Ponywatching

by ThunderTempest

Prompt #435-Existance

Twilight Sparkle stared at the image of herself formed by reflection and refraction of light in a polished and metal-backed piece of glass. She ruffled her wings uncomfortably, spreading them and then refolding them. She supposed that with time, she would get used to them. Ponies were so unlike the books she treasured and loved. Books, once printed, didn’t change, and that was good. It meant that their contents were fixed, an absolute. But ponies couldn’t be printed. Ponies changed, and that meant that if books were a constant in the equation, then ponies were the variables.

But if books and ponies could be reduced to simple mathematics, then that also meant that life in general could. Everything was just one big equation, being evaluated thousands, millions of times a second. Every time something changed, the equation would be re solved. Princess Celestia had said that this was her ‘destiny’, but the variable called Twilight wasn’t so sure. If destiny was an actual force, then that meant that nothing she did was of her own free will. It was all predetermined, laid out and declared as constant. If she jumped off the highest balcony of her tree of knowledge, would she crash to the ground, or would her wings save her? Which one was part of her ‘destiny’? if she was meant to crash to the ground, but saved herself by usage of her wings, would that be defying her destiny? Or was that her actual destiny?

Twilight walked away from the mirrored glass, and her horn lit up with a soft amethyst glow, pulling a number of books down from their positions on the carefully organised shelves. The dictionary was only helpful in providing a definition for ‘destiny’, (1. Course of events; pony’s fate. 2 the power which foreordains), which Twilight already knew. Astrology was also completely unhelpful, because horoscopes were too vague for what she needed to know.
Twilight absorbed the constants of information throughout the day, only suffering minor diversions to eat a grown tree-hanging fruit bought from her friend, and convincing the living permanent sugar rush that was Pinkie Pie that the library where Twilight made her home and her occupation was not an appropriate place to test the Party Cannon’s rapid fire feature.

As night fell, the unicorn-turned-alicorn-princess that was Twilight Sparkle placed the constants of information back into their positions on the shelves. As she climbed the stairs to go up to her bed, she reflected on the day’s study. Nothing she had found had adequately explained who, or what, determined a pony’s destiny. But if Princess Celestia had told her it was her destiny, then she must be telling the truth, right? The Princess was so much older and wiser than Twilight.

And so, Twilight Sparkle went to sleep. And then she was a fish.

Author's Note:

Written for Prompt #435-“Believe”
The Prompt: Reimagine My Little Pony as a Surrealist Tragedy.

I’m assuming that a Surrealist Tragedy is something like what indie filmmakers create, where everything is ridiculously overthought. I attempted to put a bit of surreal back into it.

Comments

[Valhuir]

Yeah, she's overthinking things. I prefer a semi-determinist philosophy where Fate is the general term, Destiny is the heights you could potentially achieve, and Doom is the depths you could fall to. It could be said Ghandi achieved his Destiny, but Hitler fell to his Doom.

[Themaskedferret]

Dear god....twitches at terrible memories* It's okay, the giraffes no longer need trumpet lessons...