One.
I have lived long, forever, you may say. I do not call it that. Forever implies there is a never, and that implies the impossible exists. Which, if you have ever met me, you know is untrue.
Impossible things happen every day. Well, not impossible by definition, but impossible by saying. Saying is words, and words hold power, do you not agree?
Falling in love, surviving an earthquake, losing a brother. If one were to be faced with these situations, they might mutter "No..." And "It can't be!" Or, my personal favourite, "That's impossible!"
It is possible. Oh, so very possible.
Order. Bleh. Such an ugly word. Order means rules, which means limitations, which means impossibilities. The universe doesn't work like that. I have learned that long ago.
They have called me evil, mad, cruel. I am none of these things. I am all I am, which is nothing and everything and all in between, if you choose me to be. Or maybe not.
The truth is, if compared to the universe, I am as tame as a kitten. The universe kills ponies, sheds blood of entire civilisations, starves foals and does so completely at random. It is a jerk. The problem with ponies is that they think the universe isn't alive, that it can't hear them. That's silly. After all the life that exists within it, do you think it couldn't do so for itself? Psh.
The universe is very much alive, for as long as I can remember. It takes perverse pleasure into twisting life into what is possibly the most cruel of punishment.
It forces it to think.
See, I was not always like this. At first, I was a sort of thingie, but not. I had hidden from its view for long enough to survive, but all good things must end at some point.
It turned its ugly head towards the scar in the stars, that bundle of nonsense and thought "What if it could?"
And so, now I can.
What do you mean, 'can what?' I can everything. I am Strife, I am Disorder, I am anarchy but I am also Harmony, Order and uniformity. It all depends on your view of wrong.
One day, when I was not strife but I was order, a pony of freedom came up to me and said: "Why must I live in a world of no free will, where all is grey and life is a prison?"
I gazed upon the pony, laughing at his question, amused by the irony of it all.
"My subject," I answered, "There are some who would die for a chance to abandon all chaos."
What I did not expect was for him to surprise me, which, seeing as unexpected is chaos, caused me to be trapped once more, but that's not the point. The point is the question.
He asked "Why?"
That simple, moronic question asked by a being which didn't have even an inkling of the workings of all had filled me with terror. Why? Why, I ask, does the Universe, God, whomever you may like, create all this? Order, disorder, all of it! What is the point of it all?
For the first time, I was scared. Scared to see, scared to know. I knew of fear, fear was how I trapped ponies in the cage, created strife, fooled Harmony and all that. Heh, this one time, I got a doctor guy so scared he almost never went out of his house. But anyway, I was scared. So, I seeked reassurance, I needed to be told that there was a point, a reason to live. From my stone I asked passerbys, I asked guards, I even asked Harmony for Pete's sake!
That's right, I got Pete scared too.
All of their answers, they were all useless. Some answered honour, some knowledge, some even love. Fools! Could they not see? They were all made by the same stuff, order and disorder, all of it! What they call meaning was just an illusion which would dissolve with death.
But it did give me an idea.
What if, perhaps, instead of looking at it all, seeing no pattern, I could go into detail and analyse the chaos from there? It surely was worth a try.
So, once more, I freed myself. What? Don't give me that, I'm disharmony/harmony, I do what I want. Harmony was of course immediately pouncing on me, ready to trap me once more, telling me not to "play games" and all that. They must have been quite nervous, seeing me there, doing nothing at all. Once they had calmed down (about two weeks later, with regular visits by Day and Night) they finally decided to hear me out. I told them that I was tired of being trapped over and over, so I had decided to live a good life and we could perhaps be... Friends. They couldn't handle the truth of my desire for fellowship. They were so blind that they thought friendship was a product of Harmony. Pah! What a load of Jabberwocky. There are too many variables in friendship, it's just disguised chaos. We did the whole packet, playing, helping each other, etc. the purple one in particular took a liking to me. I wish I could've spared her, but it was out of my control. Well, not really, but she would've remembered me tampering with her emotions, as memories are out of my jurisdiction, unless it breeds strife.
Anyway, after a few years, I still couldn't see a pattern. All this trust, reliance, what was it for? How did it matter?
Maybe I needed to go deeper. Maybe I needed to love.
And so, I willed myself to.
I was happy at first, so very happy. This mare, Twilight, as I recall, was wonderful. Smart, beautiful, funny. She had this bunch of little quirks that when you think about it you just..... Goo! She was adorable!
She had bad sides, too. She was very obsessive-compulsive and far too studious. She had great knowledge of the world, but no understanding of it. For all it mattered, her books might as well have been blank.
Did I mention her brother had married Love?
Love was adorable, in the way she thought she had more control over how somepony feeled than a chestnut. She could illude somepony into feeling a certain way, but it was not genuine, though I must admit, considering it lasted as long the host did, it was a powerful trick.
The point is, Love saw through my trick, she knew I willed myself to love. One day, when we were all at the beach, she brought me into a room away from pry eyes and told me that she knew I was lying, that I did not really love. I merely laughed at her foolishness, explaining that if I willed myself to, I could anything, so it was genuine. Unlike hers. But I didn't say that. But this showed me that I was still trapped, caged within my own lie. I still did not hold the meaning to it all.
