Trip the Light Fantastic

by ponichaeism

1. INSTANT CARMOT

“Odysseus wanders as an individual, aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation [is] a temporary period, a brief journey of the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to land and race....”
-Philip K. Dick, Beyond Lies the Wub

Celestia dimmed her horn and cleared her mind of the sun-raising spell, that most ancient and powerful magic responsible for coaxing the rosy-hooved dawn over the horizon. Sunlight bloomed through the stained glass windows lining the eastern wall of the throne room. One beam in particular passed through the simulacrum of her most faithful student's defeat of Nightmare Moon. A rainbow, fashioned into the moment the darkness in her sister's soul was quelled, shone down on her. The princess took a moment to stare up at the illuminated window with the sun behind it, but her contemplation was interrupted by the grand arched doors opening. Hooves struck the marble floor and echoed in the hall. Celestia faced her sister, who entered the throne room as if summoned with a thought. Princess Luna's wings arched out as she halted and stood proud and regal.

“Sing to me, O sister,” Celestia declared, “of that illustrious musician." Playfully, she used the archaic dialect of their childhood. Her sister was still new to this world after her thousand-year absence, and had not yet mastered the intricacies of the contemporary speech.

“Unfortunately she is still lost to us, that mare of wide-ranging spirit who wanders far and wide in her own shadow.”

"Then have thou some subtle and cunning device contrived to guide her home to us?"

For a long, agonizing moment, Luna remained silent and stared at her sister with widened eyes. Then she dropped the lofty affectation and replied, "I'm working on the matter, but the pace is difficult. She is....obstinate."

"My faith in thou is as persistent as she." Faintly smiling, Celestia said, "Work thy wonders, thou thaumaturge."

The princess of the day watched her sister and fellow Deathless One close her eyes and lose herself in rapt concentration. She compared Luna to the stained glass window, mentally juxtaposing the two figures and observing how they informed each other. A whole pony, she knew, was a gestalt composite entity in a state of flux between many disparate moods and thoughts: once Luna was her darling sister; then she became the destroyer; now she was the healer. Yet she had always been Luna. All those fragments of her, those minute pieces of being, were moments in time like the droplets that create a river. In the end, everything and everypony under the sun and the moon flowed ever onward, each undergoing their own journey as they traveled in time.

Everything flows, Celestia thought with a certain resolute finality.

Luna smiled and announced, “She dreams.”

“Show me.”

Celestia closed her eyes to the material world and fully unlidded her mind's eye. She slipped into the astral plane, dominion of the mind. The higher realm dawned like a door opening slowly: first allowing a thin line of light into a darkened room, which spreads and widens until the eye of the observer sees nothing but infinite light. For a moment, the splendor overwhelmed Celestia. Then her mind's eye adjusted and she beheld the luminous astral world unfold before her; the communal well from which ponies drew their dreams and myths and imagination. But normal ponies could only sip these waters. They could not comprehend the complex streams of information streaking through the profound abyss in unfathomable rainbows of inconceivable colors. Without fully opening the mind's eye, that third eye that sees inward -- a road few ponies choose and even fewer master -- only the lesser sight of cosmic infinitude and brilliant auroral evanescence could be deciphered. That was the highest infinity they could conceive of.

“This way,” her sister said.

Luna's enlightened form streaked into the distance, leaving trails of light like shooting stars behind. With a thought, Celestia followed the princess of dreams through her domain. Her own astral body slid effortlessly past the dreaming minds, which resembled galaxies of dense, multi-layered webs. Sparks of golden light raced through the serpentine, luminescent fibers to form dazzling bursts of insight and inspiration and emotion. And as thoughts fused and feelings coalesced, the dreamers sang a beauteous micropolyphonic fugue, a dense overlap of impassioned wailing, out of which emerged a deeper melody from the harmony of the independent ariettas. The music filled the infinite realm of the singular mind that united all minds.

