A Chance of Grey - Chapter 3 - A Mad Magpie by RandomGreymane

Memories...they’re tricky things for me. Always shifting. Nothing ever seems completely stable with them.

One moment I’m trotting along just fine and then all of a sudden I’m being attacked by the memory of say...the time I accidentally insulted a purple princess who was just trying to help.

That one is particularly annoying to be honest. It wasn’t enough for me to go to an immortal princess for help, but then to insult her. Not my best moment.

It was years ago, when my wife and I were still involved in the Stellarite Cult.

Being involved with that group had taken a heavy toll. My wife was working days and I was doing night security. We were living hours away from the location and we were spending a lot of resources just to keep working there.

I remember being so tired days that I had to stop the cart and sleep halfway home.

At one point a very good friend of ours saw that we were getting in too deep and called Princess Twilight in to help. (She was the only one confronting the Stellarites at the time. Lesser ponies couldn’t get involved for fear of the cult ruining them, and of course Celestia couldn’t get involved because they were always within the letter of the law. And we all know how High and Mighty Princess Celestia loves the letter of the law.)

But Princess Twilight was different. All she wanted to do was help a friend of a friend....and I rebuked that offer of help. “I know what I’m doing you arrogant nag! I don’t know how the hell you got your wings but take them and fly your happy flank to Tartarus for all I care!”

She stood watching me and just sighed before replying. “Chance...everypony is worried about you. Look at yourself, look at your wife and foal! Look what the Stellarites are doing to you...you need help.”

“We’re just fine!” I screamed back at her.

“Is that why you’re no longer living in your apartment?” she asked pointedly. “They aren’t even paying you now! Why the HAY are you staying with them!”

“They’re going to show me how to handle all my memories!” I replied hotly.

“You don’t need the kind of help that they ‘give’ you.” she intoned calmly. “And it’s not even free, they work you to death for it. I know some of the best memory specialists...”

“No.” I said flatly. “Every memory specialist I’ve ever gone to has treated me like shit. Either they tell me I’m remembering things wrong or exclaim that all the things I have wrong, and all the things that have happened to me, couldn’t possibly be. Just...no.”

I still recall the sound of her final sigh. It contained exasperation, and anger, and above all finality. “Fine. Be it on your own hooves.” she said. In a purple flash she vanished and I was left alone with the realization that I’d screwed up. Not only had I rebuffed some real help that had been freely offered, but I’d insulted an immortal princess.

She did visit me later but I was too stubborn to apologize. Wrapped up in my youth and arrogance, I once again failed to be true.

Truth...that’s another thing that I failed at for a long time. It took me decades to learn that lying got me nowhere. Especially to myself.

Where was I...oh yeah...memories.

Some of my worst memories are bound up in small moments. Those tiny moments stick to other moments, and other moments, until all you’re left with is this “ball of timey wimey” as The Doctor would put it. (I’ve never been lucky enough to meet him. Were it not for live recordings in the history books I really might think he’s just a myth.)

And all you can see is the outer layer of that tangle of moments and emotion until the ball turns and the light reflects off something and you get a flash of sound or a vision or a feeling. Sometimes the recall is so strong that I start responding to it. Arguing with the ponies in the memories so _this time_ I come out ahead. Most of the time that one happens in the shower thankfully where nopony can hear me.

(...)

I went to the doctor the other day. So far things are doing okay but the breakdown of this body keeps happening no matter how hard I try and hold it back. He did say that my eyes have not gotten any worse yet. I’ll take that. It’s the little things sometimes.

The little things...our daughter is one of those. But also one of the larger things as well. I worry a lot where she’s concerned.

Our daughter is wonderful but she has something different going on with her mind. The doctors say it came from my side of the family and I can see that. There have been quite a few colts and fillies on my side of the family.

There is the branch of the family that frankly drinks themselves to death. That branch of the tree has cider with their coffee if you know what I mean. So there’s where my addictive stuff comes from - my daughter has that worse in some ways.

Then there was my dad’s mother who became demented early in life and the doctors used so many different spells on her that in the end she was just a lump of flesh parked in a rocking chair in the sitting room.

There was the cousin who was so angry at my uncle after he died that she ran a cart over his headstone!

But I think the winner for worst pony in my family goes to an aunt I have long called Aunt Magpie.

On some level I feel sorry for her as she was abused by the stallion she married. He was a war veteran and at least once chased her around with a meat cleaver during a flashback to his time in combat.

When he died, something in her clicked in one particular direction and she decided that she wanted all the things despite not having the money to pay for them.

