Tales From Twilight Town

by iisaw

Acceptance

There are uncounted stories about how the Town got started, most involving a mythical goddess of the evening. She is usually depicted as a blend of Celestia and Stellamara because... storytellers are lazy, I suppose.

None of the Folk use the word "Twilight" much. With nearly everything West of the Black Ridge having some variation of that word attached to it, everybody just says "the Docks", "the Valley", "the Mountain", or what have you, for simplicity's sake. Some new residents will even go as far as to only say "dusk" or "sunset" in normal conversation, even when it sounds awkward. That's purely an affectation, and it has the opposite of the intended effect, marking them out as pretenders.

That's not to say that nobody believes in the Alicorn of the Evening. Quite the opposite. There must be a half dozen major sects in town plus more little near-cults than it is reasonable to keep track of, all certain that they know the exact particulars of how Twilight the Terrible wanted everybody to conduct themselves. There's one group that goes as far as to stipulate which hooves must touch the floor in which order when arising in the morning, and they're not the weirdest bunch.

Fortunately for the rest of us, every archdiocese, oddfellowship, and llamanate agrees on one unalterable divine precept: "Get along, or else." The exact consequences are not stipulated. As devout followers of the Scholar Queen, the congregants are given free rein to imagine the appropriate horrors. The rest of us Townies pretty much agree with that particular rule and go about our business, neither knowing nor caring about any other holy truths.

On the rare occasion that I gave the matter of our founding any thought at all, I assumed that, because our national symbol is a bull's head, the Town had most likely been started at some time in the far-distant past by minotaur traders. Our half-day, half-night creation myth must be the product of pony chauvinism, or an attempt to one-up the foreign alicorns in Canterlot who moved the sun and moon. It's very easy for a goddess to be superior to both Celestia and Stellamara combined when she didn't need to actually exist.

But I have come to—doubt my casual disbelief.

I had lived in Town for several years and settled in quite nicely, forming a small and select circle of friends and lovers. But things change.

I moved out to this little bungalow when I became too restless to be good company. The joy I used to take at dining out and lingering over coffee or drinks in the Old Town had disappeared. Sitting at a café and attempting to exchange pleasantries and gossip with friends who happened to pass by had become tedious.

The bungalow had come cheap. It was isolated and exposed to storms sweeping in off the sea. Unpleasant for the outgoing and friendly Folk, but ideal for my mood. There were only two rooms, but the tiny one at the rear of the house was ideal for the foal, and the larger one that opened onto the broad veranda on three sides suited me well enough.

I spent most of my time outdoors, reading or merely staring at the crash of waves on the black basalt far below. I thought I would drink more, but the bottles on the low shelf beside the door gathered dust, only occasionally smeared by a hoofprint.

Meadowsweet had arranged for a pegasus filly to come out and clean for me once a week. I hardly needed it; I am a stallion of neat habits and the foal wasn't old enough yet to produce significant dirt or disarray. Well—I'm sure Sweet had given the cleaning girl private instructions to evaluate my "situation" and report back. At least the filly did her work quickly and efficiently without attempting to converse with me.

The foal was at the crawling stage, so I carefully attached fine netting all along the veranda railing. I tried to keep its explorations confined to the large room where a decent enough carpet covered the floor, but the open air, the clouds, and the birds seemed to fascinate it, and there was no sense in taking chances.

Occasionally, someone would come up from the town with my mail or some business papers to sign. I am not one to neglect my duties, and so I carefully stomped the forms and replied to the enquiries and put the unopened envelopes of personal correspondence in the drawer of my nightstand.

Sometimes there were storms and I would fasten the big shutters across the front of the house to block out the rain. Sometimes the sea breeze died entirely, and I fastened the big shutters across the side of the house to block out the noise from the town below.

I had dreams, of course, but I hardly ever remembered their content. When I did, I drank.

That particular night was fine. The breeze was gentle and balmy and the sky was bright with stars—unclouded. I opened all three sides of the bungalow. I read for a while before bed, using some of my limited supply of lamp oil in order to finish a particularly interesting chapter, and then lay down on top of the covers and drifted off.

The nightmare came suddenly. I dreamed an explosion of lightning, and rolled over to see a huge, dark shape ripping at the railing of the veranda, shattering the wood and tearing away the netting as easily as if it were paper. I started up in terror and backed away toward the stairs that led to the narrow, cliffside path to town.

But the dark mare wasn't interested in me. She turned to the back of the house, her rapier horn scoring the roof beams and her flared wings casually tumbling the furniture as she strode to the doorway of the back room.

I screamed out something, a wordless protest barely audible over the thunderous hoof falls of the thing that scooped the foal out of its crib with a black wing. She turned and gave me one merciless sneer before growling, "Mine, now."

The alicorn leaped into the roiling storm and vanished as I awoke, gasping.

