And I Will Love You...

Chapters

Until I Awake
While Distance Pulls Us Apart
From the Moment We Touch
When Fate Tears Us Apart
When I Falter
When Doubt Overtakes Us
As the World Goes By
When My Dreams Come True
When There is Nothing Else
Before I Believe in You
As Fear Grips Me

Until I Awake

I disinterestedly gaze over the land which I have sat upon for years now. It is as grey and bland to me as the stone which composes my body; I see nothing new. I feel nothing new.

My caretakers long ago left me to my own devices. They dropped me into a pit and had faith that I would survive on my own.

That has not made every moment that I have been trapped here any more bearable. Very little light makes it all the way back here, and no living things at all.

I am alone. As I have always been. As I always suspect I will.

One of the greatest and most irritating things about having a conscience is that, from time to time, you must let it go. Some call this “sleep,” or “rest.” I call it “waiting.”

Waiting for what? For the world to end? For some freak accident of nature to split the earth and drop me into paradise? For my solitude to finally be broken?

Waiting to wait some more. That’s all I look forward to. I let myself go and drift, waiting for change that will never come.

Am I opposed to this life? I guess you could say I am. Nothing should ever have to feel such loneliness. Finally freed from my old life in Canterlot, I am only imprisoned once again, here in this awful forest. This is a fate worse than death to me.

I can’t stand the horrific monotony of my waking life. Another day of this is liable to drive me insane.

Is waiting an escape? It numbs my senses. No longer do I have to stare at the same scenery I have for so many years. It just feels like holding off the inevitable, though.

Perhaps I should just stop waiting altogether. It only makes me more miserable when I am observing.

Today, though, my pathetic life is simply too much to bear. I retreat into the farthest corners of my mind, letting the loss of perception overwhelm me.

It appears that, just to further ruin my life, waiting no longer holds an escape. I am dreaming.

I am in an orchard. Trees stretch for acres, their limbs entwining with one another, lives joined as surely as their roots are to the earth. With their free branches, they reach up to the sky, reveling in the sunlight they bloom under, their precious, lovely fruit hanging low on their branches, tantalizing creatures for miles to come and partake of the feast.

Were it so easy for me. Were I born a tree, my life would never have been so excruciating. Now, all I feel is how alone I am. It is my only birthright.

The dream draws my spectral eyes to one particular tree.

Instantly, I sense something different about this tree. It stands alone on a hilltop, looking over the rest of the orchard forlornly. The others have offered branches for him to join, but he grows apart from them. He is alone, just like me.

Who is this tree? Why does he enrapture me so? In this terrible, lonely existence, perhaps I am grasping for something, anything that may ease my burden. I want to latch on to this tree, to be held within his branches and never feel this apartheid again for as long as I still exist.

Is that dream so wrong to hope for?

I gaze longingly at the beautiful blue sky, clear but for a lone cloud scrawling across its features.

Oh, to join that cloud in the sky. If only I were able to make her just a little less lonely.

To say that I miss my old home would be an understatement. There, the ponies grew us far enough apart that it truly took some effort to find one another. Here, it is like a constant orgy. There is no love. There is no trust. There is only touching. There is only feeling. None of it means a thing to any of them.

I think Applejack knew how I felt about touching other trees. That’s why she made sure to set me apart from the others. She knew how miserable I would have been if she had tried to place me in their midst.

The Appaloosans disgust me. They reach their branches up, teasing me incessantly. “Virgin, virgin,” they cat-call. They only want me to join in their deviancies, their perversions of what it means to feel closeness to another.

I thought I felt a love that would last centuries, once. There was a beautiful tree just a short distance from me. I had been trying to reach a tiny root to her for years.

When Applejack and Big Macintosh dug me up, I was hoping against hope that they would move me next to her.

Now, I strain to get through each day with these bullies all around. All they care about is my bark and my branches. They don’t want my heart.

The sun dips below the horizon. Time to stop sucking in sunlight, to hold out and wait for sunrise, then face the rigors of another day just out of reach of those who despise me for being faithful.

As I shut off my chloroplasts, I feel myself departing conscious thought and retreating to a safe place in the back of my mind.

I find myself in a nightmare.

The forest I look at is dark and abysmal. The plants are all overgrown, each trying to reach above and kill their compatriots. The small amount of sunlight that reaches the floor will never be able to sustain so many; more than half will never make it through the coming winter.

The trees are even worse. Not only do they rise tall to prevent sunlight from reaching in, they don’t even touch each other. Not a single one. There is... something far worse.

They produce seeds—acorns, pinecones, fruit, it matters not—and produce offspring. The tiny saplings begin to stretch tall out of the forest floor, subsisting off tiny sunbeams that they let through their foliage.

Then, once these trees are tall enough to be reached by the elders, they are violated.

I am witnessing a sapling being accosted by three larger trees. Their branches wrap around his young bark, biting into it and cutting him to the wood. Their roots, massive and gnarled, snake through the ground, sticking out visibly from the ground in odd spots only to dive down once more, tearing his own tiny roots away for their own sick pleasure.

These wild, uninhibited trees care not for their fellow tree at all. Even the Appaloosans are saints compared to this firewood. That their victim is so young, so innocent, and they do it anyway....

There is a word for this. I can’t utter it, though.

I cannot take any more of this. I turn away from the ghastly sight, my leaves quivering with anger and resentment that such injustice exists in the world.

It’s then that I catch sight of a solitary shape set partway into the ground.

He stands apart from the awful world around him, his steady gaze unbroken of the green pastures he can see in the distance. He cares not for the horrific things he can watch, instead finding the beauty of what he can see.

I admire him. I already know this for sure.

I feel his gaze shift.

He’s looking at me. In my dream, he is looking at me.

