Next thing I know, I'm sprawled out on the floor, and my muzzle hurts. I press a hoof to my cheek, wince at the pain... that's going to leave a bruise, for sure.
"That was a bad one," I hear myself saying out loud. Pointlessly. There's nopony to hear it, and I already know.
"They're getting worse," I say anyway, moving my jaw, feeling my teeth with my tongue. All still there.
I haul myself up to my hooves, steady myself against the wall for a moment as the familiar dizziness takes over. I've long since learned to wait it out, to just rest a while as I let it do its thing. Fighting it only makes it worse.
The fur on my left hind leg feels damp. I wince, and half-open one eye to take a peek, wondering if I maybe cut myself in the fall... or even worse, if I've...
...No. It's tea. It's my chamomile tea. Or, rather, it's what's left of my chamomile tea, seeing as how the rest of it is pooled on the stones of the kitchen floor, seeping into the cracks amidst the broken pieces of what's left of my favorite teacup.
"Celestia damn it."
I'd figured that, by now, I'd have grown out of the habit of talking to myself out loud like that. Isolation does funny things to a mare. Pop always did say I liked the sound of my own voice. He just didn't know how right he was.
I don't want to think about Pop. But then I think about the last thing I saw before blacking out, and I see that pegasus, alone in the ditch, and I see the shades of the timberwolves, and I hear her calling out for her wife, and even though it's only for a split second it's so clear it's like I was there to see it for real, and I realize I need something else to think about.
Like how I'm about to fall over, and how the texture of these smooth-worn flagstones underhoof is suddenly the most interesting thing in the universe.
I try to focus. Breathe. Let the nausea pass. Take a few deep breaths, slowly; feel my way along the cool, smooth bare plaster of the wall, navigating by touch and from memory. I can do this with my eyes closed. Have done this with my eyes closed. Sidestep the puddle of tea and broken pottery. Make a mental note to clean it up once I've got my balance back.
I stretch out a hoof, and feel the comforting touch of sanded wood. Seems at least I didn't knock the chair over this time. Small mercies.
I haul myself down into the chair, reach out and place my hooves flat on the table.
My table. My chair. I made these. They're mine.
They aren't much, and Pop would have laughed so damn hard if he'd seen these ugly, rough-hewn things with his professional eye, but it took me forever to make them. Hours, days... sawdust and hammers and sweat in my eyes and swearing in the air, trying to remember everything he ever taught me, everything I ever watched him do in the workshop. And I didn't give up, and I got them done, and they're mine.
Probably not worth it. Nearly had a horrible accident when I stupidly tried sawing the logs myself. Cut my foreleg pretty badly, with nopony around to hear me screaming and crying. (Yay, isolation.) Sitting there, tightening a makeshift tourniquet, bloody rag around my leg, tying a knot using flickering magic and a few good tugs with my mouth, wondering if this was how it was going to end. Willing the visions to come, for once.
It doesn't work on me, of course. Of course. That would be useful, so of course. The one pony where I'd actually want to know... nothing.
I shudder at the memory.
Oh, not the memory of the accident. No, that could have happened to anypony, and anyway I was fine, it healed up nice enough. No, I mean the memory of what happened after, when I was healed up, when I decided chopping the wood myself was a stupid plan, and when I made up my mind to venture down into the valley and spend my last few remaining bits to have somepony who actually knew what they were doing get it for me.
He's lying there, flailing, in a pool of blood, twitching on the floor, as spectral, shadowy figures of ponies unknown gather around in horror, shouting for somepony to call a doctor, milling about with no idea what to do, and I try not to look, so as not to be sick right there on the floor of his lumberyard, and I look anyway, and I hold a hoof to my mouth.
"...and four of those, also in pine, and... Uh, are you alright, miss?"
I look up at his bewildered expression, or concern mixed with bewilderment. I've seen it so many times on so many ponies' faces, but there's nothing I can do about it.
No matter how much practice you get, there's only so much you can do to prepare yourself for these conversations... which is to say, not a lot. Once you've watched somepony die, in really, really realistic, graphic detail, right there in front of you, it's just super hard to smile and talk to them some more about your lumber order.
This is why I don't go down to the valley any more. Not unless it's an emergency. And I haven't had one of those in a long time.
No, broken teacups and bumps on the head don't count, alright? And my leg is fine.
♪ "Hey, and away we go
Through the grass, across the snow..."
I like to sing to myself. I haven't heard music in a long time, but I find that singing out loud really helps... helps to pass the time, helps to keep my spirits up, helps me feel less alone. Like, maybe somepony someplace else is singing that very same song at that very same moment, and we're both singing out to the same beautiful sky, and even though we can't hear each other, we're singing a secret duet all the same.
