The kid stares down at the ground. His vision is blurry, but he can make out his own two blue hooves through a mess of shapes and colours. He blinks quickly, and soon he can see what he’s standing over—beautiful, barely-touched green grass. Don’t see much of that where he comes from.
He adjusts to his surroundings; a dark forest looms behind him, and a large amount of buildings can be seen in the distance. What the kid doesn’t know is that the bustling town in front of him is none other than Ponyville, far, far away from where he last slept. His mind trails off in search of a memory, but none seems to come.
The kid tests out his motor skills—his mouth seems to work fine, as do his shaky, tight legs. Relatively speaking, of course. He has a faint curiosity for the sight in front of him, so his legs do the talking for him.
His eyes still stray to the ground as he walks towards the town, fascinated with this beautiful grass. He hadn’t lived much outside of his home—where exactly that was, he could not recall. His brain was addled with something that stood on the tip of his tongue, and sadly remained that way. The kid dismisses the attempt and sets his mind on encountering this strange, new territory.
Was he forgetting that this was his home? Was it even his home? It’s entirely possible given his state of mind that he’d forget the whole thing. Yet, deep down in his mind, he figures this is something he’s always wanted, but was never able to get where he normally lived.
Peace. Beauty. Happiness.
His thoughts are cut off by a surprise sight—another pony, with a lighter shade of blue on her coat, looks at him with curiosity. Interaction with ponies in such lovely lands should be a wonderful experience, or so he assumes.
She introduces herself—Rainbow Dash, the fastest mare—no, pony—in all of Equestria. Quite a claim and quite a feat, if she can manage it. The kid says very little, but he does a lot of blinking. She offers him a visit with a Sparkle pony, who can supposedly help if he’s suffering from any trauma or injury.
The kid once again replies with very little, but he cocks his head to the side in earnest curiosity. Ponyville was a town of simplicity and efficiency, especially compared to... something, if the kid could remember it. The Rainbow Dash pony turned and ushered him along—her rainbow mane swung around when she did, flashing the kid with a bright sight that feels like it’s burning his eyes.
He certainly never had that feeling back home. It’s a pleasant one, though, if you discount the burning of his eyes. Rainbow Dash ushers him onwards once more, and this time the kid replies with a coherent nod. They move towards the center of Ponyville, where a large treehouse stood looking over them. A mighty sight if one weren’t used to it, and this was certainly the case for the kid.
The kid asks Rainbow Dash about the tree while she knocks on the door—an old structure, it serves now as a library and a home for the Sparkle pony she had mentioned before. The sudden initiative in asking questions seems to delight Rainbow Dash—suppose she didn’t want to feel like she was talking to a mute.
The door opens, and for a moment, the kid imagines an elderly pony—without wings or horn, just as he was—standing in the frame. Catching sight of a horn and wings, though, quickly dissuades his imagination. The new mare at the door introduces herself as Twilight Sparkle in an almost motherly tone... or, at least, that’s what it sounds like to the kid. His mind stops for a moment as though memories were soon to flood in, but a few moments after, he was no better than when he started.
In fact, the curious and almost frightened looks on the two mares’ faces seemed to set him back a step. They ask if anything’s the matter, but no sir—the kid’s fine, on the outside anyways. Nothing they can help him with.
Twilight’s concern leads her to invite him into her home, and at the same time, Rainbow Dash seems to suddenly recall an event she had to attend to. The kid watched as she left and frowned. He knew she wanted a reason to leave; he may have lost his memory, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have his common sense.
Twilight quickly offers the kid a cup of tea. The kid recalled tea, a fine beverage indeed, and enthusiastically accepted. It wasn’t common where he came from, but every sip he could get was as magnificent as the last.
This cup of tea was the exception. He wants to spit the contents out onto the floor as he drank, but supposedly his manners kept with him too. He thanks her for the tea—the gesture, at least, was nice. He settles down into a study desk chair, built with a fine-smelling sort of oak that makes things feel like home. It feels as smooth as a baby’s bottom.
Twilight asks if the kid remembered any head trauma or painful event occuring recently, which he quickly replies to with an empty no. The kid speaks the truth—his heart didn’t skip a beat. Twilight ponders this for a moment, says a few incoherent words to herself, then looks back to the kid. She explains that the loss of memories could be due to amnesia, and she proposes a quick spell to ease his mind.
The kid accepts, and soon the bright glow surrounding Twilight’s horn led to... absolutely nothing at all. He waits, and waits, for something to happen. No moments of clarity, no real thoughts streaming into his mind.
He did feel something, though. Happiness. Pleasure. The kid wonders if the spell is doing it, or maybe it was something in the air. Whatever the case, everything felt wonderful, and he didn’t mind that the spell didn’t seem to have its intended purpose.
