“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth
It came on as it must, with the speed and inevitability of a glacier.
I stopped laughing at things. I knew, intellectually, that they were funny and that I found them funny, I just couldn’t muster the humor in my soul.
Getting out of bed seemed pointless, and it eventually got to the point where Chrysalis would use her magic to lift me out of bed and put me on her back before going about her day. When she did so, I was like a cat who simply couldn’t be bothered to fight being picked up for the nth time that day.
Of course, every time she did so it reminded me of the two cats I’d left in my apartment when I died, and I had no way of knowing if they had been taken care of or not, which would be particularly tragic because Freya had bonded with both of them. JoLene’s family were highly unlikely to let her take them in, and since JoLene never earned enough money to rent an apartment, let alone support herself and Freya and a pair of pets they were likely to be sent to shelters.
Ronnie was a shelter rescue twice over, I adopted her when she had been returned to the shelter for unknown reason. She had a crumpled ear, had likely been born that way, and in spite of her perpetually chill attitude nobody wanted her until I came along. I was sincerely worried that she’d be put to sleep because nobody would adopt her for a third time. Murphy was a street rescue, but her chronic health problems meant that she was likely to be put to sleep before even having the chance to be adopted, simply because it would cost too much to get her healthy enough to adopt.
I slowly lost interest in talking about the hive. A part of me was wondering just what the point was. Chrysalis was there and not planning on leaving or dying anytime soon. She was as old as (if not older than) Celestia, so it wasn’t like old age was a factor. I didn’t see the point in learning what was going on around me, especially if I could just send a query to the hive mind and get enough of a response to wing it from there.
Even in dreams it was noticeable. They went from being active and vibrant to being dull, listless extensions of routines. I repeated my daily commutes numerous times. Road trips where mile after unending mile of nothing but ranch, farmland, and desert went by and were replayed over and over. I counted inventory in a warehouse of blank boxes that I never opened and then recounted them. I fixed the same computer again and again and again, and it was always the same damn problem.
“Chrys,” said a concerned Nightmare Moon after interrupting one of these dreams, “I’m getting worried about you.”
The clipboard I’d been holding in my human hands clattered to the floor as Nightmare’s presence caused my changeling body to reassert itself. I sighed and sort of sagged against her, “I know, and I’m grateful, really. Chrysalis is worried, too.”
Almost absently she draped a feathery wing over me, “We can play another game of, what did you call it? Doom? Would that help?”
I did smile at that. One of the nice aspects of being friends with a being that could invade and control your dreams was the ability to access pretty much any memory and play around in it. Considering how much of my later teenage and early twenty-something years I spent playing both the original Doom and it’s sequel, all we had to do is have Nightmare pull up the level maps and monsters from the archives of my subconscious and we could have all-night co-ops and deathmatches the likes of which most gamer geeks could (literally) only dream about.
Nightmare liked it because it was rather like the days of tackling tyrants and slaying monsters before her banishment. Honestly, I think she just liked the guns. Modern Equestria may have cannons, but to the best of my knowledge they hadn’t even had those in antiquity, so she spent quite a bit of time playing with the firearms. And giggling. I kid you not, she would pull the trigger, watch an imp or a zombie take damage, and start giggling. The shotgun really set her off, it had quickly become her favorite weapon when we played. She wasn’t too partial to the double-barrel side by side shotgun, she felt the rate of fire was too slow, so when we decided to shotgun-only games, she got the pump-action and I got the side by side. I will say that breach-loading is MUCH faster and easier when you’ve got magic to assist.
The less said about when she got the chaingun the better, other than if you remember the maniacal laughter from the two-part series opener of MLP, then you have a small inkling of how she behaved when she got her hooves on it.
Amusingly, the energy weapons she was less enamored with. I think it was because they were so similar to what she could already do with her horn, massive destructive effects of the BFG-9000 notwithstanding.
I sighed, “No, but thanks for not calling it, ‘Death by a thousand thunderclaps’ this time.”
