It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.
Sunset Shimmer giggled as she lit her horn and let her magic flow to the stack of wooden branches and wooden twigs behind her, thoroughly soaked in kerosene. A bright pillar of fire erupted, cuddling her asbestos-clad body like a blanket, the blazing smell of fire and kerosene assaulting her nostrils like thousand-bit perfume.
A small hoof nudged her outstretched carbon-black metallic wings, eager to see the beautiful spire herself. The hoof belonged to a pair of eyes that wanted to see the beautiful fire for herself and her alone, such a selfish act for such a young filly to whom the eyes belong, Sunset thought, and Sunset shifted her wings back in place, protecting the young filly’s easily-flammable and adorably-boopable muzzle from the raging bonfire. The filly groaned. Sunset chuckled.
The spire gradually diminished, leaving behind a small campfire perfect for smores. Perfect for a social gathering. Perfect for a mundane atmosphere of crackling fire and warmth and too much heat when the wind blew the wrong way and way, way too much heat when a pony lit it on a particularly dry summer next to a particularly dry tree in a particularly dry forest. Perfect for the fillies, Sunset thought, and so Sunset folded her wings, letting the eager colts and fillies in front of her running toward the thankfully controlled fire with marshmallows, sticks, chocolate bars, and crackers.
She waited for a while, for more than a while, for an hour, watching the foals chitter and chatter and jump around the fire with laughter until, finally, one of them offered her a pair of the delicious marshmallow-based campfire treat. A pair of delicious smores, Sunset realized, such a thoughtful little filly to notice that firemares never ran their duties alone. How remarkably considerate for a filly at her first marshmallow sharing session. Sunset thanked the filly and walked back toward The Salamander, or a firetruck as ponies of old would call it before it was remodeled, or the hooray as fillies and colts would call it while waiting for their campfires to light up on their own, or oh no as users of Tools of Ignorance would call it when they saw it knowing that their houses will soon ignite, or it’s been good knowing you as distributors of Tools of Ignorance would call it before surrendering themselves to the inescapable hooves of authority.
A white pegasus mare with a white metallic horn was waiting in The Salamander’s driver’s seat by the time she reached it. When Sunset opened the door, the fire captain quickly closed the book she was reading and put it in a nook under the steering wheel. An admirably graceful gesture, Sunset mused, at how quickly the fire captain was able to close the book, apply the bookmark, and slip it inside a confined space full of dirt and grime due to all the years it had served without a single firemare caring enough to clean it with at least a wet towel, all the while managing to not apply any dirt nor grime to the pristine white of the dust cover of the book. “How goes?”
“Fine,” she answered. Closing the door, she offered Captain Celestia a smore while munching on one herself. “Could've been better, though. The foals only shared their analysis on the government’s current ruling party for about half an hour.”
Celestia nodded and stepped on the gas. Immediately The Salamander soared through the sky, shooting forward like an arrow until, a few seconds later, arrived at the fire department on the other side of Canterlot. Not many interesting things happened, Sunset thought, and she grieved at the many interesting things that could’ve happened or could’ve been witnessed if only Captain Celestia took the time and wit to break protocol.
Upon arrival, Sunset and Celestia took off their fire retardant coveralls and hung them on the wall. They also took off their black metallic hats, in the fronts emblazoned the trademarked number 451, the temperature at which marshmallow liquefies.
It’s also, coincidentally, the temperature at which octirosene ignites, creating a blue-green flame that uses magic as its oxidant. Ponies call it Balefire, for it is nearly impossible to extinguish and how it resembled the legendary Fire of Baley that Sunset just made up on the spot because it’s very interesting to do worldbuilding without an actual story for the world to be put into and apply and explore through the endless cycle of writing and rewriting and erasing and burning the precious papers to ashes at the embarrassment she felt coming if anypony found out about it and inevitably regretting the destruction of such a masterpiece.
As Sunset lingered in the hat rack, Celestia called, “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”
Sunset nodded without looking back. “Why should we take a bath after every mission? It’s not like we ever have more than an hour between them unless we’re in our homes,” she said instead of the train of thought she had before because she had wanted to ask that question to her captain for a long time now. A grand total of thirty-seven centiseconds.
“And why should you eat?” Celestia asked back. “You’ll always be hungry again after a few hours. Why bother?” As Sunset turned around, Celestia locked her gaze with Sunset’s. Magenta eyes, Sunset mused, are always of beauty; always managing to steal her heart and full attention every time they met her aquamarine ones, flooding her with either utmost respect or unconditional love depending on how the metaphorical Boolean logic inside her mind and soul answered her retina’s input of whether the rest of the pony’s coat was white or lavender. “To enjoy the cleanliness in-between those hours, Sunset. That’s why we take baths.”
Sunset gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Captain.”
Celestia smiled back and grabbed the firepole with her hoof. “Never stop asking.” As soon as she finished the sentence, the firepole retracted and pulled her up to the living quarters above. How the firepole worked like that she had always wondered. How the firepole worked like that her mind always answered with a blueprint she had remembered every detail of through that one time she brought the printed piece of modern firepole schematics everywhere she went for an entire week because she had been sick of not being able to answer the question of how the firepole worked like that. It was worth all the complications of galloping around with her asbestos coverall burning from the inside because she had put the blueprint rather clumsily on the inside pocket of her asbestos coverall while on Ignorance Duty or Balefire Duty as some ponies wanted to call it because it sounded cooler.
Again, the slogan, Sunset thought after rethinking of what Captain Celestia just said: “Never stop asking.” It’s annoying to hear that in her youth, where everypony kept on repeating it whenever possible. But, as she grew up, Sunset understood the importance of it: to keep ponies asking, thinking, and ultimately, keeping apathy at bay. To keep society away from the illusionary happiness of ignorance and gain true happiness, that is, the one that came from knowledge and wisdom. Told to everypony from kindergarten and had become a doctrine of some sort, like religion! Only without all the hullaballoos of fanaticism because it fell more into the lines of philosophical thinking everypony had taken to heart and mind and soul if that existed.
And so, Sunset Shimmer took a bath and enjoyed the five minutes of pure cleanliness, before drying herself at the instant dryer and stepping back into the station, where the lingering smell of kerosene and octirosene greeted her and made her coat feel a little dirtier already. But that didn’t matter, for the smell alone was enough to lift her spirits up. The beautiful, beautiful smell of combustible hydrocarbon and octirocarbon liquids!
