Moments in Time
Mar. 25th, 2016 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twilightponyIt's been a crazy, topsy turvy day. It started out as planned. I got up early, took a bath, with bath oil so I'd feel fresh and not itchy. I caught the morning train to Canterlot with Spike, and we made our way to the auditorium reserved for my talk. Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns seemed mostly deserted. Like I thought, Spring Molt Break.
I had 150 flash cards, 50 transparencies. I practiced giving my talk five times (Spike insists it was twenty even though that's impossible). The scheduled time arrived and the auditorium filled up! Even my Canterlot friends were there, including Moondancer, taking a break from her research. Also present was Starlight Glimmer.
I only caught a glimpse of her in the auditorium, so I wasn't sure it was her at the time or just my imagination playing tricks on me, but it did throw a horseshoe into my pacing. Fortunately, I had 150 flash cards to keep me on track.
Starlight Glimmer is a unicorn that my friends and I had met on our first map-driven Friendship quest. More than just met, she took us captive and stripped us of our cutie marks. Starlight Glimmer had a whole town in the middle of nowhere full of ponies who had been convinced or coerced to have their cutie marks magically removed. She had them believing that happiness lay in being ordinary and that special talents leads to strife. Or they were fervently pretending so. Apparently the Tree sent all six of us to restore the cutie marks to everypony somehow. As a consequence of our helping the townsponies shake off Starlight's influence and regain their identities, Starlight Glimmer was run out of town. Or she ran herself out of town. Either way Starlight Glimmer was not a happy camper. This put a damper on her plans of spreading her magic of being mediocre.
Spike and I didn't stay in Canterlot after the lecture, we headed right back to Ponyville, where my intuition was proven right. Starlight Glimmer was stalking me. We got home, and there she was in the map room, waiting for me, as sassy as you please. She was prepared for this. I was not.
Starlight Glimmer had found a way to use the Tree Map in conjunction with a modified version of Starswirl's time travel spell to get enough power to go back in time all the way to where Rainbow Dash, as a filly, had challenged two colts to a race. Why then? Starlight had attended my lecture on the Magic of Friendship earlier today. I had explained that during a race, Rainbow Dash had created her first Sonic Rainboom and that Sonic Rainboom had been critical in shaping our destinies and eventually bringing us together as friends. Starlight Glimmer had understood that if she could prevent that key event, I would probably be friendless. She also knew me well enough that I would follow her given half the chance, and that way I would leave this reality and get dropped into the new one that she would shape by preventing Dash from making a Sonic Rainboom.
This leaves me to wonder, now that it's all over, what reality am I in now? Everything so far seems the same as it had been. I'm relieved to find the connection to this e-journal is not broken.
Starlight Glimmer was waiting for me in Cloudsdale (and self levitating!). There she foiled me and foiled Rainbow Dash's race. Spike and I ended up in some sort of Equestria gone horribly wrong. So we went back, and she was waiting for us, a smirk on her face and with new way to defeat me and keep Rainbow Dash from finding her need for speed. That ended with Spike and I returning to a different present timeline with a bad outcome for Equestria. She wasn't just breaking the chain of events that lead to me making friends in Ponyville, she was sending all of Equestria into turmoil. This happened over and over again.
So many changes to the time stream happened, who knows what may be different now. Spike, Starlight Glimmer and I are the only constants in this outcome. I'm still not sure why the Tree let all of this happen in the first place.
Back to late this afternoon. Spike and I got back from Canterlot to find Starlight Glimmer sitting at the map table. It was not a pleasant surprise to see her there, and it was even less of a nice surprise when she cast a spell that created a temporary wormhole in time and space, right then and there. It turns out she had been studying hard that whole time between when she escaped her markless town and her sudden appearance in this castle. She had been studying us and time travel, maybe self defense, probably self levitation, cloud-walking, and I think the final, important lesson she had learned, was at my lecture on the Magic of Friendship. She probably had already learned of what had been my first big break in magic, the magic burst at my entrance exam that had pushed me onto the path to being noticed by Princess Celestia. That eventually led to me making friends in Ponyville at just the right moment. But at my lecture today, she found _the_ key event. She had studied hard and well. I have to give her that.
So Spike and I found ourselves face to face with a pony we had written off long ago, and now, like Trixie, she was back to buck us and buck us hard. She opened a wormhole, stared at us with a smirk and let herself get sucked into it like she was boarding the Friendship Express to a sunny destination. She had waited for us, or specifically, for me, to return before casting that spell. Where ever she went, it wasn't just to escape, she had something nefarious in mind, and I had to find out what. The scroll she had used to make the wormhole had fallen to the floor and I did the impulsive thing. I did not call on my friends to go after her together. I cast the spell. In hindsight, it was better that it was just Spike and I that went after her. Had we been seven or six, staying together would have been complicated. We ended up in Cloudsdale.
