The cutie marks had stopped glowing. But the song remained.

It played across the flowing white hills. It danced through frozen orchards and up the trodden paths of snow. It wove through woods and rode up the pillars of smoke rising from busy chimneys.

It hummed just beyond the edge of hearing. It went on like the sound in the head after thought was silenced.

The song was too faint to say if it had words. But if it did….

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.

“Rarity, there’s customers!” Sweetie Belle said.

“So deal with them!”

“I’m busy playing on the dressmaking machine in the basement,” Sweetie Belle said. “You said I have to play at least three before I can have dinner.”

“I said no such thing!” Rarity said. “You have been imagining things, missy.”

Sweetie Belle wandered over, flopped across the table and peered at what Rarity was writing. “What’s that?”

“I am sending letters.”

“How come?”

“Because there are things to say. We’re having the Apples over tomorrow.”

“Apple Bloom’s coming?” Sweetie Belle clapped her hoofs. “We can finish playing apples to apples!”

“I…don’t think she knows the rules.”

“There are rules?”

Rarity hunched over her parchment again. “Invite the customers in and stall them with our new size system until I come down.”

“The one where we start at zero and count in, uh, logger rhythms?”

“Run along now.”

The door closed. Footsteps disappeared down the stairs. Rarity levitated her pen to the parchment and reread the last sentence.

…deeply apologize for my previous behavior. I am pleased to announce a new sale at the Carousel Boutique offering 50% off on everything for returning customers.

She sighed. Eighty-seven more names on the list.

Perhaps we could meet for tea. I would love to catch up.

Her signature splashed onto the paper with an R that curled across the page and a Y with a loop that ponies could indeed hang together with.

Eighty-six more names on the list. She felt better already.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.

“Psst!”

“Eek!”

Derpy jumped three feet in the air, aided by her light Pegasus bones. For any other pony it would have been a moment of comedic surprise. Derpy was not any other pony.

Her leg caught on a mailbox, clipping it and knocking it off its perch and sending her spinning backwards through the air. She landed in a pile of snow upside-down, her legs sticking out and wiggling helplessly.

Something took hold of them and tugged. It pulled her free of the snow and onto the ground. Derpy wiped her face, shivering.

“Hey.”

“Eeeeek!”

Derpy cowered from the hooded figure. “D-don’t hurt me!”

“Hurt you?” The hood lifted, revealing a bright pink face and hair puffier than popcorn. “I just want you to deliver a message for me.”

“Oh.” Derpy’s normally gray face was bright red. She got slowly to her hoofs and searched around for her mailbag, finding it laying nearby. “S-sorry, you surprised me.”

“Life is full of surprises. I’m most of them. Now listen carefully.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to find Maud Pie.”

“Who?”

“She’s my sister. Tell her…I miss talking about rocks.”

“Where does she live?”

“I think she travels.”

“How am I supposed to find her?”

“…Pinkie Sense?”

“I don’t have that! Listen,” Derpy slung the bag over her shoulder. “I want to help you, but I’m not magic.”

“I thought the Deliverymare could find anypony.”

“Um…well….”

Pinkie Pie had gotten very close very fast. She leaned above Derpy, her eyes as wide as the maw of the abyssal creature that haunted Derpy’s dreams.

“I think you and I have something in common.”

“R-really?”

“We come from the same place.”

“W-where’s that?”

“I shouldn’t say it. If it gets said too many times, it’ll be here. And we don’t know how many times it’s been said.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It is. Maud comes from the other place. She’s as solid as a rock. It’s important that we find her. Do you understand?”

“I…think so. Um, this sounds like a really difficult mission.”

“It does? I just want to invite her to a party! What’s so difficult about that???”

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

“Yeehaw!” Applejack said. “Cerberus, you clear snow faster than any ten ponies.”

The Cerberus, which held a plow in each gigantic mouth, whipped up a small storm with its tail.

The door banged against the wall. Applejack whirled around to see Apple Bloom running out with letters in her mouth.

“Mail’s here!” Apple Bloom said in a muffled voice.

“Would you rush an apple pie?” Applejack said.

“What?” Apple Bloom jumped across a pile of snow and spat the letters out. “Look, I’m a Cerberus!”

