The Weight of the Sun

Google Docs version *(PROBERLY FORMATTED—HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!)*: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RKVbUFXnINbINxf3V-Pnc-WUBWmJOXar5rcNI1Nyh5Y/edit

This is it, I thought.No more lives left. And I'm all out of quarters.

Any second now. One bite and it's game over.

Any second now.

Any second now...

        But the bite that would send me into the world beyond never came.

        I heard a bone-cracking, fleshythump, and acrash that rocked the ground.

        I opened my eyes to see the beast lying in a heap next to me, with two hoof-shaped dents in its side. In the moonlight, I could see that there were some ribs caved in where it took the blow. A thin line of blood trickled out of the corner of its mouth. Its breath came in wet, ragged and rattling huffs. I scrambled to my feet.

        Standing over Trixie was another hooded figure. It gave her a gentle nudge with its nose, to which she responded with a pained moan. I rushed over to my knife and picked it up.

How the hell did they find us?! "Get away from her!" I yelled, brandishing the knife.

        The figure turned towards me. There was no horn poking through this one's hood. A smooth, dark, feminine voice spoke to me as a leg raised up to lower the hood, revealing something I didn't expect... at all.

        "Is that the kind of tone you send, to one who did just now your life defend?" rhymed the zebra with a mohawk, and a raised eyebrow.

        I shook my head and lowered my guard. "No, I'm sorry. I just thought you were someone else, is all." I holstered my knife.  "Thank you, by the way," I quickly added. I rushed over to Trixie and checked her vitals.Thank god. She was still with us, for the moment.

        I looked up to the zebra. "She's lost a lot of blood; she needs immediate medical attention. Do you know where there's a doctor, or a hospital?"

        She shook her head. "The nearest is miles away, but do not let your hope decay. My home is close nearby; there does your salvation lie. If you want her the dawn to see, then you must please trust and follow me."

        "What are we waiting for, then? Let's go!" I bent to pick up Trixie, but a hoof on my shoulder halted me.

        "It seems paltry, this I know. But I must ask this of you, before we go:" She nodded towards the downed beast. "It will not live to see the dawn, but still I wish its pain may be foregone."

        It took my mind a few precious moments to decipher the cryptic request. Finally realizing what she was asking for, I stood and drew my knife.

She doesn't want the damn thing to suffer. Well, she's a better person than I am. Still, I knew that the only way Trixie would get any help was if I carried out the zebra's will.

        I knelt at the beast's side, trying to decide the quickest, cleanest way to end its life. It lifted its head and looked at me. There was no more primal anger in its stare; in its eyes, I saw only pain. It gave me a pitiful moan, a whining cry for mercy. The predator had become the prey. Resigned to its fate, it laid its head back down and closed its eyes. It even bared its neck for me, as if to say,

        "Please, just make it quick."

        I was... stunned. To see such a powerful, seemingly savage creature humble itself before its executioner, to see such a display of... of...deference in an... ananimal, it... well... itshocked me.

        When my head cleared, I patted it on the neck. "Well... you put up a good fight, I'll give you that. Maybe in another time, another place... I don’t know. Things could have gone differently. We could even have been friends..." I trailed off, imagining what it would be like to have such a noble beast as an ally. Remembering that time was against me, I finally put the blade to its neck, right over its jugular.

        I took three deep breaths, and held the last. I closed my eyes... and dug in. I made sure it would be over as quickly as possible.

        Its eyes snapped wide open, and its pupils became pinpricks. Its breathing accelerated as its blood emptied out onto the ground. Its eyes glazed over as it inhaled for the last time. With one final wheezing, bubbling exhale, it died. As a final show of respect—whether for the beast or for the zebra, I'm still not exactly sure—I closed its eyes.

        I wiped my knife on a patch of grass and holstered it. I picked up Trixie and turned to the zebra.

        "After you," I said flatly.

        The zebra gave a grateful nod and turned, motioning me to follow before bounding off into the woods. Without another second to lose, I started after her.

        After what felt like a few hours—though, in reality, I'm sure it was only a few minutes—we arrived in a clearing, dominated by a large tree with windows and a door carved into its fat trunk.

