Warmth of the sunlight

It was the last day of June. In the morning the sky was clear with no clouds in sight. However in the evening it started raining, and I got home soaking wet, which was nothing to me.

I pass by the lake, which was empty at the time. The rain made it dark and hard to see, and the surface of the lake was covered by fog. There were no sound nearby, only rain and water. It was surprisingly cold for a summer day. I stared at the lake. This was the lake which consumed the life of Pinkie’s friend. The though spun around my brain. Although his body was taken away, but could his spirit still hang around here, just like Sunny? I found it necessary to look around here. I couldn’t see ghosts, but maybe kitten can. I thought I should talk to Pinkie about her dead friend, and take kitten here sometimes.

I started walking home. I imagined when I got home there would be dried towels at the door. Sunny would have guessed that I would end up soaking wet, and she might even have prepared some nice hot coffee for me.

This made me feel uneasy somehow. How long will this kind of life last? I thought. Eventually the end will come, and she would have to leave. She would have to go to the place where everypony eventually go. But why was she still here? Was that because she didn’t do so immediately when she died? Or was she worried about kitten being left alone and not taken care of?

According to the police, the murderer was a robber. The criminal was still uncaught, and occasionally the police would come and ask a few questions and leave. Sunny was a happy and nice pony who have a lot of friends, but she didn’t have any relative here. She was simply unlucky to have run into a robber who broke in. Like plan crash or being hit by a lightning, her death was simply an accident.

And there are plenty other sad things like this on the world. Just like Pinkie, I had no way to fight it. We could only stay on our knees and beg the god for kindness, and close our eyes, shut our eyes and curl up in the darkness, waiting for the grim of misfortune to pass.

What can I do for Sunny?

I thought as I walked home and picked up the dry towel at the front gate. After I changed into new dried and cloth, I took a sip of the coffee and felt a serious headache. I caught a cold.

I end up lying on the bed for two days. My conscious was blurry, and my head was so heavy that I thought someone had stuffed my brain with lead. My muscles were also weak like sponges. I became the world’s slowest animal.

The kitten would sometimes jump onto my bed. When I feel the weight from his little feet, my heart would become calm and warm. The kitten had grown so much that I should not call it a kitten any more.

Sunny had been taking care of me. When I woke up, I found a wet towel rolled up and placed over my forehead. On the table next to me there were a glass of warm water and cold medicine.

I didn’t even have strength to stand up, so I lay down and rested. When I was napping, I could hear Sunny’s hoofsteps, the sound of her making soup downstairs, and her hoofsteps coming upstairs together with the jingle of kitten’s bell. Sometimes I could even feel her sitting next to me, looking at me with kindness.

I had a dream in my fever.

Sunny, kitten and I were walking around the lake. The sky was blue and enormous, and the trees in the forest were covering over our head. We were showered in the warm sunlight, leaving three thick shadows behind us. The lake was still and beautiful like a mirror, leaving an exact duplication of the world above. My body felt light, each step makes me feel like I could fly even if I’m just an earth pony.

Sunny had a camera a bit too big for her size hanging around her neck. She flew low on the ground next to me, taking random photos from time to time. I didn’t know what she looks like, I didn’t know her height. But in the dream she had a familiar face, and somehow I knew that she was Sunny. She flew up and down, and hurried me to follow her. She was eager to see the entire world. She was curious of everything, and she had a young heart filled with adventure.

Not too far from us, the kitten was trying to catch up with his little steps. The wind blowing against our mane and kitten’s little musket, and it felt really comfortable.

The sun reflected against the mirror surface of the lake, and it looked as if the lake was filled with gemstone of all kinds.

Then I woke up and realized that I was still inside a dark room. I looked at the clock. It was midnight, and the towel on my forehead had already fallen to the side.

The dream was too beautiful that it made me wanted to cry. If only Sunny was still alive, but that wasn’t what made me sad.

This was a dream that I shouldn’t have had. It was a dream which was simply out of the reach of my hooves in reality. It was filled with sunshine, a place where i do not belong. I sat up in my bed and started crying. My tears fell drop by drop, absorbed by the bed sheet. After living with Sunny and kitten, I felt myself changing. I had this feeling that maybe I could live like anypony else inside a world filled with happiness, that’s why I had such a happy dream. But when I woke up from the dream, I found the reality cold and cruel. I couldn’t take this, that’s why I was so emotionally stressed. To avoid this was the main reason why I hate and avoid the real world. It was so that I could protect myself.

I didn’t notice when the door opened. Kitten was sitting right next to me, looking up at my face. Sunny was probably right here as well, looking at this sick coward who went to college. I felt her asking me while tilting her head, “What makes you so depressed?”

“I can’t do it… I can’t live like this anymore. I tried, I really did, but nothing turned out the way I wanted.”

I couldn’t see Sunny, but I could feel her sitting down next to me, looking worried.