The fire bell rang, and Sunset galloped toward the hat rack before she could enjoy her moment of cleanliness.
She was stopped halfway by a cyan wing. “We got this. You enjoy your rest.”
Sunset gratefully nodded and let Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy gallop away to The Salamander, where Captain Celestia already waited. Such were the two, almost always going to missions together due to the latter’s insistence that the former always got into trouble every time she had gone without her on a mission.
The Salamander shot outside with tremendous speed, leaving Sunset alone in the fire department’s garage. Looking at the huge screen on the far side of the garage, she found that the bell was for an extinguishing duty. A fiery argument about the use of the metric and imperial system had already started. Definitely not her forte. She was always biased on the use of the metric system herself, mostly because she was a natural scholar. And so was Rainbow, she remembered, how the reckless mare had always insisted on the imperial system because of how the majority of ponies had accustomed themselves to the ridiculous Fahreneigh temperature range.
She predicted that the team of three would eventually just leave Fluttershy to douse the argument herself.
Sure enough, The Salamander returned a few minutes later with an absence of the yellow pegasus.
Captain Celestia and Rainbow Dash stepped out of The Salamander, the former looking cheery as always while the latter looking sullen as always whenever she didn’t get to do the action.
Sunset greeted Rainbow with a chuckle. “Usual difficulties?”
Rainbow snorted. “You better let me have the next marshmallow duty.”
“I don’t know, Rainbow. Why should I?”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “To satiate my psychological needs of adrenaline-inducing activities. C’mon, I’m not a kindergartner.”
“And why should I help you in your endeavors of fulfilling your psychological needs? It’s not like you’re going to die if I take every other marshmallow duty and let you take the one that occurs by chance when I’m not around. It will even keep your needs satiated while at the same time not risking your mind to raise the bar for your mental needs and keeping you happy in the lower, easier-to-fulfill degree.”
Celestia stepped between them. “Alright, girls. That’s enough. You’re going to ring the alarm.”
Sunset and Rainbow stepped back, not noticing how close their muzzles had gotten and how dangerously bright both their horns (prosthetic or otherwise) were glowing. The two then apologized and hugged and giggled uneasily. An awkward gesture of apology, Sunset noticed, and she relished the realization that it’s not the not-awkwardness that made them agree to suffer each other’s presence for another day, it was the willingness to do awkward gestures itself that made them forgive each other, knowing how far into awkwardness the other’s willing to go through just so their friendship won’t be obliterated into oblivion.
As Rainbow zipped up the firepole, another pegasus mare came from the front door. Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Spitfire, you came?”
Spitfire spat not-fire into the spittoon and gave Sunset a smirk. “Thought you’d appreciate it. Go home, newbie. I know you haven’t bought an anniversary gift for your wife.”
Sunset laughed and gave Spitfire a hug. “Thanks, Spitfire. I’ll make sure Twilight finds out about this.”
Sunset Shimmer trotted down the familiar path to her home humming a happy tune. The newest Celestial Incognizant book was in her saddlebag, wrapped in brown paper ready to be hidden until her second wedding anniversary in a week. It wasn’t a usual book (her wife had an abundance of those), for it hadn’t been published yet and wouldn’t be for at least five months. She managed to get one directly from the author himself, thus why she was trotting under the moonlit sky instead of the usual dusk.
As she was about to turn the usual corner, she was greeted by an unusual unease. As if the air itself had gotten colder, or maybe warmer? Maybe some ladybug sneezed at her feet and sent a waft of pheromones into her nostrils. Or maybe somepony was waiting around the corner to pounce at her? Maybe it’s the local party pony wanting to celebrate her having bought the perfect present for her wife. Or maybe it was . . . something else?
She took a deep breath and steeled her nerves. She was a firemare. Backdrafts should’ve been tenfold scarier than some over-energetic, personal-space-invading pony.
Nothing happened as she turned the corner. She only saw, at the end of the narrow alleyway, a white unicorn filly with a pink and purple mane and tail. Not even old enough to have her prosthetic wings. Sweetie Belle, her name was. Sunset remembered her, for she was her neighbor. A sister of the local fashionista, Rarity, who would be opening a new boutique in Manehattan in two weeks.
She remembered the celebratory party held when Rarity announced her purchase of the new building. The entire neighborhood had agreed to help her rebuild and redecorate it. She also remembered that Sweetie Belle was there, talking amicably among her peers and contemplating the philosophy of life and whether or not a supreme deity existed, as fillies her age usually did.
But the filly didn’t greet her when their eyes met and gave no indication that she had heard Sunset’s hello. Sunset knew she had already said the greeting, then worriedly trotted toward the filly when her second hello didn’t register.
The filly shook her head just before Sunset could offer her a hoof and ask what’s wrong, saying, “I heard you the first time, Ma’am.”
A ‘Ma’am’! What an odd word to hear these days. Ponies would usually greet one another with their names. Sunset recalled that Sweetie had met her when she moved into the neighborhood. She called her by her wife’s last name once, even, mistakenly using ‘Mrs. Sparkle’ and profoundly apologizing afterward for her fallible knowledge. Maybe it was just a formality? “Why didn’t you greet me back, then, Sweetie?”
“Dunno.”
“No? Not even going to think about it and cry and wail after you inevitably fall into the endless void of self-doubt and indecision?”
She shrugged. “Hm.”
“Think for a while, Sweetie. Maybe it was your laziness, or maybe your sluggish mind after a whole day at school not being able to competently use its prefrontal cortex like ponies of old would after indulging themselves with a Tool of Ignorance known as alcohol? How long did you sleep last night?”
She shrugged again. “Mhm.”
Sunset stood with mouth agape. A pony never ceased their train of thought like this! “Sweetie, are you alright?”
She nodded. “Mhm.”
“. . . And? Are you going to talk about it? What’s bothering your mind, Sweetie?”
“Hm? Oh, nothing.”
Sunset put her hoof on Sweetie’s forehead, just below the horn. “You’re not sick, aren’t you?”
Sweetie swatted the hoof away without looking, her eyes still vacant and looking at nothing in particular. She shook her head. “Mhm.”
