-Airship Mauled, Blade-
I clapped my hooves after we got done watching Jade’s rendition of ‘Hinny in the Hills’ done entirely in sand sculptures.
Apparently there was a spell for seeing memories and what we saw was rather beautiful, also somewhat horrifying given Jade did all that with spit and insanity alone. It was also quite sad that Kuril’s daughter went completely nuts, but what she had accomplished was fairly impressive.
The place Jaded had went to was far worse than she had described to us, so why does she have her sanity now?
“How can something made from such derangement be so beautiful?” Tianhuo asked while wiping her eyes.
“I feel conflicted about it, but Jade really did do a good job with getting most of the details right.” Fizzle muttered as she and Maries pinned Jade between themselves with clear looks of worry on their faces.
“That was just as good as the actual show.” Stated Fluttershy with a wide eyed amazement.
“It gets worse from there, or at the very least I get worse.” It sounded like that wasn’t oddest thing Jade did. “Also, it’s just too bad that no one is ever going to… wait… you all just saw it didn’t you? I’m kind of thankful all that effort wasn’t wasted and at least some people got to see it. I’m not exactly the breadwinner of my herd and I would never proclaim myself a hero, that’s for Maries and Fizzy. So again, it gets worse for me and I didn’t use Clone Jade for a while. Say, didn’t you say that you had Dispel Grace trapped in the nether realm Oleander?”
“Yes, I did at that.” Oleander stated as she nodded her head to Jade. “It’s not the same thing as a realm of death, it’s a bit weirder then that and he’s completely contained there.”
“Keep him there, I have a few ideas on how we can use that…” Jade smiled as she said this, it was a relatively creepy grin. That grin eventually turned into a frown as she looked to the two cuddling up to her. “Anyway, continuing on with the story of my time in Limbo.”
-Limbo, approximately seven months, Jade-
Just a reminder, I’m not in my right mind while doing any of this. That I can even remember it at all says something about me. To handle the horrors of being there for longer than a month without snapping would take someone with an insane amount of mental fortitude.
I didn’t have that.
“I am a blue goose, my language is chutney and I know the masters of socks!” Incidentally there are a few things I would want to do with Fizzle that involves socks, but that’s for things better kept private and we will be talking about that later on. “Please tell me where I can derive a cheese grater from a pile of buttered frocks?”
I was wallowing in the sand, I practically bathed in it and there thankfully wasn’t much of a smell to it. At least things didn’t smell horrible there and sand bathing is a somewhat relatively healthy thing to do in the desert, provided that you can shake the sand off. The weird and colorful fine sand was thankfully less irritating than normal sand.
You wonder why I’m bringing this up. Well, it’s been about two months after I finished my production of ‘Hinny in the Hills’ and I had lost all semblance of sanity at that point.
I’m going to say this now, this isn’t the first time I got stuck having to wait a long period time for things to get better.
“Is… that? Yes it is, yonder is my mortal graboid enemy Mr. Wiggler the worthless!” Ah yes, I was pointing at a sculpture of a sand worms head. Inside the sculptures mouth, there was a badly made sand sculpture of Blueblood. “He is so worthless because he won’t eat the capitalist! I shall bravely rescue the capitalist from being rich!”
I destroyed the Blueblood sculpture, by jumping on it like it was a pile of leaves.
“I am now the capitalist, I must destroy myself by feeding my body to Mr. Wiggler the worthless!” Okay, quick question Oleander, can you get memories of hallucinations? I just wanted to know, because I definitely know that I must have imagined Mr. Wiggler talking back to me.
“No I will not eat you, for you are the capitalist now!” The mass of inanimate sand spoke. “You are now too rich for my blood!”
“I refuse your refusal!” I then toss myself into the mouth of the sand worms head and inadvertently collapse a massive amount of sand on top of myself.
It took a few hours to dig out from that and this was just an example of what I did. I’ll just skip ahead to the second year when something important actually happened.
-Break-
“Wait, you were there for more than a year?!” Fizzle was particularly worried about Jade just from hearing this.
