As a universe crawls into nothing, an agent of the Inter-Creature Bureau of Metareality tries to work with one of the frozen world's inhabitants.
Cinnamon works for the Inter-Creature Bureau of Metareality, an organization dedicated to communication and cultural exchange between other realities. She doesn't expect much beyond the scope of her interfacing occupation with other worlds.
But the end of one of these realities—and a chaotic refugee desiring her presence—seek to upend Cinnamon's expectations.
And the candle is passed to the unicorn at the reception desk. She keeps her focus on her papers and schedule when they slide into view.
In here and beyond, the Inter-Creature Bureau of Metareality faces much variance in what is considered normal, with a list of which realities to interface with and of which portals to check up for routine maintenance in the CO-TY Hub. Recent negotiations were had with a universe on the brink of war, whose gates were installed beside those of an Equestria where humans had endured the brunt of history with ponies. As for Cinnamon herself, she hails from a magic-filled Earth—
The lights flicker.
She turns on her horn to grip onto the candle; its faint warmth touches her, a metaphorical anchor when staff perform emergency checks on the portal arrays. Multiple Flurry Hearts, both grown-ups and foals along with an elderly version of the baby, gather to discuss the current state of affairs. A panicked and time-traveling Starlight Glimmer teleports in, ruining the multi-alicorn conversation before bumping into multiple Sunsets rushing to and fro between Canterlot City portals, crashing a dozen briefcases. Paper trails fly overhead, their racking about littering themselves onto her desk.
And a claw taps its digits on the desk. “First time?”
Cinnamon sizes up the sudden draconequus before her. She’s encountered only one other such creature here—other than Discord—yet the stranger still gives her pause. Said stranger is less of a noodle, more of a pony with oddities like huge bat wings, the amalgamation of Fluttershy’s body but the eyes of Discord. And bat fangs. Yet noodly.
“Yeah, probably not,” says the creature as she floats down to Cinnamon’s level. She stays cool, if remote from the administrative mayhem going on around them. She then takes out a remote to mute several ringing alarms across the whole facility, forming a near-invisible soundproof dome including herself and Cinnamon. “But I don’t think we’ve met a lot.”
“Oh, uh, Anarchy?” an unperturbed Cinnamon asks, rummaging a drawer to verify her name. “Yes, I’ve met you before, right when I found out we had other versions of ourselves in your world some decades ago. How’s Cookie and Oakley there? Also… huh, you weren’t scheduled for today—”
“Not for quite a long time.” She conjures up a chair to sit down on. “Or, well, not me, per se. Not me me.”
“Not you you? Oh right… reader’s depiction, memory, all that. You—or your prime self, rather—did take an interview once, right?”
“Once in-character, once out-of-character. Or was that Watson versus Doyle?” She takes the bubble pipe out of her mouth. “But I’d hate to break it to you. Something caused the lights to go wee-woo here?”
“Uh, yes?” Over her own head, pegasi and griffons carry equipment to fix the fixtures. Wrenches and spanners fall as the earth rumbles. “So, what happened in your world?”
“Um, well, Cinny… it's not exactly what happened in it but to it.”
Broken lines of dusty manes and limp tails flee from an ashen Ponyville. A Screwball is corralled out by the Royal Guards, while the Elements coordinate the exodus of hoofsteps.
Cinnamon sees her own uniform on other ponies, other creatures, other versions of her bureau now present. Faintly recognized are those under a major branch called “TheManor”; their leaders welcome the refugees with howls and weepings that she can hear from a mile away.
The base for a trio of Canterlot statues is cordoned off before being lifted up to the back of a truck. Ashen moods sour the faces of an aged Pinkie and her family, a broken Lil Cheese breaking into a waterfall of tears. Other trucks roll themselves in, showing insignias and signatures of different realms, deploying portals, all paths to safety.
The dirt under her hooves withers into dust. She sits and beholds: a paled world.
Crisp pages and dusty history books amass under her hooves or in her magic. Her agency hasn’t had much equipment and training compared to its counterparts, just enough to observe and interact, not enough to conduct impromptu rescue operations. But into the sacks and wagons the tomes go, with wagons decking the crystal halls of an abandoned Castle of Friendship.