Twilight frowns at the result, obviously in contrast to the kid’s happy nature. It just feels good for him to be alive, for whatever reason. Twilight wonders aloud what could possibly be wrong, whether it’s with her magic or her misdiagnosis of the problem. The kid shrugs in a nonchalant manner and lets her know that he is in no rush to be anywhere.
Unicorns, Twilight especially, can be stubborn creatures. In this case, though, she did not pursue the matter. She’d work on it at a time when she was less busy, perhaps, as she had been quite busy with other matters before the kid came in. She had expected things to be a little quicker.
She offers him a place to stay for the next little while to get his bearings, and he could not believe his strange luck. To come to a new, foreign place, and have it be so much nicer than what he believed could be memories from his own home, felt like a new start. It felt like something most ponies could only dream of. Not just that, but he would be allowed to stay.
Soon, his vision became blurry. The smell of burning trash and cigarettes fills the air—an odd thing to smell given his current surroundings, even if he couldn’t see them too well. Twilight would be able to take care of him if he passed out, he thought.
Through twisted blurs, he could feel his vision and his legs giving way. He soon collapsed, and then, blackness.
~|F|~
The kid stares at the ground. His eyes feel like they’ve been drenched in chlorinated water for too long, but after a few moments, he adjusts into normality. The grass beneath him is not as bright as it was before—he worries for a moment. No time to worry about the grass at a time like this.
He looks around, and he finds himself in the same place as he had been once upon a time. Although this time, despite losing most of his memory once more, he feels... uneven. Like something’s changed.
The smell in the air isn’t as delicious as it was before. Everything isn’t as bright as it was before. Even the sky isn’t as blue as he remembered it.
The kid’s still happy, so he goes on his merry way into Ponyville, just like before. Rainbow Dash, surely enough, is walking past. The two share a quick word, and the kid decides to make a better impression, get some small talk going. But he really wants to see the purple unicorn once more, whose name now escapes him—Twilight, as he finds out from Rainbow Dash—so he wishes her a good day and makes his way to the tree in the center of Ponyville.
He gapes up at the building, the likes of which still perplex him. Strange times when he sees trees being inhabited by ponies.
Before he could knock on the door, a terrible feeling overtook him. A familiar feeling.
Twilight answered the door. It didn’t matter. The kid was losing his grip on the world. Twilight gasps and her horn glows all sorts of crazy for this stranger collapsing on her doorstep. The smell of burning trash filled the air, and then, blackness.
~|F|~
The kid hesitates for a moment—he knows he’s done this before. His vision begins to clear, and soon enough, the grass becomes a welcome sight once more. Strange, though, is the colour of the grass. Grey. Bleak. No beauty to be found here.
Stranger still was the lack of any other senses. Nothing to smell, nothing but grey buildings and grey sky to see, birds chirping turning into a series of monotone noises. This wasn’t what the kid was planning on doing in Ponyville.
He walks towards Ponyville, feeling weaker than ever, both in spirit and in physical form. He nearly collapses before even getting to see Rainbow Dash, who had lost all of the colour from her beautiful mane thanks to this grey, soulless world. Her expression is straight, no-nonsense, and impossible to read. She looks neither unimpressed nor interested in anything. She just... is.
The kid wonders if things will ever get back to how they started. Was this the hundredth time he came to Ponyville? Had to be, but the gradual changes certainly took their toll on him. Through baggy eyes, his vision began to blur. In routine, he collapses, succumbing to blackness.
~|F|~
The kid stares at the ground. He can’t see too much through his blurry eyes, but his other senses start flaring like crazy; his nostrils twitch and burn from the smell of trash set on fire, his mouth tastes as though they were filled with smoky ash, and his hands feel wrinkly and rotten. He can see the green grass he has grown accustomed to seeing, but this time, it quickly fades into a more somber colour of grey.
His vision improves, but the same can’t be said for his surroundings. On the ground is strewn various needles and pill bottles, all used and right in front of him. The concrete underneath him grated his hooves, and at this point, he could now see the entirety of an alleyway he was in.
Not the most pleasant change of scenery, but the kid would do anything to get back to Ponyville, back to happiness. He sees one syringe full of a strange liquid against the stone wall beside him, and he proceeds to use it on himself in a destructive manner. He hypes up for the moment of truth, but it doesn’t come. A quick blurring of his vision is all that comes up—that, and yet another hole punctured into his foreleg.
The kid slumps onto the ground and stared at the tools around him. He’d never return to Ponyville again. He feels stuck, his body is tight, but somehow tears stream down his face.
He left what he could not replace.
~|F|~