So...what she would do...is go into the houses of family members after they passed away and take what she wanted. Nobody in the family but my Uncle Jimmy stood up to her. She wouldn’t do it if he could at all be involved and possibly stop her.

So when he died, she and her three fillies pestered my grandma to give her stuff of his. My grandmare was the one who said no finally. She stood up to her and sent her on her way. Kindly but firmly. My mareternal grandmare was like that. Tiny tine pony but with fire if you pushed her too far.

When Aunt Magpie started talking to the other siblings about what would happen to my grandmare’s land when she died, my grandmare was ready and made sure she couldn’t touch it until then. (She basically sold the land to someone who gave her the right to live there until she passed. Then she divided the money and gave it to all the remaining siblings. If one of the siblings wasn’t alive it went to their descendants.) Aunt Magpie was furious.

When grandmare died, Aunt Magpie was in the house and looting it literally before she was in the ground. She was in the house one day and the next day we had the funeral.

I didn’t want a thing but my grandmare left strict instructions with my mother and my Aunt Bayberry that I was to take some things from the upstairs bedroom she kept my uncle’s things in. (It doesn’t matter really but I took his service medals and a box of sheet music that he had collected from music magazines over the years. He played guitar, a talent I’ve never been able to master.)

Again Aunt Magpie was furious. SHE was the one who was supposed to get those things and SHE was the one who was supposed to decide who BESIDES HER got anything at all.

But that’s not the crowning achievement that made me write her off for good. (So much so that she’s currently ill and I am having difficulty caring.)

The straw that broke the donkey’s back is what she said and did when Daisy took her own life.

Besides ransacking her apartment. Besides taking all her things that the really didn’t need. Besides all that...she delayed Daisy’s headstone for a full year.

She prevented the headstone from being installed for a full year. For a full year my cousin lay in an unmarked grave. I had to have a graveyard map to find where she was buried. When I found it, I buried a metal marker of my own so I could find it again if need be. (One of the old style TARDIS keys on a chain. The kind with the weird shape made of pewter. It was what I had at the time and it seemed appropriate as Daisy was always a fan of The Doctor and things of wonder in general.)

Aunt Magpie’s reasoning? I’ll give you her words exactly - “She committed suicide. She’s lucky she’s buried on hallowed ground.”

That was when I decided she’s not worth my time. Sometimes ponies try and tell me that I should forgive her but those words ring in my ears and the anger is fresh behind my eyes.

*sigh* Look...I know I’m supposed to be the bigger pony but honestly I’m not. I’m just not. Especially where she’s concerned.

She was the pony that taught me, in a very real way, how bad ponies could be. I’d seen ponies do bad thing, sometimes around me, but never a member of my own family. It really broke my trust in the good in the average pony. It took me a long time to get that back.

But then our family has always had questionable things about it. For instance, several of the family told me that my grandmare killed a stallion to protect the family.

It was years before I was born, back before all the original uncles and aunts were on the scene.

My grandmare once told me that she and grandpa were forbidden to get married by the Stallion Mafia. And that since they did, they were on a hit list from grandpare’s side of the family.

So...they changed their names...and moved to a town south of Marewaukee. Ten acres of almost worthless land. They planted black walnut trees and planted a family.

One day, one of the mafia came to the door. “Nice house.” he said. “Nice colts. be a shame if something happened to them.” (Please take these words with a grain of salt. They came from old ponies with old memories and I’m sure they were paraphrasing.)

My grandmare looked at him, thought about her family, then hit him in the back of the head with a shovel until he was dead. My uncles disposed of the car, and grandmare used that same shovel to dig a hole. She couldn’t drag him any distance so she dug it right in front of the, then, newly planted apple tree.

And everypony kept silent about it for years.

I didn’t find out about it until after grandmare had passed away. When my aunts and uncles told me about it, suddenly some things came together. The fact that there was a flower garden in front of the apple tree with a cross in it. The fact that grandmare sprinkled Celestial Water on it every Sunday. The fact that she kept anypony from walking on it. I’m honestly surprised I didn’t see it sooner.

But then I’m “only good for pushing a broom”.

Now of course you’re probably grumbling or yelling at me because how dare I judge Aunt Magpie when grandmare killed somepony.

The difference is that he would have killed them.

The times were different back then. Rougher. Things were not quite as civilized as they are now, and the mafia could do as they pleased without the guards even confronting them. (Those that weren’t being paid off that is.)

Knowing this, grandmare took the swing...so to speak. I find no fault in her actions. I too would kill to protect my family. Grandmare’s actions were all to help and protect, Aunt Magpie’s actions only benefit her. Her crimes stand while grandmare gets a pass in my book.