I awake with a start, the rising sun peeking its head over the Macintosh Hills. It was a dream, only a dream.

But that awful place exists. That place with, with....

Hope. That’s what I saw.

Hope.

Author's Note

This is one of the most bizarre things I've ever written.
--Scootareader

While Distance Pulls Us Apart

Years.

Has it really been years since I first spotted him?

Little has changed. I grow increasingly more fervent every time I sleep, hoping against hope that I will see him again. I have the recurring dream where I travel across the desert and find the pony town, then I see the orchard he is in. Yet, try as I might, I can never see him amongst all those trees.

He has to exist... I just don’t know where.

What if I knew where he existed? Would I be able to find him? To travel to him? Of course not. I am trapped. I’ve no legs to carry me, no muscles to inch myself along the ground with. What could he possibly hope to see in me, anyway?

Yet, I know there is something. I have felt it just as surely as I now feel my body of stone. There is a tree out there, and he is calling for me.

Fantasy is all I have, isn’t it? It’s where I find myself escaping even now. The world of life all around me is dull and boring, much like I feel I am. Who wouldn’t want to get away from my waking nightmare?

Yet, my dreams seem no less torturous at times. Should I not be allowed to see the one whom I want most in my dreams?

This dream is no different from all the others before it. I am very familiar with this patch of earth, with the locations of these plants. I see them every single day.

I turn around in the desert, but... something is different.

I am at the foot of a tree trunk where there has never been a tree. His leaves are a vibrant green, his lovely fruit a most striking red.

I am in love. Is this what love feels like?

Words whisper through my thoughts, as if he is talking to me. “I will be there soon.”

Then, he disappears and I am left floating on a cloud of pure ecstasy. I touched him. I really touched him.

My root slowly digs its way through compact and hardened earth, weaving its way around small stones and disturbing the ever-curious tiny bugs which inspect and promptly ignore the newcomer to their homes.

I know where I’m going. I just know.

I can feel his presence. Many times, I have had the same dream that takes me from Sweet Apple Acres and into the nearby forest. I watched Oakington’s leaves shudder one final time as he succumbed to the tiny fractures which had accumulated inside him after so many years, their imperfect stitching slowly trickling away what small amount of health he had left. I watched my saplinghood crush entwine with Leaflow, who I once considered a friend—and I couldn’t have asked for a better tree to make her happy. I watched Rustle go through three seasons of drought and continued ignorance from the Apple family (due to producing bad apples last season) as he nearly died of thirst, but managed to hold out until the rains finally came and ended his tragic ordeal.

Yet, I do not wish to return to Sweet Apple Acres—I wish to go further, to find the one who captivates me and makes me feel things I never once believed I would feel for another.

I know I will reach him. I just have to keep... digging.

I don’t know when I lost myself to my dreams again, but they have taken me by surprise tonight.

I realize nothing initially. My dreams usually take me far from Appleloosa, yet tonight I remain here. The only time in my entire life that I have been able to go where I want and do as I please is being marred by my caging even in the world of imagination.

Eventually, I realize that I am dreaming. There is a shape resting against my trunk and no explanation as to how it came to be there, so I know I am imagining its existence. Anything to pull me out of my humdrum world is a wonderful break of monotony.

Wait. What is resting against my trunk?

I shift my focus downward, and the world stands still.

I know it is him, and yet, the world is pulling away from me. I have to say it, before it’s too late.

Say what? That I love him? That I need to feel him, to know he is everything I have ever wanted?

I can’t. Not yet. I need to tell him myself, when he is truly beside me.

I feel a shudder in my real body. I am out of time. I have to say something. I will reassure him.

“I will be there soon.”

My mind snaps back to reality. I am in a dark orchard, surrounded by trees who care nothing for their fellow tree.

I will be with him soon enough. He will forever be worth it.

Author's Note

Just keep going, Bloomberg. You can make it. :)
--Scootareader

From the Moment We Touch

I feel haunted by my own thoughts. What is real to me anymore, and what is just some fabrication of my mind?

I dream of an orchard, miles away and several centuries’ travel expected, even with all the luck possible. How is that for attainable?

I am wishing for nothing but disappointment, trying to chase away the dark clouds over my soul for several brief moments only for them to once more loom over me, releasing torrents of rain which wash away any final shred of hope that I may still cling to.

It is petty, pebblish, and arrogant to think of myself as a haughty king, or even a desirable ornament. I have been trapped back here, out of sight and out of mind, so as to never force the ponies who once knew me to recollect the destruction of their bonds of friendship. I can’t say I blame them, but it hurts all the same to be exiled so completely.

Who wouldn’t turn to the brighter future? Who wouldn’t fabricate a being that wishes to be with the beholder just as surely as the wish may be to be with the beheld? Am I not the most sane, the most stalwart of guardians, to turn to misguided hopes so as to not to wallow in my own despair and self-pity? Just as I have been abandoned, surely this phantom of my dreams will someday abandon me... yet, until that day, I am determined to—

To what? My own mind is rebelling against me. To so blatantly lie to myself... is that not the greatest bastardization of hope that can be imagined? I am setting myself up to be crushed, to be so wholly devastated that I wish for nothing more than to disappear.

Perhaps that is what I truly wish. Maybe I want to recall how great of a failure I am, to reconcile the fact that I will always be alone, and to finally lose all semblance of thought. Is that the future I strive for?

Even if it isn’t what I want, I don’t have a choice. I am doomed to my life of solitude, stuck in a hole in the ground and ever unmoving. This is likely the last shred of sanity I am attempting to grasp before it tatters and flutters away to leave me alone once more.

I have had the same dream for... years now. I am always watching him, his efforts concentrated on something other than seeking me. He seems so preoccupied that he doesn’t know I exist.

