The Curse of Knowledge
Posey always had an appreciation for art. So much of history was lost, yet art from ages long past remained and offered insight into what was.
“The Scream by Grass Munch is notable for remaining in earth pony hooves despite depicting a pegasus pony,” Posey explained to her museum tour group. The yellow earth pony with long pink hair stood at the end of a red hallway coated in framed paintings. With a smile, she pointed to an abstract image of a distorted and distressed blue pegasus. “There have been several theories over the years, but all of them have been called into question by experts from Zephyr Heights, who claim to identify the screaming pony as a particular historical figure.”
“Ooh, who’s this?” cried out a purple unicorn with blue hair. Ignoring The Scream, she galloped to a Warhoof painting on another wall.
Posey sighed. On slow days like this, the tour crowds sometimes consisted of just one pony. In this case, it was Izzy.
Izzy tilted her head side to side as she examined the painting, which depicted a mare in four color schemes. “She must be pretty interesting if she got painted four times.”
Posey rolled her eyes. “No, that’s just his style. He’s done that for a lot of ponies and objects.” Being an experienced museum worker, she knew it was best to work with what the visitors were interested in. “But you actually did bring us to one of the big mysteries of the art world: the Smiling Mare.”
She waved her hoof across the walls of paintings. “Warhoof, Pattern, and even Dali in a variation we have in storage. They’ve all drawn this same earth pony mare—green with a red mane and an orange headwrap, and of course, a smile—but whoever she is was lost to history. Was she politically important? A relative of one of the artists? A slice of common Equestriana? Somepony too unique to not depict in art? All of it is shrouded in mystery, and some say that’s why she smiles the way she does.”
Izzy hummed and tilted her head. “You know, her hair reminds me of something I’d see back in Bridlewood. Crazy that earth ponies used to wear their mane like that too.” She gasped. “Oh wait, maybe there’s a History of Unicorn Manestyles book you could look at! Maybe she’s in it!”
Posey scoffed. “I doubt it. Dates that far back are fuzzy, but she’s only appeared in paintings drawn by earth pony artists, so it’s commonly assumed she’s from an era after the tribes split up.” She then looked to her side and coughed. “Granted, nowadays several works from those artists depicting unicorn and pegasus subjects are coming out of the woodworks, but their authenticity hasn’t been verified yet.”
Izzy frowned. “Oh, so there’s really no clue about who she is?”
Posey waved her hoof. “There isn’t much, no, but it is actually an old family tale that we’re descended from the Smiling Mare. Frankly, I don’t believe it myself, but it does tend to get the crowds interested.”
Izzy gasped. “And you didn’t try the Unicorn Ritual of Ancestral Connection?! Oh wait, duh, you aren’t a unicorn, so you wouldn’t know about that.”
Posey raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a way to learn about your ancestors by actually talking to them in a spiritual realm! I do it all the time. Did you know I’m actually part griffon?” She got close to Posey and whispered conspiratorially. “That’s how I know the perfect griffon scone recipe.”
Posey pulled away. “How… interesting. I didn’t know you baked.”
Izzy fluttered her lips. “What? I thought everypony knew I baked! Anyway, you interested? You’d clear up all your questions right away, and I can tell by looking at this mare that she bakes!”
Posey rubbed her chin then shrugged. “Well, I’m not a fan of unicorn magic, but you, Sunny, Pipp, Zipp, and the rest showed me it’s a force for good. I suppose I’m obligated to give magic a chance.”
Izzy tilted her head. “So, is that a yes?”
“Er, yes.”
Izzy reared back. “OK then! Gotta say, you were on a bit of a non sequitur there, but I’ll get you hooked up in a jiffy!”
The unicorn galloped away and Posey shook her head. She was already starting to regret this.
Posey sat warily in the middle of a circle of salt poured on the wooden floor, which Izzy then painted esoteric symbols inside with black paint. The unicorn placed four burning sticks of incense around the earth pony and proceeded to dance around her, singing some nonsense lyrics stringing peppy words together.
Posey looked down at the notepad in her grasp. “So, you’re sure I’ll be able to write down everything I see?”
