In an apartment devoured by darkness. On the floor of a building far removed from the earth. Atop a bed surrounded by empty bottles and half-eaten refuse...
...the pony who used to be called A.K. Yearling lies. Not asleep. Not awake. Living.
She faces the walls. She gazes at the ceiling. She looks and looks into those impenetrable shadows.
And then, perhaps, she sees.
The expression across her haggard muzzle is as neutral as ever, albeit slightly more creased.
There is a stirring to her fat and heavy limbs.
I think I've finally found the time to write to you.
Ms. Yearling shuffles, struggles, and eventually slides her flank off the edge of the mattress. She sits there, breathing. Heaving. When she gets up on all fours, it is with noticeable strain. She's considerably bigger than she used to be. That—or the universe is a great deal smaller. Either way, the room shifts and lurches tighter as she limps from the bed and over to the window, navigating a sea of clutter and garbage to get there.
It's been a long time, but still not too late to admit it.
An unshorn fetlock lifts a length of blinds from the windowsill. Weary eyes squint into the haze of neon lights. The shadows of Manehattan shrink in the distance. The stars have long vanished, but for the first time in ages—Ms. Yearling knows that they're still there.
You won. You always win. You always will win.
Her nostrils flare with a heavy sigh, blowing dust off the blades of the blind. She lets the plastic mask fall back in place. She turns with the flick of graying tail hairs, squinting at what remains of her bedroom: The plastic bags flattened in weird patterns. The stacks of unwashed plates that never made their way back into the kitchen. The piles of manuscripts lying in the corner—words chickenscratched across the first two or three pages but nothing more.
I am defeated. I live a life of defeat. It's what defines me. It's what I'll be remembered by, despite all that I've accomplished... or dreamed of accomplishing.
Yearling doesn't head towards the piles of trash. She doesn't make her way back to the bed. Instead, she limps towards the shower. She turns the water on, waits until it's warm, and enjoys a long and thorough rinse. In the dark.
And yet... I can't ever truly blame you. Even though I have. It is so very tempting, after all—just to pin it all on you. To label you as the cause of all my sins. My inaction. My laziness. My life of gluttony, selfishness, and apathy.
The water stops.
Yearling shudders a bit.
She takes a long time drying herself off. She takes an even longer time braiding her mane—only because it's been so long. She stares into a mirror for the first time in months. She hates it. She detests it.
She continues staring—and braiding—until her mane looks ever so remotely presentable. And then she breathes evenly.
It wasn't you who gave up on all of my projects. It wasn't you who shut the world off and ghosted on all of my friends. It wasn't you who embraced a solitary life of nightly bacchanalia with no hope of creative progress whatsoever. You didn't burn my bridges and exile my allies and welcome my vices into my very domain.
At last, prim and proper and beyond clean, Yearling steps out of the bathroom. She flips the light-switch to the apartment bedroom. The bulb doesn't flicker on. She sighs, fumbles through a cabinet, then finds and lights a candle.
Under the kiss of dim firelight, the old mare stretches open one of the many limp plastic bags and starts collecting trash. And more trash. And more—and more... scooping up litter and paper plates and bits of uneaten food, dropping them all in the bag and grabbing another one once it is filled.
Then, once the detritus is gathered, she works on the plates: stacking them in a corner and preparing to carry it all out in one go.
You're not even my enemy. You came with all the other elements of living—the joy and ache and wonder and horror—the inevitable haze of stardust that complicates our preciously minuscule time on this planet. You were simply meant to define me. Instead, I allowed myself get defeated. Multiple times. And that only means that someday... I well let you defeat me again. That's your purpose, after all. You're more than a reminder of what's unavoidable. Your its shadow, cast far ahead of the prow, sucking us all under your monumental wake when the currents give out. Only to recede, return, repeat... until there is nothing left to be but nothing itself.
Yearling trucks the full bags of garbage across her apartment, depositing them by the foyer. They're still gross and ugly, but—neatly arranged as they are in a line—the compartmentalization almost makes them blend with the furniture. One could even call it “beautiful.”
She carries the stacks of plates into the kitchen. One by one, she washes each dish clean. She then works on the tile and walls of that decrepit place—just in time for a swath of gray light to catch it. The morning sun is rising. Its bright rays slip through the window panes of the living room, and Yearling can see the large shadow cast by her own personal years of neglect and obesity.
It will never leave her. So—she keeps moving. Taking it for a walk.
We've been faithful bedfellows. For many moons. And I won't hesitate to admit that I've enjoyed some of the dreams that the weight of you has squeezed out. But the play has grown tiresome; the program has gotten dull. I need a break—not so much an escape, but a vacation. After all, we both know better than to say this is the end.
A bedroom cleaned...
...a kitchen space scrubbed...
...a living room dusted...
...now A.K. Yearling stands in her study, bathed in the half-light of a meager morning, and she's stacking books into place. All unfinished. Most barely even named.
The first few pages begin with “Daring Do,” but most—if not all—of the sentences are unfinished. The concepts are muddied at best. The outlines and synapses are vague, boring, derivative... aborted ideas that never flew off with a single paragraph.
They're all failures. But—when arranged neatly next to one another, like tombstones—they can only make Yearling dream of even more complicated failures. Hosts of future joys and regrets. And she feels the bubbling in her blood. Vessels that haven't stretched in forever. And now that there's more fat to her, they have all the more space to swim.
She exhales once more—nostrils flaring—but there's no more dust to obscure the horizon.
But the thing I wish to know is... what do you know beyond this damnable loop? Do you know anything? Can you imagine? Can you even taste the substance of hope? At least as much as you're designed to crush it? And you have crushed it—over and over and over. Constantly, faithfully, religiously. But what sustenance is there in a kill when you can't even comprehend the meat of it?
There's one book. It's completely blank. Plenty of room for mistakes. Maybe even a few jokes along the way.
Yearling scoops it up. She slides it into a saddlebag, then straps it on. It can barely fit her, but one could say the same for smiles, and she's long learned to survive without.
A hat and a coat finish the ensemble. She makes sure not to forget a pen and inkwell. She makes her way for the door. She leaves the windows open. The contents of her apartment are ever so slightly less embarrassing.
You've defeated me. Multiple times. I am the epitome of defeated. But you defeat everypony in the end, especially those who are foolish enough to think they can win against you.
She steps out onto cold concrete.
Her eyes squint. Wincing—more than a little bit of regretting—she stares into that burning dawn.
So what living isn't living? And what dying isn't dying?
A deep breath. The autumnal chill of Manehattan morning thrills her. Scares her. A.K. Yearling knows better than to expect something good from this walk—except perhaps the walk itself. And that's worth taking a step for.
So she does.
You'll reap your benefits in the end. But you will have to wait. You always have to wait. Always winning. Always waiting. But never changing. Now who is lonelier? The endlessly wanted? Or the endlessly wanting?
One block after another, Ms. Yearling approaches the heart of Manehattan. She passes by a few ponies; none recognize her. This is fine. She doesn't hear a single written work of hers spoken aloud by common citizenry. This is fine too.
Eventually, she finds the park—or the park finds her. She sits down. She opens a blank manuscript, and she fails again.
Somewhere, in the midst of it all, she stops existing and starts living. If only for a precious little while.
If pitying you more than myself is life's only bait, then so be it. One of us has to reap. You don't even have to thank me.
And that is enough
