Hope...
It's a quiet little word but It means a lot to my town. OK, so, any self proclaimed " introduction" should start with, naturally, some... introductions.
I'm Apodyn, and the town I referred to is ponyville. I was born here, I grew up here, I was forgotten here. "Whoa! Dark turn!" You exclaim. "What does that even mean?" You ask.
Well, first, thank you for your input, I do enjoy these talks of ours. Secondly, to answer what I mean by "forgotten" I need to explain what I mean by "grew up here." I haven't lived here my whole life, in fact my longest stay is now going on five years. "why?" you ask, well, you certainly know how to ask the right questions don't you?
I'll just say that my father isn't the most trustworthy of ponies. And with all the attention the law gives him he might as well be public enemy no.1.
He himself grew up in Cloudsdale, where he met my mother. They were barely out of high school before he had been discovered rigging the "Best Young Flyer Competition" in order to cash in on his bets. So, to avoid jail time, fellow gamblers, and the wrath of some seriously ticked wonderbolts, he and my mom dropped everything and ran. They jumped around a lot after that, I don't think there was a single crevice they hadn't tried to squeeze themselves into, except ponyville.
By the time they made it they were expecting, so, they settled down to have...Me!
I don't know if they were happy for those first three years, I was too young to tell, but, by that time, the town had figured out that my dad had been using his job as school janitor to sell kids some "scholastic essentials." After packing up, they apparently decided that Manehattan was the next stop, and after a successful two years, we departed again, leaving the city significantly seedier. (Which, for Manehattan, was really saying something.)
So we made a victorious return to ponyville, and dad's best customers. Sadly, the homecoming was rather short lived, as after two years school dropout rates had rocketed, and eyes fell on my family. Our next "surprise vacation" was our longest, to the remote little town of Appleoosa. Where we found that the sheriff wasn't very fond of dad assisting his distant nephew in throwing his life away, and the only judge happened to be one of his old gambling buddies, and was more than willing to personally escort him to the smallest available cell, and offer a reduced sentence to any pony courteous enough to slap the soap from his hooves.
My father's extended absence gave my mother a chance to doubt her own decisions, decisions that had lead her to been known as the mare who married that colt.
But she kept to him, she carried that burden, waiting... and I had to watch. Watch her right to him everyday faithfully, humming their wedding song. Watch her stare her reflection in the eyes, and mumble under her breath that he was worth it, he would make everything better. I listened to radio plays of Jackle and Clyde with her, and listened as she retold how their first date was to the live performance. I listened to the thunderous crash of tears on her pillow, a sound that kept me awake most nights. I listened to the silence that hung in the air as she stared out that window, waiting for his letters. I could see the weight in her eyes, pushing her down farther and farther, day to day, for six years.
And the notice came, a notice saying that his sentence had been increased by two years on account of bad behaviour, we left that day.
She had managed to scrape up the money for a train ride back to ponyville, we had rode in silence. She had found us a nice small home on the edge of town. "We're staying" she had told me as we finished unpacking, "staying for good, I promise."
And stay we did, I started high school, and mom took care of me, and took dirty looks from fellow parents, and took my bellyaching over my school-filly crush on the mail mare. Nowadays I'm amazed at how much she was able to take, without being given any thing.
This last month life has changed, for one I'm no longer the only ponyville-born Pegasus, not since little Pound Cake was born, (Mr Cake gives me more suspicious looks than usual these days), and second, I now spend a lot of my free time at the hospital. Mom had a bad fall, the doctors said she had been at her construction job when she had a major stroke, brought on by stress, she had fallen hard, broke two ribs, an ankle, her wing, and gotten a severe concussion. For the first three days I didn't leave her side, ever, but then I had to go to school, but couldn't focus, I was too worried. The doctors had told me in confidence that she would be perfectly fine, right as rain in a few weeks, but her injuries weren't what worried me. She had had a stroke, she wasn't "invincible super mom" anymore, life was getting to her.
She's never awake when I visit, Nurse Redheart said that that's for the best, it'll reduce the strain on her brain. So I kept by her side as often as I could.
Why was today different? What had changed? Some how, instead of wishing mom a good morning and heading for school I found myself wandering the hospital. Not to say that it was completely pointless, at one point I had helped a struggling earth pony nurse lift a tank of some glowing red substance onto a high shelf. She seemed about to thank me until she realized whose son I was.
Most of my wandering was just that wandering, reading the directions to find a confusingly named wing, the setting off, peering through windows, nodding to working nurses. One window I peeked through had a young, green, unicorn filly as it's occupant, she seemed to have had some kind of surgery, a thick layer of bandages was wrapped around her midriff. She was lying in a hospital bed, when she saw me she did what would have been expected, crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Of course, I couldn't be upstaged, so I opened my mouth wide against the glass, but I hadn't accounted for the filly to have support, the nurse closed the blinds on me, but it was too late I'd seen that smile.
My mind wandered elsewhere after that, I was still walking down hallways and peering in windows, but with no sense of direction or time. Some how I had found myself inside a lunch court. About fifty ponies were there, some clearly patients, wearing their useless white bath robes, labeled brackets, for every patient there was two or three visitors, everypony was talking away, enjoying food, (yes, at the same time) and then there was her.
Call me strange, but when I see someone sitting in the corner alone, staring at their baked beans like they're something worthy of pity, I go up to introduce myself.
Sometimes in my haste to cheer ponies up I open my mouth before my mind has actually formed words, sometimes my incoherent stutter of a greeting is enough to invoke a grin. She was clearly a patient, no older than me, maybe younger. she wore one her white robe over her cerulean coat, the string was tied so tight around her waist that I doubted it could be comfortable. Her main was such a pale shade of cobalt it could be mistaken for white, brushed neatly back except for two strands hanging down on either side of her face. Her right hoof was rested on the table, next to her tray, she was wearing one of those pointless mini shower caps they call shoes, she also wore a paper patient bracelet.
Now, sometimes when I try to cheer ponies up, I'll open my mouth before I've actually thought up words, however, sometimes my incoherent stuttering of a greeting is good for a laugh.
It happened that I didn't need introduction, as I reached the table her eyes snapped up, and I couldn't help it, I looked right into her big, fuchsia eyes, and a distant memory stirred in my mind. Confused, I didn't say anything for a while, I just stared and tried to reconstruct that brief image that just flashed through my mind, this apparently made her uncomfortable, as her gaze soon drooped again. Before I could apologize for the awkwardness, a nurse colt materialized seeming from the wall to her left.
"Really?" He seemed genuinely amused "again?"
She was too infatuated with her beans to respond, instead she slumped forward and laid her head on the table. Cracking a grin the nurse turned to me, "why hello there young man!" Then back to the mare "made a friend, darling?"
"Well...ah...no...I" my voice came out unnaturally low, and gruff, the nurse seemed to beam harder, clearing my throat, I tried again. "No...um...I was...uhh." Well, what was I doing?
"Well son I'm sorry," and he truly looked it, "but she has somewhere to be, but, why don't you come back later? She'd really love that." His smile threatened to rip his head in two, as the thought of me revisiting was his lifelong dream.
"Well... of course!" I beamed to, how could I not? He seemed so friendly. I waved a friendly hoof goodbye to them both, (although, I don't think she noticed, she seemed to have fallen asleep) and returned to the halls via the farthest door. The hallway I entered had windows all down one side, peering out I found I was on the fourth floor, I didn't remember walking up any stairs.
Turning from the window the smile melted from my face, my mind started to wander, and buried in the back of my mind was a feeling that I'd missed an important opportunity.