Dead Hearts
Wise ponies once said that a dream is the playground of the mind. Those ponies are right. A dream isn’t bound to the rules of reality; anything can happen in a dream. If one wants to eat a pie while trying to keep his balance on the back of a running bear, then he can do that. In a dream you are king or queen. But once in a while that dream would turn into a nightmare. A wild dream and in there you have no control about transpiring events. Those events would often show your greatest fears. Terror would be the main topic in those dreams. If one has a big fear of spiders, then he can expect a giant tarantula the next time he enters a nightmare.
Twilight also has this problem. Just like everypony else she also has nightmares, but they became more frequent now that she was 71 years old. Maybe it was because she ate chocolate before sleeping. Her parents - who rest in peace - always told her that eating chocolate before sleeping was a good way to create nightmares, but she didn’t listen and thus she had to face the consequences.
*****
Twilight fell out of bed and landed face first on the ground. What made her fall out of bed was, of course, a nightmare. It had been the 3rd one this week and she was really starting to worry about that. The nightmare she had experienced this night was the worst one. She was walking in a field when suddenly everything became black and she was all alone; nobody was with her. It was terrifying, being all alone was terrifying. It had a piece of truth in it, most of her dreams were based on real things that happened to her. This one was about more recent events. The older she got, the less the time she spent with her friends and that was bothering her, but at the same time scaring her. They were supposed to be friends for life, but time wanted it otherwise. They just drifted apart, each one went their own way and they barely communicated now.
Applejack was taking care of her grandchildren, just like Granny Smith did when she was still alive. Rainbow Dash finally got accepted into the Wonderbolts and after her retirement she became their coach. Fluttershy had set up a veterinary to take care of all the wounded critters. Pinkie became the head chef of Canterlot Palace, so she had to move out of Ponyville. It was a rather hurtful process, but it was a necessary one to ensure that Pinkie had a bright future ahead of her. Rarity had pursued her dream and she became the most popular fashionista in Equestria. Everypony had fame, glory or did something good for society, but Twilight just decided to keep being a librarian and the faithful student of Princess Celestia. She didn’t need all the recognition, books were enough for her.
She grumbled, silently cursing her bed for not being big enough, and got up as fast as she could, but she was barely any faster than Tank. Oh yes, he still lived and he would probably outlive Rainbow Dash. A new home had to be found for the little fella soon or otherwise he would be on his own, like Twilight right now.
She took a glance at the clock and saw that the hour was 7AM. She sighed and made her way towards the bedroom door; it was time to start her day.
*****
Twilight was currently reshelving the books in her library; she loved the smell of paper in the morning. Her library didn’t change once in the 53 years she had lived there. The main part was still filled with books on their respective shelves, some being covered in dust from not being read as much as they used to, and her checkout desk still stood near the door, so that nopony could leave without legally checking out a book. A book had been stolen once, but that’s a story for another time.
Reshelving had always been one of her favorite activities when not studying and now she had to do it alone, because her number one assistant had left. Years ago, too many to count, Spike had left the library, but not because he became too big as one might expect. No, he had met his soulmate. She was a pink dragon with purple spikes and she was in Ponyville to witness the Summer Sun Celebration. Her name was Amethyst and she really lived up to her name. The sunshine would reflect off her scales and she would look like a walking gemstone. Maybe that was the reason why Spike had fallen for her. Still, it didn’t matter. He was gone and that was that. She knew that keeping Spike with her wasn’t a possibility, because after a few years he would have been too big for the library. It was better to let him leave sooner than later. He still visited once in a while, but that wasn’t the same as living with her little brother.
She sniffed and wiped some tears away. It had been years ago, but it still hurt like it was just yesterday that he had left. She knew that she had done the right thing. Spike was happy now. He had a girlfriend, freedom and he was living with the other dragons. He was alright, but the same couldn’t be said for her. She had lost her friends, she was an emotional wreck and her body hurt like hell.
She shook her head and dismissed those thoughts. Everything would be alright, at her age worrying was bad for the mind. She continued reshelving, but that nagging feeling kept lingering in her mind. It was her studious nature that wanted her to read books about what might be the cause of her sudden emotional rollercoaster and the nightmares she experienced almost every night.
She began to doubt. One part of her wanted to search for the possible cause of her not feeling so well, but her other part didn’t want to search for it. She was scared of what she would find; she was scared of the unknown.