She pouted, intentionally trying to be cute, “I only did that the one time…”
I snorted in something that was almost a laugh before slipping back into silence. I looked at the boxes I had been counting and sighed again, leaning my forehead against one of the shelves. “I wish I could tell you to spend your time with some...pony else, somepony who will be better company, but that would not only be incredibly crass and insensitive to you, it would also be the worst thing in the world for me right now.”
For the rest of the dream we simply sat in a poorly lit warehouse, her wing over me and tears not quite reaching my eyes.
-~<^>~-
Recognizing that I had to keep myself moving (a lifetime of clinical depression does wonders for learning coping mechanisms), I took to taking walks around the hive. Many times I did this without the aid of the hivemind unless I got lost or stuck somewhere. I wanted to get an intuitive feel of the hive without having to rely on input from the other changelings unless necessary.
Sometimes a drone would accompany me, I think it was just Chrysalis keeping an eye on me when she was particularly worried, but they generally stayed quiet and let me do my thing.
Sometimes I’d make the journey to what in the hive qualified as a library. I would find a book and start...attempting to read it. It was slow progress, but progress it was as I started discerning what constituted a letter, and then a word in the looping scrawl that was Equestrian writing. Even the press-printed books used that loopy script, even if it was more blocky than the hoof- or horn-written forms.
I had started discerning enough to recognize when a book was targeted at young readers (which I was) and when it was a book that had lots of pictures by nature of the book. An anthology of flora and fauna whose target was an audience of university professionals, for example, was not really good when one was attempting to figure out which squiggly line was the equivalent of the letter A.
They could really use a copy of Pete the Cat. I wasn’t sure if this was indicative of the state of the Equestrian print publishing industry or just what Momma Chrysalis thought important enough to bring back to the hive, but these books weren’t even Golden Book level. The “art” was pathetic, and the lettering seemed to imply some connection to the picture, but when I would grab the occasional literate drone to read it to me, the line of text had no relation to the rest of the page. This would frustrate me enough to grab for a pen to start working on my own book to show these wankers how it was done, only to remember that my magic wasn’t up to it yet and I hadn’t figured out how to even hold a pen with hooves, let alone do anything resembling art or writing a whole book. Often, this would be the most emotion I would feel in a day, and within minutes of stomping out of the library in frustration, I’d be back to dragging my hooves.
At least the massive growth spurt I was experiencing wasn’t requiring a new wardrobe every few days, given that we didn’t wear clothing. When I hatched I was smaller than an adolescent housecat. I didn’t have one to compare sizes to, but based on how I compared to Chrysalis, I’d wager that a toy chijuajua could have taken me in a fight. Now I was more in line with a Maine Coon cat. If my growth was going to top out to be around Chrysalis’ size, I’d probably be around six feet tall once I was a fully grown queen.
Speaking of growth, some of the larvae that I used to play with were approaching their first molting. They were big enough to be a challenge once they got underhoof if they ventured into the other areas of the hive besides the nurseries. I did my best to play with them, but most of the time I was so emotionally numb it was clearly just me going through the motions.
During the few months after my wife left, thanks to what was legally required by the state of Arizona, I was given time with my daughter. This was before the family courts had done an actual investigation into my wife’s claims that I was abusing her and our daughter, so it would still be a few months before an officer of the court declared on the record that the abuse claims were bullshit. Being the father, I had no illusions on where I stood. If the courts had found any cause to entertain the abuse claims during the investigation I’d have lost access to Freya, possibly for over a decade. During these times I was permitted to be with my daughter, I was in so much emotional pain, coupled with the fear that this might be the last time I might see her until she turned 18, I was pretty much in near catastrophic depression the entire time. It was a very good thing these visits were to the Children’s Museum, because if we had been in any other situation where there wasn’t so much to distract her, Freya would probably have picked up on my mood.
