Fragility

Chapter 1

From Another Era

~~~~~~~~~~

[Grimdark][Tragedy]

~~~~~~~~~~

Day 1 —

Dear Heart Stream,

Obviously talking this over with you face to face wasn’t enough to make my point clear. So, since you seem so fond of learning about me through writing this pointless exercise, I’ll reiterate for the last time here, nice and clearly:

Sod. Off.

I don’t need help. I don’t need this therapy. I’m not “going through classic signs of grief”. Just leave me be, and let me carry on with my daily life.

—Crystal Shard

Day 2 —

Dear Heart Stream,

Ask, and ye shall receive:

"About my thoughts and feelings, what’s going on in my head, etc."

You’re welcome,
Crystal Shard

P.S. “Feelings”? I’m sorry, but this is a bit of a juvenile term, considering you are a university therapist. Let’s not kid ourselves. We all know you mean “emotions”. And again, I am not emotionally unstable.

Day 3 —

I must apologize to future readers, including myself. Needless to say, some conflict arose in trying to get me started on something like this. However, we have come to an agreement, the terms of which I shall specify here, in-writing, as a form of contract.

First, my therapist Heart Stream’s terms.
1. He gets to see the journal at least once per week. I may choose the day.
2. I must write about at least some of my emotions of the day in each entry. His word was “feelings” again, but I won’t budge on this.
3. If I don’t at least touch on the recent death that has brought me to therapy in the first place, by university’s rules I will have to talk about it within an actual session.
4. I must be honest in my entries.
5. I am not allowed to remove any pages from the journal for any reason.

Secondly, my terms.
1. I may skip up to two days per week.
2. I may be as brief about my emotions as possible, just so long as I am clear enough that Heart Stream may understand. If I’m to be perfectly honest in my writing, this may still prove to be the greatest challenge.
3. Most importantly, I am allowed to treat this journal partly as a scientific journal to aid in my research at the university. This point I insisted upon. I’ve been meaning to start one anyway as a means of organizing my otherwise impossibly cluttered notes.
4. In relation to my third term, I also insist upon the right to publish part or all of this journal, should I need to in order to properly establish my discoveries and research.

Now then, in keeping with these terms, I must of course establish a baseline. A “time zero” observation of myself, if you will. If I think about it, I would have to say that for the past few days how I’ve felt may best be described as “dead”. Not literally, of course, but emotionally. The usual trifles I deal with on a daily basis have seemed distant to me. My fellow students haven’t been speaking to me, besides the occasional “are you okay?” or “I’m so sorry”, which may be a contributing factor. I’m sure it will pass in a matter of days, but that’s part of what this observation period is for I suppose.

That should be descriptive enough. Should it not be, all that can really happen at this point is an honest discussion over how I “didn’t know any better”.

One thing that strikes me as a missing factor that some readers, excluding myself and my therapist, may need to understand future entries is the “recent death” mentioned in the agreement. I would like to explain this for clarity’s sake, but the honest fact of the matter is that I feel uncomfortable even thinking about it. Before anypony calls me out on this, I do realize that this, combined with the first few entries, is clearly indicative of my transitioning from the first to the second stage of grieving, denial and anger respectively. I am also aware that the field of psychology is one of if not the most inexact sciences in existence; these stages have been known to show themselves in individuals in seemingly random orders, to revert back randomly, and sometimes never to complete the cycle. As such, don’t be surprised if I never end up “bargaining” for anything before getting over this.

Oh, I apologize once more. I seem to have reverted to emotional content for a moment. In the interest of honesty I may at least say that it was less painful than expected. Heart Stream, as you smile and chuckle to yourself from that line, look up; I’ll be seated, so both of my forelegs should be available for the proper gesture. You’ll be familiar with it: bras d'honneur, remember? It’s not the first time my use of it has gotten me in trouble.

In any case, I have another baseline to establish still, this time for the scientific portion of the journal. First, it would be proper to establish what my research is about.

“At the Royal University of the Moon, we are dedicated to research in the hopes of solving the problems of the nighttime.”

That might not be the exact mantra, but it should be close enough to understand. For reference, the school was established in memory of Princess Luna, or “Nightmare Moon” as she seems to like to go by now. Coincidentally, today marks the four-month anniversary of her banishment. I’m still torn as to whether or not that was a good idea.