“Tacos tortas bloomin’ onions—” Izzy stopped her singing. “Oh yeah, of course. This is how I get all my best ideas! It wouldn’t work that well if I couldn’t write it down.”
Izzy resumed singing and Posey sat silently, looking around. The smell of the incense filled her nose, almost reminding her of catnip. “So, Izzy, I can’t help but notice your horn isn’t glowing or anything. Is this really how unicorn magic works?”
Izzy playfully rolled her eyes. “Sheesh, why do you keep bringing up unicorn magic? Anyway, I’m just getting you in the right mood for when the drugs kick in.”
Posey blinked. “Wait, the wha—?”
Suddenly, Posey’s eyes shrank back and she felt herself rocketing out of this world.
Stars streaked past Posey as she zoomed toward a black hole, swallowing all light around it. Her front legs approached it first and she spaghettified, stretching infinitely long from the minute differences in gravity along her body. Despite all this, Posey found herself bizarrely accepting of the situation, with Izzy’s chants of “banana fo-fana bling blang potassium” echoing across the cosmos. Finally, she stretched out long enough that the elastic force snapped her back into shape.
Posey suddenly found herself floating among pink clouds in a pleasant daybreak sky.
She breathed heavily, the rational side of her mind catching up to what she just perceived. She touched her face with her hooves, felt her mane, and then looked down to make sure she was in the correct shape. Posey was still herself, bows and all.
Looking down also made her realize there was nothing but sky below her. Her rational side told her that this was worth worrying about, but her body—mental projection?—chose not to instinctually flail about like she would have expected. This in turn gave her rational side time to remember what exactly she was doing here.
This was a spiritual realm, where she’d be able to meet the Smiling Mare. The normal rules didn’t apply. Now the question was, would she really find her here?
Just on the edge of her hearing, someone spoke. Was it Izzy in the waking world? No, this was an unfamiliar voice. Posey thought about approaching it, and indeed, she found that her mental body was now moving closer to it. The sensation barely felt like movement, but rather the world itself moving while she stood still.
As she got closer, the voice became clearer and she could tell it was slow chanting. Actually… was it also neighing?
A pink cloud passed by, revealing—she couldn’t believe it—the Smiling Mare! She sat upright on a cloud, her front legs held up and her rear legs crossed. Her eyes were closed and her chest rose and fell with every chant.
Posey grinned and scribbled onto her notepad. How fascinating! Could this mean the mare was a mystic of some kind? And her cutie mark! It was just barely cut off in the paintings, but she could clearly see it was a tree with a heart forming the top.
Wait, her notepad? Posey looked at what she was writing in and confirmed her notepad had appeared out of nowhere. It must be due to the nature of this world, she figured. She hoped this meant she was writing in the waking world too.
Posey floated around the mysterious mare, writing down any details that grabbed her, but it was clear that she’d have to talk to her if she wanted to know more. She floated up to the mare and lightly shook her shoulder. The mare opened her eyes and blinked, then she turned to Posey with an easy grin.
Posey cleared her throat. “H-Hey there.”
The mare fell out of her pose onto all fours. “Radical visions upon you, fellow traveler. You found the perfect mindstate to clear your chakras. You can feel free to join me.”
Posey broke out into a smile. A historical greeting! “Why thank you, uh, fellow traveler. Before I do… that, my name is Posey, and full disclosure, I might be your descendent from the future.”
The mare nodded. “Righteous!”
Well, she seemed to accept that easily enough. Posey cleared her throat. “I just want to say it’s an honor talking to a ghost from ancient times like this. I assume things are comfortable here in, uh, heaven?”
The mare chuckled. “I see how you got confused, but neither of us are dead, we’re both just meeting in the ethereal dreamscape, where time itself is a meaningless concept.”
Posey rubbed her forehead. “So, to you, you’re still alive? Meaning I’m talking to you across time?”
She nodded her head. “Yup, I was just meditating in my room.”
Posey scratched her ear. “And by chance, did this meditation involve burning incense that’s actually a halluncinogenic?”
The mare’s eyes widened in recognition. “Oh totally!”
