Da Capo e Da Capo
-And Twilight's hoof recoils away from the object with a gasp, and it's too cold and too hot, and the air rushing in is the desperate choke of a drowning pony.
âWhoa, hey! What gives?â says the purple and turquoise to her left, and she hears her but does not turn, eyes fixed on her hoof, waiting for it to feel normal.
"I - I've been here before."
And she smirks, because Starlight always smirks. âYou live here. Of course-â
âNo. Here. This instant. This instance. I think-â and she shakes her head, because what she is thinking only barely exists as a thought, some afterimage of something concrete. âThis has been before.â
And now Starlight is concerned, which she should be. âWhat, like deja vu?â
âYes, I think,â but it doesnât feel like deja vu. âMaybe? It's-â and there is a hole in Twilight's memory, and there are never holes in Twilight's memory, and the hole is wavy and square and there are too many ways in and out of the space in her mind like mane spilling out of Applejackâs ponytail, a hundred thousand golden threads bundled into one smear. âIt's that ⊠thing.â She looks at the thing on the workbench and she can see it with her eyes and hear it hum and she knows itâs real but it's too crooked in its place to be a thing and she can see too many sides of it at once, faces and facets like a fun-house mirror. âI-I think I've been here with that before.â
âTwilight, deja vu usually means a miscast spell.â The unicorn cocks her head, like she can't see that thing in the room. "What were you doing just a moment ago?"
"I was doing-" and there is that hole again, because every time she tries to place a moment before this moment it is the same moment "-doing this. Exactly this. I was doing this. I am doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Doing what we are doing." What were, no, what are they doing? "What are we doing? What were we doing?"
"Artifact analysis?" Starlight gestures towards the thing. "From the dig? Yâknow, the one you dug up?"
âYeah, sorry. Just a little ⊠lost.â It was an artifact. That made sense. âI think I remember.â And maybe Twilight remembers; she couldnât remember if she did or not. âWhat is it?â
âUh,â and Starlight snorts a laugh, but Twilight doesnât get the joke, âYeah, great question, Twilight. That's why weâre doing this, remember?â
"Right," and Twilight allows herself another look at the thing, and she can see the color of it but it isn't a color like how deja vu isn't Ponish, like a macroscopic piece of ontological errata, a shoe sticking out of a filing cabinet. âUh, Starlight, does it â does it look likeââ and Twilight tries her best to figure out what it looked like, and all of her vast catalogs of visual references come up empty. âWhat â what do you see when you look at it?â
She smirks again, like it was obvious. âDirt. Stone. Some carvings of circles. Exactly what we wrote down a few minutes ago.â She levitates up a clipboard and taps on it, and the hoofwriting on the sheet of paper clipped to it is Twilightâs, but she doesnât remember writing anything. âWe already got the visual part, remember?â
âSorry, yeah, I forgot.â But she hadnât forgotten, because Twilight didnât forget things, but if and when she did forget things there would be an epiphany, a set of fireworks across her memory in celebration of making her ironclad recollection of things whole again, and there had been absolutely nothing in her mind when Starlight showed her her own writing, and Twilight shakes her head, because, seeing how the other option did not make sense, maybe she really had miscast a spell and that was why she was seeing and thinking weird things which happens sometimes when a horn fizzles a bad spell-draw, fleeting thoughts the half remembered ashes of a spell that was not and had not been. âRight, yeah. Sorry. What's next?â
âIâm doing a spectrograph spell on it to date it,â and her assistant's horn lights. "Ready to boost me?"
And, briefly, there is some fizzle of remembrance, some ember of knowledge which flits and flutters around the shape in her mind that isn't a shape, but she ignores her memory because what is coming out of the linear thread of thought is a messy foalâs bow-tie knot on the ribbons of presents, and Twilight nods, and Starlight's horn lights and a field snakes towards the thing, and Twilight lights her horn and field meets field and her field and her field meet thing and it's-
All wrong.
And as field touches thing it disappears - no, drowns, sinks like water through the hole of a pail, not dissipated but just gone, no longer present, no longer extant, and the air in Twilight's lungs is lead-heavy and it stops in them, and she can feel the magic flow into that un-space and the color goes from not-color to all of them, ones not named and could never be named, and the thing is hungry for magic and matter and concepts and it is consuming the things in the room which are all losing their meaning by the moment, it's the same moment as the last moment, and she turns left to where Starlight is and Starlight isn't, it's a hole in rationality occupied by a puddle of lilac and not-quite lilac and it has wavy edges that don't end, and Twilight knows she has to end this thing, that this thing won't stop at her or the door or the roof or the town or until what is isn't being in the way things are, and her field is dead and her lungs are burning and with all she has left she raises her hoof and pulls back and swings at the thing in front of her-
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What a fascinating little horror story of being stuck in a loop, I love how the end and beginning just feed into each other like that and we simply don't know how long they've been stuck like this.
