//------------------------------//
// Somehow You Would Be Here 
// Story: Wishing You Were Somehow Here 
// by anonpencil 
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~*~

An hour and a half. 

It's much longer than I'd meant to stay, but I think it was well-needed. Bourbon Barrel talked my ear off about the new foal his daughter had, how he hoped it wouldn't inherit his eyebrows, how proud he was. And he asked about you, how long we'd been together, what our plans for the future were. I dodged that last question pretty well at least. To be honest, I almost told him more than once about the liver issue. But he was so happy, and I was so happy, and all I really wanted was a break from everything. Including my own mortality. A brief drink with an old friend, and a chance to simply forget everything else outside of those walls. That's what that bar had always been for me before, and I didn't want it to stop now. Given how much lighter my chest feels after that short talk, I can't say I won't go back there sometimes from now on. You know, just to chat. Well, and that grape juice didn't taste too awful either. 

The sun is getting lower in the sky, and the shadows around me are beginning to jut out like charcoal smudges on an ill-kept canvas. Ponies have mostly gone inside, and there's a light wind beginning to blow again, like it was doing earlier in the day. But at least I know where I'm going, and I won't take long to get there. With any luck, I'm right and there aren't a ton of clues left for me to discover. 

I round the last turn past the houses of Ponyville, and spot the pond with the willow tree drooping low over it. Its leaves no longer shine with a brilliant red gold like they did on the day we had our first date here, even though the late afternoon sun shines and dances in the surface of the pond now. Most of the leaves have fallen for the season, and the nip in the air reminds me that winter will soon be upon us. I suppress a shiver as I hurry over the brittle grass towards the tree, hearing the way the wind rustles its branches together like some sort of wooden mobile. With one easy glance to make sure I'm alone, I slip between the dangling branches, and find myself standing alone within the dwindling shelter of the canopy. 

I look up at the branches and slope of the tree above me, and turn in place so I can see the places we lay, kissed, laughed, fucked, all on that day which feels so long ago. There's a tugging at my chest, perhaps in the direction of Manehattan, where you surely are undergoing test after test right now. I wonder if you're thinking of me, missing me, or if you're just focused on whatever task is at hand, as you were always good at. I wonder if you're thinking about our date under this willow, perhaps knowing I might be here right now, just as you planned. I wonder if you're homesick.

Come home to me, Anon. The willow isn't as pretty in the winter, but I'd still love to show it to you.

I shake off the feelings that are beginning to weigh me down, and take a page from your book: Focus on the task at hoof. I scan the trunk of the tree and the branches, to see if you've tied a note on to one area or another, but nothing catches my attention. Besides, you would have wanted to make sure no one saw the note and grabbed it themselves, and you've been pretty meticulous so far. No, it'll be in the roots somewhere, near where I'd lay my head and tried to catch my breath after all was said and done. 

Sure enough, as I look around the base of the tree. I see a glimmer of white amidst the shadows. With a triumphant little smile, I reach down and pluck it out. When I open it, it's far more simple than I had though, especially after your most recent poem. 



	The most beautiful thing in your home.

	Love,
	Anon



Well, at least you're being courteous enough to get me back inside before dark. The anemia that occasionally wracks my body makes me feel cold so much easier now, and my liver probably isn't doing my immune system any favors. I'm at least grateful for your thoughtfulness, even if I'm annoyed by the vagueness of your most recent message. The others were clever, witty, but this? 

I grumble at you as I put the paper away and once more direct myself back to my home. It's admittedly frustrating to know that, whatever this final prize is, you probably hid it back in my place and I didn't even notice. However, there's one small, terrifyingly optimistic part of me that hopes you've gotten me out of the house because you're home, and were planning a surprise for me when I walk in the door. Maybe you'll be standing there, arms open, telling me welcome back and that you'll never go away like that again. After all, if I were to come back and find you in my house, I'd say you were definitely the most beautiful thing there.

But I know that's not how this works. As magical as this treasure hunt has been, you've got things to do in Manehattan, and you won't be back for quite a while yet. Whatever awaits me at home, I can't let myself believe it's you. Because otherwise, whatever gift you've left me will just be a disappointment. 

~*~

I pull the door of my house shut behind me, and lock it with a satisfying click. It's good to be home, even if I'm home alone now, and even my breathing echoes in the room. My muscles are sore, and I realize I probably haven't walked that much in months, but hey, exercise is supposed to be good for you, right? I let out a long sigh as I recollect my thoughts for a moment, and try to figure out what exactly you were trying to get at with your clue.

