Clover the Clever looked ahead at the rocks that blocked his path.
The frozen air was crisp, and ice crystals glittered in the light. The snow blew in front of his face, whipped up by a sharp breeze. He had been traveling all day to get there, and though the sun had already set and the sky was dark, the snow made it light enough for him to keep going.
The rocks were large, and tall, and he did not like the idea of jumping from one of them to the other, but the road he had walked led to them and nowhere else. A sign placed by the road had long ago fallen apart, its message destroyed. He looked down at his hooves and up at the first rock, gauging the gap between the two and his chances.
Why are you so nervous?
Drawing a deep breath, he jumped the distance and slammed his hooves down firmly on the stone, his legs tense, feeling for the slightest sign that the rock might not be entirely steady under his weight. Finding nothing, he let out his breath, and looked ahead to the next rock.
It had a patch of what might be snow, or might be ice. He eyed it suspiciously, mentally calculating if he would be better off aiming for somewhere else and if that would be harder, before once again steeling himself and jumping across the shadowy gap whose bottom he could not see to land safely once again.
The next rock was closer, and further down, and when he landed he skidded slightly and felt a moment of terror before he settled, and the fourth jump brought him to safety and solid ground on the far side.
A steep incline up the icy slope took all his balance and caution, climbing slowly from one secure hoofhold to another, until he reached the top.
The snow crunched under his hooves as he crossed the ridge and wandered up an old path between the trees that led to a wooden cabin lit by a glass-covered candle-lantern. Smoke rose from the chimney, and outside stood an old stallion in a wizard’s robe and hat, with a long white beard. He turned his face up as if to feel the cold wind more clearly, and he didn’t make any sign of noticing Clover as he drew near.
“Excuse me,” the young pony said. “Is this the road to the mountain trail?”
The stallion turned, as though only just then noticing him. “You’re almost there,” he said with a habitual, wistful smile. “It’s just across the bridge.”
“Thanks,” Clover said, and walked past without another thought. Once he was past the cabin he stopped, thought a moment, and looked back. “Was that your sign back there? Just so you know, the road up here collapsed. I could have broken my neck getting across.”
The stallion let out a laugh. “If you almost died getting to me then the mountain might be too much for you!”
Clover blinked, and bit his teeth together behind his lips as his insides tied up in knots inside him and his shoulders curled inwards. “Well if a lunatic like you can survive here I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Suit yourself,” the old pony said with the same easy mirth. “But you should know, Mount Celestia is a strange place… You might see things. Things you’re not ready to see.”
Clover’s insides were burning, but his eyes were as cold as the snow that fell before them. “You’ve been alone too long, old goat.”
The stallion laughed again, and the laughter followed Clover for a long time as he walked down the road to the bridge.
It ran over a river ravine, deep and invisible in the shadows below, and it was long and narrow, made of stone and wood together, and on the far side he could see the road continue up into the old city at the base of the mountain he was here to climb.
He looked up at the enormous thing, stunned for a moment by the sheer scale of it. He stared until the stinging cold air forced him to close his eyes, and he lowered his head, breathing deeply. Emotions ran across his face, and he shook his head to chase them off, and began to walk across the bridge.
When he was two lengths along he felt the stone shake, and heard the rumble as it began to collapse behind him. His face fell, panic rushing into him and blotting out his thoughts, and as mortal terror filled him he began to run as the bridge shook loose stone by stone underneath the weight of his steps and fell away into the darkness.
A section of the bridge in front of him was already fallen, something he hadn’t seen from the starting side, and he leapt across the gap and kept running on the far side as the entire bridge fell behind him, and he could feel it shift and tumble under his hooves as he ran. Another gap stood between him and the last stretch, and with all his strength he tensed his muscles and jumped
The stone he kicked off from came loose and dropped into darkness behind him, and as he stared at the last piece of bridge in front of him it too dissolved into rubble and slipped away, and he knew there was nothing before him to stop him from falling to his death in the cold, and the darkness.
In the last moments of his life time seemed to stretch out to infinity, locked in the moment of terror. And in the last psychotic delusion of a mind seeking escape he thought he saw a black bird swoop down before his eyes, and land on the ground on the far side of the ravine, and peck at the frozen earth, and turn and look at him.
His horn glowed with a spell suddenly placed there out of nowhere, and knowing nothing else, at the end of his life, Clover cast it.
With a jarring shock he thrust forward through the air in stark defiance of all laws of motion, and he touched the frozen ground and felt the icy grass crunch under his hooves. His lungs were burning as he drew deep, rapid gasps of air, the pounding of his heart loud in his ears, and he felt all four of his knees shake as he slowly took in the fact that he was alive, he was on solid ground again, and it wasn’t going to disappear.
Slowly, he was able to move again. He raised his head, his eyes small and doubtful, and he clenched them shut.
Clover looked up at the city. It rose, and it rose swiftly, and it rose far. Like the mountain it was built against, it strove upwards more than it spread out.
He stood amazed at the bottom of it, a vast abandoned construction site like a giant ladder set against the mountain, and looking straight up from between the base of its skyscrapers he couldn’t see where the path lead.
Behind him was the great Welcome-sign at the entrance to the city. Half of it had fallen down, and it said WELC, though it still showed the silhouette of pegasus wings behind it.
A thought came to him from when he was just a little foal.
There had been a rug in his room that he played on, which was a picture of a town from above, like a map but not, full of buildings and streets and ponies. It was his town, his place to play.
He would imagine himself arriving in town at the corner road and wander through its streets, visiting every house, greeting every pony, charting his path with his hoof, running through the city with his eyes.
At that moment he felt like he was a foal again looking at that rug, but that the ground itself was pulled loose like a sheet and hung from the wall without disturbing the city-image on it, which by some trick of perspective was both above and below him, and he could pick out its places and follow its paths as clearly.
It was beautiful, in all its rough industrial hubris. In the strange glow of snowfall at night it felt magical, like it had been emptied out just for him, to explore to his heart’s content. Cold, and indifferent, but open and waiting to be seen.
It was like an imaginary playground castle like he’d always dreamed of, full of endless hiding places and detours, where you could run through a labyrinth and never be seen, and climb to high towers and look out over a vast countryside under a dazzling sunrise.
The thought of looking straight down from the window of that tower made his knees weak, and he shook the thought off.
He walked through it silently with wide eyes, his breath leaving little clouds behind him. The cold air on his face was brisk and made him feel alive and full of energy.
He could see his goal. The highest point of the city was built into a jutting outcrop of rock, merging with the mountain, or as though carved out of it, far ahead and far above.
I’m going to reach the top.
He ran forward, climbing stairs where he could find them to get off the ground and begin ascending the huge interconnected rising buildings.