I don't need to sing, or talk out loud, of course. I'm sure there are ponasteries where the brothers and sisters go years and years without speaking a single audible word. But I promised myself I wouldn't do that. I need to make sure I remember to make a sound now and again, because I need to remind myself of a few things. What my voice sounds like. What any voice sounds like.
That I exist.
So, I talk. And I sing.
I'm not worried about being heard. There's a reason I picked this place. Nopony ever comes up here, or not often, anyway, and even if they did, well, firstly, they wouldn't see me—I mean, they could be standing right in front of my little cottage and not see it, and they'd just turn around and enjoy the best view in all of Equestria and then go trotting back down the valley. And secondly, I'd feel them coming way before they got close enough to hear my voice.
That's what usually happens, anyway. Sometimes, somepony will get too close and I won't be able to sense it in time to get far enough away that I can't have a vision, and, well, that's how you black out and come around covered in tea and bits of smashed cup.
That's pretty rare, though. Most days, most months, it's just me, and the hill, and the sky.
There are worse places to be.
♪ "...I'd rather be with you, than flying through space..."
The village isn't too far away, down there in the valley—I can see the lights in the distance twinkling at night, sometimes smell the smoke from a fire, if the wind carries it up here to my hill, if I'm not burning twigs myself.
I'm not a loner. I mean, sure, there was a time I'd rather bury myself in a stack of books than go out and play with my friends, but that doesn't mean... Well, I don't want to be alone.
But this is a safe enough distance. I can sleep without interruptions, I can go about my day, check on my little vegetable garden, my flowers... I can sit here and read, or write in my journal.
Oh, and I can practice spells, or at least the ones I can remember, the ones that aren't in those books I've read a hundred times.
I don't get new books any more.
The bookseller looks at me, quizzically.
Superimposed over her confused expression, her wizened, wrinkled face stares out blankly from a comfortable quilted bed someplace, many years from now, a bed that probably hasn't even been built yet, and then the shade of a stern-looking, grim-faced mare, with the same colored coat and mane as the bookseller but a different cutie mark, reaches out a hoof and closes the old pony's eyes.
I shake my head, and stumble, and knock over a stack of books, and she's asking if I'm alright and I'm flustered and trying to say I'm fine, and in my embarrassment and haste to get the heck out of there, I blindly shovel them all into my little cart. Preposterously, I'm trying to pretend that these are the books I came in to look for, all of them, and I hand over a sack of bits, and I turn tail and bolt right out of her bookshop, barging some poor pony out of the way in the process. He's skiing, he's elated, he's going too fast, he's out of control, and I'm gone around the corner before I get forced to see the inevitable outcome, me and my cart, galloping for the hills as quickly as I can without even once looking to see what it is I've just bought.
Mostly empty journals, as it turns out, a blessing for which I've thanked my past self so many times. The rest of my haul was... well.
I look up at the makeshift bookshelves on the bedroom wall. Maybe two dozen volumes.
I say "maybe". Trying to sound casual, there, as if I'm pretending to myself that I'm showing somepony around my lovely home. Of course I know exactly. I've read them all. And read them, and read them again, and then I've read them some more. I know the colors of the bindings, the widths of the spines, the designs of the tooling, the scuffs and bumps and general scars each one bears from being my best friends all these years. Of course I've counted them so many times. I just like to pretend I haven't.
Twenty-two.
A Beginner's Field Guide to Basic Plant Husbandry... that one was a stroke of luck alright, though the chapters about Mage Meadowbrook are a lot more exciting than the ones about how to grow wildflowers if you aren't an earth pony. You can see those pages already looking more well-hooved than the rest of the book. All the same, I haven't starved yet.
A Short History of Thaumaturgical Trace Anaylsis with Reference to Mathematical Constants, not so much; I don't think anypony besides me has read that one in a hundred years. And if this is the "Short" history, I sometimes wonder what that guy's Long History would look like. It's just pages and pages of tiny scribbles and diagrams of circles and triangles and it never lets up, and I'm pretty sure I could master the spells described in the opening chapters as having been performed by long-dead unicorns I've never heard of, except I don't have anything to practice on, and without the practical application of the techniques... well, let's just say it's a pretty dry read.
Hasn't stopped me trying to get through the thing a few times, though.