“This should be everything, including the ones you haven’t seen,” Anarchy points out with a foam hand as she grabs several books, literally kicking the dust out of a volume.
“No need to worry. We’ve got photocopiers for most of them. The ones too fragile for that, quill and parchment. What’s next?”
“Taking in my friends and family,” she says. “At least the ones you remember. Or how you remember… or something.”
“I know." She lets her mane fall just so to half-cover an eye. "A shame I haven’t met everyone. So sudden, too.”
Another book gently falls into a wagon. The rest of the tomes soon roll out of the castle.
“…and you’re sure you’re set in to welcome these refugees, uh, Generalissimo Wallnut?” asks Cinnamon in a stale, graying conference room.
TheGeneralissimo himself, a bat pony decorated in military regalia—and wearing a name tag claw-made by Anarchy—looks in askance. His hat obscures a landscape painting put in there for the express purpose of livening up the dull room. “Ma’am Cinnamon, I know you’re reaching your hoof out across your… uh—”
“Her bureau’s stories,” completes a bluechangeling, whose name tag reads Blue Alarm. “Also, he’s about to make a good point. I came from way before the whole curiosity thing started in the first place.” He then points at a human name-taggedMacario sitting at the far end of the table. “This guy’s not even an Equestrian!”
“Actually, po—”
“Two humans,” cuts in the wingedFlash Sentry beside him.
Cinnamon doesn’t groan as she recollects her hooves on the table, facing down each member of the motley crew before her. The objective of the gathering is clear to Cinnamon, helping around with transcribing what was left and being there to relate to who was left. It was Anarchy’s idea: It’d be like a focus group! But with friends! But several arguments and caffeine buzzes later, the smell of coffee cannot mask the lack of progress.
A trio consisting of a moon-wearing Princess Cadance, a scorched Autumn Blaze, and a Stellar Flare without her futuristic scarf lean forward. The last mare begins, “Our own stories haven’t even come out yet. As well as Wallnut Drive’s—”
“Hey, that’s not true, ma’am!”
“I know, and I think dear Cinnamon’s read up enough about your silly wars! And Alarm’s from before any of our worlds even met!”
Anarchy effects a smile, picking up a slice of the table.“So? There’ll be more hands, hooves, and other appendages on deck for the task ahead! And, yeah, you haven’t seen Lil Cheese a lot, but he’d be ecstatic to meet all of you for the first time!”
Cinnamon blinks. “Are you serious? We’re trying to help keep the remnants of your world from falling apart and being forgotten, and you’re focused on this?”
“Not by freeze-drying the whole thing then pinning it on the wall!” She seals her lips shut before getting her claw ready to snap before everyone in attendance. “But I can do a couple of things, get ’em right and dandy. Maybe I can have fun with them after?”
“That should be the last one,” Cinnamon finally says as she signs off a signature on a batch of papers and books right after taking care of some incomplete records.
She sees it hauled off on a wagon, disappearing after a corner in the hall. In its place, a pair of fellow agents talk up more reports, more realities to connect to. She figured that, somewhere, she may find more versions of herself out there, maybe working in a metareality agency just like hers
She doesn’t check the time as the lights turn off behind her, trotting to the break room before the bureau’s exit.
After opening the door, the little cafeteria explodes at her with a wall of light-hearted chatter.
By a vending machine, Blue Alarm along with his cadre of changeling friends talk with Anarchy’s own changeling companion Mandible who’s just brought bat pony Moon Wane over to help argue about which soda is the best, comparing the sounds of fizz of all things. Standing in line at the canteen, the two humans gather, with Macario standing far away from a growling Cozy Glow held in Flash Sentry’s arms. “I didn’t know evil foals could be this cute! Hey, Sight See, this horse can fly! So this is what Ditzy saw…”
The rest of Anarchy’s friends sit around an unusual duo: Spiral Starwith his sunburned armor next to the fancy Generalissimo Wallnut Drive, the both of them sitting on a soap box telling tales from their worlds. “I know this heat death stallion’s quite the silent type,” Wallnut goes on, “but I don’t mind working with a diverse bunch like ya all are!”