“Yes… I spent a few years there being absolutely hamstrung by insanity.” Jade sighed audibly and shivered slightly. “Surprised that I’m so sane right now? Because I certainly am…”
-End Break, Limbo, sometime into the second year, Jade-
I was still mostly out of my mind, but I had managed to remarkably find my way back to the blood pool to find out that, yes, my peach pit had grown into a little tree. I was only a little bit saner in that moment in time when I discovered it.
“The arboreal bug is a moose that goes ding!” I was a little surprised to see it had grown, also the blood pool was a little smaller thanks to the peach tree. “Imma holler you Icky Dress, I will never wear you my youth of a mother!”
I’m pretty sure I slurred the words ‘Icky Dress’, but that wasn’t too important as I had grew a friend. The tree couldn’t die and I wouldn’t either, so it was my new best friend!
Of course it couldn’t grow without nutrients, so I might have started doing some questionable… I cut myself a lot and performed a disturbing amount of bloodletting...
-Break-
“What?!” Jade’s mother Kuril was the loudest among the many friends and loved ones who shouted this, some others gasped and gave her sad looks.
Jade visibly cringed and looked quite meek at that moment, she even started to shyly wring her tail with her hands. She likely knew they’d react like that and she wasn’t about to hide what she did, as she needed to tell them everything about this and get it all off her chest.
This wasn’t exactly something you should drop quickly to try and ease the blow of it.
“Let’s be fair here, the only way the tree was going to grow is if I gave it fluids and I wasn’t exactly in my right mind so I might have… clawed myself a few times and forced myself to bleed to help the tree grow.” Putting her hands to her face Jade started to cry a bit. “I just wanted a friend that wasn’t myself to talk to!”
“Jade if you still feel like hurting yourself like that, we can get you help.” Fizzle nuzzled Jade’s neck gently. “We’re here for you.”
-End Break, Limbo, approximately one and three-fourths of a year, Jade-
“Hey Icky Dress, do you think to be a growth of great renown? Oh right, you can’t understand me… let me teach you an alphabet! Starting with A for Ass of mine… or is ass in nine? Because this place is very much like the word I’ve lost… I really need to find it again.” I looked to the tree I was sitting under. “Do you know where to find abstract letters that create a functional meaning? Because I sure don’t! What B’s are for is hives or things for a name like Blade, she’s a cool bat pony with stingers and makes buzzy noises. She is sweet on my mom like honey!”
At some point I eventually got to M. Also, yes, I was aware that Blade was attracted to mom. She was getting rather affectionate with my mother after she stopped trying to kill me.
You weren’t a very successful assassin Blade and you’ve never killed anyone. What? She needed to know that she’s better at cooking and than fighting.
“M is for mom…. I helped you be Icky Dress, so I’m one!” The tree of course did not respond… things would proceed to get weirder from that prospect eventually. “My blood is like your milk which is also an M, sustenance a mom gives you to grow!”
I really was nuts about Icky Dress, though I do have some idea of what might have become of my tree. Yes, something would happen to it or her, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing if I’m right about where it ended up. That’s for later though and I’ve been given a clue as to its whereabouts.
I got through the entire alphabet and went into a series of impossible to understand gibberish.
“Cup of the door hinge to you Icky, we need an elephant to bed and then we can pack our trunks. Yours is going to be a mammoth by comparison.” I don’t think any of what I said could possibly translated into something close to coherent. “Where is the white whale of my discontent that can make things cube shaped? I’d spear the dog with a fish steak, but it’d consume the heated byproduct of fire!”
My ability to stay a little sane came and went. I hadn’t touched the stuff I took off of me and left it sitting a short distance away from the tree, my hair was getting a bit long and my claws could have used a decent filing. I wasn’t taking care of myself very well, but I really didn’t need to in that place.
“It is vampire time, you are being big sucker for me!” So I popped my jagged claws and slashed my left arm and forced myself to bleed until I passed out. “For I am… the love of… hurt…”
I’m glad that I didn’t scar from that, but what did scar were the wounds that I got before I ended up there. Any wounds after I got there would heal perfectly.
