A Mind Confined

Chapters

Act One: Anger
Act Two: Fear
Act Three: Regret

Act One: Anger

Riverjump stood over the river just outside of the rails of the bridge, poised to end her life in the rushing currents she must have been named after. It was not coincidence or convenience that this was the fastest river in town.

She thought no one else was around, but there was one other pony. He was just there for a walk, not that she knew. When he saw her, he cried out the kind of sentiment that had kept echoing around her head for the past day, though in her head she had beaten it back already: “Don’t do it!”

She had imagined hearing someone say that to her for a long time, and thought she’d be immune to its effect by now if she ever did hear it, but she raised her head. She looked over at the colt who said it, the case for her jump previously all clear in her head, but she found no way to explain it to someone who’d ask her not to.

“Please, just climb back over for a minute. Come on, we can talk--tell me what’s going on, I’m listening.”

Riverjump’s heart rate was already intense, but the colt said the right thing again. She was starting to cry. She said, “I have to. I have to, please. You don’t have to watch.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “Even if you have to, don’t you have a minute just to talk about it first? Tell me what’s going on.”

It wasn’t okay--she definitely had to. Riverjump averted her gaze from him, her eyes naturally falling back to the river. This thing, what she was about to do--it was better to do it now than later. And yet she started turning around, pulling her body back up over the rails.

The colt, breathing heavily for a moment, smiled at her as she regained her footing on the bridge proper. She didn’t see most of his smile, as she stared at the ground for a long time before even glancing up at him, blushing so much more than she wanted to.

“Come on,” he said, still smiling even as Riverjump stared at him. “There’s a nice snack shop near here--maybe you know it. I’ll treat you, if you want to just talk.”

A Mind Confined

Act One: Anger

The two earth ponies sat in a corner booth. Riverjump had a milkshake in front of her, not one sip taken from it. The colt had one for himself as well, and it too lay untouched.

“I’d be doing everypony a favor if I found a cliff to walk off of. I make a mess out of everypony I know,” Riverjump finally said. She hadn’t talked much at all, even as the colt had rambled all the way there whatever seemed to come to mind. He was a natural at it.

“Now, I bet that isn’t true,” he said.

“It is. I’ve ruined the lives of everypony I meet some way or another,” Riverjump said through gritted teeth.

“Everypony?” he asked, leaning forward slightly at the emphasis. “You haven’t done anything to me. I bet I’m not the only one, too.”

She blushed again and tucked her hooves closer to her chest, staring at the empty space beside her.

“Maybe I’ll give it another chance,” Riverjump muttered. “It, I mean… going on.”

The colt smiled again. “Please do. Everything we go through is just temporary, you know? I don’t think it’s worth ending anything over the hardships we’re going through right now.”

Everything he said didn’t really mean anything to her; every idea he suggested, she had already realized was useless to her. Every single idea, useless. Just hearing them from him, though, sounded like a whole new perspective.

She made eye contact with him at last, but broke it just a moment after. She mustered a smile that could be only creepy in her mind, even though she hoped it looked all right. She said, “If you want to, uh…”

She realized how badly she was saying it as she spoke every word, and it made it that much harder for her to say the rest of it. Her smile faltered, but she couldn’t totally hold it back.

“If you could come tomorrow--come back here, if you want to come again for something to eat, I mean, or somewhere else, I could come too. If you have the time to come back, just for a drink, not, like--just for a drink.”

Her eyes kept darting away from his, despite her best efforts otherwise. That was still enough for her to see the expression drawing over his face as she finished her terrible ramble.

He rubbed his neck and cocked his head, his grin shifting uncomfortably. “Well, I’m not sure I can actually make it back here tomorrow. I’ll probably be meeting my girlfriend for lunch then.”

It wasn’t the last part that got Riverjump. The feeling of something within her chest shoveling its way even deeper into her took over all her efforts at being really nice, and her smile dropped.

The colt pushed himself out from the booth. He patted Riverjump on the hoof and said to her, “Just don’t give up, all right? There’ll always be somepony out there who can lend you a shoulder, you know?”

She kept her gaze square on the table. Most of her attention was set on holding back her useless crying instincts, but the meaner feelings she contained were riled anyway.

Just as he withdrew his hoof from hers, Riverjump muttered, “I’m sorry.”

He frowned at her like he was hoping that’d she say something else, but neither of them said anything more. He left. She stayed, hiding her face from anybody else within sight. Despite her clenched teeth, whimpers increasingly trembled through them, and crying escaped from her even as she still tried to hold it back.

She hated that colt now, and for that she hated herself a little more.

Riverjump’s cutie mark was that of a black vortex. Whenever somebody asked her what it is, she lied and told them that it was a black hole--that she just loved space so much. It was really the darkness in her heart, or whatever new way to phrase it that she’d thought up in her terrible spare thoughts.

The sun finally dipped below the horizon while she lay in bed, staring through her window as she waited for the night to come. She pulled her blanket off and set her hooves on the floor, staring outside a minute longer as it kept getting darker.

