//------------------------------// // Act One: Anger // Story: A Mind Confined // by vehlek //------------------------------// Riverjump stood over the river just outside of the rails of the bridge, poised to end her life in the rushing currents she must have been named after. It was not coincidence or convenience that this was the fastest river in town. She thought no one else was around, but there was one other pony. He was just there for a walk, not that she knew. When he saw her, he cried out the kind of sentiment that had kept echoing around her head for the past day, though in her head she had beaten it back already: “Don’t do it!” She had imagined hearing someone say that to her for a long time, and thought she’d be immune to its effect by now if she ever did hear it, but she raised her head. She looked over at the colt who said it, the case for her jump previously all clear in her head, but she found no way to explain it to someone who’d ask her not to. “Please, just climb back over for a minute. Come on, we can talk--tell me what’s going on, I’m listening.” Riverjump’s heart rate was already intense, but the colt said the right thing again. She was starting to cry. She said, “I have to. I have to, please. You don’t have to watch.” “No, it’s okay,” he said. “Even if you have to, don’t you have a minute just to talk about it first? Tell me what’s going on.” It wasn’t okay--she definitely had to. Riverjump averted her gaze from him, her eyes naturally falling back to the river. This thing, what she was about to do--it was better to do it now than later. And yet she started turning around, pulling her body back up over the rails. The colt, breathing heavily for a moment, smiled at her as she regained her footing on the bridge proper. She didn’t see most of his smile, as she stared at the ground for a long time before even glancing up at him, blushing so much more than she wanted to. “Come on,” he said, still smiling even as Riverjump stared at him. “There’s a nice snack shop near here--maybe you know it. I’ll treat you, if you want to just talk.” A Mind Confined Act One: Anger The two earth ponies sat in a corner booth. Riverjump had a milkshake in front of her, not one sip taken from it. The colt had one for himself as well, and it too lay untouched. “I’d be doing everypony a favor if I found a cliff to walk off of. I make a mess out of everypony I know,” Riverjump finally said. She hadn’t talked much at all, even as the colt had rambled all the way there whatever seemed to come to mind. He was a natural at it. “Now, I bet that isn’t true,” he said. “It is. I’ve ruined the lives of everypony I meet some way or another,” Riverjump said through gritted teeth. “Everypony?” he asked, leaning forward slightly at the emphasis. “You haven’t done anything to me. I bet I’m not the only one, too.” She blushed again and tucked her hooves closer to her chest, staring at the empty space beside her. “Maybe I’ll give it another chance,” Riverjump muttered. “It, I mean… going on.” The colt smiled again. “Please do. Everything we go through is just temporary, you know? I don’t think it’s worth ending anything over the hardships we’re going through right now.” Everything he said didn’t really mean anything to her; every idea he suggested, she had already realized was useless to her. Every single idea, useless. Just hearing them from him, though, sounded like a whole new perspective. She made eye contact with him at last, but broke it just a moment after. She mustered a smile that could be only creepy in her mind, even though she hoped it looked all right. She said, “If you want to, uh…” She realized how badly she was saying it as she spoke every word, and it made it that much harder for her to say the rest of it. Her smile faltered, but she couldn’t totally hold it back. “If you could come tomorrow--come back here, if you want to come again for something to eat, I mean, or somewhere else, I could come too. If you have the time to come back, just for a drink, not, like--just for a drink.” Her eyes kept darting away from his, despite her best efforts otherwise. That was still enough for her to see the expression drawing over his face as she finished her terrible ramble. He rubbed his neck and cocked his head, his grin shifting uncomfortably. “Well, I’m not sure I can actually make it back here tomorrow. I’ll probably be meeting my girlfriend for lunch then.” It wasn’t the last part that got Riverjump. The feeling of something within her chest shoveling its way even deeper into her took over all her efforts at being really nice, and her smile dropped. The colt pushed himself out