Tonight was the night everypony had decided to live.
We were alive before, of course—eating, breathing, all those organic processes; but tonight was the night we all decided to live.
There was a whole group of us; Carrot Top, Davenport, Berry Punch (obviously, she brought all the drinks), Derpy, Caramel, me (of course), Applejack and Big Mac—
And her.
Bon Bon was here.
And even though I was happy to see everypony there—
I was extra happy to see her.
Something more than happy, really.
I was born in Ponyville. I spent most of my foalhood days with everypony here; still, I’d moved to Canterlot before most of us even had our cutie marks. I came back every summer for extended periods, to visit family, and to see everypony again...
But every year felt... different somehow.
Like everypony is a little less alive each time.
Until I’d come back this year, and found everypony had died. Sure, they were still walking around, talking to one another, going about their day—
But they weren’t living. Not really.
And that scared me.
The way they looked at one another, the way they spoke to each other—it seemed distant. Like everypony was just going through the motions. This isn’t how we were when we were foals. Something was changing, and it wasn’t changing for the better.
Were we all so defeated by life that we had forgotten how to live?
Does this just come with growing older?
I don’t think so.
We all went down to the lakeshore that night, chatting about every manner of minutiae; vague pleasantries, empty anecdotes, and pathetic platitudes were all thrown about like so much confetti for this ticker-tape parade of the soulless youth.
And sure, they all talked to me, asking me how Canterlot had been, and what it was like being at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, but I was hardly a decent conversationalist. My attention was raptly held by Bon Bon as she walked, watching her mouth as it formed the enunciations of each syllable she spoke
I needed to talk to her. It shouldn’t be so difficult. As foals, we’d been inseparable.
But part of the process of dying was slowly drifting further and further from one another.
And each summer I returned I felt like the distance had grown greater and greater.
Berry brought out her brews in the flick of a tail, and soon everypony was nice and wrapped in that comforting blanket of hard cider. We never needed to be enveloped by it as foals, but now it seemed like a prerequisite—a necessity that we do any time we all got together like this.
Had it all become so boring?
It was hard not to resent and nitpick. It was hard not to notice the fading life. While everypony was tipsy and trotting lopsided and laughing a bit too loudly at everything, I was all too aware something had gone terribly wrong.
It was hard to force small-talk. It was hard not to create a burst of mana about my horn, grab all of the attention, and scream out to the crowd: “Is this it? Is this the paramount of our lives? To take a brief break from the monotony to enjoy more monotony, to discuss our own deaths and waste away all that much more while we do it?”
Nopony wants to hear that. Some things were best kept to myself. Besides, it was all so... vague. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, other than this malaise of stagnation and mundanity. Hardly helpful to just insult everypony for being ‘dead’.
I spoke to Caramel for a few moments about his part-time job at Sugar Cube corner split between work down at Sweet Apple Acres, but I couldn’t tell you a thing about either of them. The whole time I was turning my head to catch a glance of her down by the wavebreak, dangling her hooves and gliding them over the surface of the water.
That’s living. She is alive. Not like everypony else. Not like—
I excused myself from Caramel, who judging by the look he gave me had already long guessed I hadn’t been paying a single bit of attention to anything he’d said—
What was that thing about ‘if everypony else is the problem’, again?
—and I trotted down to her.
Nopony else was there. It was the perfect time to talk.
I got as close to her as I could, sitting down on the pebbly beach beside her, shivering as the cold waters lapped at my hooves.
I opened my mouth to speak to her. Nothing came out.
My tail twitched; she moved her hoof through the pebbles, inching it closer to me.
I hesitated, ear flicking and teeth grit. My breathing had picked up (had she noticed? Oh dear Celestia I hope not) and my eyes were wide, staring at that hoof.
Dare I?
I swallowed hard.
And dare I did.
I put my hoof atop hers, and she leaned down against me. My horn lit and I quickly took another swig of cider.
“Hi,” I said to her.
She smiled back at me, sending my heart fluttering and my stomach swooping as if I’d just been tossed from the back of a Wonderbolt doing a loop-de-loop.
“Hi,” she said back to me.
She lifted her hoof to my face. I felt my heart stop for the briefest of moments as it drew closer and closer to my muzzle—
Stood frozen in place as she wiped a bit of cider-froth from my upper lip.
All I could do was laugh. I took myself so seriously.
And everypony else got taken so seriously by proxy.
We fell into it like a daydream, even though it was nearly midnight. Hooves running over one another’s, my horn sparking to feel up and down her back with a groping, eager aura.
Chests pressed so tight, hearts beating as one as I tasted her breath, tails curling around each other as though they were fuzzy flamboyant ferrets.
All dissolving into a careless nothing and dropped from my mind in a blaze of dopamine.
I gasped to her in a moment of tender vulnerability about how everypony was dying—
That I knew for certain that it was time to live.
And before she could speak, I told her about how I knew it was me, how the problem had always been me all along and—
Told her about how I was the one dying.
How I wanted to save her from it. How I wanted to save everypony.
And she held me close and said to me: “You can’t save everypony—
But everything will be alright in the end.
And you should work on making yourself happy
And alive.”
With those words, it was like she had sent magical feedback shocking down through my horn, lighting up my mind and body and bringing me to a comprehension that I’d been so close to but could never reach.
Knowing for certain in that moment that I had to move back to Ponyville as soon as possible—
To be with her, forever.
I whispered this to her and she smiled, squeezing me firm with those wonderful hooves of hers, and told me nothing would make her happier.
I don’t know if I could speak for anypony else that night—
But I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I had never felt more alive.
Tonight was the night I had decided to live.