        The zebra opened the door for me and said, "Come in, and watch your head. Lay her down, upon the bed." She nodded towards a bed in the next room.

        I went around the cast-iron kettle hanging over a pile of ashes in the middle of the room and laid Trixie down on the bed in the back. I checked her pulse again.

        "I can't feel her pulse anymore, but she's still breathing!" I yelled over my shoulder.

         A loud crash came from the other room, and I went to see what the zebra was up to. She was rushing back and forth, collecting bottles of assorted sizes containing dried herbs and berries of all kinds, none of which I recognized, from shelves all around the room and emptying their contents into the kettle, which she had already filled with water and was bringing to a boil.

        I barely had time to notice that she had taken off her cloak. Around her neck and legs jingled number of thick and heavy golden rings. It was a wonder that she could move that fast with all that extra weight. They looked to be permanently fastened.

        By the time the mixture was bubbling and frothing, it had turned a soupy, sickly green. It didn't smell much better than it looked. It had an uncanny resemblance to the witches' brews of nursery rhymes and fairytales. It seemed oddly appropriate, considering my situation—stuck in a fairytale, of sorts.

        "What is this stuff?" I asked.

        After rounding up all the empty bottles and giving the mixture one final stir, the zebra answered in rhyme, "A recipe passed down from the zebras of old; the knowledge to make it is an honor to hold. It is a legendary potion, which draws its power from life's great ocean. It will light a fire in her blood, and bring back her life in one great flood."

        She looked me in the eye, and her tone grew frighteningly serious. She spoke slowly, and deliberately, as if to be sure that I didn't miss a single word:

        "The need for balancecannot be spurned," she stressed. "Where water is drawn, itmust be returned."

        The metaphor wasn't lost on me, as exhausted as I was.The potion requires blood, I realized grimly. I drew my knife and rolled up a sleeve.Mine's as good as any, I suppose. But as I readied the knife over my palm, I hesitated.How much, though?

        The zebra stopped me by putting a hoof in my palm and pushing it down and away from the knife. With the same hoof, she gave the blade a gentle tap, bringing it to my attention. I hadn't noticed that it was still caked in the blood of the beast.I guess I didn't clean it very well, I thought.

        "You sure that's going to be enough?" I asked, giving her a questioning look.

        She gave me a silent nod in reply.

        I let my sleeve down and turned the knife over so that the point was towards the liquid. I slowly dipped the blade in. My eyes widened as the mixture flashed to a familiar crimson as it started to fizz around the knife. When the fizzing stopped, I withdrew a clean blade polished to a mirror finish, as if all the time spent in the grating Iraqi desert had simply been washed away. It seemed oddly... symbolic, but I haven't had a whole lot of time to ponder it since.

        "I guess I owe that beast some thanks," I commented as I sheathed the knife again.

        "Then by 'beast', you should call it no more; its rightful name is 'manticore'," the zebra said as she came out of the pantry with a wooden bowl and ladle balanced on her nose.

        "I guess I owe thatmanticore some thanks," I corrected as I took the implements. I filled the bowl to the brim and took it back to Trixie.

        I sat down on the bed and took her head in the crook of my arm. It didn't take much to pry her jaw open as I lifted the bowl to her lips. I started pouring the liquid down her throat while massaging it with the other hand to get her to unconsciously swallow. When the bowl was empty, with not a single drop spilled, I set it down on the table next to the bed and checked Trixie's vitals.

        Something was wrong.

        I hadn't been able to feel her pulse the last time I checked. That wasn't the problem.

        "She's not breathing!"

        My training kicking in, I rolled her on her back and leaped up on the bed, straddling her with my knees. I put my ear close to her mouth, but I couldn’t hear anything, not even a faint wheeze. All I could hear was the pulse pounding in my own head. I tilted her head back to open her airway, and then, pinching her nose shut, I gave her two quick breaths mouth-to-mouth.

I laced my hands over her sternum and started pumping.

