A Blank Blue Page
by publiq
A blank blue page
It’s the architect’s canvas
So many possibilities
Flurry Rose stared at her opening salvo on the proposal. Her miseducation in poetry had left her technical prose with distinctly store-brand MFA quirks. Nonetheless, she enjoyed giving some literary appeal to introductory sections of her documents. Yes, even when they were trite remarks on the creative process.
At least her namesake, Her Royal Horse Princess Flurry Heart, seemed to enjoy her commentary at council meetings.
Rose stared at the blank blue page next to the typewritten form letter where she had typed her thoughts on blank pages, then at the binder of project requirements. Wisely ignoring all but the executive summary and table of contents, she began to envision the new tower. Protractor and compass tangoed across the first page as she drafted in initial vision, unconstrained by reality.
The next day, she jumped straight to the technical specifications. If she had known the future, she would have wished time travel spells reliably worked across centuries. Grab one of those hoof-size supercomputers ponies would one day use to livestream selfies, and steal it back to the present. Surely, that would be mighty enough to run parametric modeling software, whatever that was. Had she known of its existence, it would have made her projects absolutely fly.
Instead, she painstakingly sketched various floor plans, then compared them to her vision. Cross-referencing the specs, a pile of discarded drafts accumulated, ball after ball, under the drafting table. Some floors could be transposed to somewhere they fit within the shell; others demanded she alter the tower’s silhouette to accommodate large rooms that had to be at specific elevations for the magic to work.
Weekends brought contentment to Flurry Rose. She had worked out how to turn off her brain and party at the club to dance her troubles away. For this weekend’s festivities, she celebrated being 90% complete. Only finishing touches remained before the midweek Council meeting.
“Bravo! You never fail to impress!” commended Princess Flurry Heart before turning to seek the approving nod of her dam.
As regal as Flurry Heart stood when issuing solo commands, she remained her mother’s foal whenever Princess Cadence was nearby. In this case, the Crystal Empire had two princesses for the week. Cadence had just returned from an extended diplomatic tour, so mother and daughter booked a long overlap for knowledge exchange before Flurry Heart returned to Canterlot to take over Canterlot caretaking and once again freeing Her Royal Horse Princess Twilight Sparkle to focus on the rest of Equestria.
Cadence gave Flurry Rose’s plans a once-over and softly agreed with Flurry Heart’s opinion with a nod. “Seems good enough,” was the silent message.
Groundbreaking was a royal affair. Flurry Heart flew back from Canterlot, as the tower’s main sponsor; Cadence and Shining Armor had not looked this regal since the second take of their wedding. Flurry Rose had her seat on the royalty dias as the lead architect beside leadership from the construction crew and Viridian Vandidite, the engineer who worked beside Rose to confirm her plans were feasible. Compliance with technical specifications is one thing; being buildable necessitated a distinct discipline.
Flurry Heart was first to poke the ground with the ceremonial spade, followed by scoops by Cadence, the design and building crews, and, finally, Shining Armor in his role as head of Crystal Empire security. The unexpected inorganic crystals that Viridian Vandidite pinged with the shovel were brushed off as a curiosity and set aside to be part of the building’s self-serving museum.
After groundbreaking’s pomp, most local ponies quickly forgot about the construction plot. It, of course, remained of great interest to foals and the building team. Nopony else seemed to pay it much mind as they went about their days.
Flurry Rose returned to less grandiose projects, her blueprints in the hooves of engineers; Flurry Heart returned to Canterlot.
Even the foals eventually grew disinterested in a big hole in the ground. The mighty oversized toys at the bottom of the pit grew too distant to catch their interest. Winter came, and spring rains flooded the cavity. When the lake refused to drain, construction ponies celebrated that their foundation was watertight while setting up the pumps.
This was when the first accident happened.
Brilliant Bismuth slipped while hauling a pump hose the size of his barrel and sank to the bottom. When the foundation was fully drained at the end of the week, he was found alive. Visiting non-crystal reporters were absolutely flabbergasted at the magical inorganic biology of a pony who could not drown; crystal ponies wanted to know what kept his spirits high enough to allow the magic of friendship to keep him alive despite being abandoned for nearly a week.
