The Earth is not a cold dead place. Indeed, it lives. It sings and everything around it raises a voice to join in the choir. The Earth is an unfinished work and will remain as such. It shall never be complete, never final in its design until the design is destroyed. It is in this destruction that the finality comes. Etcetera, etcetera.
Collected here are various short works that don't quite yet have life as fully featured fics. Some of them may never leave this compilation, some may eventually be developed into full pieces. For now their genre tags can be found in the chapter listing and short description within the authors note. Story art credit to redruin01 on Tumblr. Editors are various (and sometimes not present at all) but you can probably blame either Red, Wish, or Seer if something is out of place.
Luna looked around. The end didn’t even have the dignity, the respect to be featureless. If Luna thought of a field, it was a field. If Luna felt the autumn breeze, her mane billowed just the same. If Luna looked up, only to have her vision of the waning sunlight eclipse behind the blur of a moving train, then so did the sky still burn.
Luna chose to think about the train.
“Where do you think those ponies are headed?”
Celestia followed the train as it roared onwards, vanishing behind a hill. Luna waited for a reply. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“To a warm hearth and loving community, one can hope.” Luna’s eyes drifted over the mountainside. She drank in the waning light from the candles in the windowsills, a thousand wooden fireflies scattered across the deepening green of the pines.
“One can almost be certain, little sister.” Celestia was standing beside her, a brick fireplace wrapped in white velvet. Luna sank into her side.
“Has it always been like this?” Luna could peel up the skyline if she wanted to. She could open all of this up.
“Almost always, technically. Do you remember when we were young?”
“Yes.” Luna thought about the night. “Barely.”
“I was a unicorn once, I think.” Celestia looked down at her. Luna remembered the day. “For just a second.”
“Does anypony else know?”
“Just her.” Celestia pointed at Twilight with a careful hoof. She was sitting out on the other end of the train platform.
“Who’s she waiting for?”
“A friend, like always.” The train slowed to a stop, and an orange earth pony came near-tumbling out of the doors. A white unicorn tottered out after her. “Oh! There they are.”
Twilight embraced Applejack and Rarity, ushering them off of the platform. Luna thought about their dreams. “How much does Twilight know?”
“All of it. Far more than she’s ever going to see herself.” Celestia’s ears had plastered themselves against her neck as her gaze sat and studied the grass.
“It doesn’t feel fair, does it? Her. Us.” Luna spat out ash and for a moment, the flames flickered. Luna could think of a fire. “Does it have to be like this?”
“What else could it be?” Celestia seemed to taste no ash.
“Different.” Luna knitted her brow and looked into the end as deep as she could. “I think we could make it different.”
“Are you sure you want to try?” Celestia’s voice was just as sisterly, just as reserved as it needed to be.
“Yes.” Luna focused, imagining a beginning. The last beginning they would ever need. “What else is there to do?”
I burn. Every star is known to me and I burn with them, die with them, flicker in the pale heat of atomized helium like they do. The space between them is cold and I am cold too, as distant as one universe is from the other. My body is held perpendicular to the shape it was meant to take and I feel myself fighting against my own understanding. The cusp of my being sits precarious and I feel any thought in its direction would send me teetering, tumbling in a way that I cannot reverse.
Was it always like this? Did the fire always cling to your sinew? I feel the marrow threaten to drain from my bones even as I still live and breathe. There is an unshakeable gravity that follows me wherever I go. There is a voice that always speaks to me, even when all others have gone silent, and I have learned not to listen. When the sun first nestled into my bosom it spoke and I could do nothing but sit transfixed.
Did it tell you? Do you know what I know? About death, about the finality of us, about the way the universe is meant to stretch until there is nothing left to move about within its infinitude. It must have. The sun is a cruel body and would have wasted no time in sharing the fate of the world with whatever creature was unfortunate enough to bear it.
I feel afraid some days that it can hear my thoughts. That it can hear this silly internal monologue, right now. I can’t help but laugh at that idea. What does it matter that the sun can hear me? I hope it knows how much I despise its worthless burning, its insipid heat that boils my blood. I know it cannot be without me. We are two bodies destined to dance always together until the loss of heat kills us both. I look forward to that day.
