Sometimes you can't quit while you're ahead
Ash. The only taste I can remember. I have words for other tastes, but I don’t remember what they mean. Sweet, bitter, green, wet, sour. I think those are tastes anyway. Or they referred to food. Or to other things.
I remember what hard means. Hard refers to the chair. Hard, and black, and brittle and burnt. I remember what these mean, because the chair is these things. These things are the chair.
I sit on the chair. Sitting is what I do, and that’s what the chair is there for. The chair’s always been there for me to sit on. Even when there was still food, and color, and things that weren’t hard, black, brittle, and burnt.
Sitting on the chair is the most important thing. For no reason must I ever stop sitting on the chair. That’s the most important thing. I must never, ever stop sitting on the chair.
It’s very difficult sometimes. Sometimes the sun shines in my eyes, and everything gets hard, black, brittle, and burnt. Even me. But then the big red ball moves away, and the hard-black-brittle-burnt flakes off me, and under it is red-sticky-soft, and then that becomes white-fuzzy-soft. And then it gets dark and cold. And then the sun comes back and it all starts over again.
The walls help. I don’t think they used to look like this. I feel like they should be white, but not fuzzy and soft like I am. No, they should be hard, that part is right, but they shouldn’t be black. I don’t know if they’re brittle. They’re not close enough to the chair, and I must never leave the chair.
The wind is something else. It’s soft, but not like I am. I can touch it, but I can’t touch it. It’s more like it touches me. Sometimes it brings more bits of ash, making soft-black-burnt piles in hard-brittle-black-burnt corners. I can touch those, because there’s one next to the chair. It’s also soft but not like I am.
Then there's the floor. It's quiet most of the time, but sometimes it bounces and rattles, and all the little piles of ash jump in the air, and sometimes I can hear sounds outside. Big, loud, heavy sounds. But it all stops eventually and I stay sitting in the chair like I have to.
The floor's moving now in fact. It’s bouncing again like it always does, making the chair bounce too. Sometimes the chair bounces closer to the funny part of the ground in front of me. The part called stairs. Sometimes it bounces away from them, but today it’s bouncing very close to the stairs. I don’t know what happens if it reaches the stairs, but I feel like something should. As I bounce closer, the feeling gets stronger. Something is going to happen, I just know it.
The chair bounces onto the stairs. And then it throws me out.
For a moment I’m not sure what happened. There’s still hard brittle black burnt, but it’s in the wrong place. It should be under me and behind me, not in front of me. But there’s nothing behind me, only in front of me. I start to look around, and then I see it.
The chair is behind me. I am not on the chair.
Nothing happens. I am afraid but nothing happens. I don’t know what should happen but I know it’s bad because I am out of the chair and that is bad. Maybe being out of the chair is the bad thing, but this isn’t bad. Maybe I’m still in the chair, because if I was really out of the chair, it would be bad, and this isn’t bad. Actually, it feels--
--good? Is that the word? I think it is. I think it feels good.
I must still be in the chair. I guess I didn’t know what being in the chair was. Or maybe something else is the chair? What if all this is the chair?
I start to move my legs. They make a lot more sense now that the chair isn’t that tiny not-chair I was sitting in. It’s good that I sometimes stood in the not-chair, or else I don’t think I’d remember what my legs are for. They’re for moving around the chair, which makes sense, because the not-chair isn’t the chair.
My legs are very bad at moving around the chair, and most of the time they just move me over sideways. I feel like they should all be under me, though, so I keep trying to do that. Sometimes, it works, and it seems to make a lot of sense, but it’s very hard, so I mostly just let them move me sideways. It’s strange feeling hard things in places other than behind and beneath, but I like it. It’s different.
The room is different too. When I’m not in the not-chair, I can see out the windows. There are more walls outside, big pointy ones I couldn’t see before. They look like my horn, except really amazingly big. Maybe there’s another me out there to go with the horns?
I move sideways out the holes in the walls, slowly making my legs work better. They’re making more sense now, and it works better to move forward and back more than sideways. By the time I get outside the walls, I’m moving more forwards and less sideways. I like this much more.
There are so many more horns outside. Lots and lots of them, but no mes to go with them. They’re just big horns on the biggest floor I’ve ever seen. And then I realize that this new floor is on an even bigger horn, one so big that I almost think it's a wall, all broken and craggy as it reaches up to the sky. In the other direction, the new floor just ends, and far below it is an even bigger floor. It stretches on forever, not flat like the other floors but curved and uneven, every inch of it black.