The path was far from clear. No spiraling stairwell started at the ground floor and continued to the highest levels. He would go up a level or two, then find himself back outside and crossing a rooftop to get to the next likely entrance. The brick wall shells of buildings gave way to skeletal steel bars, concrete rebar and construction site scaffolding that climbed through the vertical city.
The distance from the ground grew higher, and when Clover found himself walking along narrow scaffolds between two enormous concrete pylons he had to stop and hold tight, convincing himself by slow sense that the connections still held, it wasn’t swaying under him.
His eyes stung in the cold air, the snow blew against his face but he didn’t want to blink or turn away, and the cold made him feel that he was pushing against the limits of what was allowed. He walked, treading his path carefully, eyes wide open and looking up at the skyline, taking it all in.
Machinery filled the city. Abandoned, but still operational, they spun aimlessly in the wind, turned their gears and pulled their chains.
A street sign read “Urgent information!” in large letters on top, and the rest of the sign was unreadable.
Everything was covered in spikes, and he often had to step around, or carefully jump over a bed of them placed haphazardly in the abandoned industry.
Ad banners, erected before the buildings from which they were to be seen, showed lithe and slender pegasi as the peak of physical beauty and vigor, lest anypony forget.
As he went he experimented with the strange spell he’d discovered, casting it again and again to test its limits and his comfort. It would launch him in any direction he wished with a burst of speed, at will. Even straight up into the air, like a bird.
But it had its limits. Though it would fire with great force, it soon faded, like a feather thrown against the wind. Nor could he cast it in rapid succession: he had leapt as high as he could, cast the spell to dash straight up, and when he tried to cast it again and go higher he instead crashed back down to earth with all the force of gravity.
A taste of freedom that soon turned into a slow and painful negotiation.
He ran through his notes in his mind as he climbed over a stockpile of the strange machines, deep in thought, when he stepped down on a block and suddenly heard a loud grr-CHUNK and felt it moving below him, some mechanism triggered to snap the platform into motion with the force of a catapult.
He panicked, his entire body locking up, and without thought his horn glowed as he cast the spell, and dashed forward and off the block just before it could crush him against the ceiling like a fly.
He fell forward and tumbled over the snow into a corner, his heart racing. Behind him the machine automatically reset, the block pulled back into its starting position on a chain, ticking as the gears turned.
In front of him he saw a particularly tremendous ad banner that filled the whole side of the building in front of him. It showed a stallion in an expensive suit with a muzzle like a steam locomotive, prominently wearing a luxury anklewatch. Huge letters read:
TIME never STOPS
Do YOU?
Clover stared across the gap between him and the opposite rooftop, at what lay on the other side.
The roof was a sheet of steel, and snowdrifts had piled up on it, driven by the soft but constant wind. But somehow in spite of that there peeked through the white sheet a sudden burst of color that had drawn his eye. He stared at it, hanging just out of sight, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. They were not.
A strawberry bush clung to life amid the frost, and a lone berry hung from its stem. The fruit was plump and red and impossible, bouncing gently back and forth with each gust of wind.
Clover reached out his hoof to try to grab it, leaning on the fence of the scaffold. He fell back when he heard the structure creak under him, and carefully tried again, stretching a hindleg backwards to try to maintain his center of balance.
Don’t look down don’t look down don’t look down
It was no use. The berry hung just out of reach.
The gap between the two buildings was not wide. If he was on a grassy field he would skip the distance effortlessly.
But it was deep. Darkness shrouded the bottom, and his only clue to its depth was the distance of the ghostly howls the wind blew through the skeletal structure.
Clover’s legs went numb.
Don’t be ridiculous. Just jump over there and get it.
He stepped back, giving himself room to build up speed. He bent and stretched his legs, shifted his weight side to side, backwards and forwards. He focused on the spot where he would jump, and on the spot across the gap where he would land. He breathed in and out several times, deeply, closed his eyes, nodded, and opened them.
He ran, and he leapt.
He flew over the gap easily and made landfall on the far side, his hooves striking sharply against the stone surface.
For a moment his heart was light and full of joy. Then something broke under him and he was falling, his eyes fixed on the strawberry pulling away as he plunged into darkness.
He cast the spell in a panic, dashing straight up. It broke his fall for a brief moment before it started again, still as far away from solid ground as before, his legs flailing desperately for something to grab on to and finding nothing.
His heart felt like it would explode as the metal closed in around him, the open sky above shrinking to a jagged eye surrounded by skeletal unfinished things.
Burning pain consumed him as he struck the bed of spikes at the bottom of the pit, impaling him, tearing him apart, shattering his bones and leaving him forgotten and alone at the end of his life.
The last thing he knew before he died was the sound of wings as time slowed to a crawl, and a magic spell again was placed inside his barely-lucid mind, completed and whole, to be cast.
Time reversed itself in a dizzying whirlwind of terror and sensory information, and Clover screamed. He gasped for breath, drawing the freezing cold air deep into his lungs as every limb shot and shook and gripped for something solid to cling to.
It was only after the initial moments of mindless panic that he could understand he was standing back on top of the scaffolding, right where he’d been seconds before, as though his daring leap and subsequent death was a terrible dream, or hallucination, brought on by his own mind eager to show him all the ways he could suffer.
The strawberry still hung from its stem across the gap in front of him, daring him to reach for it.
To his right the path up towards the heights of the city continued.
Behind him the road back down to the forest lay wide open. As though it were saying, You can always turn back.
Clover thought again of the foal’s playground castle of his dreams. He remembered looking at those climbing poles from below and thinking how fun and cool it would be to reach the top – and then, when he’d climbed only the bottom few rungs on the rope, looking down and suddenly thinking how much further down it seemed from above than it had from below.
He remembered clinging to the rope, unable to bring himself to move, his legs refusing to obey his mind, staring down and burning while around and above him all the other foals laughed at his weakness. He remembered slinking away in shame, tears flowing, terrified to ever go back to the playground as they all sang his name in mockery.
As though the mountain wanted him to give up, and slink away, defeated.
He saw more strawberries as he went through the city, equally as inexplicable. They seemed to grow everywhere, yet – whether because the easy ones had all been picked or because the city was taunting him personally – all of them were far away, across chasms and atop high walls and behind barriers covered with spikes, siren fruits looking to tempt him to risk death.
He had dared to try for the nearest ones he saw, carefully and slowly jumping across rows of spikes onto safe ground to get to them, feeling a momentary burst of joy with each one he caught before hurrying back to the main path.
He looked longingly towards the more distant ones, cursing himself every time for not being brave enough.
Inside a narrow structure was a spiral staircase, or what was left of one. Clover went as high up it as he could, jumping and dashing and climbing up the fallen stretches, turning round and round.
Maybe that was why when he emerged and kept going he found that he had made a wrong turn somewhere, and found himself at the outer edge of the city, facing away from the mountain.
