Chapters * * *
It's snowing today, and I'm standing on the transit platform just before the railways, waiting for my train to arrive.
The canopy of the pasted air is a frozen blue; the dark grey overcast in the atmosphere shrouded in looming billows of clouds peaking high above the train station. Snowflakes fluttered and hung spinning and dancing with the hymn of ice and sloth gripping the complacency of every single living and nonliving thing around me.
Wherever the frozen tuffs of chilled rain touched my barren skin they melted with the heat of my body, and sucked out any warmth with the chill of the frozen air.
The heaving bellow of the northern winds blew loudly above the world yet only placed it's feet upon the ground as a soft breeze whisking lusciously dry.
The platform was crowding slowly with ponies hidden in the steam-fogged scope. Most of them were traveling back home from the holiday season, and with them a cacophony of chattering voices grew alongside the parking rush of breathing trains and rapturous bells, of yelling trains-men and screeching metalwork that ignited sparks blazing with color into the cold's hardened shroud.
Somewhere amongst the noise and mist there was a violin playing a muted symphony of aged cords and cannibal rhymes eating each other after each note died in the slew of time.
Kids wearing heavy jackets and scarves and boots ran around playing in the gathering snow.
Their parents sipped on coffee and chatted with other parents while they watched their kids laughing and squealing as they threw small snowballs at each other.
One clumsy brown-maned kid ran headfirst into a station number pole, and I'm pretty sure he knocked himself out because he hadn't gotten up for like, five minutes before his folks took him to the infirmary, or some place like it back in the station building.
I'm pretty sure he'll be okay; sixty percent sure. He'll either wake up in the next few minutes with a bad concussion, or he might have inflicted on himself a deadly case of comatose and won't wake up until fifty years later from this day. Either way I'm still sixty percent sure that he's okay.
A few trains stood quietly around the edges of the second, third, and forth transit platforms across from my own I stood on, transit platform A.
The passenger cars of the trains were filling and falling with commuters sifting like sand grabbed by the waves of a blotched sea.
Their coal engines bloomed slumbering black smoke out of their lunged stacks pillared atop of their backs, and behind the windows of the passenger cars lights spilled in dazzling gold illuminated like luxury wrapped in polished wood and hard angled, big-bucked industry.
I gazed a watch to some ponies inside the cars across the railways in front of me.
There was a stallion with red hair, his face pressed up against the glass. He was sleeping, and rather handsome, but the drool drooping out of his open mouth was less attractive. At least in my taste.
I bet to myself that he was a musician; a guitarist in some underground beggar's band playing music nobody could really understand because of how the lyrics in their songs had literally no comprehensible sense, but sounded good anyways on record. His band would never take off though, and he would end up becoming some banker in a small town.
Then I saw a young kid in a purple hoodie. She was around fourteen years old maybe, slouching into the window behind the glass of the next car set behind the guitarist.
What stood out most about her was her beautiful eyes; a ghastly brown-hazel lick with only a slight hint of something stranger, an incoherent, desperate blue. She was looking up into the silver sky counting the snowflakes that hit her window, but really I think she was madly bored and just staring at anything she could've absentmindedly.
She was a ballerina at heart, soul, body, and mind. When she grows up she's going to be the mare who spoke 'perfect' out of every movement of her body and displayed them to an audience of the rich and godly.
People are gonna love her for her grace and her heart and how she danced like a slow flame of kindling fire, but hate her for who she's become though unchanged.
She's gonna end up wildly and uncontrollably hurt, dead, and alone in a street in some city she once called her kingdom. With a bottle of poisoned champagne that's been drunk to the bottom and broken in stars shattered besides her wallowed corpse, and eventually nobody will remember her.
A young couple, a brown mare and a yellow stallion, laid in their seats folded into one another like two letters wrapped in an envelope set in the far corner of the same car the pretty-eyed ballerina was. They're getting married next year, I could feel it. They met five summers ago in Drawstreet, Manehattan during a concert at Central Park. He moved to her town the very day after the concert ended just to be with her, leaving behind everything he had ever known his entire life, and he would never once regret it for as long as he lived.
She could tell what he was thinking as easily as spotting his shadow in the corner of her eye. Every night after their marriage they'd make love but they'd somehow never conceive a baby, and every summer morning they'd have tea on the roof of their house to be the first to see daylight, even when it would rain.
I broke my gaze from them after a few minutes, staring then at the train rails five feet below the platform.
The snow covered the rugged gravel around the rowed train tracks but somehow melted when it touched the actual rails.
It looked as though the icing ground had been wounded and had to be stitched up with iron and wood.
I lifted my half empty cup of hot chocolate in my right hoof to my lips and sipped on the hot silk that drained down my piercing throat.
I couldn't really think about the taste, it was too cold out for me to really enjoy it, but at least my stomach wasn't freezing over.
In essence, I was warm enough that I could enjoy where I was, but chilled enough to almost rather be inside someplace warmer.
My body was draped under a black leisure coat that went all the way down to a few inches above my hooves booted in black. I had my green beanie hat on and a white cotton scarf wrapped loosely under the collar of my coat.
Hung across my right shoulder and over my neck was my leather duffel bag, filled with only just a few things. A book, my ticket, and a small purse of bits.
I glanced over to a large clock mounted above the immense glass doors of the tall, aged, red-brick building behind me.
My train leaves at 6 in the afternoon, but it was only 4:55 now.
Perhaps it was a better Idea to wait inside for the next hour, but the snow was beautiful and honestly I like to watch the stuff float around and fall.
The ponies around me were more interesting to pay attention to though.
They were all unwritten books full of unwritten pages, but they were also books I couldn't read without talking to, and even if I tried I couldn't talk to them all. So I imagine things about them instead.
All these colts and mares, whether they were young or old, were lives filled with memories and futures and pasts. They're full of loves and lusts, full of lights and new existences, full of things both sorrowful and joyous that I didn't know about, and that made me feel so small and so amazed at the same time.
I only have to see them from afar, and dream their lives in my head, like spotting islands in the distance of a blank and suffering ocean.
There's a psychological word for my little hobby; to stare and observe, and wonder and create things about other people's lives, but I can never remember what the heck the word was.
The cold eventually started getting to me after awhile, and I was beginning to get absolutely fed up with it. I hung around my platform, walking and watching and imagining. Eventually I wised up enough to walk back inside the station building.
I took a look at the clock again as I neared the door.
5:23 P.M.
My train was still not here.
I opened the tall glass by the handle and sauntered inside with snow still thinly caking my back and hanging loosely on strands of my rose hair. I shook off what I could and took a look around.
The interior of the station building was magnificent, and it's air breathed comforting warmth to the frozen from the outside.
Colossal columns sprung from the polished marble floors and stretched growing like trees into the grandiose ceiling.
Golden chandeliers of electric lights dangled aloft and aflame far above my head, tacked in gold to the plaster top.
The ceiling was stilted high, and serenely painted with images of folk lore and famous events.
I picked out one by one the stories I could recognize.
The Banishing,
The forgotten mare,
The fall of the Discordian era,
Lunar return,
The becoming of Princess Twilight,
The Leviathan's maze,
and the last few I couldn't recognize, so I decided to ignored them.
I glanced to the higher of the north wall, and there was a grand stained-glass window depicting the second fall of King Sombra, with a little purple and green dragon holding a shining crystal heart above his head.
Above the main entrance doors standing in the south end of the building, the words 'The Storybook Station' were embalmed in stunning bronze on the marble wall.
Among the gleaming walls, carved vines of green and yellow flowed and enveloped the whole of the station in elapsing patterns, and with the vines, resting on the leaves and the stems were birds, fairies, twig elves, and pixie bears, with many other assorted characters masterfully illustrated eternally into the flesh of the marble.
This building was the spawn of someone with a great imagination, I'll give 'em that.
I surveyed amongst the waiting clumps of crowds and benches looking for the phone boxes. I saw them next to the ticket counters and I trotted towards them, dumping my now empty paper drinking cup away in a trash bin.
I passed next to a large column on my way and slowed my pace. I touched my left hoof to the stature and slowly moved forward, admiring the twine callous hidden in the marble.
The sounds around me sank.
The feel of the absent texture riding sulkily under my hoof had, to me, stopped time itself. I had halted the movement of the arm of a clock-face filtered by the death wound of the universe.
I breathed out longingly, but not within the world. Now I was the only one who could hear myself.
Then I placed my hoof down and started walking normally again towards the phone booths, passing by stranger after stranger.
Nothing had happened.
I stepped into a phone box and closed the door behind me. The cacophony of the station became muffled behind the clear Plexiglas I encased myself in. I opened my duffel bag and fished out a few bits from my purse, then I picked up the phone and pinched it between my shoulder and my head. I slid the bits into the coin slot, grabbed a pen hanging attached by a ball-cord from the receiver box, and I picked at the number dials.
6-5-9-9-3 2-4 1-1-5-8-0-9
I dropped the pen and held up the phone to the right side on my head.
It rang a droning static bell for a few seconds before there was a click on the other end, and a familiar mellow voice lulled softly into my ear.
"Hello?"
"Hey!" I responded.
"Roseluck? Is that you?"
"Yeah, I'm still at the station in Haysville. My train hasn't arrived yet so I just thought I'd call in and see if you survived the holidays."
I heard a laugh on the other end of the line that felt as if it shot melting splinters thickly into the side of my echoing skull.
He had barely said anything to me over the phone and in three seconds of that laughter he had given me everything I'd ever've needed to hear in my entire life.
"Yeah, I survived another year Rosey. How was Hearth's Warming slash New Years with your folks?"
"It was good! Dad just slept on his couch. I helped out mom with most of the work; cooking, decorating, all that jazz. My brother's doing fine I suppose, although college isn't really liking him as much as he thought it would've, but yeah my family's doing great! They also told me to tell you happy Hearth's Warming and New Years by the way."
"Likewise."
"Hmm. So, you open your present yet?"
"Nah, I'm waiting for you to get back home so I can open it with you."
"Heh, you loser." I scoffed gently.
"I'm still the loser you fell in love with, and hey, if your gonna give me that 'tude' I guess I'll just open your gift now."
"Open that present before I get home and we'll see how much I love you then, honey."
...
We talked for a good maybe ten minutes, he and I.
Then, inevitably, minutes started to fall fast, and soon enough I was about to run out of time for the call.
A loud bell chanted once from the teleprompter outside the phone box.
"Up, hold on..." I said, stopping our conversation abruptly.
I opened the phone box's door and poked my head back into the station to get a better hear of the announcement.
A mares voice showered the station like sultry rain breaching from the ceiling.
"Train heading eastward, train heading eastward has arrived at transit platform A.
The train will be leaving for Marilytown, Canterlot, Ponyville, and ending at Shire Hill in twenty minutes.
All those who are to board for any of these destinations must now make their way to transit platform A.
Thank you."
I glanced around for a clock and found one attached by screws to a column.
5:41 p.m.
I closed the phone box door.
"I gotta go, my train just arrived."
"Yeah okay, meet you at the station back in Ponyville."
"Okay." I replied.
There was a short silence...
then I said, "I love you."
I could hear his freakin' smirk from halfway across the country.
He said, "I love you too."
A little bump kicked in my neck as I listened to his lapsed voice, and I broke into a sweet, quite smile.
"Bye."
"Goodbye."
click
***
"Tickets please."
A young mare and her kid gave their tickets to the conductor sitting on a stool. The older, salt and pepper bearded stallion took the tickets and held them tightly in his hooves, then he took out a hole-puncher out of his vest pocket, and held it with experience in his jaw as he clipped a hole in both the tickets. He gently put the tool back in his pocket and smiled as he said, "Enjoy the ride." giving the slips of paper back to the couple.
The two shuffled right and entered the train car together, escaping with them the freezing wind that had significantly picked up while I was inside the station.
I was shivering badly. I hate shivering.
I cautiously stepped up to the conductor who sat patiently on his wooden seat next to the back entrance door of the train car.
The concrete of the transit platform sunk behind and under me to be amoungst the stifling flurries of falling snow.
"Ticket please, m'am."
I glanced at the colt before me. He was only wearing his red conductor's vest and yet he barely seemed to notice the cold he was drowning in.
I flashed a quivering smile, with only a slight touch of envy.
"Of course." I replied.
I shakily brought my head to my duffel bag and opened it. I stuck my nose inside and shifted around for my ticket. Once I found it I clenched it between my clattering teeth and pulled it out, but I didn't bite down as hard as I thought I did.
As the paper slip reached the air around my lips the wind took the ticket within it's gusts and flew it back towards the platform and into the line of ponies behind me.
"OH NO!"
A few of the ponies tried to grab at the ticket, but they missed and let it fly away above them. Then the slip passed the crowd and fell low to the platform floor, swimming amoungst the flurrying snow.
I panicked and hopped back onto the car steps, cutting backwards into the line.
"Excuse me, Sorry! Excuse me!"
I jumped back onto the platform and dashed towards the ticket rushing low within the tuffs of breeze. I was bumping and yelling past strangers as I hurried by them.
"Sorry! Sorry! MY TICKET! Excuse me. HEY!"
The ticket flew faster and started to get farther and farther away from me, rushing down to the tail of my eastbound train.
As I escaped the crowd of the massed line of travelers I bee-lined towards the wind that had stolen my one way back to Ponyville, and still in my galloping stride to get closer my ticket flew still feet away from me.
When I had finally gotten close the gust took it upward, and taller than I could reach. I slowed down, knowing that it was lost now.
I huffed in defeated sighs and groaned,
"No..."
I watched it fly upwards. Five feet, six feet, seven feet, eight feet, THWIP!!!
A stick quickly swiped the ticket down and pinned it in a pile of snow. I stopped in sudden pause, staring at the pink paper slip now bent in half under what was actually a violin or a cello bow.
A gentle hoof went down and stepped on my ticket. An old head bent down, and in a timid jaw he grabbed the bow.
A small elderly colt, a light gray Pegasus even smaller than I was stood before me. His hair was an azure white from wounded age and distant color, and his limbs were strung like the twine of willow trees. His wings were brittle by the bone, and you could see his flattered skin lapse thinly under his unkempt feathers that grew out of place in spiderwebs of crazed tuffs.
I looked at his face. His frail jawline held a quaint smile between the instrument bow, and a pair of dark green eyes stared down at the ticket.
Then he looked to me, holding his smile. His face was wrinkled, and it was wrinkled in the way in which one had been smiling on for decades. That was the best kind of wrinkled face, one that made someone look happy all the time.
He tucked the bow into a tan saddle bag he wore on his right side and cleared his throat.
"Is this yours?" He asked in a chilled, croaking voice. Referring to the ticket pinched in the snow under his hoof.
"Yes." I quietly replied.
"Hmph."
He looked down at the slip dryly, then turned back to me.
"I suppose you need it back then, huh?"
I just simply nodded my head.
"Humph..phmh... Okay then."
The old colt gingerly bent down and bit the ticket. He lifted his head back up and then did something I wasn't quite expecting.
Instead of plainly walking to me, he hobbled. He lifted his left, back leg up and sharply and slowly hopped towards me.
I looked at him for a few seconds as he feebly made his way closer to me.
In sudden realization I hurriedly trotted to him, still somewhat fiercely shivering. When we met close I took my ticket from him, making an effort to hold a tighter grip in my bite.
"Thanksyew" I squeaked, muzzled through my closed teeth.
"It's no problem, dear." He said.
I found myself then glancing him over again and found that he wasn't wearing any coat, or shoes, or scarf or hat. He was practically naked in the freezing cold!
I crooked my head to my bag and stashed my ticket back inside, then turned to him and asked, "Aren't you cold at all, sir?"
"Hmm?"
"Cold, aren't you cold? You're not wearing anything to keep you warm and it's like ten degrees out here."
"Oh," Then he lifted his hoof to his mouth and cleared his throat, "My dear if you've been to the places I've been, and seen the things I've seen, a little cold weather and snow is simply like a pebble at the foot of the tallest of mountains in comparison."
A rough gust of wind blew on top of us, and with it a yelping howl came with it as it flowed crashing into the soundless ground.
I winced as it passed through through my jacket and into my skin, sinking poisonously into my bones, but he, the old Pegasus, stood his ground unshaken.
I heard him as he laughed softly before he asked, "What is your name, my dear?"
I looked to his face. The curves and billowing skin wrapping loosely around his eyes looked as if they had been painted gently onto the caverns of his skull. His irises, the color of a deep evergreen soul, lighted in reflected white by an electric bulb above us, gripped tightly my attention as he saw me staring scarce in my words.
"Roseluck." I answered.
"Roseluck," he repeated, "Do you happen to know where the train to Shire Hill is?"
"Yeah, that's the same train I'm taking. It's right next to us."
I pointed my hoof to the train to the right, still filled with golden light and filling more with frosted passengers.
"Ah, wonderful."
The old stallion shuttered his wings and his shoulders.
"Well I certainly hope you enjoy your ride back to wherever you're going, my dear."
"Likewise, sir."
He started hobbling past and away from me, and I just stood still. Soon enough as he made his way farther from me, he became a silhouette wrapped in the falling snow, the shadows of the overcast sky of grey, and the heavy steam of taming water spewing from the heat of the train.
"Have a good evening!" I heard him roughly shout.
"You too."
I sat alone and wedged between the comfort of the leather-skin bench and the stone of the car-room window which spoke between me and the winded snow outside. The door to the room was shut and I was alone and away from the clamor of the passengers in the hallway, but I could still see their shadows pass by the tinted window of the door which separated us. The walls which stood quietly around me were plied with red wallpaper and lit by a low golden set of four light bulbs burning on each end of the room's corners. It was numbly warm inside the passenger car and I was starting to get drowsy within the hum of the heat escaping the ceiling vent, and the mumbling of the walled voices coming from outside my room. I didn't have much to do now before the train departed, so I just began to think. I closed my eyes and lost myself in thought and echoed breath as I ghostly felt the snowflakes melt my skin through the window.
I decided that I could afford to lose track of time, and I softly fell asleep.
***
By the time I had woken up the train had probably been moving for maybe a little over an hour. I could see vast rolling hills of white outside my window that looked as if it was an ocean of icy land under a light violet haze of a still clouded overcast sky above. We had left behind Haysville and the falling snow long ago now. My eyes were stained in drunken daze and my shoulder ached in strain from sleeping on it for too long. The next thing I noticed was that I was still alone, which wasn't all that bad.
I sat up, stretched my shoulder, yawned, and started to rub my face. Then I noticed something sitting on the opposite bench. A tan bag that looked familiar, but escaped my memory in persistence.
"So, someone else is here." I mumbled under my scratched breath, "Whoever it is'll probably be back soon."
From under my bench I dragged out my saddle bag and plopped it down next to me. I opened it, took out my book, stuffed my bag back under my seat, and in the dim light of the room and the shine of the old evening I began to read, but the satchel laid on the bench across the room failed to escape both my eye and my mind. Between text and curiosity I filled myself. I incessantly felt an itch in the back of my mind that seemed careless to any action of wrong or right, and only a minute had passed. I wanted to know what was inside that tan bag. I put down my book on the bench and carefully walked to the door. I cracked it open and looked outside, glancing both to the left and the right of the train car's near-lightless hall finding it empty. I slid the door shut and locked it's latch, giving me a fail-safe if the other passenger returned anytime soon. I turned to the strange bag, for the first time feeling the rocking of the moving train sway me in my stance.
Suddenly I felt a vexed heat filtering under my skin; excitement mixed with a sense of harsh mischief and conscious stupidity. In the past I had gone through other people's bags before when they weren't looking, and by death and Heaven above it's a rapture of a high. The same high now brewing stone toxic in my sleeping stomach.
I trotted to the bag and flipped it open from the flapped top, and the first thing I heard was the clinking of glass. I peered inside, firstly finding five small bottles of some type of medicine. I reached in and picked one out, then read it's label.
Insulin
"Diabetic." I said to myself. I put the bottle back inside the bag and fished out a few medical syringes. I dropped one syringe back in and unscrewed the orange cap off the one I kept, exposing the needle and a faintly sterile chemical smell. I wryly smiled as a sick idea came into my head. I held the syringe in my right hoof and started playfully poking my left arm without impaling my skin. With each poke I muttered, "Boop, boop, boop!" Then I quietly chuckled to myself, feeling rather uneasily entertained.
I recapped the syringe and tossed it back into the bag, starting to fish inside it again for more content. I pulled out a wallet, but quickly put it back. The wallet was bound to have some sort of photo I.D. in it and I wanted whosoever bag this was to be a secret to me until whomever it was came back. I fished some more, then pulled out a small cardboard container of jellybeans. I opened the top, ate two, then closed it and put it back in the bag. I shuffled the items around, hoping to see anything else. Then, I tapped my hoof on something square and hard. I took it out and found it was a small, flat wooden box with two tiny hinges on one side. It was a photograph keeper. At first I wanted to put it back because of the possibility that I might see the owner of the bag in a photo inside, but there was something so simply strange about the object, as if whatever was inside was darkly beckoning to be seen. I stood there for what felt like the longest time just contemplating whether or not I should open the keeper.
The high was set in strong and my heart and mind both raced in speed outrageous. My body was starting to shake unceasingly in my excitement. I wanted to open the box, I needed to open the box. Whoever left the bag here on this bench put it here for me to find this photograph keeper and see whatever was inside. I made my move to unhinge the...
CLICKA- Tch...
Somebody tried to open the door. I quickly put the photograph keeper back inside the bag and folded the bag closed.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
"Just a minute!" I calmly yelled as I walked to the door. I took a look back to the tan bag before I unhinged the door, my blood still pounding through my howling skin, making me feel sick. I slid the door aside, finding myself faced with a kind old smile and a pair of lucid green eyes.
He stood straight and tired in the hallway, amongst the sunset lights lit by the bulbs on the higher wall.
"Hello there." The old stallion said.
"Hi." I responded.
For a moment we were silent. He stared at me, then down the hall, then back to me asking, "May I come in?"
I stepped back and he walked in, still in his stumbling gait. Then he said, "It's a beautiful afternoon, eh?"
I looked out the window to the dim and clouded sunlight outside the train car, then asked, "What time is it?"
"About eight o' clock, my dear. Before you know it it'll be nine and night will have come again."
I shut the door and gave the old stallion a smile, even though his back was turned behind me as he encountered his bench.
"Do you remember me?" I asked.
The old Pegasus took his bag and slide it to the side of his bench, then from under his wings he dropped a small violin and a bow next to the bag.
He carefully climbed up onto the leather cushion, laid down, and he exhaled loudly, "Roseluck, I remember. Is that right?"
My smile caught his eye, and I could see a smile coming back to me, "Yeah, but I didn't catch your name when we were at the transit. What is it?"
"Meelo. My name is Meelo, but you can call me Gramps. That's what kids call me anyways whenever they see me."
"Your own kids?" I asked.
"No. No..." He responded quite slowly, "Never had any kids of my own, it's just what kids call me."
"Ah... Well it's nice to see you again though."
"Likewise my dear, likewise." And as he said those words he looked out the window and lazily stared out into the early dark.
I walked back to my seat and laid down, resting my head on the armrest. I took a long breath and asked, "How was your day?"
But Meelo didn't respond, I didn't think he heard me. Then for some reason somewhere in the gates of my mind, I decided to stay silent. For a long time we didn't say anything. He stared out the window and I blindly at his bag, careful that he didn't catch my sight. I thought about starting up a conversation but it didn't look like he was in the mood to talk, and we still had several hours ahead of us before my stop came up to Ponyville. It was about forty minutes though before he broke our silence.
"I had a pretty good day."
At first I didn't realize that he was responding to my question I asked so much time ago, but I oddly caught on when he spoke.
"You thought about that for a long time."
"No, I was just caught up in another thought that came to my mind first. Something raining darkly over in Shire Hill."
"That's where you're going to, yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah." He responded.
"Must be pretty darn big for you to want to think about it for forty minutes before answering my question."
"What question?"
He was serious when he said it, and I didn't know what to say. So all I said again was, "How was your day?"
"Oh, it was fine. Thanks for asking."
The first thought that came to my mind then was that Gramps was both a diabetic and delusional. Which of course isn't a great concoction. What on Earth was he doing out in the real world when he was better fit in a retirement home?
"That's good to hear, sir." I lifted my head up, "You feeling alright?"
"Oh yeah, I'm feeling fine. Don't worry about me dear. How are you?"
"Not bad."
Meelo gave a grunt and went back to looking out the window. The night sky lay above the sheet of covered clouds, leaving not a single star to be seen.
"What's in Shire Hill?" I asked.
Meelo looked down, and I could almost hint at some sort of sadness hidden under his gentle old eyes.
"I'm visiting an old friend I once knew a long time ago in that city. We were lovers when we were young, but now we're both gone and alone."
Then silence like Hell it came, and my trap was shut.
He continued on, "We haven't talked in over fifty years, me and her. I always thought about coming back to see her in all those years I've been away, but I could never bring myself to do so. Now I'm old and just as stupid, only wiser to have finally returned before I died."
"You're dying?" I asked dumbly.
Meelo turned to look at me, and on his face he bore a sugared smile.
"We're all dying my dear, but dying isn't as bad as people think. Death is just like a kiss that waits to be caught at the right time, but you mustn't catch it without knowing love first."
Then I tied my tongue, loosening it a few seconds later to say, "So did you really love her then? The woman in Shire Hill?"
Meelo longingly sighed and closed his tired eyes in a look of deep regret, "Not the way I was suppose to."
I didn't know what overtook me to press on, but without thinking I asked, "What happened?"
And then for some reason he told me...
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.
I stuck close to the spine of the sidewalk as I marched through the city. The arrow rain was falling fast, pelting me a hundred times a second, but I didn't mind. One of the reasons I wanted to move to this city was to be close to the rain and snow, which comes frequently throughout the year here. Looking up, the cranes and skyscrapers to their tops were unseen and engulfed through the overcast above, which threw upon the ground a grey light from the sun churning far out in outer space.
I passed by many shops and restaurants on my way, and looked by many interesting ponies in the rain. None of them could seem to help me though to find the Peaksea. Then I came upon a large dome of a building, and hoisted high on a billboard pole was the sign, 'Shire Hill Ice Rink'.
I stopped and stared at the building for awhile, wondering if I could buy some coffee or something else warm and watch whoever was ice skating glide. To be honest the rain I drenched myself in was making me yearn to be dry, but an ice rick was not the smartest place to be in when you're soaking wet. I went in anyways.
I walked up to the large glass doors, pushed one of them open, and walked inside. As I closed the door the first thing that hit me was the warmth abounding inside the large, green-carpeted lobby, and then the surreal sense of being in a foreign place.
To the far left of the lobby was a confectionery shop that was thankfully open. I bought some black coffee and a pretzel from the lanky teenage'd employee and walked up a large flight of stairs set at the back of the lobby that lead to the viewer's box, a dimly lit reach that circled the circumference of the dome unending. Their was a glass wall that was cut from ceiling to floor in the viewer's box that let out into a tall view of the ice rink laid one hundred feet below me. I could see only one skater on the ice. It was then that I noticed that the building was rather empty. The only ponies I had seen in the building so far was the shop kid and the ice skater down below. I didn't mind the loneliness of my surroundings though, it was rather peacefully silent around.
I walked the viewer's box a ways, passing by rows in multitudes of chairs that pyramided up the back wall so that anyone could sit and see a clear view of the rink. I finally found a seat placed only a foot or two away from the glass wall, sat my suit case down to the floor, nestled my coffee cup in a holder carved into the armrest of my chair, and took a bite of my pretzel as I began to watch silently the mare skating on the ice.
She was an Earth pony, thin yet carved in curved grace. Her mane and short cut tail were a browning blond and her coat was a distilled white. She wore a pair of black skates and a baby blue scarf wrapped tightly around her neck. From my height I could see her face as a concentration expressed in stone. She was very beautiful.
I laid my head on the back of my chair and relaxed, watching her skate. She glided on the ice as if she herself was just trying to relax but in her own way.
She moved to the back and to the forth of the rink, first slowly then she picked up her pace as she continued. Going faster and faster she flew atop the white until at a time she touched the middle of the rink she jumped high into the air and spun. I nearly jumped out of my seat as I saw her catch back onto the ice and glide again. I could feel my jaw loosen.
Unexpectedly she lifted up three of her legs to one point of the fourth and twirled at least five times, then released and jumped again, sticking the landing perfectly.
I could feel my lips motion the word, 'wow' but my speech had fallen silent.
I sat in my seat watching the skater fly and twirl and jump and dive as minutes started to decade under hours, and all I could think of was short of what I was seeing.
I watched her, I watched her, I watched her, and she astounded me to no end. About what felt like forty minutes had passed before a strange voice suddenly forked me from behind.
"She's wonderful, isn't she?"
Quickly I turned around, finding an older, grey Earth pony with a salt and pepper mane sitting two rows behind me. He had a five o' clock shadow and a set of tired, brown eyes. In his hooves and close to his mouth he held a white mug of coffee which he sipped on a second or two after he spoke. Afterwards he set his mug in his cup holder and looked at me saying, "You have any idea what time it is?"
"No sir, I don't." I responded.
"Look at your watch." He scoffed, looking again towards the skater below.
I gazed my sight to my wrist, finding that my watch had struck upon 8:24 P.M.
"WHAT!" I exclaimed, "How did it get to be so late? You'd think having a watch wrapped around my damn wrist would help me keep track of time!"
"Yeah, that's usually what their suppose to do, but the catch is that you have to look at them so they can do their job." The old stallion chuckled, "Where are you suppose to be right now, guy?"
I looked back to the skater as she jumped into the air again and spun in her landing, "I was trying to find the Peaksea hotel while I was caught in the rain. I passed by this place and wanted to come in to dry off. I wasn't expecting to overstay my place."
"Is the skater down there also the reason why you got stale coffee and a half eaten pretzel next to ya?"
I looked to my right, finding my coffee completely cold and my pretzel dried out. "aw crap..." I mumbled.
"Heh heh, heh. Would you like to meet the skater down there on the ice?" The older pony asked.
His question caught me off guard and all I could say was, "What?" in response.
"The young mare down there is my daughter, I've come to get her to stop skating for the night before she never leaves the ice again." Then he propped his right hoof out to me, "My name's Darid, I'm the owner of the ice rink. Also I'm the chief figure skating coach around here. All the moves you're seeing my little girl down there cut, she learnt from me."
I reached my own hoof out and shook his, gobsmacked that I was caught here with him.
"Meelo. Nice to meet you."
"Yes it is nice to meet you Meelo." Suddenly Darid stood up, chugged the coffee he had left, and started walking to the lobby stairs.
"You comin'?" He asked.
"Coming where?"
"Already said where, or more correctly to whom. Now get off your back hide and follow me."
I stood up, grabbed my suitcase, and followed Darid down and behind the lobby stair case, then down a second flight of stairs that entered into the lower bleachers under the viewer's box, and we walked down the bleacher steps to a dugout fixed in heavy impact Plexiglas that surrounded the whole of the actual ice rink. He gave a loud whistled when we reached the dugout, and he caught the skaters eye, then he motioned for her to come to him.
I felt a jolt of nausea bite my stomach, and a subtle nervousness then gripped me. I gave into my will to fight through it though so I didn't look like an ass, and I dropped my suitcase to the floor.
The skater swerved into the dugout, sat down on a bench, and began taking off her skates. Darid went up to the Plexiglas and asked, "How long where you here today?"
The mare lifted her head up to see her father, and I could see her eyes then for the first time. They were a dark blue, like the color of a ridden old stone cast into a breaking sea.
"Since three." The skater said shortly.
"Three at this morning or three in the afternoon?" Darid asked.
"The morning."
"Seventeen hours?" I said a little shocked and quite loudly.
Both Darid and the skater looked at me, and I then started to feel a twisted warmth writhing red embarrassment under the skin of my face.
I really shouldn't have said that out of the nowhere. I thought.
"Someone's obviously good at math." Darid jeered.
"Who's your new friend dad?" The mare asked, tying off her fourth skate.
"Says his name is Meelo, he's looking for the Peaksea hotel. Think you can take him to it?"
"What?" I said, unexpectedly confused.
The mare set her skates on the bench and started to walk around to a compartment door that led the dugout into the lower bleachers.
"Yeah sure, I can take him." She rounded the corner of the door and came to meet us face to face.
"I haven't eaten dinner yet though so he's buying at Greenie's."
"Greenie's?" I asked in echoed response.
"Sounds fair," Darid said, "you kids have fun. Don't stay out too late."
"Need to sleep sooner or later dad, I got sweat to heat and ice to cut in the morning."
"Atta' girl." Darid soothed, "See you tomorrow honey. Love ya!"
"See you tomorrow dad. Love ya too."
Then Darid started to walk away, down towards the other end of the ice rink. I tried to say something to him before he got past ten feet from me but I was interrupted by the skater.
"Hey." She said, bumping my shoulder to catch my attention. She raised her right hoof to me and said, "My name's Aisling. It's nice to meet you."
I shook her hoof with a quaff loose smile, looked towards her eyes and said to her, "It's uh... nice to meet you too."
Once we let go of the shake she asked, "Are you ready to go?"
"Go where?" I asked.
"To Greenie's!"
"Where and what is Greenie's?" I asked.
"Best late night restaurant in town! C'mon you'll love it. I haven't eaten since midday and I need ta eat something! I promise I'll take you to the Peaksea right after we eat."
I stood there thinking for a bit, then said, "Alright, I suppose dinner wouldn't hurt." I picked up my suitcase in my maw and motioned Aisling to go ahead of me, but she did something rather unexpected instead.
"Oh, wait here I have something that'll help you hold your suitcase." The white mare then went back into the dugout, and brought out an empty hockey bag. "Here, this way you can put your case in here and it'll be easier for you on the way to Greenie's."
I humored her by strapping the bag around me and putting the suitcase inside. The idea actually had worked out really well, and soon we walked out of the ice rink, into the building lobby, and back out into the city, and it was still raining beautifully.