The waves shut me off from the world, the birds in the sky, the fillies on the beach, and my mother on the shore. There was a moment of green silence. Then the wave gave me back to the sky, the sand, and the yelling fillies. I came out of the lake and the world was waiting for me, having hardly moved since I went away.
I ran up on the beach.
Mama swabbed me down with the furry towel, "Now stand there and dry off," she said. I stood there, watching the sun take away the water beads from my fur, and the wind replaced them with goose-flesh. "My that's a biting wind," Mama said, "Put your sweater on."
"Wait till I watch my goosebumps," I said, lifting a foreleg to see the tiny bumps as they traveled down to my hoof.
"Derpina," mother chided.
I put my sweater on and watched the waves come in up and down the beach. But not clumsily. Even an inexperienced pony with no sea legs wouldn't have a problem staying upright with such elegant waves as these. It was late September. The last days of summer when things are getting sad for no reason. The beach was so long and lonely, with only a few ponies on it. Even the fillies had stopped playing, no longer bouncing their ball between them. Instead they just sat down, and felt the autumn winds blowing in along that seemingly endless shoreline.
All the hot dog stands had long since been boarded up. What passed for a boardwalk along the lake front was a series of buildings that had long since been shuttered and locked against the wind that rattled across the pier. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins. One by one the places had slammed and padlocked their doors, and the wind had come and swept away the hoof-prints of July and August. It had gotten to the point that now there was only my own tiny hoof-prints next to Mama's along the water line.
Sand blew up along the board walk, and the merry-go-round was already hidden by canvas. Every now and then the wind would whip up an edge and you could see the various creatures; lions and dragons, sea serpents and manticores, hanging frozen in mid air on their brass poles. Their wooden mouths and glass eyes were frozen wide, just like their galloping limbs. They only had the wind whipping through the canvas for music.
I stood there. Everypony else was in school. I was not. Tomorrow I would be on a train heading West across Equestria. Mama and I had come down to the beach together for one last, brief moment.
The truth was, I had insisted.
But there was something about the loneliness of the beach that made me want to go far away. "Mama", I said, "I want to run up the beach a'ways."
"All right, but hurry back. And don't go near the water," she warned.
I ran. Sand flew under my hooves and the wind lifted me. I spread out my wings and felt invisible contrails stream along the tips. It felt like I was trailing veils behind me, and I smiled at the thought. It wasn't long before Mama was only a brown speck in the distance and I was alone. Being alone is a newness to a ten year old filly. She's so used to other ponies being around, adults telling children what to do and how to act, that sometimes they have to run down a beach in their own heads if they want to be along. If they want to be in their own world, even if it's in their imagination.
But now I was truly alone.
I went down to the water and let it slip up my legs to cool my stomach. Always before, with other ponies around, I had never dared to look. I had never dared to return to this spot, and look down into the clear water, and call a certain name. But now... Water is like a magician sawing you in two. Your top half above the water is warm and dry. Your legs feel like they're sugar, dissolving away. Nothing but cool water and sand, and every now and again a very dainty and elegant wave.
I called his name. A dozen times I called it.
"Twinkly! Twinkly! Oh, Twinkly!"
You really expect an answer to your calls when you are young. You feel that whatever you think can be real. And sometimes that's not so wrong.
I thought of Twinkle Star, swimming out into the lake last May, with his long blond mane and tail trailing behind him. He went laughing, and the sun was on his slender, ten year old shoulders. I thought of the water settling quietly, of the lifeguard leaping in, of Twinkly's mom screaming, and of how Twinkly never came back up...
In my mind, the lifeguard had tried to persuade him to come out, but he had refused. He'd just come back, covered in duck-weed and clinging water-weeds, and Twinkly was gone. He had simply swum out too far and now the lake would not let him return. He wouldn't sit across from me in class anymore, or play ball with me anymore. He wouldn't sit with me gazing at the stars, or compete with me to see who could hold their breath longer under the clear cool water. We'd earned our cutie marks together that summer, him while staring through a telescope for hours up at the night sky, and me in a stream of bubbles as I had risen to the top of the water in victory after one of our many swimming contests.
