This is truly wonderful.

I cannot thank you enough for writing this, it really does make one think about their own life and future. No mean feat, for a HIE no less.

You should be incredibly proud of this achievement

Simply amazing!

I don't know what to say. It it a bittersweet situation to outlive your friends and loved ones. I cant help but wonder if he was actually immortal, or just incredibly long lifed. Still, bravo. A little slice of immortal life. I might have liked to see a Luna pairing, due to the whole immortal thing, but the characters didn't seem to mesh well. I really liked this story, bravo again.

Hey author:

People WILL dislike this unfairly, based on the fact that it lacks a description. Unfortunate but true.

Well-crafted, considering the incredible span of time that it covers. Somber, but not so sad that I wanted to turn away from it. Religious, but not overtly so. Though, I'm quite sure I didn't grasp the full meaning of the conversation at the end. I hope you write more.

This story was intriguing and definitely different from other 'human' stories.

However, I have to admit that I disliked the vagueness surrounding all of the characters and events. Although it conveys the idea of memories past and forgotten, it didn't hold much interest in the way of detail, coming off as too vague.

Certainly an interesting read though.

Very different, and very lovely.

Vagueness didn't bother me, but for the ending, where ambiguity reigns.

Might be intentional, might not.

Beautiful story nevertheless.

(Can't stop speaking in sentence fragments. Need help!)

Oh man

oh man oh man.

thanks for that.

I honestly used to think I had less emotional capacity than what I am currently displaying.

This is another in the long line of MLP fics to happily prove me wrong.

WHY? WHY? WHY?! Why did you have to make me cry?! I love reading sad stories but they make me cry! call me stupid or whatever but i just can't stop myself. Well written sir!

This was very touching.

It's...beautiful...A well-written story and very touching at the same time. Makes me wonder about the future..

Good work! Indeed

I've seen this reposted on the Internet a few (read: two) times, including 4chan/mlp/ where someone rewrote some parts a little and tacked on his own ending. I'm assuming this is the original, and it's nice to find it.

Damn...

This one's a real treat, a short little gem of a story.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you for writing it.

I linked this to a few, I hope you don't mind. This deserves both more recognition and more attention.

Well, fine then.  Write an HiE fic that proves me wrong about writing off the whole genre.  Make my fucking day.

You magnificent bastard, you.

I enjoyed this, it is definitely one of the better HiE-stories I've read but it left me with a .

What's the message?

Being immortal is tough? Gee, I don't know, I'm not immortal, I can not relate to that.

I'm not particularly religious either so I may have missed some quote or context concerning the Bible, but over all I'm not sure what to make of this.

... That was beautiful...

I...I can see why this is getting so much love. Its a very nice story, didn't get to me as much as i would of liked, no idea why considering i'm a sap for this stuff but this was a wonderfull work, whatever you do dont stop wrighting.

OMG dat was beautiful....

This was really well written, and very... sad? happy? Heart-warming!

Even though its only around 2,000 words the way you wrote it made it feel very long.

I've read this before. But even reading it again, it is still a lovely story.

This... is a work of art. Even people who despise MLP would love this.

This is a lovely, lovely story!

At first I thought it was a sort of Book of Eli thing, where it was just in his possession as "central text in the Western-canon" kind of way, him preserving it like the old guy in The Day After Tomorrow.

The whole look at immortality was heartbreaking. Especially that end. That was the best of ways this story could have ended, for real.

I really genuinely wish I understood this better... Maybe because I'm not familiar with the bible? I don't think so, you could have definitely made the overall message of the story more clear. The ending was a little hard to follow. Besides that, great job. You earned a thumbs up, if not a favorite. With a little more editing this could be one of the best.

I guess I'll just mentally edit out all the parts mentioning the bible.

Pretty good story.

damn good job

A beautiful story, very well done. You should be proud of this.

I read this, and immediately loved it. Then, it started bugging me. Why was he so emotionally detached? Why did he grow more and more distant over time, instead of the opposite? Perhaps the author intended this to be a result of him feeling out-of-place as a human, or being separated from his family - but this isn't psychologically plausible, and in any case the story ought to tell us so if the author wanted us to think that.  I'm afraid that, without an explanation, without a cause, the story is just emotional porn, hitting us hard in the feels but not giving a causal context, not leaving us with anything to think about.

Not sure why or how this one ended up in my to-reads, but I just ran into it and here we are.

Taken in the context of HiE on the whole, this does certainly offer something new, with the angle of time passing differently for our POV character. But I think you could have done more with that. This story began rather poignantly, but drags by the end, and I found it unfulfilling because of this. The biggest problem is that this story is written mostly as a list of what happened. It's not all tell, there were some effective parts, but by the end, I was bored with it. Also, I'm pretty sure that guy had sex with a mare, and I'm just... no.

Nevertheless, I have distinctly read worse. This just feels like a good idea that you ran out of steam while writing.

Before I pass comment, I must ask. Has the human become immortal? Or will he die eventually?

(Here via an old blog post of Aquillo's.)

This is an awfully big story packed into a small wordcount.  It's got a lot of neat and touching little moments, flows well, and will definitely go on my shortlist of fics redeeming the HiE wasteland.  Liked and faved.

I just have one problem, and unfortunately it's a big one: At first I read the ending wrong.

I glanced through a little too quickly, and this is what the last few paragraphs looked like once they'd passed through the brain filters:

Beside him, Celestia murmured, "They have such wonderful dreams, do they not?"

He turned to regard her, tears beginning to stream down his cheek.  

Her gaze lay fixed on distant Canterlot.  She continued to wear that same soft, quiet smile.

And I was all: "SWEET MOTHER OF FAUST, THAT'S AMAZING!  She's just given him the passive, oblique hoofslap that finally made him realize that the paradise of his old world's religion is Equestria modulo ponies, he's there now, he's immortal and can't go back, so he's dead and in the afterlife!  And she's chiding him for not realizing it and for needlessly tormenting himself!  Now he's crying because he's been pulling away, bit by bit, dreaming of someday returning to earth, when all along if he had simply let himself become part of Equestria he could have had hundreds of years of happy and fulfilling life, not perfect, but as good as it gets!  

"And ... um ... wait.  

"Did I read that right?  Wait.  OMG, WTF, barbecue.  Celestia is crying?"

Now I just have no idea what's going on.  

Is the "they" in Celestia's parting line referring to the humans in the book they were discussing, or the ponies in the city she's looking at?  Is she sad because ponies don't have the same dreams that humans do?  Is she sad because she herself doesn't have that dream and knows as an immortal that she has to live a life full of watching ponies die?  And what the hell is the ending doing making a point about Celestia when the entire rest of the story is focused around the human?  This needs to have some sort of moral, make some sort of point, about the guy and his actions.  The fact that he's clearly been missing out on opportunities for connection throughout the story, and in fact increasingly withdrawing as time goes on, needs to build to something.

... Hang on.  Was your intention to obliquely point at Celestia as the natural endpoint of the human's trajectory, as some sort of immortal living permanently apart from the mass of ponies living and dying?  Because that's poignant and kinda logical with what you wrote, but also totally wrong.  She's spent the whole story pushing at him to reconnect.

Seriously, please give me some sort of clue toward the ending.  I simply cannot seem to squint at it from any angle that makes everything align.  I really hope that this is a sign of me being stupid, as opposed to a good story's missed opportunity.

Well...

My personal interpretation of the ending was the simplest one, that these ponies, unlike humans, don't believe in an afterlife. Kinda depressing for me but there ya go. Of course, it might be interpreted differently if you try.