I am not sure what to make of this. Does he no longer wonder about me? Is he laboring for another? Perhaps he no longer stands apart and he has forgotten me—even a supposed ghost will ignore me eventually.

Maybe I should just stop waiting forever. It’s far better than being trapped in a limbo of wishful thinking.

They say that, upon waking, in that moment between consciousness and unconsciousness, is the most perfect state of being.

It only lasts a brief second at most, usually far less than that. To live in a world where the earth is still, even if we don’t noticeit—to know that the barest fragment of emotion or knowledge, feeling anything, thinking anything, will disturb such pristine wonder—it reminds me that there is still a world I regret having to be in.

Dreams are something of a departure from waking life, where all is set in place and nothing ever changes. The life I see when I am aware is dull, the most ugly shade of grey imaginable; I see nothing new, I hear nothing new, and I feel nothing new. All of it is exactly what I know it to be. There are no masks; there are no surprises.

What do I find in dreams? I find boundless opportunity. I think of it as a “what if?” frame of mind. I am able to be free of all bonds which tie me to my physical presence, to see and hear and feel anew.

Yet, I know it is all untrue. Dreams are a blatant lie we tell ourselves, a false reassurance that life need not be so dark.

No, it is the place between these two states of being that true peace lies. It is the moment when one cannot tell if they are awake, nor can they tell they are dreaming. There, the two roads meet. Dreams become reality, and reality is nothing but a dream. We feel nothing for just one iota of a lifetime—and then we are trapped once more in either the truth or the lie.

It is in this briefest of moments, when I am a formless, worriless nothingness of bliss, that I feel my lover touch me.

Creeping. Ever creeping.

I have been growing a single root... decades now? I’m almost certain that it has been decades. I know he’s there; I’ve felt him. I hold out hope that he has felt me as well.

Who is this stone? Is he gentle? Reliable? Caring? Is he anything that I fantasize him to be? I will never find out by sitting alone in this orchard. I need to feel him, to know him.

What do I know? Do I know he is there, calling to me? I do. I know I do. I have no reservations, no misgivings.

I am almost there. I feel my root traveling upward toward the surface, where the stone I seek remains, baked by the same ever-glowing Sun and caressed by the same ever-pale Moon which I feel.

How can I be so sure he’s here?

I know. I just know he’s here.

My root presses against cold stone. In that moment, I am certain.

Tom.

Bloomberg.

I love you.

And I love you.

When Fate Tears Us Apart

Time no longer passes. I am in a state of eternal bliss.

I know it is him touching me. He reached far, far beyond what I thought possible to touch me. Me, Tom, the abandoned rock.

To say that I am happy is an understatement. I know he feels the same way I do; I know, just by his touch, this feeling we share. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have believed such a thing could be mutual.

There is still a nagging doubt in my mind. What if it is just a nearby tree root? That wouldn’t be so farfetched a belief. I get the feeling my overly hopeful state of mind is willing to jump at any idea, any at all, that it may be this tree I have been reaching in my dreams.

I despise these rational thoughts. I wish I could just be happy with his touch, to not worry whether it truly may be a tree hundreds of miles away.

I have felt his root growing around me, inch by tiny inch. I imagine he will wrap around me in a loving embrace and never let me go, anchoring me as the one he will never forget or even imagine abandoning. When he holds me, nothing will be able to break our bond.

I also imagine that, now he knows I am here, he will send out more roots to hold me. I imagine seven or eight all securing me to him, then he will very slowly drag me toward him. After centuries, perhaps millennia, he will drag me to where I touch his trunk.

Even the pure ecstasy of touch pales in comparison to the dreams we now share. The touch has established a new connection between us. We can talk, understand, and learn from one another. He is the most fascinating conversation partner; I don’t think I could ever tire of him.

He does fall silent for long periods of time, such as now... during those periods, he is growing his root. I can feel it slowly sliding along my body, the most sensual thing I have ever experienced. To say I don’t find every moment I exist now to be anything but perfect would be a downright lie.

Much as I despise it, I have to let the touch go every so often and retreat into the realm of dreams; at the very least, I can take some reassurance in knowing that my Bloomberg will be waiting for me, to talk anew of the life we will someday share and the excitement and anticipation he feels with each new contour of me that he is able to explore. He describes, in great detail, every tiny crag and edge that his root is pressed up against, and it reminds me of his touch once more, causing me to describe the euphoria I have every moment I know he is there.

We also talk of other things, like the places we have lived. He asked how I may live so strongly, so impassively, around the worst perversions that he can imagine. I, a rock who has survived since Discord last rained chaos upon all of Equestria, know true agony, true suffering, in the eyes of the creatures he fabricated from nothingness. I was spared the touch of the draconequus, but several stones around me were not so fortunate.

He was appalled, first, at my pointed, matter-of-fact presentation of events, then morbid fascination, then awe of what I have weathered. I described my colleagues sprouting limbs, forming organs, respiratory systems, even cell movement—the trauma, the confusion, the... hopelessness. Rocks are not made to have that kind of capability, and they suffered a fate worse than eternal boredom in the end.

He has told me, as well, of his much shorter life. He told me of his young years in Sweet Apple Acres, the trees he came to know so well, then of his relocation to Appleloosa, where he served many more years as the ponies apple-bucked him for his delicious fruit. He also described the tiny fractures that occur within the wood that eventually take apple-bucking trees before their time, and how he was spared such a fate a century ago when the Appleloosans abandoned their settlement due to a fire.

He also told me of the hope he feels for me, his dare to dream of a life he may not be forced to live, when he found me wandering his dreams. He described the significance of entwining branches with another tree, and his ultimate refusal to feel the touch of his fellow tree—to feel my touch instead.

To say that he is not the greatest thing to happen in my life would be the greatest blasphemous thought I ever dared to wonder.