After 5 minutes of debating with herself she finally decided. She was going to search for the cause, she just had to know what was happening to her. She placed the last of the books on the shelves in the fiction section and slowly walked to the medical section. During her walk she admired her collection of books she had gathered in a lifetime. She had books about the cooking skills of the Griffon Kingdom, books about gems in the Crystal Empire and even books about supernatural beings like the Human. Her collection couldn’t compete with the collection of the Canterlot Royal Library, but she certainly had the record of ‘Most books in a common library’. She smiled at her lifework and continued her walk to the medical section of her library.
The medical section was placed in a spare room next to the kitchen. Ponies didn’t really use the medical books. They immediately went to the library, so Twilight placed all the medical books in a room with other books nopony wanted to read.
She opened the door and was instantly greeted by a musty smell coming from the old books. The cause of this smell was probably the bad maintenance of the room and the damp wood after a rainy day. Maybe she should have isolated her tree better, then this wouldn’t have happened. She shrugged and stepped inside the room. At her age isolating a house was Sisyphean labor. It was impossible for her to isolate a house completely on her own.
She looked around, it had been a whole 6 months since she last opened this door. Some books were lying nonchantly on the floor. Probably she had forgotten them after one of her many study sessions which she couldn’t remember anymore. Most of the books were still on their shelves, but covered with a thick layer of dust. That was something she actually didn’t like. She didn’t like seeing books covered with dust. To her all books were important, but due to her age she just couldn’t read them all like she used to do when she was younger.
In the whole room stood 6 bookcases and she searched every one of them for a book that could describe her possible illness. Twice she stopped at a book that had captured her interest, but it had nothing to do with the subject she was looking for, so she had to leave them in the room and read them on a later date. By the end of her search she had found 3 books and all of them had a rather general view of disease and sickness. She had picked these 3 books because she first had to know what was happening to her and later she could examine more books for details.
The first book was called: ‘Ribs, heart and lungs: everything you need to know about your body.’. It was written by Doctor Syringe from the Medical University of Canterlot or the MUC for short. She had been a couple of times to the MUC for some research projects, but she never aspired to be a doctor. The book the doctor had written was actually just an introduction to the things she was trying to find. She first needed to know the basics about her body before the real examination could begin.
The second book was from a pony she knew and that pony was Nurse Redheart. She had passed away a few years ago, but Twilight kept her alive with this book. Sadly, the book wasn’t so popular and thus she had to place it in the musty room, but now she was going to read it. This book was titled: ‘The insides of a pony.’. This book was all about organs and intestines. She chose this book, because maybe one of her organs was acting weird and that could have been the cause of her illness.
The third book was very different from the first two books. This one was written by Clouded Mind and it was titled: ‘The depths of the mind.’. This book was going to explain about mental illnesses and how it could affect your body. Twilight wasn’t really convinced that the book could help her, since she felt fine inside her head, but she just had to be sure. With all the books held in the grasp of her magic aura she walked out of the door and closed it behind her, leaving the books alone again in the musty room.
*****
The pages of the first book turned as fast and powerful as a stormy wind on a late autumn evening. They sometimes stopped on a chapter for a second or two, but were turned again soon after. Twilight was that reason that the pages turned so fast. All the 21 chapters in the book just didn’t answer her question: why was she feeling so miserable? That was the reason why she went into the foul smelling room. She needed an answer to that question, but it seemed that this book wasn’t going to give her that.
She threw the book against her bedroom wall and buried her head in her hooves. She had read the book for an hour and she learned much about a pony’s body, but it also gave her a headache. She used to devour knowledge like it was chocolate, but her old brain just couldn’t handle it anymore. It didn’t have the power to memorize everything and as a reaction her brain began to punish her for learning too much at her age. The memories of her studying until fainting stopped being reality.
She let herself fall backwards and her head landed on her soft purple pillow made of goose feathers. She just stared at the ceiling above her. Never blinking, never closing her eyes and never breathing. Sometimes stopping with breathing relaxed her, but she didn’t know why. Maybe she liked the thought that breathing was the only thing that actually kept her and the other beings on the planet alive or maybe stopping with breathing created a special substance in her brain that had a calming effect. She didn’t know how it calmed her, but it did and that was all that mattered.
After being on the verge of suffocation she breathed again and, not surprising to her, it had calmed her mind. She took the next book that was resting on her bedside table and opened it. It was the one of Nurse Redheart. She hoped that Redheart could give her the answer, but she didn’t have complete faith in it.
