//------------------------------// // [=____Betwixt____=] (convergence) // Story: Hexagons: Part l // by Wand3r3r3 //------------------------------// ~~~~~~~~~~~ Blistering cold pangs surrounded Rose's body, waking her up with violent results. She worked her eyelids open into a wide slit, finally; she could see a bright white light that violently struck her vision. She immediately shut them again, and rightfully so, but not only was it the piercing white light trying to enter her eyes, no. There was a soft, fluffy weight that pinned her whole body into such a tight constraint that she fought so hard to break. Once free, she allowed her head to fall further under the weight, where she made the sights around her out to be snow. Her thoughts did not race as of now, but she was still in a panic: details of her situation were flooding back. "That storm... How could it have gotten so...out of control..? To bury me??" With her body now free, she felt as if she was nimbly 'floating' in midair, and so she 'swam' upward, where she hoped was a surface level to all this 'snow' around her. The weight of it all soon became nothing to her, but the pain she was writhing in became all the more clear, with all the more inches she cleared. She summoned a super-strength from her deepest depths in order to continue her ascent, but it was so strange that she needed to in the first place: Rose hardly felt a few dozen pinpricks on her body while climbing that mountain; after the sun had set that day, everything seemed to change. Even with the suffocating weight all around her, hindering both her movement and her mind, she needed not struggle to take a single breath, just as before... "Nngh... Ha-aah..!" Though, she could surely feel the icy pinpricks pierce right through her coat. Her senses and bodily needs were confused and contorted. She scrambled for the air that she suddenly craved — her lungs had never felt as empty as they did in those dire seconds. "App..bloom!" She was freezing, but she refused to stop fighting. Her reasons to live were drastically dashed without little Applebloom at her side. The filly must have been scared sick after escaping whoever that was up there on the mountain, and Rose prayed to every god to forbid the opposite outcome. But was Rose even still alive? All of this felt like a dream to her... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Depths of Dejection~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ---Betwixt--- *** ** * After some amount of time, her head penetrated a sudden surface to the ocean of white matter she swam through. There was no way to tell how close she was, but she ignored explanation and quickly grasped the solid surface, cursing out and sucking air in simultaneously. She quickly mounted a firm hold, but her hooves started sinking back underneath, thrusting right back down into the boiling cold. It was then that her pain threshold was crossed; she cried out to no one but the mercy of the storm, in all futility. All of her facial features flinched and her head shivered uncontrollably under a brand-new kind of cold that lashed at her face, all under the gusts of whistling winds. But she could not falter, so with a firm resolve to climb slowly and painfully up onto the surface, she distributed her weight across a small space, inhaling deeply. She crawled her belly along the soft cushioned ground, quickly gaining a sloppy stance onto her legs. She didn't waste any breath on words, but the silhouette of the very same cylindrical spire she had fallen from was something to behold, to exempt from the rule. It was to be her guide. "Why is that mountain so special? What's going on?" She proceeded to walk her weary legs toward the blurry sight. And all the while — and once again — her body felt like it was undulating in the hold of the winds. "Is this even...Equestria?" A much more powerful flurry of winds washed along her body like a tidal wave, and she couldn't believe that it almost lifted her off of her legs. She fought them using all of her similarly diminishing might, but withal, her hope resurged in the form of her destination becoming clearer than ever, with the final flurry acting as a cleanse for the air around her. Many meters she had traversed, lifting her legs with an unknown, incomparable strength that the extreme conditions could not halt, all while the sun above looked as ill as she had ever witnessed it. It sent down terribly bright, peach-colored light that saturated the snow below her with a sickly-tinted colorless radiance, but the many swift-moving clouds above offered her eyes protection from potential blindness. "I'm getting closer," she muttered. Her body felt heavy, but it did not ache; .the more distance she covered, the more weightless she felt. Perhaps her mind was merely trying to comfort her, to coax her into reaching her goal. But more importantly, she made out a sense — and sight — of progress over the strange land she traversed, quickly finding herself in an auto-pilot state. "Where in the world else would I be?" she debated. "I know that's it... That's where I fell. That's where she's got to be..." She didn't realize it, but she was quickly approaching the precipice of a massive downward slope that sank deep within the ground, with exposed rocks scattered throughout the misty view. And where a wide valley laid as paved as can be, the huge earthen spire stood erect in the center of it all, reaching to what could only be seen as the heavens. Had she not been at the height of her senses, she could have easily met her demise at the climax of the sixty-foot drop. Pale particles weighed over her eyelids, but she glazed her sight down the slope, picking up every detail she could possibly perceive. She inched her neck as far as she felt was manageable, at the very edge, but she was losing her balance fast. "F-ff! No!" There was nothing within her hooves' reach to cling onto. There was hardly a chance she would survive such a great fall, with gravity juggling her lithe body upon all those rocks... "I can't die..! I'm not!" She readied herself for the initial impact, anticipating it to come sooner than later. But despite her finding time to look down at the valley below, it was still so far above her. Her flinching eyes relaxed and her body, while still tense and filled with adrenaline, remained far above. Relief far superseded the need to watch her own life flash before her eyes — she shook her head in disbelief, bending her neck down to look at herself. Rose's front legs were hardly even visible, even against the contrast of the dark rocks scattered down the rough slope. Her modest imagination prompted her to lay a hoof upon her chest, to feel her heart thump, but no physical contact was made. Instead, a force similar to magnetic repulsion pushed her hoof away. The sensation brought a quiet quake to her legs that made her stumble, but instead of steadying her hooves on a solid surface, her legs merely hung down from her barrel. Her weight was now so inconsequential; her physical body was no more. "That's it, then." Her voice quivered; she was absolutely mortified; her vocal whines were alleged to be as weary as her spirit was doubtlessly destitute. "I can't believe this," she whispered, "It's really...real. This is really what happens to ponies when they die... But why me?" Rose was aware of all the stories: for all of her life, she found the majority of the stories engrossing and compelling, but never had she thought that she would depart that same life as a Crystal Pony. She knew as much of their own story as what was told in text — she knew all that was meant to happen upon a particular pony's death, but she concealed no wings nor did she wield a horn. She was not special, so despite the many passages that promised post-life immortality only for those marked at birth, why was she an exception to the rules? Though now, he'd have all the time in the world to spend chasing after every detail as to why if she so chose. An eternity... But Rose's eternity would have an epilogue, written by none other than her own actions and words. Though neither would tangentially touch, nor have ears to hearken, she would find a way to mend everything within the power that she wasn't even aware she now possessed. "We'll be together again, Applebloom." Her spirit was reinforced by her physical invulnerability, and so she glided down into the barren valley below. As she closed the distance, a circular blizzard raged on, as incensed as the one that threw her off into this unknown land. It quickly enveloped her body, where she felt absolutely nothing — another thing that wasn't supposed to be: In the wide narrative of imagination, one would be inclined to believe spirits of the deceased to be affected by the hydrogen atoms of the complete substance of water, more so than its oxygen half. That was the truth for all Crystal Ponies...but again, she was exempt from the most major rules for one reason, or another. The blistering cold wasn't weighing her down and she did not falter in the heart of the most violent of gales. And her mind grew so shallow so fast...until it was populated only by thoughts of her dear filly. And so, unsure for their fate, she clutched onto the smallest of fragments of a desolate hope. "..if we'll be anything at all..."