"Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal.

He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth.

But the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question “What am I to do” if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”

—Alasdair MacIntyre

12.

Mistral looked at the airship.

He was standing on the highest of the Canterlot airship docks. Where from where he stood, he could easily see Ponyville, the Everfree Forest, and the Unicorn Range, although they were a little whitened and faded by the distance. Clouds crawled ant-like across the sky in some places, pushed by Pegasi too tiny for even his eyesight to resolve. But at the moment he was not looking at the mountains, or the clouds, or any aspect of the view. He was interested only in the project that he, the Blossoms, and many other adventurous ponies had worked on for the last few months.

He stood near the airship nose. The airship stretched long and smooth and dagger-like away from the Canterlot docks, perspective rendering it even slimmer and more streamlined than it actually was. The crew's quarters did not hang from beneath the rigid frame; they were snug inside the belly of the interior of the vessel. There were oval-shaped windows running in lines along the bottom of the sides of the craft, and a glass floor at the lowest level of the living space. The four main propeller nacelles extended a little distance from the body of the vessel. Despite how slim it looked, the circumference of the zepellin's cross-section was greater than the circumference of any other airship that had been built in Equestria: by volume it was twice as large as any other airship in Equestria. There would be room for at least thirty ponies in this ship, plus fuel and fodder and equipment to last them for months. The equipment included tools for finding more fuel and fodder; the ship would be able to sustain itself without support for many years, if they had done their calculations correctly.

It had been Pear's idea.

Mistral had been living with her in an apartment on the lower east side of Canterlot for several months, when she had proposed the idea to him and to Cherry. Mistral had been ecstatically happy to finally get married to her. The last year with her had been more glorious than any he could recall. But he could tell that she wished to do more than stay in Canterlot; and he could tell also that Cherry wished to explore the world more. And if he did not mistake himself, he felt restlessness growing in his own heart as well.

Pear wished to understand friendship, and the nature of the world she found herself in. Cherry and Pear had moved from place to place before, at least partly in pursuit of this goal. But there were lands beyond the borders of Equestria proper--lands where zebras, or buffalo, or ponies that knew neither Celestia nor Luna lived. And further lands beyond them with dragons and griffons and sphinxes and all manners of creatures. She wished to explore them all, she said, to encounter them with her friends, and to make other parts of the world a part of herself. And Mistral, on hearing her propose the project, knew that he wanted the same thing.

He and Cherry had liked the project, which hadn't stopped them from criticizing it. They had argued over the best way of doing it. They had argued whether this was an efficient way to understand friendship; over whether and airship was the best means of transportation; over the ideal size and shape and mode of propulsion of the vessel; and over the things it should carry. It had taken them longer to secure the funds for the project, to begin construction, and to persuade other ponies to join them. It had been difficult to persuade other ponies to join them, but Mistral found that he had liked it. He had never thought of himself as a pony-liking-pony, he knew; but he found encountering new ponies was something he could enjoy. He hadn't earned his cutie mark, but he had found parts of himself he hadn't known about before.

Crystal Seed wouldn't have approved of the project, Mistral knew.

A zeppelin--that was what many of the ponies called it. Zeppelins had been invented around the year 1900 in the old world, by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in Germany, as far as Mistral could recall. They had been used for transportation and for military purposes, until the Hindenburg blew up in 1937, which shattered public confidence in them. But in Equestria, no one had heard of the Hindenburg, although they all still knew the word "zeppelin." If you had followed the causal chain that lead people to use the word "zeppelin,"" in the old world, it would have lead to the old German dude. Here, it led outside of the world. As did every word he used, of course--the word "pony," just like the word "zeppelin," lead outside of the world just as surely.

"Dost thou yet dwell on the loosely-joined nature of this world?" Luna said, as she slowly materialized in the air next to him.

Mistral smiled crookedly as Luna continued, walking around him as she spoke. Her hoof-steps were utterly silent, though she was shod with silver.

"On how this very language doth reek of a world long gone? How even your name, Mistral, comes from a land that is no more? On how this world in which you now dwell has no integrity? How, follow links in the chain of the history of any single word, the chain leads into the void? How all the knowledge of foreign lands you seek, Crystal would say, is hollow."

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about that, every now and then," Mistral said. "Although it's harder and harder to do so, really. Living here makes the old world seem... empty. This feels like the world to me, now, and these worries feel more and more like abstract philosophical worries. Just like... ha, just like how I used to sometimes wonder if I was living in a simulation."

