Friendship is Magic: Columbarium
By Winter Quill
For Ben, coming upon a pony might have been rare, but it wasn’t an uncommon sight. It had been nearly a decade since the two worlds first made contact, and people and ponies were constantly traveling between them. Which had only increased once they had worked out how to keep the portals from transforming everyone who went through them. Ponies were now a frequent sight in many of the bigger cities and collages around the world.
Yet, the one place he had never expected to see one was in the cemetery, let alone the columbarium. The pony was just standing there, looking over the plaques on the marble wall. They were wearing a dark blue hooded cloak that was pulled up over their head leaving only their muzzle, tail and hooves exposed. Their fur was a much softer blue, and the tail was stripped in shades of purple.
He watched the pony for a few moments, their head was slowly tracking over the names on the wall, pausing only long enough to read each one.
Ben slowly walked up to the pony, the echoes of his footsteps filling the large open space of the building. “Can I help you?” he asked as he came up the pony’s side.
The pony turned to look at him, revealing large green eyes tinged with red and a light fuzz of what looked like facial hair. “No… no, it’s okay,” the stallion said, his voice scratchy and rough.
After how long he had been at the cemetery, Ben had become familiar with all the different signs of grief, and they seemed to be nearly the same for a pony. He simply took a few steps back, not trying to crowd the stallion, but staying close by.
The pony continued to read the names of the plaques, softly mumbling words in his own language. Occasionally he shuffled a few steps further down the wall, his hooves oddly muffled on the stone floor. Ben just watched, waiting for him to speak.
Nearly ten minutes past before the stallion sighed, his head dropping. “How do you handle it?” he finally asked.
“Everyone is different,” Ben replied, stepping up to stand next to the pony. “When I lost my mother, I just felt numb. I didn’t cry until her funeral, and even then, it still felt unreal. I ended up throwing myself into everything I could for months until it finally started to sink in.”
The stallion seemed to think about his, then slowly let out a sigh as his body seemed to sage. “But… the scale of all of it. There are just so… many,” he said, waving a hoof out across the wall of plaques. “And this is just one building. There are graves, memorials, flags. So many gone, from such a long time, all in one place. There are more names on this wall than ponies in the town where I grew up. It just feels too big to understand.”
Ben nodded, not sure the best way to respond to something like that. He had been told that the pony’s world was smaller than Earth, with only the fraction of the population, so his reaction wasn’t to surprising.
“It feels so rare back home. Even when I was living in Canterlot it felt like something that never really happened. Yet here it seems to happen every day,” the pony said, shaking his head, the hood falling away and exposing his short cut mane.
“Maybe, when you look at it like this; gather together in a place of memory, it seems overwhelming. I have only lost a couple people in my life; each one was rare and tragic. And when taken in the perspective of a single person, it is still incredibly rare.”
The pony finally turned to face Ben. “Yet working here, you must see death every day.”
Ben let out a soft sigh, that was a common misperception that almost everyone had when they found out him. “I don’t see death, I see life. I see people every day who come here, some to mourn, others to remember or they come to speak to those who they loved in life and miss in death.”
With a flick of an ear, the stallion cocked his head to the side as he wiped a foreleg over his nose. “I never thought of it like that.”
“While every person is different, how you are feeling isn’t wrong,” Ben said. He then crouched down, reaching out to place his hand on the pony’s shoulder. “Who did you lose?”
The stallion bit his lip, his eyes flicking away for a few moments as let out a sniffle. “My best friend. We grew up together, did nearly everything together, but she stayed in Equestria while I came here to study music. It was only supposed to be for a year. We were going to have a big party when I got back home. She would show me all the magic she learned, and I would play all my new songs… and now she’s gone,” his voice caught slightly at the end.
“What happened?”
Sniffling, the stallion wiped his nose again, tears starting to gather in the corners of his large eyes. “It was an accident, with the train. It… she was going home, and there was a bridge and…” he seemed to shrink under his cloak and shook his head, the tears coming freely now.
“So stupid, it’s just so damn stupid. She is… was,” he spat out the word with a look of disgust. “She was amazing. She has all of these brilliant ideas, all the things she wanted to do, plans how to use her magic to make the word a better place… and now she’s gone.”
Ben nodded, moving a bit closer to the stallion. When he didn’t shy away, Ben wrapped him into a tight hug. The pony froze for a few moments, then returned the hug. He wrapped his legs tightly around the human and started to weep into his shoulder. He patted the pony on the back, allowing him to cry as long as he needed to.
When the stallion finally pulled away, the fur on his face was matted down and his nose was wet at snotty. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his nose against her foreleg again.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Ben replied, sitting down on the floor next to the stallion. “Do you have anyone here on Earth you can talk to?”
“No. I’m the only pony at the university. I have a few human friends, but I don’t want to burden them with this,” the stallion said, folding his hind legs to sit down on his rump.
Ben shook his head. “It’s not a burden. They're your friends, they will understand how you are feeling, and having someone to mourn with will help.”
The stallion shook his head. “I don’t know… maybe… I just… they all have things that they need to do, I don’t need to add to that.”
“They will understand, and they will make time for you. After all, that’s what friend are for,” he said, draping his arm across the pony’s back.
That caused the stallion to let out a rough coughing laugh. “A pony getting a friendship lesson from a human. Dear Celestia, everything is bucked up.”
“Losing someone close to you does that,” Ben replied.
The stallion seemed to think about it for a few more moments, then nodded his head. “You're right. I’ll talk to my friends and tell them what happened. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back to see her, but I’m going to. It’s in a week, I should be able to make it.”
Ben nodded, giving the pony another quick hug. “You won’t regret it,” he replied.
“Thank you for helping me, for listening to me. I’m Star Spark,” the pony said, offering out a hoof.
Taking the hoof in his hand, he gave it a quick shake. “I’m Ben, and I’m always happy to help someone, or somepony, when they need it.”
Star Spark wiped his nose one more time. “I don’t want to do this alone. I’m sure one of my friends will come with me, but if they can’t… would you?”
Ben wasn’t sure what to say to that. It wasn’t the first time someone had asked him to attend a funeral, but this would be very much out of the country. It would be crazy to drop everything and take a trip to support someone he had only just meet, but it was clear that the pony needed someone to be there for him. He had a couple weeks of vacation saved up, and his boss would understand. “Of course, if you need me to.”
“And you won’t have to wait for a visa.”
While that was true—the waiting list to get an Equestrian Visa was months long—he didn’t want to put too much focus on that part. Of course, he was fairly sure that one of Star Spark’s friends would go with him. He pulled out a notebook from his pocket, and quickly wrote down his cellphone number. “You can call me if you need to, anytime.”
“Thank you,” the stallion said, taking the paper in his mouth, then turned around and tucked it somewhere into his purple mane. “I… thank you for talking with me. It really helped.”
Ben gave him a smile. “Sometimes, all it takes is a friendly ear.”
Star Spark nodded, rising back up to his hooves. “I’m going to go, I need to talk to my friends,” he said, and then gave Ben a quick hug before pulling away. He had the smallest of smiles on his muzzle as he turned away and headed towards the exit of the columbarium.
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This story was written and copyright 2019 by Theo Winters writing as Winter Quill, reposting and archiving are allowed as long as this copyright notice and the author's name are not removed. This story cannot be published without permission of the author.