Izzy was onto something, she supposed. After scribbling down that that drug was still in use back then, she continued, “If I may ask, what year is it for you?”
The mare shook her head. “Years are, like, meaningless. I just keep track of seasons… and days of the week. It’s Wednesday, sometime in spring… well, it may be summer now, it’s very hard to tell.”
How fascinating. “And is that common for ponies like you?”
The mare touched her chin. “It’s very interesting that you’d ask if that’s common. It shows you’re placing too much emphasis on what everycreature is doing and not, like, finding the answer yourself.”
Posey started sweating. Was she offending her? “Well, I’m just asking due to its historical value.”
“Think about it, we have four hooves so seasons make sense. But why do we care about there being ten months? That isn’t a multiple of four at all.”
Posey shot her head forward. “Wait, so you’re saying there were ten months in your time? There are twelve now. What ones don’t exist for you? It’s gotta be January and February, right?”
There was a pause, then the mare shook her head. “Oh wait, yeah, you’re right, there are twelve months. Wow, why did I think there were ten? No wonder I couldn’t keep track of them before. And hey, wouldn’t you know it, sixty is a multiple of four too! Maybe I should be keeping track of the time. Blessings upon you, dude. You’ve truly enlightened me!”
Posey looked down at her notes then back at the mare. She laughed nervously. “Yes, well, I’m glad I could help. And it just occurred to me, I never asked what your name is!” Surely she could tell her this much.
The mare’s eyes widened. “What a great question! The name reflects the state of the soul, and right now, I go by Tree Embrace.”
Posey excitedly jotted that down. “Tree… Embrace.” She paused. “Wait, right now? You mean your name is different sometimes?”
Tree Embrace nodded. “Oh sure. You should try it yourself. Right now, your soul is telling me your name is… Flower Embrace.”
“Isn’t that just your name but with Flower instead of Tree?”
Tree Embrace leaned forward. “I know, right! Our souls are so in sync!”
Posey gritted her teeth. “Well, if you don’t mind, could you please tell me your legal name?”
Tree Embrace hummed. “Legal name, legal name… isn’t, like, what nature tells us the most important legal name?”
Posey groaned. “Then could you just list the names you’ve used before?”
“Oh totally, I can do that. Let’s see… Tree Grower, Tree Planter, Tree Hugger, Tree Shadow when I was in my dark phase, Tree Fisher, and there was that one time I was just Tree…”
“Seems like ‘Tree’ is a constant, then.”
“Oh no, man, I’m just getting started. Let’s see, a dragon called me Pinkie Pie once and I was like, wow, that’s so unlike me that it feels, like, like me. And after that…”
Earlier in the conversation, Posey would have been inclined to ask about the dragon encounter, but she figured there would be little point. Why in the world wouldn’t this mare give her a straight answer? Is this just how ponies acted back then? Was there a cultural reason to have so many times? Or was she just a weirdo?
“... and I was known as Dragonfly Daffodil for a day. Though yeah, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I go by Tree Hugger most of the time.”
Posey looked at her notepad full of names, sighed, and crossed all of them out except for Tree Hugger. She started to think it was about time she left. Still, there was one last area she truly wanted to inquire about. “So, uh, Tree Hugger, I would like to ask just a few more questions. What was your connection to Picture Pattern, Saddledor Dali, and Andy Warhoof? Were they really all in the same room together painting you? What were they like? Why did they choose you?” She sighed wistfully. “Oh, to be a fly on a wall in that room.”
Tree Hugger nodded. “Flies are among nature’s most wonderful creatures. Think of the way they take living matter and, like, fruit and stuff, and once they die, they become a new source of life. And consider the transformation they make from egg, to maggot, to fly. For a long time, ponies didn’t properly understand where maggots came from, or that flies were those maggots after they grew up. There was a scientific concept known as spontaneous generation, where it was just assumed these maggots appeared out of nowhere! It’s amazing that ponies simply didn’t consider that flies are small, and they can lay eggs without you noticing. It actually took a specialized experiment by Pasthoof to prove that flies were the source of maggots. Life only comes from life, and that’s wonderful.”
