Inconsequentiality

There are few things in the world like the loss of a friend. At first, it comes as a mere shock, something that passes by like the trickling of the hours as you wait for them to come back. It's as if everyone was simply spouting bullshit, and that they weren't really gone, that they were merely away for a while. As time passes, you find that when they'd normally be there, waiting, they aren't. You can wake up one morning to find yourself heading to where they live without thought, working off of nothing but that strange ritual you had built up over time.

But they aren't there. The days pass by, night after night, and it doesn't change. They weren't there, they aren't there, and they aren't going to be. One day, you will find yourself turning around at an idea to tell them, only to find that they aren't there, and then it will finally dawn on you. They aren't coming back. They never will come back, no matter how hard you wish it.

And that's exactly what you do after that. Life drags onward, the sun still rising slowly every dreary morning afterwards. You wish for them to come back, to ease that pain in the empty hole that was once your heart. You ask life, "Why?", as if it would somehow care for the play of events that transpired. Nothing will come of it, though. They will remain as dead as they were yesterday, and the day before. Life will care about your situation just about as much as monkey will give a rats ass about where it takes a shit, or what it does with it after the feces have been dropped.

Some of the worst losses will bring about truer depression and sorrow than you've ever known. While the world around you moves on, you sit morosely in that limbo that you yourself created. The prison you created can be more difficult to leave than Alcatraz or Skid Row. At least these were corporeal places that could be broken from, an existential issue from the outside, that can be seen, understood, and fought. But this isn't some real-world battle that can be fought in the plain of reality. It's all merely a matter of the mind, a trap of its own mechanizations, defeated only by the mind that created it.

The color seems to drain out of life, as if the days were now a lack-luster shade of gray where there had once been such beauty. All the new beauty we find, the art of existence itself ceases to impress us. What is it really, but different variances of the same ideas that had been held throughout eternity, drawn into the world that will soon be forgotten by the people who will eventually inhabit it.

Most people move on after a while, accepting the fact that their wants, their dreams, where but little murmurings of a young foal, left with nothing to call its own except that sorrow that they hold to themselves like a precious teddy bear. They move on, last in the line of those that do, and carry on with their daily lives, and they regain some of the color from people that they add to their heart later. They fill much of the gap that had rested there for so long, leaving but a mere scar, and the dearest memories that accompany it.

Eventually we too will die, and pass on. There will be others around us who feel the pain that we once felt, and they too will start down that winding path of life that all must sooner or later follow. As time drags forever on, those you held dear to your heart will find themselves forgotten. Time is life's greatest tyrant, and can crush mountains more easily than any past lord or king could ever dream of. We will be erased from history, sooner or later, by nothing but history itself. Even if we were to achieve true fame and glory, enough time will pass that, even if it took thousands of years, memory will pass us by. Finite beings are incapable of such things as true recollection of their own history.

None of that will really matter to us in the end, though. Whether there is a heaven out there somewhere or not, it doesn't make a difference. If there were, we would soon find ourselves reunited with what mattered most to us in our live; each other. There would be much celebration, and the joy that comes with the reunification of people who had waiting a very long time for the next time they should meet. And if there is none, there will be nothing to recall them with. Either case will bring about the peace we spent the rest of our lives desperately looking for.

Such solace was not something that Princess Twilight Acorna Sparkle would ever be granted the priviledge of. While all her friends passed slowly away, hoping to find each other again and reunite those bonds that had bound each other together, she would remain behind. Whether or not there's an afterlife had little relevance. While they would eventually fade into the folds of time, and either be or cease to be, she had to remain behind, but a pebble stuck forever on the bend of a flowing stream, left to the devices of time like some relic left behind. She was nothing but a trapped soul, left behind by those that she saw her genesis with.

While no finite being who is subject to the infinite realm of immortality had anywhere near the capacity to remember everypony in their limited, simple minds, there's no way to truly forget those you had grown up around. They sit there, held tightly and locked without key or escape from your heart. She would never forget her friends.

Applejack had been the first, ironically enough. They had all assumed that she would be long in passing, since the responsible mare was not the sort to run too many risks. Her heart had given out on her at the meager age of fifty-six, worn thin by the hard labor that she had stubbornly clung to her entire life. It had devastated the rest of them, but they still had each other's shoulders to cry on.

It was nearly a decade before Pinkie Pie had joined her, leaving the world with a bang. If she had but one way to chose to die, the way she went would certainly be it, passing on still pleasing the ponies around her with one of the biggest parties she had given in her life. There were far worse ways to go.

The next to go was Rarity, at the bustling age of sixty-nine (shut up, you pervs). After so many years running around making dresses at a frantic rate, she finally retired, and slowly passed on quietly in the middle of the night. Her sister was shocked that she would die so soon.

Fluttershy left in a similar way to Rarity only two years later. The animals seemed shellshocked at the time, but they seemed to move on after a while. She had remained the only one to never seek out a mate or spouse, and so there were no children to miss her. That didn't stop it from hurting both Twilight and the last remaining Element.

Twilight spent the next decade trying not to think about what would happen when Rainbow Dash finally died. The others all expected her to be the first to die, given her reckless nature. But the mare was too kind a mare and a wife to abandon those that cared for her early like that. She was, after all, the Element of Loyalty.

When the cyan mare had finally died, Twilight was truly heartbroken. She had been one of the bearers of the casket for each of her closest friends, and there had always been a shoulder to cry on. But now, after so many years hoping that day would never come, the last of her friends had left her, and there was nowhere to turn, no shoulder to cry on.

Immortality was more of a curse than a gift, as many would suppose. You were truly bound to the world in which you live, and there's no escaping it. Being an Alicorn had been a dream that many had hoped to achieve. They didn't really think fully about the consequences that would befall them, should that idle wish become a reality. But for Twilight, it had.

At first, she had taken the power as a gift, something that would only enhance her life and make her very pleased. She had long lived in the present, rarely looking that far into her future, when she was bestowed a pair of wings, and the responsibility that stems from them. It was in her blood now, something that would last forever, stemming from her very core, to her very roots.

And so the days from the passing of the last of her friends turned into months, and the months into years, and those years into decades, until few even recognized the name on the simple plaque that resided in the Ponyville Cemetery. And yet, she continued to seclude herself from socialization, maintaining only her royal duties as a Princess of Equestria, and little more. She almost never visited Ponyville anymore. What was left to visit? Even Spike had finally upped and died, and visiting her friends' tombstones only added to the already immense sorrow that now dominated her life.

They were gone. They would always be gone. And there was no-where left to go, no hope of seeing them. All she had, all she would ever have, are the memories. Memories that were like ever flowing replays of the same show, waiting for the next episode. An episode that would never come, leaving her with only the most desolate wasteland of her mind. But she wasn't here to consider that.

She had stopped visiting those old memories nearly a century ago. They weren't of any use to her anymore, just the bitter dreams of a lonesome mare. And yet, she never gave up the hope. Hope that she could see them again, even if but once. Recollection was her way of dreaming, and it was time to dream again. It was time to remember.