And now on the cusp of autumn, when the sky was huge, and the lake was huge, and the beach seemed so very long and lonely, I had come down to the shore for the last time. Alone.
I called his name again and again. Twinkly, oh, Twinkly!
The wind blew so very softly over my ears, the way it does when it sets seashells whispering. The water rose, embracing my chest, then sunk down to my knees, over and over again, sucking at my hooves. "Twinkly! Come back, Twinklly!"
I was only ten, but I knew how much I loved him. It was that love that comes before all significance of body and morals. It was that love that was no more bad than wind and water, and sand, lying side by side forever. It was made of all the warm long days spent at the beach together, and the humming quiet days of education spent at school. All those long autumn days when he would carry my books for me when we walked home from school.
Twinkly!
I called his name for the last time. I shivered. I felt water on my face and had no idea how it had got there. The waves had not splashed that high.
I retreated back up the sand and stood there for maybe half an hour. Just waiting, just hoping to see one glimpse, one sign, one little bit of Twinkly to remember. Than I knelt down in the sand and started to build a sand-castle. I shaped it and built it, as Twinkly and I had built so many together in the past, though this time I only built half of it. Then I stood up. "Twinkly!" I called, "If you can hear me, come out and build the rest of it!"
I walked off toward the far away speck that was Mama. I didn't look back. I didn't want to see the water as it's waves sloshed around the half finished sand-castle, breaking it down with each fresh wave... Slowly smoothing the sand back to how it had been before
Far away the merry-go-round jangled lightly, but it was only the wind.
The next day we went away on the train.
A train has a poor memory; it soon puts all behind it. It forgets the grass lands outside Manehatten, the rivers of childhood, the rivers, the lakes, the valleys, the cottages, the hurts and the joys. It spreads them out behind and they soon drop back off the edge of the horizon.
I lengthened my bones, put flesh on them, changed my young mind for an older one, threw away cloths as I outgrew them, and shifted from grammar to high school. And then there was a young man in Ponyville. I knew him for a time and we were married. By the time I was twenty I had almost forgotten what the East was like. Sunshower suggested our delayed honeymoon be taken back in that direction.
Like a memory, a train works both ways. A train can bring rushing back all those things you left behind so many years ago. Lake Bluff, population less than two thousand ponies, came up over the sky line. Sunshower looked so handsome in his fine new cloths. He watched me as I felt my old world wash back over me like a wave, elegant as fine less, and just as old and brittle. He held me close as our train slid into Bluff Station and our baggage was unloaded.
So many years, and the things they do to peoples faces and bodies. When we walked through the town together I saw nopony I recognized. There were faces with faint echoes in them. Echoes of hikes in ravines. Faces with the faint traces of laughter shared over lessons at closed grammar schools, and swinging on metal linked swings and going up and down on teeter totters. But I was too nervous to say anything to them. I just walked, and let the memories gather like leaves in the fall, piling up for the bonfire.
We stayed for about two weeks, revisiting all the old places from my youth. Those were happy days. I thought I loved Sunshower well. At least, I thought I did.
It was one of the last days that we visited the lake and walked down to the shore. It was not quite so late in the year as that day so many years before, but the first evidence of impending desertion were already creeping along the beach. Ponies were thinning out, several of the hot dog stand were already shuttered and nailed, and as before the wind was there to sing for us as it chased the sand down the boardwalk.
I could almost see my Mama, kneeling in the sand where she once sat so long ago. I had that feeling that I wanted to be alone again. But I couldn't bring myself to say as such to Sunshower. I just held on to him and waited. It got late in the day. Most of the fillies and colts had gone home, and only the stallions and a few mares remained on the beach, basking in the windy sun.
The lifeguard boat pulled up by the pier. The lifeguard stepped out of it, slowly, something clenched tight in his teeth.