Sunset looked at her worried. She hadn’t seen her many times before, and Rarity never talked about her sister. Then again, maybe it was the little filly’s insecurity of meeting others? Maybe Rarity was trying to slowly introduce her to others and get out of her shell? She understood the reason perfectly, and why it’s never a good thing to rush a child’s developing mind. “Want me to walk you back?”
Sweetie nodded in silence and trailed behind.
The moon set and the sun rose. The day passed by like usual, the ponies happily greeting one another and the neighborhood as lively as the days before, the air filled with cosmic uncertainties and the broiling sense of insignificance. Sunset got to her usual routine: wake up at four, greet her nocturnal wife at the dining table, light up the stove and watch in fascination as her wife cooks, eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, and trot toward the fire department. Wait for the bell to ring, quickly get into her coverall and don her hat at the first ding before it even counts as ringing. Light up a bonfire, wait until it diminishes into a campfire, let fillies and colts cook smores, eat smores with Celestia as they drive back to the fire department.
At the end of the day, however, her routine changed. She walked around the corner in anticipation and, surely enough, Sweetie was standing with a vacant stare at the end of the alleyway, not bothering to think about the mare talking to her, let alone to develop a continuous loop of crippling existential dread like a filly her age should’ve begun doing. Sunset walked her back to her house like yesterday.
The second day after she first met her she found Sweetie sitting on a bench in a park, staring at nothing in particular at the lake. Sunset noticed that Sweetie wasn’t even bothered by the trickle of rain. Sunset sat beside her and tried to talk to her, who was still answering with half-hearted “Hm”s and “Mhm”s, her nodding, shrugging, and head shaking the only indication of what she really wanted to say. She tried talking about colts, which usually made any filly her age talk endlessly of how they should’ve acted, but instead she got the usual “Mhm” and a shrug. Sunset then walked her back to her house through the glimmering park of sparkling dews.
The third day they met on the street a few blocks away from Sweetie’s house. She was trotting briskly, almost a canter, as if in a hurry, without looking at her surroundings or admiring Roseluck’s rose bush, which was very beautiful and always made passersby stop to have a look. Sunset trotted faster and caught up, asking, “What’s the hurry, Sweetie?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Why are you cantering, then?”
“Dunno.”
Sunset pulled her tail in her telekinetic grip, which gave her the first reaction she got from Sweetie Belle: a scowl. Just as fast, the scowl vanished and Sweetie continued forward, slower now and only a trot like usual. Sunset walked her back to her house along the moonlit streets.
On the fourth day, Sunset met Sweetie at the local confectionery. She was sitting at a table and idly looking at a poster of a vanilla milkshake on the wall. Sunset sat across and ordered a vanilla milkshake for Sweetie, making the local confectioner ask why such a cold and sweet drink was needed at the dark of the evening. Why indeed, Sunset thought. Maybe it’s nothing more than random cravings one might get in the middle of the night, only it’s eighteen hundred hours instead of oh-two-hundred.
“Here, Sweetie. Want a drink?”
Sweetie nodded and silently took the milkshake in her hoof. She sipped on her milkshake and idly stared across the table without looking at anything in particular.
“So, you like vanilla?”
Sweetie nodded. “Mhm.”
“Why do you like it? Maybe the sweetness that got into your tongue, satiating your primal need to eat some form of polysaccharide and is blasted into the highest levels of satisfaction upon meeting the purest form of carbohydrate? Or maybe it’s a placebo effect your brain got because ponies around you kept on saying that your coat color matches the whiteness of vanilla?”
Sweetie shrugged. “I just do.”
And the night passed by without any more interesting reactions from Sweetie. After she finished her drink, Sunset walked her back to her house under the countless stars that didn’t care a single bit about their existence in the ultimate fate of the universe.
On the fifth day after she first met Sweetie, Sunset met her at the bridge. Sweetie was standing by the side and staring blankly, as usual, her eyes not caring about anything that was happening around her. Sunset took one look at her and passed by without much thought.
A few paces in, Sunset stopped dead in her tracks, her heart skipping multiple beats and her breath caught in a hitch. She whipped her head around to look at Sweetie behind her, a pony that was her neighbor, her friend’s sister. She looked at her up and down and found that, for the first time, she didn’t want to think about her. She didn’t get the impulse to analyze Sweetie like days before, or think of a way to start a conversation between them, or whether or not she’s sick with the way she was acting, or when her birthday would be and whether or not she should buy her a plastic firemare hat to encourage a new generation of Warriors of Awareness.
For the first time, she found that she didn’t care.
Sunset did not walk her back to her house.
The sixth day after Sunset met Sweetie in the alleyway was the day before her anniversary with Twilight. Spitfire had generously offered to cover her day shift the day after her anniversary to celebrate, that is, in two days. Not the perfect date like she hoped, but beggars can’t be choosers. Her wife surely would understand.
The day had almost ended and the sun had almost touched the horizon when the fire bell tolled.
It didn’t ring. The bell tolled.
Sunset, still at her shift, looked at Captain Celestia with abject horror.
Celestia nodded grimly. “Bring the Balefire igniter, Lieutenant.”
Not a minute later, The Salamander shot like an arrow, carrying all four firemares of the district’s fire department with its siren wailing all the way through the pre-sunset sky. Sunset’s metallic wing’s undersides had already been stuffed with magical runestones and a single Balefire igniter, a slender aquamarine tube with a safety pin in its top. The standard tool to burn down a house.
Not much was said nor thought until they reached their destination. “This is my neighborhood.”
Celestia pulled the brakes. “I noticed, Lieutenant.”
Sunset looked outside and, to her horror, found that they had stopped right in front of Rarity’s house.
All four firemares jumped outside and, with their fire retardant coveralls and black metal hats, rushed through the front door, bashing it down.
As three firemares galloped in, Rarity galloped out of her house with tears streaming down her face. Sunset caught her at the front door. “Rarity, you rang the fire bell?”
Rarity wailed and spoke between her sobs. “I did! I-It's my sister, Sunset! My own sister!”
“Sweetie Belle? What did she do?”
“It’s an Airpod, Sunset. And many more!”
At the same time, Sweetie’s cry came from the second floor. “No! Don’t take them away!”
Sunset let go of Rarity, which galloped away from her house. Sunset herself galloped upstairs.