A collected edition of Starswirl the Bearded's Complete Monographs on Advanced Amniomorphic Magic. This one's really interesting, although I'm not going to pretend I could ever master any of the spells he talks about. I mean, he doesn't write most of them down, he kind of assumes you're familiar with what he's writing about and launches straight into these long discussions on what the spells did, which is kind of a mixture of dense math, political asides about wizards who died a thousand years ago, and then some fairy tales about him and his weird groupie and a ragtag bunch of heroes, who were always getting into some pretty epic laser battles with the forces of evil.
Those are the best bits, although I'm pretty sure he's making most of them up on the hoof.
Anyway, I think this is some sort of rare compilation of essays or something, because there's a note from—well, I don't know, maybe the bookbinder?—between the leaves, addressed to somepony called Moondancer, saying how hard it was to pull all of these together for her but that she's such a special filly it was worth it, and they hope she enjoys it. Poor filly, I took her book, though if it makes it any better I think I overpaid.
Besides, I need it more than she does.
I think of her sometimes. I mean, I try to picture her, but I always end up picturing my friends instead, only their faces get fuzzier with each passing moon, they get harder to remember and I wish I had some pictures and instead I've got that filly's book.
Along with going out for walks on the hill, getting lost in a good book is the one thing that's kept me from losing my mind altogether—I think!—and this is probably my favorite. I often wish I'd brought some of my old books from when I was a filly, I'd love to read them again; I've thought about using up some of those journals to try and write them down from memory, just to see what I could remember. But I don't remember enough, and anyway I want to keep the paper for stuff like, well, this. I need to write these thoughts down soon before they disappear forever, and then what evidence is there that today ever even happened at all?
Oh, sure, I think, it's going on for everypony else down there—I look down at the village in the distance, watch a thin, wispy tendril of smoke from somepony's chimney curling up towards the sky, think about all the ponies going about their business, meeting and talking and selling and buying and travelling and loving—but for me, when every day is pretty much the same as every other day, give or take the odd rainy spell, my thoughts are the only thing that change. So it's important to write them down.
Of course I'd love some new books, but that's not happening any time soon.
Some mailpony, carelessly flying far overhead (taking a shortcut over the hills or something, maybe?) drops a newspaper one time. Once I've picked myself up from the grass, and managed to push the unwanted picture of their bloated body washing up on the beach out of my mind, I trot over to pick it up, and after looking around to make sure nopony was watching—force of habit, I guess—I take it back to the bothy with me.
That keeps me going for weeks. I ration myself, to stop me going through the whole damn thing in one sitting. One article a day. Two, if I'm feeling like I've been extra good that day. None, if I want to punish myself. I make it last.
By the time I've finished the junior school hoofball league box scores and pored over every last classified ad, it feels like the greatest work of literature in the history of ponykind.
And when it's over, I read it all again, front to back, and in my mind's eye I let myself rejoin the world.
I imagine somehow taking part in every article. I captain those winning hoofball teams, I attend every meeting of the council, and the planning committee, and the merchant's guild, and the village green preservation society, and I picture myself going down to the valley and just ignoring the voices and visions as I answer every ad in the paper. I buy that exercise equipment and I join the book club and the Old Ponish study group and I learn to play the piano and a hundred other things I'll never get to do.
Damn it.
Why, Celestia? Why me?
It really is the best view in all of Equestria, though.
Okay, so I have very little to compare it with, but when I wake up in the morning feeling hard done by, that life is hard, that I'm being punished for something that isn't my fault...
...which was pretty much every morning, for the longest time...
...well, I get up and look out of the window at the beauty of the hills, the newly risen sun bringing out the greens and browns and yellows of the curving earth, oversaturated and endless, the trees and the brush and the sky and the clouds, and for a moment, just a moment, I forget why I'm here, and I just take it all in.
When it rains, when it's cold, when the skies are grey and angry, then yes, it's a struggle. But when the sun shines, like it did this morning, I feel sad for those city ponies who never get to see this. I remind myself there are ponies who'd pay thousands of bits to spend a week this far away from everypony else, to distance themselves like this... to get away from it all.
There are worse places to be, all told.
I just wish it was my choice.
When it comes to the story of how this all happened, I go through phases.
Sometimes I don't want to think about it at all. I don't want to try and remember how I got here. I resent it, and I resent thinking about the way things were before. I resent the happy filly bouncing home from school for her cuteceañera, with no idea what's around the corner. Better to wall it off. Shut it down. No good can come of raking over the past, opening old wounds just to remind myself what that feels like.
But there are stretches where, for moons on end, it's all I can think about, it interrupts my thoughts so often. And so I tell it and re-tell it and yet I never quite can bring myself to write it down in full and call it finished. My Story. Definitive Edition.
Never happens.
