Chapters Dear Friend,
I hope this letter does not distress you too much. Know that although I will certainly be gone by the time you receive this, I went peacefully into the void, free of all the pain that's gripped me these past few years. Let it bring you some comfort that wherever I am, it's better than here.
I was walking down Main Street last week, guided by the lee light of the waning moon and its sister stars, examining the strange and monstrous shadows cast across the gray light of shop floors by headless mannequins, knick-knacks, baubles, and curios. Everything was quiet as the grave, my only company the few homeless folks who gather with moth-bitten blankets in the old, muddy lot pock-marked with the remains of the old hardware store. One of them - the old, grizzled man who ties wild berries into the knots of his yellowing beard - waved to me. I think he must have seen something in my eyes, or perhaps it was the way that I walked, because a sullen expression passed over his face and he made the sign of the cross with his fingers as though he was trying to expel a demon. Whether he thought a demon haunted me or that I was the demon, I will never know.
I made my way to that old stone bridge that lazily arches over the tiny brook that separates the main part of town from everything else. Do you remember that little stream? We used to go out there and do cannonballs from the railing, laughing as the passing cars honked at us and enjoying the cool feeling of the water in those hot, humid summers. It was only later that my father told me that there were large boulders below the bridge that had claimed many lives when he was a child, and it was a miracle that neither of us cracked our heads open on those hidden dangers.
That same water that we shared many fun hours in is now little more than a slurry of mud and trash that painstakingly inches its way toward some unknown and far-off destination. Banks filled with reeds, cattails, and colorful wildflowers are now dotted by needles, styrofoam coffee cups, and crushed cartons of cheap cigarette brands. I find this to be an oddly poignant metaphor for life.
The moon watched me like some cosmic, all-seeing eye as I stepped through the rusted wrought-iron gate of the town graveyard. I passed by graves decorated with colorful flowers and flags that denoted services I could not parse, stones choked with weeds and moss and others that were as pristine as the day they were set in the earth. The smell of topsoil and rot hung in the air like an old memory, oddly comforting even as it made my nose scrunch in disgust. It was strange; in this land of the dead, I felt a sense of kinship and belonging that was absent for years.
You know where their graves are, by that old willow tree whose branches bend almost to the ground. My mother loved that tree, loved the way that it sat on the hill in that awkward pose, loved the leaves it would drop in the feel, loved the rough feel of the bark. I never understood why she wanted to be buried near that tree, where her corpse would become speared by some slow-moving root curling around it like a snake and steadily devoured. But then, I never understood much about what she did.
I sat by the graves until the rose-tint of morning brightened the horizon, not knowing what I was doing or why I was there, just staring off into the abyss and letting it stare back into me. The quiet engines of cars started to woosh along the road by the cemetery, and I took that as my cue to leave. As I was walking back along the main road, avoiding the eyes of those few people who open their businesses at the crack of dawn, I saw in the fading light of a streetlamp the falling husk of an insect, killed by coming too close to the bulb, and I understood.
My friend, you know I haven't been well for a while. I don't think I've ever really been well, not for a long time, but these past few years have been nothing but constant pain. Every day it feels like a lasso of barbed wire is being slowly tightened around my heart, and I can't put up with this anymore. I haven't left my room since visiting the cemetery last week; my days consist almost entirely of eating and sleeping. I can't go on like this, but I don't know how to change it. I don't even know if I can. The only thing I know I can do is go out on my own terms.
I'm sorry. I know how selfish this decision is, and I imagine that my funeral will be full of people talking about how much they loved me, how I should have just reached out for help. But I can't. It feels like no matter how much I talk to people, they can never really understand what I'm saying, just responding with empty platitudes and a solid pat on the back. There's a void inside me, and with each passing day, I'm becoming less and less human, less and less able to be understood by others. What will I become if I let this continue?
Before my father died, he left me with one phrase that has stuck in my mind. 'Everything passes'. I think he meant the words to be comforting, saying that even when times are tough, everything will eventually come around. But the more I've thought about it, the more I've put a darker spin on those last words. Everything does pass in the end, and maybe the comfort is the knowledge that we can accelerate that process.
I apologize, my friend. I've been rambling for a bit too long and getting all sentimental in these final moments. I've already taken an overdose of my sleeping medication; there's no going back now. I'm sorry again, for everything. Maybe things would have been better if we never met, though I think I would miss all the fun moments we've had together. Then again, how could I miss what I never had?
