Like my twin brother, my conception was not inside a mare’s womb but rather from an untamed dream-like wilderness thriving inside the equine brain. A pegasus painter surnamed van Paard who only gained recognition decades after his tragic death from a magical pulse – yes, his mind was so directionless he amputated his left ear – started on another of his characteristic lurid oil-on-canvas works defined by loose brushstrokes and strong colours. Having painted a landscape of several shrubs with some protruding trees and an abandoned ducal castle in the distance, he felt somewhat displeased with its apparent emptiness and painted two ponies as accompaniment, one yellow with a windmill cutie mark and one blue with a tulip cutie mark, both in stunning detail. Then his synapses backfired: he perceived it as overcrowded, darted to a secluded coastal stretch and buried that wasted canvas under wetted sand.

For many years this “draft” picture evaded everypony’s sight, lost to history, sunk in obscurity. But as the moon moves through its phases, so do waves crash over shorelines, and seawater seeped into the developing craquelure. The two “distracting” ponies painted in thus transformed into full-fledged, breathing ponies as if the landscape ordered them to leave; those are considered the births of me and my brother. We came into existence pre-loaded with some spells and everything van Paard knew without any horrible mental disorders, so we wondered if our “mother painting” really was by that crazed artist. Teleporting to his museum in Amsterdam with our find we discovered one of his hoof-written notes reading:

“Yesterday at sunset I was painting this scene of curled-up oaks and wheatfields, a ruin in the background. I almost let my enthusiastic wings fly, in endless love with everything I saw: the sunset, the castle, the distant hills, transient flashes of a dame or hawk, even a troubadour! But I lost my mind again, and drew in a couple horses, then threw it on the damned beach where nopony would ever rediscover it… such is my life these days.”

Our faces were smug with delight, and we showed the “corrected” painting (christened Sunset at Chevalour, see below for picture) to the museum curator. “I concur, it’s his without a doubt”, she squeed after much examination, “but were you two truly first painted by the old master?”

“Yes, we were.” My brother raised his somewhat slippery right hoof, allowing the curator to touch it.

“We’ve got a living treasure here.”