Splotchy, inky blackness surrounded a lithe, cyan body. The blue shape stirred, minute movements being the only indication that the being was, in fact, awake. A half-effort moan escaped its throat, raspy and barely audible. Drowsy, heavy eyelids struggled to rise, the curtain revealing red eyes that seemed glazed over. Blinking slowly, the blue figure stood, bones heavy with the effort. They weighed the being down like stones in a river, and much like a stone in a river, the winged creature dragged itself through the dead, grassy plain.
Words fumbled out of its mouth. Gargled speech that no creature nearby could understand. It did not even sound like any type of spoken language. The phonetics were all wrong as the equine yelled into the disappearing darkness. The noir retreated, leaving the blue shape alone and tiny in a world of yellowed grass. There was panicked breathing, coming from the little blue body. Erratic breaths that fell in time to nothing.
Those red eyes shifted about, incomprehensible noises escaping its mouth. Its steps were outstretched, but the creature did not make progress in advancing. Even with large, outstretched wings, the little shape could not once again make the sky blue with its body. Air was produced from the flapping of feathered appendages, but no such air caught beneath those long, perfectly preened feathers. There was no chance to move.
The frantic attempt at speaking continued. Finally, I decided it was time to make myself known.
I took the clouds in the gray sky and made myself a body with them. Creatures tend to react better when faced with a physical shape like their own. I mimicked this blue creature’s being and grew myself into existence, dropping from the sky like a balloon. The blue being jumped, startled back, but did not move in this plane of pseudo-realism. I looked into its eyes, and all was revealed to me.
The pony, a pegasus, Rainbow Dash, narrowed her eyes at me. She coughed, the gurgled, garbled speech bubbling into the same inky black that had fled from her and dripped from her mouth. Cringing, she spat it out, but it pooled all the same. Through it, however, she spoke freely, “Who are you?”
I did not have a voice, not one of my own. My cloudy body, a mock pegasus, cleared its throat, thunder rumbling within me. “I am the Guardian,” the Wind spoke for me. It whistled as I finished the sentence. “Keeper of the Gates.”
Rainbow Dash, tar dripping from her chin into an endless puddle at her hooves, looked around. I knew there was nothing but the remnants of what used to be plants. They were never alive, but a physical manifestation of visitors and their lives right before they graciously made their appearance to me and my domain.
She blinked. Red eyes shut for a split second, piercing red that infected the world around us. I felt my own being, my soul, if one was to call it that, rouge at the sensation. “What gates?” she asked. “And where in Equestria am I?”
Her home, Equestria. Perhaps that is what it looked like? Endless fields of death, of nothing but gray skies and yellowed plants. Perhaps that is what she saw it as. I’ve met creatures from this world that she comes from. Their manifestations are always different, more colourful, more lively. They remembered their birthplace, their home, as being beautiful and full of vibrant hues.
With every drop of inky tar that dripped onto the grass, the world got darker. The clouds shivered, and I shook my head. “Only you can answer that question, Rainbow Dash. There are no Gates here because you do not see yourself at them.”
Deep red eyes leaked into the world. Rainbow Dash bared her teeth, molasses blackening her jaw and chin. “What are you talking about? I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be anywhere.”
“So you did not believe in this place. That is why you are here.” A gust of wind voiced my words, whooshing and messing up Rainbow Dash’s hair.
“I don’t understand. Where am I?”
“You are at the Gates,” I repeated. “Or, you would be. Your body is elsewhere, but you are here. And here is nowhere. Here is where you remembered yourself last being. It’s a test you cannot fail, but one you will never pass.”
Blue wings justled at her side. My clouds mimicked her. “Am I dead?”
“Do you remember dying?”
Rainbow Dash frowned, squinting those red eyes. The clouds above us rusted with her effort. “I remember flying,” she told me. Every word blew into the wind and far away. The clouds above us shifted. The silence was heavy. It weighed down on her, I could tell. “I… remember this feeling,” she whispered, gnashing her jaw together. “This horrible black in my mouth!” Frightened, she staggered back, leaving red hoofprints on the grass beneath her. The ground disappeared below her hooves, becoming sky.