Once the foundation dried out, construction of the scaffolding and support beams made rapid progress. A few idle onlookers became a fixture outside the safety fence. More than just foals, ponies of all ages would stop by to stare as they passed by.
Nopony knew whether it was the first fatal accident or the scaffolding casting a shadow into a nearby neighborhood that summoned the first protest signs. The inquest concluded that the victim (unnamed to protect privacy, but everypony knew who she was) skipped a lengthy harnessing routine for a quick turn of a bolt, then slipped on a polished beam and shattered on the concrete pad far below. Her remains were swept into a sparkling pile and given to her family with an offer to build a memorial window with her shards.
The lattice shadow reverberated across the nearby neighborhood’s crystalline architecture. The sustaining magic of sunlight is important to everypony, but crystal ponies have a direct vegetal dependence on its life-giving rays. Princess Cadence reassured concerned ponies that final construction called for transparent walls and flooring, but the seeds of discontent had sprouted.
The second death was much like the first. A pony just wanted to get his work done, then shattered into many parts. The partial floors on the way meant larger chunks of his body were left intact. Negotiation with his family was tense, but ultimately straightforward. Using his intact body parts to graft onto other ponies who lost some corresponding chunk of crystal just needed somepony with tact to sell the proposition.
It was then that the signs appeared: “Flurry’s Folly.”
Below, Brilliant Bismuth stared up at the tower over his family’s home. True to the promise, the transparent flooring and walls allowed mildly attenuated sunbeams to pass through. There were no other plans for similar towers. Why were ponies still kicking up a fuss? He had not spent a week trapped underwater, continuously thinking of the day when the sump would be fully pumped, to keep the hope needed to survive, just for the project to be canceled.
However, more ponies gathered outside the safety fence.
Nopony protested, but something other than curiosity drew them to stare at the unfinished tower.
As the weeks passed, the crowd slowly grew. Each day, its numbers peaked when the sunbeams filtered to the ground were strongest, then it dissipated until sunset.
Even with no more than half of one neighborhood staring at the scene, it felt like the entire Empire (really a city-state) was watching, waiting for the next pony to fall—waiting to swarm and end the hospitality project for visiting griffs of various species and pegasi.
The third fatality was a subdued affair. Whether from losing hope that the project would ever be finished or from personal drama that overwhelmed her, her magic left her body, leaving a life-size statue on an upper floor.
By now, progress was such that flooring would interrupt falls before any pony would shatter or, for the organic organ-filled ponies who occasionally visited for specialty tasks, go splat. Still, the crowd outside grew.
Princess Cadence summoned Viridian Vandidite, Flurry Rose, and her daughter to her throne room with orders to review the blueprints to find what captivated ponies to stop their daily routines and glower at the work zone. The usual explanations felt insufficient. The mild shadowing and new tint to the ground light were expected to draw limited local resistance, but this had spread to more than ponies from the nearby sector. None of their logical explanations, drawn from either the blueprints or the project log, had a strong enough effect.
What did have such an effect was the Summer Sun Celebration. While not the entire Empire, crowds of ponies milled about waiting expectantly at the half-fleshed skeleton of the hospitality tower instead of attending the official ceremony.
“Ftaires! We have found ftaires!” A unicorn screamed as he galloped up from where he was installing leylines in the sub-basements to the waiting crowd.
With the sun at its zenith, its light echoed through the central illumination pillars and bathed the crowd surrounding Flurry’s Folly in its magic.
Flurry Rose and Viridian wasted no time galloping down to find these “ftaires.” An unauthorized staircase down into unexplored caverns greeted their eyes.
The pair galloped up as fast as they descended. This revelation required Princess-level intervention. The lazy luminous mob stared at the pair as they pushed their way through the transfixed crowd, avoiding the might of its potential anger.
The panicked pair leaped over the guards onto the dias to interrupt Cadence’s Summer Sun speech.
“Princess!”
Inside the storage vault, the unexplained crystal unearthed during groundbreaking turned black, its summoning job complete.
Out from the cavern flew a swarm of changelings, awakened from millennia of dormancy, to feast on the crowd their attraction stone harvested thirty-eight centuries late.
