MilkyWay placed another one of SparkPlug's desktop do-dads into the box labeled: Sparky.
'Its been six months since Sparky...' she broke down.
She couldn't let a day go by without thinking of her young colt. Even if it was like dying over, and over again. She felt as if the idea of even forgetting for a minute was a terrible sin. One that, if she committed, would never be able to forgive herself for. Milky loved her son so dearly, and she felt as if the last six months were her punishment; one that she had brought upon herself. She had failed give her colt the proper attention he deserved...that he needed. She was a horrible mother.
It took a painful amount of effort to stand up after collapsing half-way onto the desk chair. Milky did what her husband had told her to do: breathe. Her husband seemed so strong on the outside. Ever the tough soldier Celestia's military had turned him into during his early stallion-hood years. But she knew IronHoof too well. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night to near-inaudible sobbing from the downstairs family room. She would tread carefully as she could down the steps, to check on her stallion. And Milky would always find Iron the same way: with a picture of Sparky that he had denied having after all of them were taken from the house. He would cradle the picture so tightly that she thought that the frame glass might crack. And that's all he would do. Just sob into picture.
She could only watch it for so long without crying herself. She would sit on the stairs, just out of sight, and sob silently into her for-hooves. She had done that a lot lately, but no matter how sad she became, or how much she missed her colt, she knew in her heart that she must never lose her strength in front of their little filly.
SunGazer is at an age where it takes time for her to process events. When Milky and Iron walked into her room the day after, their news didn't seem to have much of an affect on her. The opposite was true. She seemed to become quiet, like she was thinking very hard on something. Milky had explained to her what death was even before Sparkys'. And yet the young filly had nothing to say. She told her parents that she understood, and that she was sad, though she did not look it. Later that night, Iron had heard his little filly weeping into the dark of her room. And although he wanted to so desparately, Iron Hoof could not bring himself to comfort her.
MilkyWay finished packing all of the items on the, now dust-covered desk. All but the black desktop computer that sat in the corner, backed by the room's corner. She would have Iron move it to the garage, but she stopped. Milky had little to almost no experience with computers, but Sparky had insisted that she at least learn how to power it on. She decided that if she did just that, it would somehow bring back a piece of him, however briefly.
She sat down on the office chair and gingerly reached hoof out to the button in the center of the tower. It felt cold, and lifeless under her hoof. She pressed until she felt a soft click underneath the visible exterior of the button, and released her pressure on it. The button was now glowing a blue power symbol and she could hear the confusing inner workings of the machine begin humming and whirring to life. The screen flickered briefly before illuminating itself, and displaying white text on a black background. Milky could make little sense of the symbols' meanings though. When the machine was fully powered up, the screen then displayed what Sparky used to call: the Desktop. The desktop had many icons on it; many of which Milky considered cryptic. A picture of their family photo from last year was in the background.
Milky could feel tears begin to spill from her aching eyes at the site of her late colt, but she subdued them for fear that they would not stop. One folder sat just to the left of Sparky's face. It was labeled: PLEASE READ. Milky moved the cursor over the folder and clicked the mouse button. The folder went through a small opening animation and then displayed its contents. In it there was a singular document on display that read: for mom. Milky once again felt the tug of tears in the corners of her eyes, and this time she let them flow just a little bit. She hovered the cursor over the .docx file, and clicked the file.