The night was quiet. The gentle breeze had cooled. I stumbled to the back room to find the foal was gone.

I wasted several frantic seconds searching the confines of the small space and then I knew. I knew with that awful certainty one sometimes has in dreams, and I ran to the veranda to find a little tear in the netting. It was so very, very small, yet large enough.

But there, nearly below the level of the floor, dim in the moonless night, was a little spot of color, the pale green that I knew so well. And there was a soft, desperate cry that could have been a sea bird disturbed in its sleep.

I lifted her up and untangled her tiny hoof from the frayed bit of netting, then hugged her to my chest and wept as silently as I could until she quieted and fell asleep.

I looked out into the night and whispered to a creature that may have been a demon or may have been a goddess, "No!” I paused for a moment, looking for some sign I had been understood before continuing, "Mine. She's my daughter."

= = =
=

Author's Note:

Thanks to Jordanis for his excellent editing on this chapter.

Comments

[Octoskan]

I screeched in delight when I saw this story, with its update, in my feed. :) :) :)

[6-D Pegasus]

Welcome back!! Oh my gosh I'm gonna explode with excitement

[iisaw]

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I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

[SPANIARD KIWI]

Holy kiwi, you restored your fanfics here! Thanks, fella! 😀

[Gyro Pony]

WELCOME BACK MATEY !!!!

You know, I was just thinking about "Hay Field" the other day. No idea what brought it on.

Nice to see stories from you again.
You are one of our better authors, by writing and moral conviction.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Always good to see more from you, especially a fascinating glimpse from the edges of both dream and Twilight Town. (And it says something that Twilight hasn’t visited enough for long enough to recede into myth and various flavors of religion.)

[Gastredner]

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Not to mention all those mentions of Stellamara. I don't think we've seen that particular name in any of his other works so far. Seems to be happening quite a bit in the future.

Eithet way, good to potentially have you back, iisaw. Made me spontaneously re-read The Skyla Pseudonym, because why the hell not?

[iisaw]

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You're welcome!

11849220
It's good to be back! I'm getting a lot of unexpected fun reading over the old comments sections. And thank you for the kind words!

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Thank you both! Yep, this is set way in the future when many things have changed quite a lot.

"Why the hell not?" is usually an excellent excuse for a lot of things!

[Ghost Mike]

You coming back is such a treat that, why the hell not, I figured I'd read this extra chapter you added to this anthology and give an off-the cuff comment (from me, two years into reviewing regularly? I know), especially as otherwise it would be years before I ever would. Especially as this chapter is, I gather, one that existed already on Offprint and A03, but as it was published there after the purge here, only now does it make its way over.

Not having read anything in the Alicorn Adventures series since early 2021, my memory of this pretty much starts and ends at "snapshots through the ages of the village of Twilight worshippers that sprung up in the dimension Skyla Pseudonym took place in and has maintained their worship even though Twilight discouraged it, and when that didn't work, accepts it but rarely visits". And virtually no specifics otherwise. That's… kind of alright, it seems? This one, at least, is far less about the how of Twilight having receded into legend, and more about the tone of this mysterious reclusive stallion living in a sea cottage, and the mood of a mysterious nightmare, and on that level, I found it diverting and captivating enough.

Frankly, the nightmare mostly just confused me – I really don't get what anything in the nightmare is supposed to mean, even just in terms of intended reader effect, which is all I care about anyway – but I'll trust that, had I better short-term knowledge of the earlier chapters or Skyla Pseudonym itself (where all I remember is "rebellious Flurry Heart and Twilight end up piloting an airship in another dimension and get caught up freeing unicorns from earth pony slavers, also Twilight is permanently transformed for the story's length into a Chrysalis-esque form for some reason"), it would snap into place.

Regardless, your writing skill (of a few years ago, as noted above – hopefully it won't have atrophied for the upcoming new fic ) doesn't seem to have waned, especially with the poetic and beautiful scene-setting in those opening paragraphs. So bravo, my friend. Even if I mostly enjoyed this as a side dish to your library's return, I did enjoy it for itself too. Cheers, bud!

[iisaw]

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Thank you so much for the reaction! You have misremembered a few things, but that really shouldn't matter for this story, being set so far in the future of Equestria, and removed from the events of the other stories. You are right about the timing and appearance of this chapter.

This was a departure from my usual style, trying to set a specific mood and tell the story by implication despite an unreliable, even self-deceptive narrator.

If you're interested in spoilers... The small-N nightmare is just that, a troubled dream formed by the stallion's guilt over the emotional distance he put between himself and the child of his dead lover, and triggered by subconsciously hearing the scream of the foal as she fell through the netting. His dreaming mind conflated Twilight and a ponification of death. But what really matters is that the near deadly accident broke through the stallion's emotional barrier between him and his daughter. Cheery stuff, huh?