Those Big Blue Eyes
by Supint
Life — it can be both difficult, and rewarding, although my life was mostly filled with difficulties. I hardly knew the word “joy”. I was a few days old when I was found on the side of a forgotten road one warm summer evening in a suburb of Boston Massachusetts. I was found by an old rich couple who “raised me” until I was around 18 years old — that is, they both died in a vicious car accident on the the same date the found me 18 years later. When they died, it was hard at first, but I quickly got over it, as I had little bonding experiences with either of them — the most I ever did was live in a house with them.
I was always doing my own thing: contemplating reality. I did this a lot. Sometimes I would just sit back and think — I could do it for hours to entertain myself. Often I’d stay up half of the night — just thinking about life, and how odd it was. Half of my life, was contemplating life. The other half? Living it. One simple word to describe living my life then? Routine — it was always a routine, from when I was a child, until after I moved to a little town on the edge of the Everglades. Nothing spontaneous or unexpected ever happened. I was lost in every day life, just trying to survive in a world full of careless people, and repetitive events. Until something changed my life for the better.
I always was fond of the Everfree forest in My Little Pony. Despite it’s scary appearance, it looked peaceful and secluded, where one could just do your own thing without a care — a perfect realm for anyone like me. That’s sort of why I moved by the Everglades. Despite its dense tropical plantation, and its somewhat dangerous wildlife, I like it. It’s secluded, and — most of the time — peaceful. I liked to spend a lot of my time there, mostly just to — you guessed it — think.
When my step-parents did die, I had no one to give me advice in every-day life, so sometime in my mid-twenties, I decided to try to find my biological parents; however, as you can imagine, this was very difficult, as my step-parents had no idea from whom I had come from when they found me that fateful day. Fortunately — or, perhaps, unfortunately — I found them by accident one day. To say the least, they didn’t want anything to do with me. After we talked, and soon fought… When they had the nerve to walk away, and to not even glimpse back… I was broken. I didn’t know where to go from there — everything, my life, was a grey blur.
As you might guess, the next day I took a mental walk, a long one. I walked into the forest, and for hours and hours, I sat near an over-grown tree, contemplating why I was even put on this earth to begin with. My step-parens, through the few times I actually have sat down with them to talk, told me that everyone who was put on this earth had a purpose, but I started to doubt that. How could anyone like me have a purpose?
When I got home well into the night, I crashed on my bed and immediately went to sleep — thankfully, so did my brain. All of my life up until now was a mess — why was I even born? Little did I know, one week later, I was going to find myself confused, properly astonished, and immensely thrilled at a series of events that were about to take place. When these events did take place, I became a completely new person, full of potential and desires to make this world a better place.
Now, I warn you, this story of my life is filled with tragedies, as well as joyous things — at times it is sad and sorrowful, other times it is joyful and happy, and in the end, the joy makes it all worth it.
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It was a sunny day, and I got off work early — the fog had finally dissipated; and now, after a night full of very strange and unexplainable weather patterns, I decided to take a bicycle ride. There were a few errands I had to run and today was far too nice to take my car — I needed to clear my mind, too — so that’s what I did. I first needed to pick up a few things at the grocery store, then I planned on taking a few nature-trails on my way to a newly-opened restaurant — they supposedly had great fish.
It was 80-some degrees out today, and very humid — such as me to forget my water canteen. My red, rusty old bike got me to the grocery right on time to a few bags of food for the week. I secured then into my basket and went off, hopefully catching the restaurant before the lines got long — the plan was to drop the groceries off at my apartment on the way.
About half way through my ride back home, clouds similar to last night’s, began covering the sky — big, thick, dark, clouds — in just minutes, the lightning, thunder and rain enveloped all. I managed to have a terrible time getting home — the roads and sidewalks were slippery as heck. I could hardly see — the fog was also rolling in, too. The fact that my food was getting soaked didn’t help either. After I finally got home, I skidded and hopped off my bike with the groceries — the thunder was so loud.
Just as I was about to type the code into the entrance gate, there was a huge bolt of lighting behind me that caused me to drop my groceries, sprawling my food all over the ground. While covering my ears from the sheer sound of it, I turned around to see the lighting bolt was hovering over the location of the new restaurant. It was the brightest, most luminescent strike of light I’ve ever seen in my life. As the lightning was striking down, the clouds were the most ominous I’ve ever seen them, especially right above the base of where the lighting was coming from. They were swirling around making a vortex, like a hole was opening up from the sky. Both the lighting and the odd clouds stayed there for a good ten seconds, and then went away as quickly as they had come.
