LEGEND OF THE GODDESSES
the tropics, 116 years ago
Through a field of thick jungle grass, Celestia walked slowly, taking in the tropical scenery. The princess' coat, once pale pink, was now of purest white, and she was taller than any ordinary pony had ever been, close to five feet when standing upright and straight, which she usually did. A collection of pegasus and unicorn guards lurked in the trees.
"Hey couuuuuusin."
A shadow slithered through the grass like a snake, then took on a slimy, oozy consistency that slowly began to sink into the ground.
"Hello, Annihilara," Celestia said gently. "It's certainly been a painfully long time since there's been a Gathering."
"Yeah," Annihilara agreed. "What, like, five hundred… almost six hundred years? Damn. That's good, I guess. It means nothing important has happened. Important things are scary."
"They are indeed, but it's good that we gather now," said Celestia, turning her eyes to the horizon. "I had wondered if the magic even worked anymore! Empress Song Li has ruled over several dynasties at this point. I would have thought it would be important to introduce her a while ago."
"Well, the magic of the Gathering works in mysterious ways," said Annihilara with mock pretension. "We may never understand what constitutes a reason to meet."
Song Li joined them in the cleaning, lowering herself down to the ground at the head of a formation with a large group of guards consisting of all four of her country's species, three of each, all of them in ceremonial flying armor loosely patterned after Song Li's own.
Celestia beheld the new goddess with interest; the two were almost the exact same size and shape, though Celestia's voluminous mane and tail made her seem larger. Annihilara lifted her head out of the black puddle of ooze to get a better look.
"Ah… um, hello," Song Li said uneasily.
"Empress Song Li, I presume?" Celestia said with a warm smile.
"Ah, y-yes," Song Li peeped, slouching. "Could, um, could you tell m-me… why I'm, uh… here?"
"Oh, you poor thing," said Celestia, pouting in sympathy at the nervous display. "I'm Princess Celestia."
"Are you?" said Song Li, straightening up with interest.
"Yes, and this is my cousin, Princess Annihilara," said Celestia, pleased. "And this is the fifth Gathering of the Goddesses. The first one we've had in a very long time. It is good to have you amongst our ranks, Empress." She bowed down.
Song Li blinked several times. "You are Celestia?"
"Yes."
"News does not travel fast in this dimension," said Song Li. "I had heard you were an ordinary pony."
"I was, long ago," said Celestia, nodding. "It's taken me a while to become this, but I did. I'll probably be a few inches taller the next time we meet."
"Yeah, and your coat is really white," Annihilara commented. "Have you been bleaching?"
"No," said Celestia, snorting with laughter. "Just… something that's happened."
Song Li nodded very slowly. "Yes. It is… good to be here. All of my friends have passed on. It will be good to once again have… friends."
Sorrow flickered across Celestia's face. "I'm sorry to tell you this, Song Li, but the goddesses don't really spend time together outside of these Gatherings. The pressures of ruling are simply too great."
"Oh," Song Li said in disappointment. "Hmm. How widely-spaced are the Gatherings?"
"They used to be fairly regular, but this is the first one we've had in nearly six centuries."
"Oh…" Song Li said again, her soul sinking almost visibly.
"Song Li, I so wish it didn't have to be that way," Celestia said with a slight tremor.
"Although, hey, here's a tip for next time," said Annihilara, "have a bigger, fancier entrance. It's tradition. You'll see what I mean when the other two show up, I'm sure…"
At the exact center of the clearing, a shimmering vortex opened in the ground. Okapiopteryx shot out of it, going straight up, breaking the sound barrier a second after clearing the vortex and continuing to shoot up and up until she was about a mile up, at which point she very sharply stopped and began a slow, leisurely descent to the ground. As she did so, dozens of her followers, of various species, burst out of the ground one by one and flawlessly took their places in a circle. Once all of them were in place, they did a perfectly synchronized one-legged twirl and pounded their hooves into the ground, creating tiny shockwaves. Okapiopteryx then landed on the ground, exactly where the vortex had been an instant before, producing a much larger shockwave which blasted the leaves off of the surrounding trees.
"Hello, Annihilara and Song Li," she said, pointedly ignoring Celestia. "Here and now is a good place to be. There's nothing I'd rather do than to gather, with others who are like me."
"Was that a limerick?" said Annihilara. "You've moved up to limericks now?"
Celestia giggled shrilly. "That's quite impressive, Princess. I mean, Queen. My Queen. Your Majesty."
Okapiopteryx peered at Celestia through her thick eyelashes, then turned back to Song Li, pacing around her. "Well, Song Li," she said, "I am pleased to report, that my expectations did not fall short. And in case you're unsure, allow me to assure, that you've fallen in with the right sort."