I’m getting better at walking. I walk around all the horns. Closer, I keep feeling like they shouldn’t be black. I want them to be white and… other things. Things I can’t remember. All I know is that they should be white and something else. It doesn’t feel good, feeling like these horns should be different. Maybe I left the chair when I went out to the horns.
Then I see something new. Not a horn, not a wall. It looks just like me, only burnt and black like everything else. It doesn't blink or walk or sit like I do. It just stands there. And there are other things, like me but smaller and wrong. Some of them are missing horns, some of them are missing wings, and some of them are missing both. They all look like they're trying to lay on the other me, wrapping their legs around. There are strange shapes in the bottom, and as I look at them, I feel almost like I should hear them.
"In memoriam."
There are more below, but only some of them are sounds. The rest are just cracks.
"#h#ugh #####ve go#e, w####ll ne##r f##get y##."
All at once, the good and the bad feelings get even worse. I really want them to stop.
I try going back to the stairs and walls and the not-chair, but the feeling doesn’t get any better. Now I feel like everything should be white and other things. Things that itch. Things that bug and trouble and feel bad. I try sitting in the not-chair, but the feeling doesn’t stop. At least I know the not-chair is definitely not the chair now.
I go back outside the not-white walls, and look at the not-white horns. I look at the black floor, but even that looks bad now. Worse, I don’t even know what it isn’t. I know the horns should all be white, but I can’t remember what the floor should be. I just know it shouldn’t be black.
I have to find the chair again.
I look around, but all I see are horns. There are the little horns all around me, and the big horns that the little horns are built on, but I know none of these are the chair. There’s another horn, though, a different horn. It’s not built on another horn, and it’s tall and narrow out in the middle of the floor. Just looking at it, I know it’s different than all the other horns. It’s a special horn, one that makes me happy, and sad. Maybe it’s the chair?
I start walking. It’s hard, especially when I get onto the big horn. I go sideways a lot, and sometimes the horn is already so sideways that I keep going sideways and I feel hard stuff all around me over and over and over. But it always stops, and I can always keep walking, and I do.
The wavy floor is so much bigger up close, but looking at it just feels even worse the closer I get. I feel like it should be fuzzy and not white, but not black either. It shouldn’t even be fuzzy I think, but almost-fuzzy. It doesn’t feel quite right, but close. Better than hard and brittle.
That other horn keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s so tall and narrow it almost looks like a crack in the sky. The sun comes up while I walk, and I turn black and brittle again, and my walking makes the brittle flake off, so the red and sticky can turn black and brittle too. It feels so familiar, it makes me forget about the almost-fuzzy not-white floor, and the horns that should all be white and other things. Then the sun goes away again, and I think about all the black things that shouldn’t be black and I feel bad again.
Maybe the sun’s the chair? But it’s the sun. How could it be the chair?
The horn just keeps getting bigger and bigger, until it looks higher than the sun. Around it, there are lots of walls, all flat and low. On them I see strange shapes, shapes that should be sounds, just like the good-bad me I don't want to think about. “Administration.” “Flight control.” It all makes my head hurt, and I have to sit down. This place feels the worst of all, but, at the same time I almost feel happy. Better even than the chair. The chair has to be here. I’m only ever happy in the chair.
I have to keep looking.
I keep walking, looking at more shape-sounds. “Mana-accellerator” “Recieving.” I wander and wander until one shape-sound makes me stop. It’s bigger than all the others, standing on its own, black against the black sky. Something about it feels terrible, but I can’t look away, even as the sun comes up. Then, as my eyes turn black and brittle, I can see it clearly.
“Celestia Memorial Spaceflight Center.”
And everything comes rushing back.
We don’t understand it.
We’ve tried everything.
Even severing your magic didn’t work.
You’re tethered to it.
We can’t stay.
It’ll cook us all.
We’re sorry.
I turn towards the sun. The sun that burns me. The sun that traps me. I turn and I try to cry with the eyes the sun took from me.
“Damn you!” I scream, the light burning my tongue to ash in my mouth. “Damn you!”
The sun leaves, and I get my eyes back. I get my fur, and my wings. But not my tears. The sun keeps those.
I turn away, leaving behind the memories. The memories of the ponies that I loved. The memories of the ponies that I hate. The memories of the ponies that I let go. The memories of the ponies that left me.
I fly back into the half-melted palace. To my upturned throne. No, not a throne anymore. Just a chair.
I set it back on its spot. I turn around, and I sit down. I wait. I wait to forget everything I know. Every thing but one.
I must never, ever, leave the chair.