Memior

The sun was bleeding hot, and because it was hot I was miserable.  I sat next to the window on the back seat of a bus heading to some developing ocean-side city called Shire Hill.  It was a west coast city that was predicted to grow three times in size by the turn of the century, thirty-two years from now.  There wasn't any air conditioning on the bus, and the windows only barely opened.  When the windows were opened to their cheap extent it only blasted more hot air into the already boiling interior.  So changing my tone, everybody who was in the bus was miserable because of the heat.

I kept my suit case close to my side, using it as a makeshift pillow.

I stared out the window and followed the passing forest by, sometimes seeing an animal or two amongst and under the canopy of dark-green Pine trees; seeing without a cloud in the swollen sky.

The west coast was said to be a pretty wet place, but I was starting to guess that I had probably taken the wrong bus because of the lack of rain.

I found myself loosing myself in boredom deeper with every second passed, and I wasn't tired enough to sleep it off.

I looked down to my wrist and checked my watch; 5:34 P.M.  The bus transit was to stop about an hour from here.

I sighed, laid my head on the warm glass of the window, and closed my eyes to severance from the rest of the world.  A few minutes past before I heard a pair of tiny hoof steps draw near, took a weigh fallen onto the chair to my right, and felt a tapping on my shoulder.  I opened my eyes to find a small Unicorn kid sitting next to me.  I recognized him as one of the passengers who was sitting with his young mother up towards the front of the bus.

"Can I help you buddy?" I asked him.

"Do you have any candy mister?"

I gave a smirk and a held back a short snicker.  "Shouldn't you be back with your mommy up front?"

"She's asleep and doesn't have anymore candy.  I got bored so I decided to go ask around for some candy.  I'm starting at the back of the bus so I know I asked everybody I could if they have candy."

"Couldn't you have started at the front of the bus and still have known who has candy and who doesn't?"

"No."

We stared at each other for a few seconds after he responded.  I didn't quite know what to say, so eventually I just laid my head back on the window and watched the scenery pass again.  Soon enough though, I had gotten another few taps on my shoulder and I gave the kid my attention again.

"What's your name?"  The boy asked.

"Meelo, my name's Meelo." I responded, "And you should really get back to your mamma before she wakes up and thinks I've abducted you or something."

"What's 'abducted' mean?"

"Stolen."  I said bluntly.

"That's a neat word.  I should add that to my book of words!"

"Your what?" I asked.

"It's a book I fill with words that I learn so that I can remember them and sound smerter, smooter.. a'hem ...smarter."

"I see."  I said shortly.  I looked back out the window quietly, figuring that if I seemed distant enough from the kid he'd eventually walk back to his mom or go and slip quietly between the benches.

"You feeling okay mister?"  The young Unicorn asked.

"I'd feel better if I was in a cooler place."  I complained, still not giving him an eye to look towards.

"Oh, I can help with that!"  The kid exclaimed.

A second later the boy hopped off the seat and cautiously trotted up the aisles towards his mother.  A minute later he came back with a miniature electric fan held in a blue aura of magic.

"Here, this'll work."

The boy turned the fan on and faced it towards me, blowing a gentle breeze towards my neck.  I gave a smile and looked at him.  He was actually a pretty sweet kid.

"What's your name?" I asked the boy.

"Shining Armor.  I'm from Haysville."

"Haysville, huh?  What you going to Shire Hill for?"

"We're moving away from home for a little while.  Mommy and I are staying with Auntie Dusklight for awhile."

"Sounds pretty serious," I said, "What about your Pap?  Is he coming to stay with Aunt Dusklight too?"

"No." The boy croaked shyly, almost sadly, "Mommy said that daddy's going away for a while, but we'll see him again soon."

In turn I asked the boy if everything was alright, and he gave a wide smile to me and with an innocent optimism he said, "Yeah I'm sure everything is alright, and I'm sure everything will be alright tomorrow too!  So what are you going to Shire Hill for Mister Meelo?"

I reeled back, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit.  I looked down at my suit case and said, "I guess I just need a new start.  I was tired of my old home, so I decided to find a new one.  With new friends, new air, and new noises.  I needed to get away, and just not go back."

"Don't you have any family where you're from?" Shining asked.

"No... at least not anymore."  I responded slowly.

The young kid gave me a strange look, then opened his mouth to ask something but was cut off by a third voice.

"Shining?"  The kid's mother seated at the far end of the bus had woken up and began to call for Shining Armor.

"Shining where are you!?"

"Over here mom!"  The white colt yelled out.

"Stop bothering the other passengers and get back over here now!" The mare exclaimed.

I could see a gleam leave the kid's face as he dully said, "Kay..."

I tapped his shoulder, and with a smile I whispered, "It was really nice talking to you Shining Armor.  I hope you have fun at Auntie Dusklight's place, and I hope you get to see your dad soon too."

Shining smiled at me, said goodbye, and hopped off the seat strutting down the aisles again towards his mother.  I found out years later that the boy's father had been continuously physically abusing his mother and was charged with assault on multiple occasions.  The colt committed suicide in prison and Shining Armor never saw his father again.  His mother eventually remarried, had a second child, and moved the family to Canterlot.  As far as I know, to this day the young colt lives a happy life.