Song Li had stiffened nervously when the small queen started circling her, but quickly loosened up and giggled uncontrollably. "You are very cute," she said.
Okapiopteryx glared in response.
Tendrils of sand began swirling around the clearing, inspecting it with great interest.
"All right," said Kolassa's voice faintly from within the sand, "I was gonna do something amazing, like drop out of the sky, but there's a bit too much nature around here, I think that would be ecologically detrimental… let's see…"
Four pillars of sand gently and carefully placed themselves in different portions of the jungle.
"All right, there we go!"
The pillars took shape into Kolassa's legs, and her body formed above them, carefully balanced over the trees. She gently bent down to get a better look at the Gathering.
"Empress Song Li," she said. "The rupture in the universe when you first appeared did not pass me by unnoticed. Some might be inclined to look at you and see an alien invader, someone who turned their nation into a military empire, or just someone who fails to grasp the basics of social interaction. But all that I see… is kin. Your spirituality is fully copacetic with mine."
Song Li was frozen in fear, staring wide-eyed. "Th-thank you," she stammered. "You… you are very big, aren't you?"
Kolassa laughed and nodded. "So… what's going on here? Something big going on in the world that I don't know about? Song Li has been brought here, so what else?"
They all looked around at each other silently. None of them had an answer.
"I, uh… I kinda have a suspicion about that," someone said. "I hope I'm right."
Fork emerged from hiding. He was short-haired again, as he had been long ago, but he looked older now—heavier, his neck less straight, light wrinkles on his face.
"Fork," Celestia exclaimed.
"Fork," Song Li said darkly.
"Fork," said Okapiopteryx, her eyes twinkling.
"Fork is here?" said Kolassa, leaning down and squinting intently. "Ah… there you are."
"Fork?" Annihilara said curiously, stroking her chin with a clawed, wispy hand. "Did I ever meet Fork? No, I don't suppose I did." She leaned back against a tree. "Okay, Soledad caught me up. You all know him?"
"I've been watching all of you for a long, long time," Fork said solemnly, hanging his head. "Occasionally, you've seen and spoken to me, but most of the time, I'm just there in the corner of your eye, whenever something important happens… watching you… dangling my charm bracelet at you… I think maybe this Gathering is for me. I'm here to tell you what I should have told all of you centuries ago. I'm here to tell you everything." He took a deep breath and shook his head rapidly. "Oof, let's see if I can do this, starting from the beginning…
"I was born… or I will be born… when today is forgotten, and all of your stories, which right now range from history to ancient history, are myth and legend. One day when I was young and stupid, I signed up for a mission to reach out and touch the sun. I went there as part of a big crew, on a big silver ship like nothing that had ever been seen before. We went up there… but Celestia's sun, Celestia's beautiful sun, as much joy as it brings every day, it can also be hell. And it didn't take kindly to visitors. The flare killed the whole entire crew. But not me. All but me.
"The flare hit me just the right way that instead of dying, I was merely exposed to an obscene level of the sun's power, causing my brain to expand, like… cookie dough. From the sun, I fell back to earth. The radiation allowed me to survive that. The sun… heh, I know a lot of things, but all I know about the sun is that it's more magical than anypony realizes. When I landed back on solid ground, I was in a coma, and I stayed there for weeks. You wouldn't believe the horrendous, Lovecraftian things I saw while I slept. The whole universe laid out before me in my nightmares as my mind continued to grow. When I woke up at last, I discovered I… had a power. With the barest shift of focus, I could walk through time. Forward or backward, and anywhere in space."
He teleported a short distance in his usual puffs of powder-blue magic energy. "I just went straight from there to here," he said. "But if I'd wanted to, I could have gotten a massage or something on the way and you'd have been none the wiser. Ah, but look at that…"
He gazed down at the scorch marks beneath his hooves, and another circle of scorched earth where he had been before. "I left the forest floor just a little bit singed," he said, "and who knows what else. A sphere of unpredictable, destructive magic goes off when I time-travel. Fear of that, not to mention fear of what I might accidentally do to history, kept me from seeing these amazing circumstances as a gift. As soon as I learned how not to use the ability by accident, I just stopped using it."
"Kolassa, are you getting all of this?" Celestia inquired.
"Uh, yes," Kolassa said uneasily. "Apparently, after the Gathering is over, he's going to travel back in time and repeat everything he's saying right now while sitting deep inside my ear so I can hear it. He's in there right now."
"…Huh," Celestia said blankly.
