Flim and Flam and the Road to Old Donado

by KFDirector

The Last Lesson of Carriage Callow

“Flim! Flam! Get yo’ butts up here.”

The young Flimflam colts were not known for their obedience, but they still listened when certain ponies called for them. “Yes, Uncle Carriage!” They joined their mentor, an old blue unicorn with a gray mane, at a picnic table up on the roof of the Clover Home for Orphaned Unicorns. His magic carefully centered a knife, and then smoothly cored an apple. The brothers knew better than to rush the old stallion, especially when he was wielding sharp objects.

“Yo’ mom – she went back in front of Foal Protective Services, you know. Said she’d kicked her drinkin’ for good this time, ready to take you two back.” He sliced the apple, and gave the brothers two of the pieces, keeping the rest for himself.

Flam grumbled. “She just wants more aid money.”

“Now you shut yo’ mouth! I know she ain’t always been a good mom to you, but she is yo’ mom and she tryin’ real damn hard to make the family thing work. Tryin’ hard than most would, her position. FPS don’t usually give yo’ kids back after you lose ‘em three times. But they figurin’ on it, sincere as she been.”

Flim was as disgruntled as his brother. “Yeah, and?”

“That means you two goin’ away again. Now, yo’ mom tryin’ real hard for you to be a family, so I don’t think you ever comin’ back here – you near enough adults now anyway. But if you do, well, I don’t figure on bein’ here.”

“You’re leaving the orphanage, Uncle Carriage?”

“I’m leavin’ the livin’.”

“You’re dying? But you ain’t sick, are you?”

“Nah, I ain’t sick. I just a mean angry old cuss who lived too damn long and lived too damn hard for most of it.” He looked wistfully out over the rooftops of Canterlot.

“But Penny Wing’s got you on the clean living now, right?”

The old unicorn nodded, sadly. “Yeah, bless her heart, she does. She got my drinkin’ mostly under control, she got me to stop smokin’, and a few other vices I don’t even tell you two punks about, she stopped them too. But damage done, boys. My heart, liver, lungs, loins, gut, they all be ‘Too little too late you damn fool’ and I be all ‘I know, I know, I just wanted to not give scandal to all them foals’ and they be all ‘well and fine for yo’ soul but you still die soon’ and I be all ‘I know.’”

The boys stared for a while. “Sorry to hear that, Uncle Carriage.”

“Promise me, boys, that at least you drink in moderation.”

“We don’t drink at all, Uncle Carriage! We’re too young.”

“Don’t feed me a line, Flim! There be some ponies here who listen to Penny Wing and won’t ever drink, and good for them, but that ain’t you. You two already robbin’ my liquor cabinet. ‘course, it ain’t liquor you gettin’ most of the time, but that just ‘cuz I on to you for a while now. Drink a little when you need to be social, and drink when you happy – ‘cuz that ain’t a time that happen too often – but don’t drink when you sad or mad and don’t ever drink to get drunk. You read me, boys?”

“Yes, Uncle Carriage.” It was an admonition they would frequently feel bad about ignoring over the years.

“But I didn’t call yo’ butts up here to listen to an old stinker sob, though. I got one last thing I wanna teach you.”

Flim and Flam nodded eagerly. Uncle Carriage had taught them cards, had taught them smooth-talking, had taught them music and dance, had taught them how to win a lady’s heart (if not how to keep it) – lots of things.

“This ain’t no standard lesson, though. This lesson maybe you don’t want to learn. This a magic lesson.”

“Ain’t Penny Wing the one who teaches us magic?” Aside, of course, from the hangover cure.

“Yep. What I teach you, this a special kind of magic. And you learn to do magic my way, you ain’t ever be the best of the best at the normal kinds. And you ever get too good at the normal kinds, you ain’t ever learn my magic.”

Flim and Flam regarded each other – only the cutie marks and the start of some extra mane stubble on Flam’s muzzle distinguished them. They looked back at Carriage.

“Are we ever going to be the best of the best anyway, Uncle Carriage?”

“‘course you ain’t! You poor, you troublemakers, and you bright but you ain’t that bright.”

“So we don’t lose anything by hearing you out?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

They considered this ambiguity. “Let’s hear it, Uncle Carriage.”

The elder smiled. “Now, look across the street, boys. You see all them pretty young fillies?”

They followed his gaze to a courtyard in front of a small library, an extension of some royal academy. It being lunch time, many of its students were picnicking on the grass – atop the grass, that is, not making a meal of the grass; these were not ponies recently acquainted of want. “Yes, Uncle Carriage.”