Sorry, I'm rambling again. My head is starting to swim and the tips of my fingers are becoming numb, that strange feeling of pins and needles spreading throughout my body. I just want to say one last thing: don't blame yourself. I'm not worth it.
We had good days my friend. Very good days.
Love, Author's Note
Sometimes you get a flash of inspiration in the middle of the night.
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It was a quiet day at St. Amor Memorial Hospital. Too quiet.
Hospitals are, by nature, chaotic affairs, the type of industry that would leave Discord sobbing and running for the exit while wondering what he did to deserve this punishment. A quiet day in a hospital was the calm before the storm, a portent of doom that put Nurse Snowdrop on edge as she went about her duties. This did not go unnoticed by those around her: patients were tense as she did her rounds, the other nurses gave her questioning glances as she passed, and at least one doctor had asked if she needed to take the rest of the day off. Naturally, she refused, but she begrudgingly took the supervisor's recommendation that she end her rounds early and mare the nurse's station for a while.
Even as she lazily checked off different boxes on the useless paperwork, Snowdrop couldn't stop the swiveling of her ears as they searched for trouble. Every cough, every groan, every out-of-place beeping had her looking around for the source, only to realize that it was some routine non-issue. She knew how ridiculous she must look, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was about to go wrong.
"Oi, what's with the long face?" It was Ice Lily, another nurse who started at St. Amor around the same time as her. She and Snowdrop became fast friends, the latter's more reserved, cautious energy tempering the former's extroverted nature.
Snowdrop huffed, almost blowing a few sheets of paper off the table. She scrambled to put them back in place with a flash of magic, blushing as Ice Lily chuckled. "Oh, laugh it up, Lily. And to answer your question," Snowdrop's ear flicked in the direction of somepony clearing their throat, "I've just got a bad feeling about today."
"Oh yeah?" Ice Lily raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're getting all superstitious on me."
Now it was Snowdrop's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Lily, we live in a world where thousand-year-old prophecies come true on a weekly basis. If anything, I'm being... stitious."
"I don't think that's a word."
"Well, I just made it one," Snowdrop huffed, turning her gaze back to the paperwork. The letters were swimming across the page at this point, notes about this patient or that patient's care all swirling together. A sigh breezed through her muzzle. "I don't know, I just don't trust quiet days."
"The more you think about it, the more you're gonna jinx it ~" Ice Lily called in a sing-song voice as she trotted away to continue her rounds. Snowdrop rolled her eyes, semi-amused, and once again tried to make sense of notes and recommendations done in hoof-writing that a kindergarten teacher would have trouble understanding. Did doctors take classes on how to write in the most unintelligible way possible?
As the day wore on and the sun began to paint the firmament in rosy hues, Snowdrop felt the tension in her body slowly disappate. Nothing bad happened today, no flood of patients or world-ending disasters, nopony coding or random grease fires in the kitchen (they really needed to fire Rusty Spoon). Ice Lily was right; she was being supersti-
Bang!
Dear Celestia, give me the strength...
The front door of the hospital was slammed open with enough force to crack the wall behind it, a feat that Snowdrop would consider impressive in other circumstances. A mare rushed up to the nurse's station, her breaths coming in heavy and labored, her eyes bloodshot, and her mane frazzled, looking for all intents and purposes like she was being chased by Cerberus himself, come to drag her to the deepest layer of Tartarus. With the impassive face mastered by those who have to work with ponies in crisis, Snowdrop addressed the mare.
"How can I help you, ma'am?" Snowdrop was scanning the mare with a professional eye. No visible wounds or blood, that was a good sign. She didn't seem to be physically sick on a preliminary examination, though that conclusion could easily change. Perhaps it was a mental health case? Even with the magic of the Crystal Heart keeping the Empire warm year-round, the desolation of the North could still weigh on a pony... not to mention disappearing from the face of Equus for one thousand years and dealing with multiple crises back-to-back. Unsurprisingly, the Crystal Empire had a per-capita measure of mental illness second only to Ponyville.
"I-I s-she," the mare was struggling to get words out in between her gulps of air. Realizing her deficiency, the mare turned to her side and presented Snowdrop with her problem.