"Time travel is a hard concept to grasp, isn't it?" said Song Li. "Even in my own world, the subject always led to much confusion. I have never understood why that is. I've never had trouble understanding it. Time is… quite linear."
"So, for fear of the world unraveling, you ceased with this 'time-traveling'," said Okapiopteryx. "But I can't help but notice how, you're here in our time now. So pray tell, dear Fork, what is happening?"
Fork shrugged. "I, uh, I got control of my powers, and I forgot about them for a while. Many years went by, though I was still quite, as I said, young and stupid. I got married, to a mare who… isn't stupid at all. She's quite sharp, actually, and it's a trait that's made her a very successful blogger… heh, you don't know what that means. She is… was, will be, the tense depends upon your point of view, but she writes articles and journals on varying subjects that absolutely anypony can find. Sadly, one can be a world-renowned blogger and never make any money off of it, but what she's always wanted in her heart is to write for a living.
"One day, a day I still consider to be not that long ago, she got herself noticed by a very prestigious magazine. They wanted her as a columnist. The editor will be coming over to meet with her… I guess you could say tonight, in a manner of speaking, because only a few hours before he was due to arrive was when I had a crazy idea.
"My wife, she's always been interested in the goddesses of the classical era… that's you. What I thought I'd do is use this sapphire"—he held up the charm bracelet—"and my time-traveling power. I would go back to the classical era… and covertly record footage of all the significant moments in your lives, edit it into a documentary, and pass it off as a fake documentary written by my wife. For eighteen years, as far as I can tell, I've been zipping back and forth through time, watching you… talking to the camera, trying to be interesting comic relief, I don't know how well I did there… been spending the past couple years just doing second-unit stuff, pretty much, 'cause once I became visibly older than I was when I started, I had to make sure I didn't actually appear in the footage anymore, to maintain the illusion that it was all done years ago… which, heh, I suppose it was."
Celestia's brow furrowed, and she nodded slowly. "I don't think I've entirely kept up with all of this, but it sounds like… you've been traveling through time, watching us, for eighteen years, just to get your wife a job as a magazine columnist?"
"I happen to be madly in love with my wife," Fork said sincerely. "I can only pray that she doesn't reject me for coming out of my office eighteen years older than when I went in. Besides, eighteen years is nothing, nothing, compared to the centuries upon centuries you've spent making the world a better place so that stories told by guys like me can even exist.
"So… all this, this Gathering, this isn't going into the documentary. All of this is just because I owe all of you an explanation. When I started, my aim was to get my footage covertly, and never be noticed. We all know how well that turned out. Not to hammer the point into the ground, but boy was I young and stupid! You all noticed me. So easily. At first I was afraid that I would do damage to the timeline, but then I realized, like Song Li said, time is linear. No matter what I did in my travels, it would be something I already did, an undisclosed amount of years, if that's all right, before I was ever even born. I couldn'tchange history even if I tried. I was already a part of it."
He shut his eyes tightly, steeling himself before proceeding. "There was a time when I treated you all horribly. I am… so sorry. Ever since I watched you seal your sister away… and shortly thereafter had to watch Soledad die… I've had a hard time living with myself. Before that, I took sadistic pleasure in making things happen the way I knew they were meant to happen. I felt like I had the power to make a difference. I goaded Luna into embracing the darkness, I told the griffons where your camp was, I led Kane and Boll to their daughter… I sent Soledad straight to her death.
"I did these things because… it just didn't seem real. I was watching stories that every little foal has memorized before they've even started school, stories too familiar to have any emotional impact anymore. Only as I became familiar with the real events behind the stories did I realize that it was all real… and that I was causing no end of pain. Maybe… it was all predetermined. After all, I haven't changed the past at all. But there's nothing that can make me forgive myself. My only consolation is that… well, that it all happened a long, long time ago. What I've become over the past eighteen years, it's what I became centuries ago. And I made it out okay.
"So… now you know who I am. I'm an idiot who's put way too much effort into what might not even be a very good documentary, I don't know. I'm not sure why the Gathering chose this exact time for you to meet Song Li and hear my story, but… I've had a totally excellent adventure. I'm something very, very different than what I was when I started. And it's almost over. Because the classical era is almost over." He looked up at Celestia. "The one thousandth summer solstice after your sister's imprisonment will mark the beginning of a new period in history."
Celestia's jaw tightened in fear. "Yes. I've heard a prophecy to that effect. Nightmare Moon will return."
Okapiopteryx perked up.
"Is it true?" Celestia whispered.