She left her house and headed back toward the sweet shop. Riverjump had a feeling about what would happen tonight--not to say a suspicion, but an inherent knack of where she should go. She hoped that one ability she had going for her was just a sleuthing talent instead of what she knew it actually was.

As she nearly arrived, she found a colt approaching the shop ahead of her. It was the same colt from earlier that day, and yet he was now an it, and all of its features were warped to the point of monstrosity. Its skin and fur melted upward off its body into the air around it; its hooves sunk right through the ground where it walked; its eyes glowed so bright that Riverjump couldn’t tell how deep they began; and its tail burned.

It was nearly as tall as the whole shop, and it hadn’t seen Riverjump yet. She peered out at it from the safety of the shadows behind a house nearby. Her teeth were chattering despite the warm night, and her eyes were almost as wide as the monster’s.

The monster skulked around the rear of the sweet shop, giving Riverjump her opportunity. She dashed around the other way toward the front entrance, her hooves now shaking as she nudged the door--which was locked. Despite the door definitely not opening, she gave it a harder shove; it rattled clear in the night, and she stiffened. Her head turned back to the corner of the store, only the sweat dripping past her eye offering her impetus to blink. She didn’t.

Despite the noise, nothing came back around the corner. It took almost a minute before Riverjump regained the courage to move, but she glanced around the front of the store as soon as she dared: there were large windows at either side of the door, and blinds drawn over them on the inside. Riverjump rubbed her face and grimaced as she figured out what to do this time.

Sleeping on the upper floor of the building were the store’s owners, an older couple who operated the business by themselves. A crash and tinkling echoed up to their room, and the wife awoke. Even though her back was in bad shape, the sound of a break-in got her into her slippers faster than she had moved in weeks. She put on her glasses and took a small candle with her to the bedroom door.

She peered out into the hallway, which led only to the bathroom and stairwell. She tottered over to the latter. As soon as the elder reached the upper landing, Riverjump leaped up the last steps and toppled into her, knocking the candle out of her mouth. It was snuffed out before it even hit the floor.

Riverjump shoved a hoof over the elder’s mouth and shushed her, but the elder pushed away Riverjump’s hoof and screamed, “Help! I’m being assaulted!”

Riverjump kept her voice low while she tried to wrestle the elder’s mouth closed again. “No, please, I’m not here to hurt you! You’ve got to get out of here, and to be quiet!”

The two of them were struggling in front of the one window in the hallway. While Riverjump implored the elder to be quiet, the light falling over the two ponies began vanishing, a large shadow taking its place. She looked up to the window, and saw the monster looking through to her.

Its eye filled the whole window, its pupil expanding as it stared directly back at Riverjump. Her pleas to the other pony fell silent for a moment as tears welled back up in her eyes, compelling her not to look away.

The monster tilted its head upward, a clean and perfect row of teeth in its beautiful smile now visible through the window. Riverjump pushed her hoof back over the elder’s mouth in the next moment and shoved her to the floor, pleading again, “You’re in danger, oh god, I’ve seen it happen before--it knows you’re in here, I don’t know what it’ll do--”

The elder forced Riverjump’s hoof off again and screamed more. By that point, Riverjump heard the elder’s husband hobbling over creaky floorboards to the door as well. She looked up toward the cracked door, but she didn’t didn’t get a chance to see him come out before the wife hit Riverjump in the stomach.

Riverjump’s head spun for a moment as she fell off the elder, losing just enough time for the husband to come over her with a cane. He clobbered her on the skull, and with each hit hollered, “No one--threatens--my--wife!”

Riverjump was still crying, unable to concentrate on any one thing anymore. She glanced back to the window, but all she saw through it now was smoke. The husband knocked her right over the eyes next, and she flailed her hooves over her face to protect herself from the rest of the beating.

“Get out! Get out, now!” the wife was still yelling. Riverjump gazed back to her through blurry eyes and a shielded face, her voice breaking into a sob.

“Please, oh please, you’re in danger,” she said. Her words were so garbled the elders couldn’t even understand her.

Riverjump was completely huddled on the floor, now only crying. The store owners both retreated back to their bedroom while their intruder was down, slamming the door shut and locking it. Riverjump heard them screaming for help out their bedroom window, crying for someone to save them from her.

She pulled her hooves away from her face, climbing back up to all fours with weak legs. She hobbled over to the door, banging on it and trying to get them to understand again.

“I’m so sorry,” she cried. “Please, it’s not safe here! You’re under attack--not from me! I’m not trying to hurt you!”

She coughed, and not just once. Smoke was drifting into the hallway from the stairwell, and Riverjump could hear the crackling of a fire downstairs. She banged on the door again, still coughing and crying, but the ponies inside weren’t listening.

With one more look toward the stairs, she saw the fire already climbing them. Glancing between that and the door, she sobbed even louder.