Looking up, her eyes screamed at me. I felt myself redden; my clouds pinking and growing thick. The pegasus opened her maw wide. A flood of ink escaped from her throat. She gagged and sputtered and let it out onto the space beneath her hooves, where it became the sky and the clouds once above us. Hot, red tears slid down her cheeks, marking her face with red stains. They dripped into the cloud she stood on and I absorbed it all.
Rainbow Dash gazed down, jaw still open. Saliva and red-black liquid dripped slowly from the tips of her muzzle as her watery red eyes looked at the ground beneath her. Dead trees on a dry landscape looked back. My pegasus form vanished. “Do you remember dying?” I asked again.
“I wanted to reach the light,” she murmured through the wetness in her mouth. “I flew and flew and it was never enough. I never reached it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get away from the red.” She stuttered, phlegm building up in her throat. “Why am I here?”
“I am the Guardian. Keeper of the Gates. You came here, but here is not where you need to be.” I rumbled across the sky, deep thunder echoing across the land. “Here is where you think you are, but tell me, Rainbow Dash, where are you really?”
The clouds rusted red, tar pooling around Rainbow Dash’s fetlocks as every orifice on her head leaked black. Shutting her tar-crying eyes, she growled with effort. “I… I’m on the ground,” she started. The world beneath the clouds changed. The dead landscape was now a dark forest. “And there’s blood.”
The black tar dripping from the clouds into the landscape below seeped through, turning the misty cloud red and falling through as clear rain. Rainbow Dash heaved, thick dark red mud turning the rain into thunder. I crackled as lightning struck somewhere. “My blood. I’m covered in it. Surrounded.”
The black liquid turned red, the same rusty red that the clouds were. It streamed out of her black, turning red halfway through. The forest ground stained crimson from the body. Rainbow Dash watched herself surrounded by shadows. Every movement she made in the clouds was mirrored by her on the ground, twitching. They made incomprehensible noises.
“Are you alone?” I asked.
“No,” she muttered. “My friends are there. They’re...”
The shadows turned into ponies. Indistinguishable; barely shapes around the vibrant blue and red pegasus. They yelled in tandem. “Rainbow please wake up. I’m begging you please wake up. You didn’t have to do this, you should have just told us how you felt. We could have helped you.”
“Rainbow.”
“Rainbow please!”
“Please just wake up! They’re on their way.”
“We need you, Rainbow!”
Rainbow Dash turned away. “They’re there,” she flatlined.
“And where are you?” I asked.
“I’m nowhere. Not anymore.”
The scene below us disappeared, their static voices fading along with it. A void stared back at us, at Rainbow Dash. Red tar fell into it, dissolving into the very nothingness it pooled in.
“Why do you fight so hard, Rainbow Dash?”
The pegasus cocked her head, no longer caring about the impossible fluids leaking from her. “What do you mean?” she asked the thin air where I might have been.
Around her, the clouds formed the shape of a home, akin to a mansion. They darkened with her hard red gaze, absorbing the colour of her irises. A tempestuous wind carried my voice to her, whipping her hair around. “You chase the sun, seeking to be burnt away. You finally reach it, and the world fades white around you. Now you are here, and not at my Gates, where I can grant you escape, yet you do not remember why you are here.”
“I do. I remember I was dying. Or, I guess I died,” she bubbled through the blackness. It leveled at her knees, slowly rising as it streamed, clinging to her chin and dripped down. “The red—” her eyes set on the object of her hatred. She snarled at the cloud. “The red followed me, even in death. I can’t escape it!”
The pegasus whipped away from the cloud. As if with her own breeze, the cloud whisked away, its red spreading across the sky until the entire world was rusted. Rainbow Dash shut her eyes, more black tar spilling out of her, reaching up to the bottom of her barrel. “I wanted to leave! I wanted to leave it behind but it followed me. I can’t get away from it! I fly away from my home, but I wake up back in the same place, following the same routine!” Every word spoken elicited a spray of inky black and redness from her mouth and nostrils. “I don’t belong there, but I just can’t get away!”
The clouds boiled to a storm around her, swirling above the tar-covered pegasus. They swirled in a circular shape, not in my control, and cast a spotlight onto her. It glowed red, lighting her up with the bright red hue of her eyes. Miserably, Rainbow Dash weeped, thick red and black tears smudging all the colours on her face. “I can’t get away from the light! I’m here now, what do you want?” she screamed up at the hole in the sky. Her own reflection looked down, cast in red clouds and black shadow.