Cinnamon winces at that as she approaches the room’s end. Several Twilights console one another upon a couch, along with two Discords, one whispering to the other as the latter can only nod and nod, the both of them seated on soft chairs that she recognizes from Fluttershy’s place. And speaking of Fluttershys, a pair of them turn their backs on her, the second hiding her face from Cinnamon but not fast enough to conceal a teardrop from her eyes.
At the end, by the kitchen door, Anarchy says goodbye to a couple of the Power Ponies before she opens a portal back into their comic world. As it closes, “So, how’s it going, Cinny?”
“Your world’s been doing relatively fine, considering the circumstances. All the other agencies have been doing much more stellar work than mine could, but nevertheless, we’re doing all we can to give all of you a good home. I’d say I’m more than proud of that.”
A light catches her attention. A candle on the cafeteria table flickers.
“Done already in, what, fewer than two thousand words?!” Anarchy takes a seat and takes out her empty bags from hammerspace. “But hey, brevity is wit and whatever else that kooky old proto-Troper said!”
“Oh no, I’m not asking you to leave or anything, if it’s not your time.” Cinnamon’s words catch Anarchy mid-packing. “It’s just, much of the preservation has been done. Snapshots of the world, copies of your stories and histories… it’s all under control now. You can rest easy with that in your mind.”
Anarchy sticks her tongue out. “I mean, sure, I can, but we still have to move somewhere… more permanent! You don’t mind us crashing around the place here, no? ICBM don’t mind?”
“The IC—oh right… that’s a pun.”
“Hey, that’s part of the Cinnamon I know! You gotta loosen up… it’s proof that whoever thought of the name wasn’t a grouchy grump!”
Under a cold, starry night, she sits at home, with her long-time friend Cookie there for dinner. Situated in a village not too far from Ponyville, this house and its neighbors has acres of farmland just a stone’s throw away. Even now, the smell of produce has only now been stamped out by the scent of pumpkin soup.
“So how’s it going, Cinnamon Bun?” The cheerful Earth pony sipped on her food and made a loud slurp. “I heard Oakley’s hanging out with his wife, like, again!”
“That’s how marriage works,” Cinnamon says. “It’s been over a decade after we all got uplifted, and you still sound so wondrous at the whole world.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Cookie makes a characteristic tilt of the head. “I mean, it was kinda’ sad when we all moved out on our own from the Apple family—and yeah, I know what you’re gonna say… ‘Yes, I know, I was there’—but it’s still fun!” She tilts her head further, her mane dangerously close to her soup. “How’s work? Sounds like you got some overtime blues.”
“Been fine enough.” A couple of cookies are taken. “We did have an emergency. Everyone pitched in, though.”
Her head tilts far enough for the mane to be dipped in her food. “Emergency, huh? Tell me all about it!”
“It’s not a fun story, Cookie.”
Cookie’s sobbing still rings from across the bedroom. Though muffled by the pillows covering her ears, Cinnamon still lies awake, chilly past a crawling midnight.
It burns her heart, left a seething, empty, hollow, despairing something within her veins. Cookie kept asking, looking for more scoops on the emergency. The news, of course, was broken to her in full.
Don’t worry about our counterparts there, Cinnamon said. They’re in good hooves now.
That was hours ago. The watchful ticking of her alarm clock marked the hourly fractions when Cookie cried awake and when she cried asleep.
A warm coasts Cinnamon’s head. Her heart beats harder. She rises to see a candle, tries to focus on it through the window. It may have vanished, if it has been there.
A malaise falls upon the train ride to the bureau, fixing frowns into the faces of her colleagues. Small talk chooses not to show up. Past granite gates lay the atrium where the portals lay. Traffic from the other worlds to here is still low; not many appointments show up on her list.
But as she approaches her desk, the candle still lays there. Anarchy sits at her chair, touching the flame with the tips of her bat wings. At the last second, her head rises; everypony else gives her a quick greeting. “Hiya. What’s up?”