I am broken from my reverie, my speculation over my good fortune, by a low rumbling from below me.

I have lived a long, long time, and I know the tremors of an earthquake when it comes. There are several that I have felt while trapped within this hole, but this is to be the greatest yet. There is no mistaking it.

The earthquake hits in full force, the ground beneath me shifting and groaning. I am solid, as solid as a rock can be, so I will not fly apart, but I am hearing branches fall from trees, their trunks fracturing, as well as timberwolf howls and manticore roars and cockatrice hisses. The denizens of the forest have been disturbed, and many are feeling it.

Quicker than I have time to register, I feel the very hole which has held me for years suddenly splitting, a crag opening away from me, to form a funnel-shaped avenue along the surface. I am tumbling down, down, away from where Bloomberg is, away from my happiness, my hopes... my dreams.

As I roll away, I see a root which held me lovingly suddenly abandoned. There is a screaming in my head, I can hear it coming from someone I know.

Then, there is nothing.

I lost Tom.

Where did he go? I cannot hear him, cannot see him. I can no longer even feel his rigid shape pressed against my—

My root. I cannot feel my root. It was—fractured. It is no longer connected to me, sheared away just after I lost my lover. I am screaming in agony, the sudden loss of my limb immediately apparent as I feel precious fluids leaking into the ground where it broke.

I have lost my Tom. He has gone away from me, disappeared from where I may see him. I can no longer feel him; I have lost my root. I cannot quest for him, cannot find where he may be hiding.

Already, I can feel insects crawling in the dirt by my broken root. They have come to devour what is ejecting from my body. I must seal it. I must stop myself from losing any more strength.

I spent centuries waiting for a touch, then, when I finally had it... the very earth itself took my touch away.

Hours... have passed. My root is sealed; no longer am I slowly losing strength. I wish now only to rest, then wait for morning to come so I may put right once more what has gone wrong.

I search, my vision bleary and my mind feverish, for the loving grey stone I cannot find. If I just see him... if I know he is there, I will know that there is no need to panic. If I can just find him now, I know I will feel him again someday.

I am at Sweet Apple Acres, gazing at the hill he once stood proudly upon. I am finding it difficult to make out anything at all, let alone a small rock stuck halfway in a hole... but if he was there, I would know it. I’m certain I would know.

Tom has moved. I do not know where, but he is not where he once was. I cannot find where; my gaze will not move.

I am exhausted. I am only going to end up killing myself if I push any further. I must... regain my energy. Then I will find my Tom.

I know we will be together someday. I have to hold to this one truth.

It has to be true.

I give myself over to the blackness that is true rest. I must become strong once more.

When I Falter

I feel numb.

What is it to the life I live, to the lives that those things around me live, that my mind is now as numb as my body?

Do I expect sympathy or understanding? Do I seek comfort or pity? Am I worth something to anything? Was I snatched away from the final stalwart of my tenuous grasp on what truly matters to me?

I am a rock. A Celestia-damned rock. And who am I to think I could ever be anything more?

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I spontaneously appear next to Bloomberg. Let’s stop all rational thought and just blindly hope for a few seconds that all of my wishes come true. Who am I with?

He’s just a tree, nothing more. Should he matter to me?

No, no he shouldn’t. A rock and a tree don’t belong together, nor should they be together.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t matter to me.

And he does. He matters to me, more than anything else in my existence has ever meant to me before.

Why did I dare to hope? Why do I still dare to hope? We have caused each other so much pain and grief—I heard his screams as I was torn away from him. To lose each other was as torturous to him as it was to me.

Yet, now that we have committed... what else is there to do? We cannot simply ignore one another. We cannot pretend our life together never happened. Even those few brief days that we felt one another is worth an eternity hoping to feel the same touch again.

For better or for worse, our lives are entwined.

Admittedly, I could not have asked for anything more worth pining for in my days of solitude.

In my dream, I wander the orchard.

I know where Bloomberg is, but... I can’t bring myself to look at him. I know that, when I do, I will see things that I can’t bear to look at.

Pain. Betrayal. Resentment. Fear.

Hope.

Perhaps I will see only my own misguided hope reflected on his leaves to gaze back at me. I believe I will see hope in him as well.

Hope is all I have.

I look at Bloomberg.

Bloomberg doesn’t notice me.

At first, I’m angry that he would ignore me after we had weathered so much together. I know that he would never do that, though... so I look more closely.

Bloomberg seems... weak. Sick, even. It’s as if he lost something, or perhaps he was attacked. I get the feeling that I caused this, but I can’t fathom what I’ve done. I would never wish pain upon this tree I love so dearly.

So, in my dream, I watch and wait. I am the comforting gaze which guards him against evil, unknowing things. I am the strengthening presence that he has to pull from in his time of need. I will be here until the sentient world drags me back to where I must be.

I feel beset on all sides by malice. In my feverish conscious cycles, I hear the other trees taunting me. They laugh at me, a stupid romantic that had once had a dream to seek out another who will never be able to seek me out in return.

I am a stupid romantic. Even in my exhausted, delirious mind, I know I am. I will never give in to their cat-calls, nor will I lose hope in Tom.

They know I am weak. They know I am all but powerless. They take this opportunity to grow their branches toward me, creeping closer every day. Even if it kills me first, I will use up all of my energy to stay away from their tempting grasps. Every last one of them.

I should be using my energy to recover from the loss of my root, not retreating from my fellow trees. They care nothing for my situation: Who I am, what I want. They are pushing me to either die or join them in their disgusting perversions of what it means to be a tree.

I will not forsake myself or my upbringing to let them have their way with me. I am stronger than that.

The thing I miss most is Tom.