As Sunset reached the top of the stairs, she saw Sweetie clinging into Celestia’s left foreleg, trying to reach the small white hearing device in the captain’s right hoof high in the air. “This is a Tool of Ignorance, little one. Surely, you understand how dangerous it is?”
Sweetie wailed harder.
Sunset touched Celestia’s shoulder. “Let me handle this, Captain.”
Celestia nodded and gave Sunset the device. Sweetie immediately let go of her foreleg, enabling Celestia to leave the house, and hugged Sunset’s left foreleg, desperately trying to reach the Tool of Ignorance in her right hoof. “Sweetie, calm down!”
Sweetie wailed even harder.
Sunset sat and lowered her right hoof. Immediately Sweetie took the Airpod and clung to it like oil in a pony’s coat. Sunset wrapped her hooves and wings around her, and Sweetie leaned in, still crying. She felt like a giant marshmallow, Sunset noticed, with how white and soft her coat was. “Hush, Sweetie. You know you can’t get away with it, don’t you?”
Sweetie whimpered.
Sunset sighed. “Sweetie, ignorance isn’t the choice if you want to be happy. It is the understanding—”
“I’ve heard that a lot.”
“Then you understand?”
Sweetie leaned back, breaking the wing hug, and glared at Sunset. “I totally do. In fact, I understood it perfectly. So perfectly that I found out that nopony—and I mean absolutely nopony—is, in fact, happy with it. Everypony kept on thinking and yet nopony is happy. Don’t you think there’s such a thing as too much thinking? My teacher told me it was a dumb idea. There’s no such thing as too much thinking.”
“Because there isn’t.”
“And that’s where you’re all wrong.” Sweetie grit her teeth. “Thinking too much leads to you arguing with one another. Or even with yourself. Is that happiness for you? No, I don’t think so. For me, that’s just as delusional as thinking that ignorance doesn’t give you happiness. Have you never thought that, just maybe, all our miseries came from the thinking that we do? We’re always taught that misery can be destroyed with knowledge, yet nopony ever even thought that, just maybe, it can also be destroyed—no, prevented—with ignorance?”
“Sweetie, it’s not that simple.”
“See? You said it. You said it not because it is not that simple, but because I said too much and you couldn’t keep up with the explanation for it, didn’t you? If only I were a little bit older, you’d feel challenged and this conversation would have turned into a fiery argument by now, and another firemare would’ve come here because the fire alarm went off. We’re just about to argue, Ma’am, we’re just about to fall into a bottomless rabbithole of psychological-misery-inducing that is relentless arguing and it’s all because we think.”
Sunset didn’t answer.
“There you go, ma’am. Your answer. There is such a thing as too much thinking and it gave us not happiness, but sadness. It makes us miserable. Overthinking, I call it. Overthinking kills our happiness, not make them, as our doctrine tells us.”
Sunset closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She let it out and said, slowly, “Sweetie, I know it’s hard at first, but I promise you, you will find happiness eventually. It’s not eternal happiness, no, but it’s an occasionally-occurring-happiness that keeps you going on in life. It’s not good to detach yourself from reality just because you don’t want to deal with it. You won’t be able to be happy if you keep escaping from your responsibilities because they will chase you down until the end of time, no matter how fast you’re running. Don’t you care about your future? Your pursuit of happiness?”
Sweetie pulled away, stepping back a few paces. She accidentally stepped on a Joyboy the firemares had found during her endeavor to get her Airpod back, already soaked in octirosene like the rest of her toys and the house. She looked at it for a brief second before returning her gaze toward Sunset, the same vacant and empty look she had always given her carved into her pupils like a Balefire scorch mark.
“Frankly, Ma’am, I don’t give a damn.”
Sweetie raised one of her hooves, where the Airpod wasn’t there, but something slender, bluish-green—
The Balefire igniter. “Sweetie, wait!”
A metallic click. A sizzle like a shaken soda bottle.
Sunset draped her wing over Sweetie and lit up a teleportation runestone with her magic. A flash of light and a popping noise later, Sunset stood up stumbling next to The Salamander. She raised her wing and—
“Sweetie Belle?”
She snapped her head toward the window on the second floor. Sweetie was standing up, just succeeding in slipping away from the firemare’s wing grip. She gave Sunset an empty look, a small triumphant smirk, and a clear look of the sizzling Balefire igniter.
“Sweetie Belle, no!”
An electric crackle. A bright flash of white light. A raging Balefire.
White. Such a beautiful color, so pure and so easily tainted. Such a delicious color, how Sunset saw the color dripping every day on top of a small campfire. How the picture oh so easily forgotten. How she hoped that a similar picture of a melting white skin, so soft and innocent and full of love and care, can be as easily erased. How she wondered whether molten Sweetie tasted like marshmallow as well, and how well it would taste if put between crackers with chocolate.
Fahreneigh 451: the temperature at which marshmallow liquefies and octirosene catches Balefire.
Sunset Shimmer woke up with a start, her coat drenched in sweat and her eyes wet with tears. She took a deep shuddering breath and released a cry of misery. As she tried to turn around, she noticed that she couldn’t. Her mind slowly awoken and finally noticed the soft purple coat on her face and a pair of hooves hugging her head tight. “Twilight?”
Twilight crooned and gently caressed her mane. “Hush, Sunset. It’s just a nightmare.”
Sunset cried freely. “N-no, no it wasn’t.”
“It’s about yesterday, then?”
“I killed her, Twilight!”
Twilight draped a purple polycarbonate wing over her wife. “It was an accident, Sunset.”
“I could’ve stopped it! I should’ve been more careful with the igniter. I should’ve gripped her tighter under my wing!”
Twilight said no more, simply caressing her and keeping her in a reassuring hug.
The crying finally stopped, and Sunset looked up. Her eyes met with Twilight’s own, in-between them a pair of reading glasses. She looked to her side, finding a book sitting on the nightstand and the digital clock telling three o’clock. She looked back to Twilight guiltily. “I’m sorry. You were reading.”
Twilight shook her head. “Doesn’t matter, love. You’re in need of help, and that’s the most important to look after.”
“No, you didn’t, Sunset. Anniversaries are supposed to celebrate our relationship, to show each other and the world how much we love one another. What better way for me to say ‘I love you’ than being there in your time of need?”