So it was with the larvae, they all remembered how I’d been and could tell that I just wasn’t as engaged as I used to be. Bless their little hearts, they tried to cheer me up, but it simply wasn’t enough to overcome the massive, crushing weight on my soul.
Soon enough, the caretakers came to collect the larvae for a naptime, and I was left with my thoughts again.
-~<^>~-
After I first told Chrysalis about my nightly “friend time” with Nightmare Moon, she removed me from my protected room and kept me...jacked in (if you will) to the hivemind at all times. It took quite a bit of persuasion (and two nights where I couldn’t get any sleep thanks to the hivemind keeping me awake) to get her to let me have my room back. The night she let me back into my room she insisted on sleeping in the bed with me, the two of us forming a minimal hive mind as I finally slipped off to dreamland.
Nightmare was there waiting for me. “Where have you been!?” she tackled me to the ground and hugged me close, “As depressed as you’ve been when you didn’t show up I was worried…”
She was interrupted by a clearing throat. Chrysalis stood over us, glaring down at Nightmare Moon. The Mistress of the Night scrambled back to her hooves, suspiciously studying this unexpected development. “You...aren’t part of Chrystal’s dream.”
“And you,” replied ‘mom,’ “Are not welcome in my hivemind. I told you this last time you tried to invade my changeling’s minds.”
“Mom,” I snapped in warning, “It’s OK. If I hadn’t wanted her here I’d have told you when she first showed up.”
Chrysalis glared at me, “Yes, and we’ll be discussing what is and is not appropriate for you to allow into the hivemind when you’re properly rested. Something I’m here to ensure happens, by the by.”
I rolled my eyes, “I was wondering why you were suddenly OK with me sleeping in my own room again.”
“She is not some child for you to coddle!” snapped Nightmare at Chrysalis, “She is an adult with a greater depth and breadth of experience than most of even the most seasoned of Our little ponies even in the height of Discord’s reign!”
“Moony, cool it down! And don’t be hyperbolic.” I snapped, “Mom, she’s a friend, and one who’s been trying to help me.”
They glared at each other, “How,” asked Chrysalis, “Has attempting to gain a foothold into the hivemind been helping you?”
I groaned, “Oh, for the love of…”
I was interrupted by Nightmare this time, “What would We gain from your hive mind? The best way to mix bug spit with mud to make building material?”
Ugh, if this got any more salty I’d be able to cure fish. I transformed into my Princess Columbia persona, “Enough!” Nightmare was once again startled by how much like Celestia I looked and Chrysalis was taken aback by her daughter taking the guise of one of the alicorn princesses, “This is my head! Last I checked, I got to decide the rules in here.”
Apparently, the fighting was feeding my subconscious enough material that a night terror was starting to form and my ‘disguise’ to drop. Of course, with the hivemind connection and Nightmare’s influence, it was a bit broken. The zoo enclosure that tried to wrap around me was missing parts of the walls and ceiling, and of the people on the other side of the glass, the only two who weren’t merely vague shadows were my ex-wife and daughter. They were still as statues, the abortive nature of the dream keeping it locked, like a frozen holodeck.
“...what is this?” asked Chrysalis, glancing around the fragmentary room and focusing on the two figures through the glass.
Nightmare wrapped a wing around me, helping me to deal with the feelings of despair and hopelessness that always accompanied the night terrors. “This is one of her nightmares, a place the darkest parts of her mind created to taunt her.” She used the other wing to point to the figures of JoLene and Freya, “Those are the people she loved most in her previous life, and now they are forever beyond her reach.”
Chrysalis’ searching gaze flickered from me to the figures in the window and back. She walked up to and through the barriers, Nightmare sensing what the Queen was wanting to do lit her horn with her magic and locked the two figures in place while the rest of the night terror dispersed like fog. She carefully studied the dream people, her gaze lingering for some time on their faces. “When you described humans to me, my daughter, I admit I didn’t quite visualize this.” I once again had tears that didn’t quite form enough to leave my eyes, humming quietly in agreement as she examined them. “The smaller one, I assume this is the daughter you’ve spoke of?”
