Back Where You Started

by B_25

0 – "How Does One Format One-Shots?"

I awoke in a land of happiness and knew it to not be of my own. I didn’t know how, or more importantly, why I was standing at the center of that town – but I was here, and that was all that mattered.

I walked the dark streets. I gazed at the unique structures. There were other ponies on those moonlit streets, like me expect without the wings and the smiles. I tried doing that – not ripping off my wings, but trying to smile.

I smiled back at the ponies who passed me by, and I didn’t know why. Then, for whatever reason, my eyes became attracted to the golden rays of light flashing through the windows of a bar.

I had nowhere else to go, so I pulled back the wooden door to the establishment and took a step inside. There were more ponies hear, at the tables and behind the counter, laughing all the while, playing their games of cards.

What was I doing here?

I didn’t know. But where else would I go? Where else did I belong – I may have felt out of place, but this was the only place where I was here. I approached the counter of the bar while inside my head of thoughts, wondering if I could partake in fun happening all around me.

“What’ll be?”

I was more surprised that he had seen me amidst the fun than by the question itself. I coughed into my hoof to buy me some time to think of an answer, taking longer than I should, for I wondered why I always had to think of what I should say.

Why don’t I ever let just let the words escape past my lips, unhindered?

“Do you charge for water?” I asked with a guilty smile. “If not, I’ll see myself out.”

The bartender only chuckled as he placed a glass before me, filling it not with water but a liquid I was all too familiar with. “Your kind needs something that burns rather than soothes. Don’t worry about the tab, Jumbo over there has it covered for the night.”

I take the glass to my hooves and the rim to my lips. I glance over to the table of my creditor, seeing him dance atop the damn wood, as those gathered around it cheer him on. As I took the first sip I realized something about them: they didn’t care that they looked like fools, so long as they were having fun.

I blinked. My chest burned. I pulled the glass away from lips, only see the contents gone.

“Told ya, son,” the bartender said as he brought the pitcher over the counter, pouring more liquid into my glass. “Just have a little more, and you’ll fit in just fine. Say, how long have you been here for?”

“Me?”

“You’re the one I’m talking to,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Just how long have you been stuck in this town? Don’t you ever wish that you was the one that created it?”
“Uh…” I squeezed my eyes and shook my head. The world didn’t feel okay, and I didn’t know why, as I plunged the liquids down my throat. I sputtered, then spoke. “I just got here moments ago, and even I’m not sure how.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’ve seen your face before, I know just who you are. You’ve here long ago – you even had once a home among those golden times.”

I blinked. Then suffered. An influx of memories surged through my drunken body. I would have puked, but I did not want to be rude. So I held back my bile and thought back to those brighter days, only to realize it was those whom I was remembering was what made them bright.

“Where are they?” I asked, looking around the bar as if they were there. “The greats that brought light this town. Those happy few that brought us together. Where are the ones whom we all looked up to?”

“Dead or gone,” was his reply. “Either they finished their course in this town and moved on, or they died in a way that is more than physical. I almost began to count you among the latter...what are your still doing here?”

I thought about the answer. I let time pass by as I thought it would surely come to me. Life continued, fun was still had, though it was not the giddiness that I once knew. I wondered why I was still here even though the town was dimming, but that was then when I realized.

“I’m here because I have nowhere else to go,” I said, not quite knowing why. “I’m here because I’m here. I’m not deluded enough to bring back that golden light, nor do I think I’ll ever improve into some that could – I’m simply here to return to my cabin in the woods, and finished that which I started.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

I blinked. The contents of my drink were once again gone, as were more of the patrons of the bar. “You can complete your work into what it was meant to be, but will there be anyone else to read it – will you even be around to read it completion.”

I was silent because I did not have an answer.

“Have you ever thought about the sacrifices you’re making by producing mediocre works?” The bartender asked me, though I knew he was no longer that. He was closer to me now, and I almost couldn’t tell the difference between us. “About the school you could be doing better in, the work where you could be excelling in, the life you could actually be in. Instead, you stay in your head to work out plots that still do not work, and spend hours a day hammering out words that are worst than the ones before.”

I tried to pull away, but the gravity of the other kept pulling me in closer.

“There’s no improvement, no one to read your stories.” The other gripped me by the throat and rose me into the air. I was so terribly light, and it wasn’t because I was a pegasus. “You produce for a silent crowd. Those who know better aren’t a part of them.”

Finally, at last, not knowing why, I flexed my hind legs and bucked the bartender in the chest. He flew backward, into the wall and slid down it with a thud, before I was the one looking down upon him.

“When did you become such a cliché?” I said, not quite caring how I sounded at the moment. “And you’re right about everything. I’m in a cycle that I can never break out of, but crying about it won’t do anything.”

I turned around and made for the door – I would return to my cabin soon enough.

“You know that I’ll never leave you,” a voice came from behind me, both from inside me and not. “Because you need me. You need me to tell you what waste you are, how much better you could be spending your time – I am the pathway to the answers that you seek, and that’s why you need me.”

I opened the door to the empty streets. I almost couldn’t see the moonlight.

“So long as you stay in this place that many have abandoned years ago, I’ll be with you – it’s the same with most of the greats here,” the voice said as it became distant to my ears. “So long as you continued to live, I’ll never leave your head.”

I smiled as I stepped out onto the dark streets.