“Well, all them little fillies are studying real hard at Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. They learnin’ all kinds of magic, and they gonna be real good at it, no mistake. But they ain’t gonna know everything. Y’know why?”

“No, Uncle Carriage.”

“‘course you don’t! If you did, I wouldn’t have to tell you now, would I? Well, they don’t know everything ‘cuz they learnin’ about magic the scientific way. Now, science is fine, don’t get me wrong, science does the job ninety-nine times in a hundred, science made us a whole lot of fine things that work real well, but there some things it just plain misses.”

The brothers nodded.

“Now, think on this. One of science’s real basic ideas – so basic they don’t even mention it, most of the time – is that you can’t break the rules of the universe. You see the problem?”

“No, Uncle Carriage. You can’t break any rules. That’s what makes them rules, ain’t it?”

“Nope. Think about rules for a minute. Alright, what happens if you out of bed after curfew?”

“Penny Wing whoops our butts with a big ol’ stick.”

“And what happens if you unsupervised in the fillies’ dorm?”

“Somepony screams bloody murder, and Penny Wing whoops us our butts with a big ol’ stick.”

“And what happens if you lay a hoof on my 959 Curricle without my say-so?”

“You whoop our butts with a big ol’ stick.”

“So you can break all these rules, only there be consequences, so you don’t – unless you think you won’t get caught, or maybe it worth it anyway.”

They nodded.

“Now, let’s talk about one of science’s ideas of a rule. What happens if you make a triangle on a chalkboard, and all three sides are exactly as long as each other, but the angles ain’t all exactly the same?”

Flim frowned, recalling his geometry lessons. “You – you can’t.”

“You can’t? But who whoops on your butt with a big ol’ stick if you do?”

“Nopony! You just – you just can’t do it!”

“But what if you really need to do it? What if it the only thing that’ll save a starvin’ little filly from dyin’ in the cold with a bundle of matchsticks?”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s right or wrong, Uncle Carriage, you just can’t do it!”

“So science rules be different, huh?”

“…yeah, yeah they are.”

“And that where all them pretty little fillies across the street start from. And a damn good way of thinkin’ of things, too. But it ain’t the only way. And I’m gonna teach you another way: my way. Not everypony can handle thinkin’ of things ol’ Uncle Carriage’s way, ‘course, and even if they do, surer than Tartarus smells like warm dog piss most of ‘em can’t make it work for ‘em. But you boys…” He regarded them for a moment, and nodded, satisfied that his earlier assessments had been correct. “…you might just have it in you. Trot with me.”

Carriage got off the picnic bench, and started down the fire escape stairs – the brothers followed him, and soon they were in the streets.

“There a couple of things that all gotta come together to pull this off. So before you start goin’ ‘Uncle Carriage, you drunk again’, shut yo’ pie hole for a damn minute and let an old colt talk, you got that?”

“Yes, Uncle Carriage.”

“Now, here’s the first thing you’ve got to know. Reality ain’t quite like that. The rules don’t enforce themselves. There’s a…a spirit that infuses the whole damn universe. It be like, Princess Celestia, but writ large all through everyone and everything and everywhere. This spirit, it got a personality. It love us, mostly, and it get a laugh outta messin’ with us, but it also its job to enforce all the rules.”

“But it didn’t whoop on me with a big ol’ stick or nothing when I tried to make that triangle you were talking about, Uncle.”

“‘course it didn’t! It got more subtlety than that. Let’s talk rules again: what happens when you bite that filly Trixie’s ear off and smear her blood all over her dolls?”

“W – what? I would – I couldn’t ever do something like – ”

“‘course you can’t, ‘cuz you ain’t a psycho! It ain’t even a rule to you because it just ain’t somethin’ you’d ever do! But make no mistake, it is a rule, we’d all whoop on you with big ol’ sticks you ever did somethin’ like that. And that the way of the spirit of the universe – most its rules, it don’t even occur to you to break. Oh, you’re aware of them, and them fillies over there study them, but how do you break ‘em? If you ain’t well and truly crazy, it don’t even occur to you to try, or how to begin!”

“But somepony can break those rules?”

They trotted alongside the pegasus airfields, and for a few minutes in silence he had them watch the ponies coming for landings – usually just the ones with lots of cargo to carry; unladen pegasus ponies had less need for a long strip. A few of the ponies – such as sleeker mares glistening from flights through rainstorms – they stared at longer than others. Eventually, Carriage started speaking again.