Cinnamon bites her tongue. The draconequus—or ponequus or whatever she is… spawns of Discord are not to be questioned, not too much. “Anarchy?”
“Always with the full name,” she teases. “You know you can call me Ann, right?”
“I wish I could have the honor, but like I said, we haven’t really met a lot. Our progenitors—”
“I mean, my Dad and your world’s Dad… uh, Discord… they did meet in the comments somewhere,” she said.
“I’ve taken note of that. But Anarchy—er, Ann—why are you here? At my desk?”
“Come on, is it a crime to hang out?” she answers with a laugh. “But to be serious, my family and I are planning to move into your world for a while. Can’t really have two Moms in the ol’ cottage, but we can manage in Ponyville somewhere.”
Cinnamon magically picks up her clipboard. “That’s more than fair. When’re you going?”
“End of the day?”
That gives Cinnamon pause. “That early? You’re not the sort to be in a rush.”
“Oh no, no rush!” Twiddling her claw and paw, “Still, it’s… Mom and Dad want us to get out of here sooner or later. This place is great and all, but this ain’t a village. Dad would go mad from the gray walls and the gray floors and the gray goo—”
“He’s already mad.”
“Heh! Knew you’d say that.” She pumped a fisted claw into the air. “Could never resist a joke for too long!”
Cinnamon sighs, putting down her clipboard. “So, what now?”
It takes a while for Anarchy to focus back on the conversation. “Just papers for moving in. Dad and I are pretty bad at bureaucracy, which, figures—” she sticks her tongue out again “—but that’s what this place is for, isn’t it? I can at least be there. And your friends are still there, too.”
“Like, everyone?”
“From the 2016 changelings to the Jinglemas start-up OC’s made forDrakeyC’s—”
“Watch your meta levels, Anarchy.”
“Oh yeah, right, that!” But she turns to the reader, blushing. “You know, kinda’ wish Comma had his own representative OC for this one. Could’ve had some roleplay going on…”
Back-and-forth waiting for Ponyville mail and other documents in the refurbished town hall. From what Cinammon’s heard, it isn’t too different from many other Ponyvilles across the worlds. Anarchy’s world, for example, lived several years ahead in “canon time.” How Cinnamon still managed to understand concepts like “time differential” in her training for bureau work, she has not figured out.
But in line, changing chairs every few minutes, getting familiar with the patient ponies before and after her, Cinnamon waits to the scratching of pencils and ballpen. Anarchy is at Cinnamon’s beck and call, teleporting in and out to provide signatures and hoofprints and other forms of identification, at one point bringing along Cozy Glow (which the other ponies in line then get scared of, only to be told that, no, the petrified Cozy Glow in the Canterlot Gardens hasn’t gotten free; reports of Anarchy and her friends’ deeds and misdeeds spurred this world’s S.M.I.L.E. to enact stricter security measures—
“Oh yeah, I think that’s me,” Anarchy says. “Whoops! Here’s your little parenthesis back: )”
“How did… how did you speak out a punctuation mark?”
Anarchy pats Cinnamon on the back. “Practice. Also, long line we’re having here, yeah? I figure I can stay here for a jiff. So, everypony, who wants to see Cheese’s chaos mane?”
Several ponies raise their hooves.
“And here’s where you’ll be staying in,” says the realtor to Anarchy’s family, voice somewhat muffled through the walls. “Close to the Everfree but not too far from Ponyville proper.”
Cinnamon hangs back just outside the front door, listening to the businessmare praise the newly constructed house by the wayside. Fluttershy has been expected to be here, and along with Anarchy, her two other children are present, a changeling-esque creature and a pegacorn colt. Of good surprise to Cinnamon is Discord’s presence, holding a bouquet of flowers, sometimes nudging Fluttershy with it. They share a polite kiss on the cheek while the realtor doesn’t work, which Cinnamon sees through the window.
Their heads float in and out of a succession of windows. Uncharacteristic of Discord, he shushes Mayhem and Frenzy whenever they get too rowdy with chaos magic, profusely apologizing to the realtor for their behavior.
