Stillborn
I died before I was born.
Since I had never actually lived, I have no means to forget anything. I can still remember what I saw before my death.
I was still in my fetal position. The womb I had grown in was trembling. My mother was close to birthing me.
But something drifted through the walls. I saw green glowing eyes, a red curved horn and a fanged, toothy grin.
“Hello, child.”
His body was a swirling black cloud. He looked me over as if I was a precious gemstone.
A tendril drifted across my cheek. It was the first time I felt cold. I shivered as I tried to back away.
He chuckled. “Where are you going, hmm? Noone escapes Sombra. Not even the unborn. I need your body, little colt.”
I tilted my head, unable to talk.
He began to shape an icy dark curtain around my body.
“This is the only way I can come back to life. I may have to wait years before I can take control of the Crystal Empire again, but that prize is worth the wait. As for you?”
I stiffened, the cold sapping me of my strength. He began to seep into my body.
“I appreciate your sacrifice.”
He pushed me out. I suddenly found myself drifting outside my mother, but she was still groaning, trying to give birth. The doctors surrounded her. Bright lights above. White tiles below.
The shock of eviction stunned me so much I drifted away from everything. My eyes closed. My legs wavered as I floated like a speck of dust in the sunlight.
A moment later, I shook myself awake. I was in the same room, but the lights were off. Noone was there. The intruder who called himself Sombra was gone. And so was my mother.
I never saw her again. I never even got to know her name.
I struggled to move my floating body. I could see the tiles through my legs. Kicking and flailing like a leaf in the wind, I got so angry, I screamed. Or I tried to. Sombra could talk to me, why couldn’t I make any sound? Maybe that came later.
Did ghosts grow up?
Or would I be like this forever? Silent as a memory. And just as helpless.
He mentioned taking over the Crystal Empire. I looked out a nearby window. In the distance, huge blue spires gleamed in the moonlight. Was that what he was talking about?
As I stared at this strange sight (everything is strange when you are new to the world), I wished I could get a closer look. Then I realized that I was drifting towards the window.
I was moving!
As I approached the glass, I thought about stopping.
I stopped.
My hooves were halfway into the wall.
It seemed so obvious in hindsight. Of course I couldn’t move through the physical world in a metaphysical body. I had to think my way to other places.
There was nothing for me in this room, so I thought about going through the wall. And I did. Easily.
My mouth gaped as I was enthralled with everything I saw. Reaching up to the stars was a huge crystal castle. There were many other buildings, but none were as majestic.
As I drifted up towards the top of the castle, I tried to increase my speed and control. With practice, I began to fly around the spires, laughing silently.
I stopped at the highest tip of the castle and looked all around me. The city lights below gleamed and sparkled like the countless stars above. Even that early in life, I knew that few places in this world were as spectacular as this.
No wonder Sombra wanted this place for himself.
Admiring every gleaming surface, I began to notice movement in the streets. Flying closer to the ground, I began to see hundreds of other...what were these people called?
I knew I couldn’t talk, so I drifted down and hoped that noone would panic at the sight of me. People walked past me without so much as a sidelong glance. They all had four legs, manes and tails, just like me. Their bodies glimmered like the castle I flew around. Were they made from the same crystals? How did that happen?
It didn’t matter. I was among my own kind. Home at last.
And then someone walked through me. Then another. And another. Oddly enough, those people shivered afterward, but never looked at who they walked through.
Because they couldn’t see me.
I was cold silence.
I didn’t belong here.
Did I belong anywhere?
I flew away from the crowd, shaking my head.
Stopping in mid-flight, I looked over the city that I was once in awe of and realized that I could never be a part of it.
* * *
In the years that followed, I witnessed many things that I could never have.
I sat on park benches, watching children play. They were having fun. I couldn’t.
I floated through every restaurant in the city, watching the people eat all kinds of food. Something else I would never be able to do.
There were homeless people, sitting in the shadowy back alleys. Wanderers like me. But at least they could talk to each other. I had no one.
When I spent some time in an elementary school, I did learn to read. I also learned that I was the ghost of an earth crystal pony. I might not have been alive, but I was growing up. At least I managed to accomplish something in my wayward life.
In a library, people read thousands of books. No matter how many times I tried, I could never lift a single page. But if I kept far enough away from readers to not give them a chill, I could read over their shoulders.
That’s how I found out who King Sombra was. A history student was researching this brutal ruler’s reign.
Sombra was once a loved and respected king a thousand years ago. When he experimented with black magic, however, he released something from the spirit realm that took him over and turned what once was paradise into a horrendous prison.