And as my love, my dearest affection, aged and withered away, I could not help but weep to think I would once more be alone. I panicked, I pleaded her to allow her to be with me forever, another immortal amongst the passing by, but she refused. She told me there is no meaning to life if death can't be. So she asked me the unthinkable. She asked me to die with her.
I admit, I.... I had to think about it. But I guess it took me too long to decide, because before I knew it, she was gone. It had taken her, the Universe had won once more. And I was too afraid to share her painless forever.
Sometime later, ponykind was extinct. Only me and Day remained, as Night and Love had chosen the path I never could. As the sun grew larger and ate the space between it and Equestria, we both knew that only I would survive.
And in those last, fatal moments, Day, as annoying as ever, just HAD to ask that question. That one, haunting question I had tried to answer in what felt like forever. But we went over that.
She asked: "Why?"
And as the Sun ate at the ground, burned all creatures and scorched all that had been on this world, she didn't run. She didn't scream. She just waited for an answer.
And all that I could answer was: "I don't know."
And so, I was alone once more. Alone in the infinite void. Alone alone alone. Al-one. All alone. And bored. Bored bored bored bored. Booooorreeed. BORED. But, all on my lonesome, I could at least think. And so I did. And I thought, if the Universe was alive, could I maybe ask it? I was too scared to ask before. It was cruel, it did not like to be questioned, I was scared it would take away what I had, what I needed. But, what did have left to lose? A mind? I was fine before, I would be fine afterwards.
But fear, that damn fear, it wouldn't let me. I already said I knew of fear, on a level nopony understood. It twisted the mind, made one do things they wouldn't do, all for fear. It was the curse of thought. The fear of losing. This is why stars and rocks alike had it so much better than any living thing. They did not fear, hurt, love, laugh, cry, hate, they did none of that. And they could exist for ages.
By the time I had made my mind up, there was nothing left. Stars burnt out, rocks became dust, dark replaced light. There was nothing I could lose, nothing it could take away.
I approached it, which you'd think would be pretty easy, seeing as it is everything. The problem is that I'm also it, so I had to make so I wouldn't be caught in its thoughts.
Anyway, I managed to overcome the problem, and before me, it was. Simply that. Such a moronically simple thing, and it mesmerised me to no end. It was like... Well, looking at everything at the same time.
"What is it, child? One must go through a great deal to summon the likes of me."
You'd think it would have a great and imposing voice, with an echo and all that. But I couldn't even hear it. I just sort of had the memory of it speaking.
"I have a question, father."
It got a bit annoyed at that.
"I HAVE NO CHILD, IT! Tell me what you want before I decide to not you."
If there was something that scared me more of the question, it was to unexist. All trace of me, in all of Time, throughout all of Space, it would be undone. Such thoughts are what kept me from asking all this time.
But not today.
"Why?"
I simply asked. It would know. It knows everything.
"Why? Why not?"
It chuckled obnoxiously.
"You are a fool. You think of order and disorder and all of me as things of a whole, but separate within. There is no such thing! You are all me and I am all you, which is Chaos. No, not your chaos. That is what you call disorder."
"Then what is chaos?"
"Chaos is the collection of all that I am! Order and Disorder are both nill and all. They are definitions of pieces of the Chaos I am, but value as nothing by their lonesome. Don't you see? They don't exist. They are concepts, created by all of the likes of you. Order is the pathetic attempt at understanding me and Disorder is a moronic trial to define all else of I. There is no why, there is no how. It is all what you make of it!"
I was... Overwhelmed, to say the least. All of what was revealed.... It meant I had wasted my life. All these questions, they had no answers, because they weren't questions. They were traps. If I had believed I could not be trapped, I couldn't. If i believed Love had true power, she did. If... If I had believed that... That I could rest forever alongside her... I could.
"You have lost purpose, one." He continued, snapping me back to attention,
"You have lost your life looking for no answer to no question. I cannot repair that. But you have gone through the trouble of making me as you can see, and for giving me a somewhat meaningful conversation, I will reward you."
I couldn't believe it. Was it... Was it true? Was the universe...
"I will give you another."
... Being merciful?
I was suddenly caught in a vortex of swirling time, space bending in a light at the end of the tunnel, blinding as much as itself. I almost collided with some blue box before I arrived to my destination.
Before I arrived... Back.
I opened my eyes, and there in front of me, I saw the little pony who caused the whole bloody problem.
"Yes?" I asked him with a completely intended harshness.
He recoiled, but mustered the courage to speak.
"I-I asked why."
I couldn't help myself. It was too much. I laughed. I laughed on and on and on and on. If there had been a sun, it would've probably set. I finally stopped, staring him dead in the eyes and grinning ear to ear.
"Because they are."
Of course, the sudden outburst of chaos trapped me once more, but I had nothing to regret. I lived my life. I chose to be freed once more, I chose to make friends, I chose to fall in love. But I did not choose to look at my lover's grave, it would've been too much.
No, I chose to rest beside her.