When the sky darkens and night begins, from within their new home, Cinnamon can spot the shaky shadows of the family, cast by a candle Anarchy holds. Browning leaves rustle above Cinnamon, spinning before leaving.
Leaving the café, Cinnamon waves goodbye to Oakley and his newly wedded wife. They spoke of a simple and humble honeymoon, they boasted of the delights of love, they kissed through a little accident with spaghetti, they laughed and hugged.
But down the street, a faint light catches her eyes against the darkness. Once at the little cottage—not Fluttershy’s, but the style isn’t too far off—she knocks on the door. She is greeted by Fluttershy. Not the one she knows; the eyebags on her face proclaim her age. “Oh!… hello there. You must be Miss Cinnamon?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Ah.” Only now does Cinnamon register that her eyes are red. And that her voice is muffled. “Ann told me to expect you. Come right in.”
Cinnamon takes in the rustic aesthetic, of a little fireplace and a couple of reading chairs, the smell of freshly burned wood. Cheesy family pictures adorn the shelves; scrolls and quills encroach upon the cabinets and the furniture. Flowers in vases and pots and just pure soil bloom, lighting up Cinnamon’s path through the living room.
Fluttershy glides up the stairs and out of sight, but by the fire, Anarchy sits, with a cup of tea going cold by the recliner. A candle gives scant warmth to the drink.
“Where’s the rest of the family?” Cinnamon asks matter-of-factly.
A sentient teaspoon drops supar into Anarchy’s teacup. “Upstairs,” says Anarchy herself. “Discord’s brought over some friends…”
“Mm. You know that the rest of your friends are here, too, in safe hooves. Sort of.”
“Yes. Thank you very much for that.”
Cinnamon sees Anarchy’s chair expand into a two-seater, coughing out dust and a remote control and some pocket change. A paw invites her to take the extra space. So she takes it.
“I… I know I can’t be here for too long,” Anarchy begins, blowing on her tea. “I know why you’re here, why all this is happening. I… people will see me. Different ways, situations… just so I stay awake.”
“Stay awake?”
Anarchy lets a digit go from her cup. “There’s… fourothers expecting me. Or they already saw me. Funny how that works. But I wish… no… well, someone wishes we spent more time together, you and I.”
Cinnamon clasps her forehooves tight. “But we were quite far apart”
“Doesn’t matter. An ocean apart, but I still saw you, you still saw me. Wasn’t it you and your little horses that helped get him hooked onto your little world in the first place?”
“And you got him hooked to yours. I know...”
A hoofful of giggles are shared. Bubbly and fizzy is the feeling climbing Cinnamon’s soul. But everything vanishes with a sigh, a welcome layer of sound against the crackling of dying wood. “You can’t stay, you know, Anarchy. You already stopped staying. Besides, what am I doing here with you now? Just talking to someone else’s interpretation or remembrance of you just to let it all out?”
“That’s not Cinnamon talking, is it?”
“Ergh, probably isn’t. Yet, you’re not here, like, kind of, but you’re still… somewhere in my head… I just didn’t know. I don’t… no, I don’t know. One day or every day, I expect to say hi, and you say hi, and we’d wave, we’d talk… maybe not you and me but everyone else, your home and my home, like nothing happened. Cookie… she wanted to travel there, get to your world, get to know you more. Maybe after a while, we’d really meet, not just us but the creatures outside this reality… we’d have a party, a feast, talk about each other and our own Equestrias… or take a call, play chess, get to know our other friends…”
Sharp points take her on the withers. Anarchy’s claw, she sees, calming her down. An anxiety attack, or it might’ve been.
“But you know what The Good Book says, Anarchy… the house of mourning… it’s better than the house of feasting…”
Anarchy holds out a big black tome of scripture, the cover lit up in the fireplace’s melding orange aurora. “Where we all end up...”
The candle’s light burns as entertainment and contemplation. They watch it whip against the air, defiant as the flame fought the invading cold, then watch each other.
Though a gale, a storm, a hurricane pass them by, they grip their seats tight, grip each other tight, Anarchy’s chaos magic contradicting itself by maintaining order in her home, keeping the elements at bay and the candle afloat.