If we're going strictly by what I think is the most beautiful, there's that cheese in the fridge. But I already checked that, and you haven't dared to touch it, thank Celestia. You might be referring to the photo I have of you and me together at the autumn festival out by the Apple farm, because to me that really is an image that melts my heart. But, from where I stand in the doorway, I can see the photo  near the kitchen, and it looks untouched. To be certain, I wander over and pop the back out of the picture frame, but there's nothing there but the date that I scribbled on the photo, so I'd never forget it. I growl to myself in frustration as I replace the back of the frame and turn towards the rest of my home. 

It's somewhere here. It's got to be somewhere here! Could it be the bed? You don't really like naps, same as me, but you do love to get a good night's sleep. I practically canter to the bedroom, but I again find that there's nothing suspicious there. Okay, then maybe it's the vase where I keep flowers you bring me, like you did before our first date. Back to the front of the house, but there's nothing amidst the still wilting flowers from the last time you decided to surprise me with roses. I really should clean those up, I note, I just haven't had the heart yet. Alright, alright, so not the vase. There's that really pretty pair of earrings you bought me, but I think I find those prettier on me than you do. Sure enough, when I pop open the little jewelry box, there's no sign of a note. That lamp with the stained glass? Nope. The record player that has your favorite tune still loaded on, ready to play? Nothing. 

"Damn it, Anon," I hiss as I search the area pleadingly with my eyes. "What the hell were you getting at?"

Think Berry, think! You're better than to be outsmarted by some numbskull human, even an incredibly attractive one...

A bath? I love baths, even if you don't seem to like them, preferring showers to soaking for long periods of time. Maybe you would try to convince me to take a bath after my long day of walking, and it does seem suiting seeing as the hunt began in the bathroom. Maybe you'd want to end it there too. And I swear to god, if I find out that this whole quest ends in "your adventure was the real treasure!" then I am going to punch you in the face as soon as you get home. No regrets, right in the face. No one likes a cop-out ending. 

However, the light of hope has begun to glimmer inside of me, and I hastily make my way to the bathroom, almost slamming the door shut behind me. I race to the tub, opening each shampoo bottle in turn, only to find liquid suds inside each. I check in the soap dish, under the tap, inside the drain, between the curtain folds. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing! 

I can feel tears of frustration again rising to my eyes. I'm so close. I can feel that I'm near the end of all this and I've done so well, and to be stopped here in my own home? It feels so pathetic, so useless. I push myself away from the tub with a grunt of anger, more at myself than you, and put my hooves to my face to try to hold back everything I'm feeling. I can do this, I tell myself. It's here somewhere. Even if I can't find it right at this exact moment, I will find it, I am able to do that much. For now, maybe I should step away, take a breath, get a glass of water. Look at it with fresh eyes after some time has passed It's getting towards night, so it might be time to have dinner and refuel my brain so to speak, give myself some of the much needed self-care you'd remind me I need to have. 

I give a little nod, just to reaffirm to myself that this is a good idea, and wipe at the budding liquid that was trying to leak past my tightly shut lids. My face feels sticky from effort, a little gross. Even without you here, I still don't like to actually feel gross, even if I'll occasionally skip a bath or two. Shaking off any lingering feelings of inadequacy, I turn to the sink and lower my face towards the bowl to splash water against my cheeks and eyes. As I bring my head up, I blink at myself in the mirror, noting the damp circles of purple beneath my eyes, the curve of my pale cheek bones getting more prominent. My...

My.

Me.

I stare at myself for what seems like hour, afraid to move or breathe, like I might lose track of the obvious thought screaming at me through every nerve. At last, I shut my eyes, trying and failing this time to hold back a new, fresh set of tears. You said I had to find the most beautiful thing in my apartment, and you meant by your standards. Of course you did. Of course you'd do this. You don't use that B word often in reference to me at my own request, but whenever you do I feel a tightness in my stomach, a pause in my chest. I blush, and you love it when I blush. You tell me I'm beautiful when I blush, which only makes it worse. 

I had been wrong. You did use me as a clue after all. 

"Damn it," I mutter as I hastily wipe at my face. It's to you, to me, to my own frustrations, to the fact that I didn't get this one sooner. "Damn it, damn it."

Even as I say it, I'm smiling.

I cough and swallow a few times, and everything threatening to overflow from me subsides somewhat. When I open my eyes, my own face is looking back at me. No longer pale, there's a rosy glow to my cheeks, a blush spreading across my nose and up to my ears. If you were hoping to make me blush with this, and I suspect you were, then mission accomplished.