"Even so," Mistral continued, "I wouldn't be myself if abstract philosophical worries left me completely unmoved."

"And to what conclusion hast thou come," Luna said, stopping in front of him. She blinked, eyelids slowly passing over her enormous liquid eyes.

"Well," Mistral said, slowly, and stopped. He ran his eyes over the faintly ridged, outer shell of the airship. The fabric rippled in the strong breeze that he felt running through his own mane. It was cold this high, and gusts of wind would be able to sweep him off the platform if he were not careful. Not that that would be a great problem for him.

He looked down the dock to make sure that Pear was doing well in the winds

Further down the platform, he could see her and Cherry Blossom loading things on to the zeppelin. She carried the bulk of the loads, and the heavier items, working quietly and regularly, while he carried lighter items back and forth, rarely touching the ground even in these high winds. He also occasionally helped stabilize the herculean stacks of things on her back—but only rarely. Pear Blossom's massive strength was a trait which... Mistral found that he liked quite a lot. He didn't need to worry about her losing her footing; she could have wrestled him to the ground in a few seconds, if she wanted to. And as she had, he thought, smiling. It had been a little foalish of him to worry that she was doing well.

He could see that Pear and Cherry Blossom were not speaking as they worked, but you had only to look at them for a few seconds to see how many years of friendship they had behind them. It was the silence of mutual knowledge sufficiently deep that words were almost always unnecessary. Some day, Mistral looked forward to having that with Pear. He knew that point was many years away. But the process of getting there was indescribably sweet.

"You could yet turn back," Luna said. "Follow Crystal Seed in her researches."

Mistral had already said goodbye to Crystal Seed.

It had been sad, in a way he had not expected a goodbye in Equestria could be.

She had already asked Celestria to alter her mind. So Celestia had increased her working memory and her capacity for concentration. The interior of her unicorn's laboratory, when he had arrived to say goodbye, had been like the interior of a massive, three-dimensional circuit, with energy flowing through razor-narrow channels carved in the air itself, and reserves of energy pooling in twisted fractal-like trees branching between different channels. Crystal Seed had said that what Mistral could see was just the visible surface of the even more fantastic, n-dimensional reality on which Equestria was built, which itself reflected the fundamental nature of computation in all possible universes, simulated or not.

"The mappings between Equestrian space and old-world space are absolutely fascinating," Crystal had said when he visited. "I've told Celestia that I think the homomorphism reflects something fundamental about the nature of computation, given any constraints on the speed of information transfer within a manifold. Celestia just smiled at that, because she's a tease. I'm just guessing about this, but I'm pretty sure Celestia has spent a fair bit of thought on this matter, so she can make sure that she isn't running on a simulation on someone's computer. This work would be useful if you wanted to prove that you weren't in such a simulation; she needs to be certain she's at the basement level of reality before she sets out optimizing that, of course."

Mistral had followed, but also not followed, what Crystal was saying. Her enthusiasm was contagious. But her enthusiasm and self-modification was also a wall being raised irrevocably between the two of them.

She almost never walked anymore. She only teleported. If she needed to go further than the maximum range of teleportation, she did it in a few blink-fast steps. When Mistral had visited, she had teleported a table and chairs in from some maximally-compact storage unit, and assembled tea for him in less than five seconds by teleporting a cup onto the table, then cold water into a telekinetic grasp above the fire, then that water into the cup, and then a tea bag into the water.

They had talked a little longer, but the breadth of Crystal's mind was by now far greater than his own. Equestrian pony minds, like human minds, could normally handle about seven items in working memory. Crystal had told him that she could now handle about seventy.

"I was going to ask for more, but Celestia pointed out that there are disadvantages to increasing working memory, at least with our current cognitive architecture," Crystal had said. "The risk of unconsciously overfitting or failing to value the simplicity of a theory actually goes up even faster than working memory goes up, at least at the asymptote, although not immediately; so I'll stick with a working memory of this size until I find a good way to tweak my mind to avoid that error."

Crystal's loves were now a wall. Crystal was turning rapidly into something unequine, something that could only be friends with minds of similar capacity. Sunspot and Flare were like her now, having apparently taken her arrival as a cue to begin a similar project of self-improvement. She now communicated almost solely with minds who had taken the same steps as her, often those from other shards—and with Celestia herself. Crystal had moved from human to pony to something else faster than Mistral had expected.

