• Published 2nd Dec 2012
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Xenophilia: Further tales. - TheQuietMan

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86: I will see things you will never see. (SS)

A/N: Watch out - there's a bit of a time skip here.

I will see things you will never see.
Chapter published 14th Aug 2015

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December 30th 1290AC
Main House, Estate of Herd Bellerophon, Outskirts of Ponyville


It’s over.

It is. It’s over. I know it, everyone here knows it. And, in a tiny way, one that I don’t want to admit... some small part of me... some little part of me tucked away that I’ll never, ever speak of... is... glad.

How could I?

Without a word, Father reaches over the bed, his palm resting on Mother’s forehead. Slowly, gently, with great love and affection, he moves his hand down towards the tip of her muzzle. When he takes it away her eyes are closed, never to reopen.

Those eyes... eyes that had been so full of joy and laughter, eyes that had cast so many enigmatic glances, eyes that had held the world in all its glory.

They’d seen so much, those eyes. They’d beheld a world from long before my birth, a land so different to the Equestria of today. It had changed, grown, evolved... for better or for worse... and she had seen it all.

And now she wouldn’t ever see it again.

Such beautiful eyes, so alive, always shining with the sparkle of wit and wisdom, the same sparkle that I had seen in my sister’s eyes. Identical pools of black and gold, a gift of hereditary mimicry that, in my younger days, I had wished could have been passed onto me, genetically impossible though it was.

And now, that sparkle, that light that we held so dear, is gone... and with its absence we know that which we had long feared was coming but wanted not to admit.

It was over.

I don’t know why, but a stupid old lyric comes to mind, from one of the human songs that father brought with him. It was from an old story, one of the many that big sis Belle had published over the years. Something about a herd of rabbits searching for a new warren. The song had always made me cry as a child. But now I am an adult, and an elderly one at that, silly stories about fluffy bunnies were long ago... but the feeling in my chest is just the same as it was then, the tightness around my eyes, the pressure in my head...

Breathe, Star, breathe. In through your nose, hold it, out through your mouth - just as Mother Twilight taught us.

My eyes flick over to the clock on the bedside table, years of practice mentally jotting down the time. Almost five decades as a doctor, most of them as a trauma surgeon, had my mind running through a long in-grained check-list of what happens next. Coming up on fifty years in service meant that I’d signed more than a few death certificates in my time, but it’d be a cold day in hell before I signed that of my own herd-mother. No, Twinkle Time would be back soon enough, one of the doctors from Ponyville general in tow. They could play the part of attending physician tonight.

She was a good girl, Twinkle Time. My eldest, long since past the days where I could call her ‘girl’ to her face. A good girl, solid, dependable, a good mother- no, a great mother... something I wish I could have been for her.

She’d be back soon enough.

The room was going to get cramped, or was it already? The bedroom wasn't small, usually home to a herd of four with room to spare, but there were many of us here tonight. Too many, really - too close, too cramped, squeezing, closing in, bearing down. Too many, too many bodies.

Mother Rainbow is clinging to father, her wings wrapped around him as she bawls her eyes out. She and Mother Lyra had been so tight over the years, closer than sisters, much closer to each other than to their own blood siblings or birth herds. Some small part of my brain comments that she’s come so far from the days of my childhood. Back then she would rather have been seen dead than as she is now - snot running down her chin, face awash with tears, her eyes screwed up as she weeps unabashedly into father’s neck like some kind of traumatised school filly.

Father, for his part, has his arm around his wife’s neck, pulling her in close, letting, encouraging her to cry. Just by being there he’s doing all he can for her... just as he’s always done for the rest of us.

Mother Twilight sits at Father’s side, doing that thing she does when her brain’s shut down - her mouth moving through the same motions over and over again, opening as if to speak before closing again without saying a word, her facial muscles looping through the same group of actions over and over again, waiting for her conscious mind to finish its soft reboot.

It wasn't a shock, or a surprise. We’d known it was coming, known for quite some time... but perhaps that just made it worse.

The room is too small, much too small, and it’s about to get smaller.

I have to get out, get away - not too far, just not here, right here.

I rise from the bedside, almost stepping on Sky’s tail as I shuffle my way out of the door. Pushing past the family members that have gathered out on the landing, weaving between the bodies that line the stairs, barely registering their presence as I make my way down the corridor of this old patchwork house.

Father had talked for years about knocking the old place down and starting again but, every time the place needed expanding, the herd’d always end up just buying another old house and bolting it on wherever it’d fit like some kind of residential Frankenstein’s monster. One thing was for sure, it certainly made for some interesting corridors - corridors that I now wandered through purely on autopilot.

