Sccrttcch.
Srrrcchkkkhh.
Skretttccchhh.
The bloodcurdling, cringeworthy noise is hard on my ears and even harder on my throbbing head.
Scraaatttttccccchhhhhh.
It takes me quite some time to realize I am the source of the grating noise. Heeding the morals of the old saying about complaining of a headache while pounding yourself in the head with a hammer, I snap out of my subconscious for just long enough to stop... whatever it was that I was doing. I am unsure of what, exactly, was causing the noise, until my sight returns to me. Of course, it was just me with my file. Why would it be anything or anypony else?
I am the only pony I have known since yesterday. Perhaps I did not know anyone the day before that, or the day before that either, but I cannot think back that far. Every day is as fresh and dull as the last one. They begin with my awakening, then my pondering of the same old questions. The three ‘W’s.
Where am I? Why am I here? And who am I? I can never make progress on these thoughts. If any progress were to be hypothetically made, it would be lost in a few days' time. I forget everything that is unimportant, and everything I do is unimportant.
I am in a grubby, light-gray cell, adorned with walls that are very tall, with no windows, and are plain aside from the occasional tuft of moss or a small crevice in the brickwork. I don’t remember how to measure things, but the ceiling is high enough above me for it to seem much smaller than it really is. There is no door, and there is no light source of any kind besides miniscule luminescent slits beaming out from the few cracks in the walls. I believe this to be the same room I was in yesterday, and knowing that is a tiny pleasure in the nothingness that my life has become.
The only thing that ‘stands out’ in the entirety of the room is in the form of a rectangular photo attached to a nearby wall. This photo is the one thing I refuse to forget. I make a point of studying it every day, if only to assure that it doesn’t slip away from my memory and into the fuddled mess that is my subconscious.
The photo is of six ponies, but the colors are washed out and most of the facial features have been scratched into nothingness. If there is anything that I remember, it is that I was a part of this group of six, and I had a positive relationship with all of them.
I rise to my hooves with a certain weariness that, if I could remember that far back, may or may not have seemed familiar. The bricks are cold, hard, and unforgiving on me as I make vague attempts to stumble towards the one object of interest. It seems I have also forgotten how to walk, resulting in multiple face plants and perhaps a broken jawbone. Of course, if I knew what one felt like. It seemed more or less in the dark to me.
After an indeterminate amount of time spent introducing my facial features to the faded red brickwork below me, I'm met with partial success - it appears that my legs have regained some sort of memory (muscle memory, if you will), and I can now stand. It's a victory in itself, sort of the small sense of laughter at a world that seems to have taken everything away from me. Sure, I have no vestiges of memory or motor skills, but I can stand.
Take that, world.
Miniscule victory as it is, it's still something that I can give myself. I'll likely have forgotten it by the morrow, but for now, the revelry is sweet indeed.
Revelry.
...revelry.
Where have I heard that word before? Or, perhaps not heard...but associated. It feels all too much like this word held relation to something so long ago, as though I've aged 200 years and forgotten the common language, but yet kept an untranslatable puzzle piece with me throughout the time, as if I could one day understand it.
I vaguely wish that I could understand anything besides the cube I seem to be trapped inside.
I manage to move past both the unsolvable word, and the victory of learning how to stand – I suspect – again. It takes me another few tries, but yet, with an unsteadiness borne of what I assume a newborn would experience, I make my way to the other end of my tiny...'cell', as I've decided to deem it. While it lacks a door, it seems to be the appropriate term.
As I draw closer to the picture, something instinctively slows my gait, and I end up stopping from a much further distance than I intended to, but I quickly realize that closer positioning is largely unnecessary. Every single detail is more than visible from my fairly large distance, and though the details to observe are rather...few in number, my eyes dart back and forth regardless, drinking in everything that they could. It seems that perhaps my body seeks to remember something that my brain can't.
As I'd managed to observe from the other end of my lightly red-dusted cell, the photo was all but devoid of color - even the tiniest little blades of...what I can only assume are grass...were given no grace when it came to saturation. It was indeed true that there was color in great abundance in two spots, and two spots only - coincidentally, they fell upon two ponies.
It seemed to be a rather alien sight, at least to my own eyes. Here I was, in a washed-out, color-free prison...but yet these strips of yellow, pink, and even lavender stand out so strongly, that I'd think that some higher power were taunting me, waving an apparent world that seemed to exist right out of my reach right in my face.
I felt the anger – for whatever reason it was present – well up in me quickly, rising quickly from my hooves and up to my brain, obscuring nearly everything I'd already accomplished - the standing, the walking, the teasing memory I almost uncovered.
The last thing I thought I remembered was a loud, clattering sound, before the world went dark.
I awoke what I assumed was some time later, approximately twice as pained as I had woken up earlier. I noted, with a small sense of bravado, that I'd managed to remember how much pain I had apparently been in...
...I'd no idea of how long ago, though.
My gaze drifted to the side as much as it could, and the lonely sight of two, split, jagged wooden strips were the foremost things in my vision. I assumed that perhaps I'd had something to do with it, but I couldn't be sure. I couldn't remember anything. Not my name, not where I was...
