“It’s time for you to sleep. Alright Bit?”
“Sweet dreams. No nightmares!” Silver quipped.
“Moon, that pun--” Heart shook her head.
“He is not even a filly!” She continued.
Bit managed to get the pun, and he giggled softly. Even though he was only four years old, the little colt had already learned how to speak fairly well. He even understood Silver’s jokes sometimes. Bitmaker had come a long way from the tablecloth-blanket days.
“Okay mommy.”
Silver and Heart tucked their foul at each side of the bed.
“Sweet dreams.” Heart echoed.
The light was turned off, and all that remained illuminating the foul’s room was the Moon’s light, shining through the window like a nightlight. The window was ajar. The gentle rays of the Moon seemed to wander around the room as the wind blew the curtains to and fro. Bitmaker watched the spectacle, filled with feelings of awe and beauty. As he watched the dance of the curtains and the light, the Moon and the night, he felt his eyelids grow heavy . . .
But then some deep instinct awoke Bit, and he instantly felt completely and utterly awake. The wind seemed to be somber. The curtains grew uneasy. The light of the Moon became harsh. The atmosphere was filled with a feeling of darkness, and there was a feeling of vulnerability.
Shadows lurked and shuttering sounds pounded the window. Bit nearly leaped from the noise.
“What was that?” He wondered uneasily. He felt himself tighten with fear.
“Monster?” The word hung heavy and echoed in his mind. The curtains started glowing. Brightly eerie lights shone through.
At first they were blue and white, like the morning sky, but then they started switching. Gold, silver, red, bronze, and a deep violet flashed through the window. The force of the wind intensified.
Bitmaker was too scared to move or speak or move, let alone get his parents. He was paralyzed and transfixed by the lights. Finally, a deep blue light pierced through the window. It was even strong enough to pierce through the the green curtains of Bitmaker’s bedroom. The light was accompanied by a sudden whooshing sound. Bitmaker heard a sudden pitter-patter. Four, in fact. When he looked up, he realized that it was the sound of four hooves landing skillfully on the ground. Bitmaker was overtaken with fear, and he did not even blink. He heard a soft crack a few feet in front of him. Despite everything, Bit managed to peek up a little farther. He found himself staring up into the eyes of a tall, deep blue figure. He saw the unicorn horn as the pony’s expression changed from an emotionless countenance of boredom to a euphoric grin filled with a dark humor. It was the last thing Bitmaker saw that night.
Bitmaker felt as though he was being sucked through a narrow, spiky passageway, and he became nauseous and dizzy. But soon the sensation stopped, and everything was filled with emptiness. Something slammed.
Chapter 3: It’s a cold world
“Bit? Bit! Bit . . .” a vague voice floated through the void.
“Oh, please wake up, please wake up . . .” Heart repeated the words in her despair.
“Dear, please calm down.” Although Silver was good at keeping a calm demeanor, even his voice was vibrating.
“. . . papa? Mommy?” the colt spoke, relieved to finally be embraced by his parents.
“You’re awake!” Silver exclaimed. He was loud despite himself.
“Oh Bitmaker . . .” Heart sighed and smiled.
“We were so worried, and, and--what are all those cuts from?” Silver Moon tilted his head to the side?”
“I don’t know, but it really hurts, papa.” Silver drew his head back quickly in shock. He frowned.
“Bit, please, you don’t sound the same. Can’t you talk with us normally? This is no time to be--”
“Papa, what do you mean? I--ah--” Bit realized at that moment that his voice was weirdly low.
Silver Moon and Heart Sapphire looked at each other uncomfortably. They looked back at Bitmaker. This time, Bit felt more like they were glaring at him with concern and scrutiny than anything else. But, as usual, Heart Sapphire always had a solution in mind. She turned to Silver, and she spoke:
“Well, look at the time, it is eight-o’clock and we have not even had breakfast yet. No wonder we don’t feel so well. Silver, shall we cook something together?”
“Oh, of course.” Silver said, relaxing. It was a relief to focus on something familiar and familial, as opposed to the strange sights of his battered son and his son’s tossed, messy blankets. Unfortunately, as Heart turned around to walk to the kitchen, she saw something that disturbed her.
“What . . . happened here.” Heart’s voice dropped, at first in surprise, and then in confusion and horror. Then her jaw dropped. “Ehr . . .” She seemed to be speechless.