“You ain’t, you little crabapple. Just because we change our prices now don’t mean nothing else changes.”

“Growl,” Apple Bloom said to the Cerberus, who was actually terrified of children and never knew what to do with her paws.

Applejack waited until Apple Bloom relented and gave her the letters like a proper pony.

“Let’s see here,” she said, flipping through them. “Bills. Something from William. I hope he stopped shooting apples off ponies’ heads. Last I heard he doesn’t wait to put the apple on them first.”

Apple Bloom chased after the Cerberus, who was making incredible time with the plows.

“And…huh.”

This letter wasn’t addressed to “Applejack”. It was addressed to “The eldest mare of the Apple family.”

To the eldest mare of the Apple family,

Salutations! We write to you on the most propitious of occasions….

Applejack skimmed until the words started saying something. She flipped the page and started reading.

…a business venture combining your land and our ACME-guaranteed machinery, a partnership that seems so splendid we are positively, absolutely….

Blah blah blah.

…the buried treasure of Granny Smith.

Your most humble servants,

Flim and Flam

For such short names, their signatures took up a lot of page.

Applejack looked at the frozen orchards. Snow clumped on leafless branches. The red-green bird had migrated south, and the trees were cold and gray.

But the bird would come back.

The humor tickled her face till a grin broke out. Granny Smith didn’t have no hidden buried treasure. Her treasure hung off trees for anypony to take—so long as they paid first.

Because the red apple skins were her blood, and the green her coat, and the black seeds her teeth, and the white meat the pages of the Book, those that weren’t yellow and black, which was most of them admittedly.

Not a buried treasure. A living one. There’d be a funeral for it someday. But not before Applejack’s. And not as long as anypony liked to eat apples.

“Apple Bloom!” she called. “Get me my best paper and the pen that still writes! I got a letter to send!”

When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.

“Fluttershy! It’s so good to see you again.”

“Hello,” Fluttershy smiled at the mare at the desk. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around recently. All this snow!”

“Don’t make me laugh! You’re here so often I think you’re one of our patients!”

“Ha.” Fluttershy picked up her medicine box again and headed down the hall.

She stopped at a door and knocked. Instead of waiting, she pushed it open.

“Hello, Mrs. Butterhoof. Would you like me to change your sheets?”

Mrs. Butterhoof indicated she would, mostly by drooling. Fluttershy changed the sheets, hefting up a portion of Mrs. Butterhoof’s saggy flesh whenever she needed to. She wasn’t strong when it came to leg-wrestling, but she was the local champion at lifting old mares.

“All better?”

“Grnl.”

“That’s nice. Have a good day.”

She closed the door on the way out. Two doors down and to the left, she knocked again.

“Mr. Sweet? Would you like me to get you some fresh water?”

“Fresh water! They dint feed me for three days!”

“Goodness. I’ll get you something to drink.”

“Right, right,” Mr. Sweet said suspiciously, watching her fill a cup. “I won the lottery.”

“Really? Again?” Fluttershy gave him the filled cup.

“Don’t tell!”

“My lips are sealed.”

Down the line of doors, familiar faces, familiar conversations. She didn’t even have to listen anymore. She always did, though.

The last door looked like all the others. Fluttershy took a deep breath before she knocked.

“Eh?”

“It’s me!”

“Eh? I’m seeing a patient!”

“I’ll be just a minute.”

The instant Fluttershy stepped into the room, Father’s face split into the widest smile a pony ever had. “Feather! Come here, pigeon.”

The room was dark, the blinds drawn. It smelled slightly stale and musty, as if the window wasn’t opened enough. She opened it, then set the medicine box down by the foot of his bed and sat.

“Hello, Daddy.”

“Feather, my dear, what do you think of the curtains I got?”

Fluttershy was used to answering to her mother’s name. She was also used to the curtains, or rather the lack of them. “I couldn’t ask for more.”

“I picked them out special just for you.”

“Thank you, I really love it.”

Wrinkles molded his face and made it rubbery and slack. He was wearing his teeth at least, though probably not cleaned. For a moment he seemed to have exhausted his conversational stores.

“I saw a patient today,” he said at last.