“That spirit, it has personality. Most the time, it enforce rules. What happen if a pegasus try to fly? Most times, pegasus fly. What happen if you try to fly? You plant yo’ face in the mud, and we all laugh, ‘cuz you a prideful little unicorn punk who got what comin’ to him. And most earth ponies try, same thing. But about once a generation, the spirit decides to let one pony – it almost always earth pony, ‘cuz the spirit love earth ponies better than us, it only give us magic or wings ‘cuz it feel guilty about not lovin’ us so much as it love earth ponies – the spirit decides that it be really, really funny if that one pony get to break rules.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know who that pony is now. I knew one from then. Panda Moan, colt with black and white spots. He open my eyes to all this.”

“He could break rules?”

“He could fly. See, what he’d do is he’d trip over somethin’, ‘cuz he real clumsy, only he’d get distracted on the way down – usually a pretty mare, that his way – and start thinkin’ about somethin’ else other than fallin’, and then he’d miss the damn ground. And then he just be hoverin’ there, like it ain’t no thing, and then he starts swoopin’ and loop-de-hoopin’ like he a pegasus.”

“Because it was funny?”

“To the spirit, it was. I tried that the same way he did it, I got a mouth full of mud and I had it comin’. See, to the spirit, it was only funny ‘cuz he was doin’ it.”

Flam frowned. “So that’s this magic? Something only one earth pony in a generation can do? What good is that to us?”

“I told you, shut yo’ damn pie hole and let me get around to it. The first trick to my magic is knowin’ that they some ponies in the world who get to play by different rules. Big one is the earth pony like that – the earth pony the universe think it funny to let them break rules. They other kinds too, but you probably ain’t ever going to run into them other kinds, I don’t think.”

“You’re not drunk again, are you Uncle Carriage?”

“I’m comin’ to it! Now, here’s the next part. Blank canvas now, think about new things. Say you runnin’ a con. Now, gimme your thoughts here. If you pretendin’ to be somepony else, you believe you that pony?”

The brothers disagreed on this.

Flim argued first. “You can only make somepony really believe you are somepony if you really believe that you are that pony, Uncle.”

“You can’t ever lose sight of your goals, Uncle,” Flam argued back, “you’ve got to always remember what you really want out of the game, so that you can back out if things go screwy. And you don’t need ponies to ‘really’ believe you – just a little bit, enough to get what you need. Most ponies don’t pay that much attention anyway.”

“You both right, mostly. If you just hopin’ to stud with a pretty mare for the night, and she kinda interested too and just lookin’ for an excuse to say ‘yes’, you don’t have to believe all that hard. If you want somepony to give you money and you give ‘em nothing, you have to believe pretty hard. But there something out there that pay real, real close attention.”

Flim raised a brow. “The spirit of the universe?”

“Damn right. The spirit can be fooled, but it’s real hard, and you have to believe harder than anything – you have to know, harder than you know the sun’ll come up tomorrow, harder than you think you know yo’ name – you have to know in every fiber of you that you somepony else. And if you believe that hard, the spirit might just buy it.”

Flam shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how hard Trixie thinks she’s Daring Do, I know she ain’t Daring Do. She doesn’t even have the hat.”

“‘course you know, ‘cuz you ain’t a fool! But the spirit don’t see things the way you do. The spirit don’t use eyes, it don’t use ears – it reads into yo’ soul. And yo’ soul don’t wear a hat. So yeah, just believin’ hard, that ain’t good enough all by its lonesome to con ponies, because ponies look to all kinds of outer cues too, but the spirit pretty much just look inside. But it look real hard. You got to make your soul the very spittin’ image of that other soul.”

“And then what, Uncle Carriage?”

“And then the spirit think you somepony else. And that can be huge, if you know what you doin’.”

Flam looked skeptical. “You mean if I can make the spirit think that I’m Panda Moan, then the spirit will think that it’s funny to let me fly?”

“Yep. ‘cept Panda Moan dead, and the spirit know it, so you can’t pretend to be him anymore. You got to find the next earth pony that break rules. They somewhere out there – maybe they flyin’, maybe they spittin’ fire, maybe they steppin’ between shadows, I dunno. When one dies, the spirit makes another one, but I dunno if that means a new one born or a new one find his cutie mark in makin’ the spirit laugh its butt off.”

The look of skepticism on Flam’s face continued unabated. “So you’re teaching us this lesson now in case someday we find the new earth pony so we can then pretend to be him?”

“I teachin’ you this lesson now because you gone soon and I dead soon and I ain’t got time to wait to find the new one before this little bit of secret knowledge disappears forever. Ain’t a lot you other little punks I think can know this – oh, some worth it, more ‘n a few deserve it more than you two, but you what I got to work with in ‘can make it work.’”

