Lost of thoughts

by CraftAids

Tumbuluponus

Paper-thin, obscuring mists permeated the rustling greens by the side of the gravel road. From that forest edge and down the path, a pony bolted. Pebbles shifted and rolled and hopped and remained, untouched and undisturbed, giving their full and undivided impassivity to his frantic irrelevance.

Lumpy blobs of green leaf swaths like hard candy rejects laid on depth-perception defying trunks, covered in large, white bark edges. He passed by, leaving transparent, swirly pulses of brown dust behind. The ground to either side was colored green. His big eyes kept focused forward, in the direction he was heading. A circular, two-story building made of metal sheets and glass windows sat to one side of the trail. Some distance later, he passed a round door in a giant rock. Mostly, there was just a wall of plants on each side of the trail guiding him along, which he pushed himself down at speed so that he could get to the place it led, in spite of not actually knowing where that was, because that was where he was going.

Dredged, the flickers of noticed thought recorded a jerky passage from desolate, dense foliage to busy, empty houses on powerful missteps designed by his adrenaline-addled mind. Insufficient breath squeezing through a tense neck passage and blood pounding every cell, he found himself here, in the midday sun, on a foreign trail, in some thatch-hut hamlet, perched precariously on two legs too many. Despite his mad dash, he hadn’t the foggiest in regards to maintaining an ass off the ground and a mouth not filled with gravel. Though he was doing it before, he didn’t know how to do it, now that he was thinking about it. Obviously, he took a spill.

The cluttering memories of rock raking flesh and body straining onward and vague yet urgent calls fell away under the rebuffing concept that everything that was happening was bullshit. His coming here was bullshit. His walking on four legs was bullshit. His face was bullshit. The time of day was bullshit. The similar clouds and the monotone sky were bullshit and everything else was under reasonable suspicion of falsehood.

His eyes flicked from object to object. His gaze was intended as an investigation. Each piercing glance found that hidden behind each thing perceived was the confirmation that, yep, that s indeed a bush, or a tree, or a house’s rocky wall. The town he had reached the edge of was just a town to him. He had no concept of the place he had been rushing for and he had no memory of where he had been rushing from. His paranoia grew as he found, again and again, nothing. He recognized the trend and stopped. He accepted that looking at his surroundings wasn’t telling him what was happening. Nothing he could see would explain everything in a useful manner. Nothing would explain the splayed horse legs in the air above him. There were only two options. He could wait for everything to be the way he wanted, or at least a way he understood, or a way he thought he could understand, like Gandhi protesting reality, or he could accept that this furred mass of bone and meat was now him, because he already knew that it was.

He came to his hooves… poorly. Even poorer was his first attempt at a step. Even poorer was his idea of where he was going. Even poorer was how he felt when he realized, back on his side in a cloud of dust, why, exactly, he didn’t know of anyplace useful to go.

Nearby, he spotted a box. He knew what it was. He got to his hooves but stayed low to the ground. His choice proved wise as his imbalance kept bringing him down. His tummy served as a fifth leg as he moved to the orange painted dumpster. He propped himself up against the side and pushed open the lid. He tossed the lid up so that it rested against the wall. He rolled himself over the threshold and dropped in. Two eyes peeked over the rim. A single hoof reached up and hooked the lid. Slowly, it lowered, sealing in eyes and out light. For a time, he had a moment, and he slept.