//------------------------------// // Desert Daze // Story: Amethyst Star Isn't Prepared For This // by MagicS //------------------------------// Blob. A blob of darkness with glittering sunspots took up everything she could see and feel. A sudden flash of green occurred in the corner of her eye. In the corner of the space she occupied as her mind drifted and warped, being shaped like a ball of clay. Starbursts and other explosions of color became more frequent. Some loud, others quiet inside her head. Amethyst Star heard and saw as well as she could in this chaos. Ever shifting from something to nothing and then another something. She was aware of... things. Something? Voices, shadows, figures, familiar and unfamiliar. Her subconscious mind slipped out like a leaking water balloon. Water of memories and feelings crushing her, pulling her, encompassing her. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. What was that? What was that? What was that? Amethyst Star, what was that? Amethyst Star, the pony. The unicorn. The pink and purple. Gemstone Cutie Mark. On a trip. Where? Where? How long? How long? What had she seen, where was she going now? Laughter. Orange laughter as Amethyst Star watched her shadow run through a forest, box upon box, crate upon crate, piled on her back. Weighing her down. The pony turned pack mule ran up a mountain, climbed it until every single one of her possessions fell and was lost to the darkness. A flying mustache came and grabbed her in its hairs, taking her and throwing her downhill where she rolled and rolled along with the boulders, ducking and dodging between the huge balls until her hooves were rolling on top of them as well, forced to balance and run on the colliding balls like a circus performer. It all fell out from under her while she swam through molasses with other strange shadows chasing her or running ahead. Mocking her. Laughing at her. Saying they were better than her. What can she do? What can she do? What can Amethyst Star do? Spinning round and round, her head, her body, the world, all spinning so much. A tornado around her that would not abate. Photographs spilled our of her head that each contained a memory and action of Amethyst Star’s, they all flew together to create the perfect collage of her misadventure and failure-riddled journey. Her friends and their shadows were they to pick them up, point them out, and laugh, laugh, laugh. Those shadows morphing and twisting and pulling her friends along with them, turning from pony to demon that laughed with big pointy teeth at Amethyst Star and her tribulations. Wings wider than the sky opened up behind the shadow and a horn taller than the mountains shot up from it, purple and red and white flashes of color overcame Amethyst Star, knocking her down and down again. The shadows and colors turned to nothing but gray, her blurry vision stuck on it, unable to process anything more. The grayness never became anything solid, always changing, always contorting around Amethyst Star and forcing her to swim through the murkiness. An absence of color, an absence of feeling and emotion, a grayness emptier than pitch black. “I told you you would regret this, did I not? Well don’t come crying to me.” “Don’t come crying to me.” “Don’t come crying to me.” No happiness no sadness, nothing but gray, Amethyst Star wants it to go away! The feeling of being pulled along on a track came to Amethyst Star, she looked to her sides to see roses climbing up all around her while she was stuck and unable to move by her own power anymore. An endless farm of roses came up to surround her, a sea, a countryside of roses. Red, white, yellow, pink, all the natural colors of roses but then even more that were dark blue, or striped, or spotted in multiple shades of a color, roses that could never be found in the natural world. But more than any of those, black roses rose in rows behind all the others. “I did warn you not to go in, didn’t I?” The rainbow road of roses came together over her head, merging into one single black rose that opened up and swallowed Amethyst Star whole. Vines and thorns were all around her now, as tainted a black as the petals themselves. Roses and roses and black roses among them. Amethyst Star’s mind was a daze, an impossible to reconcile cacophony. Her thoughts more muddled than any strange thing she had seen in this infinite landscape of shadow and color. A star. A star. A white star now. Overhead, growing in size, coming closer. Threatening and unreal in a way no star should be. Where did it go? Why was it here? What was Amethyst Star to do? Fail? Fail. Fail again? Was that all she was, was that all she could do? Is that her adventure is that where she went, was there nothing else to do? Wasn’t she more or could she be even less? No! No. No, no, no. Amethyst Star knew what she was, so much more than everyone thought. So much more than everyone said or how everything looked. Where was she? Where was she? Where even was she now? Amethyst Star, is this what you wanted, was this a good idea? So much coming, so much right ahead. Dazzling light and shaking ground, singing songs and painful cracks, ponies racing and racing by, was that adventure? Confetti! Confetti and more confetti! Was that for Amethyst Star? Bring it here! Bring it on! Amethyst Star was prepared! Was she? Was she? Colors and colors, so many more, all of them coming together again, blinding white light and a big smudgy blur, Amethyst Star slipped and slipped and fell and fell. Sand and sand, hot and hotter. A feeling she was well familiar with. Where was the water? Here was the water. Drinking and drinking it down. The world still blurry, the world still tumbling, the world still melding and twisting together. No. No. Untwisting, unfurling, everything coming around. The colors changing, the infinity shrinking, all the thoughts and memories spilling back in her head. Rewinding. Returning. Water running past her lips, invigorating. Amethyst Star coming back, her body and mind and unicorn self. All of it shifting and sliding back into one. Wobbly on her hooves, was she on them at all? The desert, she remembered. She felt again, felt for real this time. Strange. Uneven. Unpleasant. Amethyst Star stood up. Amethyst Star fell. Everything a fog, everything she had seen gone. Sick. Unwell. Trying her best as always. Amethyst Star slowly continued on.