They lingered in front of the gates of the Royal Palace, beholding the glory and splendor that was Canterlot Castle – through such bars and past such guards as they needed to peer through to do any beholding.

“Uncle,” Flim asked, brow furrowed, “What if we find that new pony, but there’s no way we can make ourselves believe we’re them?”

“My lesson ain’t done, Flim. Some unicorn magic goes into this, you know.”

“But what if they’re…well, a mare?”

Carriage stared into space, deep in thought. “That a good question, Flim. I guess I always thought of mares doin’ better at proper magic and colts doin’ better at wild magic, but maybe it ain’t always that way, come to think. Magic to change colt to mare or back, in the body and all, that be real damn hard – maybe no one but Princess Celestia do that, and even she don’t do that. But all we got to do is fool the spirit with the soul.” He muttered to himself, starting to trot again down the sidewalk of Canterlot’s main boulevard, and his pace had picked up.

“Yeah, yeah, that might work.”

“Uncle?”

“I gonna show you the details, boys, but souls? They songs, or near enough. They got melodies, rhythms, beats, harmony. You ever pretend on bein’ a mare, it like singing a mare’s song with stallion voice –ain’t sound quite right, least not outta you. I knew some ponies that maybe had colt bodies and mare souls, but that ain’t you two. But you improv a little, you shift the pitch, you put same song on new octave, one right for yo’ throat – and sudden it sound right, like that how it always meant to be. Maybe you ain’t quite original, but maybe you just as good.”

Flim nodded eagerly. “And that’ll fool the spirit?”

“Buck me if I know, boy. I ain’t even consider it ‘til you ask it. This wild magic, Flim, this secret magic. Now then.”

Carriage took a seat under a fragrant cherry tree, and then did Flim and Flam. They took in the breeze passing between tall buildings, and the scent wafting from a quiet garden in the cool of the day.

“I gonna teach you hear those songs, and I gonna teach you play ‘em back by ear. The day ever come you find that pony, maybe you play his song. You find her a mare, you gonna need another step, ‘cuz you gonna need to get her sheet music, and that trick all on you to figure. But meantime, I teach what I know, and we gonna practice ‘til Penny Wing come find us and tan my blue hide with a bluer streak for not havin’ you two ready for yo’ mom to pick up like I said I would. You got that?”

“Yes, Uncle Carriage!”

---

One earth pony and two unicorns trotted through rain-slicked streets while the pegasus ponies above arranged a spectacular downpour.

“…and you’re sure it’s her?”

“You gave us the last clue, old bean – Twilight Sparkle herself couldn’t explain what she does. Is it in Twilight’s nature to give up on understanding anything?”

Their lawyer sighed, as a passing carriage wheel sent up a muddy spray onto his vest. “No, it’s not. But if I’m going to help you shake down a pony who deals in black magic and forbidden artifacts so you can borrow, free of charge, an illegal magic mirror….”

“We’re certain it’s her.”

“Although we’re not certain this is going to work,” Flam added. Responding to his brother’s glare, he only could say “What? We aren’t. This is wild magic.”

“It should work,” Flim reassured their lawyer.

“Well, at least tell me this is all you two are going to need from me for this hare-brained scheme.”

“I would, but you’ve asked us time and again to stop lying to you.”

---

“Ah, Miss Pinkie Pie!” The market was closing as a drab earth pony trotted up to a fluorescent one. “On behalf of my clients, I’ve been asked to deliver a message.”

“He’s got her attention, right?”

“Right. She’s not even looking this way.” Flim turned back to the tall mirror they had positioned on the roof of an unsuspecting sofa merchant, and peered into its depths – swirling colors told him that the magic was working, but that it wasn’t just right yet. He frowned, and nudged one of the gems in the mirror’s frame with a tap of magic.

“Don’t!” Flam spat. “I’ve almost got them. You just worry about reading; I’ll worry about focus.”

“Oh, silly! You don’t have to lie to me. I know they’re only sorry because they got caught, and they only sent you to talk to me so they can scry on me with a magic mirror.”

The brown pony’s mustache drooped. “You…already know that? Then why aren’t you stopping them?”

“Oh, because they’ll need to have done it, some day. What I don’t know is…why are you helping them?” She tapped him on the muzzle with her hoof; her eyes accusatory, his ever-widening.

“What are they talking about down there?” Flim wondered aloud.

