When Water Withers
Mark yawned. Temp work sucked and he couldn't have guessed that today's late night shift would mean working a literal graveyard. They gave him a flashlight, a policeman's baton and told him to watch out for punks. He was getting more of a fight from keeping his eyes open than from anything that crept in the dark.
His last three pills rattled in his pocket, swaying in tune with his rocking of the chair.
Muddy boots sat on the desk and he yawned some more, thinking about the other guy that was supposed to working this job with him. Stan something? Whatever. It's been twenty minutes. Almost Mark's turn to start patrolling his side of the massive park. The skinny shack held strong against the summer downpour, rain cascading down the shingled roof.
Mark closed his eyes and he began to dream.
“Why do you like the rain so much?”
The little boy stood on his tiptoes and on the stack of books he stole from the bookshelves, looking out the window and down to the wet gardens below. The rain went rat-tat-tat, falling like shooting stars to splatter on the grass and green. The boy thought of smashing his face against the glass, getting closer to the water. To be come a rat-tat-tat. Swift and right. Not slow and wrong. But it would've been rude and he didn't want to get on her nerves. The room wasn't his. None of this place was his.
And the only thing that was wouldn't stop staring back at him.
He tried to ignore his reflection. The scrawny, sun-deprived boy with the jagged scar on his nose stretching from cheek to cheek. It was easier to do when it rained. When the water poured and blocked out the sounds of his own thoughts. The boy wasn't ugly but the child remembered a time where he wouldn't even thought about being not ugly. Only dummies thought about it.
He didn't want to answer Celestia.
The rain poured and poured and he bunched his shoulders together.
Why did she have to ask anyway?
He wiggled his nose and proclaimed, “Dunno.”
“Really?”
The boy pulled on his T-shirt, glancing down at the stone floor. She never rushed him to answer. She was nice like that. “You ask weird questions.” He said after a while. It was a question, a statement and a warning. He meant a lot of things but sometimes, he wished he didn't mean anything at all.
“I'm not upset anymore so you can go away- Hey! Put me down!” Teeth on the back of his shirt lifted him up and sat him on her fluffy bed that was bigger than the one at his house. The one his parents had all to themselves. The boy crossed his hands and pouted. “I was watching that.”
“It's okay to be upset, you know.” The lady said. She looked like a horse and did stuff like a horse but she talked like the people on tv. The really smart people. The boy liked her despite her being a pretty princess but all the things he liked always got taken away. His hands weren't strong enough... “My ponies tell me that you won't take any food when it rains. Aren't you hungry?”
The boy flopped over, turning from Celestia. “They should mind their business.” His eyes went to his hands and the old scars there. Sometimes, his hands still felt sticky. Bloody. An image of the long dark flickered into his mind before he blinked it away. It was still raining and today, he wouldn't think so hard. “I wasn't hungry when you found me.” He sniffed, wiping with his wrist his nose. If he rubbed it too hard, it starts to bleed.
She settled in next to him, pulling him close with her wing. The boy turned over and patted her, stubby fingers moving through the fur and tufts of feathers that grew along her side. She was weird. Just like him. He hugged her, feeling her heart through her body. It went ba-dump, ba-dump. His heart went baa-dump, baa-dump. Peaceful like the rain, faster than the darkness in the ground.
“I'm not hungry.”
His belly growled.
“It's okay if you're not.” She said softly. “But promise you will eat for me. If you stop eating, I'll stop eating too. Then all of the chefs in the castle will get mad at us. They'll say if we won't eat, they'll make us eat. Then they will make sorts of cakes and creams and puddings and force us to eat every sweet bite until we're sick to our stomachs.”
“That sounds awesome. Let's do that!”
“But if we eat too much then the sweets will start to taste the same and bland. They'll take the joy of desserts from us. Soon, only mildew and spinach and brussels spouts will taste yummy.”
“Yuck. I don't want that.”
Celestia nuzzled his red hair, brushing the uneven strands aside. The boy closed his eyes, basking in her presence.
“I'm still not upset.” He said to the blanket, Celestia still in his hair. She was so weird. “But I'm a little hungry. Can I get some cake if I eat all my vegetables?”
“Of course.”
Celestia kissed his forehead.
“Eww, cooties.”
Mark opened his eyes, the night sky turning blue as the long rain ended in a half-hearted drizzle. Morning was approaching and Stan hadn't woke him up. He rubbed his eyes and stood up, yawning. Then he patted his pants and pulled out his bottle. It was empty.
The man stared at the bottle, opened it and stared inside. It was still empty.
“What the fuck?” He said, stepping outside. “Stan?”
A dark forest spread out before him, a half hidden trail of stone and glass leading to the gaping maw of the cave. Children walked around him in pairs of two. Parents and teachers following each group of twenty. Something bumped into his leg. A shrimp of a kid with bright red hair.
“You did it.” The little boy said. “You killed her.”
“I didn't do anything! I'm not taking this shit from nobody and that includes you. Stay fuck out of my head and my dreams.” Mark snapped, snatching the little punk by his collar. “None of this is real.”
“Then go in.” The boy faded from his hand, slipping away as dark mist. “Kill me.”
Mark glanced at the cave and the people wandering in, the old wounds on his hands ached. He turned away and walked, ignoring the sounds of the cave entrance's falling in. The shouts and screams of everyone else. He patted his slacks for the bottle again, shaking for pills.
He didn't hear anything but he didn't remember taking them so he brought it to his lips and took all three. Something went down his throat. It might have been guilt. It might have been shame.