A half-dead thestral filly sprawled across her back.
There was a half-dead filly on her back.
What the fuck.
"We've got a code blue over here! Someone grab a gurney!" Snowdrop yelled in the direction of other medical ponies as she took the filly from the mare's back. The poor dear looked horrific: her lips were blue as a corpse; the area around her muzzle was covered with spittle and flecks of vomit; her appendages hung limp as a cheap ragdoll; and there was no luster or shine in her half-lidded eyes. If it weren't for the shaking, barely audible breaths she took, Snowdrop would have thought she was holding a recently deceased body.
A group of nurses rushed forward with a gurney and Snowdrop placed the filly down, absent-mindedly brushing her two-toned gray mane. The nurses hurried toward the back, a doctor shouting orders and commands, quickly passing through the double doors that led into the deeper annals of the hospital. Snowdrop was left alone to deal with the mare, who seemed rather flustered by the speed at which events progressed.
"Hey, why don't we sit down?" Snowdrop guided the mare over to a row of uncomfortable plastic seats. The mare settled into one of them, staring down at the floor with wide eyes that were still searching for answers. "Do you need something to drink?" The mare nodded. Snowdrop grabbed her a cup of lukewarm water from the cooler in the corner of the waiting room. As she was over there, she took a deep breath, steadying herself to ask some uncomfortable questions. The mare gratefully accepted the water from her and gulped it down like a pony who had spent months roaming the desert. "Now, Miss...."
"Rosewood."
"Rosewood. I'm just going to have to ask you a few questions." She levitated over a pen and clipboard. "Is that okay?"
"Yeah, of course," Rosewood ran a hoof through her brownish-red locks. "I'm not sure how much help I can be though. I don't know who she is."
That caught Snowdrop's attention. "She's not yours?" Now that she thought about it, it was unlikely that a crystal unicorn mare with a magenta coat would be the mother of a gray-coated thestral, though perhaps the filly took after her father.
"No, I-I found her," Rosewood looked like she was about to vomit. "She was... I heard groaning in an alleyway when I was coming home from work, a-and I found her just laying there. I-I thought she was going to die when I was running over here." Her eyes spoke of a deep, primal fear. "Is she going to be okay?"
Snowdrop kept a professional face, but inside, she was wincing. It was always awkward when you were asked if a recently admitted patient would be alright. Speaking realistically, the situation could go anywhere at this point. The filly could make a full recovery; alternatively, she could die within the next hour. But ponies didn't like realistic, especially when it came to matters of life or death, and so it was usually a safer bet to be vague. "She's getting the help that she needs."
Rosewood took a few deep breaths in through her nose before nodding. "Yeah. I guess we just have to see what happens."
"Mmhmm," Snowdrop hummed. "Now, I need to ask a few more questions, if that's alright."
Snowdrop gathered as much information as she could from Rosewood, all the while trying to ignore the question that pecked at her brain like an annoying little bird. But it was hard to ignore one major detail: thestrals did not typically live in the Crystal Empire due to the light reflecting off the crystals bothering their sensitive eyes; in fact, Snowdrop had never seen a thestral in the Crystal Empire except for the Night Guard when Princess Luna visited.
So why was there a nearly dead thestral in the other room who displayed all the signs of being drugged?
The last thing someone expects to see after swallowing a bottle of pills and a bar's worth of alcohol is... well, anything. I mean, you expect to see nothing. Zilch. Nada. You should be dead, on to the next life, drifting through the void, whatever happens when you pass, not waking up to the sight of ceiling tiles with little clouds and cartoony birds painted on them.
I groaned and shut my eyes against the stinging bright lights of the room. 'I can't even fucking kill myself right... '
Taking deep, shaky breaths through my nose, I tried to calm my racing thoughts before I gave myself a headache. Too late; there was already a pulsing ache in my head like someone was steadily hammering a nail into my skull. The massive influx of chemicals and vodka had my brain sluggish, but that didn't stop it from berating me like a strict parent. Poisonous barbs flickered around my head like an aggressive horde of gnats.