from the booth. He patted Riverjump on the hoof and said to her, “Just don’t give up, all right? There’ll always be somepony out there who can lend you a shoulder, you know?” She kept her gaze square on the table. Most of her attention was set on holding back her useless crying instincts, but the meaner feelings she contained were riled anyway. Just as he withdrew his hoof from hers, Riverjump muttered, “I’m sorry.” He frowned at her like he was hoping that’d she say something else, but neither of them said anything more. He left. She stayed, hiding her face from anybody else within sight. Despite her clenched teeth, whimpers increasingly trembled through them, and crying escaped from her even as she still tried to hold it back. She hated that colt now, and for that she hated herself a little more. - Riverjump’s cutie mark was that of a black vortex. Whenever somebody asked her what it is, she lied and told them that it was a black hole--that she just loved space so much. It was really the darkness in her heart, or whatever new way to phrase it that she’d thought up in her terrible spare thoughts. The sun finally dipped below the horizon while she lay in bed, staring through her window as she waited for the night to come. She pulled her blanket off and set her hooves on the floor, staring outside a minute longer as it kept getting darker. She left her house and headed back toward the sweet shop. Riverjump had a feeling about what would happen tonight--not to say a suspicion, but an inherent knack of where she should go. She hoped that one ability she had going for her was just a sleuthing talent instead of what she knew it actually was. As she nearly arrived, she found a colt approaching the shop ahead of her. It was the same colt from earlier that day, and yet he was now an it, and all of its features were warped to the point of monstrosity. Its skin and fur melted upward off its body into the air around it; its hooves sunk right through the ground where it walked; its eyes glowed so bright that Riverjump couldn’t tell how deep they began; and its tail burned. It was nearly as tall as the whole shop, and it hadn’t seen Riverjump yet. She peered out at it from the safety of the shadows behind a house nearby. Her teeth were chattering despite the warm night, and her eyes were almost as wide as the monster’s. The monster skulked around the rear of the sweet shop, giving Riverjump her opportunity. She dashed around the other way toward the front entrance, her hooves now shaking as she nudged the door--which was locked. Despite the door definitely not opening, she gave it a harder shove; it rattled clear in the night, and she stiffened. Her head turned back to the corner of the store, only the sweat dripping past her eye offering her impetus to blink. She didn’t. Despite the noise, nothing came back around the corner. It took almost a minute before Riverjump regained the courage to move, but she glanced around the front of the store as soon as she dared: there were large windows at either side of the door, and blinds drawn over them on the inside. Riverjump rubbed her face and grimaced as she figured out what to do this time. Sleeping on the upper floor of the building were the store’s owners, an older couple who operated the business by themselves. A crash and tinkling echoed up to their room, and the wife awoke. Even though her back was in bad shape, the sound of a break-in got her into her slippers faster than she had moved in weeks. She put on her glasses and took a small candle with her to the bedroom door. She peered out into the hallway, which led only to the bathroom and stairwell. She tottered over to the latter. As soon as the elder reached the upper landing, Riverjump leaped up the last steps and toppled into her, knocking the candle out of her mouth. It was snuffed out before it even hit the floor. Riverjump shoved a hoof over the elder’s mouth and shushed her, but the elder pushed away Riverjump’s hoof and screamed, “Help! I’m being assaulted!” Riverjump kept her voice low while she tried to wrestle the elder’s mouth closed again. “No, please, I’m not here to hurt you! You’ve got to get out of here, and to be quiet!” The two of them were struggling in front of the one window in the hallway. While Riverjump implored the elder to be quiet, the light falling over the two ponies began vanishing, a large shadow taking its place. She looked up to the window, and saw the monster looking through to her. Its eye filled the whole window, its pupil expanding as it stared directly back at Riverjump. Her pleas to the other pony fell silent for a moment as tears welled back