"Princess?"
The familiar voice raises me from my stupor. Looking up wearily, I am greeted with the sight of my faithful assistant. As always, her mane is kept in pristine order with that stupid magenta maneband I got her for her birthday, the one that clashes horribly with her dark orange hair. Her brown eyes are furrowed in concern, as they always are when she senses I'm not quite all right. At the sight of a plate of slightly misshapen green plant stalks levitated by her slate gray unicorn magic, my face breaks out into a brilliant grin.
"Katie, you're a lifesaver!" I cry gratefully, galloping towards her desperately. I seize the plate with my own silver magic, eagerly yanking the plate towards my face. Kate isn't fazed by my uncouthness, but all the same she sighs a little as if I were a misbehaving foal that could never be tamed. As I pick up a stalk with my teeth and begin to munch it, she starts up conversation in her usual businesslike way.
"My name is Catherine, not Katie, Princess." she corrects, mildly miffed by my goofy-sounding nickname.
"And my name is Nexione, not Princess, Katie!" I retort through a mouthful of broccoli stalk. Swallowing my unsightly cud, I continue with one eyebrow raised. "I'll promise not to call you my silly nickname if you don't call me your normal one. Deal?"
"Deal," she responds, her neutral tone calming me. To a degree. I think she has a lawful aura that would be able to deflate Pinkie Pie's mane just by being within a two-meter radius. "But if I may, Nexione, you seem to be a little...uncreative with your sentence structure. Is something wrong?"
"Clever girl!" I applaud, despite her correct identification of my own weakness. I take a few steps down the catwalk, gazing up at my room. Well, globe. Well, really big globe with an uncountable amount of lines and dots crisscrossing the walls. I stare up at the large, golden circle at the very top far above me, impaled by thousands of multicolored threads that began below me at the opposite pole. The rainbow found in the various lines is beyond the spectrum of a normal pony's eyesight-that much I have learned from inquiries to what little visitors I am permitted. Why I see so many colors, I don't know. But it helps, in a way. I can distinguish from one pony to the next, even from the most mundane and similar of lives. Everypony has their own individual line with a distinct color, sometimes one that they could never imagine themselves. Thing is, I never see these wondrous hues outside of my plot globe, as I call it. Its formal name is the Room of Eternal Paths, but that's too many syllables for me. Despite my massive undertaking, I'm chronically lazy and do whatever I can to cut corners where doing so won't shatter the fabric of the world as we know it. Despite? Maybe 'because of' would fit better.
The golden circle stares down at me, shimmering as if bathed in sunlight. It mocks me. I can barely remember the touch of sunlight. I feel it sometimes in my mind, but it's only a vague trace of someone else's memory or coming life. I don't have one of my one because I'm too busy mapping out everyone else's. Sound fun? Guess again.
"When do you think my line will reach it, Catherine?" I murmur, partially to myself.
"Reach what, Nexione?" she asks, raising an eyebrow and stepping up beside me. Being an alicorn, I'm twice her height, not counting my huge horn and equally proportionate wings. But I rarely use either of them for anything. Again, my purpose in life is so much more than magic and flight. Some ponies would have a hard time believing that. Not Catherine, which is why she's the best temp in the world.
"Finis, Ending," I clarify, still gazing up at the golden circle of destiny as if spellbound. "When is my time? How will I know?"
"I don't know if you will, Nexione," replies Catherine. Inwardly, I cringe at that for a reason I can't quite place. "Being an alicorn, your life will continue indefinitely."
"Indefinitely," I word suspiciously, looking down and narrowing my eyes. "I don't like that word much, 'indefinitely.' There's too much gray area, too much unknown potential. It's too much of a loose end. My job in life is to tie up loose ends, make sure they don't exist. I'd be the first to know that there's no such thing as random, just insufficient knowledge of the universal plot."
"But isn't that a good thing?" queries Katie. "Eternal life is quite the blessing."
"Is it?" I hiss to myself, shutting my eyes to hold back a sudden onset of tears. I instantly regret that. Without the distraction of visual input, a thousand new possibilities, horrible and terrific, flash before my eyes in the space of a moment. Such knowledge, flooding into my poor brain, undermining my grasp of sanity and reality. I wince and open them again, reassured by solid, monotonous sight. I realize that I'm panting slightly, and that Catherine is greatly concerned by my apparent discomfort.
Eternal life spent like this?
"Princess?" she asks again, slipping up on her promise to call me by my name in her panic. I don't mind, though. All I can do is stare into a peaceful nothing for the longest time, before I gather enough strength to continue my rave about my own lunacy.