Now I can walk on clouds now, but not Spike, or half my friends, without magical preparation. I had none, and Starlight Glimmer was waiting for me. We were in the past and at that crucial moment when Rainbow Dash, filly Rainbow Dash, gets presented with the opportunity, and then the motivation, to fly fast enough to make her very first Sonic Rainboom. Thus, it was also the day Spike hatched and all my friends got our cutie marks.
Starlight Glimmer is a very good student. Too good. She managed to keep from falling to earth, avoid me and thwart Rainbow Dash from picking up enough speed, several times! Each time, the reverse worm hole would manifest and pull me "back" to a _new_ present time, next to the Map Table. In each instance, it would be a timeline in which I had never made friends in Ponyville.
When we'd come back to the new "present", we'd come back to an open area, oddly deserted, except for the map table. Was the Tree in on this? How many dimensions does the Tree "see"? Well, thanks to Starlight Glimmer, we knew what went wrong and what it was we had to correct. Filly, blank flank Rainbow Dash had to complete that race unfettered. We still had the scroll and we went back. Again and again. Fortunately to the same moment _before_ Rainbow challenged her two colt rivals to that pivotal race. Unfortunately, Starlight Glimmer had a whole arsenal of ideas on how to both beat me and keep Rainbow Dash from making a Rainboom then and there. I study Friendship, she studied dueling. Did I mention that she's really good at her studies? I had a lot of spells thrown at me that I had to learn how to emulate and counter on the fly. It was not going well.
Each time I failed, Spike and I got dropped into a new timeline. Every timeline was different except for one common element. Without the Elements of Harmony, without me and my friends standing together, working together, giving the right push at key moments to change the tide, Spike and I would come back to find Equestria in the clutches of one disaster or another. Nightmare Moon as sole ruler of Equestria (the little of which I saw was doing surprisingly well, but I didn't stay long enough to see much more than the completely renovated Everfree castle). Discord's mad Equestria running ponies ragged. King Sombra revived and at war with Equestria. Queen Chrysalis' conquered Equestria, hunting down the last of the pony resistance. One change to the past, many different presents, and none of them good. But always the Map Table, Starlight Glimmer's scroll and the three of us remembering our original, lost timeline. OK, the Map Table indicates that the Tree makes for four.
The last stop took us to a timeline where all around the Map Table, as far as I could see, was a lifeless wasteland of rock and desiccated ground. That time I had succeeded in grabbing Starlight Glimmer (small victory! yay) just in time to drag her with us into the worm hole. I couldn't out duel her, but maybe I could still teach her. After all, she's a quick... Well, I had nothing else to lose.
Friendship Reference Manual; chapter: Starting Friendships; header: making friends with enemies; subheader find out what motivates your enemy. Summary: Solve or salve that motivation first before any headway can be made into to finding a common interest.
The inhospitable, grey, windswept dessertscape wasn't enough to change her mind. Instead, to try and change my mind, she took us back in time to her past to teach me. There we saw her and a foal friend just as that foal friend experienced a surge of magic catching an avalanche of books. The friend got his cutie mark right there and then and ran out to tell his parents. He moved away without saying goodbye. Starlight Glimmer never made another friend. Since that moment her mantra has been that cutie marks break friendships. Then she took us back to Cloudsdale where she snatched the scroll from Spike and proceeded to slowly rip it so I wouldn't be able to use it again.
But I hadn't finished. I explained that all friendships are important, that everypony's friendships keep all of Equestria strong. I slowly convinced her to give friendship a chance. Meanwhile, filly Dash created her first Sonic Rainboom, the worm hole opened and we got sucked back to the present, this time inside an intact castle. I guess I'm getting a little better at the magic of persuasion.
Then something strange happened. The Map Table pulled the scroll from Spike's grasp (he'd grabbed it after Starlight had relented) created a new worm hole and sent the scroll through it, alone! Then there was a blinding flash. It could be that the Tree has dropped us back into our original time line, although how would I know? If so, I hope it also stopped all those disastrous timelines somehow.
The blast of light had all my friends running for the castle, which was perfect, we had a lot to discuss. While Starlight Glimmer waited in the hall, we sat around the Map Table at a meeting that morphed into a Friendship Council with Starlight Glimmer as the topic of discussion. We decided to pull the cart that we had pledged to pull, that of spreading Friendship all across Equestria. So we gave Starlight Glimmer our friendship. Thus, we found a new pony inside.
I had 150 flash cards, 50 transparencies. I practiced giving my talk five times (Spike insists it was twenty even though that's impossible). The scheduled time arrived and the auditorium filled up! Even my Canterlot friends were there, including Moondancer, taking a break from her research. Also present was Starlight Glimmer.