If she had been able to look ahead to all this, before getting involved in trying to help more of her victims, Riverjump wouldn’t have thought this was her limit. She’d have thought she met her limit a long time ago, before she had busted through the window to warn the store owners. But despite a good show of bravery tonight, even Riverjump had her absolute limits.

She hobbled over to the window, eyes and legs bruised, and smashed it open. The noise of it was negligible over the fire and the screaming. She brushed away only a few of the shards remaining at the bottom, still coughing into her hoof, and pushed herself over the sill.

It was even hotter the next day. The current in the river was lower today, not that Riverjump could see. She knew pretty well how swelled it would be based on the weather, even though she was in the middle of town right now.

She had planned to blow this all off after his stint on the bridge yesterday, but there she was after all. She sat on a bench outside the town square, her face drooped toward her hooves. She had bandages all over her body, but only one on her face.

“Wow, what happened to your eye?”

Ponytail Spectre finally showed. She walked up to and stopped right in front of Riverjump’s bench, not wearing much of an expression; the only part of her face that was contorting was her mouth as she moved a lollipop around her teeth. Riverjump figured that Ponytail didn’t really consider her a friend, but the two of them had known each other for a long time now and Riverjump had somehow never scared her away.

The mare swished her namesake ponytail and said, “Sorry, am I late? I forgot when we said we’d meet.”

Riverjump pushed herself off the bench and shook her head. “You’re fine. I am too--I mean, my eye is.”

“Yeah, but seriously,” Ponytail said with a cocked head, “you look pretty beat up. Did you fight somepony? Like, in a real fight?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Did somepony do this to you but not in a fight?”

Riverjump leaned her head back a little and considered for a moment what would sound acceptable. She had already stressed out that morning over how to cover up all her cuts with minimal bandaging, and had come up with several different stories to tell almost no one who would even bother asking.

She rubbed her neck and grinned, explaining, “It’s not like that. I got drunk and fell out a window.”

“Oh,” Ponytail said. She shifted the lollipop to the other side of her mouth. “Well, that sounds like a good time after all.”

Riverjump moved beside Ponytail and the two of them began walking. Ponytail shifted her lollipop and poked Riverjump in the shoulder. “Hey, I know what’s gonna perk you up. Sugar. I don’t come down here much, right? There’s this sweet shop nearby that’s been around forever that I hear about from everypony, and it’s supposed to serve the best stuff ever. Ever, like ever. Up for some diabetes poisoning or whatever?”

Riverjump felt her cheeks flush and brain jolt. She nodded anyway, thinking of nothing to say.

Ponytail smiled and looked forward again. “Yeah, I thought so. This’ll be awesome.”

“I really just need a drink anyway,” Riverjump muttered. “Hot out…”

They bantered on their way there, even though Riverjump didn’t contribute much to it. Ponytail talked and Riverjump listened, as they both seemed to prefer. The conversation stopped when they arrived within sight of the sweet shop’s charred husk.

Firefighter ponies had eliminated the blaze, but the building itself barely had any foundation left. All of the walls were burned down and there was little evidence left that there had ever even been a second floor. No ordinary fire could devastate a structure so much.

“Oh, god,” Ponytail gasped. “Are they--?”

The firefighter ponies were just then removing two sets of mostly bones from the ridiculous amount of ashes around the site. While Ponytail clasped a hoof over her mouth and stared, Riverjump had already tilted her gaze away. The latter noticed another particular pony in the few others that were observing the scene: the colt.

He, too, was watching the bones getting taken from the ruins, his expression more of a simple sadness. Riverjump looked away from him so quickly she whipped her own hair into Ponytail’s face.

“Hey--” Ponytail said, slapping away the hair. She glared at Riverjump for a second, but looked past her the next moment. Her eyes brightened again and she said, “What a hottie.”

Riverjump frowned, but stared at the dirt. “Let’s just go somewhere else.”

“Oh, yikes,” Ponytail said. “I guess that sounded really superficial of me. I’m not good at staying sad at something, though, and that guy really is a stud.”

Riverjump turned even lower and further away from him, the voices of shame already starting in her head. She forgot to hide them from her face.

Ponytail glanced down at her, but didn’t look too concerned as she sighed, “It’s okay to look at pretty colts, you know.”

Riverjump raised her head and looked back at Ponytail. The blushing mare whispered, “I already met him yesterday.”

“Oh,” Ponytail said. “Wait, what’d he do to you?”

Riverjump turned away again and said, “No, I got drunk after he left. He took me there yesterday, and--that part’s not important. He just...”

Riverjump glanced back over to the colt. “He just embarrassed me is all.”

“Whatever then, lady,” Ponytail said, shifting her lollipop. She patted Riverjump again and pulled her close. “Not worth thinking about a guy that you don’t like. Let’s just go get shitfaced.”

