Author's Note
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It's In The Eyes
“...Fiddle?”
Just like the instrument I so regularly strum, life flickers to life just under my eyelids. It isn’t a relaxing soliloquy or quartet that greets me, though - just silent confusion, as I try to return feeling to my... everything. My chest throbs, my tongue like hot-glued cotton, and my hooves feel like liquid fire.
And yet, I find myself unaware of why I’m sitting here. Here, in this room lit only by several inch-low candles, the furniture dented with cruel and jagged U-shapes, my back like sandpaper against the door.
“Fiddle? You there?”
That voice repeats its singular inquiry. It feels so familiar to me. So soothing, and yet… harsh. It was tempered by life, and disappointment… and… something else. But she tries to hide it.
And somehow, before her next words spill out, I just know that such reservation is being done for my sake. One that only a certain color will make safe to open myself to.
But for right now, the color - or why I need to see it beforehoof - still eludes me.
“Come on, Fiddle,” said a strange voice. ” I know you didn’t pass out. I can hear you breathing. Before, I could hear you… crying.”
Crying? Indeed, my eyes do hurt, and I can feel the dried streaks on my cheeks. I probably have streaks of red reaching up to my baby blues, like claws washed in a lake. Even the sandy shores replicate in the dust that tickles at my lashes every time I blink.
Wait. Dust! "D-Dust? That you?”
“Yeah. It’s me.” A husky laugh. “Thought I lost you there. Nice to know you can say more’n one word, actually.”
Sweet realization blasts into my mind at that point.
Lightning Dust is here.
The one who found her way to strings of my heart, the one I found sitting in a pit of her own squalor after the ‘Bolts stripped her of her position. The one that I have always thought still deserved the highest spot in the clouds, long before our first kiss made me feel like I’d been launched there.
Yet she is on one side of the door.
And I on the other.
Again, why?
I cannot remember, but it feels… imperative that I keep this wood barrier between us. Danger pricks at my every nerve, but the root of such trepidation feels so far underground I might have to dig to Tartarus for it. My back muscles and legs ache with exertion; so I've held this position against the door for quite a while.
If it's keeping me from Dust, it must be about something really serious.
And yet I have forgotten why? It shames me.
“Um… Dust? Do you know why I’m here? Doing this?”
A while passes before Dust responds. “Shoot, you don’t know? Look around you, the evidence should be right there.”
My eyes, anvil-heavy as they feel, scan over the floor. Guttering amber light washes over the rent peels of dozens of citrus fruits, the faint traces of juices gluing to my pea-green shirt and my fur.
So… was it a party?
No. I remember. Dust is never this messy, and neither am I. Our first dinner date was a testament to that. I still remember her laughing at my clumsy hooves, nearly overflowing our plates with pasta sauce, and the way she ruffled my mane to calm my nerves. Said it was amazing I went so far as to make a meal for her anyhow; something that not even her parents did in her youth.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment, not so long as I draw breath or fiddle bows.
No, this isn’t a normal scene, these gutted fruits. And it doesn’t explain the wreckage the rest of the room is in.
“I think… Did we have a fight?”
And despite the fact I’ve no idea if that’s true - or even who started it - guilt shreds a path to my heart like a chainsaw’s ravenous teeth.
Dust sucks in a breath, and exhales more than just that. I cannot hear the words she utters; this door is very thick, despite its lack of locks. “I mean…” and I hear the smack of her moistening her lips. A habit, but probably understandable in this case. “We were just sitting alone tonight, watching some dumb Power Ponies cartoons…”
My ears perk up. Yes, that sounds like me - another of many numerous little habits Dust swept me into like a tornado. I liked Mistress Mare-velous the best - Dust has even told me I’d be a dead ringer for her, looks-wise.
“And then what happened?” I ask, cursing how croaky my voice is.
“Then…” Now I definitely hear that gulp. “I swear, it was like a light switch. You turned off the TV, and… I could see the teeth become fangs, hear the rips as ears became tufted…”
And then another lost piece of the puzzle slots into place, my eyes widening. Oh Faust, is that why I hurt all over? Why do my eyes sting at every light cast across them?
Why do I feel so unbelievably hungry?
“Oh no, Dust…” I say, my heart feeling like it’s been cut apart by piano wire. “What… happened to me?”
