Breathing This Great Huge Thing

Bristles woke up in a bed ze didn’t recognize. An IV in hez arm, hez compression gloves on the nightstand. Nurse Firm sitting on a stool at hez side, face in hands, asleep. Ze felt weak, like somepony had replaced all of the blood in hez system with mercury, and all of the sinew with dried leather. The muscles wood, the bones of soft lead. The world swam in and out of hez head. Ze groaned, and tried to look for hez sketchbook. Hez neck wouldn’t turn well. Fingers dragged.

Nurse Firm woke up, and comprehended immediately what ze wanted. She pulled the thing out of her lap, opened it to the nearest empty page, pressed it into Bristle’s hands, and put a pencil between hez fingers.

From the exhaustion or the drugs, she couldn’t tell, but Bristle did not draw much. Ze barely even moved hez hands or writs, making hollow, abstract scribbles with the graphite.

“Are you okay?” Nurse Firm asked.

“Mmm.” Bristles responded.

For a while, it was quiet, and ze continued to scribble. But after a few moments, ze stopped and put the pencil down. Nurse Firm straightened up and paid rapt attention. After about a minute of not drawing, Bristles closed hez eyes and fell back asleep.

Nurse Firm looked once more at what ze’d managed to get down before ze passed out again. It was the face, just barely recognizable, of Celluloid, that painter they’d met a while ago. There was a line through his head, with a little N near the front. She tried not to get excited, but this was progress, and she knew it.

A little later, someone knocked on the door to their tiny room and a buggy, fanged face appeared around it. “Nurse Firm? We came to see if Bristles is alright, may we come in?”

“Of course.”

She stood up as ze, Quick, Tubs, and Orbit walked into the room. Tubs and Orbit each shook her hand. “I’m Tubs, and this is Orbit. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you as well. I’m Nurse Firm, I take care of Bristles. Orbit, thank you so much for saving Bristles, I don’t know how to repay you—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupted. “I work as a lifeguard sometimes, certified and all of that. It was just instinct, really.”

“Well, thank you for cultivating that instinct, then, because without you ze wouldn’t be here right now. If there’s ever anything I can do, please tell me.”

“There’s nothing, really, it’s fine.”

At the sound of cloth stirring, she turned to see Bristles sitting up and reaching for the sketchbook again. Nurse Firm moved to hef, and the rest of them came politely forward, trying not to crowd too much. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Too dead for him. Too much weight.” As ze spoke, ze tried very hard to use hez weak limbs in creating, just in the sketchbook, a drawing of Xaquik. The lines wavered a bit with the soreness of the muscles.

“Oh,” Xaquik said, “You’re drawing me. I’m a ze, by the way, like you.”

“Mm.”

Orbit watched Bristles draw as Nurse Firm and the rest talked, and felt a lump form somewhere in his chest. When a lull came up in the talk, he asked, “Does ze really draw like this all the time? Really not stop even to rest or eat?”

“Yes. Getting hef to sleep everyday is a chore. Eating is easier; so long as the food doesn’t interfere with what ze’s drawing, ze doesn’t mind chewing. Every now and then ze’ll forget ze has food in hez mouth, tough, and I have to remind hef to swallow.”

“Bristles,” he said, tentatively, “how do you love something so much without stopping?”

“This is life. Draw or die.”

“You draw very well,” Sunluck said to hef. “We can be friends, right?”

“Mm.”

Somehow, Orbit felt unsatisfied, watching this creature taken from the edge of death continue marching uselessness into the dust. Drawing and drawing and drawing; mostly figures and studies of Xaquik and hez anatomy. Ze felt flattered by it, and let Bristles closely examine the holes in hez hands and legs. With both appendages, ze put hez fingers through as many holes at once as ze could. It only took a few seconds for hef to be satisfied each time and return to drawing. Xaquik also offered up hez wings for Bristles to feel and draw.

As ze let hef inspect hez eyes, ze said, “I’m the changeling that was you a day ago, Bristles.”

“Mm.”

“I hope I didn’t make you too upset.”

“Used me. Fake.”

Xaquik smiled sadly.

After a while, ze started looking at Orbit. Enraptured with Xaquik, it took hef a bit to notice him, but as hez eyes flit quickly to him and back to the paper, Orbit felt hef reaching into his withered soul to better draw. Ze created a little, sad Orbit next to a happier Xaquik. Then ze looked up again and squinted, with some disgust, at Orbit.

“What?”

Ze didn’t answer, but flipped to a new page and started a new piece.

“Ze might reconize you.” Nurse Firm thought aloud. To Bristles, she asked, “Do you remember him? He helped pull you out of the water.”

“Yes.”

Nurse Firm smiled weakly back at him. “I’m sure ze appreciates it.”

Orbit just nodded. They talked a little longer, Tubs kissed Xaquik for hef, and they started their goodbyes when two o’clock snuck up to them. As they walked out, Bristles ripped the page from hez sketchbook and offered it to Nurse Firm. She handed it to Obit.

