You felt something cold and unpleasant touches your back. As if a decaying corpse has just called you.
You stood up abruptly and, having your tail glued to a leg, stepped back.
No one. Nothing.
Because there are only darkness and silence around. Dead silence devours you with bones, sucking the life out of you.
Your heart pounds as fast as it can. You are afraid. You want to run, but you cannot.
Your legs shake. You feel you are going to fall. You pray that this is the end of a nightmare, which only gathers its force. That you will wake up right now and everything will go back to normal.
But the silence continues its mad and sad aria. It frightens you. It makes you go insane.
After standing in a state of fear for two minutes... or three hours, you try to look around, reducing your silhouette to the bare minimum possible.
Sand. Sand is everywhere.
It scratches your face, it crawls into you, it is in you, but you only stare further.
Darkness. Darkness that never ends. Never again will the beautiful crescent Moon appear in the sky, turning the sky into a pleasant pattern. Never again will the Sun appear, illuminating everyone with its beautiful light.
There will only be darkness. The darkness that makes you go insane.
Yes, you can resist, try to save your mind, but you are powerless before it.
Before the endless blackness. It captures you with your head like a whirlwind.
With your painfully pulsing head.
You put a hoof to your forehead and feel that you have a horn.
You touched it everywhere you could, but it is already solved.
You are a unicorn.
You tried to feel your stomach.
Yes, it is still in its place, but you felt feathers.
They grew out of rather powerful wings that once gave their mistress the right to do the most beautiful pirouettes in the air, making everyone just envy you.
No, you are not a unicorn, you are an alicorn. A powerful, god-like creature, that is able to stand before any danger and protect those who are dear to it.
But what are you now? A weak, fearful prude who is afraid to even raise her head. How are you going to protect your dear ones? Who loved you and you loved back even more? Who helped you out in a difficult situation, giving everything that could have been given?
You do not remember it. You do not remember anything.
The main question stood before you - what to do? And the only thing you counted as an answer is going forward.
Going forward until the end, until the legs refuse to get up, until the body rots of absence of even food, until you breathe.
Until you are alive.
Making your first step, you felt your ear membranes tearing apart.
This sound felt more like a fall of a meteorite than a step. Closing your eyes, you continue to walk. The more you went, the more you were afraid to open your eyes.
They spy on you. They want to take your life as they did with hers.
You do not remember her. You do not remember her name. The only thing you remember is her smile. It was the most important event in the world. Her smile forced you to forget about every disaster around, to forget about everything just to see it more.
But it was not meant to be.
You made a mistake. A mistake that made it occur.
Loneliness.
It literally ate you alive every day.
You felt your soul being poisoned, your body being rotten, your mind being died.
And you wanted it.
You wanted to suffer, to feel like a complete bastard that does not have the right to live.
You shed tears all day long to release all your bitterness. But you did not succeed.
It just piled up, it grew stronger. You cried for as long as you were conscious, for as long as your throat clenched so that you were literally choking.
But you felt like it was not enough. That you were feeling sorry for yourself. That you did not deserve such light punishment.
But she felt the same, did not she? She, too, was lost in grief, feeling insanely lonely.
And you knew it, and your heart bled even more.
You looked around, but what did you want to see, what?
You could not answer this question and decided to walk further, trying to get out of this situation.
Bending up, you tried to lit up your horn. After a minute of tries, you have made a little light.
A butterfly in the kingdom of darkness.
Looking at the ground, you saw footsteps.
These are not yours.
You did not remember how much you have run for these two, three or maybe five hours. You did not care at all.
You just wanted to see someone, to just stop this silence and darkness, which pressed onto you with unimaginable force.
You did not care how many hours, days or months you are going to need. You needed someone who is ready to share your endless grief.
The more you ran, the more you felt a strange feeling. It was somewhere at the edge of your mind, like it was waving with all of its force, trying to be noticeable.
You saw the place where you had started as you stopped.
Falling down from the debility, your heart has stopped. No, not from the fatigue, but from realization of one fact:
Loneliness.
Your life is not needed to anyone, you will die in agony, and no one is going to remember you, you are not loved and never will.
Your life is empty, it is worth nothing at all. You are all alone in this empty world, and you are unwanted here.
You shed tears, trying to get lost in them, to run away from reality as you always did, but it will not help now.
No one and nothing is going to help you, you are alone.
You do not remember the moment when you stopped to sob. There was only incurable grief in your heart.
You looked around again. The darkness now seemed no longer a terrible and dangerous enemy, but an inattentive listener who answered your pleas with nothing but silence.
“Why are you silent, why?!” you yelled, trying to get an answer that did not follow.
Only silence and darkness answered you with their somewhat dark, understandable language.
But your voice. It is so... Familiar.
You looked at your own hip, trying to find a trace that will answer your only question:
Who are you?
You looked narrowly at a small figure on the thigh and became paralyzed.
“I am...” You did not have time to say anything, feeling your heart stop and beat no more. The last thing you saw in your life was the endless darkness that called out to you, but the only feeling that raged in your soul was despair mixed with wonder.
You did not make it in time.
***
Her face expressed a unique feeling. She was staring in wonder, her glassy, unblinking gaze going off into the distance, as if trying to find something there.
She did not have time to understand. She did not have time to feel.
She did not have time to save her.
A large alicorn, which could protect anyone, could not protect itself. Inside, she was fragile, like a crystal that had slipped and shattered. Only her help would have restored that beautiful grace she once possessed.
But she died alone, never having had time to recover.
Author's Note
To be honest, I was trying to get myself up to translating a somewhat larger story, but I just... can't? Don't want to? Don't feel the necessity to? I don't know, but I wanted to post at least something.
Hope you all are doing good in these uncertain and bad times.