Nowthen, where's the actual clue? I feel like I have the obvious answer, but there's still no sign as you what you meant by pointing me here. There's got to be something more. I sniff back any additional moisture, and search the edges of the mirror for hidden paper, but find none. I check the top, almost having to stand on the bowl of the sink to do so, but there's simply no paper there. Perhaps there's another mirror in my house I've forgotten about, or maybe I was wrong after all. Or maybe you wrote it with invisible ink somehow. Like...

No, you wouldn't do that, would you? It's too cheesy, even for you. And yet, it makes sense.

My eyes narrow in suspicion, and I check to make sure the door is fully closed before I turn my attention back to the sink. Keeping my eyes on the mirror, I twist the hot water knob until a steady stream is pouring out into the bowl. I even plug the drain, so it begins to fill slowly and surely with near-boiling liquid. After a moment, I see a hazy fog begin to creep up the bottom of the mirror, like frost turning water into ice. As it reaches the middle of the surface, I began to see shapes, unwilling to fog, take form. My eyes widen, and I feel my mouth began to twist into a smile. Ah-hah! I knew it! It's the old chapstick writing on the mirror trick. Still, pretty corny as far as your clues have gone so far, like something right out of a bad romantic comedy. Not that I'm upset, it's still kinda sweet, in its own way.

I give the cold water knob a quick twist as well, releasing a larger billow of steam into the air. Before long, your words become very clear:



"Read to me."



This clue only takes me a very brief moment to figure out. It's something I've said to you a few times when I've been sick. Sometimes, when there's cramps, and mucous, and chills, and nausea, it can be impossible to sleep. In one, nearly fevered night, I remember I called to you from across the room and asked for help, some help, any help in taking my mind off of what I was feeling. At first you'd been at a loss, just repeating that you wished there was something you could do. Then, like a lightbulb, you'd remembered that I had quite a collection of books in the room, and you'd grabbed one at random from my shelf. It had been Grimm's fairy tales, a rather macabre choice considering what I had been going through. However, it had done the trick. The sound of your voice, even, calm, and soft, had carried me through the night, and when I awoke in the morning, I felt better. It was probably the only way I would have gotten to sleep.

You also said you'd sung to me while I slept, though I don't remember it. It's still a nice thought.

Since then, when I felt really bad and couldn't sleep, I'd asked you to read to me. In that silly, childish voice that comes out when you feel really vulnerable, I'd given soft pleas of 'read to me,' and you'd rarely turned me down. A few weeks ago, you'd gotten a cold as well, and this time it was my turn to open a book at random. As it had worked for me, you'd fallen asleep to the sound of my voice. It was a gift I was only too happy to give, considering how many times you'd done the same for me.

The thought of it all tightens my gut, but I'm too excited about knowing this new clue to feel too broken over it. I turn off the water and rush out of the bathroom, practically hitting the wall as I round the corner to my bedroom. As I look towards the bookcase against one wall of my room, my eyes scan over every shelf until they find something odd. Something out of place. But something I never would have noticed unless I was actually looking for it. Where my volume of Grimm's fairy tales usually sits, there's what looks like a wadded up cloth stuffed between two books. I crouch down to sit on the floor, and use my hooves to tug whatever this strange thing is out of the shelf. As it comes free, it spills into my lap, several objects all coming loose between my legs. 

The first thing I see is that the cloth object is one of your shirts. It's one of your relaxing day shirts, a loose and easy fitting one. You wear it around the house, even to bed, but you usually take it home with you rather than leaving it here somewhere for me to deal with. I've always said you look like a slob in it, and of all the shirts you could have left behind for me, I'm sure you could have chosen a better one. But at this exact moment, as I look down and see it, it's one of the most lovely gifts I could have ever imagined. 

I hold it up to my face and breathe in deeply, and your smell fills my lungs. It's shocking how much it makes me feel less alone. I genuinely wouldn't have thought that just a breath of you would be enough to ease an aching part of me that I didn't know was in such pain. I take another long breath, like some sort of addict with a new stash of drugs, and breathe out away from it. Don't want to put my own smell into the cloth right now, better to preserve this scent for as long as I can. I'll probably need it multiple times during your absence.

As I lower the shirt from my face, I spot the other two items on the ground. One of them is a long, metal-tipped quill, probably a hawk feather from the striping on it. The other looks like a leather-bound book. As I open it, I instead find that it's a pad of fine parchment, encased in a fancy binding. It's lined, the way I prefer it, and the paper looks to be of very good quality, and smells of fresh balsa. I also quickly spot that the first few pages of the pad are not blank. My breathing stops, the air still tasting of you trapped in my lungs. Effortlessly, my eyes flit over the words you've left me, my body frozen as if each sentence is a spell you're continually weaving. 