The colt was leaving. Despite how anxious he seemed before, his expression by then had reduced to a slight frown and the look of a tut-tut on his lips. He hadn’t noticed Riverjump, and she stared at him as he went. He was alone. Sans the “girlfriend” he was going to meet up with here today. Riverjump’s frown consciously turned into a scowl, and she felt all the worse for it.

The firefighters were putting the bones into a wagon at that point. Riverjump’s gaze turned to them for a moment as they put a blanket over the bones, but she then looked back to the colt.

He had no memory of what happened last night. Only Riverjump knew. She knew that it was his fault in the first place for treating her like a merit badge. If she had died yesterday, the two elders she had failed to protect would still be alive. Even for all the blaming of herself she usually did, she knew that was true.

Ever since that vortex on her flank had appeared, things like last night kept happening. To any other pony who harbored what Riverjump did, this surely couldn’t turn out the same way. It would be an adventure they could follow, or a mystery they could solve. It would be anything they could solve.

Not to Riverjump, who knew exactly how she was going to die. She and Ponytail went the opposite direction as the colt, and left for a bar.

Act Two: Fear

Riverjump clutched her head with one hoof and leaned against the mailbox with the other. While her face was distinctly off-color, it was her frown that looked like it might change shape at any given moment. She took a minute to steady herself and her stomach, then got back to the mail.

She sorted through the junk first, stacking it in a pile on top of the mailbox, then put the missives to her parents on top of those. All her thoughts were focused on the mail alone, and those that strayed back to how ill her bowels and brain felt were quickly put back into concentration. The times her stomach jolted, she clutched the mail much tighter.

This was routine for her, minus the hangover. It may have seemed strange to outside ponies, if any of them had seen where Riverjump was just yesterday, but she was feeling better right now despite the world around her spinning just a little. She had even gotten up when she actually woke up.

There was one letter for her today. She held it up higher than the rest, paying attention mostly to whom it was from. His name turned her expression even iller.

She thought about not opening it at first, but she unclipped the string binding it shut even while her doubts weighed heavy. The letter read:

Dear Riverjump,

I hope you haven’t moved from this address already. I really wanted this letter to reach you. I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and I guess this is my attempt at admitting what I did wrong, and what I can do better. I think we can make it work again if you’re willing to give me another chance.

I’m not coming by to fluster you in person or anything, don’t worry. I just want you to write back to me and give me an answer. Some things in our relationship went way further than they should have, and some didn’t go far enough.

I wasn’t lying when I said the nice things about you. I meant every one of them, and I still feel them. If it helps, this is my fifth try at writing this letter. I want everything I say to come out right this time. God, I miss you. Write me back.

The letter ended with a farewell, then his name. By the time Riverjump got that far, she had already sat down by the side of her mailbox, her back leaning against its post. Her expression had turned to a different kind of pain. She felt like a worse person for getting affected by it at all.

Riverjump just needed a moment to collect herself, even if the moment lasted several minutes before she remembered she was outside, where everyone could see her too plainly for her to be comfortable. The sender was long gone from her, but the thought of him only reminded her of that other colt. The new one. “The colt,” because she had worked up the courage to ask him out before even asking his name.

Riverjump dropped the letter. It wasn’t just shame that was rekindled by remembering her life from years ago. Rather, memories were getting stirred of what happened before she even met the sender. She remembered what was still happening right now to the new colt.

She bent over and puked.

A Mind Confined

Act Two: Fear

Riverjump didn’t stay home for long. She wanted coffee, and hadn’t thought of whatever would happen after that--nothing decent. The first place she found that seemed a good candidate was a little dine-in bakery. Large windows in the front showed puffy pastries and other diversified treats, and a sign read, “Yes, we serve hay.”

As her stomach rolled around inside her again, she grimaced at the thought of going inside. Her stomach didn’t provide the only feeling of dread as she waited on the store’s cusp; she had a bad but familiarly entrenched feeling of what was already waiting inside.

She pushed open the door anyway, and inside found the colt from yesterday wearing an apron and serving customers breakfast. She lowered her head and went down the opposite aisle from him. Coincidences didn’t happen to her, and just seeing him made the pit of her stomach feel even more sour.

Riverjump chose the corner booth out of several available. Though she was already trying to stifle her frown, she whispered, “Just one cup.”

She gazed straight down at the table most of the time, but kept glancing back at the colt as he served other customers. She pushed around the salt shaker on her table in between glances. When she looked to him again, she saw he had paused in taking orders--he was talking to another mare, who both hugged him and pecked him on the cheek. He responded to that with an even more beautiful smile.

Riverjump turned her gaze back to the table, still fiddling with the salt. The colt came her way a minute later, but Riverjump didn’t look back to him until he was right by her table.

“Hey there--decided what you want, or do you need some recommendations?”

She glanced up to him, smiling as little as she could. She muttered, “I just need some coffee.”

It took a moment, but as he recognized her the smile he was just wearing came back. It faltered as he looked over her bandages, however, and he said, “Hi again. Glad to see you’re still around, but are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Riverjump blurted, glancing away. “It was an actual accident. It’s not related.”

