The coffin felt heavy as I carried it on my shoulders. It was probably heavier to me than the other ponies carrying it. It's glossy oak body felt like marble in my claws, weighing me down and threatened to bring me to my knees. The creaks and groans of the wood seemed to match the sobs of the surrounding ponies and the mournful songs played from the choir who held back their tears as they struggled to finish their somber threnody.
I've carried too many coffins down this path. I've seen too many ponies cry, and the sorrowful laments have become so familiar to me I could recite the notes myself.
I've been here too many times. I knew this day would eventually arrive...
But that didn't make it hurt any less.
For a moment, the music ceased as the lead singer approached the gathering crowd while the open casket passed by. I don't think anypony expected such a sweet voice from a pony her age. Her white skin was beginning to wrinkle and the pink and purple colors in her hair were fading.
Tears were beginning to form in her eyes. "Don't cry Sweetie Belle..." I whispered as I marched passed her.
Her emerald eyes looked into my own. I wondered for a moment if she recognized the pain in my eyes. Maybe she realized the pain she felt from losing her sister wasn't too different from my own. Maybe that was why she began to sing stronger, more passionately, when she returned to the choir.
I've never heard her sing like that other than the day we buried Rarity.... It seemed like her death was the force causing Sweetie Belle to age.
Rarity...I still remembered that day. I carried that coffin too, but at least Rainbow Dash and Applejack were there to carry it with me.
Twilight was also there with me, although I guess Twilight was still with me as I carried this coffin too.
The casket felt a little heavier now, as painful memories swept into my head. Even the sweetest of memories seemed to hurt, they hurt because they felt incomplete.
I remembered when she kissed my cheek, when I gave her that fire ruby....
I hate that memory the most.
I should've told her then. I should've told her how I felt. But instead I waited. I waited until she became famous and her clothes became popular in Canterlot. I waited until I turned twenty. Dammit! She grew sick! Bed ridden! Weak and helpless! I visited her at the hospital. She was beautiful, but tired; far too weary to continue her struggle. I still waited!
She passed away the next day...
I should've told her how I felt.
The memories, the pains they brought, I tried banish them from my thoughts, expunge them from my aching heart. But those sinister memories clung to me with claws, taking pleasure as they tore open flesh and let tears and blood pour from me.
An orange Pegasus was dressed in the uniform of a commander. She didn't lower her hoof from her grey-purple mane until she was completely behind me.
I almost didn't recognize Scootaloo in that uniform. She said she was a chief master or something a few years ago. I didn't think she would be a Captain by now.
She promised she would make Dash proud the day she died. I wondered if Rainbow Dash would be proud of her now.
All of a sudden the casket felt even heavier.
Dragging my feet, I continued to advance to a set of lonely black gates of the cemetery.
The oak bed was carried passed the grey tombstones and the occasional colors of flowers for the few fortunate dead that were bothered to be remembered. I've walked this path before; I was following tracks I've imprinted into the ground.
A large tomb protruded from the dead grass ahead of me. The dark, unwelcoming monolith slowly opened the slab of stone covering the entrance, pushed by an aged earth pony in a Stetson hat.
...Applejack? No. Applejack was gone. She was put to rest months ago.
The few remaining steps to the back of the chamber seemed to stretch into miles as I entered. It took a second pony to help me place the coffin on the stone bed. Yet even as it rested there the weight on my back remained.
Three different rhythms of hoofsteps faded away from the cold room; I remained--alone.
"Y'alright Spike?" I turned to see the Stetson pony still standing by a polished oak casket.
"Yeah, Apple Bloom," I lied as my eyes trailed around the room, passing over the six coffins surrounding me. I wiped away any tears I had before looking at Apple Bloom "I just... Can't believe they're all gone, ya know?"
"Mmhmm," she placed her hat at the coffin's head, "hard ta' believe they ain't here anymore."
"How's your family doing, Bloom? I know your family lost AJ not that long ago."
"They're fine. Ma'kids seem to be doin' well." Apple Bloom paused for a moment, then added, "Hell, I ain't even that sure if the grandkids even notice that their great aunt died. But ah' sure do. It's quieter, not as cheery either. The whole barn jus' seems... Lonesome.
"Ah'm gonna miss her," she sighed.
"Yeah," I nodded. "Do you think they'll be waiting for us when it's our time?"
"Heh, Ah reckon; if ya take confort in that sort of thing."
"What, you don't believe that whole afterlife stuff?"
"Not really," shrugged Applebloom. "Ah think life just ends. Got the idea after readin' this book ya' see--"
"What book?"
"It doesn't matter what book it was, only that ah read it, and finished it."
"Wow. The whole thing?" I feigned a chuckle.
"Hah hah. Funny. Ya gonna let me finish?" Glared Apple Bloom. "Ah finished reading it, and ya know what Ah did afterwards? I closed the book and placed it in the shelf with dust.
"And that's life; a story, but it has to end someday. Someday life ends, the book closes and we're placed somewhere left with dust.
"Sometimes a pony might pull the book out, remember us in some way, but it doesn't make the story continue. There's always the same end."
Applebloom placed her hat back rightfully on its faded red pedestal and trotted out. I offered one last glance at the surrounding coffins, the dust they collected, and followed.
The walk from the graveyard seemed long, and tedious. By the time I had exited the tearful crowd had dispersed, leaving the outside world as desolate and cold as the cemetery behind me.