When time moved on the bus reached the peak of a small road-cut mountain, and Shire Hill appeared all at once fit within the forested valley below.  I stared at it, the city, analyzing it as the road softly winded down the hill.  Unfinished skyscrapers stuck their red-iron beams into the sky like the bloody ribs of a dead and decaying animal carcass, giant yellow cranes greater than the buildings they were creating towered far above yet still wound slowly under the invisible stars from day, a thin grey smog held aloft into the city's atmosphere in lingering haze, shaped and lights and colors could be seen all alive shifting endlessly throughout the buildings and streets like ants atop their mound.  The place looked alot better in the brochure.

The bus reached the foot of the mountain and stopped upon the brink outskirts of the city, parking under the overhang of an old, dilapidated bus station.  When I got off my seat I heard a piece of hard something fall onto the floor near me.  I looked down to see that it was Shining Armor's little electric fan he lent to me.  I quickly opened my suitcase, put the fan inside, closed it, picked up the case and began to walk out of the seat rows.  When I stepped off the bus I looked around to see if I could find the kid so I could give him his fan back, but I couldn't see him at all and so I decided to just keep it for a little while.

I decided to take the subway train to avoid having to fly in the heat.  I took a tunnel lurking down into the pavement, bought a ticket from a ticket box, and waited five minutes at the transit platform standing around a crowd of hot and unhappy ponies destined to the same train as I.  When the train arrived the passengers inside filtered out the opposite side of the cars before the doors opened to the oncoming riders.  I entered in, found a seat, and tried to relax.  The interior of the passenger car was nasty and uncleaned, and best left up to the imagination's eye to reek in it's filthy havoc as I tell this old story.

After the train took off I was amazed at the silence in the room.  Nobody spoke, and it seemed that nobody breathed either.  Some passengers read newspapers, others listened to music bulked within their earbuds, but most just stayed quite while they looked echolessly about the car.  Some passengers stood on the floor, others sat on the seats.  It was if I was amongst dead souls in that train, waiting for a spark of light to burn them into their next heartbeat.  I quietly stood up and in a loud voice spoke, and even to the smallest ounce of life within me I filtered into their silent heads.

"'As the dust hit the ground.'  A poem by Louwrie Deptick."

And then the dust did hit the ground as all the eyes within the room caught fire onto me, even those who deafened themselves to their music unplugged to hear me next.   I breathed in a heavy breath...

" What blades of grass unburnt by will of flame and heart touched me not,

for the wind was by my side as I watched my cabin erupt on flowers of red brighter than any rose,

I watched as my home burnt to the earth and below the earth was shaken,

for the deed that had been done by mine own heed in the night.

I saw the cinders tie up to the heavens as the gusts saw fit to be,

and I saw the cinders fly upon the forest trees to which then flame caught greater,

then from the forest then to the town made of oak and cedar and leaves,

into that town sparked up a sun brighter than all day, and eighty lives took leave.

I stood amoungst the unburnt grass, watching my windows shatter,

before then the door was locked and I couldn't get out, and there I stayed within with thee,

beloved now escaped by my last breath I watched as you were freed with me,

and so we stand together in our last, before I crawl and you soar,

for I burnt our home with our bodies inside, for I burnt the forest which yielded her trees, for I burnt the innocents and the town, and now I shall burn untold as the dust hits the ground."

The tongues within car stayed silent.  Unable to understand exactly what had happened, and therefore didn't know how to react.  The poem is actually quite a famous three stanza'd piece that depicts an actual event that had taken place long before the long before, by the perspective of a freshly dead and guilty soul.  A married couple once lived in a cabin on the outskirts of a forest which had a town not far away and within.  Somehow a fire started within the cabin and both the husband and the wife died inside the inferno because they couldn't escape from within their home.  The flame spread to the forest, and then engulfed the town killing an estimated eighty individuals.  Louwrie Deptick wrote the poem as a sick mind, giving the reason of the fire and deaths to the husband who set his home aflame to kill himself and his wife, and was dragged to damnation as the poem plays out to the end.  Nobody knows if the husband really started the fire, and so the truth will always be hidden like a skull in the rock.

I looked around to the faces of the other passengers.  Theirs mouths were loose but still, their eyes sweltered in thought, and their movements were slow.  Then an old stallion started clapping in applause, which caught on drifting throughout the cabin in an easy uproar.

In triumph I had broken the silence.

When the train stopped and I came into the city, I walked up the subway stairs and found that somehow it had started raining while I traveled underground.  The city was all and wet concrete.  The drenched grey-paved roads reflected the lights of every light ignited above them, and the glass of the building windows dripped with hissing raindrops.  I drifted my eyes around the street corners and found myself lost.  I spotted a Unicorn mare with an purple umbrella hovering above her not far from the subway entrance.  I trotted to her, dropped my suitcase to the ground, and asked where The Peaksea hotel was, to which she gave me directions.  Shortly after I began walking through the crying city I was even more lost than before, that was until I had found the ice rink.