“Dear?” Silver reacted.
“The window.” She repeated. Heart slowly pulled back the corner of the left curtain.
“About it?” Silver inquired.
“The window.” Responding to her tone of voice and her repetition, Silver turned his attention to the window, and so did Bitmaker. The window was cracked, and some pieces of broken glass had fallen onto Bitmaker’s little table. Heart had tied back both sides of the curtain by now. The square window was clearly visible now. Although the window had been almost perfectly clean and transparent the day before, now, it was hard to even tell what was outside. The cracks in the window were white and dusted with pieces of glass so small they were almost like sand or a powder. The cracks were also everywhere. Bitmaker was curious about the strange appearance of his window, so he walked up closer to it. Since he was short, he climbed on his chair. Then, he put two hooves on the table.
“Why is it all cracked?” Bitmaker said quietly. Searching for closure, he turned to his parents. But his parents seemed to be too preoccupied to even notice his dangerous antics.
“How did we not notice this when we walked in?” Heart pondered. By now, she was visibly upset.
“Notice it? What HAPPENED here?” Bitmaker felt a little estranged by the sheer volume of his father’s voice, so he backed up. He didn’t realize he was backing up into the window.
“Bit, the window--” Heart called out. Hearing the word “window,” Bitmaker turned around towards the window. His head smashed the glass painfully. He tried to find his footing with his two front legs, but he was alarmed when he realized that there was nothing under them. The next thing he knew, he was falling. He had been standing upright earlier, but the momentum caused by his stumble forward made him start to slowly twist and rotate in the air. He hit a tree branch, and it scraped against his left leg. Bitmaker cried out in pain. The impact with the tree had made his rotation stop, and Bitmaker found that he was upside-down, looking up at the sky.
CRACK
Pain shot through his back, and it blocked out all his senses for a moment. He felt a strange pulsing in his head. Terrified and still in agony, he tried to open his eyes. As he opened his eyes, he started to become more aware of what he heard:
“. . . broke the window.”
“I saw that. He turned right towards it, and he smashed it.” The voice was a low growl, a tone that was unnatural and unfamiliar to Bitmaker. It took a moment for Bitmaker to even register that it was the voice of his father.
“Silver, don’t you think it could have been an accident? I mean, Bit is usually such a sweetheart to everyone.”
“Dear?” Silver paused. “You told him to watch out for the window. But he went directly towards it.”
“Silver, I want to hear you. I want to listen to you and understand you. But I just cannot believe that Bitmaker would be so--so destructive.”
“Heart, I did not want to have to bring this up, but . . .”
“But what?”
“. . . but it is quite possible that Bitmaker is not himself anymore. That--that we lost him.”
“No. No, no, no, no, it can’t--”
“I’m sorry. We have to consider the possibility. We have no choice.” Bitmaker lay on his back, listening to this ominous and perplexing conversation between his parents. He heard his mother start sobbing. “Let’s go to another room, dear,” Silver paused in response to her crying, “Please, please, I’m here with you dear . . .” Bitmaker heard hoofsteps two stories above him. At first they were loud, irregular, and awkward, but soon they faded away.
When his parents’ voices had faded away along with their footsteps and his mother’s cries, Bitmaker had nothing to distract him from the sheer pain he was in. He started crying loudly. He lay there for another minute; he was just lying on his back and crying out into the morning air. But no one was there.
“Help!”
Perhaps no one heard him, he thought.
“HELP!”
No one was there.
“Mommy?”
His mother was not there.
“Papa?”
His father was not with him.
“HELP!”
No one was coming. Bitmaker felt the silence and despair of the world start to close over him. “But I’m not giving up. Not yet.” He thought. He needed his parents to help him and make his back better. Most of all, he needed them to understand what really happened, instead of saying confusing things about him being “lost.” Bitmaker knew he did not mean to smash the window, and he knew that he was not “not himself,” because although he was only four years old, Bit knew that being “not yourself” meant being strange and crazy.
“The only strange and crazy things there were were last night and this morning.” Bitmaker thought. “But I don’t have time to think about that now. I NEED to get up.” he said to himself, shouting inside his mind. At first he wiggled his legs for a second, but he quickly realized that was not going to work. He started to roll over to his right side.
