A pony came to visit me today. She has roots, but did not carry an axe. She has wings, but did not sit on my branches. She has a horn, but did not do anything impossible.
I fancied her immediately. I still do not know why. She felt warm and full and I wanted to drink her in like sunlight. I had never felt anything like it before. I had never seen a pony act like her before either. She only sat in my shade and wept, staring at the ruins of the castle.
Perhaps she lost her home in the town. But many ponies must have lost their homes, and none of them have come here. Only her, and she does nothing but sit. For a long time.
She sighs, and then her horn glows. The glow lasts until the sun has set and the moon has risen into the sky.
I have spent many centuries looking into the sky, and the last few centuries of sky have been unobstructed by branches. I have seen the moon many thousands of times, but it looks different tonight. It is marred by a stain that I have never seen before. Perhaps the smoke from such a great fire rose so high into the sky that it has sooted the moon itself.
I feel the pony’s roots pull up from the earth as she flaps her wings. Lost in my thoughts, I had nearly forgotten she was here.
The moon draws her like a moth. She ascends, pauses, and alights on my uppermost branches. This is very confusing. She perches, light as a feather, but her mass is… solid? She is sturdy, immovable, yet fragile as a bird.
I feel her roots reaching into me, through me, down to the earth. Her feathers stretch toward the sky as she whispers to the moon.
The moon seems very far away. I doubt that it can hear her.