Nothing Can Shine

          A thought collided into her skull.

        There had once been reasons for jumping out of bed with a smile on the face, and she’d long forgotten those reasons. It was escaping her. The activities and objects Rarity had once held interest in, taken pleasure from, only distant figures in her mind drawing farther and farther away. Getting dimmer. A whole dominion going on and away and light fading from the window while she sat in drudgery in a dim room.

At drudgery again, in a dim room again. Hunched over the work table, spools of thread piled around, rotating the fabric, adding yet another stitch. Yet another dress. Trying to ignore it as she again poked herself with the needle. Always another order to fulfill, more work for the unicorn to consign herself to. Her method of keeping surrounded by walls, of forgetting the time. Finishing another seam, adding a frill. It was what she knew, it had become her purpose for living. Keeping some pony dressed in frivolous patterns was her justification for existence, her excuse and when the world came knocking at door demanding what right she had to take up space, to add yet more of her blight to the land, Rarity could stop it right there and say, Well, I’ve got to make dresses for the ponies. Got to keep them in nice stitches.

Yet it was splintering her continuing the work, forming some design she’d lost interest in and quelling the unrest. Rarity pushed it away, raised her head to the mess of colors before her. Her workroom, her supplies, her outputs, life all crammed to one space for the sake of convenience. For the sake of denial. How long at this, how much time spent in this manner? It seemed to her that she’d lost track. The years blended to a mess of color behind her, prime long past. Nothing significant to latch onto in the murk of routine and repetition, no past, no future.

Nothing but the present, and it cracked painfully into focus. Rarity was a fraction of herself. Her hooves ached. Mouth was sore. The chair seat scraped her rear uncomfortably, the air was too stuffy, her lamp was the wrong shade. The floor was covered in scraps and tools. All impeding her. Not even the interior was spared, and she could feel her blood pulsing, heart beating irrhythmically, her intestines constricting and processing. She could feel it all, none right, sickness without comfort. She’d questioned too much.

Her work sat on the table before her. Where would another dress get her?

She couldn’t do this, couldn’t live. Rarity shoved away from the worktable, but didn’t know what next. Never knew what next, wasn’t that the real reason why she’d thrown herself into meaningless stitching? She didn’t like ponies. Her skull pounded and she was all too conscious of her breathing, the little compressions her lungs were making. Tongue tasted existence. Enough to make her stagger to the wall and throw herself down. There was no justification for this, hell of sensation and meaningless.

It demanded too much. The items would go neglected, she’d pay heed to nothing. Drown her thoughts in nothing. And yet, the wall was a thing that existed. Rarity tried not to believe it and stared dutifully. She’d rather be content staring at chipped and dull paint, go back to wiling away the hours at times in poetic defiance, for what that was worth. But oh how was this any better? Deadeningly boring, in a bad way, no significant difference from the sewing. Not enough that existence opposed the mare, her own volition was conspiring against her. This wall knew no such troubles, it had no lungs to speak of. She gazed at a certain flaking piece and it gnawed at her. This wasn’t the first, there had been other times she’d tried to get on like this if the many recollections of paint were to be trusted. This segment certainly seemed familiar and beyond that, she could recall quite an array of different walls. All sorts of hues and textures, different designs almost enough to be reminiscent of the pulsing disease of ponies. What a blight that was, only worsening her frustration.

Maybe another portion would fare better, would stall her thought. Attention shifted to the neighboring wall, same color but worn with holes and nails still embedded from the photos and sailboats she’d torn down. Discarded memories. No, this one was a bad choice, not the picture wall, it held the most thoughts of the awful lot.

She tried the remaining third, tiny specks and other irregularities on this wall, still cleaner than the others. But cat scratchings marked the corner. The cat, where was the cat? What had she ever done with that thing, she’d been on the whole precise with its feeding, where would it have gone to give up that? Foolish creature it was setting about to go places. Why had she never gone places? She didn’t even go upstairs anymore. Always stuck here pacing the same rut with stooped posture as if weighed down by the concerns and desires of ponies she had no obligation to, that she’d learned to hate, wallowing in a gutter.

No desire of getting up either, not to face the clutter of the room. Needed to take her mind somewhere else. Rarity kept her gaze straight ahead, fixating on the portion of wall before her.  She wouldn’t do it, couldn’t. Motion was beyond her now, her vessel parked and anchor set, no casting off today, nor ever, go tell the crew it was time to find other work. Their blame for taking up such an ill-advised occupation to begin with, and now they’d go hungry. That’s all trying to join the land of the living got you. Damn the body, she didn’t need nutrition nor exercise, she would lie here still and pristine.