He rubbed his neck, but kept smiling a little. “Well, I really am glad to see you’re still kicking. You said you just need a coffee?”

“Yeah,” Riverjump said. She opened her mouth again for a moment, considering whether or not to speak further. Though the colt stayed silent as he waited for her, she closed it again.

“I’ll go--”

“I thought you had lied to me,” she said after all, blushing.

He raised his eyebrows, but his expression didn’t otherwise change. “What?”

“I saw you at the sweet shop yesterday,” Riverjump explained. She lifted her hoof only a little toward the other mare, and said, “You said you were taking her, but she wasn’t with you.”

He glanced over to his lady, then back to Riverjump with a less enthused shrug. “Yeah, she couldn’t make it yesterday. Not that it would have made a difference, I guess.”

Riverjump’s cheeks flushed even brighter. “Well, that’s true. That was really terrible, what happened.”

The colt frowned and looked back toward his ladyfriend, her back turned from him. He looked at Riverjump and leaned in a bit as he said, “Honestly, I feel horrible for those poor folks that were still inside, but I feel even worse just thinking I’m going to profit off of their passing. I mean, they were my competitors. They had better recipes, too--their stuff is way better than mine. I wouldn’t be surprised if somepony comes asking me questions about what happened, if any foul play is discovered. I’d do the same.”

“No, yeah, I get it,” Riverjump said. She was glancing around anywhere but at the colt, and after a moment her gaze settled on the other mare. Riverjump nodded at her and stammered, “She seems nice.”

The colt’s expression warmed again, but not so much as just a minute ago. He said, “Oh, she’s a great girl, but...”

Riverjump looked back up to him, a familiar feeling coming back to the forefront of her mind.

The colt ruffled his own hair as he glanced at the other mare. He continued, “I mean, she really is sweet, but she has some ideas about how my business should grow, and she’s pretty stubborn when she tells me about them. It’s not that I mind her giving me some input, but, you know, she just goes pretty far with it. I don’t want to be some douche who doesn’t care about what his girl says, but I guess I’d say our relationship is in a rough patch.”

Riverjump had already tuned him out near the end of his spiel. She was back to staring at the table, a cold sweat working its way down to her hooves. She strained to keep her voice normal as she muttered, “Is it bad enough for you to want to break up with her?”

The colt cocked one eyebrow and started, “Uh--”

Riverjump’s eyes widened as it occurred to her how she had expressed her worry. She whipped her head back toward him and waved her hooves in front of her face, interrupting, “That really wasn’t what I meant to say at all. Pretend I never said that, just--never mind.”

Though the colt’s smile had wavered, he said, “Well, it’s nothing that serious. I’m sure we’ll find a way to work through it.”

He checked around at his other customers, then looked back to Riverjump. He leaned down a little as he said, “Hey. Despite that, you know where I work now, so come by anytime if you just need somepony to talk to. My name’s Cinnamon Buns.”

Riverjump looked away from him as she replied, “I’m Riverjump.”

Cinnamon leaned back up and chuckled, “Well, no need to live up to that. I’ll be back with your coffee in a few, all right? I’ve just got to go talk to my girl about something.”

He left again, and Riverjump offered a single wave of her hoof as goodbye, not that he saw it. She pulled the salt shaker closer to herself, slumping her chin onto the table right in front of it. She didn’t feel much for coffee anymore.

Another rump bumped into Riverjump’s and she flinched, but it was Ponytail taking a seat beside her. “Smallest town ever, huh? It’s really comfy. I can see why you never looked back.”

Riverjump raised her head at Ponytail, the former too tired to look happy for her acquaintance. Riverjump muttered, “That’s not why I left.”

“No, nope,” Ponytail said, raising a hoof in front of Riverjump’s mouth. “Not the line of conversation I wanted to start. I saw Hottie McAsshole in here, then I saw you chatting it up with him. How’d it go this time?”

Ponytail moved her hoof under her chin and rested on it as Riverjump sighed. “It’s not like that. I, um, didn’t even know he was in here.”

“Hmm,” Ponytail said. “Well, if you’re not focusing on him after all, then you better start thinking of where you’re taking me today. I’m leaving in just a couple days. As dinky as this place is, that’s enough time to see basically everywhere, right? Where do we start?”

“I haven’t really explored much yet, or ever,” Riverjump said, pushing the salt away. “I guess that’s pretty pathetic.”

Though Ponytail’s cheek was already stretched upward by her hoof, she grinned fully. “Yup.”

Riverjump accidentally smiled a little. The atmosphere of voices in the bakery was growing louder; Ponytail straightened up and tugged on Riverjump’s leg, pulling her out of the booth as she said, “Let’s go fix that, then.”

Riverjump willingly slid out of the booth and got up, but almost glanced back at Cinnamon again. She didn’t when she realized the raised voices were of both Cinnamon and his ladyfriend. Riverjump’s smile left ahead of her.