She still satisfied values with friends, who helped her with her research. She still satisfied values as a unicorn pony, for her magic was intimately involved in all she did. Yet she had grown differently and entirely apart.

Mistral could have remained friends only had he followed her, and he knew that he was unwilling to do so. He had realized that this was probably his last meeting with her.

The finality of that meeting had been sad, but it had also been satisfying. Even as Luna told him that he could have followed Crystal Seed in her researches, he knew that he would not do so, and that he did not regret his decision. His mind was completely decided. He felt his last fears drift away on the winds.

Luna smiled, and let him think.

Further down the airship dock, Cherry Blossom had stopped working to flirt with a blue-and-teal research pony who was coming along on the trip—Mistral tried to remember her name. Sea Foam, that was it. The research pony had been checking the inventory for her part of the voyage before the airship was loaded up, and was reluctant to talk, but Cherry looked to be successfully breaking down her resistance. She had stopped working, and was describing the use of one of her tools now. Cherry was rapt with complete attention to what she was saying. Sea Foam even now smiled, at least a little, at Cherry's wide eyes and magnetic stare. Cherry was perfectly charming without trying. Mistral made a mental note that to watch the development of relationships within the airship; that could possibly lead to difficulties.

Pear Blossom had stopped working as well. She stood still, surveying the world. Her mane, tied up tightly in a ponytail behind her head, waved freely as the air rushed by it. It reminded Mistral of the first time he had seen her, so many years ago; he felt a tingling in his hooves, just as he had then. Mistral knew her well enough to know what she would be doing. She would be simply looking at the world, and finding each aspect of it good. She looked at the airship. She looked at her brother flirting. And looked back at Mistral. She smiled.

Mistral found himself warmed again, despite the cold.

"I see thou art not bothered by the nature of this world, though it dost lean upon the old," Luna said. "I see why thou art not bothered; I know thou nature entire. Dost thou, however, see it thyself?"

Mistral looked back from the world he lived in to his old life. He didn't want to think about many of the details of it; it didn't really please him to do so, anymore. He had considered asking Celestia to erase it, and replace it with a pony-equivalent life; but he had come to the conclusion that this was probably unnecessary. But, though he did not want to look back at the details, he could summarize in broad strokes.

"I never really learned how to be an ape," he told Luna. "My thoughts were too rushed. I was scared of dying. I found out a lot about that world, but I was completely ignorant about all sorts of things about myself and about other people, and that made myself and other people very unhappy."

Luna blinked again, still listening to him. The world was reflected in her eyes, Mistral saw. He could see himself, and the platform, and mountain behind him. And he knew she could see through him, and see everything he was going to say before he said it, but he also knew that he wanted to say it anyhow.

"I'm just... happy to come to know myself and others. And to be happy with other ponies," Mistral said, and knew that he had pronounced a coda on the plot of his old life and embarked fully on the one which took place only in Equestria.

Luna nodded, and dissolved like smoke, departing with the wind.

Mistral started to walk towards Pear Blossom. The wind picked up, and he leaned into it slightly; his eyes watered, and he was glad he had his four, reliable, sturdy hooves to stand on. If he had opened his wings, he would have been swept right off the platform—he kept them close by his side. It would take years of practice to be as talented as Cherry Blossom in these winds.

The wind rippled the fabric of the zeppelin very slightly. He had supervised the construction of the mooring for it, as well as its frame—the lines and the structure would be strained under these circumstances, but he knew that they could take it. The problems involved in making the zeppelin had been hard, but interesting. And working on them with the Blossoms had been immensely fun; they could see solutions he could not see, and he could see solutions they could not, and altogether the experience had brought them closer together. The challenge had also introduced him to several other ponies who were coming along on the trip, and he was glad for that as well.

As he walked towards her, he knew that Pear Blossom would stand still, waiting for him, eager for him to approach her but still desirous of being approached. She loved him, and loved that he loved her, and his love could make her happy. He enjoyed the difficulty of the gale and the cold of the wind in walking to her. It would make her warmth all the more pleasurable when he reached her.

The voyage would start in just a few days.

Author's Notes:

It seems like a lots of FiO stories end with an alienating long-term zoomout. I was going to, but couldn't think of any new things to add.

And anyhow, it wouldn't be as satisfying.