I burn. Every star is known to me and I burn with them, die with them, flicker in the pale heat of atomized helium like they do. The space between them is cold and I am cold too, as distant as one universe is from the other. My body is held perpendicular to the shape it was meant to take and I feel myself fighting against my own understanding. The cusp of my being sits precarious and I feel any thought in its direction would send me teetering, tumbling in a way that I cannot reverse.
Was it always like this? Did the fire always cling to your sinew? I feel the marrow threaten to drain from my bones even as I still live and breathe. There is an unshakeable gravity that follows me wherever I go. There is a voice that always speaks to me, even when all others have gone silent, and I have learned not to listen. When the sun first nestled into my bosom it spoke and I could do nothing but sit transfixed.
Did it tell you? Do you know what I know? About death, about the finality of us, about the way the universe is meant to stretch until there is nothing left to move about within its infinitude. It must have. The sun is a cruel body and would have wasted no time in sharing the fate of the world with whatever creature was unfortunate enough to bear it.
I feel afraid some days that it can hear my thoughts. That it can hear this silly internal monologue, right now. I can’t help but laugh at that idea. What does it matter that the sun can hear me? I hope it knows how much I despise its worthless burning, its insipid heat that boils my blood. I know it cannot be without me. We are two bodies destined to dance always together until the loss of heat kills us both. I look forward to that day.
This is a bitter curse. It is a curse. It must be, mustn't it? There is no way to describe it otherwise. No alternative offers itself for transcription. The pathways it draws in my mind are haunted and it is through these claustrophobic hallways that my thoughts now must flow. There is a constraint in the secret magic of the world that I could never have grasped until this moment. Where you ended I began. I would like to end like you, to hasten my departure from this miserable knowing. My unravelling will be cause for celebration. When I am the last friend left alive, the sole witness of the Magic of knowing another, I will throw myself a party.
Do you know me even still? I feel you do for I know you are beyond yourself. The body you had was not the body you were bound to. I think I hear your voice in the songs the stars play for me; their dull chemical melodies a constant drone. They provide background radiation in more ways than one. If only they could lend that constant, endless pressure and heat towards something more worthwhile than serenading a mare marked for the end.
She speaks too, at times. It is only in the darkest places that her voice breaks through the static. When the world around me quiets it never truly ends for she is there to fill the gaps, to mumble the promises of a million different dreams to anypony willing to entertain her. These days very few do. I hardly need to set the dreamcatcher as the little ponies seem to chase their own. Your dual ending changed something. It set bodies in motion that you never could’ve foretold.
I see you both sometimes, at the station. I look and you are there and when I blink you are gone. You seem content, at least. That’s a nice thought. Is there contentment in unmaking? When I am gone, will I be happy? Am I happy now? What does happiness mean to a pony who has seen her own death? I suppose there is a certain grim satisfaction in knowing that my life cannot end until the universe wills it to. There is no more fear or indecision, no more hesitantly striding into whatever paltry war the finite forces of evil manage to stir.
Death is a strange thing when the fear of it leaves you. I think, when you get down to it, we were always meant to fear death. Never was it meant to be something we could stare down and overcome. A pony is a finite being and to be robbed of the finitude is to lose something irreplaceable. I have thought about trying to meet death at my own hooves but know it would be a fool's errand.
What did it feel like when you first killed something? How old were you? Times were darker then, I am sure. The stars tell me that everything wasn’t always bright, saturated in thick painful color. There were times where the dark fell and only those who could burn another's soul to cinders survived long enough to see the light again. To cause death is sublime, I believe. I understand the way cruelty catches hold in others hearts. It is easy to be evil. It is hard to be kind.
Hardest is to know your kindness means nothing in the end.