All the sounds of unbuilt city faded away behind him, only the soft wind remained. A little flock of brightly colored birds perched on a nest nearby, the only living things he’d seen in the city, sometimes taking off to fly in formation before landing again. He stood on the edge of a hollow skyscraper and saw the vast murky sky, and the abyss beneath him.
It was a peaceful place, and beautiful. There was only the wind, and the dance of snow, in an empty world.
His hooves were at the edge of the abyss. A single step forward and he would be in the wide open.
He stood there for a moment, listening to the silence for guidance.
Suddenly his ears perked up.
Somewhere in the stillness nearby he heard a rhythmic beeping and buzzing, like some strange signal being sent out from nearby to anypony who heard it. Looking away from the abyss, he carefully stepped along the outer edge of the city to peek around the next corner.
A series of little brick blocks, reached straight out in front of him like islands in the ocean of sky, linked and supported by half-seen and untrusted structures. And at the end a machine of unknowable purpose repeated its message into the void.
As his eyes ran over it a flicker of light struck a shattered window pane and Clover thought he saw the shape of a heart in the crystal.
The machine fell silent, and all was still. Clover watched, waiting to see if there would be anything more. There wasn’t.
He took a step back.
Hey. Do you remember when
“NO,” Clover snapped, turning his head suddenly, as if yelling at somepony behind him. “No. No. STOP. Not doing it. Not. Horse apples. Ponyfeathers. Hide-bucking snapjackets! Cankers! Drink capstones, you take – lank – DOCKNUGGETS!”
He stomped his right forehoof down so hard his whole leg hurt. Somewhere nearby he heard birds flap their wings and take off in flight. He stood still and stared at nothing, teeth clenched together, breathing rapidly, until he calmed down enough to turn around and shake his head.
Slowly, regretfully, he turned away, back into the city.
Retracing his steps Clover found where he’d taken a wrong turn and went the other direction, climbing further, with the slopes of the mountain rising up through the gaps between structures.
He clambered his way up a snowy fence and onto a container whose gate was jammed open, when something caught his eye. Up ahead he saw the flicker of firelight shining on the sides of a building and the metal surfaces of the city.
What is that?
He approached cautiously, staying in the shadows until he was close enough to peer around a corner.
On a rooftop with tall fences to shelter from the wind there was a campfire burning bright, and a lone pony sitting beside it.
She was a pegasus pony, with pink fur and a purple mane, and downy wings. She was wrapped up in a thick jacket and large fuzzy earmuffs, and a vest covered in pockets, all meticulously designed and carefully fit to style, far from Clover’s simple cloak. Behind her was her tent, and she sat tapping her hooves on a small tablet of metal and glass.
She was also talking to herself.
“Hi Pippsqueaks! I’m up here on the side of Mount Celestia and I’m—no no, that’s terrible, let me try that again…”
Clover stayed there, unsure what to do, suddenly feeling keenly aware of himself.
The pegasus was clearly a lone mare, dressed in fine warm clothes and no doubt with a pack full of supplies. Standing there in the shadows behind the corner with his hooded cloak, Clover must have seemed like a lurking assailant waiting for a chance to attack.
If she was afraid she hid it well. As soon as she caught sight of his movement she looked up at him, seeming slightly unsure at first but then quickly erupting into a warm smile. “Is somepony there? Oh my hoofness! Come on out and say hi! Sit by the fire.”
Clover glanced backwards, as though thinking about leaving, or perhaps wondering if the mare was talking to somepony else coming up behind him. After a moment’s hesitation he stepped into view fully. The mare reached out a hoof. “I’m Pipp. Pipp Petals. What’s your name?”
Clover looked at the mare and her hoof awkwardly, wondering what to do, as the moment dragged out until it was too late to say anything. The hoof was withdrawn.
“Quiet type, huh? That’s fine. My sister tells me I can fill the time just fine on my own.”
Clover cleared his throat. “Sorry. I just… have a lot on my mind. Um. It’s Clover. My name is Clover. Clover the Clever.”
“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Clover,” the mare said warmly, still tapping at her small machine. “I wasn’t expecting to see another pony all the way up here. This is quite a place for a hike, huh?”
Clover nodded, unsure. “It certainly isn’t easy. This place is…”
He thought back to the strawberries, and the old stallion he had met on the road, and the black bird, and the void. He wondered what were the words.
“Strange,” he finally finished, ignoring the look she was giving him. “I didn’t think there were any other ponies here either… That’s… kind of why I came.”
“Want to get away from things? Yeah, I can see that. This place is pretty cool, huh?” She barely looked up from her strange glowing device, tapping it deftly with her hoof.
“It is very cold,” Clover agreed, pulling his cloak tighter and stepping closer to the warmth of the fire. He looked up at the skyline all around them. “And strange… It’s like, something out of a dream. Or from another time.”
“I know right? It’s ancient.” Pipp smiled, and looked out into the snowfall, white and glittering in the firelight. “I was searching for something – different, something special, and beautiful. Something nopony had ever seen before, full of… mystery, and melancholy potential. It’s perfect.”
Clover couldn’t help but nod in agreement. “I don’t think I knew this place even existed,” he muttered.
“Yeah.” She turned and looked into his eyes. “So, what brings you all the way out here?”
His mind screamed.
What could he tell her? Did she understand what she was asking? How could she? How could he explain that the aggregate entirety of his life experience had led him to try to climb the mountain? When every one part of it made no sense without the context of every other part, when his every decision by itself seemed like madness, and the full body of meaning was a sun burning inside his stomach, impossible to take hold of, too big to fit through his throat, too hot to share?
What could he say to try to make somepony understand when he barely understood it himself?
“I just wanted to.”
“Cool.”
“Yes.” Clover looked around for something to say. “And you? Have you traveled far?”
“Very far,” Pipp said with a knowing chuckle. “I’m from distant, sunny, pegasus-filled Zephyr Heights, the city for which this city is a prophetic memento mori. And you? You must be from Bridlewood?”
His thoughts felt like molasses. He stared at her blankly. “Must I?”
She had already moved on. “I love your cloak! It’s i-cooon-ic!” She said in a sing-song voice that was unlike any sound Clover had heard from a pony’s mouth, and made him feel like he was being made fun of. “Is that the fashion there? It makes sense, for the woods. But aren’t you cold wearing just that?”
Clover pulled his cloak tight protectively. “It’s just my cloak.” He stood tense for a moment in silence before he relaxed again. “But the fire is nice. You made it?”
“There’s an app for that!” Pipp said proudly and shot out her phone so fast that Clover flinched. He looked at the glowing surface. “Oh. Tinder?”
Pipp yanked the phone back.
Clover blinked in hopeless confusion.
Participate, you damn fool.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is that some kind of… magic tablet?”
“Oh, wow, you really are straight out of Bridlewood aren’t you? You haven’t seen a smartphone yet?”
His cheeks burned. He shook his head.
