THIS IS A STORY

by _NAME_

Story Six

The stallion hobbled into his bathroom late one night, ready to brush his teeth, take a shower and go to bed.

It had been an exhausting day, more so than usual, for the stallion.

Earlier that afternoon, a group of young ponies had taken it upon themselves to decorate the outside of his house with eggs, something the stallion spent most of the evening cleaning up.

And for a stallion well past his prime, that much manual labor did not bode well for his heart.

Standing in front of his sink, the stallion stared at himself in the mirror, wondering how he had gotten so old.

It seemed, to him, that it was only yesterday that he had graduated from school, or that he married his loving wife, or that he held the first of his two foals, or that he retired from his job of sixty years, or that his wife, the love of his life, had passed away, leaving him alone.

To the stallion, his life had seemed so short and so full of both pain and joy.

But now, he felt the full brunt of his age weigh down on his shoulders.

The wrinkles on his face seemed even deeper than they had that morning.

With a quiet sigh, the stallion gave his teeth a quick brushing and decided that he would take a shower the next morning, because the day’s events had worn him out too much to be bothered.

Shambling out into his bedroom with a slow gait, the stallion moved towards his bed, ready to fall asleep after a long day.

With a pained grunt, the stallion managed to heave himself onto the bed.

His breaths were quick and shallow, but they had been for a long, long time.

As the stallion rested in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, his mind drifted back to the past, as was the norm when he had nothing else to think about.

He thought of his wife and of the day that she finally succumbed to her illness.

He remembered the smile on her face as she told him with the last few breaths she had, that she would always love him and would watch over him from the next life.

He remembered the tears in his eyes as he felt her hoof go limp and saw her eyelids flutter and never reopen.

He remembered the smile that remained on her face and took little solace in knowing that it was there because of him.

Back in the present, as the stallion turned on his side, he briefly thought that he saw his wife next to him once again, a smile on her lips and love in her eyes, but he knew that she wasn’t there.

The stallion’s own eyelids fluttered shut as he fell asleep, and his mouth curled into a slight smile as thoughts of his life turned to dreams.

The stallion’s chest gently rose and fell, and with each breath came a new memory.

And he was happy.

But as the night wound on, the stallion’s breaths came fewer and fewer, though he had no way of knowing.

As his body began to fail, the stallion’s mind was lost in the past, reliving those far-flung days when everypony was young, the world was a little more vibrant and he had to walk uphill in the snow both ways, just to get anywhere, back when life was simpler.

The stallion took a few more ragged, shallow breaths as he dreamt of the day he went on a picnic with his wife and children.

And then, his chest slowly ground to a halt and his limbs relaxed as his body gave out.

The stallion exhaled one last time and the synapses in his brain sparked for the final time, giving him a rather pleasant memory of a day spent at the beach with his mother and father.

And with that, the stallion slipped quietly and painlessly into the afterlife, his thoughts in a happier place.

And he never woke up again.

And all was quiet for the rest of the night.

Author's Note:

[Story suggested by Axan Zenith.]

Comments

[Dark Avenger]

Aww... and it was getting so good...

But seriously: I think this chapter should have been used later on. Compared to the previous ones, this one kind of broke the pacing. Though the writing is still good, it did not allow all the details to slowly come to the surface like before. It's not that I don't like that we get to know any more about him, but to have all of it dumped on the reader so abruptly, and then killing the guy off...

And yes, I do realize it was written based on a commenter's suggestion...

[_NAME_]

3035331

[Do not fret.]

[Just because the stallion died in one story does not mean he is dead in all of them.]

[This is a story about a stallion.]

[But it is not the same story about a stallion.]

[Axan Zenith]

YOU ARE DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. YOU ARE DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.

Thought you were hot, guess what: you're not!

YOU ARE DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.