Quietus

Sleep.

It's a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

We spend a third of our lives sleeping, taking naps, dozing off, and just overall slipping into the ever accessible unconscious. It doesn’t make our problems go away, but it does make us feel better about them.

I spent so much time thinking about sleeping, wondering if I should take a nap during my break, spending my time resting my eyes. Sometimes, I’d get my work done early at my job just to have more time to sleep. Maybe I had an addiction to sleeping, even.

If the sandpony were real, we’d be best friends.

I stared up at the tile pattern of my ceiling, laying in a hot tub of water. It was absolutely wonderful, especially warm around my hooves, and made me extremely drowsy. Just as well, it made me feel clean in ways that showers didn’t quite do; even if I was technically laying in a puddle of my own filth. My entire body was submerged except for my head, which would soon follow. My eyes were half-closed, and my tunnel of vision was getting smaller with each passing second.

I would have fallen asleep entirely if not for the door bursting open.

“Hey, what are y—” They started as the door swung open, stopping just as suddenly. One pony stood in the doorway, eyes widened as they saw me, gaze dropping to my hooves, then lower to peer at the water. They slumped against the doorway, all of the tension in their body ebbing out as their knees fell out from them. A piece of paper fell from their grip. “No.”

“Oh, you’re here a lot sooner than I thought you’d be.” I muttered, my voice so meek it was barely audible. I must have been sleepier than I thought.

“Why would you…” They forced themselves to their hooves, taking hesitant steps towards me with a quivering body. “Why?”

“Didn’t you read the—” I groaned, feeling the warmth of the water seep out of me and into me at the same time. “Note? I’m tired, really tired. All the time, I’m tired no matter how much sleep I get. Every day, all I look forward to is when I get home and go to sleep. Today, I just…” I tried to shrug, but the sense of lethargy spread into my body like a poison. It was a miracle I could even move my mouth to talk. I didn’t have the energy to do anything but sleep. And write that note, I guess.

They stared at me for a bit, resting their hoof on mine. It was cold— especially compared to the water of the tub. It made me want to let the rest of my body slip into the water. If they weren’t there, I very well might have. If it wasn’t for the throbbing pain in my wrist, I would have long since passed out.

“Well, sure, we all get tired sometimes,” they whispered, moving their hoof in a circle around mine. I think they were trying to comfort me, but nothing could be more comforting than the numbness that had made its home under my skin. “Heck, there’s not a day that goes by I don’t want to just…” they trailed off, making a droning noise like they couldn’t bring themselves to say the word. “Sleep. But we have families who want to see us while we’re awake, goals we have to strive for, that we have to be awake for.”

“Don’t all those things…” A cloud of mind-fog flew over my brain. Very briefly, I forgot how to talk. “End up with us sleeping? Why not just cut to the chase? Why not just relax?”

“Because you’d be missing out on all the great things that happen while you’re awake! Don’t you sleep so you can wake up in the first place?”

“Hmmm.” I guess there was some truth to that. Sleeping wouldn’t be as enjoyable if I never woke up, and vice versa. “So, what, we stay awake just to sleep? Seems stupid to me. Why not just cut out the middlemare and sleep all the time? If sleep is what it always ends with, then isn’t that worth more than being awake?”

“Um…”

I must have stumped them. Which is fair, I did phrase that quite oddly. I kept my gaze locked on the water, watching as it moved on its own almost like it was breathing.

It was soothing to watch.

I nearly couldn’t hear the choked sobbing to the left of me.

“What if you find something better than sleeping? Like a really good book, or great food? Or a really nice mare? Isn’t that worth waking up for?”

“Sure, but, what if a million bits fell out of the sky right on me? Well, I’d be dead, for one.” I tried to laugh, but I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs to do so; it hurt to take in that much at once. Instead, I just sort of wheezed. “I could think about what ifs until I fall asleep, and not one of them will come true. Why shouldn’t I settle for something that’s certain, I know I like, and that I don’t have to wake up for?”

“...Because I’m asking you not to.”

I would have turned my head to face them, but I had this crick in my neck that wouldn’t quite go away. Or maybe I was just being lazy, who knows?

“You’re asking me not to sleep? That’s like asking a pegasus not to fly. I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can! You loved staying awake when we were foals, you’d stay up for a day or two at a time!”

“I guess, but I liked it more than sleeping then. Now I don’t. So, what, I’m supposed to stay awake for somepony else when I want to sleep? Isn’t that a bit selfish? Aren’t you asking me to do that so you can enjoy being awake, not me?”

They winced in pain at my tone, and honestly? I couldn’t blame them. I’m not usually a spiteful pony if I can help it. But something about the way they said that touched a nerve I didn’t know was there.

Now, even if I wanted to face them, I don’t think I could.

I did, however, hear them sharply inhale through their teeth. They stopped the circular motion on my hoof, pulling back their hooves to their chest.

“So, you’re not even going to try?”

They didn’t even try to hold back the somberness in their voice, or the way it quivered.

“I’ve already tried.”

They sat there for a long time, I didn’t hear them move once. Until, sooner or later, they got up and shuffled over to the door.

“I guess that’s it, then.”

“Of course it is.” I answered. “I’m already in the tub.”

I didn’t hear anything else.

I started closing my eyes, more because they were getting heavier by the second than anything, then I spotted something out of the corner of my vision.

It was the note I left.

It was on the bed, I could just barely make it out.

“That’s…strange.” my voice was less than a whisper at this point. “I t—hought they brought it in?”

In fact, didn’t I leave the door open earlier? How’d it close?

Those were my last words before darkness encroached everything I could see, and I fell asleep.

A fleeting thought flew away as I wondered what was at the end of sleep, if anything at all?