The sun set over all the town at once, of course, but somehow it always seemed to take a little bit longer in the park. A lone mare sat on a bench by the public garden, her hooves curled up underneath her as she watched the horizon grow too dark to see.

Riverjump was the first to stumble across her that night. She was about to walk by the mare, but instead of passing her Riverjump stopped and turned toward her. Though her voice wasn’t as clear as usual, Riverjump asked, “May I sit here?”

The mare eyed her, but even as she did she said, “Sure, have a seat.”

Riverjump slid up onto the open spot beside the mare and laid her head against the back of the bench. The mare pulled her own head back a bit and said, “You smell like wine. Bad day?”

“I feel like wine,” Riverjump mumbled. “Cold and empty.”

A corner of the mare’s mouth tilted downward, but she said, “I’m just waiting for somepony else to show up. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“I would like that,” Riverjump said. “You ever feel like everything’s beyond your control? Even yourself? I can’t even control my own feelings. That pisses me off, and I don’t want it to.”

The mare’s reaction didn’t show much on her face, but she tucked her hooves in a little closer and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Riverjump.”

The mare said, “My name is Liberty Belle. How’d you get all those bandages?”

Riverjump shrugged. “These were an accident. They’re the kind of thing that heal, anyway. I don’t care about them.”

“You should care more about your body,” Belle said. “Live longer and feel better about yourself.”

“Nah,” Riverjump drawled. “It won’t matter that much longer, don’t you worry. Not that--that didn’t come out right. I made it sound worse than it is.”

Belle, too, leaned her head against the bench. “Have you seen a doctor about the things going through your head right now?”

Riverjump narrowed her eyes and raised her voice a little. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not stupid. It’s obvious this condition isn’t a one-night thing for you. No matter how--”

“It’s not worth it,” Riverjump said. “No one can help--”

Belle tapped a hoof over Riverjump’s mouth. “Don’t interrupt me. This is important. I don’t care how many ponies have already told you that you need help. I’m telling you again, right now, after being able to figure it out in a minute of conversation. You need the aid of a professional.”

Riverjump pushed away Belle’s hoof. Tears were welling up in her eyes again. She said, “I’ve thought about it…”

She sounded as if there was something else she wanted to say, but said nothing else. Belle frowned at her, then patted her on the shoulder. “Sleep helps, if nothing else. You should go home.”

Riverjump grinned and turned her gaze upward. “You know, tonight…”

She trailed off again, and Belle tucked her hoof back in. Riverjump’s grin didn’t falter this time, and she continued, “I went drinking again with the closest pony I have to a friend tonight, but not to drown my sorrows. Tonight I did it to be brave, because I’ve got to be really brave for this.”

Belle smiled, too, and looked away to the garden. She said, “Sounds like something I did once.”

Riverjump looked back to Belle. “Yeah?”

“I used to be a lot like you, until I met the right pony to pull me out of it,” Belle said. “You know how it goes when you’re at your worst. I only got through it after pulling together all my courage and asking him if he’d like to spend more significant time with me.”

Riverjump’s grin vanished. Belle kept gazing at the flowers and said, “Now, that hasn’t made it easy. I keep saying things to him I regret just a minute later, and I never own up to it in front of him, because I’m afraid I’d lose an edge that doesn’t even exist. We’re going through a rough patch right now, if--well, it’s not really a rough patch. It’s my own fault. He could crush my whole world if he ever didn’t forgive me.”

Belle looked back to Riverjump and frowned again as she found her companion turned away and wiping her cheeks. Belle put a hoof back on her shoulder and said, “Hey… I didn’t mean to drag you into my troubles. I’m sorry. He and I are just going to work through this, all right? We’ll be fine. So will you.”

Riverjump’s lips quivered as she kept wiping, though she hooves were too wet to be of use already. In between hiccups of whimpers, she said, “You’re not really like me, but that’s a good thing. I’m glad you’re not.”

Riverjump lowered her hooves as Belle rubbed her shoulder. Riverjump turned to her again, still sniffing, and smiled a little. Belle smiled back at her.

Riverjump raised her hoof to Belle’s head and then knocked her into the bench as hard as she could. Belle didn’t have time to react as her head bounced against the wood and she clattered off the bench entirely. Riverjump slid back off and began pulling Belle’s whole body over her back, panting at every step. The struggling pony muttered with each breath she had available, “Just don’t wake up--too soon! We’ll hide--all--night, until the sun gets a move on again.”

Heroic as she looked through her struggle, Riverjump’s walk was slow and heavy. She could only take a step forward every second, and not even her bravado could keep her fear at bay. She knew she wasn’t fast enough.

She heard more steps behind her, louder ones. Their sound wasn’t of clopping over the dirt road, but of pounding. Riverjump took wider steps, rushing herself, saying, “Please, please…”

She took too large a step forward and collapsed, Belle spilling off her back as they both fell onto their sides. Riverjump couldn’t catch her breath to try again. Her eyes were shut tight, crying hard, and she was still begging.

