• Published 3rd Feb 2013
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Subjunctive - Integral Archer



In this romance of language and culture, a changeling linguist struggles to salvage what remains of the failed invasion of Canterlot with only himself, his words, and his deception as his weapons.

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Chapter XII: Perfect

I must be permitted to gloss over some details.

I will not pretend to know how we brought over the rest of our family; how it was decided who would come to this land and who would stay back to care for the old, young, and sick; how our sister queen was inserted as she was, who saw what weak point for her; what threat exactly sent the ponies into a state of alarm such as to cause them to erect that barrier over the city—though I will mention that the day before the impediment went up, I saw my brother in squabbles whispering to a pony on the street, giving her quite the visible shock, and after confronting him I learned that he had said some indiscreet things to her; and though I was, and still am to this day, convinced that his imprudence had something to do with the ponies’ suspicion, he would deny any causation between his actions and theirs and repudiate any culpability on his behalf to the last day—I mention none of these things because, honestly, I don’t remember, nor would I care to.

Whether it be of changelings or ponies, whether it be of griffins or dogs, of the mightiest eagles or the lowliest sparrows, a family is a family; and when creatures of like species come together, the group invariably possesses the traits peculiar to that label. It is something of a universal hell: to have an engagement one needs to attend with one’s family and to have to overcome the unique relationship dynamics—maybe the patriarch can’t find the particular garments he wishes to wear; or the females have shut themselves away, engaged with their toilets for an amount of time incomprehensible to the rest of the household considering the activity, which gives rise to questions as to what they’re really doing; maybe your vehicle of transportation has been struck with complications, etc. The specifics change, but the delay, frustration, and anxiety peculiar to moving a family is one in the same.

Now, imagine my family. Multiply, raise to an exponent, and take a factorial, proportional to how many there were of us on that climatic day, of the magnitude of that aforementioned confusion. Do this, and the end result will be something that no reasonable mind can elucidate or would be willing to should it value its sanity.

Of course, that is what I told myself from my spot at the focal point. Yes, I was brother commander, but the more I delegated certain tasks to my subordinates, the more complex the endeavors became, and the less inclined I was to know what they were doing. Nevertheless, this mental selectivity, which might be considered a lethargy, did occasionally recur with a certain amount of guilt to me.

What was I doing such that I couldn’t have checked on the status of my family? I wasn’t terribly occupied, and my lieutenants were quick to remind me of my lack of inaction. But I was more concerned with the ponies, the sights, the sounds—and Foil.

Ah, Foil. Though the face of my sister queen and those of my lieutenants are evanescent wisps in my memory, which twirl and distort the more I try to reach and caress them, yours stays with an impression too trenchant to convince me that I had many times seen it before in the corporeal world which is so hazy in comparison. I thought I was keeping you from the clandestine intrigues, plots, and shrills around you; but you, with your eagerness, reversed our roles and kept me from them.

What power had you had, Foil, that you were able to draw me, for nearly my entire stay in your city, from my family, away from my sister queen and her frustrations, from my lieutenants and their excoriations, such that you were able to muddy my usual assiduity which I applied in all important matters? No, you didn’t muddy it; you simply turned it to the issues where it thrived the best. And in that realm—the realm of teaching, instruction, and learning—everything else fades to obscurity.

So, thanks (or damnations) to you, my memories of the events leading up to the invasion are foggy. I would vaguely hear ecstatic shrills in the air above us, exchanging information, routes of attack, weak points, etc.; but the moment I tried to tune in and offer my own help, there you would be, asking me another question, so phrased that I was helpless not to turn back and answer you.

I speak dubiously now of those last few days before the invasion—but, at the time, I was in raptures, for I could not see a single piece out of place of where it ought to have been. There they were, in the air, thousands of shrills, each contributing what little he could offer to the whole, the whole that was focused on and around me. I couldn’t hear a single word, but it didn’t seem to matter; I couldn’t hear discordance, and I thought that that was the same thing as unity.

On the day preceding the one on which the invasion would take place, a single word passed as lord between all minds. Seeded from an unknown origin, there it leaped, growing and branching from one to the next, till it spread completely in the network of our voices, a strong, healthy vine, holding us all, promising deliverance. It had a different meaning for everyone, according to his nature, but all those separate meanings formed together as shoots of that vine, uniting us all to our one common purpose.

The meaning it carried for me? It was . . .

“What?” said the sentry to me on that day, pulling me from my trance. I realized that I had been mumbling to myself, quite regardless of him and what he had been saying.

“What about it? It’s an aspect. You told me about it already,” he continued, after I’d slipped back into the shrills.

I tried to refocus and look back at him. He, too, was in a distant state, with dark circles under his eyes, his voice slurred, his movements slow. Tired as he was, I wondered how much he’d noticed.

“Perfect . . .” I whispered again, “perfect . . . perfect . . . perfect . . .”

“Is that your favorite out of them?” he asked.

“Yes . . . certainly.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . the perfect suggests a sense of completion . . . of wholeness . . . of everything being done . . . and everything new to come . . .”

The sentry nodded and yawned. “I know,” he said, his eyelids falling. He closed one completely; the other he kept open a sliver, and a dark pupil, unfocused but still alert, held its exhausted attention on me.

“Plus,” I went on, “you can’t say it without smiling. Perfect. See? It’s impossible. Perfect . . . perfect . . . perfect . . .”