I'll find myself re-reading my journal from the last time I got obsessed with the idea, and without fail soon enough I'm there thinking no, that's wrong, that's not how it happened, why did I write that? And so I fill the pages with another, slightly different account, and then another, and by now I think there are probably whole books full of this and none of them is right.
I grab one off the shelf at random.
My friends all got cutie marks that made sense. Skeet with his clay pigeon, that one was obvious from when I first heard his name, four generations of ponies making those things. Wintershine and her table tennis paddle, no ambiguity there, though I remember her sulk when the rest of the schoolponies refused to play her any more. Kind of a pointless one, that, when you think about it. And... the green earth pony, what was her name? With the mousy mane? I mean, I couldn't really tell what hers was meant to be, but she loved plants so much, and she turned out to be so good at growing flowers, we all figured it was connected to that.
We used to be so close, didn't we? Why can't I remember her name now?
I wonder if Wintershine ever turned pro?
Anyway, I waited and waited. I thought, when I finally got mine, it'd be the happiest day of my life. Instead, it feels like the day everything went to crap.
I'd say "the short version..." but it's the only version, I can't remember anything else about it. And that's not an isolation thing, I couldn't remember then, either. All I know is that I was flipping through a spell book in the library, not paying much attention... skim-reading, really, and then I feel this surge blasting through me, I can feel every nerve in my body prickling and waking up and stretching out, and everything goes white, and when the librarian helps me to my hooves she points to my flank, and there's this squiggle, a bit like...
"Wallflower, that was her name. Wallflower Blush."
Talking out loud again there.
Anyway, a bit like hers, it's this abstract thing with stars and wavy lines and I guess it's to do with magic or something because I feel totally certain that's what my life's purpose is going to be, that I'm here to do magic, to study magic, to learn magic, and I guess I'm supposed to figure the rest out by myself, which is kind of a disappointment because I've always hoped that on The Day when I left blankdom behind, I'd suddenly have it all figured out, clear path, that sort of thing.
I remember thinking, this is OK, the rest will come later.
But it wasn't OK.
So I practically skip home, eager to show Pop my cutie mark, and obviously somepony from school has let him know in advance because as I gallop to the door, he's standing in the open doorway holding a little cupcake with a candle on it, so small in those big carpenter hooves but I'm so touched by the gesture, and I look up to his eyes and I see this goofy look on his face, like he's gonna cry, but from happiness, and it reminds me of Mom, and I speed up ready to leap into his arms and I'm thinking about how not to make him drop the cake when I tacklehug him and maybe I can show off a levitation spell, and then...
...Damn it. I need a minute here.
So, the pain, it's super intense, but only for a moment, and it hits me right under my forelock, and sends me tripping to the ground and I scrape my haunches on the gravel but that's not what I'm thinking about, because what I'm seeing is Pop, sprawled on the floor, twitching violently and foaming at the mouth and then going rigidly still, and I know he's dead, and I puke on the towpath and gasp for breath and I hear myself screaming and I look up...
...and Pop's there with icing smooshed on his apron from where he dropped the cake to run to me, and he's asking if I'm alright, and another pony comes trotting over, and I look at them and see them mangled under the wheels of a carriage, and here's the baker, somehow passed out in a huge cloud of thick, dark smoke that I know isn't there, and I'm sick again, a lot, and then I wake up in bed.
I've got a pretty good idea by now of what's going on, but when the doctor comes, and I see him, black mane turned white, slumped at some desk stacked with books in a room that isn't mine, that settles it.
I can see how ponies die.
Worse, I can't not see how ponies die.
I don't tell the doctor, of course. Or Pop. I don't tell them what happened, and I surely don't tell them what I saw. No. I tell myself I can learn to live with it. I tell myself I can do this. Steel myself, make sure I only eat bland foods before meeting new ponies. I tell myself I can get through it. It can be a gift. I can push past seeing the faces of everypony I've ever met, twisted in death, and find the positives in this... special talent, this thing I've never heard of anypony else being able to do. I'm strong enough, right?
I last maybe a week of nightmares and puke before I decide I have to get as far away from other ponies as I can.
...Yeah. In the years between then and now, I've been over what I did wrong that night so many times. Anypony who wants to point out something I could have done or should have done better... I'd tell them to save their breath. There's nothing I haven't already cursed my past self for not doing, whenever I think back. Which is often.
I mean, I could have told somepony where I was going, for a start. I could have trusted ponies a little more—trusted them not to break my isolation by coming out to see me, not to ignore my pain as a sacrifice for their obsession, not to ask me for readings like some novelty fortune-teller at the fair.
...I could have said goodbye to Pop.