More pauses. Damn it, Dust, tell me! I can handle it! I promised you that six months ago, and I still mean it now! But I don’t dare say it aloud; who knows what tremor or influence will infect my voice then?
“Look, Fiddle,” Dust finally says. “It doesn’t matter. You’re still my special somepony - no matter what happens, I will always know the pony I love is underneath. Just… let me in. So I can get you help.”
I hesitate for a brief second, my back almost off the door. I still don’t know what it is I’ve become, but I know Dust would never lie to me. She’s still fast; I can close my eyes and still remember the shape of every muscle she endlessly trains to perfection in our yard. I know she’ll use every bit of power to get me to… to wherever I need to be.
But then I feel the door shift, and I push back against it. It’s not shock, primal fury, or anything like that.
It feels like… instinct.
Like I’ve done that a hundred times this night too, the noise even making my ears tilt down in anticipation. As though I’m trying to block Dust’s voice out.
But again, why?
God, I just want a mirror in this room so I can see just what horror has taken over my face. Just some hint of an answer.
“Dust, I…” And I’m crying again, fresh rivulets running down my cheeks and twinkling on the floor. “I’m sorry! Go get the help without me! Don’t get hurt over me!”
“I won’t leave you here alone, Fiddle!” Dust barks, determination ringing in her every word. “I can’t stand the thought of you just suffering! Lost! Without me to pull you from that abyss!”
I shiver, despite the heat from the candles around me. Dust has never sounded so possessive, so… desperate. Is it really that bad? Do I dare-
My hooves creep closer to the crack of the door - it's ajar, but I still feel the pressure of a body against it. Dust wants to see past that crack. See me.
Do I let her?
It is then that I feel the dig of the spine of a book against my hip. I look down at it, but alI I see is the faint wording of the title, the loopy yet embossed cursive singing to my tired eyes.
…fenses against Bat…
By Granny Smi…
…reword by Flutter…
The rest is smothered by shadow.
“Dust?” I breathe out. “What’s with this book?” Again, it feels warm against my coat - like it’s been embraced by me before. Certainly, the weird angle it is at supports that theory - face-down on the floor, crushed pages flicking weakly in the wind howling through the broken windows.
“Don’t worry about it, Fiddle.” And now Dust’s voice is guarded again. “Probably what’s jamming the door. Just move it and I can get to you. Don’t you want that?”
I do. By Faust I do. Every time I’ve ever broken a string on my fiddle, every time things have heaped upon my back so heavily it feels ready to break, Dust has always been there. She’s like an oar offered to me in a raging storm...and this one feels like the worst of all.
But I can’t move it - or even move it up further to read it fully. Not without removing my back’s bracing upon the door completely.
But some part of me, some really deep part, will not consider it as an option - despite my curiosity.
Then again, memory invades; there is a certain color I need to keep in mind. Something resembling the lettering embossing the book. Something I’ve been repeating. But what?
“At least let me see your face, please.” Dust’s request sounds like a hacking choke. I want to cry again at the pain I’ve caused her. “Before I go. Please.”
And little by little, I relent. My shoulders ache terribly at the pressure against the door, but my eyes approach the crack.
There is Dust, her face as full and flush as ever. Her tightly pursed yet still kissable lips, her wild cornsilk mane that I love to brush endlessly.
Her crimson eyes, like blood moons as they bore into my very soul.
And then it all slams back home for me. Why I’m at this door, why there are no windows in the room Dust is in, what that elusive color is that I need to remember.
I roll back against the door, almost too late as Dust’s full-weight barrels into the door and nearly jerks me from the straining wood. The only reprieve between a pony and a monster, just as Dust said.
What was left unsaid - what nearly doomed me - was who the pony and who the monster was.
Now it’s all flooding back to me with terrible rapidity, as the banging continues, as I again fight to keep oblivion from claiming my tired eyes as darkness will soon overtake this room. Hunger again growls to me, a reminder I’ve been doing this for seven hours. And my ears are shut for a good reason - the voice that hisses out to me still tugs at my heart to let it go free, trilling with a hunger that a thousand mangos couldn’t sate.
“Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold,” I gasp into the air punctuated by Dust’s bestial growls, with my Defenses Against Batponies booktight against my chest like a talisman. As I hopefully will stay until sunrise.
Gold, gold, gold.
Lightning Dust’s eyes, the ones I lost myself in for so long, are supposed to be gold.
