I wake up again. It happens every morning. I glance up at the myriad of crystalline faces that greet me. “Hi,” I think. “I’m Maud.”
Normally, I laugh a little bit in my mind at this joke. Many ponies don’t realize that it is a joke. But you did. You knew it was a fun way to remove the awkwardness I feel around others by making them feel awkward. That way we’re together. In awkwardness.
You didn’t need that, did you? You didn’t have to pretend or play funny little games like that. You were always so comfortable with who you were. I miss that. I miss it a lot.
I walk around my cavern where I live. Ponyville adjacent. You thought it was funny when I first said that. Every part of my home reminded me of you. You were everywhere. Every time I turned around, you were there. Now you are not. I don’t know where you are, but you're not here.
I can’t stay here. It feels wrong. For once, I am not comfortable underground. It brought me comfort knowing they placed you there. All secure and snug in your new soft bed. You were buried next to a piece of iron ore and flint. If you strike them together, they produce sparks.
You did that. You helped passion well up where most thought none existed. But now it hurts. The lack of you makes that fire burn me. It’s locked inside with me and consumes all that I am. I need to get out before the fire consumes me. So I leave.
I leave you at home, but all I find is the you outside. I see you in every rock and every tree. I see you on the landscape. Your heart has been stamped on it. Everywhere I see is a place I used to see behind you. And now all that is left is earth. It looks barren. It looks dead. Like you.
I had no idea that you could look so cold. There was such warmth to you. Not every pony knew that special warmth you had. Even less guessed at your depth. I move past that dead land. For the first time, I run. I run from you instead of toward you. You are so close that I can't breathe but so far I can’t touch. Such a paradox of proximity is a riddle I can’t even fathom.
It makes no sense. This world makes no sense. It shouldn’t even exist anymore without you. How can anything pleasant still remain? How can the birds still chirp and the sun still shine? I can’t comprehend it. It’s too… weird. None of it seems natural. Even Boulder seems different. Like I don’t even know him.
I want to see ponies I know. Ponies I trust. Starlight Glimmer and Trixie Lulamoon live in that castle that’s growing bigger in my view. The small clumps of dust I kick up as I run sting my eyes, but I don’t notice. I think there is moisture forming in my eyes as a result. The world is changing. It’s becoming blurry. The blurry world that has been my home without you.
Ponyville looks wrong. The colors aren’t muted. They aren’t cold and distant. The ponies there walk around in their normal happy daze. How dare they? Don’t they know the world ended? Don’t they know that it should be grey and dark? They don’t know how much sadness they should have. The fact that they don’t makes it worse. I run faster.
The blurriness is making my destination move. I can’t see. The moisture from the dust clouds is blinding. Again the dirt has turned against me. It and I used to be friends before you left. Why did you leave? How could you leave?
You promised you would always be there. You promised you would stay by my side. Five ever. It’s even longer than forever. You Pinkie promised. You can’t go back on a Pinkie promise. You just can’t. But you did. You left anyway. You left for a place I couldn’t follow. A place I couldn’t stand by you.
Why are there wood bits flying? Where did all these splinters come from? And all this... fruit? The splinters were made of a Quercus Alba. You loved Quercus alba.The dust hugs me. It holds me down while ponies in the blurry world shout. I feel hooves on my back. They are asking me questions. I don’t know what to say.
“Maud?!” cries a voice I knew very well. It belongs to Starlight, my friend that I was going to see. But she’s just a large pink blur. Some blob that is using her voice. I’m not even sure it is her.
“Oh my goodness,” cries the voice. “Are you alright? You ran right into the fruit stand.”
“The world became blurry,” I inform her. She should be careful when the world is this desaturated.
“Blurry? Oh, Maud, you’re crying,” the blob gasped. “Oh, come here. And you’re bleeding.”
The voice sounds warm and inviting. It makes my darkness worse. It wasn’t you. No pony should sound this warm when you aren’t there.
The pink thing wipes my eyes. And I see Starlight. She is covered in concern. She looks awkward. She shouldn’t. She’s known me for years. She shouldn’t be like the others. Not now.
“Maud, I… I don’t know what to say,” Starlight admits to me. She looks away, as if my plight can infect her somehow. It won’t. Death of loved ones doesn’t work that way.
“Do you need anything?” she asks.
“I do. I need Mud Briar back,” I tell her. You are the only thing that can change this. You would know how to fix it. You always did.
“Ooh, I’m so sorry he’s gone,” Starlight says with such a sad tone, I can’t help it. I can feel the warm tears running down my face. They stained my coat so often. “Let’s go to the castle and get you cleaned up.”
I follow the blur. She always made me feel better before. Now it just seems empty. The walk to the castle almost feels like a funeral march. The castle stands gleaming in the sunlight, mocking my pain with its beauty. The others stare again. It used to be in confusion and wonder. Now it is just in pity. I can see you in their eyes. They all knew you. They knew you were gone. They say nothing. Nothing will bring you back.
We enter the crystalline structure of the castle. Pinkie tried to impress me with it once. The thought of her makes me feel worse.
“So, uh, did you discover any nice rocks in Galloping Gulch recently?”
“No,” I answer. She places that smile on. Like Pinkie does. I hate that smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you would find something new to, uh, help?”
“I didn’t go,” I tell her. The idea of leaving Ponyville filled me with dread. It used to not bother me at all. But suddenly, the idea of not being near your things, your world felt like abandoning your memory. It felt wrong.
“You didn’t even go?!” Starlight begins to shout. Then she regains herself. “I mean, uh, you seemed so sure that it would help. We helped pack and everything. What did you do instead?”