It took the combined forces of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna to destroy his infested body and cast his dark spirit into a pit of ice.
The book didn’t discuss the possibility of King Sombra’s return. No book in that library did. That means only I knew what he was planning.
At that point, it had been ten years since Sombra took my body from me. If he was able to take over an entire country, what could I do to stop him?
Nothing. All I could do was drift through this world like a breeze. I was useless.
The student rubbed his hooves over his arms. Fog puffed from his mouth.
I began to float up and down the rows of books behind him, thinking about what Sombra said.
“I appreciate your sacrifice.”
It wasn’t until much later that I found out what sarcasm was. He could take whatever he wanted. I couldn’t take or give anything!
I was punching the air with impotent rage. I had never felt so angry. Or lonely.
The student sneezed. Gathering up his books, he muttered something about the freezer door being left open.
It took a while for me to calm down. When I looked for the student, I could only stare at the book-shelves I floated past. There was a thin sheet of ice on dozens of books.
Was that all I was able to do? Make life colder for the living?
I sighed, hung my head and floated away from the library, no longer caring where I went.
For the first time in my so-called life, I began to feel weary. I was tired of everything. It was hard to conjure up enthusiasm for the future when I knew exactly what I was going to be for the rest of eternity.
After years of quietly slipping through every inch of the Crystal Empire, mostly out of boredom, I saw just about every kind of activity. Mulling over all those memories of other people’s lives, I wondered, not for the first time, just what the point of it all was.
Fillies played, colts and mares ate, slept and had children. Why? What’s the point of doing anything? Everything we do fades away. Only the wicked seemed to remain, free to snatch a pony’s life away before it even started.
I was stillborn.
Closing my eyes, I let myself wander like the homeless. It didn’t matter where I ended up in an hour. Or a day. Or even a decade.
* * *
I heard screaming. There was a chill in the air that somehow seemed familiar.
Opening my eyes after a long slumber, I saw white tiles and doctors. There was a pregnant mare on a table, struggling to give birth.
One of the doctors was feeling her belly, muttering, “Why in Celestia’s name is her skin cold?”
My first memory played out as clearly as if it happened last week. Acting on a hunch, I phased into her womb and saw a familiar sight.
King Sombra was slithering around the unborn filly like a snake smothering his prey. He looked up at my intrusion and said,
“Hello, again. I’m surprised to see you, little colt.”
He stopped wrapping himself around the foal and smiled at me. “It’s just as well that I took your body. Did you know that you were born with a heart defect? You died just as you graduated high school.”
Sombra shook his head and tsked. “Your mother was so heart-broken. Oh, well. Time to move on. This little filly will hopefully last longer.”
My mother.
This sociopath knew my mother better than I did. He was able to have fun, eat food and talk to people.
And now he was going to steal someone else’s body.
When he looked away from me, his tendrils began to cloak around her head.
I reached out and slapped it away.
Sombra stopped, stunned by what I did. I could only stare at what I had done.
“No.” He said, grinding his teeth, his eyes flaring with green fire. “Don’t you dare try that again!”
He tightened his grip on the child. I flew straight through her and gripped him in all of my legs, yanking him away from his victim. Sombra snarled as he struggled. When he glared at me, I saw wrinkles between his eyes.
Sombra was getting worried. Out of all the ponies in the Crystal Empire, I was the only one around that could fight him.
The mother screamed in agony as the baby was pushed away from us.
The womb was empty and silent.
“You fool! I almost had her! Can’t you see what I’m trying to do? This country needs me! Now I have to find another child!”
With a massive push in all directions, he broke free of my grip. He fled the womb and I dashed after him.
I could feel my inner strength returning. No matter what maternity ward he hid in, I found him. No matter what hospital he escaped to, I was right behind him. Sombra and I were never far apart.
This is what I was lacking all these years, what I needed more than anything. A purpose.
The once-great King Sombra was a malevolent specter on the run. I could never actually harm him, but I would make sure that he’d never ruin anyone else’s life.
I may be stillborn, but I also have a mission. One that I still fight to this day.
And I am focused.
I am determined.
I am eternal.
The End
Author's Note
I had this little ghost story floating around going "A-bloogy-woogy-woo" for a while. What got this pony-tale going (and written in seven hours), was the realization that I had not put King Sombrero in a story. The fact that he was little more than a cloud of homicidal truck exhaust in the TV show didn't help.
Anyhoo, I hope this tides you folks over until my other stuff arrives.
The theme for this story is "Reach For The Dead" by Boards of Canada