“Oh? That’s good.”

“You won’t believe who!”

“Probably not.”

He gave her a crafty look. “Princess Celestia, it was! Pigeon, we’ve hit it big!”

“I’m very happy to hear that.”

“She had yellows.”

“Goodness.”

“Cured her right, though. Cured her right.”

“Do you know my name?” Fluttershy said.

He grunted, not unpleasantly. He just didn’t have an answer.

The medicine box was by her hoofs. There were bandages, and smelly things for cleaning, and a very pointy needle, and a small vial of a liquid that had sent tremors through her heart every time it sloshed when she first poured it.

She knew what the last memory of her father would be. She had made it months ago. If she also remembered today, it would just be remembering it twice.

“They said it would be better for you here,” she said, knowing he didn’t understand. “I wasn’t sure, but they said, everypony said. At the time…at the time it hurt me more to imagine me hurting you because I didn’t let you go, than hurting you because I let you into the care of ponies who just…aren’t…enough.”

He did his grunt again, and looked around for something to say he had bought for her.

“If you want,” Fluttershy said, “I can end it. If you want. You just need to tell me somehow. If you’re unhappy or in pain, you just need to tell me somehow. And I’m sorry that I, I.” She wiped her eyes and said nothing more.

“How about a night out, Feather? Just you and me.”

“Mm-hmm,” Fluttershy said, her throat burning too much to speak. She took a deep breath. “I’d like that.”

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Rainbow Dash was winning, and it felt really good.

Her opponent studied the board. The sand was trickling down agonizingly slowly, like Tank walking across the room. His hoof hovered over a piece she hadn’t considered. Had she missed—oh no, if he moved there!

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE PONY SHAPED ONE MOVES?

Rainbow Dash breathed a sigh of relief.

They met for tea every week. Chess wasn’t as much fun as a race, but he always won those. He wasn’t faster—he just won. As in, by the time she got to the finish line, he was already there, and had been since the race began.

Fortunately, he was kind of dumb when it came to calculating anything more than a lifespan.

Tank nudged a platter with a fresh pot of tea along the ground. Rainbow Dash sipped.

“Ow! It’s hot!”

Tank would have rolled her eyes, but she was a tortoise.

“It’s been a crazy time lately,” Rainbow Dash said as her opponent blundered into an easy fork. She snapped her move onto the board, flipped the sandglass, and took another sip. “Twilight’s gone so crazy she’s even moping about an invisible friend.”

BUGGER.

“Yeah, you’re bad with the knights.”

I LEAD THEM OUT OF BATTLE, NOT INTO IT.

“Huh? You always say the weirdest things. A statue came alive! It tried to kill me. Twilight saved me! Then she made out with the air or something, it got kind of uncomfortable.”

CHECK.

Rainbow Dash took his piece without even stopping to think. “She’s so bummed out, I wish there was something I could do.”

BUGGER.

“At least the Sugarcube Corners are open again. I couldn’t sleep without any coffee.”

Her opponent studied the board with an increasingly unhappy gaze.

Rainbow Dash swished the last sip of tea around her mouth thoughtfully. “You’re always going off to weird places, have you ever seen an invisible mare like that? Huh? You have? Really! Can you bring her a message from Twilight? Oh, you’re seeing her tomorrow? How come?”

Notice me!

The mare watched Twilight.

Twilight did not see the mare.

Please! Be what you were again!

Twilight turned the page of her book.

The mare slumped on the floor. Spike walked through her, carrying a glass of radish juice, which Twilight accepted with a pleased noise.

No….

Nothing worked. There wasn’t anything to seem like it could work. Like a foal who stopped believing in Santa Hoofs, Twilight was never coming back.

The mare rejected that. There was a way. There had to be a way.

The floor wobbled. Darkness crept around the edges of her vision. Space blurred and distorted—

No, no! Don’t do that again. It just hurt her and didn’t help.

But she saw again! No. She didn’t. Not me. Just the monster I became.

Maybe I should hurt her—no! It makes everything black and cold. You hated that. You told yourself you didn’t and it was a lie and it still didn’t help.

Then what?

“That reference can’t be right,” Twilight said to herself. “I’ll check.” She began to stand up.

