As Time Passes by

Chapter 2

“Kitty kitty kitty. Come here. There is no need to be afraid of me.” Colgate said, rounding the boulder. As she did so, she saw a large shadow diving into the woods.
‘Why would it run away from me and why was it so big? Cats aren’t supposed to be this big.’ she thought, wearing a worrisome look plastered on her face.

“Hello?” she asked into the woods. “Are you still here kitty?” No response. ‘Must have run off.’ She toughed and shrugged her shoulders.

“Are you coming?” Lyras voice echoed through the air.

“Yeah, I’m coming. Seems like it ran off to nowhere.” Colgate shouted back. “I’m there in a minute.” She was really worried about that cat.

As she came back to the dirt road she was greeted with a frowning Lyra saying, ”Are you done searching for now, or are you going to waste more of our time? I didn’t plan to stay overnight here.”

“Come down Lyra. I was concerned about it. No reason to complain.” Colgate responded, sticking her tongue out in Lyras direction.

The time Colgate reached the dirt road again, Lyra set into motion as well.

“You know, you can’t just pick up every cat you see and care for her. You’ll end up as one of those crazy cat-mares, which only lives for their cats.”

That’s not true!” Colgate shouted. “I just wanted to see if it was alright and I would have left it alone if it had been ok, but unfortunately it ran off.”

“Yeah, sure.” Lyra said, turning her head towards Colgate. “You would’ve picked it up and… Colgate?”

A look of pure shock was drawn on Colgate’s face as she pointed on the road ahead of them. Something was laying there and neither of them could say what it was.

“Ok, this is definitely no cat over there.” Lyra said mouth wide open.

The mares slowly covered the distance between them and the thing lying on the ground.

“Is it dead?” Colgate asked Lyra with a look of worry and fear.

“I think it’s still alive. It’s still breathing.” Lyra said. “It must be unconscious.”

“But. What is it doing here? How does it get here? And most important. What is it?”

“I don’t know. It can be lost or being here on purpose. It can be friendly or dangerous. It can even be intelligent. Look at its clothes. They are covering the most parts of its body and it looks nothing like us. It has no hooves, but claws, looking close to the dragon that is with the student of the princess. What was his name?”

“Spike.”

“Thank you. So, for the fact that it has claws I’d think that it is walking on its hind legs like him and that it is probably able to speak. Though I have no clue what language it will speak in. And the last thing I’d like to say about it, is, that it is most likely the *cat* we heard earlier and for this wanted to fool us into believing that it was only said cat, so that we don’t go looking for it. Unfortunately for it you love cats and went to its hiding place. It panicked and ran off into the bushes. It fell down the slope, hit its head, came to a halt and fell unconscious.”

“It seems to be hurt very bad. There is a stream of blood running down its head.” Colgate noticed very concerned about the being, completely ignoring Lyra in the process.

“Uuuh! What did I say just moments ago? Hehey, Equestria to Colgate! Wait. You don’t think about…”

“Let’s take it with us. We are responsible for it. Without us it wouldn’t be hurt like this.” Colgate blasted out, before Lyra could say anything.

“Oh for Celestia’s sake Colgate! You are too caring. We can’t just take this thing with us! It’s possible that it is dangerous and wants to do harm to us! Just imagine what would happen if other ponies are seeing us with it!” Lyra cried out.

“Calm down. We scared it and are responsible for it as I said so before. It’s true that we can’t just go carry it around and freak everypony out, but you know, we are unicorns after all and we have something called magic. We are able to make it invisible to the other ponies until we are out of sight and if it really wants to do us any harm we could, let me think about it, use our magic to knock it down again and transport it to the palace. Once there, the princess would take care of it. So don’t chicken from something you don’t even know.” Colgate reasoned.

“Well, thank you. I would’ve never guessed that we can use our magic.” Lyra said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s just that I don’t feel comfortable with it near to me. I’ve never seen anything like this before and this could mean that it is an alien or something from the Everfree Forest. I’m only worried. Is it so hard to understand?”

“No it’s not, but wouldn’t it have attacked us the moment it was aware of our presence when it was trying to harm us? I think it was afraid of us and because of this disguised itself as a cat, so we would go away. See? We are the cause to its pain and fear. We owe it to it.” Colgate replied, understanding Lyras worries.

“Fine, you got a point there, but I’m still not feeling well with this thing, invisible and nicely draped over one of our backs. It’s still dangerous for us to bring it near to a town. It could cause a panic, if it wakes while we are carrying it around.”

“Ok I’ll take it then. Don’t you worry little filly, aunt Colgate got that big ol’ mean thing and will keep it out of your rangey wanegy.” Colgate said like talking to a little scared foal.

“Hey! Stop messing with me and get it loaded up already. We have to go to a town, remember?” Lyra asked, still a bit antsy.

The mares settled the strange thing up on Colgate’s back, casted an invisibility spell around it and started heading for Ponyville again.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
“What’s going on? Why is it so dark here? Where is here?” the voice asked itself in the darkness.
“Is there anyone? Hello?”
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
There were my parents. They were actually sitting in the living room of our house, looking truly sad.
Some other guys were standing in the room searching everywhere. I wondered what they were searching for, so I went over to my parents and wanted to ask them what was wrong.
“Hey mom, dad. What’s wrong? Why are you all making a frown? Did something bad happen?” I asked them, reaching out to the shoulder of my dad.
But nobody answered me or took even notice of my presence.
Something was clearly going wrong and my hunch was right.
As I tried to touch my father’s shoulder, I simply slipped through him and the couch, like they were made of thin air, only stopped by the floor.