“Well, it’s the reason why I’m here. It’s my work, my hobby, my life, my calling. On that content grind. Gotta find something great to deliver for my audience.” She laughed, smiling wide. “I’m always searching for the most epic sights, snapping the best pics, to share with my followers. I was running out of steam back in Maretime Bay. But this! This city is something else. I’m gonna get so much good content here.”
Clover listened, though he had to fight every word. “You’re a… a travelogue writer?”
“Travelogue? Clover, everypony uses Feedbag now.”
“What?” Clover mouthed the word, then shook his head. “Never mind. But you said – do you know anything about this city? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Oh sure,” Pipp said casually, not looking up from her phone. “The Pegasus ponies built it, with tons of support from the royal family. It was supposed to be this – city of dreams! Where anything is possible! A city that never sleeps, full of style and glitz and glam! The ideal city, for the ideal pony.”
Clover listened intently as she spoke, silently taking in the jagged, hollow spires and towers all around them. “They poured bits into it,” Pipp continued. “It was the biggest construction project for many decades, and it went on for years. And then nopony wanted to live here. It stood empty, and construction kept going – until they pulled out overnight. The final order is still classified. But they went so fast they left all their equipment behind, a ghost city from a future that never was.”
“Equipment?” Clover’s ears perked up. “Was that those – I saw… pointless machines, still functional.”
Pipp nodded, not looking up while Clover ran his eyes over the structures all around them, searching. “Pegasus construction. They’re for transporting materials and equipment vertically. Rather than have ponies land and rise all the time it’s easier to just launch it and catch it mid-air. They’re also for launching ponies. Taking off from a stand-still is hard, traffic moves much faster if you get a little boost to start with.”
“That’s… I see.” Clover took a step away from the fire. “Thank you. I have to get going.”
“Oh. Are you going back down?” Pipp asked.
Clover shook his head. “No. I’m going to the top.”
“Oooh. Ambitious! Good luck. I hear there are even older structures if you go higher up. I want to get some pics, but I’m not sure how far I’ll make it. It looks like it only gets harder from here though, so I might turn around soon.”
“Oh? Can’t you just fly up to the summit?”
Pipp looked at him strangely. “You haven’t met many pegasi, have you?”
Clover crossed a leg defensively.
“Listen. You can’t just fly up a tall mountain. The higher you go, the stronger the wind gets. The sky gets angry where the earth challenges it, and they fight. Even for Pegasi mountain-climbing is its own skill, and I’m not Rainbow Dash. If you’re going up there, take care of yourself, okay?”
Clover nodded. “I… thank you. I will. Good luck with your, um, picks.”
“Thanks. Good luck on the climb!”
Clover turned around and continued on his way, his mind a jumble for a full minute before he could think anything.
That was odd.
…She seemed friendly, though.
I wonder if I’ll see her again.
…After that conversation? Don’t be ridiculous, you made a complete fool of yourself.
Like that ridiculous thing you did. What were you thinking?
…I don’t even know what it was I did. She showed me the thing, I just looked at it.
Well you should have known. Whatever you did it obviously made her uncomfortable. She was only pretending to tolerate you after, to be polite. She probably hates you now.
Honestly, what were you thinking. A mare like her, rich and stylish, talking to you? She must be laughing at you right now.
Clover stopped and stared at a plain concrete wall. A few snowflakes blew past it.
…I can’t ever speak to her again.
He kept climbing, the site of the fire falling further behind him. The freezing cold air bit his face. He kept himself looking forward and upward, clenching his eyes and shaking his head when he felt like looking back. And at last he found himself at the end of the path.
Ahead of him he saw the final, tallest building of the half-city, that anchored itself to the mountain at its top.
Between him and it was a great open stretch, far too wide to jump. Halfway between stood an angled crane holding a lone girder that swayed in the wind. It was enormous, and much of it was covered in spikes.
It was, he estimated, exactly close enough for him to reach. If he jumped, with all his strength, into the void, and if he timed his dash exactly right.
He stood staring at it in dead silence for several minutes that felt like an eternity.
Don’t be a fool.
You can’t do this.
You can’t do ANYTHING.
Clover felt the bile rising in his stomach, his face burning.
Then he jumped.
The huge girder swayed, an enormous motion like the slow turning of a planet, his eyes locked on it. It was not slow, but impossibly fast, the empty void rising swiftly to seize him.
He cast the spell, dashing forward past the empty black, and slammed down onto the girder. He clung to it with all four legs, shaking like a leaf, the freezing cold metal draining his heat. It rumbled beneath him, but did not alter its course.
Hold on hold on hold on hold on
You did it. It’s okay. It’s not gonna fall.
You’re okay.
I’m okay.
Slowly, deliberately, trying not to think too much about its motion, Clover crawled forward to the center of the girder and stood up.
The wind ruffled his cloak but did not push against him. The metal was not slippery as ice. And the motion of the girder was slow, dependable. And the gap in front of him was not greater than the gap behind him.
“I did it once,” he said under his breath. “I can do it again.”
He did not wait as long this time to make the jump. The dash obeyed him, and he touched down on the far side.
He blinked, and slowly his mouth widened to a grin. “I – I did it. I did it!” He tapped the concrete platform beneath him, which turned into a clatter as he lightly jumped on all four hooves, and laughed in triumph. “I did it!”
He turned his eyes upwards, following the tower’s height to the rocky outcropping of the mountain at the top. “Now I can just—” He walked through the open doorway and fell silent.
The interior of the skyscraper did not hold a staircase leading up, as he’d hoped. Not even a broken one with holes along the way.
What he found instead was that the whole building was an empty shell, outer walls with windows around a sheer open shaft that stretched from the earth to the roof, with nothing inside except for the abandoned construction machines affixed to the inside.
His guts knotted up inside him, and he felt sick.
There’s no getting across that. Not with the dash spell either.
Or…
There was a launcher overheard, not far from where he stood. Clover looked at it intently, eyeing its path along the rail. Slowly, he raised a hoof and touched it.
The machine reacted instantly, smashing forward with the force of a catapult and a loud mechanical KRR-SHUNK, before the chains and gears began to tick backwards, returning it to its starting position with a sharp click.
What was it she said?
“The machines are for transporting equipment,” Clover muttered, “and ponies.”
He followed its path with his eyes. Across the void was another launcher, and from where he stood Clover could clearly see the rail along which it moved, that it pointed straight up.
And if you die, you’ll know.
Clover looked up at the launcher above him, and felt the anger welling up inside him.
I’m not turning back.
He cast the dash spell, and slammed his hooves against the launcher. It came to life, roaring like a dragon, and flung him across the great chasm like a pebble thrown into the sea.
Oh no oh no oh no no no no NO
Clover’s legs flailed as he stared down into the black void, the wind overwhelming his ears, spinning and twisting, touching nothing, with only the fall.