        Two breaths, thirty compressions, one hundred beats per minute. Every few repetitions, I would check her pulse, spit out a curse, and continue. It wasn’t long before I had exhausted my vocabulary, and then I went back to the beginning and started again.

        I heard a flurry of hooves and more clashes from the other room. The zebra charged in and shoved me off of Trixie. She crushed a small bundle of herbs and berries between her hooves, and they began to spark. She jammed her hooves into Trixie's ribs, and Trixie's entire body leaped clear off the bed!

        I heard a sharp intake of air and a myriad of quick breaths before it slowed down to normal, and then I was finally able to catch mine when I realized that I had been holding it the whole time, and pick my jaw up off the floor.

        The zebra yielded, and I leaned over Trixie and checked her vitals one last time. She was breathing, and her heart was beating as strong as ever. With a sigh, I plopped down next to the bed and reclined against it. The zebra sat down next to me.

        "I think that's enough excitement for me tonight," I chuckled. I turned to her and added, "Thanks for all your help. I'm James, by the way." Without thinking, I took off a glove and held out a hand.

        To my surprise, she gave me a hoof and shook. "Zecora is my name, in trade; and I am glad that I could be of such an aid."

        "Nice to meet you." Zecora nodded in reply. I let my head fall back against the edge of the bed.  It figures that she tries to say as much as she can without using words, I thought.I wonder if their whole race speaks in rhyme.

I sat there for ages, letting my exhaustion gradually overcome my will to stay awake. As I fought the urge to let my eyes slam shut on me, I slowly began to realize how deafening the silence had become; the only sound in the room was Trixie's soft but constant and rhythmic breathing. Zecora still sat next to me, motionless. I looked over, and she was... staring at me—more precisely, at the top of my head, at my helmet.

        "Is there something on my head?" I asked, feeling the top of my helmet.

        She reached up and touched a hoof to my helmet, inspecting it. She rhymed, "Something I could not noticeoutside in the dark; seeing it just now gave me a slight start."

        "What are you talking about?" I unbuckled the chin strap. I removed the helmet and held it in front of me. Once again that night, and it wouldn't be the last, my breath caught in my throat.

        I marked two perfect holes, going through the exact centers of the front and back of the helmet. The back was torn inwards and the front was blown outwards, with a line of dried blood staining the camouflage all the way down to the rim. Gasping, my hand instinctively shot to the back of my head. But all I found was unbroken, greasy hair and an intact, sweaty scalp. My forehead was equally unscathed, save for a few scratches from branches whipping me in the face.

        It's... unnerving, finding out how you died, after the fact. In my mind, I could see myself dashing for cover, with that little Iraqi girl clinging to me. I could see, behind me, the building where he was holed up, sitting there, his rifle perched on the railing. I could see the glint of his scope, and the flash of light as he took the shot.

        It seemed so... personal. I could have just as easily been killed by an IED that my humvee drove over on the way to the ceremony; I could have been standing next to a suicide bomber as he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the button; I could have easily taken any one of the thousands of bullets whizzing through the courtyard that morning.

        Of all the soldiers there, he singled me out;he decided that it was my time, that he was going to play God. He took the time to plan his shot, took the time to compensate for the wind and my own movement. And when he was ready, he steadied his hand. And he pulled the trigger. No longer did I feel like a victim of war, like another fallen soldier, caught in the crossfire.

        I felt...

Murdered.

        "May I ask, if I dare: what made those holes there?"

        I let my head fall back against the bed again. My vision started to swim as the side of the mattress—which must have been filled with something very soft, maybe feathers—cradled my stiff neck. It was extremely tempting to simply pass out, then and there. But I had a question to answer.

        "A little chunk of metal, about yea big." I pinched the last joint of my index finger to roughly estimate the size of a bullet. "Flying so fast, you can't even see it." I sighed. "That's what we use to kill each other where I come from." I saw Zecora nod solemnly, sympathetically, yet knowingly, out of the corner of my eye. She didn't ask any more questions; she understood.

        Don't get me wrong: I missed Earth, terribly, and I still do. There's a lot of good things that mankind came up with. Cars, airplanes, computers, the Internet, medicine, space travel, the list goes on and on. But war sucks, any way you spin it. I wasn't in Iraq to fight. Hell—half the time, I didn't even carry a weapon. Before that day, I hadn't fired a single shot since basic training.

