The room was a grotesque sea of papers and ink; swallowing the floor in their seemingly endless and infectious mass. Broken and discarded quills drifted along their uneven surface. Words of disgust, laid written along its water. While shattered ink bottles sunk beneath their filthy, papyrus textured, waves. However this was not a sea of great unfinished works. Instead it was a sea of failures. Disgusting failures that haunted their creator. For they were lacking the beauty he sought to encapsulate. Failing to achieve his only goal.
Their endless expanse of disgust continued uninterrupted throughout the room. That was with one expedition. The middle, in which rose a pair of mighty wooden mountains. They reached for the roof above, far out of the reach of the grime below. Both neatly made and masterfully crafted of simple pine wood. With their only blemish being those instilled upon them by their current owner.
The taller of the two mountains was a desk, which housed with it the waterfall of papers and inks that breathed death into the sickly ocean below. As well as the candle that illuminated the failure; making them visible for all to see. The shorter compatriot was a chair in which a frustrated creature sat, a changeling. He idly looked over the stack of papers atop the first mountain, before furiously throwing another fresh wave of paper to the ocean below like God casting man out of The Garden of Eden. Hoping they might scatter far enough apart that they're words never meet again and thus prevent their ugly head from ever surfacing. A vain attempt. For out of the corner of his eyes he could still see the botched works staring up at him; begging to be corrected and finished, yet he had neither the resolve nor the knowledge to do so. And so they remained forever banished from his presence. Doomed to rot away into nothingness.
A frustrated and heart broken groan escaped his pine tinted muzzle. His right hoof came down once more with a thunderous bang, sending tsunamis of rejected and tarnished paper scurrying across the room, while the light that illuminated the world briefly flickered from the sudden gust; nearly casting the world into a deep darkness. The green giant seeing this froze in worry, waiting for the candle to regain its strength before picking back up the tool of his craft to try again. The new quill, now encapsulated by the magic, just barely hovered over the fresh batch of paper yet made no further movement as if unsure what to say.
But that wasn't quite right, for the changeling knew what to say, just not how to say it. As his mind was a maelstrom of competing thoughts, each toiling over the other for a chance to be conveyed to paper. Though their struggles were frantic, there was almost an order to the chaos. As one died away to the back it gave birth to another that would overtake the one that now held center stage.
Though ultimately their attempts were counterintuitive, as when one made it to paper it would undermine the last; thus causing the sting of thought to be undermined. As it was no longer a cohesive melody, rather a disgruntled series of odd and harsh noises. As a result they, like all the thoughts, words and feelings, that came before were cast aside into the ocean of bile below. In the simplest terms this series of events was a cycle. A cycle that had been carried out for longer than the changeling cared to count. A cycle that had bled the once eager bug dry of the joy he once held for this endeavor. Now each new word was no longer a task he wished to attempt. But was instead a slog he dreaded, but had to do. For like all creatures, he was a slave. His master however was the world itself.
A world that at every instance reached out for him, begging to be explored. Begging to be explained. Begging to be more than just something others glanced at. It demanded that it be seen. It be known. It be loved such as he loved it. In truth though the “world” is only what he called it. The world was in reality so much more than just that. It was something that lacked any true definition. But rather, it was a gut feeling of knowing it when you saw it.
In his mind it was The simple smell of grass as it was dewed. The feeling of a sea breeze over taking oneself. The distant sound of thunder offering to bring with them rain. The simple beauty of another day gracing the land with its majestic light. The respite a friend could give in a sea of anguish. The insurmountable struggle one has to overcome during the lowest points of life. The unknowable pain from a heart freshly broken. It was a story every creature and everything had. An untapped trove of knowledge, feelings and experiences. Each unique and distinct from the last. While there were over laps and parallels amongst these things, none were quite the same.
Each a was and is a new experience, so alien to his own, and so very familiar at the same time. Each one brought smiles and tears, hope and grief, friends and enemies, memories both good and bad. Each was an experience he didn't wish to just emulate or copy. No he wished to create one that may tell its own story. So that others might see it too.
See the vivid hues of indescribable colors. Hear the wondrous and harmonic melody of life. Experience the highs and lows of existence. Be enthralled with the same thing that had captured his mind for so long.
Even now as he sat alone in the poorly lit room he could see it. The deep umber browns of his wooden room. Each plank had its own unique quirks and textures that all told a story. The simple sound as a quill married paper and ink slathered over its virgin surface, that was begging to bring in something new to the world. Something beautiful. He could feel it in his very being; yearning to be released. And yet, he could not. With all his power and all the time he had spent contemplating these things, he simply could not do it. For he did not know how to breath such things into the world. No he was only capable of breathing pale imitations and crude replicas, that lacked that inert beauty.
For, in his mind, he was not a pony. He did not receive such magical gifts such as they. Gifts he so badly wished he had so that he might share it with the world. No, instead he was born with no such luck. He was a changeling through and through. Destined to only leech off others and never truly create. Forever a slave to the desires impressed upon him by the world, desires he could never fulfill. For unlike ponies he did not have a heart that could be broken. He did not have lungs so that his breath may be taken away. Nor did he have muscles or bones that could know aching. Instead he could only observe such things, for he had chiton in place of bones. An open circulatory system in place of lungs and a heart. He could not even truly see the world in which ponies saw it. Instead he was stuck viewing it through the range of ultra violets only wishing he could if even for a moment gain a ponies eyes.
Yet even in these differences, even in these setbacks. He still knew that the world was beautiful. Even if he could never truly come to appreciate it as ponies could. Though even after years of study and observation and wishing the world remained as indescribable as it was beautiful. Even when he so very much wished it not to be. But at last, the years took their toll and he was reduced to toil and struggle, as he tried to convey the things he so very much wished to express. All the world’s beauty seemingly stuck locked inside his mind and begging to be shared. It was like a prisoner, and he its warden. Though he wished to free it, to let it out, he had lost the key, or maybe he never had it. Try as he might no key he ever tried worked. So it remained confined to the deepest parts of his conscious, like a forbidden knowledge that should never see light. Doomed to die away with him.
It pained him to watch it sit there. Pained him that the cell only ever grew in size. Pained him to know it was due to his inability. His inability to let them out. The thoughts haunted him all his days like a specter. Following him wherever he went. Attacking him whenever he ignored the world’s plea to be expressed. There were days it didn’t even allow him to sleep or eat. And over the years it has slowly chipped away at him until the world no longer left him happy, and instead it made him cry. Cry that he had failed. Cried that he could not free it. Cry that he would forever be stuck with it and its nagging. Crying that something he loved so much, only brought him pain.