Rain.
Rain makes everything better...
Rain hides everything...
The sky flashed a hot white, illuminating my face in the puddle below for only a brief second. Thunder crackled soon after, rolling for a few seconds before fading into the distance. The vicious downpour soaked more rainwater into my already dripping fur, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine. I stood there almost in a trance from seeing my face in the distorted puddle, not knowing what to do.
I stared into the dark water, hoping that the next time the sky lit up somepony else’s eyes would cover mine. The cracked grey brick beneath the puddle warped into shapes and shattered with every drop that hit the surface. The distorted image was jaded and seemed to show me how underneath the purity there seemed to be something wrong with the core. The lightning flashed once more, followed by a disparaging crash, making my hairs stand on end as I winced at the noise.
My broken image was reflected back to me once again, the same tangled brown fur split into thousands of pieces from the falling rain-water. The red mane seemed plastered to my face, wet and rustled about by the rain. The same blank stare that I had used to gaze into the collection of dark water gazed back to me, and straight through me, just as everyone else seemed to do whenever they weren’t mad at me. The emotionless eyes showed the same numb feeling pulsing through my body.
I shut my eyes and turned my head kicking at the horrible sight and sending the puddle everywhere. Opening my eyes again, I looked back toward the end of the alley and out into the dank streets of Manehattan, seeing an occasional pony run by trying to escape the inevitable soaking. I glanced upward and noticed the few that had made it inside were settling in and making some coffee or talking to a friend indoors. I longed to go back home, but I had made my decision when I had left in the middle of the night.
I was never going back to those mean colts that had made fun of my bare flank. They would never be able to make fun of me. The bareness of my backside and my flightless and magic-free body theirs to play with and torture until they had their fill. I can’t go back and explain myself now. My parents didn’t care about me, the simple Earth Pony. I couldn’t go back after making up all those stories about how I had fell down the stairs or got hit with a soccer ball. Those bullies would be waiting for me tomorrow at the school grounds, and I wasn’t going to deal with them again.
Another shimmering blaze of light illuminated the town and bleached the colors for a brief second before the crack of another wave of thunder exploded above the skyscrapers of the city. I shivered again, the cold rain running through my fur and chilling me to the bone. A strong wind picked up and blew the rain into my face, getting my mane into my eyes. Wincing in pain, I brushed the hair aside and continued down the alley stepping into every puddle to make sure my numb face couldn’t stare back and judge what I had done. I wanted to shout at it that the bully had deserved it, but the guilt in my gut and the fear of being caught by anypony who might have been on the streets kept my tongue silent.
I thought about the incident again, trying to hold back a few tears. Why did I have to be the brave hero today? I had already had my dose of their treatment, and I didn’t need another. But she was even smaller than me, and I couldn’t just walk past while they shot her self esteem to bits. I did what any good samaritan would have, and tried to talk them out of it. I should have know they wouldn’t stop because I told them to, but I didn’t know what else to do, and she was already crying in a heap, her blue mane spattered with grime and her tail covered with trash.
I stood up for her, and instead of averting their intentions I just put myself in the path of the steamroller. They started to make fun of my blank spot on my behind and I yelled at them to stop their stupid bullying. They pushed me in the trash with the crying filly, and she looked at me and shook her head no, her eyes brimming with tears, a visible bruise on her cheek and foreleg. I told them to pick on someone their own size and the leader with the brown mane got angry. His football cutie mark told me he was probably the captain of some team.
“Brave lot you all are, picking on a filly half your size!” I shouted trying to help the filly up who refused to move. The leader seemed to get angry about this, but I kept trying to get the blue-maned filly up and out of there before they hurt her any more. She had violently shook her head no, until she screamed and glanced behind me with her face contorted with fear.
The next thing I saw was a hoof headed straight for me, but I quickly dogged out of the way before it could make contact. The next thing I knew, the screaming had stopped, and I saw the hoof kick the filly I didn’t even know square in the face. Her head smacked into the brick wall of the building she had been next to, making a deafening crunch. She stopped moving entirely, her body going instantly limp. She slid down the wall, falling right next to me. Blood was flowing out from a massive wound in her head and her eyes were shut peacefully as if she were asleep.
That was the first time I had seen somepony die.
By the time that my brain had finally caught up with me, somepony was coming down the alley hearing the commotion. I panicked and ran for home, not knowing what to do about it. That night I had spent in solitude, my mom having been at a party all night, and my dad sitting on the couch drunk and reading the paper. I finally decided then to run away and never come back. I didn’t want to live with a drunken pegasus father who was never proud of me and a Unicorn mother who was more worried about going to parties than spend time with her only daughter. I knew that I’d be blamed for the death of that innocent filly and my parents would have turned me in first chance they got.
I snapped back into the present, kicking a small rock as I started to wander further into the alley. I was cold and needed to find someplace to get out of the rain. I walked past a box where I heard a snoozing, and when I peeked in, I found a grimy pegasus with only one wing resting inside. His box seemed big enough to fit both of us, so I poked him, waking him up with a grumble.
“Ugh,” he exclaimed “What the hell do you want?”
“Can I come in out of the rain?” I asked, the rain starting to make me shiver constantly now. I hoped he would take pity on me since I was just a filly.
“No!” he shouted, pushing himself over away from me. Shooing his hoof over his back, he told me, “Go find your own damn box.”
I felt dejected, but turned and tried to find something to put over my head to stop the soaking rain from biting into my skin. Looking around, I saw a dumpster with a big piece of scrap tin resting next to it. I went over and slid the tin outward, leaning it against the dumpster, just far enough so that I could squeeze underneath and get the rain to stop hitting my mane.
I curled up into as tight a ball as I could manage, and thought back to my day. I tried to save somepony and ended up getting her killed. It was all my fault, and I could have saved her. My parents don’t even care about me. They probably won’t even notice that I’m gone. I closed my eyes and listened to the pitter-patter of the rain hitting the hard tin above me. This would be my bed tonight until tomorrow where I would wander to the next street. Taking a deep breath in, I choked up a bit and buried my head in my foreleg, covering my eyes.
And I cried.
Rain.
Rain makes everything better...
Rain hides everything...