Ah, but back to my point. The research. The science.

Many of my fellow students seem to take the criteria of the school’s research quite leniently. To be fair, there are plenty of students that have been quite sensible. For example, I believe I’ve heard of somepony who is looking to breed crops that use moonlight to grow instead of sunlight.

I for one am trying to develop something that may aid everypony in the new city, and possibly any future city to be developed across Equestria. I’m simply looking for a more reliable and, to be blunt, less flickery light source than simple torches. Of course, magical light is the simple solution, but typically it requires constant focus and attention by some unicorn, or otherwise just expends too much energy to be reliable.

The most recent headway I’ve made with my research has been through use of glass prisms. I hypothesize that, given the proper construction and initial light frequency, a very minimal amount of magical energy would need to be devoted to lighting an entire street! Some call this outlandish and silly, but even they cannot argue with the flaws of our current lighting system. Between the poor light quality and the threat of fire damage, especially in such tight quarters as a city, advancing beyond torches and braziers is a must for Equestrian society.

I was planning on transcribing some of my notes into this day’s entry, but I’ve already worked my way well past how much I had planned on writing. I shall pick up with this tomorrow.

—Crystal Shard

Day 6 —

I may have taken some liberty with the skipped days rule. I was a bit shortsighted, obviously, as I now am forced to write in this journal for each of the next two days. Sure, it will be a good way to light a fire under myself and force me to stop procrastinating on rewriting my notes, but unfortunately I still need to include the emotional portion.

However, to understand today’s emotional problems I need to establish a bit of context, in the interest of future readers more so than peers.

I am not by any means what one might call “social." I’m sure my attitude towards my fellow students has generally implied this already. However I have made one friend during my stay here. Her name is Honey Comb, and her area of study is that of beekeeping. Odd, yes, but it does give her a rather interesting standpoint on several issues. I believe when we first met we had a lengthy discussion over geometry. Everypony knows that, structurally, the triangle is mathematically the strongest polygon at its root; Honey Comb insisted it was, in actuality, the hexagon. I believe with any other pony the conversation would’ve ended once I brought up the proof, but she insisted we eschew the mathematics. I was appalled, yet intrigued by her argument. She insisted, and to this day still does, that the flexibility of the hexagon, as she’s seen in her work, is a sure sign of its superiority. Technically, I agree with her, and as her friend I’ll support this point; honestly, the only reason I hadn’t torn her argument apart at first was a mixture of sympathy and the fact that a perfect hexagon can be composed of perfect triangles anyway.

Just being around her is enough to make me smile now. Well, under normal circumstances. She’s a good enough friend to help me forget the troubles of the day, and is in fact one of about three things that can pull me from my work. The others include life-threatening circumstances and any legal or university mandate that would require me to stop. I believe I’m Honey Comb’s only friend, at least at the University. She doesn’t like to talk about her time before she came here. I can respect that. All I was before moving to attend the University was an avid student preparing to attend someplace like the University.

I haven’t spoken to her in a week as of today. No, we’re not fighting, she just needs time to herself. The “recent death?” That was her father. I never knew him, though from Honey Comb’s reaction, I might count that a blessing. I’m sorry, that must sound incredibly cold; I only mean that I might be so overwhelmed as she is right now had I ever met the stallion. I know my work could wait for a few days, in theory, but I find it hard to get back into my rhythm after more than one day of rest. I can’t imagine what’s happening to Honey’s hives right now. To be fair, I believe she considers her bees friends also, if not close pets, so I don’t think she’d outright neglect them; still, sometimes a pony can’t help but worry.

On a more pleasant note, I managed to do some more tests with the standard prisms today. Unfortunately I didn’t make much headway into discovering the proper combination. Triangular prisms seem to only want to make rainbows or just angle the light. Rectangular prisms are out of the question simply due to the mathematics involved, obviously. Today I tested combinations of several triangular prisms, but the most I managed to do was re-angle the light by about five degrees from the starting direction.

That’s about all I’ve accomplished today of note. I must say, compared to yesterday, I’m getting the hang of controlling my rambling thoughts.

