The Night Like Any Other
B_25
The night and the day had been the same, the same as all the ones that had come before, set with its usual contents, that endless repetition saved by slight and sporadic deviations. It was a routine set long ago for the greatest good. To maintain the life that she held and to allow for little improvements.
The streets of Ponyville were dark, save for the spaces of light, illuminated by the passing streetlamps. Dirt crunched, and pebbles rolled beneath the fall of Rarity's hoofsteps. It was a long day, and the nightly trip to get home was longer.
Rarity didn't look to the beauty of the stars in the sky. Nor did she speak to fellow passengers on the train ride home. She was tired, withdrawn, and barely bared the will to make it to the door of the boutique. A shadow had devoured the building, but her key found the lock and, with a click, the way inside was unlocked.
The mare stumbled into the home with a sigh that echoed throughout the lobby. She barely floated the keys into a bowl set on a stand next to the door, which closed behind her. It was dark, but turning on the lights was time she did not have—neither the willpower.
Rather she wandered into the kitchen, fetched herself a bottle and a glass, and set the two onto the table. From there, she seated herself on a stool and prepared for the homecoming wine. It was her way of winding down, of taking a moment to breathe that was away from other ponies—before going back into the fray the very next day.
But as she went to uncork a bottle, a talon dressed in darkness already set on the cork, stabbing it. With a twist and a pull, the blockage plopped into freedom. Then it was flicked aside, and the bottle was lifted.
Rarity was too tired to be huffy.
"You're lucky that I'm not a younger mare," Rarity remarked while resting her cheek onto her hoof, and setting her elbow onto the table. She watched as her drink was filled first. "Or a different kind of lady." Her foreleg wrapped around the alcohol as the bottle receded into the darkness. "Please, darling, in the future? Don't break into the homes of close friends."
The figure appeared next to her, with a stool in his claw, setting the seat before the table. He saw next to the mare, which was new, but she was too tired to mind. The dragon sat and poured his own glass. It filled, and he took a sip, not bothering to turn on the light afterward.
"Do you mind speaking, dear?" Rarity asked on lifting her glass to her lips. "I want to make sure I have the right dragon in my home. If not, I'm afraid my next action is to scream—and I do not believe I have the vocal cords for it right now."
The dragon cleared his throat. "It's... me."
Rarity sighed in relief. "Thank heavens! I do not know if my throat could even take a yell at this hour." She then shook her head. "Mind you, I might have to risk the raising of my voice if you are here without good reason." Her muzzle stuck into her drink. "And flattery, this time, will not suffice as a good reason."
Spike inhaled deeply and did not speak for some time.
And then.
"How... weird of an answer are you willing to accept?"
Rarity's snout pulled out from the rim of the glass. A blush was spread across it. Her eyes blinked at the question. "Hmm. Now that does depend." Her angelic hum sounded her pondering. Then she exclaimed with a flick of her hoof. "Ah-ha-ah! So long as it is the truth, my dear, then all strangeness is quite acceptable."
Spike lifted his glass, swirling the scarlet sea within but never sipping from it.
He then lowered the glass.
"What if I told you that... I'm not the Spike that you knew?" There was a sincerity in his voice, the kind forged by experience and grief, one that did not kid around or that it looked for any kind of attention. Rarity forgot all the jokes and listened to him in full. "That I'm from the future. Way, way into the future.”
His head turned to her, but his face couldn't be seen.
"One that you're no longer a part of."
Rarity pushed her lips aside in digesting that thought. Death visited her mind in the times she was not overworked or tired. Sometimes it scared her. Other times, she nearly craved it. It felt both close and far.
That it would happen soon.
But never next week.
"Knowing that you are not the type of dragon to joke about this kind of thing," Rarity opened without thinking, knowing that, in times such as these, in the nights that were otherworldly, it was best to let the soul be free from the body. "And that Twilight will go on to become ever more powerful that—yes, I could see you coming back to check up on us."
Her eyes then lowered to her glass. She could feel it in her hooves but didn't see it with her eyes. "Though I'm saddened you would ever need to come back at all." Despite that, Rarity smirked next. "But I suppose there's some advice only old friends can give."
She looked up at the figure of a friend. "So tell me, what troubles you in the future?"
The figure had been looking at her, and her white coat allowed a little light in the night, but he soon turned away and kept that way. Spike tried to speak, but his throat croaked. It took several swallows until words creaked out from him.
"This particular night."
Rarity choked. "And why is that?"
"Because... this is your last night."
She blinked. "Really? Is it now?"
The figure was still turned away as he nodded. "Yup."
Rarity looked around as though her view would be changed, as though her chest would squeeze and expand with breath, that her blood would tingle, that her coat would sweat, that she would deflate out of existence itself.
But nothing around her looked or seemed or felt different.
“Now isn't that peculiar?” Rarity remarked on returning to her glass. "I supposed dying was supposed to be this great event—but nothing around me seems different at all. In fact, it all rather looks the same." She rubbed her lips together. "Are you sure tonight is it?"
"Yes."
"Huh." Rarity focused on her drink, cupped it with both forehooves, and raised it below her chin. "I suppose I was a romantic fool to expect that anything would be outside the 'norm' in regards to this. You hear about ponies dying all the time. But they see no great change around them when it happens."
She went to sip the drink but... lowered it back to the table. Rarity then looked to her friend, both close and far, as would be expected, at this critical time, due to the kind of life that she lived. "Say... how does it happen with me, darling? Just how do I go?” Her chin tilted down. "Or is that one of those things you're not allowed to share?"
