//------------------------------//
// Interlude 
// Story: The Good, The Bad and the Princess 
// by BorealStargazer 
//------------------------------//

Useless.

Shut up. Silence. Begone.

Uselessssss.

The sun burns even through the drawn hangings, a small ray beaming between them slices the soft, enveloping haze into shreds. Such rays are like measured ticking of the alarm clock in nightly silence, like drops of water dripping from a loosened faucet. You never notice one until you're in bed. You endure them for some time, reassuring yourself that the long-sought sleep will take you soon anyway to where no faucets or alarm clocks will threaten you.

Then comes a sudden urge to break something. To crumple. Tear apart. Utterly destroy.

I feel sick, I writhe in my bed but the salvation doesn't come. I'm a dirty cesspit everyone dumps their disgusting, shameful, unwanted things into.

Your choice.

My gums feel strange, aching? hurting? and I clench my teeth to a crunch. The sensation doesn't go away but grows duller. Like an itching place you've just scratched. I loosen them, and the feeling returns in force. I bite my pillow.

When novels describe the protagonist descending into madness, he usually starts seeing nonexistent ponies. He begins talking to ghosts no one except him can see, does things looking strange to any outsider, but eventually he finds his way across the abyss. He comes to his senses, his mind finally returning to him.

Horseapples.

I see only death. Death, death and death everywhere.

Dear diary, do you wish to know what did the soldier of the Sun Guard say the other day? ‘The cute one’. Cute. That's what they see. My sole function is being a decoration of the throne room. The only thing that makes me different from the crystal chandeliers and gilded armchairs is me having wings and a horn.

No one looks at me from the mirror. There are no mirrors anyway. Not a single one in my entire chambers. Imaginary interlocutors are nothing.  The real challenge is to stay alone for a quarter hour. 

You took the burden. Now carry it.

They don't see.

There are things in this world that one cannot bear. Sorrows one cannot manage. It's such a convenient thing, to have somepony who takes your pain away becoming your saviour. Painkiller. Medicine. Healer.

Who heals the healer, Tia?

Do they even deserve to be healed? I've seen them, seen them all. All the dirty laundry they wished to hide. All the things for which there is no place in the showcase of our land of love and friendship. Everything that gets stuffed in the darkest corner of the darkest, dustiest closet never to be brought back to the light.

So you yearn for forgetfulness. But how about seeing the real you? Not the ponies you want to be seen but what you truly are. Foul, wretched, envious, cowardly, depraved monsters.

Care to take a look with my eyes?