8th Hour - Study hall

Cheers erupt in the hallway and die down as the final bell of the day tolls and an irate instructor shouts for the verbal celebration to be quelled. I limp towards the library, babying the worse of my bad legs as I go, and ignore the catcalls of “Gimp!” and “Cripple!”. With a burst of unleashed anger I barge into the wide, open room. Awaiting the resounding thud of the slammed door I’m disappointed when the pneumatics slide the door quietly shut.

I pass teachers, push aside students, and twist and turn through the many sweatshop grade bookshelves until I come to my seat… only to find it occupied, and by a pony no less.

“Oh,” the pale yellow Pegasus stutters as I near, “Am I in your seat? Oh dear, I’m so sorry, I’ll just move so you can have your seat back.” She rises, not with her wings but with her hooves solely, and scoots away from me. “I’m so, so very sorry!” she meeps and buries her face into her pink hair.

“No worries.” I murmur softly as I settle into my seat and swipe another chair from the adjacent table despite angry rebukes from its former occupant. “Would you like to sit with me?” I smile gently at this soft-spoken filly and pat the seat as an infuriated sophomore behind me bellows and leaves in a huff.

“Uh,” she shivers and looks up at me with a terrified expression, “Oh… Ok, you won’t hurt me will you?” she asks as she flutters up on to the seat next to me.

“I’d do no such thing.” I assure her with a kind smile.

“Well… OK then,” she looks up and her tender teal eyes melt my heart a tad. “I’m, I’m Fluttershy by the way.”

“What’s that?” I ask and tap my ear, “I’m a bit deaf.”

“Fluttershy.” She repeats and I stare at her blankly.

“Flower eye?” I guess.

“Fluttershy.”

“Fighter guy?”

“Fluttershy!”

“Finger thigh?”

“Fluttershy!” She shouts causing a dozen or so “Sshh’s” to ring out from the other library patrons. “Sorry.” She reverts to her whispery tone.

“So how are you enjoying your stay on Earth Fluttershy?” I ask to take her mind off the whole name fiasco.

“Well,” she pauses to take a deep breath, “it’s kind of scary, not you I mean, not that your world is scary, just that, just that…” she hides behind her hair and squeaks; “It’s terrifying!”

I laugh quietly and pat her on the head. “I can’t argue with you there Fluttershy, this world is the most horrendous place I know of.”

“What?” she gasps. “Then whyever do you stay here?”

“I haven’t much choice on the matter, I can’t leave this world and everywhere’s the same, more or less, so I stay here and ride it out, hope for better days, and…”

“And what?” she asks sweetly.

“And dream of a better place…” I add solemnly.

“So if you dream of leaving,” she scoots closer and nudges my arm, “why don’t you try to go somewhere better?”

“It’s not that simple,” I explain to her, or at least try to, as she edges closer and closer to me. “I’d love to leave, I really would. But I can’t, it’s just not possible for me to escape reality and ascend somewhere grander and greater than here and now.”

“How do you know that?” she snuggles up against my side and scrutinizes my frown. “How can you know something if you’ve never tried? How can it be impossible if you’ve never even attempted to make it possible?”

“I…” my voice falters and I look at Fluttershy soberly. “I don’t know.” My hands quiver with a mixture of fear and excitement at the idea of actually trying to leave. “Could I go somewhere else?” I ask her.

“I did, and so did the princesses and Twilight and Rainbow and Applejack. If they went somewhere why couldn’t you do the same?”

“They had magic to help them,” I remind Fluttershy, “Besides, they didn’t go to a better place, you said it yourself; this world is terrifying.”

“Well…” Fluttershy mumbles.

We sit there for a few silent moments, neither looking at each other nor away at anything else, just lost in a world of thought until she breaks the hush and offers an idea.

“Maybe twilight could send you somewhere…” she suggests.

“Hmm,” I sigh, “I’m not a huge fan of her work but maybe, just maybe that would do the trick…”

“So what is this world like?” Fluttershy suddenly asks. “All I’ve seen of it has been this school, which is scary enough, but you speak of it as though-”

“As though the thought of existing even another moment here brings tears to my eyes and pains me?” I finish for her. “That’s because it does. This would is kind to few, just to some, and bearable to most. To me… it’s just suffering to me.” I shift my sore legs and Fluttershy winces at the resulting crackles of grating bones.

“Is… is that why?” she asks innocently and nods at my lower limbs.

“No,” I stroke her hair absent mindedly and stretch my legs out under the table. “Physical pain bothers me little, it’s the… the emotional, the mental agony that tortures me.”I sniffle and wipe away a stray tear before it can even be seen. “This world is good to some, but not to me, never to me. I’ve never had it easy, I’ve never gotten it right, all I’ve ever done was survive one day and hope and pray that the next would be better. So far no one’s heard those prayers, or if they have they’ve failed miserably to answer them.”

“Oh my…” Fluttershy cries at a loss for further words.

“It’s ok though,” I wrap an arm around Fluttershy and hug her for a moment, “I can handle it, I’m used to it by now.” I smile, with genuine pleasure for once, at the yellow and pink pony in my arms as the environment around me shimmers and glitches. I close my eyes and hear her speak.

“It gets better,” her voice falters and fades, “Surely it will.”

And I open my eyes and she’s gone, the cheap, dusty bookshelves full of cheap, boring paperbacks have returned, and in my grasp is a small pin in the shape of a butterfly.

“A butterfly flaps its wings.” I mutter, just now realizing what her sign was.

“And there’s a snowstorm in Chicago… or is it Milwaukee?” I look up to find who replied but no one’s there.

So I just look at the pin and smile softly to myself as only a madman would. “It gets better… oh how I hope you’re right.”

But when will it get better? I can’t wait too much longer, I fear that neither I nor this world I’m in can hold it together until it does get better. So here’s hoping for sooner rather than later.