Sunset chuckled. “How cheesy of you.” She leaned in and pecked her wife’s cheek. “I love it.”
Twilight giggled, and it was a golden jingle of diamond bells to her ears. Twilight leaned in, and she gave her a passionate kiss. They released it after a while, then she fell back into Twilight’s warm, loving embrace.
The doorbell chimed. Sunset turned and Twilight dropped from the bed. They walked together, Sunset trailing behind Twilight’s steps across their bedroom, along the corridors, down the stairs, until finally reaching the front door.
Captain Celestia greeted them with a worried look, her body devoid of any uniforms yet the black metal hat sitting on her head like a flame to its ember. “Good morning, Lieutenant. How was your sleep?”
Sunset smiled and saluted. “Good morning, Captain. My sleep has been . . . interrupted.”
“I see.” Celestia nodded. “Would you like to take the day off?”
Sunset looked at her surprised. “What? No, of course not! I’ll be at the station in an hour, as usual.”
Celestia shook her head. “It’s important that you take your time to recover, Sunset. Yesterday’s events hadn’t been pleasant.” She reached under her wing and produced a brown paper bag. Opening it, she levitated out a smore. “I brought you some snacks. Want some?”
A beautiful one, Sunset remarked. A perfectly melted marshmallow between the perfect crackers with the perfect amount of chocolate. It was still hot, even, with the white, pure, beautiful marshmallow a picture-perfect copy of a melting pony hide.
Sunset tried to smile. Her lips tried to curl up but were instantly pulled back at her stomach’s lurch. She stepped back and held a hoof over her mouth. She leaned to the side of the terrace and emptied her stomach to the ground below.
As she finished, the ringing in her ears she hadn’t noticed ceased, and she heard the muffled noises of her worried wife. “Sunset, you’re okay?”
Sunset shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s happening.”
She felt a feathery wing drape upon her. “It’s trauma, Sunset. Take the day off.”
She looked to her side, finding Captain Celestia looking back at her with tired eyes. “It’s not your first time handling Ignorance Duty, but it’s definitely your first time it took a victim. Don’t worry about it, Sunset. Every firemare will eventually experience it. I did. Rainbow did. Fluttershy did. Even Spitfire did, that one time. Oh, poor mare, she was. Took the whole week off, she did. But she recovered, and eventually continued her duties until this day.”
Sunset leaned on the railing of the terrace dejectedly. Two wings, one of feathers and one of polycarbonate, draped upon her in a calming embrace.
“Take the day off, Lieutenant. Take as much time as you need; we’ll cover you up. It’s under the protocol, so you need not worry.”
Sunset sat silently on the dining table, idly tapping her hoof to the shining wooden surface. Twilight had insisted that she stayed there while she cooked.
She turned around, finding her carbon-black steel wings hanging on the wall like an ornament. It was quite beautiful indeed, she mused. She never took the chance to really admire it from a distance before.
Sunset glanced to her right, finding Captain Celestia sitting comfortably with a book on her face. The fire captain suddenly turned, her eyes meeting Sunset’s own.
Sunset looked away.
Celestia put her book down and called, “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing.”
“Lieutenant?” Sunset looked up and met Celestia’s gaze. “Speak up, Sunset.”
Sunset sighed. “Normal ponies go to rehabilitation when they’re caught using Tools of Ignorance, right? What about firemares? Do they get punishment instead, since they’re supposed to be the one handling these things? Or are they forgiven because exposure to the Tools makes them more prone?”
Celestia chuckled and leaned back on her chair. At Sunset’s questioning look, she let out a blissful sigh and said, “I remember my first Tool. A bottle of moonshine, it was.”
Sunset gaped. “Y-you’ve drunk moonshine before?”
Celestia nodded. “It was my fifth year of duty, I think. Yes, yes it was. I’d just burned down a house full of the thing. Took some home, drank it alone. It tasted terrible. Smelled terrible too, it did. But I liked it, and drank some more.”
“A-and then? What happened?”
“The captain found out,” she said wistfully, staring at the ceiling. “He was a wonderful man. He told nopony about it; simply laughed and let me be. He gave me twenty-four hours to dispose of the rest myself.” She looked down, meeting Sunset’s eyes. “Which I’ll also give you, Lieutenant.”
Sunset cocked her head. “Twenty-four hours to rest?”
Celestia shook her head and chuckled. “No, Sunset. I’m giving you a day to burn that idea of how ignorance can give you happiness.”
“I’m not—”
Celestia put a hoof on Sunset’s mouth and winked.
As Celestia pulled her hoof back, Sunset opened her mouth, but quickly closed it back when her wife came from the kitchen, levitating two plates of bacon and eggs and a bowl of oatmeal. “For you firemares, as always.”
Sunset took the two plates of bacon and eggs, giving one for Celestia and one for her.
“Thank you, Twilight,” said Celestia.
Twilight sat to Sunset’s left, across Celestia, putting the bowl of oatmeal in front of her and munched with a happy smile, as always. At her first swallow, she looked at Sunset, saying, “So, what have you got planned for today?”
“Well,” Sunset began, “I was planning to go to work for the day and prepare for our anniversary in the evening. Seems like that’s not happening.” She glanced at Celestia. “I have no idea what to do now.”
Celestia looked at Twilight. “What does your wife love to do?”
“She likes to travel,” Twilight answered instantly. “Driving, to be exact.” She glanced at Sunset with a smirk. “She likes to take a trip to nowhere in particular; wasting gasoline for no other purpose than a blissful trip along the road.”
Sunset chuckled. “And that’s how I met the love of my life.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?’
“Yes,” Twilight answered. “She ran out of gas in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night. My house was the only one around which lights are still on, and so she knocked. She asked for gas, which I definitely couldn’t have had—”
“You totally could’ve!”
“—seeing as I don’t have any vehicles at home that require gasoline. Or any kind of transportation at all, for that matter. So I offered for her to stay the night instead until the neighbors wake up. She misunderstood it as flirting.”
“It was in the middle of the night. I was tired. She was hot.”
“She flirted back. She’s really awful at it. It was love at first sight.”
Celestia chuckled. “What a lovely story you both have.”
Twilight and Sunset looked at each other with loving smiles. “It is.”
Sunset sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I feel a little better. Thank you.”