"I'm fine," I lie. I quickly correct myself, noting in the back of my head that Katie should brace herself. "No, I'm not. I never have been. What does 'fine' even mean? I don't know, but it never described me. Not even when I was a little filly. I cried all the time, just yelling and crying about this awful pain in my head, and nopony knew why. Not even me. I didn't know why all this knowledge hurt so much-it just did, and I didn't let anypony know what was wrong with me, because I assumed that it was normal. Listen to that, me assuming I was normal. But when I grew up a little more, I would say things that made no sense. I didn't have a concept of myself, so lost was I in the storm of information. Nopony knew what was wrong with me, or why I had wings and a horn when both my parents were earth ponies. Celestia herself came to see me, and I completely baffled her. I still baffle her. I baffle myself. What's real? What isn't? Past, present, future-what's the difference?"
Silence. That never happened. Not in my life.
"Why, order of events, of course," stated Katie, as if everything had such a simple answer. I sighed a little-leave it to Katie to keep at least one hoof firmly on the ground. But what if I wasn't on the ground in the first place? What if it was more like sinking in a turbulent ocean and not knowing how to swim?
"But that's the thing, Katie," I moan, resting my forehead on the guardrail. "There's no distinction like that for me. Because I'm locked up in this globe every day, because if I were to ever get out there's no telling what would happen. I just write it down, the stuff that the universe spits into my head. But what does it mean, Kate? What does this mean? Why am I doing this? Will I ever know?"
"I...I thought you knew everything," says Katie dumbly. She walks up to me to put a hoof on my shoulder. I look down at her wistfully, suddenly envious of her mediocrity.
"I wish," I lament bitterly, turning my head away to hide behind my green and gold mane. "I wish I didn't. I wish I only knew as much as everypony else. Then I might be normal, and my life wouldn't be such agony. This knowledge burns, and my sanity is the kindling."
"I never knew, Princess Nexione," gasps Katie at my pain. I give her a drooped look. "Don't you need help?" I smile weakly at her, despite my all-time low.
"I don't think anybody can give it to me," I point out with a small chuckle. "I mean, as far as we know, I'm the highest pony being in history...or am I?" I question, looking to my globe of crisscrossing lines with a rekindled hope.
"You are, aren't you?" affirms Katie. Sometimes it was reassuring to see that there were sane, silly, unimaginative ponies in the world.
"I used to think so...," I muse in an ominous tone. I trace the surface of the globe for that one line-yes, there it is! The one that burns with all the colors of the vortex in my head. "You see that line there, Kate? The multicolored one that's like looking into an exploding star?"
"What line?" demands Katie, craning her neck to look where I am. I remember with a scowl that Kate can't see all the colors. In fact, she can only see a few separate shades. Rolling my eyes in mild exasperation, I leap up over the guardrail and glide over to the surface, putting my hoof on the line. The effort of looking at it this close makes me squint. Katie nods.
"What's so special about it?" asks Kate, furrowing her brow as if I'm making a big deal out of something that doesn't deserve it. I don't think there's anything that exists that needs to be a bigger deal.
"If you could see its color, you'd know," I inform, taking off again. Following its zig-zagging trail that soared all across the globe, my wings were getting a bit of a workout, which was also rare in here. "But follow it with your eyes. It goes everywhere, all over the globe-even backwards. The closer the astrum, or event star, to the End Pole, the farther in the future it is. This line doesn't care. It's been everywhere and back again, and once in a blue moon-"
I come to an abrupt halt, just as the line did.
"It just stops and reappears again a little ways away," I remark, pointing to where the line started up again a few inches away, headed in a completely different direction. "As if there was an event that should've happened, or only happened to it, but technically never did. Or somehow I didn't write that astrum down, which makes no sense."
"Does it ever end?" demads Katie. Steeling myself for the impossible, I soar up to Finis. I point out the line for her.
"There it is."
Then I point to a glowing line precisely across from it on the other side of the circle.
"There it is again."
"But that can't be the same line!" gasps Katie incredulously, actually rearing up on her hind legs in her shock. I knew this was a big deal-Katie never gets excited. "That's impossible! A pony that comes back from the dead?!"
"Well, it's happened twelve times, so I don't know what to tell you," I tell her grimly, diving down to touch down on the catwalk again behind Katie. I look back at her. "And every time, it continues on its merry way, going everywhere and doing everything. But the color, Kate, the color! It's heartbreaking and breathtaking, beautiful and terrifying-beloved by all but hated by itself. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. This pony is...I don't even know, but he's something big."