This is a bitter curse. It is a curse. It must be, mustn't it? There is no way to describe it otherwise. No alternative offers itself for transcription. The pathways it draws in my mind are haunted and it is through these claustrophobic hallways that my thoughts now must flow. There is a constraint in the secret magic of the world that I could never have grasped until this moment. Where you ended I began. I would like to end like you, to hasten my departure from this miserable knowing. My unravelling will be cause for celebration. When I am the last friend left alive, the sole witness of the Magic of knowing another, I will throw myself a party.
Do you know me even still? I feel you do for I know you are beyond yourself. The body you had was not the body you were bound to. I think I hear your voice in the songs the stars play for me; their dull chemical melodies a constant drone. They provide background radiation in more ways than one. If only they could lend that constant, endless pressure and heat towards something more worthwhile than serenading a mare marked for the end.
She speaks too, at times. It is only in the darkest places that her voice breaks through the static. When the world around me quiets it never truly ends for she is there to fill the gaps, to mumble the promises of a million different dreams to anypony willing to entertain her. These days very few do. I hardly need to set the dreamcatcher as the little ponies seem to chase their own. Your dual ending changed something. It set bodies in motion that you never could’ve foretold.
I see you both sometimes, at the station. I look and you are there and when I blink you are gone. You seem content, at least. That’s a nice thought. Is there contentment in unmaking? When I am gone, will I be happy? Am I happy now? What does happiness mean to a pony who has seen her own death? I suppose there is a certain grim satisfaction in knowing that my life cannot end until the universe wills it to. There is no more fear or indecision, no more hesitantly striding into whatever paltry war the finite forces of evil manage to stir.
Death is a strange thing when the fear of it leaves you. I think, when you get down to it, we were always meant to fear death. Never was it meant to be something we could stare down and overcome. A pony is a finite being and to be robbed of the finitude is to lose something irreplaceable. I have thought about trying to meet death at my own hooves but know it would be a fool's errand.
What did it feel like when you first killed something? How old were you? Times were darker then, I am sure. The stars tell me that everything wasn’t always bright, saturated in thick painful color. There were times where the dark fell and only those who could burn another's soul to cinders survived long enough to see the light again. To cause death is sublime, I believe. I understand the way cruelty catches hold in others hearts. It is easy to be evil. It is hard to be kind.
Hardest is to know your kindness means nothing in the end.
Oh was all Celestia could think to say. Oh was the only thought left in Celestia’s head, really. There was something about seeing a six hundred year old flame that robbed one of coherency. Rain Silent was more than just a flame, really. She was… she was a rock, for at least a century. Celestia came to depend on her. Rain Silent came to depend on Celestia. They loved each other.
“Hello.”
It occurred to Celestia that she had never heard Rains’ voice. Just the soft hooftaps and sweeping gestures of Kirin sign language. She knew that Rain must’ve had one at some point. They discussed the Kirins’ predicament at length when they were younger. Celestia could never convince her to allow her people to regain their voice and Rain never succeeded in imparting the true weight of fear she felt at that very prospect.
“You may come forward. Or, actually, where are my manners? Let me come down to greet you.” Celestia was surprised to find her legs working at all given the jumble of signals that criss-crossed her brain. She would rely on a thousand lifetimes of decorum to carry her until she could collapse in private.
Rain Silent was quiet as Celestia approached. It was impossible to guess what she was thinking. There was a time in Celestia’s life where she could’ve read the mare like an open book but that time had long since passed. Standing in front of her was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. A very beautiful stranger.
“You look like you haven’t aged a day, Celestia. How have you been?” Rain Silent smiled and Celestia nearly fell apart.
“How have I been? I can tell you, if you have a few days.” A nervous chuckle broke her lips and Celestia felt her confidence wither. “Really, I’ve been great. I see you’re… talking.”
“Yes, I am. We all are thanks to two ponies. Was it you who sent them?” She was close. Too close for Celestia to stomach. Too close and too tall.
“It was not! I believe they were friends of my old student Twilight Sparkle. They were…” Celestia spun a hoof through the air as she averted her gaze. “Called, I believe, by some map or another. I’m glad to see you. Though I am wondering what might have brought you here to me.”
“Well, you see…” Rain hoofed at the red velvet carpet beneath her, eyes clouded in thought and uncertainty. Celestia braced herself for terrible news. “I was wondering if you wanted to go out for dinner.
