Andarin: The Mountains: Make tea, not love; Alkonost.

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper.

- T. S. Eliot

“Well,” says the young mare thoughtfully. “If the sky is resting on the mountains, then we could climb them and rip it off,” and then a brilliant – in her mind – thought comes through, from the heavens themselves, apparently. “We could see what’s behind the sky!”

Spaceships? Who needs them? Just tear the sky down, steal the jewels studded there and walk into the next dimension.

Easy.

The thought of seeing what lies beyond is quite exciting, though, and almost immediately her not-inconsiderable (if hopelessly misguided) mind bends to figuring out how, exactly, this mission could be accomplished. The most obvious one would include climbing the mountains and snatching it down, but she knows – perhaps instinctively – that climbing that high is a Bad Idea of epic proportions. She knows little about air rarefaction (OK, nothing at all) and the dangers inherent to it, but she does know about the sin of sloth.

For a moment she wages sloth vs knowing a whole new ‘beyond’.

Curiosity wins.

“We could climb up and poke it with a stick,” she says reasonably. “Or try to burn a hole through it. Or we could send an eagle to rip it open, but I don’t think we can tame eagles,” and her brow furrows just a little as she thinks. Hard. “Or we could make something that throws rocks really hard, take it halfway through the mountains and try to punch a hole through the sky – or maybe unsettle it so it slides down where we can more easily pull it down.”

And thus the pretty pony invented not only the concept of space travel and extraterrestrial (or rather, extraelemental) worlds, but the catapult as well.

She’s on a roll, alright.

***
jörmungandr
there is hope, but not for us