Luna's astral form guided Celestia towards one galaxy in particular. The sisters descended into it, immersing themselves in the bursts and flares of mental activity. Flickering visions danced and wavered, hazy and indistinct, creating mists of memory and imagination that clouded around Celestia like nebulae. The aether thickened as they approached the shining galactic core of the dreamer's sleeping consciousness. Sensations streaming through the dreamer's brain plugged themselves into Celestia's own mind, creating a world around the two observers. A warm summer's day constructed itself. The skies were crystal clear, the wind was alive with the scent of freshly-mowed grass and fragrant flowers, and birds twittered joyously in the trees. The world was in bloom, and nature reached out to embrace the little filly whose dream this was. She stood on the hilltop near them in her astral body, a little pony shining with light.

“In her dreams,” Celestia thought to her sister, so as not to disturb the dreaming mind, "her eye is open to everything around her except herself.”

“This is no dream,” Luna thought back, “but a memory that dominates her thoughts, even in the sanctuary of her dreams.”

“Is she aware of how powerful a hold it has over her?”

“On some level, yes. But she is not yet awake to herself, and does not recognize the memory's significance. To her, it is simply a reminder of what she lost. She does not realize it is also the substance she crafted her life out of. But come, watch. Her song is about to begin.”

The little pony closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the gentle caress of nature's embrace. And in the absolute stillness of the moment, like an eye opening just in time to see the rising sun clear the horizon, the filly heard the most beautiful song in the world.

“For one brief moment,” Luna explained, “her mind attuned itself to the astral plane, and her mind's eye glimpsed the infinite in all its splendor.”

Celestia felt the divine harmony of the music in the filly's head. A string of notes popped into her mind, fully-formed. The melody was simple enough, or so the filly thought, but as they built on one another they stirred the most incredible feeling in her heart, a feeling of indescribable, uplifting joy. The song reverberated through her skull while nature sang in harmony with it. The birds and the wind and sun pulsed along with the cosmic heartbeat. The song burned inside her soul like a phoenix and lent her spirit wings.

And then it started ebbing away.

Celestia's heart wrenched. “Oh, you poor little filly.”

The dreaming pony felt the divine melody slip. In a panic, she galloped home, inadvertently taking Celestia and Luna, who were anchored to the dream, with her. But Celestia felt the realization burning through the filly's thoughts: she wasn't a musician, she couldn't read musical notation, her parents didn't even have one of those tape recorders she could use to hum it and record it. There was no way to keep hold of the music. And so, as she ran over the hills, she burst into tears for the sweet melody, capable of bringing her to the most rapturous joy, as it drifted away on the summer wind. The notes were already indistinguishable. All she remembered were the absence they carved into her soul. The only thing in life she wanted was to hear that song, and she couldn't even have that. What kind of life would she lead without that song?

What sort of life, indeed, Celestia mused.

Luna thought, “Here it comes.”

Before her mind's eye, Celestia watched the summer landscape distort and dissolve around the filly's astral body, which aged fifteen years in the blink of an eye. Grimy black walls erected themselves and blocked out the hazy summer skies and bright sunlight. A dungeon wrapped itself around her and trapped her. She galloped in a frenzy, her heart pounding in her chest, trying to free herself. But the dungeon's bowels were a twisting maze, and she didn't know the way out, so she picked her path at random and ran with all her might. But she had nothing to guide her, and succeeded only in plunging deeper into the maze.

Celestia watched the pony's legs pump in vain. “She's lost, and in her panic she loses herself further.”

In a dark, brooding tone, Luna thought, “The dark night of the soul is far blacker and more disorienting than the deepest dungeon.”

“Can she find her way out on her own?”

Luna observed the dreamer, then thought, “I....” Though she couldn't read Luna's thoughts, Celestia knew what her sister meant to say clearly enough: 'I couldn't.' “I'm not sure,” Luna finally thought.

“Then will thou guide her?”

“No. She isn't ready yet, and her song is still unfinished. For a pony as lost as she, a subtler hoof is required, or else the process may be spoiled.”

Disheartened by the lost little pony's plight, Celestia thought, “Then I entrust the matter to thy capable hooves.”

The princess closed her mind's eye. Reality wrapped itself around her like a cocoon, leaving her once again folded up in the material realm. She turned back to the stained glass and wondered how she would feel if, as a filly, during the years that would create who she was, she glimpsed the infinite and then lost it. What kind of pony would she be and what sort of life would she have led if she was forever taunted and tortured with an inexpressible joy forever out of reach?

