Is This How Life is Meant to Be?
Pinkamena wandered the dark, desolate landscape.
She sighed and trudged across the dark, damp dirt beneath her hooves, yet no hoofprints remained.
Looking around at her surroundings for what felt like the millionth time, her eyes held nothing but pools of sadness. This place wasn't right.
But she had always been here, since she was a little filly. It was all she knew.
'Is this really how life is supposed to be?' She pondered the question that was always on her mind, every second of her life. 'Am I supposed to be in this dark place forever?' She didn't have an answer.
Pinkamena let out a whimper as a cold breeze blew over her, causing her to shiver and clench her eyes shut. 'Another coldfront must be coming....'
Looking around quickly for any sort of shelter, all she could spot was a dark, dead tree. She sprinted over towards it and huddled next to it, as a blast of harsh wind suddenly came out of nowhere.
The relentless storm beat against her, the tree only giving minimal protection.
Despite having gone through this ordeal thousands of times, she still cried out in pain as she felt as if blades were slicing along her skin.
Her flowing straight magenta mane whipped in the wind, occasionally smacking her in the face.
After several minutes, the winds died down, and she slowly stood up and walked away from the shelter she had used. She shivered and tried to warm herself up, but to no avail.
She was always cold.
Her mane fell down and covered half of her face now that the wind stopped. It was unkempt; dirty, with strands of hair sticking out in several directions.
She remembered when she was a filly, how it used to be smoother than the stones. But that was years ago.
Sniffling a bit and trying to hold back tears, she trudged onward.
She didn't know where she was going. She never did. But she knew that nothing awaited her here but misery. She lived with the hope that someday, if she kept travelling, something would change.
But even after years, all she saw was the dirt landscape, filled with dark rocks, blackened trees without a leaf to speak of, and the darkest of clouds overhead.
'Is this what life is meant to be...? Am I the only pony in existence, the only one to be traversing this place? Why was I made? Why was I the one pony chosen to exist?' The tears were showing up in her eyes again, but she held back the floodgates. She had done enough crying over the years, there was no reason to start now.
She closed her eyes and rubbed them with a forehoof while still walking forwards, but froze in shock at what she saw when she opened them.
A brick wall rose up in front of her, the same dark colour as everything else in the world.
She looked both ways and even up into the sky, and it went on farther than her eyes could see in every direction.
Her eyes sparkled in excitement. She had never thought the day would come.
Change. Something was new. It wasn't the same as the rocks, dirt, clouds and trees she had seen everywhere. It was new! For the first time in her life, something new!
She ran up to the brick wall and pressed her hooves against it, sliding them across and feeling the texture, relishing in the unfamiliar feeling.
"It's....amazing!!!" She leaned against the wall and nuzzled it happily. New. She found what she had been searching for!
Her excitement was suddenly crushed when she felt another breeze. Looking around frantically for any large rocks or trees, her eyes widened in horror at the realization that nothing was close enough to run to in time.
With barely a second to spare, she pressed herself against the wall and curled into a ball, shivering and whimpering, before the onslaught of wind as sharp as knives came forwards, tearing into her mercilessly.
This time the wind was far more powerful than the last one; it was one of the worst she'd ever experienced, and she choked out a pained yell as it occurred.
For what felt like hours she felt pain all over, and huddled into a ball as tightly as she could to protect her face and more vulnerable parts of her body from being assaulted.
Eventually, the pain became so unbearable that she passed out.
With a whimper and a groan, Pinkamena's eyes fluttered open.She shakily got to her hooves and winced at the sharp pains all over her body.
"Why...why is life this way...?" She cried. "Do I exist only to be in pain!?"
Several moments of tears and sobbing followed, before she finally stopped and rubbed her eyes again.
Her ears twitched and she turned towards the wall she had discovered, and tried to let the sight of it raise her spirits. But then she gasped as she saw a large crack running along the wall where she had been huddling from the winds.
Dashing up to it, she ran her hoof across it with interest. She had never considered the possibility of what was on the other side!
She started to get lost in thought at the prospect of what could be over there, when her ears turned towards a sound from the other side of the crack in the wall.
Eyes widening, she pressed her ear to the wall and listened intently.
To her shock, a foreign sound made it's way to her ears.
She didn't know what it was as she'd never heard much more than wind and dirt under hoof before, but she recognized the cause of the sound.
It was similar to her own voice.
"Hello!? Is there anypony there!?" She asked frantically, hoping beyond all hope that she wasn't the only pony in existence, wasn't the only one going through the nightmarish land.
But there were no sounds after that, and to her surprise and fear which made her back away from the wall, the cracks that had appeared from the wind started to fix themselves, until they were back to the way they were before.
Everything was back to the way it was before.
Pinkamena hung her head low and whimpered. She knew she was wrong to hope. Nothing else existed. This wall was only here to show her that; that her search was pointless, and this dark world was all that existed.
With a few more tears shed, she turned and followed the wall that didn't seem to end, even with the knowledge that there was nothing for her to look forward to other than the next painful gust of wind.
Pinkie Pie danced happily to the music during her sixteenth birthday party. She laughed merrily for multiple reasons, but the biggest of which at herself for being as silly as to forget her own birthday and think her friends didn't like her anymore.
Unlike most times, she actually got all sad from it. She didn't usually get upset or bothered by things, as she just pushed them away to a dark corner of her mind she liked to avoid.
Her smile disappeared for a moment as she felt a bit of the pain from before. Thinking deeply, she pushed away all the pain she felt to the back of her mind, and blocked it off fully, sealing her miseries away from herself, fixing the opening such immense emotional pain caused.
She giggled in happiness, safe with the knowledge that nothing would ever truly hurt her.
After all, if you just push away the bad thoughts and memories, you and no one else will get hurt.
Right?
Author's Note
I've had this fully written since July 25th, but I was intending to add more detail and patch it up a bit before posting it. However, with my recent loss in interest in ponies and it being Halloween, I felt I should post it now.
Please let me know what you think in the comments below!