He crashed into the other side, where the second launcher reacted as quickly as the first and shoved him upwards, the gravity and the motion zapping his mind and body and seeming to slow everything. He looked in front of him, which was up, and saw the narrowest, flimsiest of cross-boards and the bare remnant of a ladder through the roof.
As he hit the apex of his orbit, for an instant he hung motionless in the air before the plummet. He reached out his legs desperately for the ladder, and the dash spell showed mercy on him and obeyed, bringing him to it.
He held on to it for dear life. Shaking, he raised a hoof to the next rung and bent his ankle around it. His hindlegs trembled as he forced them to straighten, to push himself up each step, until he clambered up onto the roof.
He took a few steps there, feeling the solid ground under his hooves. Slowly his heartbeat returned to normal. The wind rustled his hair, and he could look back and see out across the entire city, though where he started he had no idea. Below the spires he saw only darkness now.
There was a huge stone marker there, erected there at the highest point of the city, like a gravestone. On it was written:
MOUNT CELESTIA
This memorial dedicated to those who perished on the climb
The top of the marker was carved with an alicorn horn and wings, like Celestia herself was carrying them.
Clover looked at it quietly, then turned away. He staggered off to the side, finding shelter from the wind in a corner, and soon set up a fire. He sat down in the glow and warmth, and pulled his cloak tight around him as he felt the last of his energy leave him.
“I can’t believe I did this,” he muttered, and yawned. “What was I thinking?”
He closed his eyes, and the last thing he heard before sleep took him was the fluttering of wings, and a black bird roosting overhead.
Clover climbed the concrete walls and felt the snow blow against his face, as he looked up at the skyline of the city at the foot of the mountain.
Of course he knew where he was, and where he was going. The winding, rising climb between the skyscrapers that was his approach to the mountain. He looked at the construction machinery that littered the unfinished city, forgotten but still working, waiting for him.
He passed the sign marked “Urgent information!”, and stopped to read it:
“Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a psychological disorder that develops in response to prolonged or repetitive trauma that the afflicted feels that they cannot escape.
Symptoms of CPTSD include lack of trust, isolation, difficulty understanding others’ emotional states, problems with impulse control, depersonalization, difficulty identifying and expressing emotions and internal states, and difficulties communicating needs, wants, and wishes.”
In my dreams I am vulnerable.
Clover woke up.
He didn’t know the time, but it was still night, and an aurora stretched out across the sky, filling it with shimmering curtains of color. Not only that but the sky seemed alive with a multitude of stars. In the thin and freezing mountain air they shone like he’d never seen before, bright and sharp and dazzling, and they raced across the sky like falling jewels.
He looked up at the memorial stone where he’d laid down to rest. The writing danced in the dim and shifting light, which stretched out behind the sculpted horn and wings like Celestia herself had descended into the stone meant to symbolize her. Perhaps to observe him.
He did not know how long he had been sleeping, how much of the night was left. But he did not feel cold, and he did not feel tired.
He turned away from the marker and looked up towards the mountain peak.
Standing between him and it was an old town of the far-flung outskirts. It was a ruined structure, built above the pegasus city and far older than it. The cold air was crystal clear, and even in the middle of the night, between the starlight and the snow-covered ground the walls cast long shadows.
While the city below was half-built, frozen in the moment of reaching upwards, waiting for ponies who would never come and a future that would never be, this town looked the other way. Ponies had been here, once, and had long ago abandoned it. Now, though built to stand against the harsh winds and heavy snows of the mountain, it slowly crumbled under the weight of being forgotten.
He knew towns like this, Clover told himself. His childhood was spent in them. The materials, the construction, simple brick and wood walls, though the wood had long crumbled. An old town hall with a clock tower still reaching high above, and stone roads running between. Homes with good basements, tight-built side to side when outside was too forbidding.
The rocks and sparse grass. The thick sheet of ice on top of the rocks and grass. The icicles that hung from every ledge. The shuff-shuff of snow packing together under his hooves with each step as his legs sank into them, leaving a rough trench in his path.
It was even beautiful in its own way, in the cold and stillness. Left to sleep undisturbed, on its slow journey to nothingness.
But one thing did promise to preserve the town, in its fashion. Thick walls of ice clear as glass enveloped entire houses, children of the glacier pushing down from the impassable dark side of the mountain, returning from exile to reassert an old claim.
The ice melded with the boulders and the broken walls in the shadows, and Clover couldn’t see what roads were open and which were blocked.
Something started tickling in his mind as he went. He’d been dreaming as he slept, and the memories played in his vision.
He’d been a foal again, and starting at the Mare St.Royce School for Foals. It was the third year, and it was his first day. He’d had to move across Unicornia, far away from Coldscar Valley, far from the old home, and for all that they spoke the same language he could not understand a word the other foals said.
The memory played out before his eyes as he looked around: a tiny version of himself in an ill-fitting saddlebag, small and frail and timid, with a manecut he didn’t choose, not knowing where to go, where to speak, where to look. Some other foals came to him.
“Drafna hva dimsi?”
Young Clover stared at the filly in alarm.
“Dimsi hva salda? Dafa! Dafa valdi dan!”
The foals ran away screaming and laughing, and they never spoke to him again. But the first impression had been set.
Focus, Clover.
Clover drew a breath and forced himself to be calm. He looked upwards, far away to the distant peak of the mountain, reminding himself of his goal.
“You can do this,” he whispered to himself, “Everything else is a distraction.”
He ignored the foals in the snow at the edge of his vision and kept going.
The old town hall stood before him. He clambered through the opening left behind by a fallen section of wall, and dropped into its dark interior.
Inside was a large, empty hall strewn with piles of debris from ancient furniture and fallen brickwork. A few rusty chains ran down from the ceiling. Some of them held old lanterns, but many had been torn off and simply hung in the air. The walls creaked, and a low howl from the wind echoed back and forth across the open space.
Clover felt out of place in the ruin. He stepped around the crumbling piles, searching for a way through to the far side. He walked cautiously, and kept his breathing low and quiet lest his intrusion brought down more of the structure on top of his head.
The front doors had burst inwards. That whole side of the building seemed encased in ice, and impassable. The wooden stairs to the upper floors had long since crumbled and fallen away leaving only holes in the ceiling to mark their passing, too high above Clover for his dash spell to reach on its own.
Something in a corner caught his eye, and he went over to look at it.
There was a hatch on the floor, half-obscured in the dirt, and Clover pulled it open. He looked down into the enormous underground chamber, and dropped down into the darkness.
Clover knew towns like this. He knew buildings like this. They had blind spots. Tunnels for shipping goods that nopony wanted seen, built to be connected and concealed, dug in and dug out.
Dark brick walls slowly crumbled, revealing frozen earth and roots in the gaps. As above, the old wooden stairs leading down had long since rotted to dust, and looking down he saw only darkness that gave no indication how far down the floor was.