What would her song sound like?

“Nonstop wubs, all the time, everytime!” DJ-P0N3 yelled. She had a microphone right up against her mouth, the only way she could shout over the thumping ruckus of her music, which meant her voice was mighty loud when there wasn't any playing at all. A great big gleeful grin was on her face as she added, “Listen up, party ponies, 'cause DJ-P0N3 is in the hizzouse! The beats are coming like bombs, and we're gonna let 'em....” Using a bit of her unicorn magic, she let the turntable needle fall onto a record. “DROOOP! Aw, yeah! Everypony mosh!”

But Apple Bloom wasn't the only pony at the party staying far away from the sound system. Not by a long shot. Wincing fiercely, she flattened her ears to protect her hearing from the wobbling, high-pitched bass. The dubstep was loud, so loud it rattled her family's barn right down to the foundations. What a horrible racket, she thought, about to go crazy. It starts off all wailing, like it's bein' tortured. Then it goes and starts pounding so fast! Why can't the music jes make up it's mind?

She slunk over to the table against the wall. The punch bowl on the fancy quilt-patterned tablecloth jumped to the music. Spooning any punch out was a fool's errand, so Apple Bloom wasn't sure what that said about her new friend Sweetie Belle, who had the ladle handle tight between her teeth. She craned her head over the rim, trying to get some of the punch out for about the fourth time. The bass suddenly stopped, but rather than jump for joy, Apple Bloom was wary. She could tell what was coming next, because it had happened so darn much already. Suddenly, a big old bass boom like thunder shook the barn. The bowl took to wing, higher than ever. It landed wrong on its way down, tipped itself over, and upended itself on Sweetie Belle's head.

With the bowl perched behind her horn like a helmet and drops of punch running down her coat, Sweetie Belle glared at Apple Bloom, warning her not to laugh, but AB couldn't resist it and got into a giggling fit. Sweetie Belle said something as she pulled the bowl down, but the music drowned her out.

“What?!” Apple Bloom called.

As Sweetie Belle pulled the bowl off her head, she screamed, “Dubstep stinks!”

“I think she said she hates dubstep,” Scootaloo yelled, not especially helpfully.

“Thanks a bunch,” Apple Bloom said sarcastically. She rolled her eyes.

“What?!”

Apple Bloom shook her head. “Never mind!”

“What?!”

Instead of bothering to answer, she just jerked her head at the DJ table, telling her friends to follow her. The music grew a whole lot louder the closer they got to the turntable. The giant speakers were so tall and black. She remembered being taught in school about those eerie old monoliths that dotted Cornhaul, and the woodcuts of ponies in weird robes doing a kind of ritual dance in the moonlight. But she was pretty sure stones like those couldn't make barns collapse barns just by making noise.

The DJ's untamed blue mane flew everywhere. She was all busy bobbing her head to the beat with abandon. Apple Bloom didn't know how in the hay a pony could get themselves so caught up in dubstep music, since each and every one of them distorted bass thumps felt like a sledgehammer to the face.

“Excuse me!” Apple Bloom yelled.

With those tinted goggles she always wore, Apple Bloom didn't have the slightest clue if the DJ's eyes were even open. She certainly didn't pay any mind to Apple Bloom and the other two fillies, so AB had rear back and wave her forelegs over her head to get the mare's attention. That took DJ P0N-3 out of her trance, sure enough.

“Why aren't you moshing?” she yelled with a grin. “Isn't loud enough for you?”

“No, no,” Apple Bloom said quickly. “Ah jes wanted to make a request! Do ya have 'Unicorn' by the Allmare Sisters?”

“No, the Buzzcolts!” Scootaloo shouted, hopping up and down. “Play the Buzzcolts!”

“Aw, I want to hear ABBALOOSA!” Sweetie Belle pouted.

The three fillies turned on each another, hollering over the others and the pounding dubstep. “The Buzzcolts!” “Allmare Sisters!” “ABBALOOSA!”