I freaked out instantly as I hit the floor, pulling myself in a corner of the room and rocking me back and forth. “This can’t be real! It has to be a bad dream! I can’t possibly be a ghost! Nooooo!”

I cried out loud for several minutes, until I finally accepted that I can’t do anything to change the situation and let myself calm down until I was only sobbing lightly.
It was then, when one of the guys I couldn’t recognize went over to my parents and started to talk to them.

“Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, we haven’t found any trace of your son or a letter from him or any kidnapper. It looks like he just disappeared. But by any chance, could it be possible that your son is sailing on the ocean and just stayed there for a longer period of time? It could possibly be that he …”

“No it can’t!” cried my mother. “He would have sent us a message if he would be staying any longer. No! Something must have happened!”
She was looking more upset than sad, but that’s just like them. Worrying about me, because I am the one to take over the family business once they are not able to do it anymore.
I was really starting to feel bad for my parents and then this. (I don’t get them. I seriously just don’t get them.)

“Search for him. Everywhere. Turn the whole area upside down if you need to, but find him. Also check the gps of our cars, the boat and his one propelled plane, if some of them are missing. I had it installed to find him no matter where on earth he went.” My father added in an authorial voice. (Just what the hell is this coward thinking? That I’m just deciding to leave one day with one of his cars or something and never come back? This man is crazy! Someone call the asylum, we have an inmate running free!)

Suddenly they were all standing in the middle of the room, staring at each other. It also seemed to be earlier than just mere moments before.
My sobbing had stopped and I was walking over to them to hear what they were talking about.

“I’m sorry Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. We found out that your son got in a heavy storm and was forced to anchor on a little island. We found the boat, but there was no sign of your son. It is like he isn’t in this world anymore.”

“That’s impossible.” My father laughed. “My son can’t just vanish with not a single trace left. Are you sure he was not on the boat or the island? Have you searched everywhere?”

“Yes, we are sure that he is neither on the boat nor on the island. We have searched the whole territory and he was nowhere to be found.” the guy answered.

I wondered how much time had passed between when I was trapped in that cave and them searching for me.

“It has been three weeks now.” my father said out of the blue. “I think it’s time that we stop seeking for him. He can’t possibly survive this long. We have to live our lives no matter how hard his loss might be for us.”

(Ok, so it has been three weeks since I got trapped in this cave… Wait a second! Did he just break off the search? What is this old fucktard thinking? Ok, I’m dead, but he can’t possibly know it!)

They all hung their heads low in one minute’s silence for me and scattered afterwards.

The scenery was changing again and I was suddenly standing in front of our house. (Whoever wants to scare me with this shit, congratulations, you did it.) It was far older than I remembered and fell apart at some place. I saw four men carrying a coffin out of it and could overhear some talk shred.

“It’s a shame. They lost their son twenty years ago and went on living in the house, refusing to take even one little step outside all these years.” The first one on the left said in a causal tone.

“Yeah. They thought that it was their fault that their son disappeared. They were waiting for him so long, but he never returned.” The second one on the right added.

“A true tragedy. His wife only lived for ten years and killed herself because of guilty feelings and nightmares hunting her down to insanity.” The second one on the left said, shaking his head.

“And now the old man died. He broke the moment his wife’s soul left her body behind, but lived on for ten more years, always hoping that his son would come back and free him from the guilty feelings, assuring him that it wasn’t his fault that he disappeared.” The last one of the four resumed, dropping a single tear.

I was touched. They really thought that it was their fault that I disappeared. (And now I’m even sad. Whoever is pulling this off, have some piece of my mind. This is not funny.)
I wanted to run up to the coffin and whisper, even though no one would actually hear me, that I don’t hold anything against them and am happy that they’ve waited for me so long. I wanted to say my goodbye. At least to my father.
But as I tried to move I couldn’t. It was like I was glued to the ground. I had to watch as they loaded my father in the hearse and drove away, leaving me behind in total silence. (No it’s not like there was nothing to be heard. The sounds of the environment were still present, but I didn’t notice them.)

I was standing there for what felt like one and a half eternities, what probably was about ten to fifteen minutes, when the whole place fell apart. (Hey don’t look like that, I’m only telling what happened.) I found myself floating in a dark void, a little dot of light shimmering in the darkness in front of me. I approached the light steadily. (I don’t know how I did it or why, so don’t ask.)
As I was just a bit away from it, I heard an evil laugh coming from behind. It was a creepy dark laugh. One of those laughs, that freeze the blood in your veins in an instant.
Since I was not thrilled to meet the owner of the voice, I sped up and hoped for the best.
Coming closer to the light I could hear a female voice. “Strange thing…hurt…care…” she muttered.
Or at least sounded like it.
For now I really gave a fuck and floated, ah what am I saying, flew in the warm embrace of the light. (I’m sure that it was better than waiting for whatever was in the dark.)