I didn't do any of those things, and when I think about that, it hurts almost as bad as when I get the visions.
Stupid.
When they find me and bury me, I want them to carve on my tombstone: "It made sense at the time."
There I go again. What was I saying?
After I flee, I wander these hills for days, me and my little cart of junk and as many bits as I could get my hooves on—sorry, Pop—heading to the next somewhere that wasn't right there. I look back on it now, and I don't remember very much about it, about what I did or about how I felt. I have memories of snacking on plants, and drinking from streams, and just keeping myself alive, even when I'm sure I was telling myself that that wasn't really a priority.
I do remember it being cold, and wet, and that sleeping outside is uncomfortable. Especially without a tent, because I left in such a hurry that I forgot one of those might be useful if I was heading off to the hills with no plan on where I was going.
Best. Idea. Ever. Right up there with all my other Best Ideas Ever, and about as successful.
(Wish I could tell you what was going through my mind when I was "packing", but it's all a blur. Besides the money, I apparently found space in my cart of hastily gathered junk to bring an old embroidered cushion, a sprig of fennel, and a shower cap... but no tent. Although the shower cap was actually kind of helpful when it rained. And that cushion has been my rump's best friend over the course of thousands of cups of tea by now, so I guess it wasn't all bad.)
Anyway, I think—I'm not sure, but I think—it's been four days when I find this little bothy tucked away, high on the hillside, and I decide to spend the night. It looks like nopony has been up here for a very long time, given the cobwebs everywhere and the bugs who've taken over, and there's no table and no chairs. But it looks sturdy enough; there's a door, and glass in the windows, and my heart is already warming up when on further exploration I find a fireplace, and an old copper kettle, and, mercy of mercies, a bed.
For the first time in however many moons, I allow myself to think about my future.
I tell myself I've as much right to this place as anypony else, that it's what a bothy is for. I'll camp out here until the next visitor comes to stay, and make myself scarce as soon as I start to see their future.
Nopony ever comes to stay, and by and by, this becomes my home.
So, where was I? Right, okay. So, I've got my chair, and I've got my books, and I'm not stupid enough that I can't see these things are getting worse, not better. The pain's more intense, the nausea is more uncontrollable, and I don't venture back to civilization any more because I can't block off the noise of the crowd.
I don't have a plan, and I don't really know what I'm expecting to happen, but I have to do something, and my default something is research.
But these books aren't much use. Can you imagine what it's like for me, going to a library? Can you imagine what it would be like going to Canterlot? To Ponyville? Appleloosa, even? I can't stop it, and I don't even have to see a pony to get the vision any more, if they happen to wander close enough, and it's bad enough when it's just one, but a hundred all at once...?
I stay home. I grow food. I make tea. I read. I write. I walk. I sing. I sleep. And a new day begins.
I want to write to Canterlot, to the School for Gifted Unicorns where Pop always said I was destined to end up. But I can't send letters. No dragonfire, no mailpony, I don't know the spell to send a scroll to a fixed location. We were due to cover it at school next week. I mean, "next week" as in what would have been my next week, however many years ago that is now.
So, I try using one of the spells I do know. Something from one of the books. A spell to let me work out exactly where I am, and—remotely—alert a pony to help me by coming to pick up a letter.
I wait until it's dark, and I'm sitting there with my little rushlight, cross-legged on the grass in my star-circle of pebbles, which I've laid out just like in the book but with these pebbles instead of using chalk because I don't have any chalk, and I take a breath, and I close my eyes, and I reach into my mind, and then reach out again.
Gently. Slowly. Carefully.
I reach out, blindly, inch by inch, feeling my way outwards, visualising my magic like long strands of horsehair gingerly exploring. I know I can't rush this. One false move, one inch taken too fast, and I could miss a whole town, and unknowingly spend the next five hours reaching out across the ocean, on a slow heading to nowhere.
And I bump into a pony.
It feels like I've physically walked right into them, headbutting each other on the street as we both turn a corner, and I can't tell what it's like for him but for me it feels like I've been hoofed in the head, and I try—I mean, I swear, I really try my best not to see, but it's no good. He's there, lounging in his big, comfy armchair with a foal in his lap, but he's also having his mane blown about by freezing wind at the bottom of some mountainous ravine, limbs broken and sticking out at weird angles, his body smashed, the sound of a raven in the distance, as I hear him talking to somepony else over the din of the wind and the magic and the pain...
"Hello? Is... is somepony there?"
"What's the matter, honey?"
"I don't know, for a moment I felt like..."
...And then he's gone, just like that, and I throw up, violently, all over the grass, rolling around and retching and moaning as my skull feels like it's being turned inside out.