I am so weak I don’t even dream anymore. I know he is there, waiting for me to return to him, that we may once again see each other’s worlds. I get the feeling he is seeing mine; it pains me to know that I can’t see his as well.

I am in constant pain. It lances down my root, several small particles of dirt having wedged themselves into the exposed wood, where they remain to torture me for my poor decision.

No, it was not a poor decision. I felt Tom. I knew him. I had him in my grasp. There is nothing that will ever cause me to forget his beautiful shape.

And so, I labor away, trying to halt my untimely death while still maintaining my sanctity of self for the time when Tom and I will touch again. He is the only thing which keeps me strong in these trying times, and I will regain my health for his sake, if not my own.

I love him. Is that not enough of a miracle? I can regain my health with that knowledge alone. I just need to remember that he is here, watching over me, every moment that he is able.

I will become strong again... and I will find him again.

When Doubt Overtakes Us

Is this the solace I have worked so long to have gained? To be ignored and forgotten by the very being I love most? To be snubbed and ridiculed, shamed and backstabbed?

I, Tom, am nothing but a joke to those who think they know me, and nothing but a burden on those who truly know me.

I’m convinced now that his touch was in my head. There was never any root with which he held me lovingly, only a fabrication, a wish that there were something more to my life than the bland, tasteless depression that had overtaken me for so long before I’d imagined him.

I don’t even want to say his name anymore. I am that disgusted.

I dread sleeping at night. I am afraid the specter of that tree will again seek me out, to cause me more misery and discontentment. His tendrils reach around my mind, the very sentiment constricting me, pulling me down, to never be seen of this world again.

Bloomberg is my own mind rebelling against my sanity.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the accursed tree never existed. He is a metaphor, a name given to my slowly loosening grip on reality. I imagined him, and now I am paying the price. I fell in love with make-believe.

I am centered in reality, am I not? There is no time for clichéd romances in Tom’s life. I am a solo rock, and I have been ousted from my place of guardianship. Perhaps that makes me a little relieved; a change of scenery is welcome. I am now at the bottom of a hill. Perhaps that is all I needed to get out of my depressive state.

This won’t be easy for me to come to terms with... I know I must, though.

I am fearfully wandering the corridors of my dream world, half-expecting him to be lurking around each new corner I turn. Equestria is mine to explore when I am lost in this limbo, yet I dream of orchards and forests. Even my subconscious aims to torture me as much as possible.

Being afraid of myself is no way to live, but it is certainly better than living out a misguided hope... or a lie.

Was there ever truly a root pressed up against me? If there was, it certainly didn’t travel a hundred miles to touch me. Me, for Celestia’s sake! Who do I think I am?

I dream of it even now... to feel that touch again. My mind so sorely needed that touch to be real that it truly believes it was. Perhaps that is why I now find myself incessantly wandering forests while I wait.

Heh... waiting. That’s a funny description of this phenomenon.

It is as if there is something for me to wait for. For what? Consciousness? Awareness of my surroundings? A reason to exist? To make it day by day, eternally believing that there is something that is worth waiting for?

There would be something worth waiting for... if he existed.

I stare into the distance in my dream, making out a familiar vague shape. It is a true shame that I pierced the veil, that what I seem so transfixed on is simply my own mind playing tricks on me.

I never want to have to live through this again. Only facts and truths from this point forward.

I am weak.

I want nothing more than to be with my Tom, to feel once more his ridges pressed up against my root. His touch still lingers on me even now, despite my severed root, my slowly draining life force, and my vastly decreased awareness of my surroundings. It was that meaningful to me.

The other trees call to me often. They can see my suffering. They forced me to move my branches away, to stay pure for my Tom. They aged me far faster than I should have aged. I stayed strong... for Tom's sake. He would be proud of me for maintaining myself just for him.

Despite all that I have done, however, I grow weaker by the day. There is no way that I can make it through at this rate.

There is only one thing that I can do.

There is nothing left for me... except one thing.

I feel a burst of energy. This is my final chance. I reach out to him and find him immediately.

Tom?

...

Tom!

What?

I love you.

...

Tom, I love you.

And I love you, Bloomberg.

I wish I didn’t. I know I do.

As the World Goes By

Millennia. That is how long I have searched for Bloomberg. I look forward to the rumblings of the earth now, because I know they bring me closer to him in some fashion. Perhaps not directly toward him, but I feel that there is love behind the tremors, a guiding force that seeks to bring us both together.

The landscape has slowly warped around me. Equestria is no longer the lush, vibrant land that I recall so distinctly so many centuries ago. The land I lived in when I first found Tom is no longer the land of today.

Perhaps a dozen centuries ago, my place had put me above a railway. I would watch the garish trains travel to and fro, sometimes whistling, but more often chugging silently by. A nearby road allowed me to pick out ponies who pulled carts behind them, their journeys to the many far lands unknown to me.

These traveling ponies’ antics were something I told Bloomberg of. He often told of the Appleloosans who once inhabited his town, the once-proud oaken buildings now either piles of ash or fire-worn husks. He was able to watch over a ghost town.

Then, one day, the trains stopped. The ponies used the road for a while after that, but traffic was drastically reduced. It slowed to a trickle, then eventually stopped altogether. From time to time, I would see a geriatric hobbling along, perhaps on her way to see the place she had been born, but I would see the same pony coming back, her gait far more solemn and destitute than it had been when she’d first visited.

This, I told to Bloomberg.

I was fearful, first, that whatever had struck this land was affecting Bloomberg, but he assured me that he was apart from it all. He still thrived, as did his fellow trees in the orchard. They still bore fruit which the buffalo would gather for their feasts, and what was not gathered would be snatched up by the nearby critters. He told of the respect which the other trees finally showed him, the understanding which their old age has provided them. He is urging me to come to him, so that we may finally be together.