“Don’t know, don’t care; all that matters is that he got her to sit still for once.” Flam’s magic reached out and tapped all seven of the mirror’s gems at once, and he listened closely to the resonance. “Just a little more…there.”

Flim looked back into the mirror, and saw new swirls of colors, mostly in shades of rose and pink, and then he pushed himself to look deeper and deeper. There was a whole world here – the song, when made into something for the eyes, was a fractal, with no final level of detail that was sufficient – one needed first and foremost to grasp the pattern, the overarching truths that generated all that could follow.

She offered him a hankie, and he took it in hoof and dabbed his eyes. “You’re right. Until I’ve ever lived for myself, at least once, how can I ever be good enough for anypony, much less her?”

“That’s the spirit!”

“The day after the cider season, I’m leaving those two behind and going on an adventure!”

“Yes!”

“I’m going to the gates of Tartarus!”

Her smile weakened. “That’s…well…”

“And I’m going to buck Cerberus in the knees!”

“ – maybe a little too much spirit – ”

“And when all the Prison Lords of Tartarus stand arrayed against me, I’m going to say ‘send out the Devil’s Advocate, because I’m ready to take his overpaid flank to the cleaners!’”

“ – I’m not super-duper sure you’re totally getting the real spirit of this – ”

“Flim! Flim! Have you got it?”

He gasped, pulling back from the mirror, sweat pouring through his coat and mane, soaking into his hat. “I think so, brother. But….”

“I think she’s about to move – do you need to keep reading?”

“No, no,” Flim replied, doffing his hat and shaking it dry. “A thousand years in there couldn’t answer all my questions.”

---

No birds and few bugs lived on the island – only the wind through the trees, the waves on the none-too-distant shores, and the distant chatter of their fellow forsaken dabbed the vast canvas of silence, so they kept their voices low. “You know you might not come back from this.”

Mere hours of practice with Carriage Callow, and while Flam had never been very good at any of it, Flim had admitted that Pinkie’s song was orders of magnitude beyond the difficulty of anything that he had come close to mastering. He tried to laugh it off now: “If I don’t, you can date Trixie.”

His brother scowled. “…don’t be like that.”

Hesitation was of no more value, and he prodded him with his hoof. “Just do it, Flam. Now.”

It was possible to engage the song solo – that was how Carriage had learned to do it – but it was much easier with a unicorn partner. With the aid of magic, hypnosis could start a metronome, and a little stage costuming could give a few intro cues.

A small flash from Flam’s horn, and Flim found himself swan-diving into a rose-colored maelstrom.

To be drunk was to blur reality into a softer focus; it may have been less accurate, less detailed, but it was sometimes more pleasant.

To be sober was to see things as clearly as one’s disposition would normally permit.

As far from sober as sober from drunk, some wags would call ‘knurd’ – seeing all things as they really were.

It was a state one would readily associate with the divine, or the powers accorded to the divine – and there were two basic reactions one could take to beholding true nature. One could recoil, be filled with despair and horror – and those who openly theorized about ‘knurd’ usually assumed that this was the only sane reaction.

At first glance, some ponies thought that to be Pinkie Pie was to be pleasantly drunk all the time – or to be under the influence of other strange substances: to love and laugh at everything because she just couldn’t comprehend the darkness.

They didn’t realize that to be Pinkie Pie, in truest essence, was to see everypony and everything as it really was, and to not care about the muck and the spots: to just want to give it all a big hug and dance with it and put a smile on its face, whether or not it had a face or feet or anything at all to hug. Oh, she could be wronged, and she would sometimes hold a grudge afterwards; there was nopony perfect under the sun. The song began with the melody, not the instruments. That was Pinkie Pie: an angel of rapturous joy shining through an imperfect pony lens, and usually succeeding at that.

My entire life has been wrong, the last vestiges of him realized. I’ve always known music and smiling and dance, just like this. But I only ever used them to look out for me and mine. I’ve never understood the true power of laughter like I do at this very moment.

Explosions of rose petals and colorful balloons stripped away all that he considered his own, until there was barely a shred that could be called “Flim’s”. I swear to the Princesses, from this moment forward, I’ll never set out to harm another living soul, he thought with the last thing capable of thinking, the last thing that was his.

And then?

Flim ceased.

“Hi! I’m Bubble Berry!”

Comments

[KFDirector]

Rated T for Teen because Carriage Callow is not a good role model for very young children.

[Passerby]

This is a awesome story and you should feel good for writing it.

[Mr. Grimm]

2768022

He may not be a good role model, but he's a thoroughly written character. I really liked his explanation of the universe's spirit.