//------------------------------// // Song of Circles, One // Story: Ofolrodi // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash's eyes flew open with a whimper. She lay. Stretched out. Legs and hooves and wings pinned to the dew-laden strands of a giant spider's web. Suspended in darkness. She gasped and hyperventilated. Ears twitched. Eyes darted. Wings buzzed like a trapped fly. A shriek escaped her lips. A yelp. She shook and thrashed and fought with her restraints. Tiny vibrations rippled along the silken strands, trailing into darkness. Then... ...heavier vibrations rippled back towards her. Heavy. Thunderous. Carried by a million hooked legs. It was coming for her. It was coming for her and she was going to die. She screamed for help. She shrieked for mercy. She howled and sobbed into the abyss. Nothing but darkness greeted her. Hungering. The vibrations came closer. They shook her skull. They resonated in her ears, forming a pattern beneath the primal terror of the moment. That pattern soon became a voice. It throttled Rainbow and soothed her all at once. From darkness we come and one day return. Eclipsed by shadow, there is room for Song. Rainbow Dash breathed and panted and breathed and panted... The vibrations surrounded her. The legs and hairs encroached, carrying with it the darkness from all edges of the web. Soon, she was suspended by nothing but her own breaths, forming a melodic squeak in the center of the everlasting emptiness. Affording a semblance of the sound... the Song... The Song defines us, its strings sustaining Until there is no more life remaining. Perfect harmony encapsulated Briefly between onyx parentheses. Rainbow Dash's eyelids thinned... lowered... and fell. There was a hint of color... a final spark from her inner being. A lasting exhale, and it was gone. The barest trailing molecules scattered outward into the ether. Like stardust. Building up speed and momentum as it pierced the everlasting blackness. And the hint of substance blurred by. Nebulaic bands of glittery gaseous detritus. Constellatory miasma, furiously soundless. A hazy shade of stars—billions in number yet null in heat. And from the void in between... the hint of something solid, poignant, and purposeful... Lingering. Trailing. Spinning. Weighting. And from this briefest of orchestrations A ballad is formed: a symphonic dance Befitting accidents and miracles, A duet performed in the darkest void. At first, it looked like a narrow string of lifeless metal. Then—as it zoomed closer—it possessed curves. Texture. A surface that reflected, projected, differentiated. Finally, pivoting, it exposed a complex glass onion cross-section of circles within circles. Cylinders within cylinders. Forever rotating. Forever animating. Brimming from the inside out with artificial light. Atmospheres. Ecosystems and oceans and arcologies. The Song of Circles, conjured in secret. We know not the authors nor the artists. Their legacy is their work: an ode to Life in all its shapes to be and not be. To dwell and to die in numbers great, small, And to pass on their slice of the Circle To the next generation to arrive As all who have been blessed to hear the Song Have been summoned from Darkness into Light. Zooming even closer, levitating swarms of structures materialized, patrolling the horizons within horizons that reflected one another and rotated constantly. Heat brimmed and crackled between the opposing continents and curved shelves, allowing life to thrive and migrate and bloom and decay and revitalize the landscape. And then, countless movements into the Song, An uninvited break, cocophonous And unyielding in its grotesque volume, Shattered the rhythm—forced a new cadence. From within the innermost circle... Hovering over a slice of verdant landscape... ...two spheres formed. One of golden, steady and sparkling brilliance. The other of flickering, ever-changing madness. There was a ruby splash of color, a violent hemorrhage. Two swarms of structure flew to the rescue, but it was too late. The slice broke free, shattering mountains and spilling oceans and—FLAAASH! The ruby light flooded the circles, spilling out of the cylinders until the lonesome slice was expelled fully and completely... Jetted out into the chaotic dark, twirling helplessly in a death spin until it was a mere silhouette against the nothingness. The timeless Symphony of Life and Death, Forever tainted by its own chorus, And yet it was the birth of a new song. Forged in dichotomy, tempered by a New soundscape and seeking new audience. This Song beckons the strings to form a new Partnership with the Spectrum, a duet Of chaos and harmony, and this slice Is the new destined auditorium.