For a moment the mare thought it was just a dark vision of herself, another guild-made tool of torment. But it didn’t disappear.

A stallion all in black with a scythe was walking across the room toward Twilight. Who had taken quite a lot of abuse over the last two weeks, and never rested like Fluttershy said.

Whose carotid arteries, as she stood, were stretched too thin, and snapped.

The scythe came down.

And stopped on the handle of a shovel.

Two glowing blue sparks turned her way.

“Mine,” the mare said.

She didn’t know if a magic circle could hold him. That’s what the shovel was for.

The scythe flashed, and she blocked it again. It whirled, cutting, and met the blade of her shovel. Sound waves were sliced apart before they could make so much as a clang.

He drew back for a moment. The mare tensed.

A thousand, million, billion scythe-blades carved through as many worlds toward Twilight, cutting along every line of possibility.

The mare moved to block the first one….

In another world…

…there was a house on the rock by the water. A Unicorn lived there, and kept a library. She was visited occasionally by the local fillies and colts when they were looking for entertainment or a place to hide.

The Unicorn spent her days there reading by the sea and smiling at the young ones who came her way. Waves falling against the rock carried her to sleep each night, and the morning bravado of gulls woke her. She ate simple things, and read, and watched, and was basically happy.

There was another…

…she was very skinny, but it didn’t matter, and she wore a dress the color of spring grass that stopped short of reaching her hoofs. That mare was always with the Unicorn, though few ever noticed. The Unicorn did, though, and politely refused the occasional offers she received to meet with some local stallion. The ponies of the nearby town grew accustomed to their spinster librarian on the rock by the water and the offers stopped.

The Unicorn knew the mare, and was glad for her company.

Many suns and moons passed like that….

In the normal amount of time, lengthy for the Unicorn and vanishingly brief for her companion, the Unicorn was dying. The mare could not save the Unicorn, nor join her.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

None of them did.

The mare had eyes that saw in modals, eyes that had seen this long ago. And now, finally, she gave it up….

An infinitude of scythe-edges curled down toward Twilight. The mare blocked each one.

“Stalemate,” she said. “I’m allowed to challenge you to a game, right? You don’t win.”

He stood back, putting the butt of the scythe on the floor and compressing very much like a sigh.

I CAN NEVER REMEMBER HOW THE PONY SHAPED ONES MOVE.

He fished a sandglass out of his cloak and examined it. Only a few grains of purple sand remained.

Grains of sand that were glowing, glowing as of music giving off light.

It disappeared back into the black recesses of his cloak. He looked at her, one brilliant blue eye flashing out for a moment.

He grinned.

And left.

The mare sagged. Twilight stood by the bookshelf, searching for a reference, and didn’t notice the sad eyes on her back.

It wasn’t what she wanted.

It was what she had.

And that would have to be good enough.

She would not stand at her grave and cry.
There would be no grave. She would not die.

This is not a happy story.

It is not a sad one either. Some bad things happened, and some good things, and a lot of mess in between. But I think Twilight Sparkle, and even the mare, are both, if not happier, then better off now than in the time during and after Princess Cadance’s visit to Canterlot. No matter what they each lost, and no matter what will come after, something was created during that brief and unspoken-of battle that would not die…and not vanish…until the end of the time of all things….

…We must face the positive fact that the motivations for higher living standards that a free market channels into Walrasian equilibrium when the special conditions for that pattern happen to be favorable—these same motivations often lead to social collusions and myriad uses of the state. For good or evil, these may not be aberrations from laissez-faire, but theorems entailed by its intrinsic axioms. —Paul Samuelson. (Emphasis added)

However favorable an opinion one may hold of the business game, he must be very illiberal not to concede that others have a right to a different view and that large numbers of admirable people do not like the game at all. It is then justifiable at least to regard as unfortunate the dominance of the business game over life, the virtual identification of social living with it, to the extent that has come to pass in the modern world. In a social order where all values are reduced to the money measure in the degree that is true of modern industrial nations, a considerable fraction of the most noble and sensitive characters will lead unhappy and even futile lives. —Frank Knight.

He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; andy he care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

Author's Notes:

Thanks for reading.