After receiving my confirming nod, she returned to her examinations. I hadn’t thought at the time that it was anything unusual, I was just glad they’d stopped fighting. Nightmare hugged me close again.
“Don’t think your closeness to my daughter has slipped my mind,” said Chrysalis without looking up from her studying, “I would ask your intentions toward her.”
Nightmare snorted in amusement, “She is the first friend I have had in nearly one-thousand years. She knows the pain of banishment and being taunted by that which you desperately want but cannot have. She is a sister-in-suffering. If, when she’s old enough,” this last part was directed at me, Nightmare giving me a bit of a good-natured stink-eye as she said it. I rolled my eyes, “If she chooses then to pursue something more with me, then that is up to her.”
“For heaven’s sake,” I said, “I know as a changeling I’m less than a year old, but I lived until I was forty as a human.”
At this Chrysalis and Nightmare shared an amused glance. Mom returned to her examination as Moon chose to tease me a bit, “Thou wouds’t need another hundred or so years before being considered anything like an equal in age, child.”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
-~<^>~-
A few days later, the depression had caught up to me fully. I was in my room, the lights reduced as much as they could be without snuffing their magic entirely, slumped in the bed in nearly the same position as when I’d awoken. I had stirred enough to use the bathroom, my liquid intake resulting in the attendant biological processes to get rid of the waste and excess. After that, I returned to my bed.
It wasn’t that I was refusing to stir, it was simply that I couldn’t seem to figure out why I should. As much as Nightmare wanted to help, she was only delaying the inevitable. My dreams had gotten more and more gray, to the point where Nightmare Moon’s black coat was the most vivid color in the entire dreamscape, save only her purple cutiemark.
I started humming intermittently, a tune teasing at my memory. For some reason it was stuck in my head but not enough for me to identify it. As I would hum, a piece or two would emerge, connected to emotions and jumbled scenes from memory. After a few bars where I’d have to skip sections I’d get frustrated, give up, and silence would resume, and then the tune would get stuck in my head again, and I’d start humming again, and the cycle would repeat.
At some point, Chrysalis entered the room. She didn’t try to get me out of bed or cajole me into action. She simply climbed up onto the bed next to me and stroked my hair, listening to me trying to assemble a half-remembered song.
During one of these refrains, a lick of the lyrics floated into my consciousness along with the smell of dust and cardboard, and it flooded back into my memory. I had heard it first while I was doing an inventory job I’d landed during the divorce. The courts had just ruled that I would have full parental rights and responsibilities it was pretty much all over except for the negotiation of who’s house Freya would live with and when. The heartbreak of realizing that I was divorced in all but the signatures on the paper had been haunting me for days until the song The Greatest Bastard randomly came up on Pandora. I openly wept at work, having to take a break just to process the grief.
Unnoticed by me, my horn lit up and started playing the plucking of a guitar accompanied by the gentle swelling of a string section. I didn’t realize the instruments were audible, as I was only hearing the sounds of the music from memory.
As I started singing the words, some part of me knew that Chrysalis was hearing everything, but the words were pouring out of me in a flood, and as though they were connected with chains, the hurt and anguish that had been eating my soul was being pulled to the surface.
The song was a ballad of sorrow, the tears of a lover who’s lost their greatest love. It recounted the joys and sorrows of the shared journey they had. The sublime happiness of togetherness and growth. It held the tender notes of apology and understanding that what one person brought to the relationship wasn’t necessarily what the other wanted. It was the pain of realizing mistakes were made and could never be undone, and the understanding that blame was either shared or could not be assigned to anyone. It was an acknowledgement that the love hasn’t ended, but the relationship has. Poured out into the melencholy tune, the minor key, and the octave shifts of the voice was the heartache of knowing of the missed opportunities and unfinished business that could never be completed.