I only caught a glimpse of her in the auditorium, so I wasn't sure it was her at the time or just my imagination playing tricks on me, but it did throw a horseshoe into my pacing. Fortunately, I had 150 flash cards to keep me on track.
Starlight Glimmer is a unicorn that my friends and I had met on our first map-driven Friendship quest. More than just met, she took us captive and stripped us of our cutie marks. Starlight Glimmer had a whole town in the middle of nowhere full of ponies who had been convinced or coerced to have their cutie marks magically removed. She had them believing that happiness lay in being ordinary and that special talents leads to strife. Or they were fervently pretending so. Apparently the Tree sent all six of us to restore the cutie marks to everypony somehow. As a consequence of our helping the townsponies shake off Starlight's influence and regain their identities, Starlight Glimmer was run out of town. Or she ran herself out of town. Either way Starlight Glimmer was not a happy camper. This put a damper on her plans of spreading her magic of being mediocre.
Spike and I didn't stay in Canterlot after the lecture, we headed right back to Ponyville, where my intuition was proven right. Starlight Glimmer was stalking me. We got home, and there she was in the map room, waiting for me, as sassy as you please. She was prepared for this. I was not.
Starlight Glimmer had found a way to use the Tree Map in conjunction with a modified version of Starswirl's time travel spell to get enough power to go back in time all the way to where Rainbow Dash, as a filly, had challenged two colts to a race. Why then? Starlight had attended my lecture on the Magic of Friendship earlier today. I had explained that during a race, Rainbow Dash had created her first Sonic Rainboom and that Sonic Rainboom had been critical in shaping our destinies and eventually bringing us together as friends. Starlight Glimmer had understood that if she could prevent that key event, I would probably be friendless. She also knew me well enough that I would follow her given half the chance, and that way I would leave this reality and get dropped into the new one that she would shape by preventing Dash from making a Sonic Rainboom.
This leaves me to wonder, now that it's all over, what reality am I in now? Everything so far seems the same as it had been. I'm relieved to find the connection to this e-journal is not broken.
Starlight Glimmer was waiting for me in Cloudsdale (and self levitating!). There she foiled me and foiled Rainbow Dash's race. Spike and I ended up in some sort of Equestria gone horribly wrong. So we went back, and she was waiting for us, a smirk on her face and with new way to defeat me and keep Rainbow Dash from finding her need for speed. That ended with Spike and I returning to a different present timeline with a bad outcome for Equestria. She wasn't just breaking the chain of events that lead to me making friends in Ponyville, she was sending all of Equestria into turmoil. This happened over and over again.
So many changes to the time stream happened, who knows what may be different now. Spike, Starlight Glimmer and I are the only constants in this outcome. I'm still not sure why the Tree let all of this happen in the first place.
Back to late this afternoon. Spike and I got back from Canterlot to find Starlight Glimmer sitting at the map table. It was not a pleasant surprise to see her there, and it was even less of a nice surprise when she cast a spell that created a temporary wormhole in time and space, right then and there. It turns out she had been studying hard that whole time between when she escaped her markless town and her sudden appearance in this castle. She had been studying us and time travel, maybe self defense, probably self levitation, cloud-walking, and I think the final, important lesson she had learned, was at my lecture on the Magic of Friendship. She probably had already learned of what had been my first big break in magic, the magic burst at my entrance exam that had pushed me onto the path to being noticed by Princess Celestia. That eventually led to me making friends in Ponyville at just the right moment. But at my lecture today, she found _the_ key event. She had studied hard and well. I have to give her that.
So Spike and I found ourselves face to face with a pony we had written off long ago, and now, like Trixie, she was back to buck us and buck us hard. She opened a wormhole, stared at us with a smirk and let herself get sucked into it like she was boarding the Friendship Express to a sunny destination. She had waited for us, or specifically, for me, to return before casting that spell. Where ever she went, it wasn't just to escape, she had something nefarious in mind, and I had to find out what. The scroll she had used to make the wormhole had fallen to the floor and I did the impulsive thing. I did not call on my friends to go after her together. I cast the spell. In hindsight, it was better that it was just Spike and I that went after her. Had we been seven or six, staying together would have been complicated. We ended up in Cloudsdale.
Now I can walk on clouds now, but not Spike, or half my friends, without magical preparation. I had none, and Starlight Glimmer was waiting for me. We were in the past and at that crucial moment when Rainbow Dash, filly Rainbow Dash, gets presented with the opportunity, and then the motivation, to fly fast enough to make her very first Sonic Rainboom. Thus, it was also the day Spike hatched and all my friends got our cutie marks.