“When I was young… in fact I am still the same, I was shy. I would not talk at any family meeting. I wasn’t good at talking at all. I had a little brother, but he wasn’t like me at all. He was always able to talk with anypony happily. Everypony liked him, loved him, and hoped that I could be just like him.”

“But I just couldn’t do it. It was impossible. No matter how hard I try, I couldn’t be like him. I was just too stubborn. It was impossible for me to please any one.”

“I had a pretty aunt. She was the sister of my father, and I really liked her. She always played with my little brother, talking and giggling. I really wanted to join them, but I couldn’t. There was finally once that she asked me something, but I didn’t respond happily and childishly like she expected. I could see the disappointment in her eyes. ”

I found it hard to breath under such pressure. I could feel Sunny staring at me, her vision reached right into my souls.

“I really tried to be friendly, but I just couldn’t make others accept me. Stubborn people like me were just not cut out to live on this world. I would rather see nothing. Living in a bright world could only make my darkness more visible. It broke my heart. I hated it so much that I wanted to dig out my own eyes.”

I felt warm on my cheeks. I knew it was Sunny’s hooves, but I tried my best to forget that feeling.

One day kitten disappeared. I waited until dinner time, but he didn’t come back still. I saw the old shirt he always carried around at the corner of the room, so I picked it up, folded it up and placed it on the sofa. He never took a walk around town this long. Sunny wasn’t able to leave the house or the garden, so she couldn’t go outside to look for the kitten. She searched everywhere inside the house, I could tell by how messy the room had gotten. She seemed really worried.

Could the kitten have simply gone missing? I sincerely hope so. I was really worried, so I started looking around town. The worst ending I imagined was that the sight of kitten lying cold on the road. There had been plenty of road kills. The idea made my heart shake with fear. I suddenly realized how important kitten was to me. Every time I turned around a corner and found the road clean, I felt relieved. After a while, I suddenly heard the honk of a car behind my back. I turned around and saw the pink mini cooper, and Pinkie was inside, waving her arms at me. I ran towards her.

“I had a cat, but it’s gone missing. It’s a white cat, have you seen it?”

“I never knew you had a pet before. I saw a cat earlier, but it was brown. I haven’t seen a white kitten.” Pinkie said.

She decided to help me look as well. I guess I did look really worried. She left the car at my place and walked around. We lit up two flashlights and search around town until it got dark, but our efforts were in vain. We had no choice but go back. The house was really messy, Sunny must be worried too. The TV was still on, and the floor was filled with all kinds of files. She didn’t clean up at all.

This is the first time I had allowed Pinkie to come here. She occasionally said she wanted to come over, but I refused with all kinds of reasons. We went upstairs, and when we came back there were already two cups of freshly made tea on the table.

Pinkie was confused, “What? I didn’t see the tea before. Weren’t you upstairs with me?”

I nodded.

“Then who made this…? Oh well, I am so tired. It’s all right Dan, you’ll find him eventually. Hey , you got any booze?”

I didn’t, so I went to the convenient store right around the street corner. Pinkie told me she was too tired to walk. I was a bit worried when I left her at my house. Not because I was afraid she might steal my stuff, there wasn’t anything valuable any way. I was worried Sunny might show him some creepy things. When I came back with the booze, Pinkie drank some and chatted a little. She went back to her place after that.

“You gotta let me see when you find him.” She said.

I nodded and closed the door. I started cleaning up. Without kitten, I didn’t know where Sunny was any more. I found the TV and the shelf moving. I guess Sunny had been looking for kitten behind them too. She was still convinced that kitten was hiding somewhere inside the house.

I walked upstairs into the photo room. The drawers had been thrown open, and all of the film had been damaged from too much exposure to the light. This made me remembered the peaceful dream I had, and almost turned me into a crying sissy again.

The kitten didn’t come back until the next day.

I was cleaning Sunny’s newspapers that she didn’t throw away. They were from years ago. The corner of the paper had already curled up and turned yellow. Why did she even keep these?

That’s when I heard the kitten meowing from the garden.

I had almost given up, so hearing him meow was like a dream to me. I heard him meow again and the bell jingled. After I was sure that I wasn’t hallucinating, the joy and happiness was so overwhelming that it had almost choked me and made my chest exploded.

I ran into the garden with no shoes on. I looked around, but I only saw tall grass and trees. Then I realized that I haven’t search the other side of the fence yet. The woods family lives on the other side, including Granny Woods with her annoying bike. Maybe there was a hole in the fence, and the kitten got through it, but he couldn’t get back.

Granny woods found me first before I went for her. She held the kitten tight in her arms. I almost cried at the sight, but I still managed to keep calm and took over kitten.

My brain was filled with thoughts of kitten, Sunny and Pinkie. When I heard kitten meowing, I made up my mind.

“I wanted to apologize, but he was already dead.” I remembered Pinkie saying again. She was remembering her friend, and her face was filled with regret and sorrow.

I decided to take another trip to the lake with Pinkie.