There's a certain liberty in hopelessness.
When I was a colt, I had one great fear, and that was my father discovering that I didn't actually want to be a farmer like him. That was because I knew it would make him angry, and when he got angry, he was like a wild timberwolf, snarling and vicious. I was terrified of what he'd do to me. When he found out anyway, suddenly I didn't have any problems anymore. He beat me, he failed to get me to change my mind, and after that, there was nothing more he could do to me.
Sure, the beatings never stopped until I left home, and he remained a horrible wretch of a pony until my mother finally suffocated him to death in his sleep, but what was important was that the worst had already happened, and nothing I could do could change that. Once my life became the most hellish it could possibly be, suddenly I wasn't afraid of whatever else he might find out. I got daring. I finally started living my life. When the consequences are the same either way, actions don't matter, so you may as well do what you want.
From that moment on, that was the philosophy I lived by. Sixty-three years, it's kept me going now. It's a strange idea for most ponies to comprehend, I know. For most ponies, their core ideals are rooted in friendship and harmony. When I tell ponies that mine are in hopelessness, I get these odd looks. I explain my story, tell them what it all means, and even if they claim to understand, I can tell they find it bizarre. After all, without hope, the world becomes a grim place, does it not?
To that I say, yes. I do find the world grim, because it is. I look out my window right now and I see a drab and dreary world. The forest is dead, the sky is cloudy and grey, and the ground is covered with snow. As far as my waning eyes can see, everything is bleak and miserable. Maybe a fresh-faced youth would look out and see a winter wonderland that brings to mind thoughts of Hearth's Warming Eve and snowball fights. But for me, I have only one thought.
It's going to be freezing out there.
I pull my boots over my hooves and wrap a scarf around my neck as best I can using only my mouth, and then I start trying to fit my ragged coat on. The top button falls off the old thing, and I grumble as I pick it up and throw it onto the wooden table in the corner. That's another job for me to do later: sewing that button back on. As I open the front door and the wind buffets me right away, I know that today will be nothing but pain.
I step over the threshold and out of the relative warmth of my log cabin, shutting the door behind me. Already my eyes begin watering and I have to keep my head bowed to move. I trudge through the snow and move around the side of the cabin, where my axe lies embedded in a tree stump. I wrench it out with my teeth and place it in a holder sewn onto the outside of my coat. My scarf comes a little loose, so I rein it back in and wrap it around my neck a few more times. It's cold, so I have to tuck it inside my coat and hope it'll get warmer.
It's as I begin fighting my way up the path from my cabin that I reflect on hopelessness. If I were certain that I would die tomorrow, no matter what I did here today, I'd have that sense of freedom again. I wouldn't be suffering out in this cold, enduring the horrible winter for no other reason than survival. I'd be burning my cabin down and laughing in manic joy, acting on impulse for the first time in years. Instead, I'm heading out into the woods yet again, because there exists that small glimmer of hope that if I can gather enough firewood, I can endure the darkness for a little longer.
Hope hurts. And I hope so very dearly for spring to come early this year...
I know this forest well. Living here as long as I have, I could navigate it blind. The beaten paths I take through the woods were beaten by me. I created all these dotted clearings of tree stumps that I'm passing by. Where snow has been cleared and piled up, that was my handiwork. It was all me. Nopony else lives nearby for miles in any direction, and so for decades, I've been responsible for maintaining the land. I had help once, but... that was a long time ago.
My axe meets the small, leafless tree I marked. I need to swing hard to make any kind of progress, and it doesn't take long for my neck to start aching from the motion. After a few minutes of hacking away, I determine that the tree is weak enough, so I put away my axe, turn around, and buck at the thing, toppling the rest. It saves having to cut it any more. Even in my old age, that earth pony strength sticks with me. I allow myself a small smile as I shuffle around and try to lift the fallen tree onto my back.
"Hurgh." It's heavier than it looked, but I can manage. "Mercy..."
It's not long before I'm back on the trail, trying to carry the monster with me. I know it's not good to exert myself like this, especially under these conditions, but I can't help it. I don't want to spend another minute out in the cold, and I just want to get back to the cabin as fast as possible. I know I'll still have to chop the wood outside, but at least I can go inside and take breaks if it starts snowing.
I feel a snowflake on my nose, and my eyes cross to look at it. More start falling. I turn my gaze skyward and sigh. I can see my breath in front of my face when I do so. Curse the winter. Curse this wretched season and all who enjoy it.