He saw a door down a section of the old stair leading to a side room, and jumped to it. Inside was a smaller chamber that led down alongside the main chamber, filled with large blocks of ice that formed a roundabout stair. He cautiously jumped from block to block, until he reached the cold soil and stone at the bottom.
Another door led back to the main basement chamber. A cluster of foals huddled together at the basement wall.
St. Royce’s school for foals had blind spots. There were walls without windows, and that’s where they went. There were places that weren’t watched, and rules that weren’t written, and snitches got stitches.
Silence suited him fine.
There was a colt who declared they were friends, and wouldn’t leave him alone. The colt was loud and brash and drowned out Clover’s quiet thoughts and it irked him. And Clover, who was accustomed to sitting alone for long times, was angered and rude.
Clover winced, and forced himself to look away, feeling like his own subconscious was betraying him.
Was it not obvious that he was preoccupied with other things? That their voices were like a hail storm on his mind, pushing their way in when he already had too much to think about?
Didn’t it make sense that he would lash out at them for not reading his thoughts?
The basement was a good place to hide when the shouting starts. Or when the shouting ends.
His eye twitched, his ears laid back flat. and he stopped to rub his brow. Suddenly there was a tension in the muscles of his spine, that hunched him over and stretched him out, that made him kick and jerk to work it out.
He made his way down into the darkness, avoiding the ice.
In one wall of the basement he found what he was looking for: once hidden behind a false wall panel, long since broken, was a narrow tunnel to an underground passage. Clover bent down and crept inside.
The tunnel had stayed open, mostly. But the ground had shifted slowly under the grinding weight of the ice and, left untended for so many years, the tunnel had bent and warped far below it.
He had to get down on his barrel and crawl. The tight passage corkscrewed around him, and it was hard to tell if he was going up or down as he twisted himself to fit through. Until in the end it opened into a larger chamber filled with ice.
He did not know where he was, but he figured in a basement under some other house somewhere in town, nearer to the surface where the ice had crept down. There was a door on the far side. But the ceiling was covered in more of the treacherous-looking icicles, and the floor was strewn with spikes, real ones, to deter unknowing intruders in the dark.
There was another memory, from years later in another school. He had grown bigger, and his mouth fit differently on his face.
A filly said something kind to him. But after hearing kind words used to mock so many times he stopped distinguishing between them, and every kindness felt like an attack.
He reacted accordingly, and the filly never said a kind thing to him again.
“Stop.”
Clover saw his young self standing in a circle of other foals. His face was locked in sneering, snarling rage, eyes afire, head low in a ramming posture as he turned this way and that, shouting angry, hurtful things. He felt on fire, and the fire made him strong, pain washed away in invincible burning heat.
When it burned away it would leave him feeling weaker than ever.
“Stop.”
There was a happy moment of playing games, kicking a ball, surrounded by other ponies he didn’t want to think about. He was smiling, and they were smiling, and no-one was hurt, and it burned as much as anything.
“I said ENOUGH!” The echo ran back and forth across the hall.
Are you the same pony now that you were back then? Is there some true you that you were supposed to be, if you can only find them? Was it who you were before all the thingsthat made you change? Do you think that if you rip away the armor and the thorns then what’s left will be the real you?
Can you go back to that pony?
“Khamberflanks,” he muttered to himself as he paced back and forth, like the incantation of some private spell. “Proskasimp. Morkempsi.”
He shook under his cloak under the shaking passed.
“...I can do this.”
There was a gap in the treacherous ice, a long straight gap between the sharp points that looked ready to impale him and leave him freezing to death and bleeding out if he so much as touched them.
“Dash straight forward,” he mumbled to himself. “Don’t look back. Just straight forward.”
He held his breath and focused every piece of his will into carrying out the command without deviation.
And when it was done he pushed forward, breathing a sigh of relief as he left the passage behind and kept going.
Past a narrow doorway whose door had long since disappeared he dropped down into the heart of the town’s secret, the nexus that bound every tunnel and house together.
It was empty. If anything had been left here when the town was abandoned it had long since been picked clean, and every other exit had been filled in, and blocked off.
All that was left, standing alone against a far wall, was a large mirror.
Clover’s eyes settled on it, and he didn’t look away as he walked down towards it.
Inside it he saw himself walking through the dark basement. He was searching for a way through, and out, checking every corner. He poked at the walls, and peered up under the ceiling. He saw himself searching every spot. But as he searched he saw a dark shadow moving behind himself, and as he turned back to see he
Crash.
The mirror shattered clear across.
Inside the mirror Clover stared, and saw the cracks extend across the wall and through the air. It left a criss-crossing spiderweb of shards that each showed its own reflection all around him, each one slightly different.
The cracking done, he looked around. He thought back to the mad old stallion he’d met on the road.
“The mountain will show you things,” he muttered.
He pressed a hoof against the sharp edge of the crack, and leaned his weight on it. Finding it steady, he climbed onto it and walked along the line.
You’ve done this before. You know how it works.
He nodded.
The crack ran through the wall, ran through the building, ran through the sky.
Clover walked along it, one step at a time. All around him he saw the places he had been, distorted and twisted in the reflection. Like a broken mirror, every side of every crack was the same image at different angles, spread out all around him. He carefully balanced along the narrow line to avoid falling back into any of them.
The line of the crack stretched out to the edge of the universe, and if he looked closely along it he could see the stars shooting and the aurora.
He followed it back through the smuggling tunnels, seeing now the remains of ponies who had succumbed to the ice and the traps, the interlopers who did not know the way. He followed it up to the town hall, where the hanging chains now held pony-sized cages, gibbets that had held the ponies of whichever side without judgment, those who’d smuggled and been caught or those who’d judged the smugglers and been judged themselves in turn.
He followed it through to the glacier that enveloped the town.
Of course a crack will get me through the ice, he thought.
It ran through the frozen earth into the tall empty chamber of the town hall, and standing on it he looked up to the clock tower, balancing on a glass shard’s blade where the stairs had rotted to dust beneath the open ceiling shaft. From there he could just barely jump up to the next floor, and continue climbing.
He dashed, and climbed, going up the stairs and jumping from platform to platform, where chains and lanterns hung down alongside gibbets.
He jumped to the wall, clung to it; he climbed up along the uneven ledges as he felt his legs protest, until he was high enough. Then he kicked off in a jump, and when he was just below the opening he dashed up, grabbed onto the ledge, and rolled up and over to the floor above.
“Clover darling, slow down,” said a deep, smooth voice that sent a deep chill down Clover’s spine.
Clover shot up on his hooves and looked around, ears alert. “Who’s there?”
Sitting by the wall, opposite the remains of a long-dead pony, there was a unicorn made of shadows, with charcoal fur and a mane that flickered like waves at midnight on a black sea. His horn was red like a glowing ember deep in the fire, and he looked at Clover with eyes red like blood in candlelight.