As the music faded out and the merciless bass thankfully wobbled out of earshot, the DJ yanked a record out from under the booth and held it high. “Well, I'll tell you what I do have: some wubs! Yeah, that's right!”

The three fillies shared a look of fright, then waved their hooves wildly to let the DJ know that wasn't necessary in the slightest. The mare pursed her lips, slumped her shoulders a bit, and gave in.

“I'll check what I got,” she said, rummaging around under the table. She came back up with a record, slapped it onto the turntable, and spun it.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders cringed, drawing away slightly. Apple Bloom's stomach knotted itself in a big ball of fear at what would come blasting of the speakers, but to her relief it was nothing but 'Is Your Song Long Enough?', by Iron Ferryier. As the slow, measured power ballad played, she looked at her friend Scootaloo, then at Sweetie Belle, and as one the three fillies shrugged and decided it would do mwell enough.

“Thank you,” they called.

“No problem,” DJ-P0N3 said.

But Apple Bloom couldn't help noticing that the mare looked a bit uncomfortable. She grooved to the music again, but it seemed more like a motion mechanical, that of a mare just going through the motions with all the joy and enthusiasm of a lazy-rotating windmill, than of a pony really and truly enjoying themselves. Apple Bloom did feel a mite bad about it, but she felt worse about listening to that lurching musical mess that was dubstep, and followed her friends back to the punch table with nary another word to the DJ.

“Hey, what happened to the music?!” Rainbow Dash asked, offended.

“I wanted to listen to the Buzzcolts,” Scootaloo said, beaming up at her idol.

Rainbow Dash tousled her mane. “Heh heh, thatta filly.”

As Dash walked away, Scootaloo sighed dreamily. “Rainbow Dash thinks I have good taste!”

“She'd be the only one,” Sweetie Belle said.

Sweetie Belle chuckled when Scootaloo snarled “Hey”, but Apple Bloom still felt a touch bad about that dismayed DJ. It was weird, after all; DJs were paid to play music that partygoing ponies want to hear. But the equine heart all too often has a raging contempt for reason, and AB's guilt towards the lonely pony would not quit her. That DJ-P0N3, she....

She don't really fit in here, Apple Bloom thought, everything suddenly becoming as clear as the sun breaking through the clouds. With all that dubstep stuff she likes, she'd be much more at home in Fillydelphia or Los Pegasus.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Sweetie Belle, who skipped past her on her way to her sister, who she went and orbited in a tight circle, hopping up and down, as Rarity was deep in talking to Twilight Sparkle.

“Rarity, Rarity, Rarity, I wanted the DJ to play ABBALOOSA!”

“Is that so, Sweetie Belle?” her sister asked, putting on a mighty fine show of hiding her fluster for the interruption.

“I know they're your favorite band,” Sweetie Belle said in a sing-song voice.

Rarity blushed and her pupils shrank until they were scarcely bigger than pinpoints. They darted around to see if anypony besides Twilight had caught what the terrible secret her sister had spilled.

“Don't worry, your guilty pleasure is safe with me,” Twilight said, winking and laughing.

Rarity darted forward, sending Sweetie Belle off-balance and landing on her rump on the floor. The fashionista got in Twilight's face until their snouts were touching, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring. As she poked Twilight, she growled, “Oh, it had better be, or else I might have to let slip that a certain unicorn likes to croon 'Call Me Mane' when she thinks she's alone.”

Now it was Twilight's turn to blush and look around to see if anypony had heard. Rarity broke away and effortlessly turned on the smile again as she fluffed her curled mane. Noticing her sister on the floor for the first time, she asked, “Sweetie Belle, what are you doing down there?”

“Nothing,” her sister said, dazed.

Sweetie Belle jumped up and brushed herself off, then trotted over to rejoin Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. The three of them went to town on a plate of cupcakes, and when that wasn't filling enough they considered going to city, too. But as they chowed down, Apple Bloom found her attention drawn back to Twilight and Rarity again.

“So,” Rarity asked, “what do you think it means?”

“Hmm. Well, I have some theories about your very interesting dreams.”