As the final sung notes escaped me, notes of just pure sound without words, tears were flowing down my cheeks freely. In my mind’s eye I saw my wife and daughter as they would be in a perfect world; in perfect health, smiling, and all their cares attended to. I saw them on the beach in San Diego, one with the cliffs of La Jolla reaching out into the surf as the sun set behind them. I saw them at my sister’s wedding in Vail, Freya falling in love with a little stuffed bear in the vacation cabin we were staying in for the event. I saw the Halloween the year before my death when the bitterness of the divorce was finally fading and JoLene and I escorted Freya around the church Trunk or Treat to fill her bag, dressed in a kid’s sized Darth Vader outfit while JoLene was wearing all blue with a novelty palm-sized TARDIS strapped to her head.
As my horn’s magic faded and the last, trailing notes of guitar strings faded into the air, I slipped off to sleep, Chrysalis curled around me comfortingly.
-~<^>~-
I’ve had the displeasure of experiencing both physical and emotional trauma that required letting the malady run it’s course, and in all cases it’s simply a matter of letting the body and mind do the necessary healing. If you’ve ever had a burn blister, you know such a thing is about as bad as a blister can get. Horribly traumatized flesh underneath a puss filled sack of your own skin, and that’s only if the burn doesn’t just blast the skin off.
Getting second to third degree burns from flaming vegetable oil is a memorable experience at any age, let alone when you’re eight. Remember kids, never let your cooking oil exceed its smoke point, let alone its flash point!
Once the blister bursts, it needs to be drained completely, and ideally washed and the wound sterilized as best as possible. After that, you can bandage it, especially if you lost the skin in the process, but it’s best to simply let it be and heal on it’s own.
Such was the case with my depression. The worst of it was finally over, and I was doing my best to return to normal activity, but the whole hive had been warned to treat me gently for a while.
A few days after my first unintentional successful use of magic (a fact that I blushed at when Chrysalis explained what she’d witnessed when I woke up later) I was on mom’s back as she went through the hive, attending her various queenly tasks. I was still a bit worn out, but I was aware enough to notice when we deviated from her usual route. “Huh? Mom, where’re we going?”
She turned and smiled at me, “I have a surprise for you, daughter. One I hope you’ll appreciate.”
A few moments later, we entered a compartment I’d never visited before. It had all the hallmarks of a master artist’s studio; paints, frames, tools, a spinning wheel for clay, unworked blocks of stone for sculpting.
A changeling of average build and dust flecked around his shoulders turned to greet us, wiping his hooves with a towel. He stepped away from the sink he apparently just finished washing in and bowed, “Your highness, your timing is perfect. I just finished the polish.”
“Excellent, Clavus. Please, show your princess what you’ve made for her.”
The changeling artist, Clavus (apparently), leapt to his hooves and trotted over to one of the large work benches. It was fairly low to the floor, and whatever was on it was covered by a tarp. Like artists pretty much anywhere, Clavus wanted to turn his presentation into a minor performance. I smiled at him, which he took as his queue to continue, and whipped the tarp off his work.
My breath caught in my chest. I didn’t realize I wasn’t breathing until spots started floating in my vision. Gasping, I turned to Chrysalis. “When I saw them in your dream, I knew what I could do to help. Or rather, what my artists could do. Clavus is the best in the hive at the moment, and I think he did a remarkable likeness, don’t you?”
Mom helped me down so I could approach the two sculptures, each carved from a single block of white and pink veined marble. For the first time since a truck blew up next to me I was looking at my ex-wife and daughter’s faces in the waking world. Not trusting my voice, I stumbled forward and wrapped my forelegs around the busts, fresh tears painting my face and dripping down on the marble. This time the tears didn’t feel harsh, they didn’t have the abrasive, almost poisonous quality of the tears of sorrow like I’d cried the few days prior. These felt like a mountain spring, and I was able to feel something I hadn’t in awhile; genuine hope.
I felt the happiness rolling off my mother and the giddy feeling of success from the artist and heard Chrysalis whisper to Clavus, “I think she likes them.”