There once was a bright red pony, his name is forgotten to almost everyone, even those who know the story well, but most just call him the lumberjack. As you may guess, his profession was just as his title stated, he chopped down the tallest and most hefty trees, to make such pleasantries such as furniture and houses, he cleared thickets and otherwise chopped his way through several forests along the countryside.
It was his favorite pastime, he loved his job more than any other thing in the world, who could tell why really, for it seemed such a mundane task of repeatedly beating his sharpened metal weapon into the roots of a fresh tree, but he seemed to find satisfaction in doing it as though he could be able to do it until the end of time.
The trees would bend over in the rain and mourn their lost siblings that had been prematurely taken for the impatience of the lumberjack. And you could almost hear their cries as the wind blew and whipped across the forest, creaks and snaps would be a splitting headache of guilt to the normal pony, but the lumberjack seemed to not notice, he kept on his path.
If the lumberjack would have known earlier what he had inadvertently caused, he possibly would have been able to stop what was undoubtedly coming. He may have gone home, he may have had to break the news of unemployment or employment elsewhere to his family and watch as their tired and sympathetic faces looked upon his.
But no, he was too far in, he was too deep into the forest. He was out cutting lumber ever since 6 that morning, he had decided not to leave a trail or go with any of his co-workers, for he suspected he could find his way back to the dirt path on his own, as time and directional experience had shown. But the day was long and he kept working.
He forgot about lunch as that trance of muscle memory and repetition lulled him into a sense of belonging and numbness to time. He didn't notice how long he had been gone until the setting sun hit his eye with a sharp crimson ray as it peeked behind a storm cloud that it had been hiding behind for the past few hours. He stopped and looked up at the sky, the clouds were red, and the golden streaks of dying daylight lines the horizon.
But the lumberjack for once did not stop to admire the sunset for he knew that he was late and should have been home by then, he didn't want to become food for the timberwolves after all. So he turned his attention to his surroundings which he had ironically not been paying the closest attention to in the past day.
It was a large circle of stumps, and he stood in the direct center of it, there were small paths out to the sides, but he did not remember which one he had taken to get there, it was all a fog. It was like a dream a few minutes after you had woken up, the longer he tried to recollect what happened and what he did that day, the harder it was to remember anything at all. He looked around him once again, it seemed to become more alien by the minute.
He just decided to try a path a random, and if it didn't lead back to the road then he would come back and try another one until he had eventually found his way out. But he didn't realize that the forest wasn't on his side if it ever was. As he walked down a corridor of aspens and pines he heard a whisper, if that even, it felt like something tugging at his soul that needed to tell him something, to show him something. He followed.
It led him off the path and down into a small clearing that was filled with damp bushes and colorful flowers that were closing as the sun grew more distant. He stood in the center and looked around, the tugging had stopped. He was about to return to the path until it happened.
He knew.
Something had shown him the eventual fate of objects and ponies that he had somewhat directly caused by his actions, he knew that he had done an irreversible action that would affect so many lives of those that he in no way was a part of or would ever meet save for the afterlife. He saw the pain, he looked back and it all became clear and somewhat distorted by the immense pain at the same time.
The lumber company did not need the vast amounts of wood that he had reaped that day. They would use it for something else, they would give it to someone else. The forest would be scarred for the foreseeable future, and nobody would ever know what he saw.
No one could ever felt what he felt at that moment, which must have been divine intervention, a conscious being put into his skull, a reckoning. And in that very moment he felt overwhelmed, he could not bear the immense guilt he knew he would be made to have. Too many souls he saw, too many lost childhoods he saw. That lumber would be used in the construction of a building, a three-story manor, those mahogany logs would be carved into a door that sealed the fate for so many.
He did not see all, but just enough to overpower his mind at that given time, he felt as if he could not move on, he could not walk another step. He felt the overwhelming urge to fling his axe at himself, to be the next victim in the cycle that he had unknowingly created, and hoped to be the last, but sadly he was mistaken.
The lumberjack then used the axe on himself. Before he did it, a part of him wanted to hold back, a part wanted to be responsible, but the other half would rather end it all then be held accountable and even worse, witness what would unfold. He fell backward as the steel cut through his ribcage like snapping twigs. The thud of the landing jolted the weapon out of his chest cavity and it hit the mossy ground softly.
One would think the blood of a red pony would be hard to notice, although it was a dark red, it flowed through his fur and onto the ferns and undergrowth of the forest, staining everything in its path the same shade of scarlet as itself, and eventually a sickening brown.
The lumberjack's last sensations were the grass and dandelions nestling his back as he looked up at the sunset one last time. His eyes stayed still as tears seemed to solidify and leave his expression to capture so vividly his last emotion, better then the best poet could describe.
The body was found the next day by his co-worker, who called the lumberjack's wife and child down to break the news and bury him. They say that his body sprouted with flowers, and foliage surrounded him as if nature had made a small shrine for the one who most thinks he tormented. But if you listen carefully, you can still hear the trees crying all the same for the lumberjack as they did for their brethren, as if they also knew what he had seen, or what he left behind.