I felt as if the burden of the casket hadn't left me as I returned home. When I arrived there I almost believed it had decorated itself to match the mournful stillness pungent this day. It was now a skeleton, with only a few remaining ugly brown leaves clutching to its branches like a crying child. The windows were devoid of light and when I opened the door to the library there was only darkness to greet me. Even as I turned on the lights the whole place seemed...empty.
The library was clean for once. Nopony had teared down the books from the shelves searching for a long-sought novel or textbook. No, they all stood aligned properly, organized, systematically placed.
Left in the shelves to collect dust.
I climbed the stairs to Twilight's bedroom. Her room was just as clean as the library below, as if she hadn't even existed. The bed was made, the floor glistening, and a single closed book rested on her nightstand.
It was her photo album, I recognized it instantly. I...I shouldn't have opened it, not when her absence already hurts me.
But I opened the book, letting the rough paper dance around my claws and stack over each other like bricks until the photograph of a purple unicorn smiling next to an infant dragon emerged on the top. She was so young, we both were--so young that we thought forever could last an eternity.
She promised me she would never abandoned me--so, why am I so alone?
They all promised me, not that it mattered, they all dwindled away like dust until only I remained.
I let another page brush pass my claws, revealing the image of a bouncing pink pony, hair puffed and smile wide.
Pinkie Pie... Ponyville seemed a bit grayer without her.
Another page slipped between my fingers like delicate sand, this one with a meek yellow Pegasus. Her pink mane shielded her frightened eyes like a mother protecting her son.
She died alone in her cottage, silently, without the world knowing.
I envied her. I knew I would die too, alone. But there's a difference between nopony being with you to know and nopony being with you to care.
More pages spilled onto the book. Pictures of Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash. Some others had Pinkie and Fluttershy. There were even some photos where I was with them, grinning like a child with candy.
That must've been so long ago.
The paper continued to fall until the last one collided with the rest of the book--a photograph of all six of them. Basking in the joy of each others company. They were all together; only I was alone.
I pulled my face away from the book and looked to the window. Night had blanketed the sky.
For a blissful moment, I was able to escape the dead images of the past as the drawers of the nightstand were torn open, and an iron lantern was dragged from its home.
The weeping clouds from the Pegasi earlier today had not calmed themselves, in fact now the clouds had gone from weeping to feeling distraught, wailing with violent thunder as their tears doubled.
The lantern shook I my claws from my cold nocturnal air permeating around me. Its dim light barely illuminated the muddy path ahead of me in the dark night.
I followed the tracks that permanently marked the ground, the ghost of my footsteps that were immune to the burying mud and rain.
I knew this path; I've traveled down it too many times before.
The gates of the cemetery crept from the darkness before me. Carefully I slipped between the rusted iron into the graveyard, passing the grey tombstones and shriveled flowers over the graves of those once bothered to be remembered.
I continued to crawl through night's shadow until the foreboding entrance of a marble chamber stood before me. The yellow light of the lantern seemed to mix with the glistening white of the stone's surface. Slowly I reached out and pushed the large slab that made its door. When it wouldn't budge I forced my whole body onto it until it finally creeked open. Only a sliver of moonlight invaded the room while I quietly slipped into the room.
The chamber door shut with a loud clamor, filling the room with violent thunder, but the deafening noise had stirred nopony from their sleep.
I set the lantern down in the center of the room, allowing the light to wrap around the six cold coffins. My six friends...my family... We were together again.
I approached the end of the tomb where the latest coffin had been laid and where a marble one neighbored its left. Hesitantly I approached it. It glimmered beautifully in the lamplight, especially the three diamonds on its lid.
I caressed each stone gently, "Rarity..." A whisper escaped my lips, "I should've told you how I felt..."
I turned my attention to the remaining caskets.
Pinkie...
Fluttershy....
AJ....
Rainbow....
My head turned to the casket to the right of the marble.
...Twilight.
I stepped back from the wooden casket, never letting it leaving my presence, as if I was frightened it would disappear if I turned away. Blindly I fumbled for the lantern behind me until its iron handle crawled into my grasp.
The candle seemed to plead mercy for a moment, but I could not stand the glossy oak bed before me any longer. It boiled my blood and tore open the fingers wrapped around the lantern's handle. The small tongue of flame screamed and kicked the sides of the glass chamber as it fell before shattering on the stone floor. Dead.
In an instant the darkness pushed to the corners of the room seemed to poor into the center, a violent sea of shadows flooding the entire chamber. Its powerful currents battered me and pushed me back to the stone bed again. I blindly groped for its ledge, desperate to climb above the shadowy tides before they could drown me.
I heaved myself next to Twilight's coffin, chilled to the bone by the icy water.
Slowly I huddled next to Twilight, desperate to find warmth, "Y-you p-promised you w-wouldn't leave..." I stammered, "Do....d-do you still promise me?"
There was no warmth. I turned to the others, "You...you all still promise that you.. You w-won't leave me... Right? Don't ever leave me..."
I prayed for an answer, for just some sort of response, but eventually I just prayed that my tear-streaked eyes could just close and I might find some sleep.
I prayed more than ever that my story could end right now.
That my story could close and I could be placed on some shelf left to collect dust. At least on a shelf I wouldn't be by myself.
I wouldn't be some book of photographs, unretrievable memories, left open on the nightstand alone.
Author's Note
Huge shout out to Draconian Soul. Thanks for giving me this idea and for being an awesome proofreader, man!