Pain. I could hardly feel it, but it was there. Everything felt heavy, dulled and sluggish. I barely managed to open my eyelids. It was blindingly bright and I could feel my retinas aching, protesting this strain. Even though the edges of my view remained black I refused to give up this bastion of vision. The pain was good, at least I could feel something.
I could make out the dim white outline of a figure next to me, another pony, a snow-white mare with bright crimson eyes and a frazzled mane of bright blues. She’s… saying something, but I cannot hear her clearly. As she comes into greater focus I see from her expression, drawn in worry and shiny tears running down her eyes that she seems upset. Don’t pity me, I tried to say to her. This detachment from pain felt wonderful. It was like living in the peaceful haze of a dream.
But deep within the confines of my mind, something buzzed constantly in the back of my consciousness. Who was this mare? I thought I knew her…
No matter my efforts though, I couldn’t attach a name to her, or any emotion to her; all I received was a vague feeling of wrongness, like I’d forgotten something dreadfully important.
Slowly, my drowsiness began to return, an omniscient force was trying to drag my eyelids shut again and slowly succeeding. Through my liquid fog and the distance that seemed like miles, yet I knew to only be inches, beside the bed I was lying upon but could not feel, a monitor began to slowly beep a warning, growing in intensity. The mare next to me became agitated and started to cry something that scarcely reached my unreceptive ears. It sounded like she was begging for me to stay awake, telling me not to fall asleep.
At those words I was reminded of a song I had once heard in the village I grew up in, though I couldn’t remember the name, I was too tired to. In spite of my exhaustion, I forced numbs lips to slowly move sluggishly to produce the lyrics:
Hush now, quiet now
It's time to lay your sleepy head
Hush now, quiet now
It's time to go to bed…
Scents of grime and scum
Stain and drip down the walls
With a smell worse than that of dung
In these underground stone halls.
Opposition towards the bourgeois
Hath rendered them ill with malevolence.
But so long as the moon strengthens me,
I will refuse to hesitate or repent.
The sun for too long has bragged
Of its limitless light and glim
While it ignorantly dragged
Behind its own oppressed kin.
They call me murderer, criminal.
But these are just pointless words
When I already knew my crime’s toll
Was to never again see sky or birds.
And so long as I know others will
Take up the spear I once held,
The end is a satisfaction still.
Into bone and dust, I will meld.
Behold, but a scuff and scrape,
Of the jail keeper’s tread on stone.
And with a quick burst of hate,
I know I am now not alone.
The time has come,
My fate and destiny are done.
A flash, a cry, and then
Darkness and silence again.
All hail the Lunar Republic.
Her hooves brushed softly against the carpeted floor as she exited the howling winter air outside and entered the theatre’s warm lobby. She shook her head gently a few times and delicate flakes of snow fell from the earmuffs she wore and floated to the ground like feathers. Turning towards an abandoned luggage cart that was nearly empty, her eyes caught sight of a familiar oak wood case with a treble clef carved into the body. Smiling, she crossed the floor gracefully on her delicate but precise four legs. To a spectator, she would have looked as though she floated across the floor, rather than walked across it.
Her charcoal grey coat glistened slightly in the yellow light of the lobby, partly from the snowflakes that had melted upon contact with it outside and partly because of its incredibly smooth and soft texture. Not a molecule of stray dirt upset any of her features. When she reached the case, she reached a hoof out that trembled only slightly and ran it slowly down the length of the wood. A small shiver ran down her back and legs and she turned to look at a portrait upon one of the ornate walls. Her bright, violet eyes took in the details of the orchestra, the conductor’s poise, and the trance of delight that had fallen upon the audience.
Taking up the vessel that held the key to her entering the same world inside that portrait, she stood on her hind legs, embracing the wooden case with her fore legs. Her silky mane, dark as ebony, sliced through the air gracefully with the movement, not a hair out of place, and covered the right side of her face slightly, like black silk. To an unknown source, she whispered almost inaudibly, “Thank you.” A single tear hit the red carpet moments later, disappearing instantly on impact as though it was never there, just like this memory.
