//------------------------------//
// Flatline 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

Starlight stared at her unfinished solitaire, then at the deck of cards yet unturned lying beside it. She didn't feel like doing even that. And she was bored.
Oh, maybe it would have been different if she'd had something she actually needed to do or work on. But no. Nothing at all. She was just supposed to relax, apparently, despite how clearly impossible that was after the day she'd had.
A thought wormed its way into her mind. She could sneak into the right room, and then pay the other world a visit through the portal. And a moment later, that fantasy was shattered, as she remembered that there was no portal there in the castle anymore. There hadn't been one for months at that point. Not since that summer day when the Behemoth had come to Canterlot. The mirror had been shattered that day, and no one had worked on repairing it.
Not that repairing it was necessarily needed. There were other portals to the human world, if one really wanted or had to go there. Quite a few actually, some less accessible than others. She supposed, if she really wanted to, she could always sneak to the archive instead to take a peek at the list of known ones, and then go to one of those. But that would probably take a while, and at that point she could just take a regular walk outside.
Although there was something still alluring about having that walk be on the other side instead. In a place where nobody would know who she was. Where she didn't have to worry about who she was. Where she could pretend to be someone else, if she wanted to, and pretend that the things that had happened that day weren't real.
Just to take her mind off of them for a bit. Just to allow herself to. Even if she knew it would all be back to her at the end of it, she wished she could ignore it, just for a while, just finally manage not to think about it.
But she couldn't. And it was always there, pressing at the back of her mind, trying to force its way back to the centre of her attention. It would be like that for days, she knew, probably weeks, perhaps months. It would never truly leave her.
It had come and gone, like a flash of lightning. She'd had no control over it, no say in how it had happened, no time to react. And just like a tree struck by lightning, she would bear that scar in her memory.
It wasn't, all things considered, a bad thing. She hadn't been hurt, none of her friends had either, no other innocent creature had been involved. But it wasn't only about that. It was about being forced to watch it happen. Being powerless to stop it.
She should have been used to it. It had been the same with the Behemoth. But they'd found things to work with. A way to fight back, adapt to the changes of the world. They had grown hope that they could one day take back what they'd lost.
And yet, again, fate had chosen to remind her that there were things out there outside of her control, too great for her to have any say in their course.