It was a glorious early afternoon in the village of Ponyville. The sky was clear, the birds were singing, not too hot, not too cold, the rodents were minding their manners...

And then the earth beneath them shook in a great quake as the earth shuddered at tremendous trauma. Shockwaves cracked buildings, knocked over trees and crumbled mountains. Buildings collapsed, trapping ponies aside, and when it finally came to a stop the village was completely demolished to rubble.

A tree house dwelling where lived the resident bookworm and organizer extraordinaire, Twilight Sparkle, protégé of the honorable Princess Celestia herself, was uprooted, the house that had been built between the branches completely gone.

An earthquake like this had never happened before in living memory. The ponies weren't sure what to do, so they all asked for ideas. And so time went on, many ideas were had, but the town remained demolished. Then Twilight Sparkle decided to ask the strange thing that had recently moved to the mountains. It seemed to know a whole lot of things no ponies knew. Maybe it could tell them what had happened, and how to fix it.

Thanos had completed his machine. The entire thing was like a giant, frictionless orb, rotating slowly in the air, so perfectly smooth it would be in perpetual motion with the slightest push. Thanos, however, was nowhere to be seen.

"Hello." Twilight Sparkle called cheerfully.

Thanos emerged. He was enormous, as tall as many trees, and covered in enormous slabs of muscle. His skin was dark bruise, his chin ridged, his eyes milky white pools as bleak and pitiless as the slopes of hell themselves, and the hard lines of his face setting his thin lips into something like a scowl. When he pushed his lips together, he seemed to have no lips at all.

When he didn't say anything, Twilight Sparkle spoke for both of them. "There was an earthquake, and all the buildings got destroyed."

"You have the means to make more."

"But many ponies don't have anywhere to live now, and are cold and frightened."

The Mad Titan was completely unmoved. "You have the means to make more of them as well."

Twilight Sparkle was completely untutored in that, so she simply stores it among the other questions she had to ask, and tried again.

"What should we do?"

"Death is as psychologically important as life. More so, if anything." He replies. "It is inevitable, and will come regardless of what you do. You live at the mercy of cosmic forces, of the laws of the universe. Any moment something beyond your understanding may choose to end your life, that you will be powerless to resist. As powerless as you are now. More so."

He steps closer, and towers over the pony that is desperately trying to digest his explanation. Contrary to many opinions, Thanos is not cruel. Merely completely indifferent about the lives of people in the universe. As he told her a moment ago, there are always more. Life had no trouble perpetuating itself. "A comet could come, and make your atmosphere unbreathable. Your world could collide with another, some multiversal conqueror might defeat your defenders and take your world for itself, this bubble may break down and move on without you. You might be scythed by ice, or fire, or conquest, and your world would end. So live for the moment. Because every moment you had was a gift."

"..." Twilight Sparkle doesn't know where to go with that. "What's Death?" She asked at last, but Thanos was gone.

She went back to the ruins, and helped fixing things.

Dear Princess Celestia,

... I'm not sure what I learned today, but whatever it was, it was definitely something important. Anyway, me and my friends are rebuilding Ponyvile, and it's times like this you learn who your friends are. You learn who you can really count on, and that, to me is important.

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle