...Long Lived Sonata Dusk
There was nothing like a giant glowy unicorn and a blast of rainbow to the face to put your life in perspective.
Sonata was over tacos. She wasn’t a kid anymore. You had to grow up at some point in your millennia-long life, didn’t you?
“Hurt…ponies.”
“Some, yes.”
They had been kind about it. Almost too kind. Sonata expected, even wanted them to rage, to scream, to blame her. Instead Sunset Shimmer had squeezed her shoulders, with a been there done that look on her face, and mentioned that if she spent some time around them she’d probably learn a friendship lesson or two.
Adagio was crushed. Aria was coping the way she always did, by being nasty and closed-off.
Sonata went hiking. She would take a bus out to a road that went up the mountain. She walked alongside it, carrying snacks and water. The cold air hurt her lungs and stimulated her mind. She needed both.
It was on one such hike that Sonata stopped to rest on the grass overlooking the slope down into the trees. It was a foggy day, and wet, so the fog was a mist. It made the trees below look like an impressionist painting, brown and red and green blurring together. It also made Sonata’s butt damp.
Sonata was disappointed to hear the roar of a car’s engine coming up. She was surprised to hear it stop. When she heard the door open, she quickly got to her feet, apprehensive.
It was an ugly black van, worn and old. And the guy who heaved himself out of it didn’t look much better. He was overweight, with acne, not because he was young—he definitely wasn’t—but because his face was unwashed. There was a patchy beard on his chin, a chin his neck was doing its best to absorb, and he wore a turtleneck with cargo shorts and sandals. With a too-small trilby hat completing the ensemble, it was one of the weirdest sights Sonata had ever seen.
“Uh, hey, uh, hold on,” he said, taking a deep breath. Just getting out of the car and he was breathing heavily. How out of shape was he?
“I was about to get moving,” Sonata said. “My boyfriend is waiting for me just up ahead.”
“You’re lying,” he said. He had his breath back, but he still still wheezed a little. Did he always sound like that? “Don’t lie. Come on, just get in the van already. Time’s up, we have to do this now.”
“Go away or I’ll scream.”
He shook his head.
“If I scream you’ll have to do whatever I say—"
“No, no no,” he said. He turned his head to scratch the back of his neck. She realized he had a ponytail, a short one. It looked like a small, tailless rat on the back of his head.
“Look, I know all about you. You’re Sonata Dusk. You’re a Siren from Equestria, and you were banished by Star Swirl the Bearded to live here. The Elements of Harmony were used to break your power, and you’ve come out here ever week lately to climb the mountain and think.”
“You creep, you stalker, I’m going to scream, and then I’ll call the police, and then I’ll scream at them too and then you’ll really be in trouble.”
“Call them. It’s my job to know things about you. I’m Death. I think you know I’m telling the truth.”
Sonata realized her fists were clenched. Now they were trembling. “I thought I was immortal.”
“No.”
“So…so what is this? You’re going to cut my soul out with a scythe? Going to show me all the most important moments of my life?”
“I’m, uh, asking you to join me in this van.”
“And you already know everything about me?”
“No, no. I get a file when your card comes up. I just read as much of it as I can—can—can read.” He sighed and rubbed at his face. He looked so tired. “You learn a lot about people. Are you coming?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes.”
Sonata got in the van. It was dirty, strewn with receipts, food bags, and empty cans of energy drinks and sodas. She tried not to touch anything as she slid over. She tried not to inhale either. It smelled like they had burned something inside the car. Death got in after her.
“Sorry about the mess,” he grunted. “Put on your seat belt.”
She did. He didn’t, leaning back instead and rubbing his eyes. “Let’s go.”
Their driver was a skinny man with a white tee shirt and white driving gloves, and his hair looked like it had been sprayed white years ago for an amateur theater production and he had never bothered to wash it out. He turned his head to look at them. When he did, Sonata saw that his pupils were unusually constricted. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, though, and his nose was runny. There were scabs on his arms, and they drooped as if they were almost too heavy to hold up. Sonata tried to shrink back into the seat away from him.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Buckle in, miss.”
“I am.” Sonata pointed to the seatbelt strapped around her waist.
The driver nodded, turned back, started the car. He buckled his seatbelt. They began to move.
“I was imagining a skeletal steed,” Sonata said.
“That’s Binks,” Death said, gesturing at the driver's seat. “He comes with the…the package.” He looked ill up close, like how Sonata felt she must look before a performance but a thousand times worse. Sonata almost wanted to ask him what was wrong.
For a while the van continued rockily over the path. Sonata felt every bump, and the van clattered and clanked like it was about to fall apart. Death seemed content to look out the window, his fat hands on his knees. It seemed like he was being careful to keep his hands from touching. His fingers looked like grubby worms. Sonata turned away. The fog was growing heavier. Condensation formed on the windows, and it was getting harder to see.
Finally Death sighed and straightened up. He looked at her. Sonata leaned away.
“You’re very brave,” he said.
“Just stupid, I think.”
“No, no. Really, I’m very impressed by you.”
“I have a good file, huh?”
He shook his head, not in disagreement, Sonata thought. “I just mean that…it takes courage, doing what you did.”