“You know me,” the shadowed king said. “I’m your oldest friend.”
Clover felt his legs tense up, heavy like iron. “I saw you in the mirror.”
“Of course you did – I’m part of you,” Sombra said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m all the things you wish you were. Handsome. Strong. Fearless. The part that sees things clearly.” He stretched out his legs luxuriously and flexed his shoulders. “And I can’t tell you what a relief it is, to finally get out of your head! To talk to you, like a proper pony!”
He took a step forward, and Clover took a step back. “You made me hurt ponies.”
“I taught you how to stand up for yourself,” Sombra said. “I showed you who your enemies were, and how to fight back. I have helped you every step of the way. I’m helping you now. Tell me, my dear friend… What on Equis do you think you’re doing here? Here, of all places?”
Clover took another step back, raising a foreleg defensively. “I need to climb the mountain,” he said. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. But… I have to.”
“Clover… Darling. My friend and colleague. Don’t you think you’re taking this a little far?” Sombra gave him a look he had seen too many times, from too many ponies. “You can’t do anything else, so you decided to do something that nopony can do at all? You’re setting yourself up for failure. Again.”
Clover felt the bile stirring deep in his stomach, and his mouth bent like a goblin. “I can do this. I’m going to reach the top.”
“Some ponies just won’t listen to reason,” Sombra said, shaking his head.
The shadow rose, hovering in the air, and all around him everything began to crumble into black nothing, like he was a moving hole in the world emptying into the void. He reached out a hoof.
“Come along. Let’s go home.”
Clover ran, and his shadow followed him closely.
Clover ran as fast as he’d ever run in his life, and heard Sombra’s laugh from right behind him. “Really, Clover?”
He jumped across the spikes, dashed up to the wall, kicked off it to the higher floor, and dashed again to the next level.
“Come on, Clover. You can’t do this. Trust me, I know you better than you know yourself.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
“Don’t I? You’re scared of heights. You’re scared of being trapped. You’re scared of being alone and you’re scared of other ponies. All your life you’ve wanted to escape. But you can’t escape yourself, and that scares you most of all.”
The walls of the clock tower were bare, the floors and stairs rotted and fallen. A gibbet hung from a chain, and Clover dashed onto it, and climbed.
Sombra was right behind him, unperturbed.
“You limp away from every failure and think maybe next time will be different. But it never is. It’s just another failure on the pile, leaving you more and more convinced you’ll never accomplish anything. Left behind, while everypony else lives full lives.”
Clover felt like he was on fire. A deep, roaring heat was licking at his hooves, and at the edges of his visions he thought he saw black flames rising from below, consuming the tower. He jumped from wall to wall, and his breath caught in his throat when he felt his hooves slip, barely managing to catch himself and jump again. His muscles screamed in pain.
“Everything you’ve ever done was a desperate, ill-thought out delusion that you could break free. But you never could. Do you really think you’re going to reach the peak? Or will this be just another failure, to disappoint everypony who ever knew you?
The clock tower pinnacle was above him. He was nearly at the top, and placed a hoof on a ladder rung when a gust of wind blew in his cloak and chilled his ears. He turned and saw a hole in the wall leading outside to open air, above the ice.
He hesitated, and looked back down to see the shadow-fire rising up quickly to meet him, caught between two options.
He let go of the ladder and ran for the hole, and just as the shadow reached down to clutch him he dashed through it, out of the clock tower and into the open air, falling down to the ice below.
He hit the ground hard, and kept running, leaving the town hall far behind.
Sombra looked at him and laughed.
The sound faded into the distance as Clover ran, and then he was gone.
Clover didn’t look back. Slowing down as his adrenaline crashed, and the ache in his hooves made him limp, he pushed forward through the abandoned streets, along its rough and damaged roads half-covered with large blocks of ice.
At the far end of the town he heard a ringing sound, and looked up to see a pay phone ringing ahead under the flickering glow of a street light.
Without thinking, Clover went up to it and picked it up, gingerly holding it to his face. “Hello?”
“Clover?” The tired voice of Princess Platinum said from the other end. “Are you calling from a payphone?”
“I… am I?” Clover looked puzzled, then shook his head. “No, you called me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Clover’s lips moved to speak but he said nothing. He shook his head again “It doesn’t matter. Listen, I need help. Somepony’s chasing me. I don’t know where I am, I think I’m in danger. Please.”
Platinum sighed heavily. “Clover, you only call me when you’re panicking in the middle of the night. You don’t have to make up some ridiculous story to get my attention.”
“I’m not lying!” He yelled into the phone.
He could hear her rolling her eyes at him. “It’s fine, sweetheart. Tell me what happened.”
Clover placed an elbow on the pay phone and rubbed his forehead as he spoke. “I’m climbing Mount Celestia,” he began. “I was stuck. But I found this old mirror, and it shattered, and I thought I could get through by climbing up the cracks, but my reflection escaped, and… and…”
He was quiet for achingly long seconds. “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”
“Of course you’re dreaming,” Platinum said. “Do you really think I would talk to you in real life?”
There was a gust of wind, and Sombra appeared from a dark swirl right in front of him. He gave Clover a look that was disappointed, but not surprised. “I told you this was pointless.”
Clover felt the ground under him shift, and he looked down just in time to see that he stood on the lips of some giant monstrous creature.
The mouth snapped open, and he fell into the blackness as it closed up above him and swallowed him whole.
Clover woke up, throwing himself up on his hooves, feeling like every part of his body and mind was screaming at him and telling him to run.
He turned around and his eyes fell on the memorial stone, the carved implication of Celestia looking down at him.
He was exactly where he had gone to sleep before. The night sky was dark, and the stars were cold, distant, and still. He was covered in sweat, and it froze in the mountain air. His face was filthy and wet, and his nose was stuffy.
He rubbed his cloak over his face.
Without making another sound he picked up his things and began to walk.
There was the town, just as he had dreamed it. But the ice was nowhere to be seen and he walked through the ruined town hall in silence. There was no basement hatch, no holes in the roof. The far wall was broken wide open, and he climbed through it clumsily, weakly.
On the far side he turned back and looked up at the clock tower, far above and out of reach. The opening he had jumped out was there, a black square of shadow high up on the tower, just below the bell. But on the clock face…
There was a light up there, behind the clock, like something glowing was hidden inside. Though he did not understand why, the sight made him feel like he had failed somehow. That he had lost a challenge, proved unworthy of its resurrections.
He kept going through the empty town, until he saw the pay phone.
He watched it from a distance, staying outside the circle of the light as though it were the loop of a snare.
He knew, from his dream, that it was some sort of connection point, tying ponies together. And he guessed, from the recognized word phone, that it was like Pipp’s own device, only bigger and immobile and therefore, he presumed, more powerful.