Oh come on, this is what she was willing to give detailed information about?! Posey cleared her throat. “Uh, thank you for that information, but we seem to have gotten off track. I was asking you about Picture Pattern, Saddledor Dali, and Andy Warhoof.”
Tree Hugger tilted her head. “Who?”
Posey slammed her hoof against the cloud, making a loud bang. “Oh come on! They’re the most famous artists from your time period, still known today! You’re telling me they drew you and you don’t remember?!”
Tree Hugger’s ever-present smile faded. “Woah, tone it down there. You’re going to harsh your buzz.”
Posey’s face twisted. “You don’t tell me to tone it down! I’ve been keeping it toned down with every inane answer you’ve given, and I’m sick and tired of it! I was willing to go along with Izzy’s suggestion, which looking back, was absolutely insane on my part! Why did I think she would actually get me answers about the past? How do I even know I’m talking to a real pony and not some hallucination? I want out of here! And you know what, maybe after this I’ll take down all the pictures of the Smiling Mare and let you be erased from history!”
Tree Hugger’s face grew concerned. “Seriously, man, thinking like that is a bad idea.”
Posey scoffed. “Oh, why? Because you’ll join other more deserving ponies in being forgotten? Well that’s fine by—”
It was only then that Posey noticed how dark the sky had gotten. Thunder rumbled, and looking behind her, she saw the spiraling black clouds of a hurricane.
“Uh oh,” was all Posey could say before the wind took hold of her.
She fell into darkness, with only momentary flashes of lightning exposing the clouds around her. She felt sick. Even though this wasn’t her real body, she could feel the bile building up in her. She clamped her mouth shut, but the sickness then took the form of her hooves extending as though she hadn’t clipped them in years—decades.
She gasped for air but found that the clouds were somehow solid enough to go down her throat and clog it. Tears welled up and she continued her endless journey, battered about by the winds.
Then she saw a light. Slowly but steadily approaching her, the shining sphere came close enough to reveal a pony floating inside: Tree Hugger. Though concerned, her face was calm and she reached out. “Take my hoof.”
Posey reached her hoof out, feeling bad that Tree Hugger would have to touch the disgusting form it had taken. As the mare’s light engulfed it, however, the misshapen bits fell away, exposing its normal appearance. Tree Hugger pulled Posey into her light and she found that the sky was suddenly back to its previous sunrise state.
Tree Hugger placed Posey on a cloud and said, “You need to remember this is a world of the soul. Bad vibes make it bad, and good vibes make it good.”
Posey nodded, breathing heavily.
“Now repeat after me. Ommmm…”
Posey took a deep breath. “Ohm…”
“No, you need to let it reverberate through you. Ommmm…”
Posey tried again, loosening herself up. “Ommmm…” It worked this time and she felt it vibrating her very soul.
Tree Hugger continued. “Ommmm… Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee!”
Posey followed suit, and with her neigh, she had a strange vision. In it, she saw a brown-haired animal with white spots, in many ways similar to a pony, but much larger, with a long thin face. It galloping through a field of flowers in slow motion. Something about all this was otherworldly, as though she was viewing another level of reality. Somehow, she had an inkling of what this was. Was this… what all ponies came from?
Their chants persisted, grounding Posey in the universe and her own past. After some time, Posey felt comfortable stopping. Her breathing was even and the world around her was stable.
Posey placed her hoof on Tree Hugger’s shoulder. “Thank you. Sincerely. And I’m really sorry about what I was saying earlier. I just got frustrated, and I get really nasty when I’m like that.”
Tree Hugger smiled serenely. “No problem, dude. Working through those feelings is why ponies come to this place, and then they take it all back to the waking world.” She tilted her head. “Speaking of which, considering it’s your first time and you just had a real bad trip there, you’re going to be waking up.”
Posey could feel it. She touched her chest and could tell she was fading away. “Urgh, I just realized I spent all this time trying to get answers from you, and didn’t tell you anything about myself. I’m such a jerk.” She took a breath. “OK, so I’m Posey—like I said earlier—and I work at a museum, and I live in an earth pony town called Maretime Bay but we recently started accepting other ponies, which I had mixed feelings about—which I now realize probably sounds crazy to someone from your time and—oh wow, there’s a lot to cover about that, isn’t there?”