My pain ends only when I get back inside the cabin, carrying with me a few small logs. I toss them into the fireplace and light it up. Then I lay down on the nearby bearskin rug, or perhaps more accurately, collapse onto it. I've not even bothered to remove my coat and scarf yet. I don't want to. The winter this far north chills a pony to their very bones, and I am too old and weary to keep this up. I fear that I may not survive the winter this year. I truly do. But still I cling to hope that I'll see next spring. Oh that wretched hope, that won't let me just lie down and die here...
The wind's still howling outside. The snow on my coat has melted into the rug, and already I think I smell of wet bear fur. I never liked this rug. All else aside, I just find it macabre. I'd replace it if I could.
Climbing up, I strip off my coat, boots, and scarf at long last, and place them all on the stand by the door. I peer outside. The sky is darker now. Luna's night has fallen, and the things that live in the dark are no doubt already prowling. I reach out and draw the makeshift curtain hanging over the window. Then I move around the cabin, going from room to room and drawing all the remaining ones.
My last stop is the bedroom. Well, my bedroom. One of two. There's nought in here but a closet, a nightstand, and a queen-sized bed, but this room is my last refuge in case the worst should happen. I draw the curtain over the last window. This one is the tattiest of them all, more of a patchwork quilt than a curtain. I've sewn it up with old frilly garments, but it's on the verge of falling apart again, and I have no materials this time. I dread the day I lose it.
In the main room, the fire is crackling away, and I sit by it once more. The rug has dried slightly, but still feels damp where I lay on it previously. Perhaps I could cannibalise the rug for material to fix the curtain? Bah. No. Too much rug. I'd have a dismembered rug out here for who even knows how long until I find more things in need of patching up.
Speaking of patching up, I should really get to fixing that button that fell off earlier...
I hear a knocking on the window by the front door, a slamming, forceful noise. I slowly turn my head towards it. Two more knocks come in quick succession.
I snort.
Nice try. Nothing gets in here.
My nights are never peaceful. In my waking moments, everything is so noisy. The blizzard outside, the crackling fire inside, and the taps on the windows that never cease all come together to make a cacophany that makes sleep difficult. When sleep does come, as it always does when my body becomes too physically exhausted to continue, I dream of unpleasant things. I wouldn't call them all nightmares, but... I never have good dreams. My dreams are all of dark shapes, old ruins, and ponies who won't look at me.
Sometimes I dream of the forest. I dream that I'm out there at night instead of in here. I dream that I wander it safely, but even in my dreams I have constant companions, just in the corner of my eye. In those dreams, they always follow me to the hills. I wish they wouldn't. But sometimes, even if rarely, I dream of something bigger. I see glimpses of figures from the stories I was told in childhood, from old legends and folklore. When I return to the waking world, I always wonder what it means that I think of them so much now, so many years after I last heard those stories.
Today, I awaken with a vague impression that I dreamt of winter, but not much else. I force myself to climb up out of bed and look around my room. Everything appears normal. My curtain is still drawn. I shuffle over to it and peel it back.
The window is cracked, and a thin layer of ice has formed over the inside. I inhale sharply, and look at the other side of the curtain. The red scrawlings on it, the shapes and symbols, all appear intact. But the curtain itself looks damaged. It won't hold out another week, I should imagine. My lip quivers at the thought of it. I shall soon have no choice but to look for more material. I'll have to go out hunting.
I look through the window and out into the forest. I see nothing there. Just trees and snow.
"You're wasting your time," I mutter. "You're all wasting your time with me."
I find the forest to be the most tolerable of the areas around my home, but it is not the only one. My cabin is not situated in the middle of the woods, as one might expect from my isolated state. In truth, I live on the very edge of it. The northwest edge, to be precise. The true heart of Skydark Forest lies far southeast of me. The reason I am so isolated is not that I am surrounded by forest on all sides, but rather that I have forest on one side, and the endless Oldfield Moors on the other.
The moors are what I truly hate. The wind out there is relentless. Not like in the forest, where I at least have the trees to shield me sometimes. However bad the wind might be in Skydark, it is always worse out on the moors.
The other surrounding areas aren't much better. To the west, the Grimrise Hills keep constant watch over me. I don't go there often, but it is a haunting place. That's where the Barrows are, burial places for some legendary Equestrian heroes, long dead from a forgotten war. It's the sort of place that makes the skin crawl to just be there. Whenever I've been there before, I always felt... well, it's not that I felt watched; I always feel like I'm being watched. But in Grimrise, I feel like whatever is watching truly hates me.
I come to a small clearing full of wooden stumps. Another of my own. If this is the right one... my traps should be somewhere here... I start searching. Curse this snow.
Meanwhile, if one keeps walking far enough eastward, they'll eventually come to Traitor's Cliffs, overlooking the Sea of Ghosts, which is somehow even colder than here, even in the summer. That's just what the weather's like this far north, I suppose, but I can't help but feel these places didn't need such foreboding names to add to the feeling of misery that pervades the place.