“Er, I'm not quite sure interesting is how I would put it, Twilight, dear.”

Twilight's smile fell away slightly. “I find them interesting. From a purely scientific perspective, that is. Anyway, if you're dreaming about your dresses coming to life and attacking you, it could mean you're feeling overwhelmed by your work.”

“But I'm not. Truth be told, business has been rather slow lately.”

“Yet the horde of dresses implies you feel overwhelmed. Is something making you stressed?”

Just then, Apple Bloom noticed the DJ approaching to the snack table, her unattended turntable spinning in the distance. 'Is Your Song Long Enough?' was, as the title suggested, long enough indeed. For a snack break, anyway. Apple Bloom and her friends moved out of the mare's way as she and stepped up to the ice cooler full of glass bottles.

“Nothing I can think of,” Rarity said. “So why would I dream about being overwhelmed?”

“According to the book Mare and Her Symbols,” Twilight gushed, sounding like Miss Cheerilee when she got all excited about learning, “one of my absolute favorites, might I add, dreams are our unconscious mind's way of telling us what we need. Our deeper minds know what we need to do to embrace our true selves, and use symbolism to communicate that with us and help us become whole.”

The DJ paused over the cooler. Apple Bloom might've just imagined it, but it seemed like more than just indecision. The mare's head inclined towards Twilight ever so slightly, or so the filly thought. Then she magically snagged a bottle of cider from the cooler, popped the top, and swigged it down.

“Tell me,” Twilight asked, after a bout of deep thought, “when these dresses attack you, are they all different dresses? Or are they all the same dress?”

“Why....they're all the same dress, I think.”

“Is it that one you've worn the last four times you've gone to Canterlot?”

Rarity blinked in astonishment. “Yes, yes it was. I've been trying to get the Canterlot elite interested in my design, but--”

“No luck? But you keep trying anyway, am I right?”

“I like that design.”

“But they don't. And your deeper mind knows that. Yet your higher mind, the conscious part of you, keeps trying, even though it's not working. I'll bet your subconscious feels like your pride in that dress is interfering with your productivity, which is being 'overwhelmed' by that one dress.” Twilight beamed. “Your deeper mind is convinced you're stuck in a rut.”

At that exact moment, by sheer coincidence, the DJ's turntable needle skipped the record groove and started looping: '-it's destiny if-it's destiny if-it's destiny-'

“Stand back, everypony,” the DJ said, slightly more unsteady on her hooves than she had been. “DJ-P0N3 to the rescue.”

As she walked away, Apple Bloom thought about the odd coincidence. What were the chances of Twilight saying 'stuck in a rut' right just as the record went and got stuck in a rut? But nopony else had given a double take or seemed like they noticed it at all. Was it really that odd, if only she heard it? Apple Bloom wanted to ask her friends about it, but the more she chewed it over in her head and the more she convinced herself her imagination was playing tricks on her. They'd laugh at how silly she was being. But still, it was mighty odd. She had just about worked up the courage to ask them if they had noticed it when the DJ replaced the broken record with a new one. A scream urged everypony to "Get the lead out!" Then a lively, upbeat dance song filled the barn.

“Ooh, I love this song!” Sweetie Belle shouted. “Let's dance!” She galloped out onto the dance floor.

As Scootaloo started after her, she called over her shoulder, "Hurry up, Apple Bloom!"

It wasn't nothing but a coincidence, that's all, Apple Bloom thought decisively. She followed her friends out onto the straw-strewn floor and lost herself in dancing. The joyful harmony and melody refused to let her worries keep her down, and to let her keep hold of them. They all drifted away while she nimbly tripped across the floor on a light fantastic hoof. She and the other two fillies, all very new friends but already nigh-on inseparable, were so fleet of hoof they were nearly some kind of an armada, a whirlwind storming across the barn. All three surrendered themselves to the music streaming through the air and let it flow through them and move them to its irresistible beat.

But every so often, Apple Bloom's eye would wander to that lonely DJ stuck behind her turntable, looking so lost and adrift. The filly wanted to throw her a lifeline, but dancing to this amazing music was the best one she knew, and if this couldn't help her....then what could?