And so another hour of reading passed and once again there was no result. The book was not so hurtful for her brain as the first one, but it also didn’t give her the answer she was searching for. According to the book all her organs were functioning normally, so her body wasn’t ill, but maybe her mind was. With a lot of care she placed Redheart’s book again on the bedside table. She didn’t really care about the first book, but this one was holy to her. This book was a friend’s book.
The next book was the one about the mental illnesses. She took it off her bedside table and began reading. The book was about syndromes related to dreams, traumatizing events or genetic syndromes, but nothing really applied to her. She had some symptoms which indicated that she had a depression, but she didn’t have all the symptoms, so she was a bit skeptic about the possibility of having a depression. She didn’t feel really sad and gloomy, but she also wasn’t happy and content; she was just feeling very weird.
She got out of bed and walked to her bedroom door. She had spent enough time on searching for a possible cause and she could still search tomorrow. The library had priority now, some books still needed to be reshelved.
*****
She was sitting on her balcony, overlooking Ponyville and how its inhabitants adapted to nightfall. Twilight always enjoyed to rest on her balcony at night. It was cool, but not freezing cool and she loved the little breezes of the night. They would reorganize her mane a bit, but she wasn’t Rarity, thus she didn’t really care about that. The older she got, the more time she spent on her balcony. She adored looking at things and most of the time those things would bring back memories.
Currently Sugarcube Corner was in her line of sight and memories started flooding in. Memories of the birthday parties Pinkie always organized for friend and foe. The memory of how the Twin Cakes took over Sugarcube Corner after their parents passed away and of course the memory of the last party for Pinkie before she traveled to Canterlot. Both good and bad memories were connected to that place.
Ponyville Park was located a bit behind Sugarcube Corner and that place was connected to the memory of the pets of her friends and herself. Her mind wandered to Owlowiscious and how he died many years ago, probably 40 years ago. It didn’t tear her heart out like the situation with Spike, but she still felt downcast for a couple of weeks. Her little helper always aided her in reorganizing the library and she always gave him a mouse as a treat, but she couldn’t do that anymore.
She looked back at her whole life and she was satisfied that she had lived her life like that. She was Celestia’s student, saved the world a couple of times and she had a library full with books, but there was still one thing that bothered her and that was that her pet, friends and family either died or went their own ways. She knew she couldn’t stop them from dying, but she wanted to spend more time with them. She had been so alone the past few years and it would make a normal pony crazy for not coming into contact with another pony for years, but luckily for Twilight some ponies still came to the library to check out books. Still, they weren’t her friends or family and she really missed them.
A determined gaze formed on Twilight’s face. Gone were the melancholic thoughts; she had a plan. Tomorrow she was going to contact her friends to get back in touch. She knew that they were going to accept her proposal. They would tell each other stories about their lives and they would celebrate their reunion in Sugarcube Corner with pies, cupcakes and other delicious treats. She was also going to invite Spike; it would be good to see him again.
With newfound hope she went back inside her bedroom and got into bed. She slowly closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. That night she dreamed of everyone she held dear. Her mind told her that tomorrow would be a good day.
She didn’t wake up in the morning.
*****
Rain fell from the sky with the help of gravity. One raindrop came loose from a cloud and fell down until it landed on a cyan snout and there it mixed itself with the tears which were falling down the snout.
Five ponies, one dragon and two princesses surrounded a coffin and in that coffin lay Twilight who was sleeping peacefully for eternity. Her death was a shock for everypony, even for the princesses. Nopony who had attended the funeral could keep their tears under control. The whole population of Ponyville and even some former foes like Trixie said their goodbyes at the funeral. Twilight really was an element of harmony and she would be remembered like the star she was.
Her five friends and her little brother all blamed themselves for not spending more time with Twilight. If they knew that Twilight was dying then they would have spent more time with her, but they didn’t know and now they were too late; she was already gone. They really wished things would have gone differently, but nopony is capable of pulling at the hooves of time, not even the princesses.
One thought occupied their minds: In the end we die alone.
A/N: There you have it, my first story without dialogue. This was really hard for me to write (exams and stuff), but I’m really glad I tried this way of writing a story. It’s not sad, is it? It might have a sad undertone, but I didn’t want to make this story cryable sad and I think a did a good job at it. This story is also about something you have to think about, namely our elderly. At the end of their lives we put them into a nursing home just to get rid of them and this is the truth. They die without friends and without family .The same happened to Twilight and the same will happen to us. Just remember: In the end we die alone.