They looked at it while he, Xaquik, Tubs, and Sunluck walked down the hall. It was a waist-up sketch of Orbit, but only his hollow skin, with many holes punched through. A blank, tired look in what of his face still could be seen even with the crumbling of it and the pieces missing. The biggest hole prominently displayed his heart through holes in his lungs—a fairly anatomically accurate one; thick veins running up and out of sight from the pound of flesh—with one hand straining, reaching desperately for it off the page.

“I think it means you can get better,” Sunluck said.

“I think ze definitely saw your depression.” Tubs said.

“I think Sunluck’s right, Orbit.I think this is a message of hope.” Xaquik said.

The little splinter of hope that had lodged itself into him earlier now glimmered again, somewhere buried under the lungs that tried to behave today. “Mm.” Orbit said.

Nurse Firm gently squeezed Bristles’s shoulder as ze continued to draw. “I think you might have made some friends, Bristles.”

Luna put her hand on Nurse Firm’s shoulder. She started, and tore her eyes from the quivering mass of opened, peach and red flesh before her to instead fill her gaze with Luna’s reassuring face.

As they walked out of a freshly-appeared door, the child’s blood disappeared off her body and Luna asked, “Do you often have nightmares?”

“Sometimes.” They were in a hallway, standing on nothing with stars and nebulas swirling around them and overhead. Hundreds of thousands of doors stretched into the distance in each direction. “It’s not every day. It doesn’t really matter.” Their hooves made no sound as they started to walk.

“I’m sorry I haven’t seen this sooner. I focus on foals, as they have the most real-feeling and raw displays of terror, to the point where some will fear sleeping at all because they do not want to dream what they do. Adults usually have tamer, duller nightmares, and are more capable of shaking them off in the morning. But what happened in there—I will keep an eye on you from now on. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Thank you Luna. Next time, I think.” She could feel her cheeks burning, but fought off the urge to try and rub the heat away.

“I will remember. This is Bristles’s dream.” Luna said, stopping at a door made of plain oak. She opened it, and they stepped into an even meadow with a faint mist around the air. Immediately, Nurse Firm was struck by the brilliancy of the colors. Several, in the clouds and the grass and the air and the lungs, were entirely new and impossible. Colors she’d never before seen and that, even while she looked at one, she couldn’t imagine. She saw a color brilliantly unique and not anywhere on the visible light spectrum, but when she tried to hold it in her head, it became only a wavering pinkish mess. Luna smiled, and remarked in explanation, “This is a great perk of the job. Not many, but some ponies can imagine new colors when they dream. I see Bristles is among them.”

She closed the door behind them, and they started walking toward Bristles. Ze still had the cutiemark, even it had impossible colors, covering zefs entire body, and ze sat, naked like Luna, painting the mountains with oil paint and a canvas propped up on a stand.

Ze’s movements, Nurse Firm noticed right away, were much smoother and unhurried.

At the sound of hooves on grass behind hef, ze turned and smiled at them. “I wondered when you would be showing up, Luna,” ze took the brush in hez hand and put it in the hand that also held hez pallet of paint, then extended hez arm to the princess. “It’s an honor to meet you. I apologize for screaming so much when we met, and I’m glad you liked your painting. It was a thrill to produce.”

Nurse Firm was going to let them shake hands properly, as Bristles clearly wanted to do, but an overwhelming wave of impulse seized her, and she jumped forward and embraced hef harder than she ever had. It might have been the thin sheen of unreality over all of it, or that Bristles hugged her back just as hard, or that ze whispered, “Hey, Clay, I’m so sorry for all of this,” but the tears that almost never fell started falling and didn’t stop. When she pulled away, she noticed the stream of salt water from her face that floated sleepily to the ground.

“It—it’s just so nice, huhh huh, to hear you talk clearly again.”

Holding onto the hand that Nurse Firm wasn’t using to rub her eyes, Bristles led them over to a table that hadn’t been there before. They sat down, Luna poured a glass of something and asked, “What would you like to drink, Nurse Firm?”

“Milk, please, whole.”

Luna gave her the glass, and it was milk she’d poured earlier. She poured another glass. “Bristles?”

“The finest coffee you can imagine.”

Luna smiled at hef as she handed hef the mug. She poured something that looked like beer for herself, and nodded for Bristles to talk.

“Well, I want to say I’m sorry for how I act in the real world. I’m sure you want to hear why I do the things I do, and it’s pretty much the mania. I feel disgusting and useless and terrified when I’m not drawing. So I draw. I do like it, I love it, I do, but it’s also a compulsion. It’s not okay for me to exist not drawing. I don’t really know how else to say it. Even now, I want to get back up and keep painting while I can use all of these colors.” Ze pointed to the impossible, beautiful hues on hez pallet.

Nurse Firm, who had almost pulled herself together, asked, “What can I do to make you feel better when you’re not drawing?”