Spike shook his head. "No difference. You suffer a heart attack in your sleep, and that's it. You hadn't done anything special the day before." He slowed into a choke, his claw tightening on his glass, with cracks crunching into its shape. "And nothing stood out to you today. You went to work, came home for wine. Did everything you normally did and, when it came to settling into bed, you thought the next day would be the same old."
Rarity nodded. "I see. So I have no idea that tonight would be my last? Or that I would die alone—and not even have a friend in my final, unconscious hour?"
"Yes."
"And... is that why you are here? Is this what ails you in the future?"
"Yes."
"And you are finally drinking wine in that future?"
"Yes."
"Good boy." Rarity raised her glass, and the dragon was slow to reach for his as the two brought their wines together. "It's about time." The glasses clinked, and the two drank, without a word shared. After the initial punch of the drink, the two were soothed by its taste, settled into a peaceful state.
"A perfect last drink!" Rarity cheered, too tired to be scared, the first night in a while where she might actually be able to sleep. "As for you. I suppose... there is nothing I may tell you? You are only here to share a glass of wine before bed, aren't you?"
The dragon nodded, and his empty glass filled with a droplet of water.
"Yes."
"Very well."
Rarity scooted off from her seat and took to all fours on the ground. She left the friend in the kitchen and entered the darkness where even her own light dimmed. Her hoofsteps fell in sound, and sensations became fleeting. The last thing was the bed.
And then that was it.
"Spike? C'mon now!" It was a voice outside his eyes and in a world that had yet to be registered. The dragon wiggled in his seat, coming to crack open his eyes, seeing, overhead, the branches of a tree. To his left stood a purple friend. "Rise and shine! You've slept beyond your break!"
Spike blinked, and although his vision cleared, the world around him was still blurry. He cranked a fist into a closed eyelid while the other focused on Twilight. He groaned. "Sorry. Bad dream. Did you need something?"
"The builders still need you to fly up the stone for the walkways at the top!"
"Right, sorry, my bad." Spike pressed his claws into the grass and stumbled forward, cracking out his back while he did so, coming out onto the hill. Twilight danced steps behind him, steadying near his side in case he needed the aid. "I won't keep them waiting."
"Wait!"
Spike had unfurled his wings but turned around to face her. "Yeah?"
Twilight stepped closer while looking away. "That bad dream... was it a nightmare?"
"No."
"What was it?"
"A fantasy that couldn't even allow itself to be a fantasy."
"The time travel spell again?"
"It lets me keep her active, and imagine if things were different."
"But they'll never be different."
"I know."
"Alright... I guess you better get to work then."
"Yeah."
Spike took flight with a couple of flaps from his wing, soaring over the hill to the stone land beyond, where the towering structure, halfway-built, stood with masses developing it. The day would be the same as all the ones that had come before, and the night would be like all the ones that were to come.
Author's Note
In the attempt to become a good writer, I had forgotten what it meant to be a writer.
What causes something to be a good story? Is it the endless thinking and plotting of an idea and its inherent beats? The living of critical moments to flesh out the overall structure? Is it the feeling and revising of a character? The waiting and sudden stumbling on a pivotal point within the work?
There is some truth to all of the above.
But that also requires that all of the above be done before one even begins to write. Of course, once you have one project set, one writes in that and, in so doing, plot ahead for the next work. This allows for structure, but discourages genuine, spontaneous works.
I drank my first wine last Sunday.
It was for RarityEQM's birthday.
I don't plan to go into all of that now, as I've already held back too many tears in the course of writing this story. I write this afterword now only to share a truth with the few that have settled onto these words.
Writing is a twofold process. It is a discovery for both the writer and the reader. I did not know what I set out to write this story, the same as you did not know the full extent of the tale by its short description. But something about it, for whatever reason, drew you into the adventure of figuring it out.
RarityEQM died on a day that was the same as any other. She worked, was tired from work, and was in her usual depressive phase. Soon, she reckoned, she would come out of it, and that she would start writing again, and that the problems of her life would be mostly solved come to the end of it.
She then got into bed, turned off the night, and did not turn them on again in the morning.
I don't like that. I don't think I will ever like that. I play it in my head on how things could be different. It's within living those fantasies of somehow inventing a time machine that you could go back. But nothing can be done even in that context. All one could do is share a drink with them.
But there is folly in that.
Spike doesn't actually find a time-travel spell to go back to Rarity on her last night. Even in a fantasy, he cannot ask her anything, for all the answers would come from himself. All he can do is indulge in her imagined presence, regardless of how limited it would be, and enjoy a drink.
Writing is the living of our fantasies.
It's the chance to make the passive into the active—even if only for a little.
The goal of this work was to release this aspect of myself that I had not shared with anyone. To create a story that captures this element of me for you to experience. To design my context and to evoke my grief.
But I need not be a part of that equation at all. The story itself sets its own conditions. It tells of a dragon who wishes to go back in time to have a drink with a friend—and he cannot even do that. Then he goes on to live a day that's the same as any other.
There is no moral or point.
Rather, it's a pocket of my existence, which you can live within for but a moment.
I wrote so much back in the day to transport myself onto the page. So that I could rip a feeling or thought, or an aspect of myself and put it into the written word. It shaved a weight off me. It saved me from the ordeal of having to remember. Once something exists on its own, it no longer depends on you, and you are saved, somewhat, from its burden.
This blog also has no point or moral.
Only that, sometimes, it is better for a person to be a writer than it is for them to be a good writer.
Cheers. Love you all. Even the ones I hate.
~ Yr. Pal, B ~