...all I could gather was that I was in a cell of some sorts, with two broken pieces of wood right in front of me.
It took me awhile to gather the motivation to want to even attempt to haul myself up, but I did so regardless – my reasoning being that laying on the brick floor, as it were, was a blind pain that I didn't want to suffer. I may have had no name, but –
Name.
Name.
Something drove me to suddenly drop to the ground and clutch my head in my hooves. It wasn't a second too soon - what followed was perhaps a pain ten thousand times more hurting than the bricks had been. It was a horrible, biting pain, that brought about hot pinpricks to my eyes, burning to my entire body, and a strange, unearthly shriek that filled the room.
I managed to piece together that the scream was me.
The pain kept its grip on me for a while more, and the instant it retreated, I fell limp on the ground, feeling twice more clearly the fierce burning in my chest, and the thin sheen of sweat that covered pretty much my entire body.
The pain, as it seemed, was my life now.
Revolted by the thought, I jerked my head to the opposite side, driven by an instinct that I didn't quite understand. My gaze fell quickly upon a single photograph. I didn't bring myself to recognize anything for a while, instead panting and trying to rid myself of the memory of the pain. Once I had learned it was likely never going to happen, I instead curled into a ball, and focused on the photo as clearly as I was able.
It was devoid of color, except in two places...
As soon as I registered the fact, my brain cut in once again with a metaphorical shriek of its own. It didn't hurt me, but rather it said harshly: turn the photo over!
Well. While it was rude about it, it had a point. I didn't want the color mocking me.
I was vaguely aware of a lavender hoof reaching out as I motioned for my own to extend, and I managed to gather that I was lavender coated as my now shaking hoof took hold of the photograph, and with a sudden, jerking motion, turned it directly over.
There was writing on the back.
It took me a few seconds to realize, but squinting through the endless expanse of space that seemed to separate me and the photo, it became clearer. And as I read, just the barest hint of a smile came to my face for a reason I didn’t know. Perhaps my subconscious knew something that my conscious didn’t, or maybe the thought that there was something I still seemed to understand existed. It made literally no sense when I pieced together the words, but... I suppose I held close the notion that perhaps later, they would mean something. But for the moment, the letter - as I soon found it was taped to the back, folded into a quarter size that held 4 more, equally sized papers also folded, and numbered - held my attention, to the point where I risked dragging myself painfully over to it, to risk unfolding it all the way and reading it in its entirety.
Maybe it was the only decision I’d yet made consciously that didn’t cause me pain. Maybe it was just the only one I would ever remember. But somehow, I put it deep inside myself that I had to memorize the letter, no matter how pointless it seemed to be. Because if I did, there was hope. There was hope that I could remember something, that I could have some idea of what life could be besides my own, seemingly pre-programmed thoughts. Maybe I’d find out some ‘day’ (as my vocabulary tells me) who I was. And just maybe, I’d be able to return to a life that was...normal, whatever the word meant. I knew that the life I led was not, but only from the faintest sense of intuition.
But one day...I could break free. I had to. For the sake of myself. For the sake of a sanity I wasn’t sure I had, yet still wanted to maintain. For the feeling of anything besides pain.
And, as the letter mentioned at the very end...
For freedom.
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
I’m not sure when you’ll receive this letter. I...I don’t think you ever will. My hopes aren’t really that high, not especially in these times. I don’t even know if anypony will even remember anything very well anymore, let alone you remember me, or if I’ll remember you. It’s...scary, but...I’m going to do this anyway. You might not believe anything you read here if you don’t remember - which is more than likely the case, given...current events. But just know that at one point, whether these things will everapply again, or even be comprehensible by any pony far and wide, that they were true, and that they were all truths that I’ll hold dear somewhere forever.
The first truth I’ll tell to you straight away, and without any hesitation as I write it: you were never alone, and you never will be.
I know what you’re thinking if you’re somehow reading this, and making any sense of it - “But I’m alone now!” I...you shouldn’t think that way, Twilight, even if you can’t help it - because you never did. All your life, you’ve been surrounded by friends who helped you through thick and thin, who shared your troubles and cared for you so deeply that...I can’t even write this without crying at the possibility that you’ll have forgotten them completely. But you were never alone, and...you always seemed to know it. I can still remember the time when you went completely crazy because you felt a need to solve a problem that they had, but that there wasn’t one, and you had to make one. It wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but it was one that showed a level of compassion and rightful intentions in it. You had the best friends ever, and I know as I’m writing this that they think you were the best friend they ever had as well. ...we all knew.
The second truth, I...I have a little trouble writing, because I’m...I’m not sure if it’ll ever be true again, but...you never gave up.
I can’t remember seeing you giving up. It was one of the best things about you, and partially why I managed to become a bit braver - it was because watching you be so...thoughtful and courageous that I thought that maybe I should try to be like that. And you always werethat way - you didn’t shy from a problem, but instead you sat down and thought it out. And let me tell you, you saved Equestria so many times because of that. Countless lifetimes, countless lives and civilizations...all saved because one pony threw her intelligence on the line to solve a seemingly unsolvable issue. Embodiment of Chaos? Not a problem, for you. A ruler who returned to seek a throne that was never hers, but instead jointly hers and her sister’s? Not a problem, for you. Even a supreme fear-mongering dictator who enslaved an empire by his lonesome? It was never a problem, and all of Equestria will be indebted to you forever because of that.
