Pinkamena Diane Pie sat as still as a statue at the sea’s edge as she had sat for almost four days now, her head dipped and her unfocussed eyes staring at the waves. Digging one pink digit through the wet sand, she sighed and watched listlessly as the little trench she created was wiped out by the next wave. The three suns of Equestria shone weakly down from the dark sky, their combined light just enough to piece the ever-present cloud and cast the beach below in twilight shadows. Barely a breeze stirred the air, no calls of birds or animals carried from further inland. The stink of the sea filled her nostrils and coated the inside of her throat, the cloying stench of over-ripe blueberries coming in waves as the water rose and fell; the sweet liquid had long since lost its appeal to her, though, and now even the thought of drinking something so overwhelmingly sweet made her stomach churn and her gorge rise. And to think before she couldn’t get enough of it…
 
Blinking slowly, the pink pony looked up from the waves and over at the horizon, almost invisible now behind stacked grey clouds, as her finger unconsciously traced lines in the sand. She sometimes wondered what life was like across the seas. Was it like here, with all under the ‘whimsical’ rule of the Chaos-spirit Discord, or were there still places in the world were things made sense: where night followed day, plants grew flowers and fruit, not gemstones or pastries, and the rivers were made of water? Was there free ponies there? Just months after Discord overthrew the Princesses and scattered the Elements, a group of desperate ponies of all races and ages had gathered a little flotilla of ships and boats, filling their holds with all the supplies they could lay their hooves on. They’d pushed off from the shore under the cover of darkness, trusting the winds and their luck to find them some friendly land they could settle on, far away from Discord’s reign. Pinkie hoped that they’d found their new land and were now living happily- that they had not sunk in a sudden storm or otherwise met their fate on the wide ocean, far away from home and everything they once knew. It had been over a century now since they left, so if they hadn’t landed by now they never would.
 
A century, or thereabouts- had it really been that long? It was hard to tell how much time had passed when the seasons changed when Discord wanted them to, and the days and nights were never the same length twice in a row; even harder to eke a living out from the wildly shifting lands. Lately, though, Pinkie had noticed that things seemed to be… slowing down. Stabilising, almost. It had been around two decades since she had last seen Discord, the day that he had changed her body into it’s current bipedal form, and ten years since the landscape had changed in any appreciable manner. In the early days it was never the same from one hour to the next, but now weeks could pass and not a single bolder would shift or tree walk. This troubled Pinkie for some reason- it was almost as if… He were running out of ideas. And what would happen then? What would happen if the god of misrule became truly bored with his kingdom? Would he try to erase it all off the map and try again, or would the Equestria be stuck like this forever more, grey and still with the three suns shining weakly down?
 
Pausing in her work, Pinkie looked down at what she had sketched in the sand and gasped- a familiar face looked up at her, a face with two eyes, a smiling mouth, a pointed horn and a straight fringe. “Twilight…” she whispered, her voice harsh and cracked from disuse. The pony swallowed, feeling her eyes well up. She hadn’t seen Twilight Sparkle or any of her friends in decades, not since the touch of Discord turned them into her puppets, corrupted into twisted, cruel parodies of themselves. Then again, it wasn’t as if they had been in any condition to call each other friends when they’d parted company. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she remembered the cruel words that had passes between them, words that echoed in her head for weeks after they were spoken; words that Discord had said meant they were never her friends, that he was her only friend…
 
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. It was all my fault…”