Eventually, it subsides. I couldn't tell you whether it took five seconds, five minutes or five hours, but eventually I stop being sick. When I'm finally done feeding tomorrow's goats, I stand up from my pile of vomit and stagger woozily in a zigzag line to the creek, where I spend some time splashing the cold water all over my face, and taking copious gulps of fresh water in between copious gulps of fresh air.
Things I Am Never Doing Again, A List.
Item number one: that.
That evening, I sit down at my table and figure out how to rearrange that spell. With a bit of reverse engineering and some complete stabs in the dark, I think I have it; if I've done it right, I'll not only stop my own magic from going out exploring like that, I'll render myself invisible to anypony else who's trying the spell themselves.
I think to myself, momentarily, that this is kind of like me making it official. My isolation, my walling myself off from the rest of ponykind, my acceptance of the way things are going to be for me for the foreseeable future.
...Phrasing.
It's not that I'm giving up, I tell myself, or that I've lost hope. But this is just too dangerous. It's dangerous for me, because the pain and the sickness are getting stronger, and I can't keep seeing dead ponies everywhere I look. And maybe it's dangerous for other ponies to be around me, too. Maybe it would drive them crazy, knowing what I'd seen, or wanting to know what I saw. Maybe somehow I'm... maybe I'm involved in how they die. Maybe it's my fault. Best to just stay away.
Isolation. Distancing. It's for the best, for everypony.
I cast the spell.
The nightmares were awful for the first few weeks, but nowadays I seem to sleep just fine. I never remember dreaming when I wake up, but I don't seem to wake up in the middle of the night. And I find I don't see ponies' faces during my waking hours, either, unless my thoughts run away with me and—ugh, like just then. Sorry about that.
But tonight is different. Tonight, I'm wandering around the bothy, which is strange, because it's just the two rooms and the whole world outside, but I keep turning corners and going through corridors. I'm sure I know where I'm going, one hoof in front of the other, humming my song—
♪ "But when the thunder's in my brain..."
—like I know where I am, even though it's not quite the old school and it's not quite my old house, and yet there's Pop's workshop and there's my old bed and there's the bothy again. And, okay, there's the circle-star in the grass, except the stones are glowing like hot coals in the darkness, and there's a kind of cloud of starry sky just hovering in front of me, hanging in the air, and it’s almost like a window to some other part of Equestria.
And I wander over and peer in, because apparently my dream self is just as bad as the real me when it comes to never learning not to do things.
So, I look into the cloud, and there are two ponies standing there. Standing in space, with their backs to me. There’s a big, tall, dark blue alicorn, and she’s talking in soft tones to a little pink filly with a golden mane. Now, I instinctively brace myself and grit my teeth, wincing in readiness for how I'm going to see two corpses, trying to empty my mind, trying not to guess what I’m about to be shown...
...but instead, the alicorn looks up out of the mist, right at me, with a look of shock on her face, and I don't get any vision at all.
She places a hoof on the filly's shoulder, and the filly stops stock-still mid-sentence, frozen in time.
"You!" says Princess Luna, bounding over towards me, or towards where I'd be standing if I wasn't looking at her through a cloud. "We have found you!"
I try to compose my thoughts. It's Princess Luna. Princess of the night. Dreamwalker. This is your chance for rescue. Say something.
"Uh... What?"
She doesn't respond. She's almost face-to-face with me now, but she's looking right through me, cocking her head to one side, looking around but never making eye contact.
"We can sense your presence, young one," she says, as if she's talking to somepony about a yard over my left shoulder.
"Hey, hang on," I say, "young? I'm nearly—"
She talks over me, as though she can't hear me. "We have worked hard these past months to quell your nightmares. We were unsure who you were, but we have been searching—"
"Princess Luna? Can you hear me?" I ask, out loud, my voice cracking.
There is no response, as Luna looks around, and it feels like I'm mute; I feel she can see me, or sense me, but she can't hear what I'm saying.
"We cannot hear you," she says, "and we apologise if we are talking over you. Please remember, my little pony, you are not forgotten. You are not alone. It is most important tha@!ta y- rem...ber-"
She flickers, and her colors glitch and her eyes widen as she raises a blocky, blurry hoof...
...And then she's gone, and a strange voice whispers through my head.
....connection lost...
...I wake up.
Funny thing is, I never liked chamomile tea back when I could pick and choose.
One day, I think to myself, I'll wake up and I'll be better. Maybe Princess Luna is working on a cure. Maybe my being able to talk to her in my dreams is the cure, like she's helping me somehow. Maybe I'm just crazy and she knows what to do.
