CRYSTAL HORSES IN THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE doing things tw for death

When one spends a very long time trying to remember something, their head starts to hurt. This is what many would call a “tension headache”, but to Marina it was just something that further prevented her from recalling every precise detail from her past. How cruel it was to have been cursed with such an unreliable mind, plagued by those years and years of nearly endless stagnation! Years… one thousand, to be exact. So, perhaps the little crystal pony had ought to be kinder to herself. Surely you would also have a rather poor memory of your life if you had been cast away into such a slumber for that length of time. But it was moments like these, moments where Marina found herself lying in bed in the middle of night, glaring up at the ceiling as the brief flutter of names… faces… places… taunted and teased her. They flaunted their near-existence ‘round her head, and so close could she reach out and grab them… before all too soon, they were whisked away, as if playing a game with her. It was maddening. A mixture of exhaustion and rage lapped at her mind as Marina’s icy stare into the ceiling blurred with fiery hot tears… before she twisted around to slam her face into her pillow. Him. Marina blinked a few times as she slowly lifted her head. Him. He was a stallion, some… unicorn from far away. Far away… far away did not exist to crystal ponies, not at that time. He was beautiful. That spiralling horn that rested upon his head, which spewed such gorgeous, foreign magic… Him… * Aphrodite blinked as she stood before the body of a dead pony. A light breeze rustled through her perfect tresses and danced across the strangers' own pitch black mane. She’d never seen such a … dull pony before. Dull as in DULL. He did not have the same crystalline wash that she did. Aphrodite tilted her head to the side, pondering just what it was she should do. Death was not scary, not to crystal ponies. But upon further inspection of this outlandish body, and a rather rough poke… “Oh!” Aphrodite gasped and recoiled her hoof back against her chest. Sharp! Pointy! Panic flooded her system now as she frantically switched gazes between her painful hoof and the source of her fear. Horn! This creature had a horn! And even worse… HE WAS ALIVE! Death did not scare crystal ponies, but the walking dead sure did! Aphrodite whispered a silent prayer to the Crystal Heart as she backed away from the stirring body. Oh gods, she’d done something to… to revive him, or something! And just as she was about to scream for a guard… “... looks like Starswirl wasn’t crazy at all...” He spoke. Oh gods, he was speaking. She was speaking with a weird… outsider! Aphrodite trembled in her place, eyeing the male nervously as he slowly sat himself upwards with a grunt. After a few moments, he looked back at her, and… smiled. “So it’s real.” Upon remembering she had a voice, Aphrodite stuttered, “Wh-what’s real? Who is… who is this… Swirl of stars you speak of?” The stallion gave her another smile as he stood up, brushing himself off. “The Crystalline Empire.” And thus became the Crystal Empire’s first contact with a mainland pony. It was not long before more crystal ponies had spotted the commotion going on just by the edge of their perfect city. Soon, a curious and slightly frightened mob cautiously surrounded the stranger. And this stranger was him… the very pony from her past that she would never quite recollect fully, but whose relationship she would always remember. And not only that, but… a reminder of the very day Marina truly questioned her mothers ways. Jewelled Harp was the self-proclaimed figurehead of the Crystal Empire, and was truly the most powerful pony that was to ever exist… in the minds of the crystal ponies, at least. And being mother to Aphrodite meant that life was particularly restricted. Marina recalled with frightening certainty the very evening Harp had found out an outsider had infiltrated the Empire. “Those… those… wretched creatures… harmony… harmony! Ha-ha-ha! What harmony is this, if those two child-princesses let their own wander so blindly into our home! Centuries have gone by without such intrusion, and now look!” Harp sneered as she paced back and forth within the great hall of the palace. Her only company was poor Aphrodite, who had been swiftly brought back into the palace upon Harp’s realization that something was amiss. Whipping around to face her daughter, Harp bellowed out, “And YOU! Speaking to an outsider like that! What thoughts has he poisoned your mind with, hmm?” Aphrodite sat there, stunned by the almost uncharacteristic bout of anger that her mother so suddenly emit. “H… He didn’t… He just mentioned… Star… Swirls… Starswirls…?” Harp’s eye twitched… before letting out a shriek and stomping her front hooves against the ground in a fit of childlike rage. Aphrodite had seen her mother lose it