Twilight draped a wing around her. “How about a random trip? Maybe it’ll make you feel even better.”
“We’ve planned that for tomorrow.”
“Alone.”
Sunset snapped her head toward Twilight. “W-what? Why? It was the original plan for our anniversary, after all!”
Twilight chuckled. “I’ll surprise you when you come back. You surprise me when I greet you. Doesn’t that sound more romantic?”
“That’s cheesy.” Sunset giggled. “I love it.”
Sunset stared blankly at the empty street in front of her. Trees, houses, and ponies slowly swept by her peripheral vision as her car drove past.
She felt alone. She didn’t like it one bit.
She hadn’t thought of where she was going. But, then again, that was how her life was before she met Twilight: aimlessly driving around without a clue of even where she was, simply enjoying the sensation of driving. It was an odd hobby, others said. Why would she like driving? Walking is a lot better. You could meet random strangers and make new friends, find new things to learn and have random thoughts stuck inside your head like a parasite. Driving was monotonous. You could arrive at your destination instantly without finding anything new and interesting.
In a way, she liked that. She liked the idea that she learned nothing on her trip, simply enjoying her own mind and arriving at her destination the same mare as when she left. Unchanging. Forever the same.
But, as life gave it, she couldn’t. She’d always arrive a slightly different mare as when she left, perhaps psychologically from the nagging thought about the purpleness of a house she passed by on the street that made her come to the realization that her wife’s mane was not lavender, it was indigo! Or maybe she sneezed on the way, letting go of a few molecules that were once her into the air and sucking in new molecules to fix that (molecularly speaking) gaping hole inside her body, thereby making her, by definition, different?
She shook her head and focused on the street.
Not that she needed to, it was barely twice trotting speed.
And that made her ponder. No car in existence ever sped past her current speed. None but The Salamander. Nopony wanted to do that, for speeding up means missing potential interesting stuff on the way. It was necessary for The Salamander, however, for they were always needed the instant they were called. Besides, the things they miss on the road always paid off for what they didn’t miss at the destination.
Her eyes bulged. How much interesting stuff had she missed because she took her time on the road? She looked down, below the steering wheel, to where the pedals were. She could always do the opposite of what others do, right? What if, instead of walking slowly and hoping for interesting things to find her, she sped up and hunted for interesting stuff? Instead of letting stuff happen, she makes stuff happen?
She hit the gas and let her car sped as fast as it could. Which was quite fast, she had to say, for something that wasn’t built for speed. Her car’s engine roared as she let the wheels sped along the asphalt road. Everything was a blur, the houses, the trees, the ponies naught but a speck of color occupying an insignificant portion of her vision for a meaningless fraction of a second. She didn’t find anything interesting on the road, because she found nothing on the road comprehensible enough to recognize nor think about.
Her mind raced. Her nerves sparked in excitement. Her blood overrun with adrenaline, flooded with oxygen and forced her to focus on the speeding landscape before her. She took turns, sharp turns, U-turns, merry-go-round-turns, Beta caro-turns, and found that she always needed to slow down whenever she took some form of direction change.
It killed her grin.
What if that’s not the case? she wondered. She remembered reading about a hypothesis about how sudden acceleration or deceleration of the wheel might cause it to slip. In her adrenaline-induced moment of crystal clarity, her mind formed a stupid, insane idea to use that slip to turn a corner without losing speed.
And so, foolish as she was, she did. She hit the gas at a corner, prompting several ponies to scream. She also held the clutch, prompting the rpm gauge to shot up to the red bar. It wasn’t good. The red bar indicated something bad.
But, foolish as she was, she ignored it and released the clutch.
The back wheels screamed as they lost their grip on the road. The front wheels fumbled as they noticed their hind counterparts floating.
Sunset’s car turned the corner in a rush of smoke, in a whirling smell of burned tires, in a grin of a bacon-maned unicorn.
It missed centimeters from a passerby’s screaming muzzle. At the last moment, Sunset threw the steering wheel back.
As she left the turn and had her car steadily moving in the normal way again, Sunset giggled. Sunset chuckled. Sunset threw her head backward and let out a hysterical laugh.
Wasn’t it fun, not caring about how the street vendors with bulging eyes at that street corner could’ve been turned into a bloody pulp of pony meat and bones, how she could’ve died, how her wife could be so devastated and so traumatized by either the accident or death that she stopped functioning in society?
Yes, Sunset reasoned. It was fun.
A couple of hours passed with a lot of corners deliberately taken. A lot of hours passed with police officers wondering what to do as there weren’t any laws specifically mentioning about speed limits, for it was never needed. A lot of hours spent with a grin, with a lot of laughter, with neither thought nor care for her surroundings. Bliss.
For the first time in her life, Sunset felt truly, genuinely happy.
As she turned another corner, she glimpsed the phrase 'Rehabilitation Center' on a billboard. It made her slow down for a bit to think clearly without having to worry about crashing. More specifically, thinking about Rarity and how she's currently living there for her loss of a house. And a sister.
She half-wished that it wasn't the case. She hoped that the place was simply their home so that she could stop by and take Sweetie for a ride, forcibly taking her Airpod she hadn't noticed before and avoided all the hullabaloos of yesterday by introducing her to the thrill of driving fast and made her love it more than some gibberish electrical sounds with the occasional bass. It might be a Tool of Ignorance, but she could always reason to society by introducing it as another type of sports. Drift Racing, maybe.
Sunset shook her head and wiped away the tears forming in her eyes, with it wiping away her thoughts. Sweetie was right, Sunset realized.
Sunset wished she could drive Sweetie back home, away from the clutches of death and to a confectionery at which they could spend time together ignoring each other and not talking to each other, simply enjoying vanilla milkshake in front of a campfire made of Balefire that was burning the building down and not caring that they, too, will respectively turn into molten marshmallow and liquid bacon at 451 degrees Fahreneigh.
A few seconds after the knocking, the door opened, revealing the face of her wife with her trademarked smile. “Good morning, my love.”
“Good morning, Twilight.” Sunset giggled and hugged her tight.
Twilight frowned. “Sunset, are you alright?”
“Been better. But let’s not keep that from our anniversary! Even if that’s yesterday. So, who’s going to surprise who first?”
Twilight laughed and landed a kiss on Sunset’s cheek. “Why don’t I go first?” Releasing their hug, Twilight let her in, closed the door, and walked her upstairs.