Starlight Glimmer is a very good student. Too good. She managed to keep from falling to earth, avoid me and thwart Rainbow Dash from picking up enough speed, several times! Each time, the reverse worm hole would manifest and pull me "back" to a _new_ present time, next to the Map Table. In each instance, it would be a timeline in which I had never made friends in Ponyville.
When we'd come back to the new "present", we'd come back to an open area, oddly deserted, except for the map table. Was the Tree in on this? How many dimensions does the Tree "see"? Well, thanks to Starlight Glimmer, we knew what went wrong and what it was we had to correct. Filly, blank flank Rainbow Dash had to complete that race unfettered. We still had the scroll and we went back. Again and again. Fortunately to the same moment _before_ Rainbow challenged her two colt rivals to that pivotal race. Unfortunately, Starlight Glimmer had a whole arsenal of ideas on how to both beat me and keep Rainbow Dash from making a Rainboom then and there. I study Friendship, she studied dueling. Did I mention that she's really good at her studies? I had a lot of spells thrown at me that I had to learn how to emulate and counter on the fly. It was not going well.
Each time I failed, Spike and I got dropped into a new timeline. Every timeline was different except for one common element. Without the Elements of Harmony, without me and my friends standing together, working together, giving the right push at key moments to change the tide, Spike and I would come back to find Equestria in the clutches of one disaster or another. Nightmare Moon as sole ruler of Equestria (the little of which I saw was doing surprisingly well, but I didn't stay long enough to see much more than the completely renovated Everfree castle). Discord's mad Equestria running ponies ragged. King Sombra revived and at war with Equestria. Queen Chrysalis' conquered Equestria, hunting down the last of the pony resistance. One change to the past, many different presents, and none of them good. But always the Map Table, Starlight Glimmer's scroll and the three of us remembering our original, lost timeline. OK, the Map Table indicates that the Tree makes for four.
The last stop took us to a timeline where all around the Map Table, as far as I could see, was a lifeless wasteland of rock and desiccated ground. That time I had succeeded in grabbing Starlight Glimmer (small victory! yay) just in time to drag her with us into the worm hole. I couldn't out duel her, but maybe I could still teach her. After all, she's a quick... Well, I had nothing else to lose.
Friendship Reference Manual; chapter: Starting Friendships; header: making friends with enemies; subheader find out what motivates your enemy. Summary: Solve or salve that motivation first before any headway can be made into to finding a common interest.
The inhospitable, grey, windswept dessertscape wasn't enough to change her mind. Instead, to try and change my mind, she took us back in time to her past to teach me. There we saw her and a foal friend just as that foal friend experienced a surge of magic catching an avalanche of books. The friend got his cutie mark right there and then and ran out to tell his parents. He moved away without saying goodbye. Starlight Glimmer never made another friend. Since that moment her mantra has been that cutie marks break friendships. Then she took us back to Cloudsdale where she snatched the scroll from Spike and proceeded to slowly rip it so I wouldn't be able to use it again.
But I hadn't finished. I explained that all friendships are important, that everypony's friendships keep all of Equestria strong. I slowly convinced her to give friendship a chance. Meanwhile, filly Dash created her first Sonic Rainboom, the worm hole opened and we got sucked back to the present, this time inside an intact castle. I guess I'm getting a little better at the magic of persuasion.
Then something strange happened. The Map Table pulled the scroll from Spike's grasp (he'd grabbed it after Starlight had relented) created a new worm hole and sent the scroll through it, alone! Then there was a blinding flash. It could be that the Tree has dropped us back into our original time line, although how would I know? If so, I hope it also stopped all those disastrous timelines somehow.
The blast of light had all my friends running for the castle, which was perfect, we had a lot to discuss. While Starlight Glimmer waited in the hall, we sat around the Map Table at a meeting that morphed into a Friendship Council with Starlight Glimmer as the topic of discussion. We decided to pull the cart that we had pledged to pull, that of spreading Friendship all across Equestria. So we gave Starlight Glimmer our friendship. Thus, we found a new pony inside.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-26 05:59 pm (UTC)Although I suppose it's not clear that the original timeline existed between when you first went back and when you restored the proper events . . . actually, I'm not sure "between" even has an objective meaning there. But unless you've got a spell to examine other timelines or evidence that this one is wrong, it's probably best not to worry about things you can't investigate or change.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-27 12:32 am (UTC)So, in the final return to the present, after I had the outcome I was looking for (Rainboom achieved), were there two Twilights, Spikes and Starlight Glimmers? Was my original timeline, the starting point for the whole seesaw ride, minus one Twilight, one Spike and one Starlight? Ditto for the Map Table? Maybe. We did do something to the past that last time -- we went there, and from there, back to the present. A new present. But I still think the Tree fixed that. And you are right, it's best not to worry.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-27 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-27 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-27 12:45 am (UTC)