...Hate
All I’ve known for so very, very long is hate.
Hatred of life, for letting me be born; hatred of this hellhole of a town, for existing in the first place; hatred of my so called ‘friends’, for taking the most precious thing in the world away from me. And, above all else, hatred of myself for failing to protect my sister.
My name is Mitta, I’m an Earth Pony mare from Sunnytown, otherwise known as ‘Hell’. We were settlers a long time ago; no, that’s not right. Settlers are hard working ponies who tame the land and work themselves to the bone to make sure that they leave behind something for others. We were lazy runaways who didn’t want to work; when we found an area of Everfree forest where edible foods grew naturally and clean water flowed freely, we just stopped running and set up shoddy ‘houses’ to live in. We called it ‘Sunnytown’ at the time because it was one of the few areas of the forest where you could see the sun overhead; even imagination wasn’t plentiful among us, I sometimes wonder why half of us made the effort to breathe when we were still alive.
But yeah, we didn’t struggle and barely worked. When we found gems, they were treated at simple gifts without any intrinsic value; we didn’t get much in the way of visitors either, mostly little fillies or colts that had wandered away from caravans travelling through the forest, or other runaways from the- then budding- town of Ponyville. Most of them wanted to stay after that, finding our way of life much to their liking: All play and no work. How stupid one can be when they aren’t forced to think; and how easily spooked they are by something new.
When that mark appeared on my beloved sister’s flank; the town went riot. We had no way of knowing, all of us had been away ponies for so long that we had forgotten what a Cutie Mark was; we were scared. They feared demons, sickness, everything under the sun and moon was blamed at one time or another; and Ruby never could answer their questions to their liking. Eventually, they snapped; herding her toward our home away from the town and then setting the whole place ablaze... and I let them. We all thought it was for the best, that we were saving ourselves from something that would kill us all.
But Everfree has its own magic; wild magic beyond the knowledge of any unicorn that ever lived. In a way, Everfree is alive; and, at that moment in time, Everfree was angered.
The fire spread along the trees, moving with supernatural pace as Everfree turned it’s ire on us. The flames leaped right to our houses, leaving the trees all but untouched; the village was in flames in under twenty minutes and we couldn’t find a way out, no matter what we did. We died that day, along with our town; there were no survivors of Everfree’s wrath. But the next day, we were back; none of us understood, but then came the fall of night and we saw...
The monsters we had become caused yet more fear; trying to (meaninglessly) either kill each other or end our lives. None of it worked, of course, we can not die; but we could feel the pain from the attempts. Oh, how it hurt to keep existing with a broken neck, at least I managed to fix it after about half a century; and there was that one who still exists with a nail sticking through his throat, unable to remove it. We are truly monsters; Everfree made sure that we would never forget that; but, the worst part of it for me, everyone else acts like we were in the right. They talk endlessly about how it was the only way, some even going so far as to blame Ruby for our state.
I know that isn’t true; I’ve seen Ruby a few times. She’s still here, but not like us; she’s still pure, still whole and well (or as well as one can be when dead I suppose). But I’ve never approached her once; how could I, after what I’d allowed to happen. I’m not like the others, I know full well what I’ve become and what I was. It took Everfree’s punishment on me to realize how much of a monster I was; walking through life without any direction, taking without giving and not even trying to change what I was. I was a zombie long before this curse forced me to exist in this state; I don’t deserve forgiveness for what I’ve done, and no one else thinks they need to be forgiven.
They can all rot for the rest of time for all I care; I don’t give a damn about any of them, not even the ones I called my friends once. I’d let myself rot along with them, let myself be punished the same as them for what I’d done; but there’s one thing that’s stopping me.
That one little filly; she was here, she ran from here with my help and escaped this hell. Ruby helped her, I know that; I saw her again just for a second as that filly ran from the ones I couldn’t delay. It was close, so very close, but she made it back to that unicorn she was with just in time; Celestia bless Ruby, she’s always been good at finding ways to do things that no one else could. But that simple act of kindness may have doomed that sweet child. She escaped; for the first time since our curse, someone managed to leave Sunnytown. That might lead others to try, might lead to us spreading our curse beyond Everfree...
I can’t let that happen; I’ve done too many horrible things as is
I don’t care if it kills me, I don’t care if Everfree lashes out and tries to destroy me for this, I don’t care if Celestia herself tries to smite me down; I deserve it all. But someone has to make sure that nopony else can be touched by this curse; and to make sure they don’t hurt anyone else like they hurt Ruby.
I have done so many things wrong in my life... let me do just this one thing right.
Mitta closed the book with a sigh, still finding breathing a hard habit to break even after centuries of not needing to. This was her safe deposit in a way; if she managed to make it out of Everfree, she would keep it as a journal to have a way of getting things off her chest. If she died as soon as she left Everfree, then at least somepony had a chance of finding this thing and spreading the information about Sunnytown so that none would ever fall to it’s curse ever again.
She wasn’t even sure which outcome she was hoping for anymore.
The Earth Pony glanced out in the noonday streets; it appeared as though she wasn’t the only one finding old habits hard to break. Most of the town was in the middle of an afternoon nap, something that- again- wasn’t required but most did anyway; and for once the mare was grateful for this place’s laziness. With no one around to see her, she could slip away without drawing any more attention to a potentially dangerous situation than already had been.
Placing the journal and the pencil she had used to write with into an old, worn saddlebag (all that was left from another unfortunate wanderer), Mitta quietly slipped out of the house. This was it, now or never.
The deserted streets offered no impediments to her escape; even though she constantly expected either one of the other townsponies to show up, or for the curse to somehow stop her from what she was doing. But neither ever happened and she was at the edge of town before she realized it. This was literally the furthest she’d ever gone in longer than she could remember; but there was no nostalgia or homesickness stopping her. She galloped right passed the edge of town and kept right on going once she hit the forest proper; she was mildly grateful that the illusion held in the shade of the trees, but she supposed that was to be expected since she could still see some sunlight filtering through. She had to keep running though; if she was to reach the edge of Everfree before anypony in Sunnytown noticed she was missing, she had precious little time.
Unseen by the fleeing Mitta, a pair of glowing yellow eyes looked on in contentment. “Maybe Apple Bloom will finally help you forgive yourself, Sister; I’m waiting for you.”