The door shuts with a loud clap.
Familiar shadows.
Familiar smells.
The faces of friends hang in frames off the walls.
Kites, flowers, plaques, kites, landscapes, more kites.
The world dims outside the window. There is no stopping it. There is no stopping anything.
A heavy sigh, long and high-pitched, stretched by the weight of so many words and warnings, still circling and circling.
Hoofsteps shuffle across carpet.
The shadows of the room lurch.
Halfway to the bed.
But then—a lingering.
And a scuffling.
Followed by stillness.
Silence.
Teeth grind against one another.
A throat turns sore. Buckling.
Eyes shut and lungs heave.
A booming shout to the wall—neither victorious nor angry: “Similo Duplexis!”
The room fills with light.
Strobing.
Pulsating.
Then—
—the shadows return.
The room spins—but only briefly.
It shifts; it settles.
Eight hooves. Two horns. Two sets of indigo eyes. Against twin seas of lilac.
“You really shouldn't have done that,” you murmur.
“You have no self control,” you reply, just as softly.
Silence.
You look towards the floor. “You don't even know what you're thinking half the time.”
Your mane droops as you sigh through your nostrils. “Don't lie.”
A hoof brushes against the carpet below you.
You want to stretch out the quiet and yet you want it to end.
“They're all depending on you,” you say. A mutter. As if you couldn't hear it. “And yet all you ever do is keep them waiting.”
“That's on them.” Your muzzle tightens. “They knew enough about you since the beginning, and yet they still choose to wait.”
“Don't shift the blame on them. It's not their fault—”
“What? That they can't see through you?”
“You know very well that they can. If anything, their kindness and devotion is strictly out of sheer pity.”
“Yeah. And that's on them.”
You stare.
You stare back.
After the fourth or fifth fuming breath, you buckle.
“You really wish you could be angry,” you say. A shaking of the head. “You don't deserve to be angry.”
“Repeating that won't magically make things better,” you grumble.
“What else are you going to accomplish?” You glare. “All you do is waste time.”
“You had your opportunities.”
“So many opportunities...”
“You're just lazy.” An indignant snort. “Don't blame it on fear.”
“And don't envy them for being unhappy.”
“They get to complain—”
“You don't.”
You lean upon the precipice of a retort. Instead, you deflate, plopping back on your haunches with a sigh. Eyes cast downward. “You never do.”
“Isn't that what this is?”
“You know very well what this is.” You look up, eyes burning for the briefest of righteous seconds. “This is what you can't ever have.”
“You could have it everyday—!”
“Not with them!” your teeth show.
An echo—brief as it is pointless.
A few kites on the wall flutter, then hang still.
You run a hoof over her brow, sigh, and shrug into the shadows.
“You should have just moved on.” You fight the lump in your throat. “Founded another town.”
“You should never have pursued Twilight from the get-go,” you add, nodding.
“Should never have given into temptation.”
“Temptation for what? For revenge?”
“You knew you never could have adequately punished her and her friends. Not even with Starswirl's spell.”
“You tasted something. Something she offered from the beginning.”
“It drew you out.”
“You pretended to resist it—but then you received it.”
“And now you have it.”
“And you're wasting it.”
“Wasting it every day.”
“But they're letting you—!”
You stomp a hoof down, teeth barred. “That's because you're letting them let you!”
You're silent, recoiling from that.
You continue, snarling: “You're their worst enemy—even to this day—and they don't even know it!”
A shudder. You gaze towards the dimming world beyond the window. “You're worse than a villain.”
You falter upon hearing that.
You continue to spell it out: “You're a friend who only puts up half the effort.”
You close your eyes.
You're not finished. “That's why this never ends. That's why you never get to be angry or sad or anything else. You're a dog, running halfway into a forest, lost among your own failures.” A deep breath. “You know your limits. You know they're more valuable to you than gold. You know that you will never cross them and because of that you will never go anywhere or feel anything or afford anything.”
“You're just lazy.”
“Are you?” You look sharply across the room. “Or is it something else?”
“Stop making excuses.”
“All you ever do is stop.” You slowly shake your head. It's something duller than disappointment, but it sours just the same to look at it. “Your entire life is nothing but stopping. When will you even begin?”
A shrug. You don't even make eye contact. “Who will even pretend to care?”
“Ponies actually care—”
“No.” You glare. “They pretend to care.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because all you ever do is pretend to care...!”
You gaze back, calm and collected. “Do you truly think that everyone else is the same as you?”
You bite your lip.
Your eyes narrow. “Do you think anypony would actually want to be you?”
You gaze aside. The next breath rolls through you like rustling leaves. “The less you give them, the less you have to worry about that.”
“You're not worried.” You shake your head. “You're not worried about anything—why put any stake... any stake whatsoever in what could possibly happen if things changed?”
You say nothing.
“Just what do you have to lose?”
You say nothing.
“When... will ever you stop stopping... and start starting?” Something passes before you. Like clouds before an eclipse. “What ever happened to 'step right in and start again'?”
The hair on your back bristles. “You hate singing.”
Something akin to a chuckle: “You know.”
All is still.
Ice upon the precipice.
The day has died further. The shadows of the room blend. The lilac drowns and it's hard to tell the hooves from the legs or the horns from the heads.
“You're hopeless.”
The sigh is one sigh.
“You're going to blow this off and be the same in the morning.”
The shrug is one shrug.
“You always do this. You see everything. You know everything. But you do nothing.”
The breath is one breath.
“You are nothing.”
Movement. A shifting. Inwards.
“You are nothing and they will never know. You don't care—so why should they? Why should anypony?”
Hooves reaching.
Brushing.
A heat.
Breaths and quivers.
A neck nuzzling a neck.
Gravity—expelled—gentle and quiet like a fallen tree suspended in between.
“You're still just wasting time.”
“Yes.”
“You're not accomplishing anything.”
“Yes.”
The room is small, yet enormous.
The boundaries have vanished.
They always vanish.
Even in the brightest day—surrounded by smiles and frowns and curses and blessings—the horizons never taste light.
You nuzzle close.
A familiar scent—one that you can't shake.
Like so many other things.
Weights of a life lived long in static.
“You wish you could cry.”
You hold tight.
You fall in place.
But you never touch the ground.
You never touch anything.
And from the unfathomable boundaries you hear it.
You know it.
Before there's even a breath to conjure it.
“Yes.”