If it was true that it could tie ponies together, connect their voices across any distance, he wondered who he would reach for. If he knew how to operate the inscrutable device. But he didn’t.
With that feeling in his stomach, he turned from it and kept walking.
His head was a tumble, and he couldn’t put words to what he was thinking. A fire burned in front of him and when he came close he heard a bright voice call out. “Clover! Hey! Come on over—Woah! Are you okay, girl?”
Clover stopped at the edge of the firelight and Pipp ran over to him. “Are you crying?”
Clover blinked, and wiped his eyes with his cloak. “N-no,” he said in a strained voice, and cleared his throat.
“Are you hurt? Oh hoofness, you must be freezing to death… Come on, sit by the fire!” The young mare dragged him along, and he let himself be dragged. “Sorry I passed you, I thought you’d gotten further along.”
“I was by the memorial,” he said. “I need to keep going. I have to…”
The fire burned merrily and bright under the glittering sky, with Pipp’s tent pitched beside it. The warmth of the fire struck him, and reminded him just how cold he was, and he shivered as feeling returned to his legs and face. Pipp had found herself a spot far more sheltered and pleasant than Clover had to set her camp.
“Maybe I will sit a while,” Clover said. “Oh, if that’s all right with you. I mean.”
“Yeah, you’re not going anywhere right now,” Pipp said. “Not until you warm up.”
“I have things to do. I mustn’t get distracted.”
“Of course you are. You’re all alone up here. You know what’ll cheer you up? Getting a thousand likes on Ponygram.”
“What?”
“Take a selfie with me!”
“A what?”
Without giving Clover a chance to object Pipp sat next to him and hugged him close, foreleg over his shoulder, and took the picture, with a snap and a bright flash.
She held up the phone to show him the results: Pipp beamed for the camera with a giant grin and warm, cheerful eyes. Clover looked equal parts morose, awkward, and terrified, his face too little and too soft, and doubly out of place sitting next to her.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Pipp said, her smile somewhat more strained now. “But trust me, nopony looks good without a filter. Watch!”
She tapped the screen in some unholy secret incantation that Clover would never comprehend, and when she showed him the image again they were both of them covered in rippling rainbows.
“It’s fine. I’m just not… portrait-worthy,” Clover said.
“…Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
He sat back and closed his eyes, and drew deep breaths.
Pipp turned away, then her eyes shot wide as a thought struck her. “Oh my Celestia, I have to show you, look at what I found in town!”
Pipp triumphantly held up a strange mechanical box between her hooves, as though it were some long-lost treasure. Clover had no idea what it was, but it looked made of some unearthly material, and to his eyes it looked impossibly futuristic, like the pay phone.
Written on its side were the words “Pony Walkmare”.
“And it still works!” Pipp said with unbridled delight, eyes glittering and grinning wide. “Here, try it!”
She put the headphones on his head and pressed a button, and his eyes lit up as the music began to play in his ears.
“What is,” he started to mutter, then stopped as he sat listening.
The music brought back all the emotions he’d felt before. They ran through him in waves. But controlled like this, in sound, he felt them differently. Like he could sit there all day, just listening, and not feel tired.
“I know right? So. Cool.” Pipp squeed. “I was trotting through the city when I heard music, and I flew over and found this! It must be ancient!”
He nodded, barely hearing her over it. After a minute she pressed the button, and the music cut short with a sharp click.
“You feel better?”
Pipp was watching him intently, concern written on her face that even Clover could recognize.
A look of shock passed over Clover’s face, quickly suppressed as he realized once again that other ponies could both see him and think about what they had seen.
His mouth opened and closed.
Before we talk I need to explain all the reasons you shouldn’t talk to me. So you can make an informed decision.Yes, that’s a great start, that always works so well.
I can’t tell her what I think. She’ll think I’m crazy, or just not understand a word, or get bored. But I have to say something. And I don’t want to lie.
So think of something halfway between dishonesty and madness. Go on, pretend to be a sensible pony. You can do that. You’re good with words, supposedly.
Clover hesitated for another moment. “Do you think ponies can change?”
“Huh?”
“Your cutie mark. Finding your mark means finding your true self. And cutie marks don’t change. So… Do you think that’s the end of it? Nothing more?”
Pipp looked surprised for a moment, then sat back. “Huh.”
Clover felt a sting in his chest. Idiot. “I’m sorry, forget I said anything.”
“No, it’s okay.” Pipp sat there thinking for a moment, then tapped her phone a few times. “Let me tell you a secret, Clover: everything is beautiful. You just have to find it first. Here, look at these pics I took in the ruins.”
She flicked through them, and looking at them Clover felt his attention slip. They were beautiful, and even though he had just passed through the old town himself he felt like he was looking at something completely different, precious secret sights that had shown themselves to the mare, and that she was sharing with him.
She could see it on his face, and grinned at him. “Right?” Clover nodded, and sniffed, and rubbed his face with his fetlock.
“It’s okay,” she said when Clover said nothing in response. “My grandpa was an inventor. He loved cameras, he even made some improvements to how they were made back then… of course, nopony makes those anymore. But it makes me feel close to him. Once, when I was just a little filly, I had a… a fight, with somepony, and I ran to my room crying, and he came to cheer me up. I was upset about… never mind, it’s not important. I was jealous of somepony. Somepony better than me. And he told me…” Pipp looked into the flickering firelight, and Clover saw it reflected in her eyes. “He told me, Pipp, it’s not just about you. When your picture is everywhere, even if you’ve never met them, ponies see you as a friend. That’s your power. If you find joy and excitement in your day, you put it into theirs too. It’s a responsibility. Being famous means… being a friend to everypony.”
“I… never thought of that,” Clover admitted. “I don’t think I could be famous.”
“Hey. You’re doing your own thing. You’re going to the top of the mountain, right?”
Clover nodded. “I’m tired of breaking promises.”
“You see? Life goals. It’s admirable.”
Clover wanted to accept the compliment, but felt like it would be a lie to do so. He said nothing, and the two of them fell into silence for a while.
“Thank you for the fire,” he eventually said. “I should keep moving.”
“You sure? You look pretty tired. You don’t wanna get some more sleep?”
“It will pass. I’m going to the top.”
“Wait.” She grabbed the Pony Walkmare and held it out. “Y’know what, why don’t you take this.” She held the device up for him. The gesture shocked him, and it showed. She let out a little “heh.”
“But, you found it,” he mumbled.
“I have my phone. I got my pics. I don’t need it.” She shrugged. “Besides, you looked like you need it more.”
“I… thank you.” He took it, and held it close, like a treasure. “I’ll take good care of it.”
Clover got up and followed the path.
At the edge of the firelight he paused, and turned back, and looked around.
It was only the barest flicker of movement. But up on a broken wall he saw a flap of wings, as the black bird turned and flew away.
