Pupa's Nightmare in the Hospital, Semi-Ponyfication #2

The firebird's claws dropped Pupa out of a dizzy heigh from above a conifer forest into the treetops. Her fall was slowed by the thick, dense moose, that grew on the cold, long branches and trunks. She landed on an impenetrable mesh of fallen woods, moose and mushrooms. The little changeling looked around and recognized the wind carried her to where she had slept away time as a little larva, unburdened and undisturbed.

The castle's towers raised high above the trees to her side. She was in a small forest near the castle, to which she always had been able to look down to from her small chamber. She even could see her window. She stood up and cleaned the needles out of her mane, spat out some moose that was glued to her tongue.

This was the place where it all started, at which she's lost everything but won just so much more.

This was the dying space of her dreams, in the shade of old, muted trees. It was the place where she was killed, where her destiny would come fulfilled. It was where she was tormented and tortured by changelings' hooves. A prey to her mother's moods.

In the wide wilds of the forest there laid a place that was dark and where the light barely penetrated the many trees surrounding her. There, Pupa had troubles seeing her own hooves before her eyes and the branches looked like claws reaching for her. Even the undergrowth seemed to try and hold her in place.

Behind all that, among fallen trees and beneath the branches, in small holes, she saw glistering orbs that stared at her, first few than many, all around her. They were eyes like star dust within dark, broken faces, made of ceramic or chitin.

They drew their circles around the filly ever closer, and the wind carried single voices, “Did she already forget us? Did she think about us? We shall rise in every full moon's night.”

Closer to the castle was a clearing. Light rays fell through the tree tops onto a pit in the soil. It wasn't empty. A creature the size of herself stood in its middle. It stood on changeling legs and had the body of her ladybug plushy. She couldn't recognize face of the head that was loosely attached to it, and she stared in terror upon the abomination. It was looking up at her with morbid dignity, and in its chest stuck a needle. A thread span from it to one of her hooves it held towards her, as if it was pointing. Pupa couldn't tell what expression the small mouth made, but with the white hair falling like maggots on the creature's shoulders, she couldn't think of it but as the muted suffering itself.

Pupa was sure the abomination was the leader of all the eyes surrounding her when it was joined by another little changeling, then another an a dozen others. The first was another filly like her but younger. She – or it – seemed heavily decomposed, half her body but a skeleton, the other an assortment of blood drained skin.

Another was an even younger colt, from what she could tell still in grub form, with rotten flesh where later chitin should have grown. A big hole adorned his forehead, and his way to move was the scariest of all of them. Until the abomination in the middle raised her gaze to a question, towards Pupa, and spoke in a voice petrifyingly familiar, “Mommy's angry with you. You're a disappointment to her and worthless. You don't deserve to live among her.”

Pupa felt hot tears stream down her cheeks and she turned, turned to run away, but the eyes were everywhere, raising like impassable walls to every side. She turned on the spot, helplessly, and from every direction came this thunder's lament.

“Have you already forgotten us?” came from behind her.

“Have you thought of us?” It came from the sides.

“We will raise in this full moon's night,” threated what was before her.

Only the abomination in the middle stood in further silence. The figures around her, some dead, some mixtures of puppets and changelings, joined in their very own assault.

“Come, and stitch her together.
“Come, and take the needle and the thread.
“Come, lie down beside her among the maggots.
“Come, and stitch her together.”

They almost sang their dark enchantments upwards, much lower in volume than the surrounding eyes did, but well audible. Pupa pressed her front hooves against her ears in terror but in vain. It didn't make the voices go away, nor did her heavy sobbing.

She broke when the abomination in the middle spoke up, clear and above all the noise around them.

“We were not helped to live, we were not given the possibility to proof ourselves worth of being alive. With what right do you claim this privilege all for yourself? Come, stitch me together, in this night of a full moon.”

Pupa screamed, screamed louder than she ever did. And she heard, above every voice, even above the one of the abomination, one voice screaming in a tune she never heard, “I... I...” it almost seemed as if the voice had troubles forming the words, “I want to live!”

–

“Shh now,” Cerci said. She had heard her little love scream in her sleep and rushed to her side at Godspeed. The little changeling was hot as the sun and sweated fully wet. Pupa pressed herself that strong against Cerci's front hoof that she had trouble feeling it any longer. It didn't matter to her.

“Everything is good now,” she whispered, “it was only another nightmare. I'm here. Shh...” With her other front hoof she went over the head of the poor filly and pulled her closer. She was so busy calming down the sobbing Pupa that there was almost no room left in her head for the anger against Chrysalis.

Almost.