I am watching the land slowly die around me. Leaves are wilting, flowers no longer blooming, and all too often, things that I had thought hardy and persistent not 24 hours before are crumbled brown messes upon the ground of the mountain above the railroad.

The railroad itself is the worse for wear. The wooden panels have rotted and disappeared, the steel rails rusted and wrapped by plant matter, which subsequently perished.

It isn’t as if a pony needs to maintain the rails anymore, either. They haven’t been used in centuries.

Has it been that long since I saw one of their bright, vibrant trains? Or a bright, vibrant pony body? Around me now are only muted browns and grays.

It reminds me of a life before Bloomberg. Life that is lifeless looks much like this. Oh, I wish I were with him right now.

As if rising to my wish, I feel a tremor beginning in the earth. Equestria is shifting once more. There have been several hundred of these since my vigil began of this place, but this one may be powerful enough to rend the sturdy mountain.

As I feel everything begin to shake, I hear several trees fall behind me. There is a small commotion of long-lived plants being stripped of their lofty positions reaching toward the sky, to join their decomposing comrades. Fungi will now do their work, sprouting up inside of the refuse and devouring it for their own selfish nourishment. It is co-existence, in a way... I guess the plants should be thankful that fungi don’t seem to like living things nearly as much.

A tear ripples through the ground, arcing beneath me as I drop a few tens of feet, then become lodged in a small crevice which has been opened. Slowly, the earth continues to buckle, and after several long seconds, it disintegrates, sending me rolling along a small trough toward historic Appleloosa.

Tonight, I dream of Bloomberg.

He is atop his hill, watching me. I stare at him from afar, feeling the distance between us, not so far but infinitely vast. It will take a miracle for us to be together.

Bloomberg is a miracle. To me, he defies all logic, all reason. He is exactly who I imagine spending the entirety of my existence beside, the one thing with which I can weather all adversity.

He is still centuries from me. The distance is impossibly long between us, and I will never bridge it. Not alone.

In response, he tears his roots from the earth, setting them upon the solid crust and raising himself out of the ground. He clambers over the ground, seeking me out.

I call out his name. “Bloomberg!” He doesn’t hear me at first, searching nearby, but he doesn’t know I’m there. I call his name again. “Bloomberg!”

This time, he hears me and crawls to me. He looks beleaguered after the effort it took to uproot himself. I call to him once more, “Bloomberg!” Perhaps my calling his name will lend him some reassurance.

He comes to me, replying with my own name: “Tom!” His roots encircle me, pulling me against his trunk.

This is the most reassurance I have had in centuries. Not since I first felt Bloomberg’s root pressing against me have I been so certain that I love him.

Even so, I know this is only a dream touch. It is maddening.

In the dream, I begin drifting away from him. I promise him that I will be with him soon. I promise, I promise.

Then, I disappear.

Bloomberg. I will be there soon.

As if on cue, the ground begins to rumble below me. They seem to be getting more frequent, more powerful. I consider this a great positive—they bring me ever closer to Bloomberg, as if fate pulls us together. The earth itself buckles and shifts to unite us.

Perhaps a few more centuries, at this rate... I am nothing if not hopeful.

I will be there soon, my love. You needn’t worry anymore.

Author's Note

I'm thinking, uh... two more chapters. Yep.

--Scootareader

When My Dreams Come True

I am near, Bloomberg. Just a little longer.

Come to me, Tom. I’m waiting for you.

Nothing can express the excruciating wait that I have labored through to be near him. It seems too uncanny that luck would bring me this close to him. There must be something more at work... a force I am unable to fully grasp. It is incredible to think that I, Tom the Rock, have traveled miles to be with a tree who I wasn’t even certain existed.

I am being watched over by something wonderful. I have to be. I have told this to Bloomberg, and he agrees: Our love is transcendent of the standard depth of reasoning.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that the earth would tear itself apart to bring us together.

And the earth is tearing itself apart—something has changed the climate. Much of the land is barren now, only the occasional scrub brush managing to peek its head above the blasted scenery to defy what fate has in store for the planet. None of it is green, only muted browns and dusky greys to camouflage them with the background. I imagine this would be to prevent predators from devouring the plants and their species going extinct.

Not that there are any animals anymore. I haven’t seen one in centuries. I imagine the herbivores either ran out of food or got overhunted by the carnivores, which then ate one another. Centuries spent watching the circle of life in action from my passive viewpoint, or seeing a herd of grass-eaters strip a field of anything above the earth... to suddenly see nothing alive or moving, apart from the ash that slowly falls like snow, is truly a stark contrast.

Bloomberg assures me that his home over the hill has felt very little of these effects. The ash never gathers up more than a foot or two before being blown away by powerful gusts of wind. The land is still green, the sun still shining, and the plants and animals still quite healthy. It is like an isolated paradise.

I am almost there. Just a little longer, my love.

As if my willpower called the very ground beneath me to action, I feel a groan from the planet. An earthquake is coming.

I anticipate finally being able to see Bloomberg, the true Bloomberg, instead of only a dream copy, a synthesis of imagination and hope. Soon, I won’t need to imagine, nor will hope be necessary; I will have him. He is my Bloomberg, my love, my dream partner and my inspiration. He is everything to me.

I will be there soon, Bloomberg... I will see you in mere minutes.

Come to me, Tom. I have to see you. I need to see you. I can’t wait any longer.

Nor can I wait any longer.

All my life, I have waited. Bloomberg is the first and the only thing I have ever dared to hope for. Perhaps love always finds a way. I believe that that is what has fueled this journey of mine. Luck can’t possibly move the earth and bring two stationary beings together.

There is a terrible rending sound as the hillside in front of me splits in half, the fissure arcing under the ground which I sit upon and making a convenient trough. It’s just too convenient to be luck. There has to be something more.