She rolled over onto her back, chest heaving and legs shaking, and opened her eyes. The monster stood right over her and Belle, hiding the entire sky from them. It looked bigger. Its eyes shone even brighter.

Riverjump only stared, her sweat all that moved. The monster tilted its head down toward her, not them, but just Riverjump, and smiled at her with the same beautiful smile she hated. Even through her sobbing, she could see it clearly.

It raised its leg out of the ground and stepped down on both the ponies below. Riverjump held her breath and braced her legs against the ground--but she wasn’t crushed. The monster’s hoof fell right through them, and Riverjump felt herself being raised up. She saw darkness no matter where she looked, except for Belle floating beside her.

Belle, alone, was burning up. Riverjump could make no audible protest, but only watch. Even as Riverjump reached for her, the two of them were too far. Belle’s skin, then all that underneath it, burned noiselessly until all that was left was her skeleton. When that was done, the two of them floated back down to the ground and landed softly upon it.

The monster lifted its hoof away from them and stepped back. It turned around, not looking to them again, and went back the way it came.

Even Riverjump’s bandages lay untouched. As her whole body shook, she pushed herself onto her hooves and stumbled over to Belle’s form, falling to her knees over her.

“Please…” Riverjump whispered, “just let it end for me, too…”

Someone had already knocked thrice on the door of Ponytail’s motel room was able to get there. She trotted over to it without her signature ponytail, as she had been in the middle of brushing her hair before bed. She shuffled a hoof through her bangs to get them off her face, then pulled the door open.

Riverjump stood outside, her face tilted toward the dirt. Tears streamed down her chin, dripping below her. She turned her head upward, her eyes red and puffy. Ponytail’s only expression was raising her eyebrows slightly. Riverjump sniffed and whimpered, and Ponytail lifted one open hoof.

Riverjump took it and grasped Ponytail around the shoulders, the whimpers cracking into sobs. The smell of alcohol on the sobbing pony’s breath was still heavy, but Ponytail stroked Riverjump’s mane in between pushing back her own. Riverjump held on for some time.

Act Three: Regret

Minor trigger warning for abuse.

He had asked her to come over tonight because he said he wanted to apologize to her. She just hoped he wouldn’t change his mind by the time she got there. But by the time she arrived, he wasn’t there--it was.

The door was unlocked. She entered, hoping he wouldn’t mind her coming in without him knowing first. The sun had already set, and she didn’t yet know the meaning that carried.

She only felt the monster’s presence when it was too late to run, so she hid in the closet. She heard it pass by right outside, and as soon as it left she would follow it again. It didn’t leave, however. Its pounding stopped right in front of the door, and she heard it sit down. She realized that its target was not someone she could save.

Her hooves were clasped over her mouth, but not tightly enough to contain all her sobs. She knew it could hear her, but it didn’t come in. All night it waited right outside the door, and she just a threshold from it.

It got up again much later, just before dawn. She was still awake, her body aching and her eyes dried. The door opened, and she saw the monster staring down at her with the smile she always feared--his. She didn’t squirm or protest, as she had no energy left with which to struggle. The monster came in.

This monster wasn’t huge, nor was it ethereal. Its tail was on fire, and yet it didn’t burn her, but beat her. As every blow landed on her, she waited simply for her end to come as well. But just as the dawn came, the monster smiled again at her and faded back into his body, and it was he who was left in front of her, hooves raised to her face, blood dripping from all but her cutie mark.

Her eyes could still open, and she would live. She saw him looking back at her, his eyes changing in a way she hadn’t seen before. His hooves were the ones that quivered now, and his face was the one dampened by tears. He touched her again, this time on the cheek, and cried for forgiveness. He had no idea what he had done, but the thought finally occurred to her: it really wasn’t her fault. Not this.

She didn’t stay angry at him, perhaps for the same lack of energy, but over a much longer time. Even as he buried his head into her chest, crying more than ever, she forgave him as best she could understand how to. The words never came out of her mouth, and he would never know, but she gave up all those feelings for him. All she still felt was the monster leaving him the same as it entered, hiding back in her again.

Shortly after, she left--his house, the hospital, then the town.

A Mind Confined
Act Three: Regret

Riverjump waited behind a tree as she listened, though it was hardly a hiding place. She was looking to the ground, rubbing one foreleg with her other, and listening to Cinnamon cry out in the park.

She never peeked at him, nor did she cry with him. He sounded nearly the same as she had heard years ago from someone else. Up until the moment she heard the first scream of Cinnamon’s despair, Riverjump still harbored something against him. She still felt like she could salvage something.

But when she heard him, she realized this wasn’t Cinnamon’s fault. There wasn’t even anything left for which she could forgive him. She felt the monster leave him, too, and land back in herself.

A crowd of ponies had gathered in the park, and none of them saw Riverjump leave. She walked until she couldn’t hear Cinnamon sobbing anymore, and kept walking all the way through town. It was early enough now that she didn’t pass a single other pony--though Riverjump knew that coincidences didn’t happen to her.