But I allow myself to daydream. I find myself doing this more and more these days, letting myself get carried away with flights of fancy. Of finding a working suppression spell. Of every other pony in Equestria managing to block me out. Or maybe, of them all disappearing overnight... No, that's horrible. Just me. Fix me. I can dream of being cured. And I'll brush my mane and my tail and I'll polish my hooves and I'll hold my head up high and trot right down into the village... yes, I'm going to go down to the village, and I won't see anypony die, and I'm going to go to the general store and buy a pound of tea. Real, actual tea.
Still, for now, well, this is pretty nice, all told. Thanks to Wallflower, and the book, I recognised those weren't daisies growing out on the hillside there, and now I can have as much chamomile tea as I want, whenever I want. I bet some ponies in Canterlot would pay through the nose for this. Fresh air, calming tea, no visions of dead ponies... combine it with the view, and this isolation thing sometimes feels like it's really not so bad after all.
I sit myself down on my tatty old cushion at my crude little table, heat radiating from the thick earthenware cup, gentle steam getting in my eyes. The scent of the chamomile is wonderful, it fills my nostrils and soothes my heart, and I lift the cup with my hooves, lift it to my lips, delaying that heavenly first sip as I just close my eyes and breathe it in, filling my lungs with the warm, sweet steam, and I open my eyes and let out an undignified SQUAWK of shock because there's a huge white alicorn standing in my doorway.
For a moment, Princess Celestia just looks at me, and I can't quite read her expression, but I'm immediately comforted by it all the same. She's not smiling, exactly, but nor do I feel she's about to blast me to a scorch mark. Which is good, I think, because I want to leave the bothy clean for the next pony who needs it.
I wonder why I thought that.
She's still staring at me, sizing me up, tilting her head.
Suddenly, she breaks the silence, her voice softer and kinder than I expected. "You don't see anything, do you?" she says, and off my presumably stunned look, she continues. "...You don't see my death?"
Matter-of-fact. As if she was asking me to pass the sugar. Which I don't have.
"...Is this a dream?" I hear myself saying out loud, and she half-chuckles under her breath before stopping herself.
"I apologise, my little pony," she says, straightening herself up. "I did not mean to startle you, or to throw you off guard like that. All the way over here, I have been trying to plan what I was going to say to you. It was... not that," she adds, with something approaching a more regal version of a shrug.
I look around for a moment, bewildered, and slap myself across the face with a hoof. When I open my eyes again, Princess Celestia is still standing in my kitchen, head cocked to the side, looking at me.
"I would ask if you were alright," she says, furrowing her brow, "but I fear we are some way past that. Do you know how long you have been out here?"
"...A long time?" I mutter, rubbing my sore face. "How... How did you..."
"My sister," says Celestia, simply. "She felt you reaching out many moons ago, and then disappearing abruptly. In time, she was able to reach blindly into your dreams to stop you remembering what you had seen each night, but she was never able to establish just who you were or what was happening. But please," she says, "do sit down again, and forgive my rude interruption."
Celestia motions with her eyes, and I see that she's floating my teacup above the ground in her magic. She gently sets it down on the table, and waves her hoof to indicate I should sit.
"I imagine you have a great many questions," she says. "I have only been able to surmise your situation from your dreams."
"Am I dreaming right now?" I ask, and she smiles kindly at me, before reaching out a huge, feathery wing to stroke my face. I flinch away at first—it's been so long since I've had physical contact with anypony, and here a Princess is stroking my cheek and whispering to me not to be afraid.
"Does this help?" she asks, soothingly, almost cooing the words. "Can you feel me? If slapping yourself was not sufficient, does this help to convince you that this is no dream?"
"I don't know that it does," I say, but there's no denying it feels nice.
"Then you may slap me, if it will ease your torment," says Celestia, and for what feels like a whole moon I just stare at her, not sure if I'm hearing her correctly.
"...This is kinda leading me down the 'I'm dreaming' path, if I'm honest," I say.
"Well, then, what good would it do at all? But I assure you I am quite real."
"You would say that, though."
"Indeed. May I have a seat?"
"I've only got the one chair, I'm afraid..." I begin, but before I can finish, Celestia's horn lights up and a second chair appears out of nowhere. She eases herself into the big, plush padding as she gracefully sits down, mane flowing around her.
Wish I could have known that spell.
Celestia looks up at me. "It's not so very complicated, but it does take effort," she says, as if answering my unvoiced question. "I have many students who mastered it. Though none of them could hold a candle to what you can apparently do."
"Okay," I say, shaking my head. "Now I know this is a dream. I never told anypony..."
