Ciders at the Edge of Equestria
“It’s colder than a Windigo’s asshole out here!” Vinyl shivered audibly, letting out a small puff of steamy air.
“Uh…” Ditzy scratched her temple. “I don’t think that’s how that goes.”
“It most certainly isn’t,” Octavia added, nudging her friend rather aggressively in the ribs. “What did you think it would be like out here at night, Vinyl?”
Vinyl tossed her head back and let out an enormous, aggravated sigh, a plume of fog rising from her lips. “It’s summer, Tavi! I thought it’d be warm!”
“Well, but the sun--” Bon Bon began. She quickly stopped herself from finishing the sentence, instead tapering off into a sort of embarrassed whimper.
A strange silence overtook the group.
Lyra coughed. “We gettin’ close, yet? It is pretty cold out. Don’t want anypony getting frostbite or… y’know.”
Another silence.
Octavia cleared her throat. “Ditzy? I believe you had the map?”
“Oh, gosh!” Ditzy chuckled awkwardly, fumbling through her saddlebags as she walked. “Sorry, sorry. I forgot I was-- ah-ha!”
She brandished the parchment in the air.
“Ay, way to go, Ditz!” Vinyl cheered, only half-serious.
There were a lot of things about this little gathering that were only half anything.
Ditzy began working at unfolding the map from her bag. She did so with a great amount of grumbling, though the group understood that this had less to do with her own confusion and more to do with making any sort of sound at all in this ghastly quiet. They were alright with that, they decided.
“We shoulda picked someplace closer,” Lyra said. She gave her little wagon a tug, and the case of cider rattled musically. “Like. I dunno, home?”
“Ugh.” Octavia rolled her eyes. “As usual, you have absolutely no pageantry.”
“Not to be ‘that guy’, but does this even deserve pageantry?” Lyra asked. “I mean, we’re all gonna just--”
“Of course it does!” Vinyl cut in. She said it perhaps a little louder than she had intended, and the sound echoed through the mountain pass.
Her friends stared at her for a moment.
Vinyl, suddenly flushed, was very thankful for her shades. “I mean… c’mon, Lyra. Of course it does.”
Bon Bon nudged Lyra. “You’ll regret it if y’don’t.”
Lyra shot her friend a look. Will I, really?
That really remained to be seen, if she was honest. If they were all honest. I mean, who knows? The sun could come up in just a few minutes, and everything could be back to normal.
Or maybe it wouldn’t.
The group plodded on in silence another minute or two as Ditzy struggled to read the map in the dark. There really wasn’t any sound at all out here-- only their own out-of-sync hoofsteps echoing against the mountains, and the rattling of the little red wagon filled with booze.
There was something so small-town, grunge-band, teenage-depression about that sound. About the visual, too; five friends, looking bedraggled and sleep-deprived, trucking along through a mountain pass with nothing but alcohol and a scavenged tourism map, each of them filled with their own private heartbeat and apocalyptic malaise.
“Oh, hey!” Ditzy held the map up to her friend. “We’re close! Just around the bend!”
“Alright!” Vinyl grinned, then turned to the rest of the group. “Double-time, folks! I need some cider to warm me up.”
Bon Bon saluted, albeit sarcastically. “Aye-aye, Captain Scratch.”
Octavia and Lyra gave their own half-hearted salutes, and picked up to a trot.
The mountain pass was becoming significantly less pass and significantly more mountain as they went, threatening to consume the travelling group in its rocky and lifeless outcroppings. Yet Ditzy pressed on, cantering ahead of them all and veering off to the right.
The group exchanged a look, and broke into a gallop to catch up to their fearless leader. The ciders clattered harder, but Lyra seemed unconcerned.
As promised, it was just around the bend.
Through a tiny, some might say hidden path off to the right, they could see nothing but stars.
Ditzy paused and tucked the map back into her saddlebag. “See? Told you y’all could trust me.”
Her friends stared at the yawning chasm before them, some mouths agape, some eyes wide as dinner plates.
“Whoa,” Lyra said.
Vinyl whistled appreciatively. “Yeah, they weren’t kidding, huh?”
Bon Bon snickered. “Who? The cartographers?”
“Tsk, shut up.”
“And, in the East, the world falls into oblivion,” Octavia murmured. She looked down into the darkness with almost no emotion at all. “Beyond the darkness of the night lies only mysteries, as the pegasi cannot fly, and the unicorns cannot see, and the earth ponies cannot feel.”
Ditzy cocked her head. “Huh?”
Octavia seemed to snap out of her focus, and shook her head. “Just… old writings. I can’t quite remember where I read them.”
“Yeah, but that quote’ll stick with ya, for sure,” Vinyl commented. She clapped Octavia on the shoulder.
A little burble of laughter rolled up from the group. It echoed, and it sounded like there were much more than five best friends at the edge of Equestria.
Lyra cleared her throat. “You guys wanna take a seat? I’ll pass out the ciders.”
The group all agreed at once, rushing down the hidden path and out onto the ledge.
“Whew, shit, that’s deep!” Vinyl commented, skittering back from the crumbling edge of the world.
“What’d you expect, dope?” Lyra asked. She cracked open a cider with her magic and passed it to Vinyl. “Just don’t lose your cider, okay?”
The edge of Equestria was as long as the world itself. It stretched up North to the Crystal Mountains, and down South to the Hayseed Swamps. In the daylight, one could have seen the chilly haze of snow to their left, and the dark marshy murk to their right, if only just barely. At night, the world seemed to fall away in every direction at once.
