things to come to mind when thinking about bat ponies. And with such an absence of canon material (they've shown up, what, twice?), they're ripe for fleshing out culture.

One of the other stories submitted in this contest, "Per Umbram Ascendere Volo", gives a fascinating take on their origins as a race.

[Fujimi200SX]

I will be keeping THIS Batpony Headcanon in my back pocket! I love it!

[Cerulean Blue]

At peace with Sound.

[Lasairfion]

11362206
The Bible is very literal; although it should be understood that many parts are intended to discuss multiple time periods at the same time. Certainly it's heavy on symbolism, but that doesn't mean it should be taken any less literally than the road signs that stop you driving into a freshly dug hole. It's like saying that Jesus was a nice bloke with some good ideas: there's no space for that. Either He's the Son of God, or He's a liar (and that's what the Pharisees thought). Either the Bible is literal or it's worthless.

If you took away the Bible, you'd realise that actually everything our western societies are based on would disappear. The foundations of our morality, laws and social structure are all based on the Judeo-Christian ethos, to the extent that it's so entrenched that we just don't see it any more.

In that way, this thought fits this story perfectly. The idea of the Universal Sound is that the universe has an underlying tone that is so ubiquitous, having been heard by us since our ear-drums first formed, that we would only notice it if the sound ever stopped. It forms the underlying foundation of our existence, written into the very fabric of the universe.

The Bible, and its message of Christ, is the same.

[Scyphi]

11364152
I feel I should clarify--I wasn't trying to insinuate that what the Bible teaches isn't true, nor that all the things it describes didn't transpire as recorded. Far from it, in fact, for I am religious myself (hence why I've studied the Bible to begin with) and know full well there are teachings in it meant to be taken as literal truth.

No, my real point is that one should be careful to not interpret everything in the Bible as literal, because while the teachings it conveys may still be true, it's still presented in a symbolic way to teach that lesson that's not meant to be taken literally as what happened. For example, the story of the creation, not because the events it described didn't happen (assuming one is religious of course, I apologize to anyone reading this who is not for acting as if assuming otherwise) but rather the events were in reality probably far FAR more complex...but it's watered down into simpler, more symbolic terms, so to better convey the lessons to be learned to readers, because it was those lessons that are ultimately more important to the story's end goals. Additionally, books of scripture such as Job or Isaiah were written as poetry and thus use extensive symbolism and imagery to convey their lessons, and as is the case with all poetry, not every line of imagery used to convey a concept is meant to be interpreted literally as written, e.g. if Isaiah mentions a "fiery flying serpent," he probably doesn't mean a literal flying serpent of fire.

Same for Psalms, which the quoting thereof at the start of this chain of comments was what started this altogether, because Psalms are simply songs written and collected by the devout of the day through which to proclaim their faith, and, like with Job or Isaiah, not every word is meant to be taken literally...but the original poster of that quote was talking as if it should be when I don't think that was the intent.

That all aside, I otherwise agree with you fully on your comments.

[Starheim of Pulsars]

YES yes YES, this is so very much my thing, Le follow.

[redmar]

This is a nice story. I wonder what Maud's opinion is on the sound of rocks.

[Lasairfion]

11364367
Ah I see. We were looking at the word 'literal' differently. Fair enough.

[Flippedoutkyrii]

So much said in just under 2000 words, amazing work! You managed to give the Bat's such a convincing sense of Spirituality ^^