"I'd rather not say," said Fork. "But what happens that morning will cause the world to be very different from that point on. And nothing really interesting happens between now and then, so that's why my journey chronicling this era is nearly done. All that's left to tell you is… I've been watching you all since you were very, very small… or the moment you arrived on this world, as the case may be. In my time, you're legends. In this time, you're goddesses, queens, rulers. But right now, right here in my heart, you're just… you're just amazing women who I admire very much. I'd like to ask you… if you'd be so kind… to keep an eye out for me for the next couple of weeks. I will be—after I repeat this whole thing for Kolassa, of course—I'll be coming to see each of you. I'd… I'd like to collect final testimonies from you, to go at the end of the story." He inhaled and exhaled slowly. "Thank you in advance. Yes… thank you."
He disappeared.
Annihilara gave a low whistle. "That was some story."
"He's one of us," Celestia said confidently.
"Hmm?" said Annihilara, rapidly skimming across the grass to place her head right alongside Celestia's.
"Do we not have stories as convoluted and tortured as that?" said Celestia.
The others muttered in agreement, Okapiopteryx grudgingly.
"I guess we'll see him once more," said Celestia. "And then… he'll be gone forever. At least until his time. If we're still around then… he didn't make that clear. How strange to know that I'll never have to look over my shoulder for him again." She smiled. "Now that I know him, I'll almost miss that. Oh, Lara?"
"Yes?"
"It's been a very long time since you last rejected me. Will you join me in Canterlot Castle?"
"Neeeever gonna happen, Celestia," Annihilara said in amusement. "I love you too much to see your world fall apart."
"And I love you too much to let you go," Celestia said pleasantly.
"Let's just… make this perfectly clear," Annihilara blustered. "I will never come live with you."
"And I will never stop asking."
Annihilara nodded. "Good to know."
"Not the worst impasse we could be in," Celestia agreed.
Silently, the five goddesses and their respective entourages departed.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Weeks later, as Kolassa wandered through a featureless stretch of the Whispering Desert, Fork landed on the pupil of one of her eyes. Only there could she see him clearly.
"Ah, Fork," she said pleasantly. "You wanted some sort of… testimonial, then?"
He nodded, and the voice of another Fork, deep inside her ear, answered her. "Yes, if you could. What I want to know is, at this period in history… your philosophy on being a goddess."
"All right. When do I begin?"
"Right now," he said. "There's another me way out in the desert, I've got a good shot, I can hear you, so… fire away."
"Eye, ear, and way out there somewhere recording my words," Kolassa mused, glancing around. "That's a lot of time travel for just an interview."
"Ah, I'm used to it," he said earnestly.
"Well…" she said, gazing off at the horizon. "My philosophy is, I'm sure, quite different from what you'll get from my counterparts. I am not a ruler or a leader. I don't raise the sun or command an army. I didn't build a dynasty. I just… wander around, think about stuff. My philosophy is… inspiration. If one child, in a city on the edges of this desert, looks out their window and sees me walking by and is inspired by the sight—just one child—then I've done my job and my centuries of life have meant something. Will that suffice?"
"It will. Thank you."
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Okapiopteryx's bedchambers were lined with a mural depicting an okapi village—the village of her childhood. It was a dark and windowless room, lit only by a single candle. Fork was gently setting Okapiopteryx into a good position where he could capture her testimony.
"Hmm… good?" she said, settling comfortably into a stack of rolled-up rugs.
"Ah, yes, very good," he replied. "So… what is your philosophy?"
She gently took a deep, meditative breath, and spoke with her eyes closed. "I rule the way that I live. If I can, positive vibes are what I give. And thus do I receive, from those who believe in me, a vibe which us all shall outlive. Do I see the world in all its scope? Some think I do, I say nope. But when I see all my land, working as a single band… why, it fills my heart up with hope."
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
"I… am just like everyone else," Song Li said confidently, curled up fully armored in her own bed. "Where I come from, there are thousands of beings who look like me, dress like me… very few who actprecisely like me, for I have certain… disorders… but all told, I am no more special than any other soldier or civilian. It could have been any member of my kind who chose to come here and declare themselves a deity. Others might have taken the country by force and been feared throughout the world, others might have been better leaders than I, but… I hold myself above no one. I lack the confidence to do so. This, I believe, is why I succeed. Those who do consider themselves better than anyone else might have succeeded faster, but I will succeed longer, I should think."
She blinked rapidly and glanced around nervously. "Was… was that adequate? It certainly seemed to take a long time…"
Fork lowered his charm bracelet and smiled. "Song Li… it was perfect. You're perfect. Don't let anyone tell you different."
"Oh dear," Song Li muttered, her face flushing unseen behind her mask.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
In the ruins of Clovenshire Castle, Annihilara gazed down at Fork, her body a huge net draped over the castle's pillars. "You really wanna hear from me?" she said.