So she stuck doing what she loves, with friends at her side? Lucky gal
Nice experimental piece, love it
wow. this was amazing!
Very reminiscent of the deja vu sketch in Monty Python. I can only infer this is what insanity feels like,
If you're in a high-magic environment, don't do archeology. Leave that shit buried in the ground.
Clever of you to mark this story as the sequel to itself, nice touch.
It was a strange sense of deja vu.
It was a strange sense of deja vu.
It was a strange sense of deja vu.
So she stuck doing what she loves, with friends at her side? Lucky gal
Nice experimental piece, love it
Walking down the path I had suddenly been there before. The terrain all at once familiar and foreign and overwhelmingly beyond time and reason. I was incapable of entangling rational facts from the ocean of thought which eroded my foundational reality. My friend, a tether and strength swept away as the moment stretched onward.
- excerpt from the archives
there sure are a lot of metaphors in this!
that this is pretty great! At first, I thought there were some blatant typos. But as I read, it became clear it was intentional. A clever execution of an interesting concept, and all wrapped up in a 1k word bubble. I'm curious, because the thing seems to be "consuming" things, and Twilight is clearly terrified of it once she starts to understand, so I wonder if this loop is degenerating into nothing or if it actually a closed loop at this point. Either way, I think
That first time through, it was just a mysterious little story.
But then you loop back âround, and you think you understand.
Then you loop back âround, and you start to think deeper.
You loop back âround, and you notice things about the story you didnât before.
You loop back âround, and every time the story is the exact same, but the experience is completely new.
You loop back âround, and no matter how many times you loop back âround, the story contains all the same words, though you will never loop back âround to that first time through, when it was just a mysterious little story.
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My goodness, you're right! I hadn't ever seen that one (I don't think I've watched any Python in years) but it is a strikingly similar take. It almost makes one thjnk they've seen it before...
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Indeed. Or perhaps Groundhog Day. Always a good one for repeat viewing,
Lov d the reading
Welcome to the Mindf**k
Isn't this where we came in?
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Oh, no, sorry, that's the next time around. Just take the repeat again.
This story confused me, but in a good way. I still don't know if I understand whats going on in it aside from a time loop.
Um, so she has summoned some type of Elder God that eats time and space.
Ooh, now this is experimental horror!
It's going straight into my favorites list. Well done, good show! I especially love the repeat signs at the beginning and end, they really tickle the musician in me.
This concept--with the story being a sequel to itself--is very similar to another story I've read on this site. It's actually really annoying me that I can't find it or remember its name. I do remember it starred Agent Sweetie Drops in a more sci-fi setting with an exploding spaceship.
Ah, well, still a good story nonetheless. Good luck in the judging!
Beautiful, recursive, perfection.
ooh love the use of this as essentially a very specialized grammatical mark!
ooh i adore this imagery and flow
ooh a great way to describe something unable to be described
love the implications this has for just what unicorns are actually doing when they cast spells
oh lovely way to end, or to start at the beginning anew, in this case. in the face of a horror that can be described as
the endless loop Twilight is subjected to itself has meaning, imparting the weight of tragedy on all this metaphysical horror. and the concept could have been let down by the prose, but you did excellent work with it here. thank you so much for writing!Â
Outstanding use of the medium, including that fun little wrinkle that lets you tag a story as a sequel of itself. If ever it were appropriate to do so, this is it. Perfectly paced bit of literally existential horror, an unbreakable Möbius strip of recovery and injury, effect and cause. Thank you for it and congrats on the honorable mention.
Absolutely phenomenal work, not only is this written expertly, but it sounds like it comes from experience. I love this kind of psychological horror, it just warps everything and makes nothing makes sense or nonsense.
I think what keeps happening is that somehow, whatever the object is, decided to connect to Twilight, maybe to torment her or something. Maybe this is all a delusion to keep Twilight from doing anything else. Or maybe this is actually happening and she and Starlight keep unleashing some kind of a ancient being of unknown power only so Twilight can slap that prick back to where he came from and the on and on it goes.
Reading fanfics for people with alzheimer's is very cool.
Good story!
Hello! I read all the stories in this contest that won recognition, so here's a review. Marking this as a sequel to itself piqued my interest before even beginning the story. I like E-rated horror, and like all good time loop fics this comes across differently on a second read. Paced well, too. Liked and faved!
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Hey uhhhhh thanks!
I appreciate your interest and your review. I must confess G.E.B. is also really beyond my understanding, but I think the gist I managed to get from it whilst I struggled my way through had something to do with emergent meaning through repetition, particularly multi-layered repetition. I don't think that's exactly applicable to what is happening here, but there's enough of a connection to inspire me for writing at least a thousand words worth of material. Little loops throughout, both in the text itself and in the meta-text. Or something like that.
That was great, now itâs time to read the sequel.