before but… never like this. But once the mare calmed down did she approach her dear daughter, resting a perfectly polished hoof on her shoulder as she let out heavy breaths. “My dearest Aphrodite… you know of the danger of outsiders. I shall extend the kindness and graciousness of our beloved Crystal Heart and offer this stallion sanctuary for a few days until he gathers the strength to leave.” Aphrodite raised her eyebrows with an obvious hint of excitement, which Harp so easily caught. “But…” she continued, dragging her hoof along the smaller mares cheek until it tapped just underneath her chin. “I would not bother getting so attached if i were you. Or else, you shall find that these outsiders are often disappointing.” Except, she did become attached. Terribly so. His name… she could not remember his name… but Stranger had become the most fascinating pony in her life, and surely he had felt the same way. He was gorgeous with his slate grey coat and wonderfully lush green eyes. And he was tall, so tall. And his magic… How exciting it was, feeling the wisps of green aura tickle and poke at her as he told her all about his life in some city named Canterlot (A rather new city, it seemed.) “...and so, Starswirl needed someone to find out if this place was really just a legend or not,” Stranger explained idly on the third day of his stay in the Empire, sprawled out on his back against the grass as his magic held up a diary filled with notes the apparently ancient unicorn had left for him, scribbled messily with paragraphs that Stranger had been creating throughout his brief stay here to bring back home to the other unicorn. Aphrodite was too busy nuzzling her cheek against the soft fur of his chest to pay too much attention, delighted in both the fact that she was laying beside the outsider (which would wreak havoc on her mothers very soul), but also because of how exciting it felt to go against her mothers wishes! “...so I volunteered. I’d got quite the mind for navigating tough conditions.” “And yet you ended up passed out and nearly dead on the edge of the city!” Aphrodite giggled. “...still made it, though.” Stranger grinned down at his little companion, softening his gaze a bit as he brought a hoof up to brush some of her mane away from her face. These moments of quiet and what must have been love, were moments Aphrodite cherished so deeply… and moments she was sure her mother would never find out about. But if she were to find out… this was a thought that she could not bear to think about. It did not matter anyways. Aphrodite was never really sure where Strangers body had been left. Perhaps deep below the cavernous dungeons of the palace. Or perhaps dragged out into the Frozen Wastes. Regardless of where he’d been discarded, she knew he was dead. No matter how much Harp reminded her of how fleeting and uncaring the outsiders were, how little they cared to stay after achieving whatever goal it was they had come to accomplish in the first place, that he must have just been in a hurry to leave… she knew he was dead. And as Aphrodite stood out in the blistering cold meters away from the warmth that the magical barrier surrounding the Empire provided, she stared out into a world of pure white, a world that, just days ago, she could have never even imagined really hosted other ponies. Harsh winds whipped at her face and threatened to topple her over, as she slowly pulled out the diary stranger had shown to her the day before, wrapped within a protective cloth. Within these pages held secrets Jewelled Harp had prayed would never get out to the land that was called Equestria. Secrets that were only meant to stay within, to ensure that the Crystal Empire would forever remain an enigma to the rest of the world, to never be bothered again. Aphrodite had spent the morning hastily writing down every bit of knowledge she had, everything her mother had taught the crystal ponies, everything she knew now that was a lie. And then, with all her might, Aphrodite reeled her foreleg back… and threw the journal out into the unknown as far as she possibly could, watching as violent winds carried it onwards and onwards and swallowed whole by the world of white. She turned, and once again entered her home, walking back to the palace with a lifeless, dry disposition in comparison to the crystal ponies around her that shared laughs and an overall cluelessness to the gravity of what had just happened. And as she looked up, Aphrodite could just make out the form of Jewelled Harp, standing still atop a balcony that overlooked the city. She did not shudder at the way Harp's piercing yellow gaze bore into her own. * Marina blinked a few times as she came to, groggily rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hooves. She simply sat there in bed for a good 10 minutes or so. Wondering what sort of descendants her dear Stranger could have had, and if she would have ever been able to meet them at this time.