"Absolutely," said Fork. "You're a part of this story. Can I get you in a more natural… shape?"
"All right."
The net formed into Annihilara's pony self, which slowly floated down to ground level. She cried out in pain as her cutie mark appeared.
"So… that hurts?" Fork said quietly.
"Every. Single. Time," Annihilara confirmed. "As if that scythe is actually slicing me open. So, you're recording this?"
"I am."
"Okay, well… I have nothing to say to that question," she said. "I'm not a real goddess. I'm just a freak. I don't matter."
"Princess…" Fork protested.
"What, you think I do matter?" she spat. "Well, you tell me, Mr. Big-shot time-traveler guy. Will I ever make a difference?"
"I… I really shouldn't say anything," he stammered.
"Yeah," she scoffed. "That's because I'm never gonna make a difference."
"I didn't say that!"
"I'm no one," she said, pacing back and forth on legs like octopus arms. "I always have been. I accepted this long ago. Why do you think I killed myself? Nothing I've seen in a thousand years has done anything to dissuade me from the attitude I had that night. So, as long as I'm a nothing and a nobody, I might as well be really good at being nobody. So I'm gonna hide in this castle, and no one is ever going to find me again. I'll do whatever I can… to disappear. So the world is never again burdened by my existence. That's my motherfucking philosophy right there. Am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong."
She leaned forward, glaring harshly at Fork from an uncomfortably close distance. He didn't flinch, but waited until he was sure she had stopped speaking before calmly replying. "I interviewed Soledad mere minutes before she offed herself. Or, I tried to, anyway. What she said was remarkably similar to what you're telling me now. Before I started this journey, all I knew about the goddesses was the most basic, common knowledge that my time possesses. So I didn't know squat about Soledad… but I knew a whole lot about you."
Terrified, Annihilara recoiled, huddling into a mass of shadow. "That… that can't be good," she stammered. "It just can't be. Something terrible is going to happen and it'll be all my fault, I know it. I just… know it."
She retreated into the castle as a wisp of smoke.
"People care about you, Annihilara," Fork called. "Don't forget it."
There was no answer.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
"M-my philosophy?" Celestia said uneasily.
Like several of the others, she was resting on her bed, her legs tucked underneath her body, a blanket draped across her back.
"Well, um… uh… why, that would be the Elements of Harmony, of course," she said, sighing in relief at having found an answer. "Generosity. Honesty. Kindness. Loyalty. Um… ah… what was the, the fifth one? Not magic, but the other one?"
"Laughter?" Fork supplied.
"Yes, laughter, that's it. 'Laughter', of course. Entirely forgettable, that one… So, yes: generosity, honesty, kindness, loyalty, laughter: mix all those together and you get the sixth element, which some say is magic, but, as my old friend Ragnarok once astutely pointed out, it's actually friendship… which is the most powerful magic in the world. A case can be made for love as the most powerful magic, but truthfully, love only binds two hearts together. Friendship can bind hearts in an infinite array."
She gave a big smile. "The Elements of Harmony may be forgotten by history, but their ideals still spread through Equestria, if not in so many words. That is my philosophy on ruling. Somehow, Equestria is harmonious under my guidance. If this era ends in a century or even tomorrow, it is good to know I created something beautiful that lasted this long."
Fork bit his lip. "Hey… listen… it's gonna be okay. It's all gonna be okay in the end."
"Thank you," she said. "Any special reason you've waited three months for this? If I understand time travel correctly, you could have just come to me as soon as I got home from the Gathering."
He shrugged. "Lately, I've just felt like actually moving forward in time every time I jump, I guess. Maybe I'm trying to acclimate myself to living normally again, or maybe I wanted to give you time to think about what you'd say when I returned. I can't quite put my hoof on it, but it's just a whim I've had."
Celestia nodded. "So, that's it?"
"Do you have anything else to add?"
"No. You asked for my philosophy and I gave it. Simple enough, as it's not really mine."
"All right," he said. "Goodbye, Celestia. It's been very good to know you." He vanished.
Seconds later, he peered around her doorframe, his charm bracelet held aloft and recording, not letting her know he was there.
"It's all going to be okay, he says," Celestia said bitterly. "What a joke! It will never be all right again. How can I believe in the Elements of Harmony anymore, when I… am alone? And I won't have anyone to confide in ever again."
Her head dropped down onto the bed, and she cried into her pillow. Fork set down his bracelet and just watched her for several minutes, until she fell silent, apparently having cried herself to sleep.
Fork breathed in and out deeply, and addressed his sapphire. "All right. Just one more stop, and then… post-production. I'm so close."