“I don’t think there is anything. I would’ve told you, I promise. There’s only so much that isn’t art that I can filter through my head to get to you, but I would do it if I could. Luna,” ze turned to her, “do you have any idea how to negate the magic of this?”

“I have some ideas, and I will try them when we wake. But I fear they will not work. I would suggest, as much as you dread it, that an institution might be a good idea. Somewhere where trained, capable ponies can research you and perhaps come up with an answer.”

Bristles’s face fell. Ze sighed and started to paint slowly on the table. “I guess maybe. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be locked up in the loony bin. I doubt they’d let me paint all day.”

“I could come,” Nurse Firm said. “I have credentials, I could still be there.”

Bristles looked over at her and, with unprecedented warmth in hez eyes, ze said, “I’m so sorry I’ve consumed so much of your life. If I don’t get better, please, don’t let me drag you down until one of us dies. I don’t want to be in the bin.” Ze looked back down again and painted a little more. Nurse Firm recognized herself, her coat an unreal pinkish, her eyes some non-existent shade of blue. “Maybe I can switch nurses every five years or something. You’d be off the hook by December.”

“I don’t want to change. You are my life now, Bristles, and you’re my responsibility.”

“Sorry about that.” Ze looked down again.

“It’s not your fault,” Luna said, “I’ve seen cutieous studiummania before, and it was just as debilitating then.”

“Wait, you know another pony in my hooves? What’re they doing, can I meet them?”

“Well, it was over a thousand years ago. He was a mechanic.”

“Was he cured?”

“Well, no. He died in a house fire, actually, when he was about nineteen.”

“Oh.”

“It was a tragedy. I was told there was one more case right after I was banished—an astronomer who made great strides. Also died young.”

“Well,” Bristles said, chewing hez lip, “Guess I better watch my step. At least we don’t use lead oxide anymore.”

They continued to talk, but in the end there was no headway to be made.

“I’m sorry, I am really, but I can’t stop. I can’t. I’d go mad in a snap, I’d slit my throat with my fingernails or bite open my wrist if I had to go an hour without painting or drawing. I-I just can’t. This is life for me, it’s how I live. It’s the only way to live. It’s the curse that’s made it like this, but it is like this and I can’t change it. At first I disagreed with Celluloid and what he said about art, but I agree with some of it now, after thinking about it. I might want to respect my art by taking care of myself, it’s just that there’s too much art in me. The only way for me to respect it is to get it out of my system, and that means drawing every second I can. To stop for even a moment is unacceptable and revolting and terrifying. I don’t know why. It just is.”

“I understand. And I don’t hold it against you. I don’t.” Nurse Firm looked down at her milk while she talked. It tasted good—cold and creamy with just the right kind of soft, refreshing bitterness. She looked back to Bristles’s clear eyes. “Is it scarier than almost drowning was?”

Ze stayed quiet a moment, putting strokes of thick pigment on the table. “Yes, absolutely. If… If I had been drawing while I was drowning, I don’t think I would’ve minded so much. Can you tell Orbit that I do appreciate it again? And all of those four, it was nice of them to come drop by for me. I hope I have made some friends.”

She smiled. “I will. And I think you have.”

“We must be leaving soon,” Luna said, looking upwards and downwards, at her fingers gently deforming, reading the in-betweens. “We’ll all be waking up in a handful of minutes.”

“Okay. Clay, before we leave,” Bristles said, standing up, “I want you to know that I do appreciate you. I’m sorry that I haven’t been showing it, I just haven’t really thought about it much until now. But I really wouldn’t be here right now if not for you, and I know I never make things easy. So thank you, really, for everything.” Ze pulled her up and into an embrace.

Nurse Firm hugged on tightly, “It’s okay. I’ll be here until we find a cure, I promise.”

“There might not be one, though.”

“By Celestia, I’ll find it. Don’t you worry about that.”

Bristles pulled Nurse Firm down and kissed her gently on the forehead. “It’ll be okay.” Ze let go, and Nurse Firm wiped her eyes again.

Luna hugged hef as well, and said, “Thank you again for the marvelous painting you did of me and the Lunar guard. I’ll be notifying everyone I think can help about this. Even though it’s far-fetched, we can hold on to hope.”

“Thank you, Princess.”

She looked up, and then nodded solemnly. “Here it comes.” Suddenly, standing up still, Nurse Firm could feel the pressure of the covers over her and the mattress pressing into her back. Feel herself wake up as the others raised their hands in parting. Her eyes opened to the stone ceiling above, and Luna squeezed her hand. She sat up. Bristles just now opening hez eyes and reaching for the sketchbook to start the day.

As Luna led them up to the main tower to let them watch as she lowered the moon, Nurse Firm saw Bristles creating a figure of herself in the sketchbook. A little Nurse Firm on the page, standing tall and strong, fully clothed but with her open shirt billowing in the wind, carrying the globe in one hand and a bouquet of wilted roses in the other.