"You can tell all that from the color of the line?" asks Katie skeptically. Yet I ponder how to answer her for a moment. Not just from the color of the line, no. Every line has its own certain feel, its own special tragedy or comedy, or even both. I don't know how I sense it, any more than I know how I manage to see colors that don't exist in the spectrum of visible light.
"Yes," I half-lie, still gazing up at the globe. "Thanks for the stalks, Kate. Could you go tell Luna that-"
I was interrupted when a furious, towering alicorn busted open the doors on the other end of the catwalk. Dropping my commonplace smile, I evenly gaze over at Princess Celestia as she stands furiously in the doorway. Meeting her burning gaze, I know this was intended to be a private conversation-Celestia doesn't like to chew people out in front of others.
"Go make some phone calls, Catherine." I order quietly.
"I don't have any to make, Princess," she responds awkwardly.
"Yes, you do." I contradict, flicking my wing at her whilst still holding Celestia's gaze. Doing so was like staring into the sun, but Celestia has yet to learn that she really couldn't faze me. Not after exposure to the constant nightmare in my brain. Occasionally that was a subject of pride for me, but in reality it was just a sick reminder of my alien affliction. Catherine obediently scampers off, Celestia moving politely out of her way but otherwise immobile. Kate's gray unicorn magic shut the plain silver doors behind her. Then the bullets begin to fly.
"Do you have any idea what just happened?" growls Celestia, forging right up to my face and trying to make herself taller. She manages in getting an inch taller than me, but we're actually the same height, which I think is a sore spot for her. Again, doesn't intimidate me.
"No," I reply truthfully. While I transcend time and space in my own globe, I have little knowledge of current events outside of it. I don't care much for the present, it's too fleeting. You blink, and it turns into the past. I scan the constellations of lifelines, searching for and eventually locating Twilight Sparkle's line. I trace it all the way up to a hoof-sized austrum, its name appearing unbidden in my head.
Star Swirl's Spell Remedied
"Cadence's wedding? The changelings!?"
No, not yet.
"Ah, yes, that!" I respond concisely, smiling a little as I turn back to look at Celestia. "Nice adventure, eh?"
"We could've been overrun by them!" bursts Celestia indignantly at my apparent nonchalance. My face hardens again. Fine then, your majesty, if you don't want to play nice, I won't. But this version of the game isn't nearly as fun. "What is the point of having you, Oracle, if you will not tell us about these things beforehand? How could you shrug off such a massive-"
"-event?" I finish for her, my horn shimmering with magic. The catwalk lurches from under us, rotating on the invisible axis of the globe's centerpoint. When it stops again, there is another large austrum at the end of the walk, the end that used to lead to the doorway. Celestia has fallen flat on her face, though I stifle a giggle. Judging by the position of the doors, gravity should have been pulling us down the catwalk, away from the star. But this walk is enchanted with its own sense of gravity, if you hadn't already noticed that. I walk up to the star, though the width of the globe makes it a slightly lengthy walk.
"Because I don't see things the way you do, Princess," I drawl boredly, pointing out the obvious that Celestia had so blatantly overlooked in her rage. "There was no mystery for me, like there was for you and everypony else. I knew all along that the Elements would prevail. I never stress or worry about tomorrow, because I don't even know where the outside world is in relation to the universal timestream."
"Ponies could've died!" she blurts in a flailing attempt to reassert herself.
"No, there was absolutely no chance of anything happening that didn't," I correct harshly, whirling unexpectedly on the princess. She startles backwards a little, a small victory. "If you want to worry over little things like that, be my guest, but everything is so much less random than you think it is."
"Little?" snarled the Princess, her moxie returning. "How is that little!?"
"Things are to come that will greatly overshadow the Changeling attack," I prophesy ominously, losing my anger to a breed of sorrow that only I know. "Emotionally and otherwise. This is nothing, just a small detour. A pony beloved by all will rise so high, and fall so much farther. The choice will be impossible. Whatever she chooses, you must live with it."
"Is it...me?" asks Celestia quietly, her eyes wide. She seems so much smaller, now. Much more like Twilight. I sigh, shaking my head and looking back at the huge austrum.
Rise of Tirek
"Then who?"
"I can't tell you that, Princess," I lament sadly, opting not to look at her or imagine her countenance. "You know that. You wanted prophecy, and I gave it to you. Now do you see why my life is a nightmare?"
More silence. Today is just weird.
I notice Celestia's simple nod from the corner of my eye. I begin to move the catwalk again, though not as abruptly as I had the first time. The doors stand open, waiting for Celestia.
"Thank you for your time, Nexione," she says courteously, bowing her head and turning to quickly trot out the door. I take a deep breath.
"You're welcome."