//------------------------------//
// [2-4] Fun 
// Story: Seattle Seapony 
// by dNihil 
//------------------------------//

Those thoughts.

She started getting sick of them.

They kept stealing her mind away in favor of a meaningless riddle that she couldn't make any sense of.  It wasn't just those words that were crowding her brain, either, oh no.  There was a feeling of spite.  That something or someone had done it to her for no reason.

She also couldn't stop thinking thoughts of a strange toy that she remembered from her childhood.  As she stared up at the sky, the corners of her vision fading, she focused on those thoughts rather than the others, because they held no ill intent in her mind.

The world swirled away.


↺


"You can't make trains fly!  That's impossible!" Brooke said.

"But I can't get it across here.  You took the track!"

"Hey.  I needed it to make this part over here.  You already have all those pieces, so do something about it!"

Cala stared at her sister, who was crossing her arms.  She narrowed her eyes.  After a moment, she said, "I don't wanna."

Brooke gasped.  "Don't you da—"

"Mooooom!"

She sighed, holding a hand up to your forehead.

"Play nice," someone called from the other room.

Cala grinned and went over, taking her pieces of the track back from her sister.  She went about repairing her own area.  She already had about two thirds of the toy wooden train tracks, and had built a sprawling design of interlocking track pieces.

After a few minutes, Brooke said, "You know what, I don't care.  These trains are for babies anyway.  Have fun being a baby, baby!"  And she took off out of the room.

Cala silently cheered, going over and taking Brooke's train.  It was the last one they had that worked because she had broken the other two.  She set it on her track and turned on the power switch, watching as it started moving with a mechanical whirring sound.  It approached an intersection in the track, and she reached over and turned it so the train would go under her bed.

She went over to the other side of the bed and waited as the toy went through the 'tunnel'.

Suddenly there was a flash of light and a magic popping sound from under the bed.  Cala gasped and looked underneath it, wondering what just happened.  The train rolled out from underneath the bed and Cala stared at a new addition.  In one of the little cargo carts, near the back of the train, there was a toy she had never seen before.  Certainly not something she had put there herself.  It was a little unicorn.  Its coat was an aquamarine color, its mane and tail light teal with white stripes running through.  Its little golden eyes looked incredibly lively as they stared at her, piercing her soul and tugging on her heartstrings.

She picked it up in her little hands and turned it over in her grasp.  This was absolutely perfect!  The best little toy for the best little girl.  She had always wanted a My Little Pony toy.  The commercials all made them look so great.

She looked at its haunches and saw there was a picture.  A glowing, golden harp.  She liked music.  She listened to music just about every day with her mom.  She looked at it and thought, before lighting up with an idea.

"I think I'm going to call you... Harper!" she said.

Its little golden eyes shined in amusement.


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Within a day, Harper had become Cala's favorite toy.  Within a week, she had started bringing it everywhere with her, from home to school and to anywhere she went out.  Within a month, Brooke got sick of her immense fascination with it, and began spending her time pursuing activities more common for an adolescent.  Within another few months, their mother was exhausted and still couldn't figure out where it had come from, so she just let it be.

After a year, it was starting to get worrying for everyone involved.  Cala had spent nearly every day at that point practically glued to the little unicorn figure.  She often talked to it like it was listening, and could almost swear that it wanted to respond to her, though it had no way to actually speak.  All of her friends at school had accepted that she was strangely attached to it, and they even went along and played with it with Cala.  But her mother had started sending her to a counselor to try and sever the bind, claiming it was unhealthy.  The counselor was simply baffled that such a thing could happen to a young girl.  Brooke didn't want anything to do with her sister, and it had very much strained their relationship.

The unicorn had been through a lot in that time.  The color in its mane and tail had completely faded, leaving it a bland white.  The image on its flanks was fading, and if you didn't know it, you might not have been able to tell that it was a lyre.  Its eyes still shined with that lively light in them, but no longer with that youthful vigor that had first enraptured the girl.

Cala loved Harper.  But a point came that it had to be put to an end.  So what her mother did, is she put it up on a shelf in Cala's bedroom.  She said to Cala, that she could have an hour every day to play with it, and no more.  Over time, she lowered that threshold; it began to be only a half hour, and then only fifteen minutes.  Cala agreed at first mainly because her mom's word was law, and it still allowed her to enjoy the toy.  Near the end, she gave up and simply decided to leave it there on the shelf for good.  And so she stopped.  She moved on from that stage in her life because she eventually realized that nobody liked her when she played with that unicorn toy.

It was left alone, there on that shelf in the open closet of Cala's bedroom.  It was piled behind other junk over time, gradually being obscured from sight and forgotten.  But it didn't forget.  Harper was still there on that shelf, experiencing every second of that eternal solitude.  It was left there for years.

The light in its eyes had began to appear a bit manic.


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