20/20
“Can you take me to the wishing well?” Listener asked in a raspy voice. The noises of hoofsteps echoed through the veil of darkness he had known for as long as he could remember. Ever since he was a filly, Listener had been blind. He had played life by ear, listening his way through life. He had tried to make friends with ponies all of his life, but none had ever tried to be a friend to him. He lived his life in solitude, assisted every now and again by his relatives who saw him more as a burden than a brother. They would buy him groceries, pay for the upkeep of his tiny apartment, they would provide the basics. But when he wanted to talk, the only thing that would listen was the darkness that surrounded him every waking hour of every day.
“Can you take me to the wishing well?” he asked again to the spectres that passed by him as he sat propped up against the wall. He had heard of the wishing well, a small abandoned water well that had once dried up, but had recently sprung to life again, bringing with it tales of a powerful magic that could be unleashed with the toss of a single coin.
“Can you please take me to the wishing well?” he asked, begging anypony in earshot to help him to the place where his vision could be restored.
“What wishing well?” a feminine voice asked from the blackness.
“The well that grants wishes,” Listener said as he rubbed his hoof along the bit he had peddled off of a generous passerby. Not many ponies were ever so kind as to give anything more than a few coins, but this bit would be the bit to restore his sight.
“Oh, you mean that well,” the mare said as if a revelation had struck her. “I can do that.” She helped Listener to his hooves and carefully led him to the well. Everypony knew about the wishing well, it had become an overnight phenomenon that many ponies had tried their luck with. Listener wanted to do the same, to regain his sight.
“How far is the well?” he asked incessantly as the mare seemed to walk for ages.
“It’s just up ahead,” she would always respond with a chuckle. “What do you want from the well?”
“To see.” His answer struck deep into the mare, that much was evident from her involuntary flinch. The short answer carried so much emotional power it nearly brought the mare to tears. The two traveled on in silence after the response, both too afraid to ask the other any questions.
Several minutes later the duo arrived at the well still in complete silence. The well was a nondescript stone cylinder about a foot tall. Deep within its bowels one could barely make out the sound of trickling water. That magical trickling was exactly what Listener wanted to hear. He raced to the edge of the well, assisted by the kind mare, and ran his hoof along the bit one last time.
“Its ironic,” he mumbled as he felt the smooth surface of the coin. “I will never see the coin that let me see in the first place.” He held the coin over the edge of the wishing well and let it slide out of his grasp. I want to see.
The coin hit the small puddle of water with a low plunk. Immediately a blinding white sensation surged through Listener’s eyes. The nerves that had been so ridiculously twisted and destroyed began to mend themselves, restoring sight to the once blind stallion. He stood there, in total shock, at the sensation he had longed to experience for so many years. Slowly his eyes began to adjust to the new sensation, but something was amiss.
His eyes were functioning properly, this much was true, but his brain did not know how to understand the signals sent from them. What he perceived was not something such as a pony, coin, or wishing well. Instead his mind could merely identify colors, shapes, and lines. The mane of the mare who had taken him to the well looked like a different entity from her body. He could not perceive the depth of the world nor the actual shapes of things. Color bordering color registered as a physical division between two specific objects. His eyes could see, but he was still blind to the world.
“Is something wrong?” the mare asked as she watched Listener frantically scan the world around him.
“I- I don’t know.” Listener reached out his hoof, wildly waving it before him as he tried to steady himself on something. His hoof hit a cold rocky surface, the wall of the old well that had returned to him his sight. The stones, however, could not hold the weight of a full grown stallion. Beneath his hoof the rocks shifted, twisted, and jimmied themselves out of place. It took only seconds for the wall to cave into the abyss of the well. With the stones, a stallion toppled into the cramped shaft. He tried to call for help, but his voice only echoed off of the muddy walls of the well. As he fell the well grew smaller and smaller, causing his legs to scrape against the walls, slowing his descent with painful bumps and jars. As his body skidded to a stop, jammed in a disfiguring position, his head dipped under the surface of the water at the bottom of the well.
Frantically, Listener pulled his head up, trying to take in a breath of air, but his snout was just short of the surface of the water. His heart began to race as he tried to jimmy his way up, but every movement he made only dropped him deeper into the water. He opened his eyes, trying to see anything that might help him escape. Nothing was there. He could not move, he could not hear, the only thing he could do was look. As he took the last few moments of breath he had left he looked to the bottom of the pool. There, a small golden circle rested at its center, it was the coin that had granted him his one wish, and supplied to him his greatest fear.
Listener closed his eyes and inhaled.