I hear voices, I know I’m not alone, but I can’t answer them right now. Questions, questions, so many questions. They want to know, they want to hear - about their grand-herdmother, or great-grandherdmother, or aunt, or great-aunt, or sensei, or friend or whatever the hell she is... was to them. But I can’t tell them, not right now, not any of them... I can’t tell them a thing. Not now, maybe later... not right now.

I stumble into the kitchen, dropping onto my rump in front of the large oak table, not even bothering with a chair, or a cushion, or...

My eyes fall in and out of focus, the old hand-carved detailing around the edge of the huge oak table swimming in and out of view, my chin meeting the warm, old wood of the table top. Time slips away from me, the sounds around me meaning nothing. I’m sure some of them voices, I’m vaguely aware of my name being called, but there’s just not enough of my brain working right now for me to respond.

I feel a prodding at the edge of my mind - my children, blood and not, enquiring, wondering. I ignore them too. Not now... not right now.

I should be detached... I’m trained to be detached. I’ve seen death many times - though not in the way that my sister, creator keep her, could - and I’ve always managed to hold my emotions in check. I fall back on my years in the field, decades of experience, to try and push back my emotional self... to push what I’m feeling away, to pack it down, compartmentalise it, store it for later...

But I can’t.

My mother is dead.

Not my birth mother... no, she’s upstairs, flapping her gums while my mother’s body slowly cools, heading its way off to room temperature, the earliest stages of decay well on their way to setting in.

Twilight tried, by the great keeper we all know she tried, but we all know just as well that Lyra was the one that really raised the three of us. She was always the one we’d run to if we’d had a bad day. She was the one we sought out if we were injured, or scared. She was the one we’d call on when we had trouble with boys, or our herds, or our kids, or our jobs. To us, Lyra was... she... she was home. She was the one we ran to, she was the one we really wanted to be most proud of us, to make smile, to hear calling out our names as...

But she’s gone.

The kitchen clock ticks away, high on the wall above the doorway to the main dining room. It ticks its steady beat, just like the one on the bedside table - tick follows tock follows tick follows tock. Onward it beats, forever onward, beat after beat after beat, a steady rhythm, the heartbeat of its mechanical life.

As the world turns, so do the hands of the clock, minute after minute. My eyes watch the polished brass of the minute hand, but my mind only recalls the memory of its twin upstairs, just a few feet above my head.

Twelve-oh-one-ay-em.

Double-naught-oh-one.

One minute past midnight.

A single minute into the new day, a single minute amongst many, seconds passing in an otherwise ordinary day. A life ending exactly a hundred years after it had begun... a mortal coil shuffled off after a full century. A life long lived, then suddenly over. Almost thirty seven thousand days, over three billion seconds... and for what? All gone... just like that.

Detached. I need to stay detached... I can’t deal with this right now.

My nose twitches, a shape moves before my eyes, across my field of vision. My chin still rests on the table top, the bone-line of my lower jaw pushing against the hard surface, the pressure reminding me that the world... the real world, still exists all around me.

A soft thump, something placed on the table in front of me. My nose tells me what it is, the unmistakable scent of hot sweet tea flooding my nostrils. My forehooves reach out, unbidden, moving of their own volition. They circle the stout old mug, pulling it closer, the heat from the scalding liquid within seeping through the thick ceramic and into my hooves.

I sit, for a while, the heat from the mug warming me, pushing its way up my arms, bringing me back to the here and now. Funny, I hadn't realised how cold my body had become. The word ‘shock’ floats up from the back of my mind. Ha, so even if my brain’s stopped functioning properly at least it’s still got the decency to let me know why.

But will it always... will it always be there for me, or will it leave me high and dry towards the end... just as it did for...

When I finally cease to function, when my brain winds down for good, when it’s time for me to... Will it be like this? Will my family be by my side? Will my last mortal view be of my blood as they gather around? Will my final thoughts be shared with my children, both near and far? Will they feel me slip away as I go? Will I go out with a smile, just as Mother did?

What more could one ask for?

The tea’s good. Warm, sweet, just what the doctor ordered. Well, not really, but it’s working now at least. Helping rather than hindering.

I can feel, or sense more like, someone settling down next to me. Whomever it was that had given me the tea, no doubt.

They lean closer, wrapping themselves around me. I can feel their warmth, smell their scent. I know it's Father, come to check on me, come to console me. I lean into his chest, his arms wrapping me tight. Well into my seventh decade on this planet and all I want right now is for my father to hold me, and rock me, and stroke my hair, and tell me that everything is going to be alright.

And he does; he holds me and rocks me and tells me what I so desperately want to hear... and I feel nothing. Because it won’t... it won’t ever be alright again.

My mother’s gone, and she’s never coming back.

Author's Note:

Someone asked me once if everyone would make to the end of the story alive. When you think about it - do any of us?

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