“What do you want?” she asked herself.
Rainbow Dash clamped her mouth shut. Tar escaped from between her teeth, through her lips, dribbling down her chin, now forever stained that murky black-red. She gazed down through the clouds at nothing. The black tar reached her body now, covering her wings entirely and slowly rising up her neck. “I want…”
The tempest above her roared, splattering red rain onto her. Her mane flattened against her head as she spat ink onto the ground. “I’m sorry! It just wouldn’t stop!”
The Wind came with a vengeance, nearly bowling her over if it wasn’t for the sticky black keeping her glued down. Rainbow Dash howled, dribbling all over. Above her, four shapes that almost looked equine looked down at her, uttering garbled cries and mangled screams. Red tears mixed with red rain. “I’m sorry! But it was so loud and the red came from all over! It followed me! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to!”
“What do you want?” the clouds asked in turn.
“I don’t know!”
“What do you want?”
“What do you want?
“What do you want?”
…
A final cloud appeared, sporting a face that Rainbow Dash hadn’t seen for a long time. The face of red; the face of guilt. The face of blood and anger and sadness and the face of death. It bellowed with a voice so soft it cut daggers into the air. So soft it echoed throughout the sky. So quiet that Rainbow Dash’s ears ringed. “What do you want?”
Nothing dripped down the pegasus’s mouth. The black void no longer rose. Stains tracked down her face, originating from every orifice on her head. Rainbow Dash looked straight up, right where she thought I might be and where I was and exhaled sharply. The wind battered her and blood sprayed down, covering the blue pegasus with its red paint. I’m not sure what changed. Not even I could tell. She stared right through me and murmured, “I want to go, now. I’m ready.”
I watched as she dunked her head fully into the thick, black, oily void. The entire world went dark with her as I felt clouds swirl and shape and finally become their true form.
The pegasus floated in the murky depths of nothing. I took the shape of a pony like her once more, appearing in front of her. Gone were the thick tracks of black on her body, though faint stains remained, and her vibrant blue coat was visible once more. Rainbow Dash dropped onto the ground on her hooves, gently landing with not so much as a thud. Her blood-red eyes fluttered open and she looked around her at the colourful scenery, then at my fake body.
“I am the Guardian, Keeper of the Gates,” I introduced myself again.
“Are these the Gates?”
I looked behind me. There was a grand set of Gates. Far bigger than any creature would need. They connected to a familiar cloudy mansion, now pristine and white. “Yes. These are the Gates. Once you go past them, you may never come back. You may look, and visit, but you cannot touch, nor interact. You will cease to exist, but live on in spirit. Does this make sense?”
Rainbow Dash snorted. “Is it supposed to?”
“No, I suppose not. Not to creatures like you, at least,” I admitted. “Your body may be cold, but your spirit is warm as long as the spirits of others keep it alive. You are alive, but your body is dead. You will never draw breath again, and never once more will you feel the breeze of the Wind or the heat of the Sun. Do you wish to go on?”
She didn’t have a choice.
“I made my decision,” she affirmed. “And like you said, my body is dead, anyway. What, could I be a ghost or something?”
“No,” I responded. “That state you were in before, that was the place between life and death. You live out your final moments endlessly. Always searching, always chasing the light. Whatever that means for you, whatever plagues your mind will live on forever. You seek entry to the Gates, and when you find it, you find closure, only then can you close the Gates behind you and move on.”
“I’m clean, and no more of that black junk is seeping out of me. There’s no more red… no more blood. My hooves are clean. I faced what kept me scared. Now I feel… calm. She wants me to move on. I can feel it. If I want to then… does that mean I’m ready to move on?”
“What do you think?”
The pegasus snorted. Soft wind frazzled her mane. “I don’t know. I made a choice that day. I flew after the sun, trying to catch it in my hooves. I let the world fade away from me, and now I’m here.”
“Are you ready to move on?”
Rainbow Dash flexed her wings. After a brief moment of hesitation, she nodded slowly. “I think so.”
The Gates opened behind us, leading to the impossible cloud home on the grass. There was no red on the cloud. No rust to haunt her. “Then tell me one more thing, Rainbow Dash. You asked me a question when you arrived. Now I’d like to ask it back to you.
“Why are you here?”
Author's Note