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The storm didn’t last too long after I had gotten inside, maybe another five to ten minutes. I got right outside again once it started lightening up to gather the remains of my newly-bought provender, hopped onto my bike, again, and strode off towards the restaurant. As I rolled slowly out of the parking lot, I found that the streets were empty, which is unusual for this town. Normally, there’d be lots of people out right after a storm even as hideous and unexplainable as that — usually to examine the damage or simply to sit and smell the fresh scent of rain — yup, people do that — but there was nobody.
As I rode down the brush-covered street I noticed multi-colored lights reflecting off of an old building. As I rode down and took a turn, I saw the cause of such lights — a police car, parked right up against that new restaurant, complete with a bustling crowd a little ways down, made of no less than 50 people — they were all gathered around something that kept their attention quite effectively. My very destination was right where the ruckus was, so I made my way over to the area. As I was nearing closer and closer, I could see nobody was moving. The looks on all of their faces were composed of wide eyes and gaping mouths. I was worried if something had happened from the storm — maybe someone was hurt — something had to have happened with that kind of lightning.
I stopped on the curb, quietly set my bicycle down as I hopped off to see what was going on. As I neared over and got on my tip-toes and tried to make my way through the crowd… I couldn’t believe my eyes. Confusion, “OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH”, and skepticism all crept into my head at the same time. There, in front of me, was what I thought to be two animals — if you can even call them animals. They were both lying on the ground. One was looking up at all of us looking confused and scared. The other, who was in a cage, looked as if she had been knocked out somehow. They were both covered in soot and rain — most likely from the storm. The conscious one was pawing frantically at the cage, in hopes to get her unconscious friend awake, while looking absolutely terrified at all these people — aliens to her — staring at them. I estimated at the time, that if they were to both stand up, they’d be roughly one and a half feet in height. They both looked full grown in comparison with the show.
My brain went on hyper-think mode as to why they were here, and how they got here… Yes, I knew that they were one and a half foot tall, animated-looking ponies, and that the one staring at all these people in a terrified manner, attempting to wake her friend was Fluttershy, and the one who seemed to be knocked out, and in the cage, was Rainbow Dash, but there was no comprehendible, logical way my that my brain thought of as to why they were here.
The weirdest thing about them was that they looked like the ponies you see in the 3-D SFM videos that many animators have posted on YouTube, except they looked smoother and more like the ones in the show, just in three-dimensional form. By the time I had noticed all of this, the police officer walked into the crowd, and cleared another space to set down another cage. He picked Fluttershy up, and gently put her down in there. She started crying immediately while, of course, shrinking behind her sizable pink bangs once she was set inside. She didn’t look comfortable, at all, the cages were quite small. The police officer then secured both of their cages, picked them up, and started back to his cruiser.
At that moment, the pink-maned pony looked up at me with those big blue eyes, sobbing, through the hideous wire-bars of that cage. I stood frozen, as we held a stare for a good several seconds, and I saw that she really was lost, and at the moment, hopeless, and I needed to do something about that — no matter how odd and sudden the situation was. I came to a conclusion relatively fast, despite it going against everything I’ve ever known and done in my young life — act now, reason later.
As the police officer passed me, trudging along with those restricting cages, I followed him back to his cruiser — the lights still flashing. Once he set them in his trunk I said, “Sir! Excuse me—“ as he turned around, I stopped talking, and was overcome with joy that maybe, just maybe, I could reason with him and get these ponies out of this horrible situation. I was so over-come with astonishment and confusion that I failed to recognize my own friend in the midst of the situation.
“Bruce? Oh thank god,” I said. He looked at me with a sly smile on his face, “‘Ey, what ‘re you doin’ down here, son?”
I didn’t even know where to begin. My brain was in a scramble and — he seemed to show no astonishment considering the situation.
“Uh, well, Bruce, I don’t know where to even begin.” He looked more inquired as I said that, “What’s ‘a matter?” It appeared as if he was oblivious to the situation. “Do you know what you have in those cages?” I asked.
He looked at me, than at the cages. They were faced away from us so you couldn’t see inside.
“Well, son, no… The closest thin’ I could come up with was some time a’ small horse. O’er than that, I dunno exactly what ‘dey are, to be honest ‘wich ya. I ‘as jus’ ‘bout ta bring ‘em o’er to ‘da animal shelter down ‘da street after I got a call.”