When an hour passes, Anarchy takes the fire into her forelimbs, says a weak goodbye, and hurries upstairs. And the candle is passed.
In the morning, there is a list to check. Another schedule of appointments, checking up on other worlds. A cup of coffee this time; no sugar, no creamer: just dark, bitter black.
She pours into her headspace a system of questions and answers, meant to gently coax out more of an amiable relationship with the worlds ahead. To her relief, most of them are the sane ones, nothing like the cosmic horrors of a heart in cinders she only saw passing, dreamful glimpses of.
Her hooves drag her to a portal. Levers pulled, flashing buttons pressed, the portal’s frame alight with a bevy of indicators, she lunges forward.
Drops of water pitter and patter from hanging stalactites. The cavern yawns with a rising hoard, though it sparkles not of gems but of scrolls of inked paper.
Ebony and silver glitter the scales of the lair’s dragon. Cinnamon is as dust to him as she stands small before his head, holding such a flammable notepad.
“I know it’s been a bit of a long time since our worlds met,” she says. “Actually a bit since, well, we met your world’s humans.”
She fumbles on her notepad. It sinks through a mountain of unprocessed pulp and oceans ofink.
Inside a dimensionally different city of dragons stuck in Equestria, her guests sit at the top of a watchtower, overlooking rows upon rows of residences, with a combined pony-dragon guard patrolling the area. She was briefed over half a year ago about this being a worlds’ convergence. She could tell by how the purple dragon on Starlight’s left didn’t look at home with Equestria’s draconic neighbors.
“Actually, can you believe it? You’re the second dragon in a row today!” Cinnamon looks up from her notes to register the faces of both Starlight and who she remembered as Spyro. “Still, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
Her magic wavers, drops the quill. They both ask if she’s okay while she keeps her jaw from twitching, her eyes defogged from the mist oftears.
“Uh, why were you meeting with me?” says an older Scootaloo, accompanied by a Flurry Heart.
Cinnamon falters, checking where she is and what she waited for: a train, having just departed Ponyville. “I mean, I was told—”
“Weren’t you supposed to meet up with Stock Image?” Flurry asks.
“How do you know? Actually, never mind. We’ve met before. I just needed more preparation dealing with a ghost, but with Stock being away, well…”
She later confesses, in written word on her report, of airing things out to barely adult Scootaloo and literal-foal Flurry, along with being unable to hide her wet eyes fromthem.
“Me again?” Wallnut asks, on a boat bobbing along the piers of Tobuck; the buildings that make up the cityline are afresh with scaffolds and new coats of paint. “Look, I appreciate the gesture, but one, isn’t this all a whole work-in-progress? And two, I’m not even done with my tale! Haven’t even started yet, miss!”
“It doesn’t hurt to check, and—”
Her quill falls into the water.
Before Wallnut dives in to save it, he checks her pulse, her panicking pulse for a frozen mare. “Lady, I think ya got bigger problems than some war or meetingme.”
Cinnamonwatches as a blue little dragon creature from an Everfree launches from her desk, signaling the end of her late-night appointment. All lights turn off in waves; maintenance staff enters with mops and toolboxes. The portal’s light fixtures shut down last.
She puts the schedule aside, riddled with erasures and impromptu notes. Relations have been maintained. Checkmarks, currency marks, and exclamation marks fill her own review. Her bag is picked up in her magic; she sets her face towards the exit.
A desk opens on its own. A candle burns bright within.
Cinnamon stops cold. “No, please, I just…”
The candle lays there, casting a greater light upon her desk, upon her papers. The little calendar and the rest of the stationery glimmer. The frames of portals all across shine on her face by the light of the candle, like the moon joined with the sun.