It’s the architect’s canvas
So many possibilities
Flurry Rose stared at her opening salvo on the proposal. Her miseducation in poetry had left her technical prose with distinctly store-brand MFA quirks. Nonetheless, she enjoyed giving some literary appeal to introductory sections of her documents. Yes, even when they were trite remarks on the creative process.
At least her namesake, Her Royal Horse Princess Flurry Heart, seemed to enjoy her commentary at council meetings.
Rose stared at the blank blue page next to the typewritten form letter where she had typed her thoughts on blank pages, then at the binder of project requirements. Wisely ignoring all but the executive summary and table of contents, she began to envision the new tower. Protractor and compass tangoed across the first page as she drafted in initial vision, unconstrained by reality.
The next day, she jumped straight to the technical specifications. If she had known the future, she would have wished time travel spells reliably worked across centuries. Grab one of those hoof-size supercomputers ponies would one day use to livestream selfies, and steal it back to the present. Surely, that would be mighty enough to run parametric modeling software, whatever that was. Had she known of its existence, it would have made her projects absolutely fly.
Instead, she painstakingly sketched various floor plans, then compared them to her vision. Cross-referencing the specs, a pile of discarded drafts accumulated, ball after ball, under the drafting table. Some floors could be transposed to somewhere they fit within the shell; others demanded she alter the tower’s silhouette to accommodate large rooms that had to be at specific elevations for the magic to work.
Weekends brought contentment to Flurry Rose. She had worked out how to turn off her brain and party at the club to dance her troubles away. For this weekend’s festivities, she celebrated being 90% complete. Only finishing touches remained before the midweek Council meeting.
“Bravo! You never fail to impress!” commended Princess Flurry Heart before turning to seek the approving nod of her dam.
As regal as Flurry Heart stood when issuing solo commands, she remained her mother’s foal whenever Princess Cadence was nearby. In this case, the Crystal Empire had two princesses for the week. Cadence had just returned from an extended diplomatic tour, so mother and daughter booked a long overlap for knowledge exchange before Flurry Heart returned to Canterlot to take over Canterlot caretaking and once again freeing Her Royal Horse Princess Twilight Sparkle to focus on the rest of Equestria.
Cadence gave Flurry Rose’s plans a once-over and softly agreed with Flurry Heart’s opinion with a nod. “Seems good enough,” was the silent message.
Groundbreaking was a royal affair. Flurry Heart flew back from Canterlot, as the tower’s main sponsor; Cadence and Shining Armor had not looked this regal since the second take of their wedding. Flurry Rose had her seat on the royalty dias as the lead architect beside leadership from the construction crew and Viridian Vandidite, the engineer who worked beside Rose to confirm her plans were feasible. Compliance with technical specifications is one thing; being buildable necessitated a distinct discipline.
Flurry Heart was first to poke the ground with the ceremonial spade, followed by scoops by Cadence, the design and building crews, and, finally, Shining Armor in his role as head of Crystal Empire security. The unexpected inorganic crystals that Viridian Vandidite pinged with the shovel were brushed off as a curiosity and set aside to be part of the building’s self-serving museum.
After groundbreaking’s pomp, most local ponies quickly forgot about the construction plot. It, of course, remained of great interest to foals and the building team. Nopony else seemed to pay it much mind as they went about their days.
Flurry Rose returned to less grandiose projects, her blueprints in the hooves of engineers; Flurry Heart returned to Canterlot.
Even the foals eventually grew disinterested in a big hole in the ground. The mighty oversized toys at the bottom of the pit grew too distant to catch their interest. Winter came, and spring rains flooded the cavity. When the lake refused to drain, construction ponies celebrated that their foundation was watertight while setting up the pumps.
This was when the first accident happened.
Brilliant Bismuth slipped while hauling a pump hose the size of his barrel and sank to the bottom. When the foundation was fully drained at the end of the week, he was found alive. Visiting non-crystal reporters were absolutely flabbergasted at the magical inorganic biology of a pony who could not drown; crystal ponies wanted to know what kept his spirits high enough to allow the magic of friendship to keep him alive despite being abandoned for nearly a week.