up in her eyes, compelling her not to look away. The monster tilted its head upward, a clean and perfect row of teeth in its beautiful smile now visible through the window. Riverjump pushed her hoof back over the elder’s mouth in the next moment and shoved her to the floor, pleading again, “You’re in danger, oh god, I’ve seen it happen before--it knows you’re in here, I don’t know what it’ll do--” The elder forced Riverjump’s hoof off again and screamed more. By that point, Riverjump heard the elder’s husband hobbling over creaky floorboards to the door as well. She looked up toward the cracked door, but she didn’t didn’t get a chance to see him come out before the wife hit Riverjump in the stomach. Riverjump’s head spun for a moment as she fell off the elder, losing just enough time for the husband to come over her with a cane. He clobbered her on the skull, and with each hit hollered, “No one--threatens--my--wife!” Riverjump was still crying, unable to concentrate on any one thing anymore. She glanced back to the window, but all she saw through it now was smoke. The husband knocked her right over the eyes next, and she flailed her hooves over her face to protect herself from the rest of the beating. “Get out! Get out, now!” the wife was still yelling. Riverjump gazed back to her through blurry eyes and a shielded face, her voice breaking into a sob. “Please, oh please, you’re in danger,” she said. Her words were so garbled the elders couldn’t even understand her. Riverjump was completely huddled on the floor, now only crying. The store owners both retreated back to their bedroom while their intruder was down, slamming the door shut and locking it. Riverjump heard them screaming for help out their bedroom window, crying for someone to save them from her. She pulled her hooves away from her face, climbing back up to all fours with weak legs. She hobbled over to the door, banging on it and trying to get them to understand again. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “Please, it’s not safe here! You’re under attack--not from me! I’m not trying to hurt you!” She coughed, and not just once. Smoke was drifting into the hallway from the stairwell, and Riverjump could hear the crackling of a fire downstairs. She banged on the door again, still coughing and crying, but the ponies inside weren’t listening. With one more look toward the stairs, she saw the fire already climbing them. Glancing between that and the door, she sobbed even louder. If she had been able to look ahead to all this, before getting involved in trying to help more of her victims, Riverjump wouldn’t have thought this was her limit. She’d have thought she met her limit a long time ago, before she had busted through the window to warn the store owners. But despite a good show of bravery tonight, even Riverjump had her absolute limits. She hobbled over to the window, eyes and legs bruised, and smashed it open. The noise of it was negligible over the fire and the screaming. She brushed away only a few of the shards remaining at the bottom, still coughing into her hoof, and pushed herself over the sill. - It was even hotter the next day. The current in the river was lower today, not that Riverjump could see. She knew pretty well how swelled it would be based on the weather, even though she was in the middle of town right now. She had planned to blow this all off after his stint on the bridge yesterday, but there she was after all. She sat on a bench outside the town square, her face drooped toward her hooves. She had bandages all over her body, but only one on her face. “Wow, what happened to your eye?” Ponytail Spectre finally showed. She walked up to and stopped right in front of Riverjump’s bench, not wearing much of an expression; the only part of her face that was contorting was her mouth as she moved a lollipop around her teeth. Riverjump figured that Ponytail didn’t really consider her a friend, but the two of them had known each other for a long time now and Riverjump had somehow never scared her away. The mare swished her namesake ponytail and said, “Sorry, am I late? I forgot when we said we’d meet.” Riverjump pushed herself off the bench and shook her head. “You’re fine. I am too--I mean, my eye is.” “Yeah, but seriously,” Ponytail said with a cocked head, “you look pretty beat up. Did you fight somepony? Like, in a real fight?” Her eyes narrowed. “Did somepony do this to you but not in a fight?” Riverjump leaned her head back a little and considered for a moment what would sound acceptable. She had already stressed out that morning over how to cover up all her cuts with minimal