I froze there.
I held my breath and felt small, only ten years old again, very infinitesimal and afraid. The wind howled. I could not see Sunshower. I could see only the beach as the lifeguard walked down the pier with a gray bag in his teeth, not very heavy, and his face almost as ashen and lined with worry.
"Stay here Sunshower," I said. And I don't know why I said it.
"But why?" he asked, sounding almost hurt.
"Just stay here, that's all," I said, giving him a smile I didn't feel.
I walked slowly down the sand to where the lifeguard was. He looked at me.
"What is it?" I asked, before he could pass by. He set his light burden gently down before he answered.
"Strange," the lifeguard said quietly, his brow knit tight.
I waited for him to continue.
"Strange," he said again softly. "Strangest thing I've ever seen. He's been dead for a long time."
"He's been dead a long time..." I repeated his words, feeling a pit open in my stomach.
He nodded. "Ten years, I'd say. We haven't had any children drown here this year. There have been twelve drownings here in the last hundred moons, but we found all of them before a few hours had passed. All except one, I remember. This body must have beebn ten years in the water. It's not... Pleasant," he finished weakly, a sour look on his face.
I stared at the grey sack on the sand. "Open it," I said. I don't know why I said it. The wind blew harder, louder.
He started fumbling with the draw strings on the sack.
"Hurry up, open it!" I cried with urgency.
"I better not do that," he started to say. Then perhaps he saw the look on my face. "He was such a little boy..." was all he could say.
He opened it only part way. That was enough.
The beach was deserted. There was only the sky, the wind, and the water, and the promise of autumn in the lonely whisper of the wind. I looked down at him. I said something over and over. A name, I think. The lifeguard looked at me, "Where did you find here?" I asked.
"Down the beach, that way," he answered. "It's been a long, long time for him, hasn't it?"
I shook my head, "Yes, it has. Oh sweet Celestia, it has."
A thought occured to me. Ponies grow. I have grown. But he has not changed. He is still small. He is still so young. Death does not permit growth or change. At least not the change we would like. But he still had his golden hair. He will be young forever, and I will love him forever. Oh, how I will love him forever.
Without saying another word, the lifeguard tied the sack back up again.
I walked further down the beach, on my own again, a few moments later. I stopped and looked at something. This was where the lifeguard found him, I said to myself.
There, at the edge of the water, there was a sand-castle only half built. Just like how Twinkly and I used to build them. He half, and I half. I looked at it. I knelt beside it, and looked at the tiny hoof-prints that came in from the lake, and then went back out to the lake, and did not come back again.
That was when I knew.
"I'll help you finish it," I whispered.
I did too. I built the rest of it up slowly, bit by bit. Then I arose, and turned, and walked off so that I would not have to watch the waves crumble it away... As all things crumble.
I walked back up the beach where a strange man named Sunshower waited for me, smiling...
Author's Note
Every now and I again I get the urge to reread stories from my youth. At times like this I remember Ray Bradbury, one of the finest writers in modern times, and one of the most fantastic short story writers I have ever known. Though he died in 2012, he has left behind a legacy any author would envy, and some of the most heart wrenching and moving works of fiction one could ever hope to have the honor to read.
One such work is the collection of stories titled 'The October Country', from whence this story is but one of many. As I read it, I could not help but think of how Derpy Hooves, our lovable scamp of a 'Where's Waldo' background pony, might have hidden depths that even she does not understand. How we know so little of the youths of the ponies that we love so dearly, and how my own youth was touched by darkness long before I could truly grasp the true meaning of it.
No, I didn't lose a friend at a young age as Derpy did in this story. But I did lose a baby sister and a grandmother in the span of a year. I did have to move away and leave behind my first love in grade school. I have always had an intense fear of drowning, but an irresistible attraction to water despite my fear.
These are all things I wanted to share with you, the reader, in hopes to entertain you...And to perhaps turn you on to the subtle greatness of Ray Bradbury.
I hope you enjoyed.