The doctors couldn't explain how he came back after the cave had been evacuated. The bodies counted. The survivors saved. He came back twenty years to the same day as an eight year old, only two years older.
The man sat on ground, waiting for the drugs to work. Stan found him later with a search party, sleeping soundly on a grave.
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I'm really liking your approach to Momlestia.
6368348
Thanks for commenting. I'm relieved to hear that you like it. If I could pick your brain, where do think the story should go?
6368617
Hmm, I shall hold my opinion until the plot becomes something I can understand. Tis good at the moment though, very good.
It's not often a story has me intrigued, consider it favorited for as long as you update it
6369144
Glad that you are interested. If you had any suggestions as to where I should take the story, I'd be open to hear it.
6369162
I've yet to understand the plot, keep updating and I'll advise if I think it's needed
I think I can see where the story is headed, at least somewhat. What I can definitely tell though, is that Equestria's time stream moves slower than Earth's by a factor of ten years. That is all I managed to pick up at the end of the chapter.
6369185
That's great. Tell me your ideas. I'm honestly winging it at the moment and I don't want to mess up.
Yes. That's important. Think of it this way, wouldn't a seemingly unaged child from a missing/proclaimed dead child from a twenty year case make headlines? Especially if you considered all of his crazy talk about ponies talking and magic and adventures.
6369211
Wait a sec.... The cave..... It's an entrance to Equestria, but for it to collapse like that, something would've had to have happened on either side... Something like, I dunno, a feud between to very powerful magic wielders. That comment by Mark in the early years seems to support the fact that he was there to witness Celestia banishing Nightmare Moon/Princess Luna...
The thing that bugs me though, is that the cave-in happened forty years after her banishment..... It was probably either wards that somehow got cast and took effect on Earth when they were meant to deter Celestia from entering the area that Luna was in, or something else happened there that we don't know of yet.
Then there's Mark's dreams... This, I can easily cut down the mystery. A child comes from someplace else, and starts talking nonsense (to that society, anyway) about talking ponies, magic, and other stuff like that. Of course he's going to repress it if everyone around him tells him constantly that it isn't normal. Children of that age are still impressionable, which is why therapy tactics like (pfffft) hypnotism, shock, or other sometimes unorthodox practices work. They reinforce society's view on things, and eventually those things that you constantly spouted were silenced as complete and utter nonsense and have you believe that it all never happened.
I'm not saying that those were the kinds of therapies used, they were merely used as examples.
This right here, is a huge implication of guilt towards something. Right now, I'm going to imagine that Mark thinks Celestia killed Luna instead of banishing her to the moon, or that banishing her to the moon is what killed her. I don't exactly know how Mark fits into that yet, though...
Sooooo, a dream within a dream, then? It's happened to me a couple times, not fun.
THEN WHO WAS PHONE!?
Sorry, I just had to make that joke. Bad 4chan jokes aside, if Nightmare Moon's currently inhabiting her namesake, then what the blueberry hell was that in Mark's dream?
The more I think about the finer details of your story, the more of a sadistic ass you seem to be. I only joke, of course. But in all seriousness, methinks The Nightmare has found a new host, and our dear protagonist isn't liking it so much...
I'm liking this setup, and the unreliable viewpoint. Assuming that the "Celestia is a coping mechanism" thing isn't true, then his state of mind implies that something terrible happened between the two.
You have me hooked , this has piqued my interests and looking to see how it plays out.
This is an unusual take on Momlestia. Color me intrigued.
6370243
us.res.keymedia.com/files/image/confused-meme.jpg
6370548 I forgot to type the 'un'. Fixed.
This is pretty interesting.
I like the interaction between the two. Keep it up.
6369704
That's a great idea but I had no intentions of putting Nightmare Moon/Luna in this fic. But I might now.
A big theme of this story is the repression of childhood. Mark does feel guilty but he rather carry that guilt then know why. It's easier on his shoulders.
I am a sadistic ass and this was written on late crazy-sauce. I'm just going to be nuts going forward. And this is me holding back. Do you want me see me putting some real effort into this story? Nobody needs to see that!
6370042
Something terrible did happen. In the second dream, notice how the little boy was gradually opening up to her? Something bad had already happened to him. He had the scars on his hands and the cut on his face before meeting her. Imagine what would have happened if she got interrupted raising him? It wouldn't take much to destroy the progress she'd made.
6370243
I hope you will continue to like it. I got inspired from a thread on how to write a motherly Celestia.
6370548
Nice quote-fu, my friend.
6371963
This is going to be weird but I'm going to ask you to describe that interaction. Do you mean between the little boy (there's a special reason why I'm referring to him separately) and Celestia or Mark and Dr. Ward? Or the implied but yet not defined thing between Mark and Celestia.
For the second dream sequence, I wanted it to feel like a memory brought on by the rain. It was to establish two things. One, the little boy was already traumatized by the time he met Celestia. And two, he was only opening up to her.
6372414 okay, not weird at all.
I meant the little boy and Celestia. I'd like to see more of that, a lot more of that. For a few reasons.
1) Writing kids is hard. I'm not good at it, and I think you hit on something valuable when writing his perspective. The inner thoughts of him recognizing her as a horse, but also as something different. The fact that he's slowly opening up to her, but thinks she's weird.
2) Her way of dealing with him. Not being princessy, but just motherly.
I'm curious as to where their relationship will go. What Celestia intends to do with him.
6372414
Gawd this might turn into a Pony "Pan's Labyrinth"...