Why yes Maries, I do have a scar on my neck as a reminder at how close the assassin came to killing me. I wasn’t exactly perfect at protecting myself from him. Of course it hurt Mara, a lot worse than when I got clawed when we first met.
Like mom would do anything to keep me safe and happy, I did the same for that tree by going above and beyond to make it grow big and strong. There were quite a few side effects to making the tree drink the fluids from my body, since I wasn’t just giving it my blood. I was also giving it my sweat and tears, mostly in the few moments of sanity I cried and in the others I exercised. I’ll get to that in a moment.
Yes, I literally put my blood, sweat and tears into the tree. I even breathed out on it a lot and it was like talking to flowers to give them carbon dioxide. I gave it practically everything I could since there wasn’t any sunlight for it to take in.
The fact that my muscles couldn’t atrophy was one of the nicer side effects of that place, any muscles torn got better quickly. Whatever was keeping me from getting hungry had a slight net positive on doing any exercise.
“It is criminal really... that barns doors can swing both ways, because no one will ever mention that revolving doors can also swing both ways and all the way around.” What? I wanted to brighten everyone’s mood a little by telling you about this. “In conclusion, this means Mexicolt Whiptails are ridiculously loose when it comes to partners!”
-Break-
“Is that even true?” Pom asked nervously as she petted one of her menagerie of beastly canines.
“Actually, yes. While they don’t need to, in large groups they can get rather…” Everyone turned to Fluttershy and her face turned bright red. She tapped her hooves together and barely whispered out the next word. “Excited.”
“Seriously?” Jade asked in astonishment. “Huh, did not know that, it was my insanity talking at the time. I should bring up the fact that the story Jurassic Bark actually has some realism with the frogs they used to magically resurrect ancient dinosaurs alongside some ancient Diamond Dogs. Kind of explains why the dinosaurs were capable of reproducing really, they shouldn’t have used that particular species of Zebrican frog in the genetics for the dinosaurs they revived.”
“If the world didn’t want same sex relationships, then a race of entirely female only lizards wouldn’t exist.” Marie intoned. “Much less asexual reproductions or the ability of some animals to fully change gender at will for that matter. Most species of fish comes to mind…”
“Before anyone asks, no, Sea Ponies don’t and can’t change genders at the drop of a hat like that!” Flotsam stated with her finned hooves crossed indignantly. “Don’t even suggest the possibility! It’s awkward enough for me to find a boyfriend as it is, especially when it comes to mentioning my biology in any capacity! It tends to drive a lot of nice looking guys away from me! Also I’m staying a sea pony, even if I have been offered an open invitation to become a hippogriff by some of the ones here.”
“Speaking of, don’t snakes have the ability to perform parthenogenesis?” Now Dr. Bones had our attentions as she was eyeing Marie suspiciously. The snake tail looked away from everyone shyly. Some people looked confused, but Jade and Fizzle looked a little wide eyed. “If you don’t know what Parthenogenesis is, it is basically a method of asexual reproduction.”
“I try not to think about that too hard when in relation to us being a chimera…” Marie wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes as everyone stared at her. “Back when Cheerilee was still teaching here, I looked it up during a biology class and… I tried very hard to not to share that information with my sisters. We can actually keep secrets from one another.”
“This has not occurred to us.” Mara and Maria stated at the same time, both looked to be mildly unsettled by the prospect that their biology could make them pregnant without a partner.
“So aside from Zen bringing up that random bombshell. One that means Maries could randomly have a child from out of nowhere should Marie have enough of an effect on their biology for it to occur…” Fizzle stated ever so slowly, while making sure to keep a comforting hoof wrapped around Jade. “Can we drop that line of thought for the moment and continue on with the story?”
-End Break, approximately into the third year in limbo, Jade-
Gladly Fizzy!
As I was saying, giving blood, sweat and tears to the tree had an odd effect on its growth, especially given it grew in a place without sunlight.
I didn’t recognize the truth of it at first, I thought I was hearing a voice in my head.
“Can you say parental feminine unit of authority?” I asked.
“Mom!” I seriously thought I had imagined that.
I didn’t.