The family grew and continued growing. Seven original foals, each with one or two foals themselves later. A large family. There’s one picture of that contains my grandmare and all five generations. (She passed away at 91 years of age.)

She taught me a lot about how to act as a human being. My mother taught me some things too, but grandmare she made SURE that I knew things I needed to survive and be a good pony. Even if my mother didn’t like some of then.

How the hell did I become me then?? This tired and twisted individual you see here?

I honestly don’t know.

I do know that I keep trying. No matter what. No matter how tired I am. No matter what physical problems I have. No matter what.

She used to do the same and I learned that lesson from her and kept it close to my heart.

That doesn’t mean I’m a perfect pony. Hell, Celestia isn’t perfect let alone myself.

But now I’m tired of trying. And my will is faltering. And I’m not sure what to do. For the first time in a long time I’m not sure what to do.

Maybe that’s a sign that I should ask others for help. But honestly I’m so tired of ponies hauling my flank out of the fire. I should be able to stand on my own four hooves...but each time I try...things happen. They’re almost never super serious, but sometimes they are. They always happen at exactly the wrong moment though.

And I mean _exactly_ the wrong moment.

Daisy once told me our family was cursed. The odd circumstances and bad fortune that has plagued our family over the years certainly doesn’t make me doubt it really. Our family acts like it’s cursed. And the universe seems to respond in kind.

Between the bits owed to the doctors for myself, and the bits owed for my wife, we’re amassing some debt. Shortly after I became employed again the last time, we had to take out credit to pay off the bills we’d gathered while I wasn’t bringing in an income. That has also left us with a hefty debt of bits to be repaid. We’re nibbling at it slowly but it never seems to go away.

And I’m having the dreams again.

They seem to come in the middle of the night, filled with hectic action that pushes me until I wake sweating and panting as if I’ve run a marathon.

A friend of mine, (yes I still have those despite all), joked that it was The Dream Warden trying to contact me.

As screwed up as that sounds, I could probably buy that with all the other odd things that have happened in my life.

But Luna has been gone a long time from the public eye. And neither Princess Twilight nor Celestia are talking.

And why the hay would she want something from somepony like me? I’m nothing special. Point in fact I’m everything ordinary.

So I laugh at my friend and shrug it off.

Still...I kinda wish it was her. She alone might be someone I could talk to about all this.

I’ve always been a night pony to be honest. The day schedules don’t suit me even though the work I do requires me to keep them.

The night is always better. Quiet and serene. There’s an elegance to it that the day just can’t match.

I think I’d tell her how much it helps to stay up late in that quiet night so I can compose myself. It helps calm the ball of memories and maybe make some sense of them at times.

But she hasn’t been seen for years. Decades in fact. All the other princesses but not her. I’ve always wondered why. I tried looking it up once but there was nothing but an...ending...in the records. It’s almost like she faded from history except for her name and likeness.

One thing I did find though - she was a master with spell clusters. The same kind of clusters I’ve spent my life working with.

I took the time to check and almost every one of the cluster creation and maintenance spells that I learned came unchanged from her original archived spellbooks.

There’s something to be said for a spell that’s useful that long even when the cluster designs themselves have evolved far beyond the originals.

The more I read about her the move amazed I am. Also the more puzzled. There’s not one clue as to why she’s not around any more. I checked everywhere. I was even curious enough to send a message to Princess Twilight.

I got no response. I’m betting she’s still angry with me even after all these years.

...I wonder if this is what my aunt feels like in her quiet moments. Does she regret her actions now? I don’t know...

As wondrous as this night is, it’s time for me to cease writing and try and get some sleep.

*sigh*

Sleep doesn’t come easy to me these days. The mind won’t shut down, and when it does the body betrays me. So in the darkness I lay twitching and trying to get my hooves under control. Sleep is only when I’m exhausted now.

I wish...I wish Princess Luna were here to help me. I just wish for peaceful rest. I think were she here she’d be able to help me.

Who am I kidding? I made this bed by not taking care of the things in life I should have. I don’t deserve that help.

Still...were she here...I’d tell her how beautiful I find her spellwork. It’s like the finest silver woven into intricate patterns so complex I can barely make head nor tales of them.

While I love my wife, where spellwork is concerned I truly worship Luna. (Don’t tell my wife I said that please. She’d be pretty offended. I don’t want her to be hurt.)

Still...just once...I’d like the chance to talk with The Dream Warden.

Just once.

I’d tell her...I’d tell her how much I admired her. And how much I respect all she’s done.

Goodnight everypony. May The Dream Warden guard you and keep you.