The sense of light pours into her heart. White invades her mind. Dots, just like in the dream realm, surround her. Ann, not yet fully formed, years ago—excited to meet her a year after her own creation, shaking paw and hoof. Then being told that she had a counterpart back in her world, her and her best friends Cookie and Oakley, helping up their Earth’s Applejack through strange magical times. And then her turn came, the spotlight on her; Cinnamon had read the reports from the other agents and observers, of Anarchy’s non-conventional birth, of built-in safety features, of schoolmates and a hoofball game, freeing up Cozy Glow and almost causing the end of Equestria in the process… all tucked in with a foggy Nightmare Night, where in all her dreams, the future ended there, and the universe started closing its doors.
She debases herself against her desk as all things fall apart, her defenses worn down by an amorphous tide searing her from within. By the time emergency staff carry her dry-heaving body to the ward, her eyes are fountains.
The train to Ponyville can’t go fast enough. When it stops, Cinnamon barrels out, breaking wooden panels. Others call on her, though the village itself is asleep; hooves ball up into fists to rage against the intruder.
She sees the cottage. Within, a little light hangs on.
Anarchy sits alone inside. The light in the fireplace, reduced to just the little candle on a familiar office desk. Cinnamon asks her for a little walk outside.
“I once wondered,” she begins, lying on a hole in the concrete wall, a partition between the highway and the La Loma Cemetery on Earth, another universe's universe. The wind breezes with clarity, hovering over empty roads and sidewalks; orange streetlights blaze against her vision like a blinding fog, not helped by the lingering smoke of invisible jeepneys and pigs roasted on spits.
“Once wondered about what?”
“I… don’t know. I just… keep… wanting to find something to say. I didn’t know. Just anything to be here… get an ending, but I don't want an ending...”
The landscape shifts, the foreign downtown melting into the cozy suburbs of Canterlot City. A crowd assembles at the staircase of Canterlot High, both humans and Equestrians. Magical lasers light up the sky, shooting out of the horse statue’s portal. The light dissipates, unveiling the skyscrapers of Ponyville so many years ahead, hollow without light nor life. The chatter of creatures, the noise of machinery, the buzz of magic every unicorn hears but keeps to the back of their mind like background radiation—nothing but nothing. Yet though every light is off, the stars still shine, the sky clear as day. Everything bites in the cold, save for the warmth of Anarchy’s paw that doesn’t seem intent on letting go.
“Like. Ann… I didn’t want… I should’ve done more, Anarchy. Said more. Talked to you more. I heard a lot about this being beaten…”
“Maybe. Maybe not. At least he kept you thinking positive until the very end. You saw his last message, didn’t you?”
“Of course, I did, but…”
Anarchy turns her head to the firmament above. A majestic purple, a deep dark blue sinking ever upward.
“Wait, didn’t you say this part wasn’t canon?”
“It wasn’t,” Anarchy answers, showing off a loose tooth. “But Dad told me he liked it so much that we’d work backwards to this time, make it a family moment. Some lore to hint at, plant seeds of. At least you’d have made it here, Cinny.” Then Anarchy fixes her gaze on Cinnamon. “You're the analytical type, but I’m a pony of chaos, spawn of Discord and Fluttershy. And hey, you’re an uplifted farm horse from a magical curiosity. Between the two of us, what is canon?”
Their laughter is cut short by a boat floating their way. Behind it, though light years away, a tiny star illuminates the night sky, dispersing the darkness.
“Already?” Cinnamon asks.
Anarchy nods. “Already.”
“But what about the cottage?”
“You read the last chapter, didn’t you? Even if it’s canon now, but I still have a lot of fuel left in me.” She grips the edge of the boat; it rocks, gently, while Anarchy throws out a gas can. “You… everyone helped. The lights may be off here, but everyone’s got photos. More than just the fan art, I know I’d still be out there, on digital pages, but more importantly, I’d be out there in your heads and hearts, in what’ll be left behind.”
She hops over to rest in the wooden vessel, swaying in the wind that no longer moved. “I know I’m not him. You know that. I’m my father’s brand of chaos. Whatever Comma’s doing with me won’t exactly be the Anarchy my creator envisioned. I can’t be your substitute, Cinnamon. I can say all the things about moving on, but Cinny…” Any possibility for a smile fades out, leaving Cinnamon to double-take. “I know you didn’t come here for a lecture.”