"Well, if there is to be no slapping—a course of action, incidentally, of which I highly approve—then I propose the only way forward is for you to assume whatever you like, for as long as it takes, until you notice you haven't woken up."
I stare.
"...That was meant to be a joke," says Celestia, and when she notices I'm still gawping, she clears her throat and continues. "This is a part of Equestria that lies some considerable distance away from Canterlot, and I apologise for not having identified you sooner," she says. "The truth is, I do not know the nature of the specific magic that has kept you from the rest of ponykind. While I applaud your diligence in keeping yourself isolated like this, I wish you had been able to contact me when this all began, or told somepony of your... symptoms. May I?"
Celestia gestures towards the kettle, and I nod, numbly, as she floats another cup across and fills it with tea.
"The ability to see the future is not unknown," she continues, between sips. "And having visions... one of my former students has reported the ability to see the past of an individual, through physical contact. But what is happening to you is rather... different. I cannot imagine it has been pleasant."
A million thoughts are racing through my head. There's an alicorn in my kitchen. I'm talking to another pony for the first time in however many moons. I'm talking to another pony and I can't see their death. There's an alicorn. In my kitchen.
"This is good tea," says Celestia, with a smile.
"Is it real?" I blurt out, and she looks at me. "What I'm seeing... is it real?"
Celestia pauses for a moment, and drains her cup. "Perhaps," she says, eventually.
"You wondered if I could see your death?" I ask, and she nods. "But you didn't want to just up and ask, because who wants that knowledge?"
"In a way," says Celestia. "But possibly not the way you imagine. Even if your, ah... gift"—she seems to be rolling the word around in her mind as she says it—"were definitely giving you genuine visions of the future, the question of whether you would be able to see my death is rather more... well, let's say, complicated."
She smiles to herself, as though she's just shared an inside joke with somepony I can't see.
"So, I admit, curiosity did get the better of me for a moment there. But, in answer to your earlier question... perhaps," she repeats. "And therefore, perhaps not. What I had intended to say, immediately upon arrival, is this: none of the ponies Luna was able to identify from your dreams has yet to pass away—"
"Pop?!" I exclaim, rather too loudly, and Celestia reaches her wing out to stroke my cheek again.
"Your father is alive," says Celestia. "I expect he will be very glad to see you."
Silence descends for a moment, interrupted only by the sounds of birdsong, and of a giant white alicorn slurping tea. At some point, I realise I'm crying, and out of nowhere, a cotton handkerchief embroidered with a golden sun floats into my vision.
"So, as things stand, it is impossible to say whether these are genuine visions of the future, or simply nightmares, projections of fear pushed through into the waking world."
She floats the whole kettle over to our table, and refills her cup; she offers the same to me, and I shake my head, blankly.
"Luna wonders if you might, in fact, be a dreamwalker too," she says, taking a loud slurp. "If you are somehow able to see, or construct, nightmares in the waking world... that is a rare skill indeed. And if your gift turns out to be what you have believed it to be all this time, well, we have ways of helping you with that, too."
Celestia finishes yet another cup of tea and sets it down on the table.
"For now, I understand you must maintain your isolation, although now that I know where you are, I hope there are things we can do to ease the burden of this distancing. I can arrange for delivery of more books, have some food brought to you... teach you the spell for sending letters, perhaps? Indeed, since I appear to be immune to your magic and thus not at risk of making you more ill, I'd like it if we could meet like this more regularly."
She reaches out a golden-shoed hoof, and lifts my tear-stained face to meet her fixed gaze.
"Keeping your distance does not mean being alone," she says, seriously. "Nopony should endure total isolation."
She pauses for a moment, deep in thought, and when she resumes, her voice is lower, more grave. "My sister could surely vouch for that. After her return from the moon, I vowed never to let another of my little ponies suffer that same loneliness. And, from now on, as far as you are concerned, I intend to keep to that vow."
"Thank you," I think I mutter, though I may be too tearful for her to understand.
"You show great promise, and your patience has not gone unnoticed," she says, kindly. "Whatever happens in the long term... one day, I would very much like you to accompany me back to Canterlot."
Another long silence.
"...If you aren't too busy enjoying life here, that is," she says with a wink, and for the first time in however many moons, I hear myself laughing.
Author's Note
Inspired by the current situation, obviously. Reach out. If you're lonely, or if you know someone who might be; if you're struggling with isolation; if you're going slowly mad... reach out. Please.
I've never written a first-person story, and also I've always wanted to begin a story with the phrase "Next thing I know," so... yeah. Bonus points if you recognise either the song lyrics, or the album cover the artwork is referencing.
