Follows A Little Spark: Sc.49 [EPILOGUE]


                                            [EPILOGUE, 51 YEARS LATER]


                                            >The thumping of your twin rotors drowns out all other sound, though there isn't much competition atop the table mountain, an hour's flight from Canterlot.

                                            >An hour's flight for Flurry Heart anyway, who touches down beside you.

                                            >When your rotors spin down, you unlock your wings and fold the blades away, then use the claws near each rotor hub to take your saddlebag off.

                                            >Flurry does the same with her magic, though she's only carrying a heavy metal slab.

                                            >You may be much faster, but she has a much more generous payload capacity.

                                            >Synthetic muscles ripple the array of small segmented plates that form your new body's shell as you look around the area.

                                            >This body’s only a little over a year old, a fiftieth birthday present of a proper mature alicorn form, horn and all, like your mothers; your father made it because he said he couldn't bear the thought of anything being considered his magnum opus but you.

                                            >Once it was finished, he never entered your shared workshop again, and you took on full-time the job of helping ponies you’d been aiding him with for decades.

                                            >His life's work was complete, he said. He was finally happy with everything he had built, and felt he needed to make nothing more.

                                            >It was the last big gift he ever gave you.

                                            >As of a week ago, he can never give another gift again.

                                            >You complete your survey of the immediate area.

                                            "I think this will work."

                                            >"We're far enough away it shouldn't be disturbed, either. Nopony comes out here."

                                            "Not unless they know what they're looking for."

                                            >Only Raven knew you two were out here, what you were doing. Her faculties had only grown sharper with age, her function helped in no small part with how many of your father’s works she’d voluntarily taken on. She wasn't going to tell a soul.

                                            >You'll tell your mothers and the rest of your family, eventually. They'll want to know what you've done, but they're dealing with the loss in their own way right now.

                                            >You wanted something you could have to yourself, for a time.

                                            >You paw at the loose earth with a crystalline hoof.

                                            >Then, nodding, kneel and start scrabbling away with the claws on your wings.

                                            >Flurry Heart walks in front of you, then starts digging a furrow with her own hooves.

                                            >You didn't need to dig too deep.

                                            >Father had been cremated, according to his wishes. Those ashes had been scattered days ago, far from here, in a ceremony attended by thousands of ponies whose lives his creations had bettered.

                                            >The exoskeleton he used to carry out his later work was slated to be enshrined in the palace.

                                            >He’d even be memorialized in the stars themselves; Luna selected a human-shaped constellation from his home to add to the night sky.

                                            >You still feel the need to make a grave, of sorts. One that represents the connection between you and him specifically.

                                            >With a delicacy only your new body can afford you, you remove an old, battered smartphone from your saddlebag.

                                            >The only thing your father had with him besides the clothes on his back, when he came to Equestria.

                                            >The original, from which parts of your brain, your eyes, your ears, your voice were cloned.

                                            >It had stopped working long ago, changed out for a backup, which itself had been replaced, and so on. Its memory card was gone, shuttled on to newer copies through the years. But the rest of it is just as it was when he arrived.

                                            >You turn it over in your claws. Every tactile detail is apparent as you gently dragged a quartz-tipped talon across its edges, handling it one last time.

                                            >With a reverence reserved for newborn foals, you place it into the pit you'd dug.

                                            >Flurry finishes her own work, and shoves the metal plate into the dirt on the other side of the pit from you.

                                            "Get behind me, please. I don't want to risk hurting you.”

                                            >Your cousin and best friend complies, coming around to stand behind you, turned the other way.

                                            >You bring your horn close to the plate, and ready one of this new body's greatest gifts, the pinnacle of Twilight and your father's cooperation.

                                            >Your own 'magic', unique to you.

                                            >After disengaging the frequency doubler, adjusting the focus, and increasing the power, you start firing the laser in your horn in pulses.

                                            >Though these bursts are invisible, unlike the usual green beam, the effects it has on the metal plate are unmistakable; ablated spots discolor the surface.