“No, no… no, I just want to be with you, just a little longer. It shouldn’t be over…”
Tripping onto the boat, hopping over a seat just to be with her, she buries her face into her neck, hugged by Anarchy, burning streams rushing out of her eyes. Tighter she holds her, to keep her tangible and real in her hooves. A slipping away, all of a sudden, on a fateful night that ignorance kept her from the painful waking—
“There, there,” Ann says, patting her on the back. “As long as I’m out there, my journey won’t ever end… and hey, you still remember me. I’ll be there. My family and friends will be there. Always. Say hi to them for me.”
No words, only sobs, a confused throat, trying to trash the boat, only for Ann to rip her hooves out of her life. But they cling on to her, desperate, for her dear life.
The hours blend in. The moon never falls. A cold wind breaks the two of them into shivers. It has been days now. The boat never leaves.
“Promise me… you’ll have fun, Cinny? For your sake and mine? You used to be so fun…”
“It was a little curiosity that got me in trouble for a bit.”
“But we wouldn’t have met without it. Without that passion you had once before. I wouldn’t let you live like a dead man walking. Just… promise me that, at least? Won’t you, Comma?”
“I’m not Comma.”
“You might as well be.”
She bends to hug Cinnamon one more time, one more hug resting on top of a mountain of a million hugs missed.
Anarchy standing firm within, the boat floats away, lifting itself higher into a hole in the sky.
“Hey, hey, you forgot the candle! Give it to me! I’ll pass!”
Then, great winds rip it off her hooves, rips her off of the boat. She tumbles down onto vaporizing grass, the soil being lifted up as gravity fluctuated and the stars gave into a symphony of supernovas. The heavens rip themselves open, folding and closing a cosmic scroll that stretches across time and space. The horizon tears itself apart, the earth below breaks, the stars flood her vision from up and down. The lights flicker back on for the final moment, joining the visual chorus of an all-white collapse.
“Cinnamon, get out of here!”
Unknown voices melt until she can recognize them, hooves grabbing her by the legs, dragging her out of the universe’s final throes, bright destruction blending into the rainbow colors of the space that hid between worlds, the portals’ limbo.
She hurls, retches on the polished floor, vertigo kicking in from the inter-dimensional ride back home. Pushed forward, is told to that she’ll be given a car, trip back to her house, where Cookie and Oakley and the rest of her friends wait.
A look back, however, grants her a deactivated portal frame. Unplugged, yet preserved.
The night sky bothers her, the moon bathing her in soft silver while she stumbles to the front door, already open with Cookie and Oakley waiting. There is the telling that they know what happened, of Anarchy journeying somewhere past time and space.
She hugs them tighter. Cinnamon doesn’t let them go. Never does as they lead her up the stairs, bathe her clean from tears and snot and vomit, puts her to bed, but she sits up, adamant, never letting go of those hooves, of beating and breathing signs of life, their faces moving, their souls still burning, fellow flames having burned with her for decades ever since they awoke upon rolling hills and a morning to herald, to celebrate, their arrival upon the world.
“I… I don’t want to let you go… a-all of you…” Tears stain and strain her once again upon a dozen times, but Oakley brings tissue and Cookie sits by her. “I’ll be with you… more and more… I just…”
The last thing to be remembered is a vague blubbering before she sleeps.
In a dream, behind a door lies an infinite hallway of shadow save for a blazing candle. Anarchy steps into frame, and colors return, tangible and holdable and they are crisp to the touch. Grass grows and flowers flourish from her hoofsteps and from Cinnamon’s; the scents of crashing ocean and a bountiful forest send them grace.
Outside a humble tent, they sit by two rocks prepared for them. Thus does Anarchy begin, “So, wanna hear a story? Then you tell me yours!”
Cinnamon looks up at her. Her fangs, her bat wings, her eerie resemblance to Fluttershy… and a halo, she imagines, around her as a morning sun forms in the sky, made of the candle’s blaze, departing from her thoughts. But though short-lived is the morning and evening falls upon them, Anarchy still sits, still asks with eagerness.
She can only reply, with good cheer, “Sure, Ann! ”