Once the foundation dried out, construction of the scaffolding and support beams made rapid progress. A few idle onlookers became a fixture outside the safety fence. More than just foals, ponies of all ages would stop by to stare as they passed by.
Nopony knew whether it was the first fatal accident or the scaffolding casting a shadow into a nearby neighborhood that summoned the first protest signs. The inquest concluded that the victim (unnamed to protect privacy, but everypony knew who she was) skipped a lengthy harnessing routine for a quick turn of a bolt, then slipped on a polished beam and shattered on the concrete pad far below. Her remains were swept into a sparkling pile and given to her family with an offer to build a memorial window with her shards.
The lattice shadow reverberated across the nearby neighborhood’s crystalline architecture. The sustaining magic of sunlight is important to everypony, but crystal ponies have a direct vegetal dependence on its life-giving rays. Princess Cadence reassured concerned ponies that final construction called for transparent walls and flooring, but the seeds of discontent had sprouted.
The second death was much like the first. A pony just wanted to get his work done, then shattered into many parts. The partial floors on the way meant larger chunks of his body were left intact. Negotiation with his family was tense, but ultimately straightforward. Using his intact body parts to graft onto other ponies who lost some corresponding chunk of crystal just needed somepony with tact to sell the proposition.
It was then that the signs appeared: “Flurry’s Folly.”
Below, Brilliant Bismuth stared up at the tower over his family’s home. True to the promise, the transparent flooring and walls allowed mildly attenuated sunbeams to pass through. There were no other plans for similar towers. Why were ponies still kicking up a fuss? He had not spent a week trapped underwater, continuously thinking of the day when the sump would be fully pumped, to keep the hope needed to survive, just for the project to be canceled.
However, more ponies gathered outside the safety fence.
Nopony protested, but something other than curiosity drew them to stare at the unfinished tower.
As the weeks passed, the crowd slowly grew. Each day, its numbers peaked when the sunbeams filtered to the ground were strongest, then it dissipated until sunset.
Even with no more than half of one neighborhood staring at the scene, it felt like the entire Empire (really a city-state) was watching, waiting for the next pony to fall—waiting to swarm and end the hospitality project for visiting griffs of various species and pegasi.
The third fatality was a subdued affair. Whether from losing hope that the project would ever be finished or from personal drama that overwhelmed her, her magic left her body, leaving a life-size statue on an upper floor.
By now, progress was such that flooring would interrupt falls before any pony would shatter or, for the organic organ-filled ponies who occasionally visited for specialty tasks, go splat. Still, the crowd outside grew.
Princess Cadence summoned Viridian Vandidite, Flurry Rose, and her daughter to her throne room with orders to review the blueprints to find what captivated ponies to stop their daily routines and glower at the work zone. The usual explanations felt insufficient. The mild shadowing and new tint to the ground light were expected to draw limited local resistance, but this had spread to more than ponies from the nearby sector. None of their logical explanations, drawn from either the blueprints or the project log, had a strong enough effect.
What did have such an effect was the Summer Sun Celebration. While not the entire Empire, crowds of ponies milled about waiting expectantly at the half-fleshed skeleton of the hospitality tower instead of attending the official ceremony.
“Ftaires! We have found ftaires!” A unicorn screamed as he galloped up from where he was installing leylines in the sub-basements to the waiting crowd.
With the sun at its zenith, its light echoed through the central illumination pillars and bathed the crowd surrounding Flurry’s Folly in its magic.
Flurry Rose and Viridian wasted no time galloping down to find these “ftaires.” An unauthorized staircase down into unexplored caverns greeted their eyes.
The pair galloped up as fast as they descended. This revelation required Princess-level intervention. The lazy luminous mob stared at the pair as they pushed their way through the transfixed crowd, avoiding the might of its potential anger.
The panicked pair leaped over the guards onto the dias to interrupt Cadence’s Summer Sun speech.
“Princess!”
Inside the storage vault, the unexplained crystal unearthed during groundbreaking turned black, its summoning job complete.
Out from the cavern flew a swarm of changelings, awakened from millennia of dormancy, to feast on the crowd their attraction stone harvested thirty-eight centuries late.