“Ow.” “OW ow, ooh ow ow.” he thought. Despite his broken back and the fresh, bleeding scratches from his encounter with the tree branch, he managed to stand up, albeit shakily at first. Bitmaker surveyed his surroundings. He was at the back of his house, near the trees. To his right, in front of him, and high above him was where the window of his bedroom had been. He was standing to the left of a disturbing pile of bloodstained broken glass. At first, his eyes opened wide with shock at the sight, but then he decided not to look at the glass. He turned left, away from the glass, and he started sauntering around his house, trying to get to the front door. Soon, he was only five feet from the front door, and he was about to go in. But before he could, he heard a door knob turning, and the door opened.
“Dad?” Bitmaker up at looked at his father. Silver’s expression was somewhat stoic, but despite that, it was still clearly pained. “I need to tell--”
“Bitmaker.” Silver paused for a moment. “There is something you must do for me. In order for your mother and I to help you.” Bitmaker waited for his father to continue. “. . . but first, come inside.” Silver finished, and he beamed affectionately at his son despite himself.
Bitmaker took a breath, and he started walking forward. His steps were labored, and his back was painful. As he reached the front steps, Silver held the door open for his son. Bitmaker stumbled in. Turning around to look up at his father, Bitmaker asked:
“Was there something you wanted me to do?”
“. . . nevermind.” Silver spun around and walked forward towards the dining room. He only glanced at Bitmaker, but his fleeting expression rose in Bitmaker’s mind. Bitmaker knew that expression.
Irritation.
Resentment.
Jealousy.
It was the expression Silver let through whenever Bitmaker got in the way, or whenever Silver was forced to watch Heart helping Bitmaker, caring for him, playing with him--anything that took the attention away from himself. Silver did not think that Bitmaker was intelligent or old enough to understand this, but he did. Even when Bitmaker did not know the exact words to describe it, he saw the gestures, the stares, the expressions . . .
He hoped that Silver would not do anything to upset Heart or make his own life hard again. But he could only hope. Right now, he had to go to the dining room.
“Wait here,” Silver instructed, “I will go upstairs to get some bandages for you.” Bitmaker lay down in a cozy couch and rested for a minute. He could hear the hoofsteps of his father going upstairs to get it. But he was taking longer than expected. Bitmaker’s eyes wandered around the room as he waited. But soon, he heard someone coming down the stairs softly. What was his father carrying? It kind of shined and reflected the light illuminating the stairs . . .
That was not a first aid kit, he realized. Bitmaker turned around, but he was not quick enough. The blade was going to hit him--
“STOP!” Heart’s voice rang out. Bitmaker fell over. Silver’s right hoof jerked back instinctively, and he lowered it off to the side. Silver was filled with quiet panic; he was desperate to hide the blade. But Heart’s expression made it clear that she had already seen it. She was trembling, but at the same time, almost frozen with shock.
“What--ARE you doing?” Heart spoke, eyes wide. Silver hesitated: then he turned around towards his wife, and he smiled.
“Heart, dear, Bitmaker had a bit of a fall, and I am trying to help him up.”
But the only response he got was silence. Heart strode over, came up close to Silver, and took the knife from his hoof.
“Don’t--” she breathed slowly, “Ever do that again.” Pulling back slightly, she spoke again: “What do you think you’re DOING?” Silver recoiled slightly, and his eyes started shifting; they mostly stayed looking at Heart, but they kept moving, as if they were looking for an escape. Tears glistened in Heart’s eyes.
“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” she finally yelled. Silver stumbled, and then he galloped. He slowed down and stepped outside the door. He shot one pained look back at his family. Turning slightly outward, he slammed the door. Heart frowned softly, not quite able to absorb what just happened. Then she started sobbing. Seeing this, Bitmaker walked over to his mother, wondering what he could do to make any of this better. Heart just embraced him. They stayed like that for what seemed like hours, but eventually Heart’s tears started to subside. Bit brushed her tears away, and she said: “I’m sorry, Bit, I should be the one taking care of you.” Bit just hugged her more snugly. “First off, before I can take care of those injuries, you really need to take a shower. Then, I will patch you up, and we can have lunch. So don’t worry dear,” she smiled down at her son as Bitmaker closed his eyes and relaxed, feeling tired but comforted.