Posey started lifting off the ground, inch by inch. Time was running out.
She looked into Tree Hugger’s eyes. “Before I go, is there anything you want to know about the future?”
Tree Hugger shook her head. “Nah man, I already learned everything about the future from the crab ponies that come after you.”
Posey’s face scrunched up. “Crab ponies?”
She heard a noise.
Snrrk snrrk
Suddenly filled with dread, Posey scrunched her nose and slowly turned her head back.
Approaching her from behind was a large red creature with a hard shell and a prominent claw that snapped with each sideways step it took. Some semblance of the pony form it evolved from remained, particularly in its large bright eyes and stocky limbs, but it was more crustacean than equine. It came to a stop then waved its large claw and gurgled.
Posey screamed.
The sky zoomed past her in an impossible to parse split second and she crashed back to Earth.
Panting, Posey felt the ground. This wasn’t a cloud, it was normal wood. Or at least it felt like it. In her rush to confirm this was reality, she knocked over an incense holder and ash spilled out. She stared at the blackened powder. At this point, she dared to look up. There was the salt circle, and there were the strange symbols inside. And this was the room she was in before. She really was back.
Then a curtain of blue hair blocked her vision, followed by Izzy’s upside-down smile. “Hey there Posey! You have a good vision? It seemed like it was going bad there for a moment, but you managed to pull through before I could do anything, so that’s good. Well actually, seems like it was going bad at the very end too, so that’s bad. But ooh, what did you write down?”
Posey looked down at the notepad laying on the ground next to her. It had completely left her mind until now. Izzy snatched it up with her magic and glanced over the contents.
“Tree Hugger? That’s a nice name. I’ve hugged a tree before. You crossed out a lot of stuff.” She failed to stifle her laugh. “Oh, and—”
Izzy turned the notepad around, showing that while it was full of writing, there was also something drawn on top of it: a big butt with a fart cloud coming out.
“—looks like somepony needs some fiber. I’m sure Sunny can hook you up.”
Blushing, Posey tore the notepad away from Izzy and held it to her chest. When had she drawn that?
Izzy continued smiling. “Anyway, I hope that was enlightening for you. If you want to do that again, you know who to ask!” She winked.
“I’m never ever doing that again,” Posey said unblinkingly.
Izzy shrugged. “Well, suit yourself.” She pronked out of the room, leaving the door open behind her.
Posey looked around. “You’re really going to make me clean this up, huh?”
Posey sat behind the front desk at the museum entrance, looking at the notes she took. Having been written in a drug-induced state, much of it was close to illegible, but with some squinting, she was able to parse most of it. Not to say much of it was useful.
At the very least, she had a name. The first thing she did was send out requests to the other cities about Tree Hugger and she already heard back. That name was briefly mentioned as a friend of an important pegasus named Fluttershy. If that was indeed the same pony, perhaps Fluttershy was the connection between her and the three artists?
As rough as that experience was, maybe it was worth it just for this.
The doors opened. Posey looked up, expecting a customer, but was instead met by the town’s smirking sheriff.
“Hey Posey,” Hitch said, looking around. “Just doing my rounds. Everything good over here?”
Posey briefly—very briefly—considered complaining about a certain unicorn mare, but instead said. “Yup, no problems here.”
“Cool, cool. Like always, you know who to call if more paintings are stolen.”
Posey raised her eyebrow. “Like by your animals?”
Hitch started sweating. “Yes, like by my animals.” He paused. “Anyway, see you.”
As he started leaving, the sheriff’s usual animal groupies came into through the door then stopped as he passed them. Two seabirds, a flying raccoon… and a crab.
Posey stared daggers at the crab. The crab didn’t notice at first, but when it did, it stared back in fear, sweating hard.
Posey put her hoof to her eyes then pointed at the crab. “I’ve got my eye on you. Don’t get any funny ideas.”
The crab gurgled in confusion.
While Posey was blessed by knowledge of the past, knowledge of the future would be a heavy burden indeed.