        I was a translator. I was there to promote peace, cooperation, and friendship—to avoid fighting at all costs. But words only go so far; I learned that the hard way. And when words didn't do the job, I stepped out of the way and let the guys with guns and the knowledge and will to use them take over.

        After a few minutes of silence, Zecora stood and went into the other room. I heard the light clinking of glass as she finished cleaning up the mess from our mad scramble earlier. Left to their own devices, my thoughts began to wander and run together until they were one big, congealed blob in my mind, with no hope of unraveling their many knots and tangles.

        The urge to close my eyes was once again overtaking me, and this time, I surrendered.

        I awoke to the pleasant feeling of the morning sun warming my face. It was so bright that it blinded me through my eyelids. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but clear blue sky above. I took a tuft of soft, luscious grass in each hand, savoring the feel and the smell of it. It was a welcome, soothing feeling, like the previous night had been nothing more than a vivid, exhausting dream, and all my troubles lay behind me, with nothing but peace and quiet ahead.

        I sat up and found myself in some sort of grove, lined by thickly leaved trees in rows. It seemed like an orchard, man-made, but had since been abandoned and left to grow wild; it retained a certain amount of order, and yet, it was unhindered, without control... it wasfree. There was a natural serenity to the place, the kind that made me feel like I could have lived out the rest of my life there, without any more sorrow, or pain, concerns, or regret.

        I realized that I was completely and utterly alone. I couldn't hear any birds chirping or any insects buzzing. In fact, the only sound to speak of was the slight rustle of the leaves, fluttering in the morning breeze. The ground curved upwards, and I started to climb towards the top. The far hills were beautifully picturesque, rolling green and only dotted by the occasional tree. The most distant ones seemed like they were almost painted onto the sky itself.

"My little pony..."

The little angelic voice drifted through the groves to my ears on the wind. It came from everywhere, like a simultaneous echo, and yet it came from nowhere, like it had been whispered into my ear.

        "My little pony..."

This time, the twinkling notes, like wind chimes, possessed a clear direction. It sounded like it had come from a few rows over. I cautiously picked my way through the low-hanging branches.

"I used to wonder what friendship could be..."

Suddenly, it came from behind me, from the row I had just left. I snapped around, and caught a small human silhouette, the shape of a little girl about the age of my daughter, skipping through the trees. I only saw it for a second, and so I wondered if it had just been a figment of my imagination.

"Until you shared its magic with me..."

It sounded like it was in my head.

"Big adventure..."

"Tons of fun..." The words simply slipped out. I hadn't realized I was following along, anticipating the next line. I didn't even realize that I knew the song.

"A beautiful heart..." The reply came from directly ahead of me, the top of the hill. I started running towards it.

        "Faithful and strong!" I cried, running out of breath. The hill was much taller than it originally seemed.

"Sharing kindness... it's an easy feat..." The voice was joined by more mature version of itself, almost Sarah's age. It hadn't lost any of the angelic chime.

"And magic makes it all... complete..." I trailed off as I stopped.

        The sun shone over the hill so bright that I had to shield my eyes. When my pupils adjusted, I saw, at the top, the silhouette of a grown woman, knelt down, her arms outstretched. A little girl dashed into her arms and was swept up in a loving embrace. The held each other for what seemed like an eternity. Then they broke, and both turned towards me. The little girl, still in her mother's arms, waved at me, and after a second, her mother joined in. Without using any words, they called to me, beckoned me. I waved back. My energy renewed, I started up the hill again.

        I was blinded by a flash of light. On a far peak, as distant as the sun itself, I spotted a familiar glint near the top. My stomach turned and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I yelled and waved frantically, pointing towards the danger. The mother and daughter continued to wave calmly back at me, oblivious to my cries. I panicked when I realized that I wasn't getting any closer.

        There was another flash, bright as day. A cloud of smoke blotted out the sun.

        "GET—!" But before I could finish, everything went black.