Can't do anything right All you had to do was swallow the pills... Idiot Failure Loser
'Stop it! ' My ears flicked as a harsh beep rang from the left of me, getting faster and faster in tandem with my breathing. It was all becoming too much, the feeling of my failure weighing upon me like a lead weight and creating a vicious mixture with the roiling sea of emotion that had been bubbling within me for years, burning through whatever fragile peace I had upon waking up like acid through flesh. It didn't help that whatever blanket I was wrapped in was extremely uncomfortable, making my entire body itch like a colony of ants was crawling across my skin. It felt like I was covered in hair!
A strange set of footfalls echoed nearby, moving closer to me. They were odd, sounding almost like high heels clicking against linoleum, but a bit more... full. Lacking the mental energy to figure out this conundrum and the social battery to interact with anyone, I went with the age-old trick of pretending to be asleep, keeping my eyes closed.
I stayed silent as I heard those strange footsteps move closer to me. The nurse - I assumed they were a nurse, because I was most certainly in a hospital - muttered to themselves as they checked over me and the medical equipment. There was a scratching sound, probably a pen on paper, and more quiet muttering about heart rates and IV drips and other medical jargon that I was doing my best to appear like I wasn't listening to. The nurse suddenly started chuckling.
"I know you're awake, silly filly."
Silly filly? What kind of -
I opened my eyes and got ready to ask the nurse how much ketamine she had to be on to come up with that strange term of endearment. That was something someone could only come up with deep within the abyss of a legendary k-hole.
"What the fuck!" I launched myself into the air and tumbled from the bed as I tried my hardest to put distance between myself and the absolute monstrosity in front of me. My escape was short-sighted, to say the least; see, when you're wrapped in one of those hospital blankets and hooked up to a bunch of machines, it's sort of hard to make a quick exit. Which is to say that I landed on the floor with an uncomfortably loud smacking sound and the pain of having an IV ripped from my body.
"Oh my Celestia!" The creature rushed to help me, but despite the pain shooting through my head I hissed at them like some kind of cat. It shuffled back, flinching fearfully as I shot it an intense glare.
How could I even describe the terror I felt in that moment? The creature had the vague look of a horse, though its features were softer and almost... human. Its coat was a pure, almost unnatural white, no dirt or grime as one would expect from an animal, and its mane was a light blue that had to be dyed because no animal could have fur that color naturally, right? But the most shocking features were the long, spiral horn planted in the middle of its forehead - because, what the hell, unicorns were a fucking myth - and the MASSIVE fucking eyes that dominated its face. I kid you not when I say that those bright blue eyes made up 70% of its head.
Scratch that. Now that I was properly oriented on the floor, I realized that the most shocking things about this creature was that it was considerably taller than me.
"What the fuck are you!" I screeched. Hardly any thought was given to the sound of my voice, which was far higher than it should have been; in my panic, I chalked it up to some sort of medical complication. I was far more focused on the abomination in front of me, who was gazing down at me with worry - likely a trap to lure me into a false sense of safety. Try as I might to create more distance between us, my limbs weren't cooperating, feeling stiff and heavy like lead. My left leg wasn't responding at all.
The creature seemed confused by my question, putting a tentative hoof to its chest. It spoke in a tone like it was communicating with a small, particularly dumb child. "What am I? I'm a unicorn."
Okay, that was kind of an obvious answer. Still, I wasn't quite ready to concede to clear empirical evidence. "What the fuck are you talking about! Unicorns aren't real!"
"You have quite the mouth for a little filly," the creature said in a tone not dissimilar to that of a parent admonishing their child. That tone annoyed me even more; who did this creature think it was talking to me like that? It crouched down, some vain attempt to appear more non-threatening, I guess. "I know this must be very scary for you, but I'm here to help."
"Stay away from me!" I lashed out as it crept closer to me. "And why do you keep calling me a 'filly'? Isn't that like a young horse or something?"
The creature blinked a few times. "A young pony, yes. And I'm calling you that because that's what you are."
"What?" I brought my hands to my face... and was shocked when I saw that the responding appendages were two gray hooves. I waved them around wildly, confirming that they were, in fact, my hands... well, not anymore, I guess. Flexing my fingers caused the ends to curl a bit, though there was very little range of motion. Still, it proved that they were mine.
This.
Made.
No.
Sense.
Smack!
I found myself once again reunited with my old friend, oblivion. It was far more comforting than having to puzzle through whatever the fuck was going on; the bruise could be dealt with later. If there was a later.
