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// Chapter I:  I Remember 
// Story: A Kind And Loving Heart 
// by SapphireWings999 
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I woke with a start in the bed of my local psychiatric ward, eyes wide open and gasping for breath.  I’d had the same dream every night for over a year and a half as I’d been in and out of the hospital more times than I could count.  The rose colored sphere, the full moon, the small, mysterious figure who stared at me with glowing eyes.  What did any of it mean?

I’d tried drowning it from my mind several times in the past, a task that was far easier said than done.  I had much better thoughts to dwell on such as finding my missing daughter, Ariel.  It had been 5 years since she was stolen as a baby and my beautiful wife, Savannah, was murdered trying to keep it from happening.  All those years hadn’t done anything to diminish my determination at finding my daughter and bringing Savannah’s murderer to justice.

That fateful night played through my mind just as fresh and horrifying as when it first occurred.  Despite soo much time having passed, aside from my thick stubble and haunted eyes, there was very little difference between how I looked then as opposed to now at 30 years old.  My black hair was still in the same new wave, Anime look as before, if not slightly bushier, and my physical appearance/build had hardly changed all these years later.

O.K.  O.K.  Maybe I’d put on a little extra weight since then, but nothing too extreme.  I mean, give me a break.  I still worked hard to make sure that I was in decent physical condition and I doubt that anyone out there would’ve gone 5 years or so without having some form of change come over them.

Sitting up in my bed, I put on my glasses after rubbing the sleep out of my eyes before leaving my room to get breakfast.  I know that a lot of people will frequently complain about how nasty hospital food tastes, but, when you’ve been in there for as long as I have, you kind of become accustomed to it and it doesn’t seem all bad after a time.

As I sat in the kitchen eating blueberry pancakes with syrup, bacon, and a bowl of Frosted Flakes, I began pondering all that the day had in store.  Today was supposed to be the day of my discharge after spending a couple months in the nuthouse already.  Every time that I’d been sent there after yet another psychotic episode, I tried to do everything within my power to convince the doctors there to let me out.  Ariel needed me to find her and nothing was going to put a stop to that.  Trying to convince them was one thing, actually succeeding was another.

With me being in and out of the hospital as many times as I had, any real friendships that I might’ve had had been pushed aside as I spent most of my free time looking for Ariel.  Many of the disability checks that I’d get every month would go towards the best investigators I could afford.  Even with them searching as much as they did, no leads ever came up.

Having moved back in with my parents several months after Ariel’s disappearance, they tried to discourage me from blowing through money on investigators as much as I did.  My bank accounts were practically non-existent at this point.

I really hated living like this.  No.  I take that back.  I really hated existing like this.  If I were truly living, I would’ve been able to find some enjoyment in life.  I might’ve hung out with friends more, gone to see a movie, attended a concert or convention, met new friends, something that any normal person would’ve done.

But that was the key word there: normal.  I was anything, but.  There had once been a time where I’d believed the fantasies I’d imagined about travelling to a world of ponies, even believing that 6 of them had actually visited me and Savannah all those years ago.  I’d blamed all of them for her death in my rage filled realization that I’d lost both her and my daughter in the course of a single night.  Not to mention the little one Savannah was carrying at the time who I’d never get the chance to meet.

Earlier on, when I was first admitted after the incident and an attempted suicide or two, I’d talked with the psychiatrists frequently about the friends I’d once had but pushed away when I’d needed them the most.  They saw this as nothing more than my schizophrenia acting back up, my inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, and, as such, they saw this as an opportunity to “cure” me, whether I wanted to be or not.

As me and Savannah had been the only ones who could recall seeing them before her death, no one else would believe me about these former friends of mine and I slowly started to forget about them as the years went on.  I now believed what the doctors had tried soo hard to get into my head, that they were nothing more than figments of my overactive imagination, meant to fill some need that I felt was lacking in my life.  Any memories of them I might’ve had were now nothing more than fragments.  Even the “cutie mark” that I had on both of my thighs I now believed were simply tattoos that I’d gotten many years ago.  I’d been cured by them alright, even if I wouldn’t have wanted to admit it at the time.

As I finished off my breakfast and placed my tray back on the rack, I went over to the TV room to kill time until my parents would come to pick me up and bring me home.  Not much longer now.


*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *


About a couple of hours later, I’d arrived home with my parents and my 2 youngest brothers, Matthew and Micah.  My other 2 brothers, Timothy and Stephen, had long since moved out, leaving only the 4 of them living in our house.  At least, until Savannah’s death and Ariel’s abduction.  My parents were very understanding of the hardship that I’d been going through with the loss of my family and offered to let me stay at their place for as long as I needed to in order to get back on my feet.