“So,” Twilight broke the silence, “how’s the trip?”
“It was fun.”
“Fun, huh? How was it fun? Interesting ponies you met on the way, or another driver asking you why you’re driving so fast at twice trotting speed? Or did you stop by Rarity’s and had a heart-to-heart chat that made you sad but later made you think better and clearer and, finally, happier as you are now?”
“Yes,” Sunset answered, and laughed at her wife’s questioning look. “I got curious with the speedometer’s unused numbers.”
Twilight eyes bulged. “You what!?”
“I went fast.”
“You could’ve died!”
“I could.”
“Why did you go fast if you could’ve died?”
“Because I could also not die,” Sunset said as she struck a pose, “as you can see yourself.”
Twilight glared. “Don’t do that again.”
“No promises.”
“Please, Sunset. I don’t want you to die. Your recklessness will be the death of you. Didn’t you think of it before you did it? That you could’ve died, that ponies around you could’ve been turned into a bloody pulp of pony meat and bones, that I could’ve been so devastated and traumatized by your death that I stopped functioning in society?”
“I did.”
“Then why did you do it still?”
“It’s fun, Twilight. I decided that it’s fun not to worry about those things for a while.”
Twilight stopped her, just before entering their bedroom. “Sunset, are you being . . . ignorant?”
Sunset shook her head. “Of course not. I’m simply setting aside my worries for a while to relieve my mental stress. Don’t worry, Twilight. I know what I’m doing. It may seem illegal, but it’s not; I promise you.”
Twilight sighed. “It’s exactly what I’m worried about, Sunset.”
“You’re worried that I found some way to relieve my stress?”
“No, I’m more than happy you found one, especially after these couple of days.”
“‘Couple of days’? What do you mean, Twilight?”
“You’ve been a little . . . off. Last week you told me you walked Sweetie Belle home after finding her at the end of an alleyway.”
“I did.”
“You told me that again the next day. You met her at the same alleyway and walked her back home.”
“I did.”
“The next day, you told me the same thing. You walked her back home after meeting her at the park.”
“I did.”
“But then you stopped telling me that. The next day, you didn’t mention whether or not you even met Sweetie Belle. But Roseluck told me that you two passed by her house. You walked her back home through the same route.”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it, Sunset?”
“I felt that it’s not interesting enough to mention.”
“She’s our neighbor, Sunset! A neighbor that’s acting oddly! How’s that not something worth mentioning!?”
“She was acting a little off, yes, but it didn’t seem like she cared much about it. Figured it’s something normal, thus something I can put away from my mind.”
“Mrs. Cake told me that you two visited her confectionery. You bought Sweetie a vanilla milkshake at quite an odd hour.”
“She didn’t seem to mind. She enjoyed it quite happily, in fact.”
“You talked to her that day, didn’t you? How could you not find any oddity in her behavior that deviates from her usual self?”
“I didn’t. She was happy to just sit there, enjoying her milkshake while ignoring me and the rest of the world.”
“It was the day you noticed that she’s getting ignorant, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“Why didn’t you report her, then? It’s your job.”
“Because, dear, she didn’t give a damn about me either.”
“That’s no excuse to not worry about her well-being!”
“I did worry about her well-being. I found that she’s a lot happier being ignorant that way, so I didn’t call on her.”
“Sunset.”
Sunset looked at Twilight in the eyes. “Yes, honey?”
Twilight slapped her. “Wake up.”
Sunset rubbed the hoof-shaped mark on her cheek. “I’m already awake!”
“Look at me, Sunset.”
“I’m looking at you right now.”
“No, you’re not. Look at me, Sunset.”
Sunset looked at Twilight in the eyes, those big, magenta irises looking at her straight through her visage and into her soul. Those clear, bright, intellectually superior eyes observing her every move and every twitch like an owl did its prey despite the tears obscuring her vision. “What did you do yesterday, Sunset?”
Sunset stepped back. “I—”
“Don’t lie to me, Sunset.”
Sunset stepped further back but was stopped by the wall of the corridor. She fell on her rump. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about, Twilight.”
Twilight stepped forward, her eyes locking into Sunset’s with so much unconditional love like always, yet with a determination that she had never seen since she proposed to her in front of her disapproving parents. Sunset couldn’t look away. “You know what I’m talking about, Sunset.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You know you can’t get away with it, don’t you?”
Sunset shrunk and whimpered.
Twilight stepped forward, wrapping her hooves and wings around her beloved. They both cried. “You’re being ignorant, Sunset.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Ignorance isn’t the choice if you want to be happy, Sunset. It is the understanding of the true nature of the world that will eventually give you happiness. With understanding and knowledge, you’ll be able to figure out all the possible outcomes of a situation and find which one gives you happiness, thus avoiding misery and sadness. By being ignorant, you’re stalling civilization’s endeavors to destroy the source of all misery and sadness, which we know can be done through intellectual advancement.”
“I know, Twilight. I know it very well.”
“Then you must understand why you’re going to need to be rehabilitated, don’t you?”
Sunset pushed her wife back, breaking the wing hug. “Y-you called the fire department!?”
Twilight floated out the fire bell from under her wing, the button pushed down and silently flickering, indicating that The Salamander is on the way. “I did.”
“B-but—”
Twilight put her hoof to Sunset’s muzzle, silencing her. She looked at Sunset in the eyes again, her tears absent in place of determination and motherly love. “It had to be done, Sunset. For your own good.”
A siren wailed in the distance, closing in on every tick of the clock. Twilight grabbed Sunset’s hoof and guided her downstairs. “Let’s meet your friends, shall we?”
Sunset silently nodded and let her wife guide her outside, just on time as The Salamander parked in front of their gates. Celestia was, as always, at the driver’s seat.
Another car soon followed, in its side emblazoned the writing ‘Rehabilitation Center’. Twilight got into the back seat after saying, “See you soon, my love,” kissed her, hugged her. And the car went away.
Celestia came out, her face stern and unreadable. No other firemare was present.
Sunset saluted. “Good morning, Captain.”
Celestia saluted back. “Good morning, Lieutenant. How was your trip?”
“It was fun.”
“Too fun?”
“Too fun.”
“You know what to do, Lieutenant.”