This is all what keeps me so isolated. There is almost no civilization whatsoever out here. Skydark Forest is uninhabited, save for me. The Oldfield Moors are barren. Grimrise Hills and the Barrows are dead, in every sense of the term. And the east holds nothing but sea spray and jagged rocks.
The closest town when last I checked (and likely the only other place to hold intelligent life within a hundred miles of here) is Barnsley. It rests on the southeast corner of Skydark, along the coast somewhere, but I've never made passage through the woods to get there. It isn't safe. Sadly, whenever I need to go there for whatever reason, I have no choice but to go east and follow the path by Traitor's Cliffs southwards, passing by the old lighthouse by Gideon's Spine.
Barnsley supposedly manages the weather for this region. I don't know how. I honestly don't. The ways of pegasi are alien to me. In my childhood, I saw weather pegasi moving clouds above the farm to make it rain and feed the crops. But I haven't seen a weather pegasus in years. The clouds here just seem to... drift over the place from somewhere. I presume that Barnsley is responsible, but I don't know for sure. I can't think of who else it could be. Skydark is not meant to have wild weather, but sometimes it feels like it does.
I find the trap. It's at the bottom of a filled-in hole, but I dig it out. The wooden mechanism has broken under the weight of the fallen snow. There's nothing caught in it. I sigh. Wishful thinking, especially this time of year. I sincerely hoped that it wouldn't come to this, but it seems I will need to do some active hunting. Already I'm wincing as I imagine the back ache I will surely give myself.
I collect up the trap and pack it into my bags. I'll need to take it back to the cabin for repairs.
I've heard tale of volunteer forest wardens who build cottages, cabins, and tree-houses within the woodlands or at its edges to care for them. Such wardens protect the forest animals. They care for them when they fall sick, and they heal wounds. It keeps the prey species alive longer in the face of predators, and it keeps the predators from starving to death when they are unable to hunt.
Animals still kill each other, and nothing can be done about that. But a forest warden seeks to extend their lives anyway. They seek to ease pain and suffering even for those for whom it is inevitable. They understand the liberty in hopelessness, but they choose to face hopelessness by continuing to do the decent thing, even when it barely makes a difference. I think it shows great strength of character. The work of a forest warden is admirable, and if I ever met one, I think that I would have tremendous respect for them.
But I am no forest warden, even though I suspect my cabin once belonged to one (it has been here far longer than I have, after all). I am another animal in this forest. I am a part of the cycle. I hide from predators, sequestered away in my den, and by day I hunt as a predator myself. It's not something I enjoy, trust me.
Prowling through the forest, as I do, I take cover behind a fallen log. The wind rustles my coat, but I take out my binoculars and look through the trees. Nothing. I pick myself up and gallop towards my next stopping point. A small hillock gives me a slightly better vantage point, and I scan the distance again. Between the trees, I think I see something. Something that didn't bother to hide well enough.
I draw a bow, crudely constructed from carved wood and sinew, and load an arrow onto it. I close my eyes. Deep breaths. My heart feels a little jumpy. The air is cold. I open my eyes and pull back the string, aiming.
A minute later, I carry the bow by my side as I walk towards it. A trail of red across the snowy ground leads me to the fallen body. I try not to think about what I've just done. I try even harder not to think about what I'm about to do, and what I will do later tonight.
I draw my knife.
I hang up the new curtains slightly less than an hour before nightfall. They don't smell too bad after getting a decent scrubbing.
After such grim work, I scarcely want to even eat, but I don't dare risk going without nourishment. If I am to survive the winter, I must not let starvation take me. In my pantry, I find a few tins and jars, mostly filled with things I grew from my garden last summer. I am not yet running low. The winter is in its infancy yet. But I will start to run out soon. When that happens, I will have to find alternative food sources.
A trip to Barnsley might be in order. I could take the cart down there, sell some of my firewood, and get a few tins of baked beans or something. Just whatever will get me through the winter. But then again, I'm not entirely out of local options either. There are some edible plants that are hardy enough to grow through these conditions. Meat is not out of the question either, if things become truly desperate.
I know, I know. Some ponies would call me monstrous for such considerations. But whatever works, works. Ponies are omnivores too. We're just not obligate omnivores. Morality is what keeps us vegetarian for most of our lives. And while I won't say that one abandons all their morals when living in isolation, desperation has a way of making one reconsider their true value. When my morals are killing me, I choose to take a less self-destructive path.
At this moment, I still have food left. Today's hunt was not for meat. But it was driven by desperation, and I did cross that line. I can't ever be without curtains.
That would just be a disaster.