There once lived a pony with a crazy mane who lived in a cabin in the woods. Such a creature liked to use redundancies, for he used the title as the opening sentence to this tale…
…which couldn’t even be called a tale. Tales are supposed to be long, right? This story is anything but – though the pony did like to draw things out to no end. How his words were read by others was a mystery that still plagued his mind.
The pegasus sat upon his red chair in his empty cabin. Light flickered from the corner of the room, where a candle lay burning. Rays of moonlight shone through the windows, but the curtains blocked their entry.
A typewriter sat against the wall at the front of the wall, with nothing but the wall around it. But the pegasus had his tired eyes staring at the wall, not daring to steal a peek at what lay below it. No howls came from the woods; no mothers sang their foals a song to put them to sleep, and no whispers traveled down the halls of the cabin.
The pegasus, B, was alone in his cabin, with only his thoughts to entertain him, and his typewriter to slowly tear him apart from within for the small orb of quality that he had inside him.
The rest of B just being utterly worthless, of course. But luckily he had that orb, for that meant that his life could have some purpose. But what B hoped for most of all, was not to find the orb, but for the orb not to be just another shallow creation made by his mind.
B sighed as he rose from his chair. He didn’t look around the room or took a moment to enjoy the wonderful sight of Luna’s heavenly moon. Instead, he treked straight across to his typewriter perched on the wooden desk, and plopped his bottom on the wood before it.
Plopping his hoofs against the keys, word afterwords was printed upon the sheet of paper, as the story was beginning to be told. B managed to smile as his cabin was sucked into a void resembling the universe, but his flow focused solely on the words before him.
The words scratched all around his being, but B enjoyed the pain and awaited the claws to scratch even just the surface of the orb.
Ping after ping.
Breath after breath.
Word after word.
Luna’s orb began its descent to rest behind the mountainous horizon and let its burning sister rise up once more to claim the land in its orange glow. B swung his head back as parts of the orange glow snuck past the curtains, and shone off his eye.
Trotting back to his seat, fidgeting his tush till he felt just right – B’s head fell, and so did to his eyes.
Night came again.
B rustled both from the dreamy state of concussions and from his seat, taking straight away to the delight that was a page filled with words. Eyes were reading over with a smile below them, word after word until the smile disappeared.
Taking a red pen in the mouth, B covered most of the words with a red pen and begun to spend many hours revising a single paragraph. Not that he didn’t mind spending the time – a state of higher consciousness is achieved during this time. But regardless of how much went into those words, they never seemed to become better.
To write a story is to destroy the illusion in your head; that the idea was perfect.
The story was finished. The revisions are endless. And regardless of the effort, the paper still came out smelling worse than B’s body odor.
Dreams of attending events and being asked questions were becoming faint. Being offered a drink and having chats no longer stood a chance. For someone to read his tales and think anything but terrible afterward was impossible.
One day, maybe, he could become a traveling writer. Exploring the lands and resting at a new spot every day to write a few pages, then continuing to the next spot. Experiences of culture, landmarks of different races, the ability to take flight and land in a new town every night.
But such ambitions were only profitable to the illusionist. They aren’t something one can build foundations on; just a distant dream that is too good for the low-born. Anyone not possing it must become second-rate citizens, looking up to the greatness that is others.
So why should a creature as low as B continue? He enjoyed his work and the expressions that leaped out from his soul, but what he got in return wasn’t enough to justify the means. Plus, far greater writers persisted out there, and they hadn’t reached any father than he.
If they didn’t stand a chance. Then why the hell was B still typing away? For the shallow hope of rising past it all and achieving the goal of telling a good tale? Bah – impossible.
So that’s why the papers were flung out the window. That’s why B would go to sleep and hope for it to never end, only to wake up with energy to write and to lose the passion throughout the day and his life.
An addict at heart. Only, no one condemned this drug.
Working away at that faint goal for he, as the papers continued to pour out the window, piling up.
Luckily, a gopher sat outside the cabin and enjoyed to eat paper. Though sometimes, he would bring those papers to snack on over at Fluttershy’s house. But she would always steal the papers away and read them in the plushness of her bed.
Reading the words. Shuffling the papers. Until it all came to an end.
“Huh,” she murmured, setting the papers on the bed. “Not bad for a gopher.”
A paperclip blinded the papers. Fluttershy rose from her bed and put the story on her shelf – among others – before returning to take care of her pets. The way they played out weren’t bad, and if this gopher got just a little better, then maybe she would show his works to Twilight.