Inert. Not a limb moved, eyes fixed to the wall, Rarity didn’t know how long she spent like this. All she knew was that sometimes it was dark and sometimes it was light, sometimes her eyes were closed and sometimes they were open. Body felt covered in aches and longed for activity, but she kept herself occupied. Tried to imagine nothing. Next best thing imagining piles of ashes. Colossal mounds choking the sky clustered together row after row, gray all that remained in an empty landscape. Stretching as far as conceivable as long as conceivable. Once weary of that image, she imagined the ash in different shades so that some piles were lighter until white and some were darker until black and others yet in states in between. When that avenue exhausted, she reversed the alterations so that those previously lighter became darker and those previously darker became lighter and so on. And when she had her fill yet too of that, she would simply invent a new exercise for her mounds of ash, to ensnare thought. It was better than the alternative, and despite her cravings Rarity felt she could have gone so on until end.

And she would have, but operations were cut short and she forced to rouse when the other ponies came over an evening. The ones she associated with, whose forms and anatomy were ingrained in her mind, taking up precious space. Rarity tried to shoo off with contempt and slurs, but the devils merely overlooked all wrongs she did them. They wouldn’t let alone and caused her to sit around the kitchen table, munching and sipping, rambling words in an order that professed recent events and times spent together. Trying to make her know things again.

Staring at the wood grain was Rarity’s defense, tracing its pattern with her sight, best efforts going toward avoiding sight of the food in their gaping mouths. Like yapping pastel teapots surrounding her and pouring out their shrill steam and inanities into her ears. One of them, she didn’t remember which or hadn’t listened to start with, had brought over some homemade concoction meant to be a noodle dish as might be found in a family restaurant. Forced that too down her gullet. They’d made agreeable noises and expressed pleasure, they told her she’d used to love these things, but Rarity couldn’t see how they expected her to believe it. All the while chewing and dribbling food on her, exposing their carnalities, no difference to separate them from a common farm animal.

The jittery pink one would hardly sit still, constantly moving closer and raising volume to conquer out the other howls, a mishap considering her articulation was the worst of the bunch. Her words were the harshest in their deception and their delivery left all to be desired as she gorged her fleshy form. She’d take a bite of food, chew and speak, or take a bite of food, then speak and chew, or worst yet speak, chew and then snatch a bite, with speech such as:

“Life is a precious gift that is best enjoyed by crowding into rooms crammed with ponies who are certainly each and every one happy and worthy of life themselves. This is the best way to meet other people and claim them as friends so you can while away the only hours you have moving your body to silly rhythms. With balloons. There is undoubtedly nothing more righteous in the universe.”

or: “I’m so glad to have friends that I might connect to and genuinely communicate with on a meaningful level. Yes, I have hundreds of companions and know and share a bond with every single one in a way that matters. People are of value.”

         Rarity saw right through the rhetoric for the ridiculous claims they were, and tuning it out would have been small matter were it not the constantly prodding, elbowing, and generally familiar contact. As if it were trying to pass some communicable disease on to her, she had no doubt, that was right up its alley. Assuming it hadn’t already tainted the food with its peppermint breath. Rarity shoved her away but the pink hellspawn only bounced right back, great big smile infecting the face. Laughed in a show of goodwill.

It was all about presentation, presentation, she wanted to present them her fat sore ass. See them try to spin good out of that. Yes, it would be a mistake to leave out the other elements, the fucking virtues they were.

        So proud of their dribble. “I’ve conquered the sky because I’m the best that ever lived and there is no limit to what a pony can achieve.”

“I love little bunnies and they love me.” Ever proclaiming to be dipped in gentility and naivety.

“Well, hard work with family is good for the body and soul.” And that one, always prattling on about mundanities such as honesty and integrity, as if they were anything righteous about this whole business. Rarity doubted even a laborer could be so deaf and dumb, most of all one flavored in soil. It must have been to mock her.

Yes, here they sat, this whole little charade designed to mislead her and instill such faulty traits, and misleading past, so then they could set her to work on crippled legs and laugh as she fell. Diverted from their own interdislike by vomiting onto her. And time was slipping as they made their posts around her and staked their mental claims. Worse than paint. It was draining her, all the vitality she’d never wanted, being stolen right out from under her. And she’d wasted her time like this most of all, Rarity believed that much.

Complicit in the whole affair, watching herself rot from the side.

They only continued in this pattern, one adding remark, then the other, the occasional pat on the back, near giving the appearance of functionality. Those gaping orifices flapping away at her obscenely as they closed in, smothering with shibboleths and inane spittle, as if they’d been bred just for the job. Stuffing their cavities with food, spewing it onto her with their words. Chatterbox shoving and poking her.

"—circling higher and higher and higher, almost near touched the sun! I sure got my feathers burned, but I'm stronger than the flames."

“You'll never know what it feels like to shine,” said the unicorn, always proclaiming to hold answers.

And Rarity didn’t, probably never would if it was possible, but too much time was gone. It didn’t matter. This could not be returned to, she couldn’t keep still any longer. That dream had burst, now, now she existed. And the hellspawn was jabbing her again. She would not left that damned serpent life slither from her hooves again. It would not escape. She’d seize it and strangle the vigor right out, strangle it right out the magenta trachea!

Rarity squeezed, putting all her strength into crushing it like so many hopes.