Octavia sat down beside Vinyl, taking a cider carefully with two hooves. Ditzy laid down on her back, content to merely hold a cider against her side for now.
At long last, Lyra plopped down beside Bon Bon, drawing out two more ciders to split.
They looked out into the night.
You had to admit, Nightmare Moon sort of had a point.
That’s what all this was about, right? About the beauty of night going unappreciated and unnoticed. About being overshadowed.
It was beautiful.
But it was terrifying, too.
Looking out at the night sky, legs dangling over the edge of the world, cider in hoof… it wasn’t unlike staring into the depths of the ocean. It was pretty, sure-- but it was dangerous. And unfamiliar. An endless, churning, freezing mystery.
“What do you guys think is gonna happen?” Vinyl asked softly.
The question floated out into the night sky.
For a moment, nopony answered.
“It’ll probably be like the hurricane last year,” Bon Bon said. “They have ponies who handle this kinda thing. Royal guards, or something. It’ll be a mess, but… it’ll go back to normal.”
Vinyl nodded. She sipped her cider.
“Even if this is the new normal, it isn’t so terrible,” Octavia said hesitantly. “We’ll learn how to live with it, I’m sure.”
Lyra huffed. “Yeah-- can’t wait to be asked for a light every thirty seconds.” She let a little wisp of light twirl off of her horn. “Yay, unicorns!”
Vinyl laughed knowingly, but the laugh tapered into something much sadder. “What about you, Ditz?”
Ditzy rolled her head to the side, and her mane dragged over the stone. “I don’t think it matters.”
Everypony turned their heads to look at Ditzy.
She seemed shocked by the attention. “Well-- I just mean that… we’re all together, right?” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”
And the world felt very small for a moment.
Ditzy cracked a smile. “I’m not scared as long as I have you guys.”
And the world felt even smaller.
“Aw, Ditz.” Lyra smirked back at her friend.
“Hey, I don’t think we deserve that,” Vinyl said, shaking her head. “Not me, at least.”
“Tsk, you do, too,” Octavia protested.
“We all do,” Bon Bon agreed. “We take care of each other, right? I mean, what else are friends for?”
Ditzy chuckled. “Yeah, totally!” She sat up suddenly, very nearly knocking her cider over. “C’mon, group hug.”
“No, no, I--”
“Ditz, c’mon--”
“Group hug!” Ditzy insisted, holding her hooves out to either side.
Octavia’s hoof slipped around Vinyl’s waist, and the pair fell against Ditzy’s left shoulder. Her wing tightened around them.
Lyra pushed Bon Bon in on Ditzy’s right.
From behind, they may have looked like their own mountain range.
The barest remainders of Lyra’s magic swirled through the night sky, a brilliant contrast against the inky darkness.
They stayed like this a moment, none of them daring to let go of each other. Their hooves stretched out into the end of everything. Their eyes were wide and sparkling, watching the night for any signs of the light of day.
Despite the desperation with which they clung to one another, they were not afraid of what would happen next.
“This was a nice idea, Vi,” Bon Bon said.
A few murmurs of agreement spilled forth from the others.
Vinyl scoffed. “Thanks, guys.”
The night sky went on forever. And maybe that was okay, because other things could go on forever, too. Maybe the sun would never rise again, but there was a kind of comforting certainty to that. New, but not.
Dark, but not.
Because the stars still glittered in the darkness. And, without the light pollution from Canterlot, they could see every subtlety of the night. Every shade of blue, every swirl of purple, every touch of green. Each cluster of twinkling stars was a masterpiece. Each constellation a hidden miracle, only seen without the sun.
Maybe eternal night wasn’t the end of everything.
Maybe your eyes could adjust.
And then, like a miracle, the sun began to rise.
“Aw, fuck!” Lyra’s hoof flew up to guard her face from the sudden intensity of the morning sun.
Octavia gasped softly, her own hooves over her mouth and she watched the darkness turn to pinks and oranges.
Bon Bon giggled softly and shielded her eyes.
Vinyl just grinned, snidely adjusting her shades.
Ditzy squeezed once more, tight and not at all desperate and not at all afraid. Then she let go.
The mountains came apart.
And, just like that, they were nothing but rag-tag teenage nothings again. A group of dumb kids who had hauled cider to the edge of the entire universe in a little red wagon. They were bathed in light once more, which made the sparkle in their eyes that much harder to see, and the dark smudges under them all the more obvious.
They couldn’t look at the sun the way they had looked at the night sky.
They were quiet, and this silence felt awkward and gangly.
“Whaddya think happened?” Lyra asked the morning sun.
“I… I guess the Royal Guard did their thing,” Ditzy replied.
Octavia nodded. “Huh.”
“Well.” Vinyl stood up, stretched. “Shit. I have work.”
Bon Bon smacked her forehead. “I didn’t even think about work.”
“That sounds like your own personal problem,” Lyra commented, taking another great swig of cider.
“Do you think ponies will notice they don’t get their mail?” Ditzy asked timidly.
Octavia laughed. “I’d be surprised if they thought about anything but the Summer Sun Celebration today.”
“Hey, good point!” Bon Bon agreed.
Everypony looked up at Vinyl, who seemed poised to leave.
Vinyl sighed. “Alright, fine. I get the extra cider, though.”
It was still cold out.
But it was getting warmer.