Hi.
[A chocolate brown pegasus lays on the ground, wings splayed before her as her pitch black hair writhes in front of her towards the scroll. She smiles, though the visual is disorienting considering she's upside down.
Even more disorienting are her eyes, one red, one blue. Pure color, no pupils.]If there is one thing I have to say has surprised me about this world, it has been your insistence on the power of friendship. Of love, of forgiveness, of
kindness. And while I put no stock in it, it is true - such things have power. No one could deny that. Humans love, you ponies love, even
demons love, as foreign as that must be to all of you. Friendship and love are as strong as spite, indeed, stronger still than it in some situations, perhaps.
But they have a fatal flaw. Let me illustrate.
Once upon a time, there were two friends. Demons, in fact, whose friendship spanned periods of time mortals could not comprehend.
[She waves a hoof in front of her, and the grass parts from the ground and floats in the air, curling together into two figures. One of them is like a starfish while the other looks fish like. The two grass figures twirl in the air, circling each other merrily.]Despite the amount of time they two had spent together, waiting in the recesses of the Expanse, still through thousands of years they remained great friends. Where one went, so did the other. When they were not together, the other waited. And so came they faithful day when they were allowed to leave their home and come to the human world, the true world, though even then only in a sense. One friend said to the other -
[The two figures stop circling, the fish-like one waggling in the air a bit, as if to illustrate it talking.]'Wait here. I go to gather us a banquet in honor of our arrival.' And so his friend said-
[And now the starfish waggles.]'I will wait here until you return, no matter how long it takes.'
And so the one went to gather while the other waited. But the friend never returned. You see-
[And in a flash, the pegasus snatches the fish-like one out of the air with its mouth, the figure disappearing in a flash, small bits of grass hanging in the air and then falling as the pegasus chews.]He was devoured, so to speak, by someone much greater than it. Had challenged someone much stronger. I have the honor of knowing who slew him, although that's another story. Is unimportant, for our tale right now. For his friend still waits for he who has passed on. And waits. And waits.
When they were together, they could be strong. But apart?
They are
meager. Friendship, love, whatever you wish to call it, for all it's strength has a
vital weakness. If two should become one, they fall apart. If two should even stay together
still they fail.
[Smiling, the pegasus sits upright, hoof coming down onto the starfish grass figure and crushing it back into the ground.]That is the cost in banking on a power that puts faith in others, instead of oneself. A power that is stronger than most others, yet can only be wielded by the
vulnerable, the
weak. To gain strength from others is a gamble; to expect it to change others who understand it not, a crisis.
The outcome that you describe as having happened into your "challenge" of our host is just as it should be. You expected that you could somehow reason with her in some fashion, it failed, as should be expected. One of you thought to protect the others and paid for it, as they deserved. What you thought to have power was powerless before true strength. This and other examples, anywhere, prove how meager any power you think you have from friendship, from love, is of any worth. Is anything, compared to the true strength one finds in oneself.
And yet
You creatures, you lowly creatures, still believe in it, even though its shown how meager and vulnerable a power it can be day by day.
Why?
Why choose something that's so flawed in protecting oneself, in providing oneself, when one could learn to stand on their
own and know something that truly mattered?
[Private to Flare]Let us continue our long ago talk on harmony. Let us return to it.
[It's still the voice that you'd recognize as 'Hikaru', but...calmer. The eager malice and cruelty that seemed to characterize her every other time she spoke are gone. The sense of superiority, the grating pride is still there, but that's par for the course for any of the body of voices that calls itself Lucifer.
Either way, it's a way the voice hasn't spoken before.]Let us say that a band is thrown into disarray. They become disjointed from one another, out of tune.
And then someone from outside the band starts to play. Strong and coordinated and rhythmic, but obnoxious and insulting to the piece the others attempted. A challenge, let us say.
When they try to play again, do you think they'll be able to find harmony to challenge this insult? That the chaotic tune that had come from their disjunction might be able to pick itself back into something resembling a harmony? Something they might all play together?
Or will they fall into utter disarray, and just become so much noise?
What do you think? Or should we just watch?
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