Happened

by B_25

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rarity, Spike
Length: 1311

I'm not sure when this happened or how it happened or even what happened. But it happened.

Things happen, and that's okay. Things are supposed to happen; they are what make things happen. But something feels so hollow about some things happening over other things not happening. We don't get to decide what happens, only to do our best to make the things we want to happen, happen, and to accept the other stuff.

Published 2018-02-19 17:40:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-02-19 17:40:07 UTC

Action and Response

Happened
B_25

Days, maybe weeks have gone by since it happened.

I'm not sure what exactly happened. Someone must have done a thing. Or a thing was done by something. That's what it means when something has happened, right? I'm sure there's more to it. I'm sure someone else, someone who was actually there when it happened could describe it better, but no one else is around.

I found myself in a library. It was pretty big.

The windows were shattered and the drapes floated with the gusts of winds. On the horizon was orange. No clouds. No sun. Just orange. Something happened to the horizon, but I haven't any idea.

There was once a Princess. Twilight was her name. She told me that things happen all the time. For good reasons or bad reasons or just the reasons pony gives, all these reasons can be found in books. Why something happened. Where it happened. What happened. When it happened. Who made it happened. How it happened.

Twilight told me the answers are found in the books. So to the books, I went.

I didn't understand the words in the books at first. Most of their covers were black, and their pages were more yellow than the teeth of the two-headed dog outside. The text itself was these strange symbols, of lines drawn in strange shapes but it was all lost on me.

I blinked, and then everything made sense.

The words became something I could read, concepts and ideas I could now understand. A long time ago, or however long a long time ago was, the ponies of this place were very happy. They talked. They played. They loved. They had kids. They died and then their kids became happy in their place.

Twilight once told me that such things were a cycle of life. That a cycle of life was something that happens, and not happened. I didn't get this idea because cycles are supposed to move and I don't see a lot of moving nowadays.

I decided to leave the library. The books were too hard to read for someone my age. I understood the ideas of the past clearly, but no longer having them in the present was too hard on me. There was another pony, Rainbow Dash was her name, with wings that gave her flight into the endless night, she told me that reading was for nerds.

I don't think Rainbow Dash liked nerds, so I'll stop reading books because of that.

It felt like night but it was hard to be sure anymore.

The streets are covered in this fog. Or maybe it's smog. I don't know the difference between those two, so I'll just say fog. This fog had an orange tint to it, and I'm not sure it was because of the horizon or if the fog would just be like that nowadays.

Night was supposed to be scary. Night was supposed to be lonely. Maybe those two are the same things. There was once a mare, Fluttershy was her name, that told me she used to wander the streets at night because the moon was blue and the air was cool and no one else was outside and that everything would be alright. To her, night was the only time that everything would be alright, because it was the time after everything happened and she could think and accept what had happened because she was there when it happened.

I didn't feel anything as I walked. It was hard to see past the fog, so the buildings of the past were hidden from my vision. All that I had was what I could see and what was before me and here with me in the present.

Just an empty street.

Friends would have been nice.

I've never had any, but I think they would have been nice. All the books and ponies I meet say that friends are the best. Life's pretty boring without them, or so other ponies say, and I haven't idea if they're lying or telling the truth. The only way to know for sure is to make some friends myself and see how that goes, but I don't have any now, and I don't think I'll have any in the future.

Ponies without friends tend to wander as I do now. They are fastened to their thoughts as their legs take them forward, for everything behind them is in the past, and the past can not be reached no matter how hard we run so we should just shrug off the whole ordeal. Those ponies can fool themselves into the ideal of the future and feel go about themselves as they're constantly progressing toward it.

Applejack spoke to me of such ponies. I told her that such ponies sounded stupid, and she nodded her head.

The past becomes more distant, and the future comes closer with every second our heart continues to beat. Progress comes whether we want it to or not. I'd rather remain the same in the past then become what I shall be in the future.

Applejack then said that movement isn't progressed and then bucked an apple tree. She probably made a lot of bits from the apples she bucked. She continued to talk, and I continued to listen. Once we were done, she returned to her family, and I began to walk forward.

“Spike, are you listening to me?”

I shook my head and opened my eyes. “What?”

“My latest idea is just drivel,” Rarity said as she rolled up some paper. It probably had a drawing of a dress on it. Either way, off to the trash it went. “As white as an angel was a cliche idea indeed. Originality is fighting through the first idea, after all.” She turned to face me. Even when I sat down on her couch, I was still taller than her. “So how was la-la land for you?”

I have a hard time answering questions about myself. I struggle and give out something I heard elsewhere quite awkwardly. “Fighting the forces of evil and saving you from a tower of silver.”

“Poetic,” Rarity said to me, smiling softly. She turned around to the drawing board when something gripped me deep inside. In that other world I visited so much, I saw the future that was to come to be, and this very moment would become my past. “Well, now it's time to wakey-wakey, Spikey-Wikey. We've got work to do.”

I got up from the couch and put my claw around Rarity's neck. It was so soft and so warm that I couldn't help but close my eyes in bliss.

“Spikey?” I heard her concerned voice say my name, and when I opened my eyes, she was looking up at me. “Is something the matter, dear? You seem a bit off today.”

“I'm just fine,” I lied, but that doesn't matter. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

“I... beg your pardon?”

“A date,” I said again, lowering myself onto a knee so we were at eye level. “We've been working so long that it's starting to get a bit hard on me.” I shrugged my shoulders. “And who knows? Maybe it's starting to get hard on you too. Maybe a date would be a nice stress killer?”

“That is not the part I have trouble understanding,” Rarity said as she stepped out of my contact, but not too far away as to not be reached again. “When you say date. Do you mean as an activity as friends—“

“I mean as a mare and a dragon,” I said. “I want to take you on a date, and I won't be mad at what answer you give me.”

And then Rarity gave me her answer.