The third truth? It’s...probably the most true, if it’s possible to say, but the one that I feel is hardest to express through just simple words. If I were still around, it’d be all that much easier to just show you, but...you’ll hopefully understand later why that’s not possible. I hope this is one that can make you remember yourself, because as you once said yourself: ‘Memories are forever, but our recollection of them are not. Only special, irreplaceable ones can remind us of the others.’ I hope with all my heart that you realize what I’m speaking about, and that you can remember this truth above all the others.
I...again, I...I don’t think words do this justice. I don’t think they ever will, no matter how many words there are that can describe it. But I’ll try my best, and hopefully, both our hearts will piece it together themselves later on. Here...here goes.
Twilight, I...I love you.
I don’t even know if you remember what the word ‘love’ is, but you seemed to understand perfectly back then. And it’s the reason I say ‘love’, and not ‘loved’: some part of me believes that you still remember me, and...all the time we had together. Part of me just hopes so badly that you can still love what you can’t even remember, and that I can do the same. Because, I... I can’t even put it into words. It’s just complicated enough that all I can say is, ‘I love you’, and hope that the words mean something to you, and later to me.
I could try to describe my love for you. I could try to describe the endless picnics in the warm embrace of the late Spring sun, I could try to describe the endless feeling of warmth just being around you holds. I could try to describe how happy I feel when we’re together, how much pride and enjoyment I feel watching you discover something new, and how much happiness I feel when I get to spend the entire day cuddling with you on a snowy winter night. And I could even try to describe how beautiful your eyes are, how flowing your mane is, or just how wonderful your voice sounds to my ears.
But words would never do those things justice in the least. The memories would not be as warm, the feelings synthesized, and the entirety of it...hollow. I can only say ‘I love you’, and hope that we’ll meet again later. I know that we will, but...my only hopes are that you remember anything at all, which brings me to my final...well, it isn’t a truth, but it’s something that needs to be said. In fact, a lot of things. I’ll go ahead and say them, no matter how little sense they’ll mean to you in the future.
The Princess has devoted all of her, and her research team’s time, to finding a cure. Rainbow Dash refuses to read until you come back, and she’s also taken to a ‘no-flying boycott’ in protest of the town’s orders. Applejack hasn’t said anything on the matter, but I’m sure she’s just as hurt as any of us. Come to think of it, she won’t talk at all. Pinkie Pie...is...she’s no longer with us. No, she’s not...dead, but it could be worse than that. The Cake family don’t want to say much, and neither do the Pies - but all we’ve ever been able to gather is that the instant you left town, a family meeting to surprise her ended up with her running away and leaving a literal trail of tears behind. Rarity’s closed her boutique, and instead now spends her time with me, and often takes care of the animals more than me.
You may not care about - or even piece anything sensible together about - the things above, but...it’s horrible. Twilight, ever since that day when they declared you a potential danger and sent you away, it’s...been rough. It’s died down, especially considering it’s been a decade - but there are still extremists on both sides of the issue. Some say that a pony with situational amnesia is harmless, others say that the shock of total recall - considering your magical abilities which have always been so stalwart - could destroy the entire country with the recoil, and then some, and so it’s best for you to remain away, where you can’t ever remember.
I personally think that you can remember, and it won’t hurt anypony. In fact, if you remember, then nopony will ever be hurt. Things will be back to normal - the Elements of Harmony will be reunited again, all the girls will resume their normal lives and have you back with them again, and most importantly, Ponyville won’t be so hostile anymore. But if you have to remember for any reason, Twilight, remember because there are lots of ponies out there who love you, and want you back - including me.
They allowed me to send you a picture to keep with you while you wait in wherever they placed you. They thought that it wouldn't be much harm, so long as I made sure that there was no way to trigger recall through it. So I'm just putting this behind it, in hopes that they don't mind. It isn't like you'll look there, I...I just want to feel better. To feel like I'm actually talking to you.
Anyway, I chose this picture of us and the girls because I thought it would be most fitting to represent our time together, and that some part of you deep down would like it. So I faded the colors with a bit of help from Rarity, and I scratched out much of the details. Every little bit hurt, because...it felt like was hurting you each time. I've lain awake crying at night, at the thought that I threw away our friendship, as well as what we once had.
I...I feel like I've thrown away the one object that was of the most importance in my life. But yet...a single thought keeps me up: I have hope.
I imagine that even though all your meals are delivered in secret, this picture will always be there. And if you’ve found this, then I hope you’ve remembered something. I hope you’ve remembered for friendship’s sake. I hope that you’ve remembered for love’s sake, for our sake.
But I hope you’ve remembered for freedom’s sake. Because if you haven’t, that word will probably disappear forever.
Remember. For freedom.
With endless, hopeful love,
Fluttershy.
________