“Getting in a van with a stranger who says he’s Death? Brainwashing an entire school with my siren powers and trying to seize the magic of friendship by force?”
“Being kicked out of Equestria and living as a human in an alien world.”
“I did have my magic. And my….” She couldn’t call them friends, could she? “My immortality.”
“No such thing,” he said.
“Okay.”
His voice wobbled a little like a boy on a date. “You give me strength.”
“Okay.”
He was silent again for a while. The van went over a bad bump, rocking them. Death exhaled loudly but didn’t say anything. He lifted his hat and wiped at his hair. His hand came away covered in sweat. He wiped that on the seat of the van between them. Sonata grimaced and looked away.
“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” Death said. He sounded so miserable that Sonata looked at him. He was staring at the back of the driver’s seat, an empty, hollow gaze like he was looking a thousand yards into the distance.
“Fuck,” he said.
Sonata needed to change the subject. “It must be neat, being Death. I mean, you get to see lots of different places. Um. Meet people. That sort of thing.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, well, it’s a job. Someone’s gotta do it. That’s what the—the one who passed it on to me said."
"I didn't know Death could die."
"Everyone can. But you can pass it on by touching someone's hand before you—before you croak. It's also how we...take. It's a morbid way to get hired. Well, at least my mom was happy to hear I’ve finally got a career.”
“You told your mom?”
“Yeah, she was the first one I told.”
Sonata nodded. Then her brain caught up with her ears. “Wait, you didn’t—" She stopped. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to have asked. And Aria said she never thought before she opened her mouth.
The continued in silence for a while longer. The fog outside was growing thicker. Sonata could barely see five feet outside.
Death moaned, shocking Sonata out of her trance. She jumped.
“I fucking hate this,” Death said.
“Hate what?” Sonata said, hoping he wouldn’t answer.
“I can’t, I fucking can’t. Binks, stop the fucking car.”
Binks didn’t answer.
“Binks, stop the fucking car!” Death sounded like a wounded dog. He looked like he was about to cry. “Binks, do you hear me? I said stop the fucking car!”
“You said not to stop the car no matter what you said, sir.”
“Fuck!” Death threw himself back violently. The backrest shuddered. His eyes were shut tight in anguish. Before his hands covered his eyes, Sonata thought she saw tears.
For a minute the van continued its slow, painful journey up the mountain. Death’s sad, frightened moans filled the van.
“Is everything all right?” Sonata finally asked in a quiet voice.
“No!” It came out as a cross between a shout and a sob. “No, I can’t fucking do this. This shouldn’t be me. I’m just a fucking kid. I’m twenty-six fucking years old! Binks, stop the fucking car!”
“No, sir.”
Death did sob then.
Another minute passed. They were going faster now, the van jerking up and down with each bump on what Sonata could only assume was the path. Sonata held her hands carefully in her lap and tried not to look at Death, who was shaking and moaning to himself, his face in his arms.
“Is there anything I can do?” Sonata asked very quietly.
To her surprise, he held out a hand. “Hold my hand. Please.”
He sounded so pathetic. Sonata almost did. Then she jerked her hand away, remembering.
“I—I’m sorry, it’s just—“
“No, no.” He pulled his hand back in, covered his face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. That would be the fucking worst. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Don’t tell them what I was like. Please.”
Sonata had no idea what he was talking about. “I won’t. I promise.”
“Almost there, sir,” Binks said. They were going a lot faster now. The car bounced constantly instead of the occasional violent jumps from before.
“Fuck, fuck!”
There were tears on Binks’s face too. Sonata looked away. The fog outside surrounded them completely. She couldn’t see anything through it. It was totally white.
There was a sickening crunch and a loud noise; Sonata was thrown forward; something caught painfully about her waist and pulled her back; her head slammed against the back of the seat. Her vision swam, and for a moment everything was a confused haze.
Then she managed to focus, and she saw Death sprawled on the seat and floor. His head was bleeding, and there was blood on the window by him.
It took Sonata a moment to find her voice. Then she screamed, a ragged cry of terror and shock and refusal.
The door on Death’s side was pulled open; Binks bent over Death’s body, his eyes wide, tears on his cheeks. One of his arms was bent at a gruesome angle. Sonata thought she could see bone poking out before she turned away, fighting nausea.
“Sir, sir, sir,” Binks whispered. Not a whisper, Sonata realized. Just all he could get out.
Sonata unbuckled the seatbelt, fumbled with the handle on the door. She couldn’t get it open. Then it opened. She stumbled out, fell in the mud. The stem of a leaf stabbed her hand. She made it to her feet, leaning on the van, and saw through the fading mist how the front of it was warped around the trunk of a tree.
She joined Binks on the other side of the van, looking down at Death. She saw how he had fallen so that his one hand rested on top of the other. Binks was on his knees, no longer able to hold back from crying. It took Sonata a while to understand. When she did, she touched Binks’s shoulder. She squeezed it.
“You’re a very good friend.” It was all she could think to say.
Sonata left. She walked blindly until her legs gave out. She collapsed in the mud, fumbled for the food and water she had in her pack. She lost a mouthful of water when her whole body convulsed, from nausea or tears she couldn’t say. It was all mixed up. Finally she was able to get something down. She wiped her eyes and remembered her promise.