                                            >Moving your head precise distances allows you, very slowly, to write on the plate, punctuated by the rapid snaps of laser discharges.

                                            >H.E. ANONYMOUS

                                            >FIRST HUMAN OF EQUESTRIA

                                            >HIS CREATIONS LIVE ON

                                            >It's straightforward and simple.

                                            >Just the way he'd want it.

                                            >You shove dirt back into the shallow pit with a hoof, then after a couple steps back, sit to look over your work.

                                            >You have to lock your joints in place to prevent yourself from collapsing, right then and there.

                                            >He wouldn’t want you to lose it, not with how you were your family’s rock right now.

                                            >Your composure is helped by the fact there were some things even this new body isn’t capable of.

                                            "Flurry."

                                            >"Yeah, cuz?"

                                            "I can't cry."

                                            >"It's okay," the empath replies. "You don't have to."

                                            >You let yourself down to the ground slowly, wanting nothing more to bury yourself beside the artifact. To be left here until your magic reserves ran out, until you died.

                                            >Maybe then you could see him again.

                                            >You still had so much you wanted to build for him, to show him what you could do.

                                            >So many plans, so many things from his old home you wanted to try to realize.

                                            >An entire world died with your father, one you and your family will never again be able to experience. Earth, that wonderful and terrible world of humanity, is forever lost to you.

                                            >"Besides," Flurry finally says, her breath hitching, "I'm crying for you."

                                            >When you turn back to look at her, she's smiling at you, but that smile doesn't reach her eyes. Her tears flow freely.

                                            >Seeing it is like a knife in your quartz heart.

                                            >Flurry recoils away from you, shaking her head, when this new feeling of yours hits her.

                                            "What would your dad say, if he knew you let your emotional defenses down?"

                                            >"I have to feel what you're going through. Maybe it'll help you, in some little way." She shakes her head again, slower this time. "I need to get used to it. He's getting old too, cuz. I don't think it'll be long until our places are reversed."

                                            "Why would you want to feel this twice?"

                                            >"I don't have a choice. I miss him too. So does mom and dad. I'm just choosing to feel it more."

                                            >She lays down beside you, covering your back with one of her wings. You adjust the rotor-blades of your own wings so she doesn't have to worry about any of her feathers getting caught. You can feel her touch, no matter how light, now. Even the warmth of her body is evident to you. Yet more gifts of this marvelous new body.

                                            >For a time, the two of you are silent, listening to the wind, Flurry’s breathing, and the quiet whir of the generator in your chest.

                                            >If you listened hard enough, you swear you could hear the beating of her heart, alongside the soft pinging of your own, a totally superfluous conceit your father had insisted on for your new body.

                                            >If you could have stopped yours to restart his, when he’d passed, you would have. In a, well, in a heartbeat.

                                            "It's not fair."

                                            >"What isn't?"

                                            "That the stallions in our families are the only ones cursed like this. It should be a mare's thing, something for us to face for them. Why do they have to be the ones who... end?"

                                            >"Don't think like that." Flurry's wet eyes meet your glass ones, before she leans into you and nuzzles your neck. "It's not an end. Not really. It's more like... the end of the beginning. That's you, cuz. Everything he’s built, all the ponies he’s helped, and you. That’s his legacy. And you can choose how his legacy plays out."

                                            >She's right. You still know everything he's taught you, and then some. You knew all the mechanisms and devices he and your mom – and later, you as well – had developed to help ponies in need. You could continue to make them, ensure his work still had meaning.

                                            >Maybe someday you could find a stallion who could love you. A unicorn, or with a herdmate who was one. You could build a child of your own, using his work on you as a foundation. You could improve on his work yourself.

                                            >You feel Flurry puff up beside you, heartened by your hope.

                                            >Yes! There's always something new to be made, boundaries to be pushed, frontiers to explore. It didn't have to end here.

                                            >You'd do it all, even without true magic of your own.

                                            >Because that's what he did.

                                            >You are Nova Spark.

                                            >And you are your father's daughter.