She pulled off all her bandages as she went, stripping them off no matter the momentary pain. As all the houses and shops gave way to trees, Riverjump approached the bridge out of town. She clattered over it, stopping in the middle, stepping up to the railing. She peered down at the river it spanned, and by then her tears were falling past her cheeks and joining the currents as she stared.

The water level was low, and the currents weren’t rushing at their peak. It hadn’t rained in some time now. Even as Riverjump climbed back over the railing, she wondered if she’d survive this. She didn’t know where the river ended. It might not be enough. But in the center of her thoughts, before all else, she knew that waiting was no longer worth it.

“You bailed on me pretty early,” someone behind her said. This time Riverjump wasn’t startled, nor did she much care.

Ponytail walked further up to the bridge, coming from the same direction as Riverjump had. Ponytail’s voice didn’t falter, nor did she rush it as she continued, “But I guess I don’t need an apology. Looks like this must be a pretty rough spot you’re feeling.”

“The last time somepony tried to talk me out of this, it went all wrong,” Riverjump said, clutching the rails behind her.

“Okay,” Ponytail said, “then you talk about it instead.”

Riverjump leaned back a bit further against the rails, though she didn’t really mean to. She said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The things I keep doing to everypony around me, I should get locked up for. Any way I say it, it just sounds like I’m trying to make a big deal out of myself, but everything that’s gone wrong really was my fault.”

Riverjump looked back to Ponytail through tears, her commitment holding much firmer than her expression. “That sweet shop? That was my fault. The baker pony burned it down because of a monster I put inside him, just because I got angry at him. Just because he wasn’t what I wanted.”

Riverjump turned back to the water. Ponytail walked closer to the railing and put one hoof on it next to Riverjump, and asked, “What kind of monster are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Riverjump cried. “It just waits inside me until I curse somepony with it, and then at night it takes them over. You’d think it would hurt them, but even in their body it still hurts me. It just does whatever they wanted anyway, and gets rid of all the ponies in their way.”

Ponytail tossed her ponytail to the other side of her back, but stayed silent.

“And then it comes back to me,” Riverjump said, “after my victims get success and happiness. That’s what I used to think, anyway. Now I guess it just hurts whoever it wants to, as long as I still get hurt, too.”

“Did you just assume nopony would believe you if you said that before?” Ponytail asked. “I kind of get it. It explains some stuff.”

Riverjump released one hoof from the rails and wiped at her cheeks. She ignored the question, but her voice cracked a bit as she said, “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Ponytail raised her other hoof onto the rail and climbed over as well, answering as she went, “Well, obviously I came for you.”

Riverjump offered no protest, though her gaze shifted to the narrow space where Ponytail could stand by her. “You mean, as a friend?”

Ponytail set hoof down beside her and said, “Well, no, but sort of.”

She leaned onto the railing while she looked away from Riverjump. Ponytail twirled her bangs, and her expression remained the same even as she said, “See, the thing is I came to town to visit you, not just to go drinking. This situation is totally unfair to me. Whatever I say right now is just emotional blackmail to get you off of here, right? So, that’s why I need you to get off. So we can actually talk honestly.”

“There’s only one way I’m getting off,” Riverjump said, tightening her grip.

“Ha ha, so punny,” Ponytail scoffed. “I’m here for another day anyway, so chill for now and we’ll revisit this tomorrow, okay?”

“Just say what you want,” Riverjump muttered. “Then it won’t weigh on you when I’m gone.”

Ponytail raised a hoof to Riverjump’s cheek and pulled it her direction, then leaned in and kissed her. The kiss only lasted a second before Ponytail pulled away.

“Now we’re both not playing fair, because you have no idea if that was honest or not,” Ponytail said.

Riverjump stared at her, still crying, but the pain on her face had vanished. Her mouth hung open still, and she felt her decision wavering again.

The moment ended with a soft slicing sound, and Ponytail’s face fell pale. She and Riverjump both looked down, and they saw that from Riverjump’s chest had come a shadow despite the sun, its shape like a dagger, poking through Ponytail’s chest in turn. The shadow melted upward the same way as Riverjump’s monster.

Blood soaked out from only Ponytail’s chest. The shadow pulled out and back into Riverjump, and Ponytail’s body tilted over slowly at first, then fell into the currents. Riverjump watched her fall, eyes wide, tears halted.

Riverjump gave up. She let go.

Something grabbed her by the hoof before she hit the water. It took her a second to gather the energy to even look up, but the grimace she made when she did took only a moment. The monster gripped the railing with one hoof and her with the other. It looked just like the one she had seen years ago.

Though the thought had occurred to her many times before, the question of why this was all happening to her popped back into Riverjump’s mind at that moment. She had never figured it out before, but the answer presented itself to her as she looked up at her monster, and saw on it the smile she hated most of all: her own.