Sunset nodded and went to the back of the firetruck. She opened the trunk, took out the Balefire-proof coverall, the Balefire-proof mask, and put them on. She took out the black steel hat, donned it. She floated out the Balefire igniter, put down by the captain.
Celestia put the igniter back and floated out the flamethrower. “I want you to know, Sunset, that the last fire captain also suffered the same thing I do right now. I failed to burn the rest of the Moonshine as he asked.” She looked at the flamethrower wistfully. “Told me to burn my house down, he did. With this.”
Sunset took the flamethrower in her magical grip.
“Consider this a punishment.”
Sunset nodded and entered her house.
A house, Sunset noticed, was just a building. There’s nothing sentimental about it.
Now, a home, on the other hoof, was full of memories, full of emotions, full of sentimental things that she had grown attached to.
Take a look at this door, for example. It was the door that Sunset had first opened two months before her wedding. It was a door that Sunset had gone through while inside her wedding dress, accompanied by Twilight in a similar fashion and a similar emotion of lovestruck lovebirds. It was a door that she had passed from both sides countless times, every time she did she did it either greeting or saying goodbye to her beloved wife. It was a door that was now burning in bluish-green flame.
Or maybe, take a look at this photograph. It was a photograph of her and her wife, of both smiling goofily at the camera at their wedding, accompanied by two other mares and two other stallions, all of which smiling happily after years of conflicting interest and beliefs and views and traditions all of which had been won by Love and Tolerance. Too bad it’s now burning in bluish-green flame. The color contrasted poorly with her wife’s purple coat.
And this! Sunset’s not really sure what it was. It looked like a bookshelf, but it’s hard to tell between all these bluish-green flames. She remembered the bookshelf that had been there once, though, holding her wife’s special collection of books. Special books that had been given by Sunset in the years they had been a couple and the first year they had been married and the one missing spot that should’ve been for her second-anniversary gift.
This one, in fact, had been a sofa. It was now a pile of melting wood and spring and professionally-crafted covers with the melting brand of Rarity’s Boutique. The sofa had been a place at which cuddling happened between Bacon Horse and Purple Smart. Now it was the cuddling place of bluish-green flame with greenish-blue flame.
On the wall was a black metallic wing, as one might clearly see. It was a staple of Sunset’s career as a firemare, switching from the easily-combustible polycarbonate into the badass, fireproof steel wings. It’s very hard to ignite, you see, and so was instead disposed of in a flick of Sunset’s horn and a Boom! of the spell’s arcane explosion.
Oh, look, a kitchen! Where is it, you may ask? Well, it was here before, Sunset swore. Maybe it’s hidden behind all that bluish-green flame?
The second floor? Well, it’s still there, see? Now watch as Sunset Shimmer, Fire Lieutenant of the 451st fire department, snapped it out of existence in a single metallic click! of the modified M-97 flamethrower that spits octirosene instead of kerosene! Look at how all those walls melted into molten concrete and how that wardrobe full of clothes and a pair of wedding dresses and fine-crafted jewelry and an album containing five-and-a-half decades of memories, two-and-a-half decades each from two mares with an additional five years of the two together all melted into a sad pile of misery and regret.
One may ask what this one is, but nopony knows. Sunset maybe knew, but she wouldn’t want to admit that it was more than a book titled Celestial Incognizant, the newest edition that hadn’t been published yet and wouldn’t be for another five months, at least. She wouldn’t want to admit that the mysterious figure of a melting block of paper was supposed to make Twilight go all nerdy and lovely and beautifully her, in all her unadulterated, triple-distilled bookhorsiness form. It would forever remain a mystery of what it was other than fuel for the bluish-green flame.
This one . . . well, it had been a car once. A car with which Sunset first met her wife, a car with which Sunset drove Twilight under the twilit sky into the Sunset, away from the city of Canterlot in which their parents were bickering on whether they should both he wearing a wedding dress or a traditional tux-dress pair for their wedding. She briefly tried to remember what color it was before giving up and simply let her mind form an assumption that it was colored bluish-green as it currently was.
Now this, this was the front yard. It was as clear as the day that it was on that it was the front yard of Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle’s home. How cognitively disabled you must be to not know that simple piece of information, you intellectually incompetent blob of neurological processes and chemical reactions. No, it’s not burning nor melting. It’s perfectly fine, it was even thoroughly lit by the light from the Balefire spire behind Sunset. How could you not see that, dummy?
Sunset felt her mask removed, revealing the tear-stained face of a bacon-maned unicorn without her beloved wings. It’s her cue, she realized, and she put the flamethrower’s safety pin back.
“You did the right thing.” Sunset heard somepony said. From the lack of anypony else at the site, it was most likely Captain Celestia of the 451st fire department.
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did.”
“How do you know?”
Celestia let out a sigh. “Ignorance, Sunset. Ignorance must be destroyed, for it destroys our happiness. Ignorance is the source of—Lieutenant, put that down.”
Sunset lifted the nozzle of the flamethrower at eye-level. “No.”
“And what are you going to do, Lieutenant? Burn me? Kill me? Well, then, do it. Do it quick. What’s holding you back, Lieutenant? Your empathetic nature as an equine? Or maybe it’s your fear of what might happen in the future if you pull that trigger? I’ve been on your shoes once, Lieutenant. I once almost killed my captain. But then I realized that it was in vain. There’s no escaping yourself from being ignorant; in this world, you either think or be made to think. There’s no such thing as escaping reality the way old ponies do, with all their toys and booze and drugs. Come back to us, Sunset, and we will forgive you. We will fix you and made you whole again. You will be happy. Don’t you want to be happy?”
Sunset pulled the flamethrower's safety pin. “Frankly, Cap’n, I don’t give a damn.”
A metallic click. A melodious scream of agony. A melting marshmallow.
How did a liquefied Celestia marshmallow taste like? Sunset briefly wondered, and quickly set aside as she spat out the disgusting and meltingly-hot blob of molten pony hide. Vanilla tasted better, she decided, and so she took The Salamander to the local confectionery to order a glass of vanilla milkshake, ignoring the confectioner’s repeated question of why she was wearing her uniform and why said uniform was soaked in some white liquid.
“Fahreneigh 451,” she finally answered, “is the temperature at which marshmallow liquefies and octirosene catches Balefire.”