Bill, for being a cop, wasn’t the best user of correct language and pronunciation, but that was no big deal.
“Bruce…” Now, it was time to talk him out of this. “You really, really can’t do that.” Before he could protest, I went on. “These animals… creatures… they won't be safe. Not at all.” He shared a chuckle and said, “Boy, you were always an animal lover.”
I stared at him unmoved.
He went on, “It’s ma’ job. What ud’ ya’ have me do?” I gave him a serious look, “Get them somewhere safe. Not the shelter. You know what they do there.” He got a solemn look on his face, and after a few moments of contemplation said, “It’s not like I really have a choice.”
Then I realized something, “Is it illegal to shelter a creature — animal — if you find it abandoned on the street?”
He thought about this for a moment. “No, it ain’t, last time I checked.”
This was my chance.
“Then, instead of having them go to the shelter, I could shelter them?” He thought about this for a moment, locked in the embrace of hesitation. He looked at the cages, and then looked back at me again. “They’re still, technically, abandoned and in need of shelter,” I said in hopes for him to make up his mind faster. “Well, I reckon…”
I have to get these out of harm’s way.
I waited in anticipation for his answer.
“A’right, son,” he finally said. I was overcome with joy and relief. “On one condition,” he said. “Sure, anything, name it.” He looked quizzically at the cages and said, “Find out what these here things are, and let me know?” I smiled and said, “I’ll do my best.” “A’right, take care of ‘em. Bring your bicycle over here and I’ll help you load ‘em up. “
With that I ran past the now-dispersed crowd, full of emotions I couldn’t even translate for myself.
What have I just gotten myself into? Only time will tell.
I picked up my bike off of the curb and walked it over to the cruiser. Bruce took the nearest cage — the one with Rainbow Dash — and gave it to me. I peered inside — it was the first time I’ve ever seen one of these guys up close — then it hit me. Rainbow Dash was still unconscious. Despite my minuscule knowledge on anything about veterinary care for animals — creatures like these — I knew I had to get her someplace fast for her to rest. To my relief, I did see her tiny soot-drenched body rise and fall, giving me the signal that she was breathing steadily. She was lying on her left side, faced towards the opening of the cage. Her cutymark was barely visible, and what was visible, was partially blanketed in mud. Her front legs were tucked in near her chest, like she had moved them closer to her for warmth— perhaps she was starting waking up? I set the cage as gently as I could into the basket of my bicycle, making sure there was enough room for the next one.
It’ll be okay, little one.
He then took the one with Fluttershy in both hands, and handed it to me. I was hesitant to look inside — to see those big blue eyes, suffering from fear and confusion — but, I had to try and reassure her it was going to be okay… somehow. I turned the cage to face me, held it up to me and peered inside to find the mud-layered yellow pony tucked up against one side of the cage, sobbing softly to herself.
“Hey, everything’s go—"
She immediately jumped at the sound of my voice and scooted back into the the already-too-small cage, making it jolt a little in my hands — then she recognized me — that big human that looked like he cared. She seemed to calm down after she saw I meant no harm and that I wanted to help her. After holding a compassionate stare, I repeated what I was going to say.
“Everything’s going to be all right.”
I tried to make out the emotion on her face — I was never very skilled at translating animal-like faces into emotions, despite that these little ponies resembled humans more than they did animals, on many different levels. I tried talking to her again, “I’ll get you both out of here. And, your friend will be okay. I promise. ” Her ears perked up again and she looked up at me — I got a stronger glimpse of that emotion displayed on her face, I couldn’t make it out, but somehow I knew it was good. I was suddenly forced to pull my eyes away by Bert’s ramblings,
“‘Ey, son, ya know they don’t know what you’re sayin’, right?”
Yeah, yeah. You’d say that.
I managed a soft, “heh” and set the cage on the right of the other one.
“Thanks, Bruce,” I said.
He smiled, and got back into his car to do whatever a cop does — probably to file paperwork of some sort. The crowd was nearly all dispersed, and most of the people had gone to dine into the new restaurant. Others were just standing there looking at me. I played a swell pokerface towards them, and I rode off towards my apartment.
Now I had time to finally contemplate all that had just happened — a nice bicycle ride back home would be perfect for that, although, I knew I was still going to be up all night, thinking about what happened today. I tried to ride as steadily as I could home for the ponies’ sake, so they wouldn’t end up getting jolted around. As I was riding back to my apartment, I finally realized what Fluttershy had displayed on her face — that emotion.
It was hope.