I begin rolling to where my love is, down the trough, directly through the small valley where a hill once stood proudly. I would have scoffed at such a thing as impossible before I met Bloomberg; now, it is the very thing which I have relied upon for so much of my journey.

Love found a way. Bloomberg is so close.

I have emerged on the other side of the hill, and am now rolling down an incline. I am not attempting to see the scenery around me; it would ruin the moment when I first see Bloomberg, truly see him. So much have I seen him in my dreams, I will know the moment I see him now. I’m certain of it.

Everything blurs around me, a conglomeration of color and vividness that becomes a sleety gray all around me. I am picking up speed as I roll, the excitement building with each revolution of my body. I am so close. So close. I know I am.

I start losing speed as the incline gets shallower and shallower, then disappears altogether. The incline then begins going the other way, slowing me swiftly. It doesn’t feel like very far to the top; I will make it over.

Suddenly, just as I am cresting the hill, I thud solidly against a tree trunk, stopping me in my tracks.

I am here.

I am touching him.

Bloomberg, I am here. I love you.

And I love you.

I shift my gaze to where I can see the love of my life.

Death stares grimly back at me.

Bloomberg... no.

When There is Nothing Else

Ash falls from the sky like snow, blanketing me with my lover. It offers no comfort; I am alone.

All that remains of Bloomberg is a blackened trunk. He has been dead for countless centuries. I can see it in his wood. I can feel it in the barrenness of the land around me. He is dead. He is gone.

Still, he calls to me. Tom, come to me. I love you, Tom. Please don’t give up now.

I have given up. My Bloomberg is dead. I can see you, Bloomberg. You are dead... and I was a fool to believe we might be together.

He insists. He urges me. Just come to me, Tom. I know we can be together. Please, come to me.

Where? Where can we be together? There is nothing for me. A rock cannot give up a life that it never had. All I have are dreams and memories of a time long gone and a life I never lived. I think and I feel, but I am not alive. We can never be together. Not even in death.

Tom, come to me. Just believe that we may be together, and we will be. We’re... closer now than we’ve ever been before. I don’t want to lose you now.

ENOUGH! The word reverberates through my thoughts, squelching the tiny voice that has been squeaking falsehoods at me the entire time. I am sick of listening to hollow promises and guarantees of a life that can never and will never be had.

My love is dead. All I have left of him is his corpse to mourn over. I dared to love, and love found a way to destroy everything I had.

My mind is still intact. This is the final irony: I can feel every last iota of pain this causes me. Love found a way.

To say that this has embittered me is laughable; rather, it has exposed me to a full range of emotion that I thought I’d buried in the past. If words could describe it, I would do just that. I can’t, though; this sea of doubt and anger and fear and denial can’t be told in words.

Bloomberg is dead. The sooner I come to terms with this, the better off I will be.

It’s no use, though. I love him.

I love Bloomberg.

He’s dead. Bloomberg is dead.

And I love him.

What is wrong with me? I love a blackened piece of wood that my body presses up against. It’s not even alive.

Then again, neither am I. Bloomberg must have known this. We both had to know that I would be alone in the end. I just... thought we would have had more time together. I never even got to tell him goodbye.

How long have I been listening to only my memories of Bloomberg? How long have I forgotten what his voice truly sounds like? Could I even hear him in the first place? Was I talking to the very tree that I have finally found, only to learn that he has been long dead, possibly before I even dreamed of him?

No, the love we felt for one another is real. The love I still feel for him is real.

Nothing will ever take away what Bloomberg and I shared. I will always remember the tree root that touched me so lovingly. I will always remember feeling my body pressed up against his, even after he had left it. I will always remember the love I felt for him and the love I still feel for him. For better or for worse, I love Bloomberg.

Nothing, not even death, can make me stop loving him.

It is not maddening, not anymore. He is dead. Nothing can bring him back to me. All I have left of him are memories and a corpse. That will have to be enough.

The world has already ended, in a way. Just as life has been snatched away from Bloomberg, so has it been snatched away from everything else. There is nothing here anymore, only an endless blanket of ash covering everything. I alone stand vigil until the apocalypse.

I could not have asked for better company.

Before I Believe in You

I feel a rush of anticipation as waiting grips me once more. I have been looking forward to this wait for what seems like centuries, but it has probably only been several hours at the most.

With the rush of anticipation comes the shrugging off of whatever lethargy I was feeling. Suddenly, I am fully aware of everything again.

I need to wait. I need to see what I saw before. I can’t go anywhere when I’m aware of the world around me. I’m destined only to be alone.

I feel myself drifting away again. This time, I don’t feel a rush of excitement, thankfully. I find myself lost inside the world of dreams.

I am looking over Equestria, in a land of semi-desert and blasted landscape. There are many stones out here, their still forms littering the barren ground, interspersed by the occasional scrubby bush or prickly cactus. From time to time, there is a living thing spotted scurrying from one bit of cover from the radiant sun to another.

I am not looking for these things. I am searching everywhere for that which I came for. Where did he go?

I am gliding over this landscape, my gaze sweeping to and fro in the desperate hope that I may find the creature which has driven me to near-insanity over the past day. I see nothing to direct me, no landmarks or hints, which will bring me to him.

Then, I spot a town of ponies, and beside them, an orchard.

I know that he’s there.

My mind is jarred back to reality. I am once again staring at the same unremarkable hills in the same uninspiring forest.

It could be said that I am unremarkable and uninspiring; after all, I am only a stone guardian. Carved from the stone in Canterlot Garden itself and destined to be something special, I have always wished that another may look upon me as a pony once did.