bandaging, and had come up with several different stories to tell almost no one who would even bother asking. She rubbed her neck and grinned, explaining, “It’s not like that. I got drunk and fell out a window.” “Oh,” Ponytail said. She shifted the lollipop to the other side of her mouth. “Well, that sounds like a good time after all.” Riverjump moved beside Ponytail and the two of them began walking. Ponytail shifted her lollipop and poked Riverjump in the shoulder. “Hey, I know what’s gonna perk you up. Sugar. I don’t come down here much, right? There’s this sweet shop nearby that’s been around forever that I hear about from everypony, and it’s supposed to serve the best stuff ever. Ever, like ever. Up for some diabetes poisoning or whatever?” Riverjump felt her cheeks flush and brain jolt. She nodded anyway, thinking of nothing to say. Ponytail smiled and looked forward again. “Yeah, I thought so. This’ll be awesome.” “I really just need a drink anyway,” Riverjump muttered. “Hot out…” They bantered on their way there, even though Riverjump didn’t contribute much to it. Ponytail talked and Riverjump listened, as they both seemed to prefer. The conversation stopped when they arrived within sight of the sweet shop’s charred husk. Firefighter ponies had eliminated the blaze, but the building itself barely had any foundation left. All of the walls were burned down and there was little evidence left that there had ever even been a second floor. No ordinary fire could devastate a structure so much. “Oh, god,” Ponytail gasped. “Are they--?” The firefighter ponies were just then removing two sets of mostly bones from the ridiculous amount of ashes around the site. While Ponytail clasped a hoof over her mouth and stared, Riverjump had already tilted her gaze away. The latter noticed another particular pony in the few others that were observing the scene: the colt. He, too, was watching the bones getting taken from the ruins, his expression more of a simple sadness. Riverjump looked away from him so quickly she whipped her own hair into Ponytail’s face. “Hey--” Ponytail said, slapping away the hair. She glared at Riverjump for a second, but looked past her the next moment. Her eyes brightened again and she said, “What a hottie.” Riverjump frowned, but stared at the dirt. “Let’s just go somewhere else.” “Oh, yikes,” Ponytail said. “I guess that sounded really superficial of me. I’m not good at staying sad at something, though, and that guy really is a stud.” Riverjump turned even lower and further away from him, the voices of shame already starting in her head. She forgot to hide them from her face. Ponytail glanced down at her, but didn’t look too concerned as she sighed, “It’s okay to look at pretty colts, you know.” Riverjump raised her head and looked back at Ponytail. The blushing mare whispered, “I already met him yesterday.” “Oh,” Ponytail said. “Wait, what’d he do to you?” Riverjump turned away again and said, “No, I got drunk after he left. He took me there yesterday, and--that part’s not important. He just...” Riverjump glanced back over to the colt. “He just embarrassed me is all.” “Whatever then, lady,” Ponytail said, shifting her lollipop. She patted Riverjump again and pulled her close. “Not worth thinking about a guy that you don’t like. Let’s just go get shitfaced.” The colt was leaving. Despite how anxious he seemed before, his expression by then had reduced to a slight frown and the look of a tut-tut on his lips. He hadn’t noticed Riverjump, and she stared at him as he went. He was alone. Sans the “girlfriend” he was going to meet up with here today. Riverjump’s frown consciously turned into a scowl, and she felt all the worse for it. The firefighters were putting the bones into a wagon at that point. Riverjump’s gaze turned to them for a moment as they put a blanket over the bones, but she then looked back to the colt. He had no memory of what happened last night. Only Riverjump knew. She knew that it was his fault in the first place for treating her like a merit badge. If she had died yesterday, the two elders she had failed to protect would still be alive. Even for all the blaming of herself she usually did, she knew that was true. Ever since that vortex on her flank had appeared, things like last night kept happening. To any other pony who harbored what Riverjump did, this surely couldn’t turn out the same way. It would be an adventure they could follow, or a mystery they could solve. It would be anything they could solve. Not to Riverjump, who knew exactly how she was going to die. She and Ponytail went the opposite direction as the colt, and left for a bar.