Entering the house, I was swiftly greeted by the family cat, Pepper, as she walked up to me and began rubbing herself against my legs.  Picking her up, I cradled her close to me while she was purring up a storm.  Pepper was a very finicky cat who didn’t get along well with other people or even other cats.  In fact, me and my dad were the only ones who she seemed to genuinely like.  If I ever held my hand out in front of her, the 2 most likely reactions she’d have would be to either lick it or rub her face against it.  I guess you could say that I just had a way with her.

I held Pepper for a while in my arms before setting her down on her cat tree and heading upstairs to my old room.  Upon entering, I saw that not much had really changed since my admittance.  There were still the stacks of boxes from my old house that I very rarely went through anymore, my bed was in the same place as always, and the walls still had that bright chartreuse color that they’d always had for the past decade and a half, give or take a year.

Even with everything that remained the same, naturally there were many things that had changed in the past several years.  I was reminded of all the famous people who had long since passed on during that period.  Some of the ones who stood out the strongest in my memory were Chester Bennington of Linkin Park via suicide (boy did that one really hit home hard for me), Martin Landau who I mostly remembered for his roles of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood and the voice of 2 in 9 (a personal favorite in the realm of animated movies), David Ogden Stiers who voiced several Disney characters from my childhood, and even the legend to end all legends, Stan Lee, creator of one of the biggest media brands ever with Marvel.

At that moment, ever soo briefly, a small sliver of remembrance came back to me; a memory from shortly before Savannah was murdered and Ariel kidnapped.  A memory about some friends of ours, whom said memories of were somewhat fuzzy, having a marathon of all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that had come out at the time.  Although, not just the MCU, but the animated Disney movies also.  As I tried to remember the details harder, it all just slipped from my mind, like sugar through a sifter, and I lost it entirely.

After that brief reflection, I turned my attention back towards my current surroundings, notably all the boxes that remained unopened.  Mom had offered several times to help me go through the boxes and organize them, but I didn’t feel like I needed her help.  This was my stuff that I needed to go through and decide for myself what to keep or throw away.  I still liked to maintain some sense of privacy in my life, one of the few things that I felt I had any sort of control over anymore.

It was then that I went over and picked up a random box from the pile to go through.  Opening the box, I found several notepads, notepads that contained songs that me and Savannah had written and story ideas that I’d come up with long ago when I was still a writer.  I scoffed at the contents that lay in front of me before taking the whole box and dumping everything in it in the trash.

Suddenly, while emptying the box’s contents, I heard a small, metallic clink in the trashcan.  Looking inside it, I saw a small necklace amongst the notepads, standing out about as much as a fox in a chicken coop.  Yet something about this necklace seemed vaguely familiar to me as I reached down to pick it up.  Looking it over, the first thing I noticed were the 3 gemstones that rested inside their respective ovals: Emerald, Sapphire, and Ruby.

That small glimmer of realization burst into a full on flame in my mind once I flipped it over and saw the inscription carved into the back of it.

Equestrian Son/The victory won/Return to thy home

Just like that, everything came flooding back into my mind with such intensity that I had to sit down on my bed for fear that I would lose my balance on account of how woozy I suddenly felt.  I now remembered everything.  I remembered the show I’d once enjoyed watching, I remembered when I’d first visited Equestria almost 8 years ago, and, most importantly, I remembered the friends that I’d made back then.

However, I was also reminded of that fateful night when I’d denied our friendship and turned them away.  I’d said hurtful things to them that I’d never meant, telling them that they could go take a flying leap off of a balcony for all I cared.  Most painful of all, though, was the looks on their faces when I’d spoken with such malice.  All 6 of them looked scarred by my venomous comments towards them.

Letting out a deep, sad sigh at remembering these events, I realized that I needed to return to Equestria now more than ever.  My friends had been carrying that pain I’d inflicted on them for far too long and I needed to renew our friendship by any means possible.  Would any of them accept my apologies?  I didn’t know.  I certainly wouldn’t forgive myself for what I’d said back then, but it was far more important for me to let the past die and try to start anew.  Plus, the change of scenery might be nice after spending soo much time these past 5 years in psycho wards.

Most importantly of all, I needed to do this for Ariel and Savannah.  The more I thought about those toxic memories or even the words I’d said to my friends, the more I knew that neither one of them would want me to hold onto either.  If I was going to try and make a fresh start for myself and those friends I’d once cared about (and still did even now), this would be the proper opportunity for that.

Gathering a few of my belongings (mostly some extra clothes I shoved into my backpack) and putting on my favorite leather jacket (just in case) before speaking the inscription on the necklace, I didn’t know how long I’d be in Equestria for.  All I knew was that I had a duty to rebuild the bridges that had been burned all those years ago and I was willing to spend however long I needed to.  As I jumped into the portal that opened before my feet, though, wings sprouting from my back and pony ears emerging atop my head to replace my human ones, I had no idea what was in store for me on the other side.