—Crystal Shard

Day 7 —

There will be no scientific content today. The weight of the incident has finally hit me full force. I’m struggling to hold the quill still, even with magic. To put it in psychological terms, I’ve skipped straight past “bargaining”, as predicted.

I woke up in tears this morning. I had a dream in which I, rather than Honey Comb’s father, had died that day. On the bright side, if I didn’t believe the myth was ridiculous beforehand, the fact that I am still alive after clearly dying in my subconscious outright disproves the idea.

I think that one of the things that really hit me was the manner in which he actually died. I didn’t have the heart to explain yesterday, and I’m probably in no better shape to try today, but it’s necessary before I go on.

He was a construction worker. I believe he was working on one of the towers for the new castle.

Pardon me, retelling this story is a bit difficult. Emotionally, not that I can’t remember. I couldn’t forget.

Supposedly he was helping align one of the walls as it was being placed by magic. I’ve seen the construction process personally. It typically takes a team of at least six unicorns to move a standard-sized wall segment. I imagine there were perhaps forty moving this piece of stone and marble. From what I’ve heard, he had just given the clear to lower the wall. Normally, he would’ve been adjacent to the section, but because it wasn’t aligning properly he had to step underneath. For twenty minutes after they struggled to get the piece into position before he gave the go-ahead to lower it. Twenty minutes of straining themselves made the short-term memory of the lift team rather faulty.

There was no gradual drop.

That wasn’t the worst of it though. He tried to dive out of the way, but the wall was too wide. And nopony expected it to be dropped so quickly after the word “Go!” He was crushed, yes, but still alive through some “miracle”. I believe my experience in his position made me truly realize what pain he must have been in before passing. He was completely immobilized by the wall on top of him, and no one heard his cries over the rejoice of having theoretically finally finished the task. All that anypony noticed was that the wall didn’t quite line up with the other segments at the top. So of course the assisting pegasi pushed the segment “into place” from the top. It wasn’t until the dust settled from the impact and they found the blood seeping out of the crack between the segments that they even took roll call to figure out who it was.

At least they cleaned up the blood stains. Probably got at least some of the tomato paste that used to be him mopped up too, and just hid the rest. I’m sure they’d all be out of a job should anypony important have found out.

There were two upsides to this, however minute. For one, they stopped construction for a day and a half afterwards. Secondly, they’ve agreed to carve his name into the wall, as something of a grave site intended as a memorial. I don’t know who “they” is. It might be the Princess, but I somehow doubt it. There was never any mention of the incident outside of the University as far as I’ve seen. Of course, the University makes up perhaps eighty percent of the finished portion of Canterlot as of this entry, so there aren’t many active citizens available for gossip anyway. Besides, as I’ve already written, widespread news of this would be bad for his former co-workers.

Let it never be said that Canterlot was built in a day. I’m sure with all her planned majesty that’s how the legend will go. This couldn’t be further from the truth. No amount of unicorns and no amount of magic can properly build up “the new royal city” that fast. The current plan is to finish within three months. That sounds awfully ambitious to me at the current rate.

Frankly this city is cursed to me anyway. That at least one pony lies dead within the foundation is proof enough of that for me.

But I digress.

Today I finally went to visit Honey Comb. Her eyes were red and sore, and her mane a mess. I had to bring in a package she had received a day ago. She didn’t talk for almost an hour after I got there. I offered to prepare lunch for the two of us; that was the first time she acknowledged my being there at all.

We had a simple meal: honey-smeared toast. She knows how to make honey herself, thankfully, or at the least she knows much more of it than I ever bothered to learn. I think she needed the food just so she could produce more tears. Something about the meal together got her to open up though. Her voice was raspy and painful to listen to. She talked about her father, what he meant to her. I found myself crying with her, and frankly I think I may this evening look something like how she had when I arrived.

I wanted to tell her about the dream, but it didn’t seem appropriate. This may be a secret I take to my own grave.

I managed to convince her to come back to class tomorrow. I’ll be keeping an eye on her throughout the day. Sure, my own education may suffer, but I don’t believe I’ll miss much. Even if I do, making sure she’s alright would make it worth it.

Honestly, my worst fear at the moment is that she’ll have a breakdown in class. I’d be the only one to blame for what happens to her because of it.

—Crystal Shard