Sickness is the way to the Dirge Tree, and we are all sick. “Unhealthy of mind” is what ponies call you if you say such things aloud – that or some other instinctive shallowness, makes you want to bite their faces off, then ask ’em whether anything’s changed – but I’ve been around enough to know there ain’t no wellness to be found in this or any other place. There is the sickness of nothingness we know as “life”, then the return to that same nothingness we know as “death.”
There’d been whispers in my family about the Dirge Tree since I was a young’un, but for some reason I was never able to recall who had said what when, where, or even why. It was like everypony had reached some kind of understanding about the Tree, and yet the very nature of that understanding was completely implicit. It was only when I saw the Dirge Tree on the day the hospital discharged me that I came to appreciate the vagueness of it all.
It was possibly the biggest darn tree in all Equestria, such that a small village could quite comfortably live inside of that warped, barren trunk or along those lightning-shaped branches. I’d long ago guessed the reason for the Dirge Tree’s name, but this did not prepare me for the haunted wailing of the thing. It was like hearing the distant passing of a thousand she-wolves.
Standing there in fear and awe, this hideous cyst in the earth which was the Dirge Tree reminded me less of a plant, and more of some sort of sculpture or building. In its shadow, I experienced something familiar yet oddly nameless, and there was a part of me that wanted to cut this disgusting growth down, but also another that wanted to cut this disgusting growth that was me down. Pressing my face into the cold, pale bark at the base of the Dirge Tree, I gritted my teeth, feeling that sinful mix of compulsion and repulsion.
“You’re an abomination,” I murmured as icy splinters stabbed my cheek and gums, unsure who I was talking to. “I’d kill you, but I’m too tired and weak.”
After the first time on the way home from the hospital, I began visiting the Dirge Tree each day. Although I wanted to return to work, my family was very insistent that I continue resting, and I didn’t have the energy to argue or do anything, really. In any case, despite the fact that being away from ponies was a mighty lonesome business, it did feel right, and not just because “think positive” and all related phrases now made me absolutely murderous.
One day, I was gazing numbly at the Dirge Tree, as usual, when I was suddenly struck by a vision, which began with the Tree splitting down the middle and pulling me into its inner darkness. I fell silently through the roaring, loamy night for what might have been seconds or years, and then found myself ensnared by an ocean of massive, clawing roots. Peering down, I saw a luminously sighing stream, which I ultimately realised was what fed the Dirge Tree, its secret source. Weirdly, this water appeared, for the most part, more white than blue, but as soon as I navigated the roots to take a closer a look, I knew why: it was transporting an eternal cargo of bones. Somehow, I understood that these were the remains of every living creature vomited from the womb of another.
I awoke on the ground where I’d fallen, having been struck by a sizeable branch from above. Clearing the blood out of my eyes and spitting out a dislodged tooth, I hoisted my attacker off me and, getting sluggishly to my hooves, started to head home. What I felt at that moment was the same dull yet crushing disappointment of opening my eyes each morning and seeing I was still alive.
As I waited for sleep that night, staring up at the heavy blackness the ceiling typically filled, I breathlessly bit down on my split lip ’til it almost resembled an orgasm. Hope, I reflected, was maybe the worst disease of all, because it existed solely to prolong the disease it stemmed from. This terrible thing we called “hope” was the very heart of the trap, a trap everypony was born into, a trap with no mind of its own and no purpose to speak of. Optimistic uncertainty – otherwise known as hope – was the self-fulfilling prophecy coursing through the veins of the sentient. No outcome would ever be intolerable, just as long as a tolerable one was imaginable.
In the morning, I dragged myself out of bed and wearily rested my chin on the windowsill, wondering what everything was, what it all meant (if anything). Sweet Apple Acres, my home, was as lively and as lovely as always, but ever since the hospital and the event which brought me there, I stopped seeing the difference between things. A sort of greyness had crept in, turning the world into a faceless blur or shadow where nothing was named because there was nothing to name.
“I’m dying here,” I uttered softly, listening to the sound of my voice and tracing meaningless symbols in the dust. “I already died, but I’m still here.”
When I arrived at the clearing an indefinite amount of time later, the Dirge Tree had gone. Speechless, I retraced my steps, thinking that I’d taken a wrong turn, but I hadn’t. I spent most of the day searching ’til I eventually collapsed with exhaustion among the grass and the stones. As I lay there, however, chest heaving and hooves trembling, I started to understand. The Tree, after all, was a living thing like any other, a living thing tragically wrenched by illness out of nothing, and nourished by death merely to go back into it.
“I want to die,” I whispered from my place on the ground. “I want to be able to die.”