Visions of a bland, grey caretaker are all that I have of her. She was like me—unremarkable, uninspiring. Then her world changed, and she ousted me. She no longer wanted the negative influence on her. The most beautiful coat of pearly white, the most magnificent styled purple mane, the most entrancing blue eyes—

She abandoned me. It’s time to stop wishing for a life I will never have.

What do I call my dreams, then? Are they any less of a lie than the love I thought a pony once felt for me?

They probably are a lie. They’re also something that gets me through each moment of this existence without aching for an end to it all.

So, for lack of a better direction in which to take my life, I hold out hope for a tree.

Does he exist? Or is it only my imagination?

Here I am, surrounded by so many, yet all I can think about is a rock that appeared in my dreams. I could give in to the temptations of the wood and entwine my branches with so many, yet I refuse.

Because of a rock.

The most interesting rock I know, granted. Yet, how interesting can a rock really be?

I have to be imagining him. The likes of what I saw in my dream are impossible to see in this world. I’ve only been around a short while compared to the other trees, but I do know that, if they had ever seen such a magnificent thing as what I saw, they would forsake their disgusting habits and devote themselves to that which they love.

So, who am I to believe I saw any different than what they have seen with a lifespan ten times what I have known?

I believe I may have felt love of a sort before... in an orange pony who raised me from a tiny seed.

Yet, what I saw in that rock defies any logic I can possibly comprehend. I have given nothing, and I have gotten nothing. What the orange pony gave me was a large portion of her life so that I may have one. If she had branches, I may have even considered entwining with her.

The love I feel for this rock is unprecedented. A brief glimpse is all I needed to cause my leaves to shake and my bark to flake. I never imagined I may feel this for, of all things, an impassive stone.

My mind chases itself in circles about the unlikeliness of this situation, yet I can’t shake one feeling above all.

I hope for his existence.

Eventually, my thoughts drift away from me, pulling me into a world I can only imagine.

I am at my old home. There is familiarity all around me. I see old Rosy, who only produces red apples, and I see Oakington, whose trunk has survived more applebuck seasons than I have leaves. The wave of regret I feel at having left them all behind drags at my flagging spirit. My dream is torturing me.

Thankfully, I feel the dream pulling me away. I am traveling away from the familiarity and the pain to advance to a dark, foreboding forest nearby.

I do not like the look of the forest... it does, however, look familiar. I often gazed toward this place and wondered what it may be like in here.

I have a feeling I’m traveling toward the rock that I so strongly anticipate seeing. Even a second sighting of him would feel like a miracle to me.

Is it worth seeing the nightmare again? Even if I had a choice, I know it would be. He will always be worth it.

Much as I like to think I’ve steeled myself to what I’m about to see, it is still a massive shock to me. I see trees mercilessly competing to survive, their most primal of urges having surfaced and causing them to go insane. I can almost hear their frenzied cries as they rip and tear at each other’s roots in the ground, their branches spiraling higher and higher in attempts to cast the other trees in a shadow and give them an edge.

It is an atrocity.

I did not come for them, though. I came for the one thing that matters in this forest. My vision lurches past these perversions and brings me to a clearing, then I dive into a thicket of thorny vines, which eventually thin out to reveal—

I slip back into awareness. It’s just not fair.

I know he was right there. I could feel it. I know where he is.

Wait... do I?

I know the way to home. I know the way to that forest. I saw where he is.

I do know.

An idea formulates in my mind. I know what I must do.

I start favoring the growth of a single one of my roots, my deepest and most sturdy. I will need to go down to where other roots dare not tread.

Then, I have a journey to make.

Author's Note

Odd as it sounds, I think these two make a really cute couple.

--Scootareader

As Fear Grips Me

Silence.

After so long with nothing, I found something... and now he is gone again.

He has been silent for so long. I call his name, over and over, hoping for something, anything... and he no longer talks to me. He is there, I just know it... and he cannot speak to me.

I know he wants to. I also know he can’t. Why can’t he? That, I don’t have an answer to.

It has been... centuries, I think, since I last heard him speak to me. I can’t even see him in my dreams. It is as if a blindfold has been tied around my mind’s eye; I see nothing, I hear nothing, and I feel nothing. I must find a way to remove it if I have any hope of speaking to Bloomberg again.

The knowledge that I’d finally found him, then the subsequent knowledge that he was gone... is just too much to bear, at times. I feel like I’m going to shatter under this strain.

I need you, Bloomberg.

Sometimes, when I wait, there is no dream to offer me some small amount of comfort until the next time I wake; there is only pain and misery. This is one of them.

The nightmare begins swiftly, without reservation or remorse. I am there, next to Bloomberg, as he stands proudly upon his hilltop.

He is not himself, however—his leaves are wilted and brown, his bark a dusky gray, and the ground around him sapped of life. His branches litter the earth, their tiny skeletons piled atop one another, carelessly shed by my lover.

I call his name. Bloomberg!

He doesn’t answer me. He simply continues gazing into the distance, his preoccupied mind oblivious to my plight.

I call his name again. Bloomberg!

Still, there is nothing.

Bloomberg... please don’t leave me alone. I can’t be alone again. I need you.

Still, there is nothing but silence.

Bloomberg... I love you.

And I love you, Tom.

Just as suddenly, the illusion around me shatters. I see him standing tall, still healthy, still strong... perhaps a little weaker than before, but the same Bloomberg I know and love.

I was terrified... but I know he is here. I know I have never had reason to fear, yet I worried incessantly for him up until this moment. I must have more faith in Bloomberg.

He will speak to me when the time is right.

I become aware abruptly. I am being called by a voice.

Tom... come to me.

Bloomberg?

Come to me.

There is a rumbling from the ground, and a crack splits the earth below me, rolling me away from where I sat for many long years. I am moving.

Will I ever see Bloomberg myself?

I love him. Love always finds a way.