Berry,

Congratulations, you did it! Was that so hard? I hope I haven't made you too mad at me, sending you all over town only to bring you back here. You can yell at me for it when I get home, if you want. I wouldn't blame you. 
But I wanted to let you know that I'm proud of you for everything you did today. You went to some very interesting places, some I'm pretty sure you didn't want to go to. I hope it was fun, and that you got to see some familiar faces, and I hope that by the end, this prize will be worth it. To be honest? The previous clue was actually the treasure, as far as I'm concerned. You're my treasure, Berry, and don't you forget it. The quill and the parchment and shirt are all just secondary things, trinkets to keep you company while I'm away.
But they're honestly not the treasure at the end of the map, either. You might notice something in common with all the places I've sent you. At least, I hope you did. If you think about it, before you read to the next line or two, you should see that I did have a purpose in everywhere I sent you. Try to guess it before I just come right out and tell you, if you can.
...
Give up?
Every place I sent you was a piece of our pasts. You get to see a piece of where I came from back on Earth, and you got to see a piece of where you came from, even if I scratched it out for you. You got to see where we met, back when we refused to be anything more than fuck buddies and friends. You got to see our first date, the first of many. They were all places with fond and maybe rough memories. And now I've brought you back here, to the present. And hopefully, to the future.
See, I hated leaving you. I hate being without you, and I know that in Manehattan, I'll feel miserable without you around. I know we'll call and write and everything, but it's not the same. And I don't want to be without you like that anymore, if I can help it.
If you're up for it, maybe, when I can get home, we can arrange it so that I don't have to leave anymore. Even for the night. I've always been bad at coming right out and asking for things that I want, but I don't think us living in two different places works anymore. At least not for me. So, if you want to, I'd love for us to pick your place or mine. And not just for sex this time. I hope me asking for us to, you know, live together is a prize rather than an extra source of stress for you. You can always tell me no, I'll be happy just to see you again. But I hope you'll say yes. It's a little selfish... but I'm rambling, sorry. I talk too much sometimes, even when I'm just writing I guess.
In the mean time, I have a request. I've left the parchment pad because I know I'll be missing you like crazy out here. Wondering what you're up to, how the treasure hunt went, how you're feeling, if you're healthy. So, if you want to, I'd really like for you to write to me. Write me a letter, write me a whole damn story if you're willing. If you're lonely like me, write about how much you miss me and how great it'll be when I come home. Tell me to come home to you. I miss you already just writing this.
Anyway, you'll wake up any minute now, so I really should finish this up. I look forward to hearing what you have to tell me (including an answer?), and reading whatever you write.
I love you.

-Anon




This time, as I read all that, I didn't even try to stop the tears. 

I've slept with the shirt you've left me every night since then. It's losing your smell, but the feeling of it against my body still helps. I've been to the bar a few times too, just to chat with Bourbon Barrel. You'll have to go in next time with me, because he'd like to get to know you better. And boy, does he have stories about me that I'm sure you'll be dying to hear. I've tidied up around here some too, but I've left the chapstick on the mirror to greet me whenever I take a bath. It's soothing to see it there, even if you can't read to me from so far away. And I've made sure to take my meds every day, and try to eat regular meals, and drink water. So far, I haven't gotten nauseated more than once in your absence.

I'm doing okay here. I'll be okay, just like I said. Take care of yourself too, because I want you back in one piece. You're precious cargo, so handle with care.

I hope this story is enough to tell you everything I've felt, everything I still feel. I tried to get all the details right, all the feelings, sights, sounds, smells. I'm not the best writer, but I did my damnedest here and I think it shows. It's the least I can do after you set up that whole hunt for me. And yes, I did have fun, but I might still yell at you when you get back. Only a little. I hope that this finds you in good spirits, and it brightens your mood rather than bringing you down. You asked me to tell you to come home, and I have, and I hope you know I've meant every word. 

I'll say it again: Come home to me. I miss you. I love you.

So, what is there left to say? Thank you for what you’ve done, thank you for loving me the way you do. I appreciate this way of keeping me company, making me feel cared for, wanted, less alone. All that being said, of course, I’ll still end this with a cliché sentiment that I feel every damn word of when I wake up without you here:

I love you. Wish you were here.

Love,
Berry

P.S. My answer is yes.



-END-