“I stayed in my bed and stared at my rocks. I watched Boulder and Twiggy play. I counted the facets on a piece of selenite. I swam in my pond.”
“You have been doing that since…” Her shrill tone is stifled by her memory. She knows she is supposed to be gentle in these situations. I hate that. She switches to a palacating tone. “…look I know that this is hard for you…”
“No,” I interject.
“What?!”
“You don’t know,” I inform her. The pain still feels as raw as it first had. “You still have Trixie. You still have that feeling. You are still whole. I’m missing something deeper than I have known. I have tried to fill the void with rocks. It’s still there. I don’t know what else to do.”
“I’m sorry, Maud,” Starlight says in a fit of desperation. She is still trying to humor me. As if this turn in life could be less painful if we just speak more quietly, or never bring you up again. It feels wrong and cheap to ignore you. You deserved better than that.
“I know,” I say with equal restraint. My normally measured tone cracks slightly. I wonder if Starlight caught it.
“Look Maud, I don’t want to sound mean or anything but it has been months since… since Mud Briar died. You can’t go on living like this.”
“I am alive. I breathe air and eat and sleep. I am living,” I tell her. It is simple. I was keeping myself going. Part of me doesn’t understand why. What the need is anymore.
“You're not living though! You’re existing! There is a difference!” Starlight is shouting. She is finally coming to her truth. The plate of porcelain she wears over her emotions is finally coming down for me.
“You are a good friend and I hate seeing you in pain like this!” she continues. “I know you lost your husband and I’m trying to be supportive, but this has been months!”
Months? It feels like only yesterday, even though I know it was not. I held you as you slept. I woke and found you not breathing. A stroke or some sort of clot. I don’t know medical terms, even though I am a doctor. But I know rocks. Not the pony body. I didn’t know what to do. Pinkie wasn’t there to tell me. You couldn’t give me the specifics of CPR. You just lay there, staring at me. Your eyes didn’t move. Your body was cold as stone. Not in a good way, like when the cockatrice turned you into stone. In a dead way.
It was the first time I truly panicked. I usually know what to do, but your face threw all that knowledge out of my mind. I couldn’t bring you back. In the end, all I could do was stain your fur with my tears. Technically speaking, it was your hair. Ponies don’t have fur.
“I think you need help, Maud,” I can barely hear Starlight say. “Some pony to really talk to about this.”
“I’m talking to you,” I inform her. It should be obvious. You would have known.
“No, well, you are, but you need to talk to some pony who specializes in this thing.”
“I don’t think it will help.” I don’t want to do this. I don’t like strange ponies who stare at me with judging eyes. I don’t want to talk to another pony who doesn’t get me.
“Maud, you have to try. I know it’s cliche, but you have to do it for Mud Briar.”
“He’s not here, Starlight. He died. If I talk to somepony, he will never know.”
“Alright. Alright.” Starlight places her hooves in the air to signal me to calm down. I don’t get that excited anymore. She’s probably doing it for herself. “What I mean is that you have to do it to honor him. He wouldn’t want you to live like this.”
“Mud Briar never told me how to live. He let me be me and I let him be him. We just adapted to each other. Like a tree growing around a rock,” I explain. I don’t think she understands.
“Well, maybe this pony could help you ‘adapt’ to this. You never know. It could help. It has to be better than sitting in your cave by yourself.”
It feels like an argument I had with Pinkie. She tried to tell me just to get out of my cave. She wanted me to move on and stop being so “mopey lopey.” She doesn’t know. She still has her husband and kids. No pony could really know what this feels like. Even if they did lose a husband or wife, it’s not the same. They didn’t lose you.
“Starlight…” I fear I’m going to let loose. I can feel the dam of my heart starting to bulge. I don’t want it to happen. I know what’s behind that door. I don’t like it. “I don’t care.”
“What?”
“I don’t care anymore. I can’t care. It hurts too much to care. I want to be made of stone. I want to be placed in the ground next to him. I want the tree we planted for him to cover over my stone body like it always did. I don’t want to feel better. I just want to be… left alone. I don’t want to leave him but I don’t want to see him any more.”
“Maud…” Starlight says, putting her hoof hesitantly in the air. She knows I don’t like hugs. But the lack of touch in these recent months is causing a rift in my previous assertion. I don’t care if she wants to touch me. I don’t care if she and Trixie hogtie me and do whatever mares do to one another. I never was curious enough to ask. I need to feel something. Anything but the dark cold stone that is crushing me. I used to love that weight. It felt secure. Now its emptiness is smothering me.
“Maud I… don’t know what to say…” Starlight says finally. She stares at me with those wide eyes she makes when uncertainty grabs her. I scare her. It is something I have done before to other ponies, but never to her. My true friend.
I stare at her. I plead with all of my being in that moment to put me out of my misery. I don’t know what that even means. I feel broken. I look at Starlight with the hope that she can turn me off and fix me somehow and turn me back on.
“I think you need to stay here. With Trixie and I. I should have noticed this before.” She sighs with an I-should-have-known-better look. She shouldn’t have. I don’t tell her.
Only Pinkie knew and I yelled at her. I yelled at Pinkie. I can still see her face contorted in fear and shock. That lower lip quivered, and her eyes filled up with tears. She ran out of my home and I haven’t talked to her since. I’d barely left the cave. She was just trying to convince me to go on my trip. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t go. Not yet.
“Maud?”
“Yes?”
“What do you say? You have friends here. We can help cheer you up a bit. I know a pony who helps with grief and depression.” Starlight looks so hopeful, it almost makes me believe. Can there be life after you?
“I don’t think…”
Starlight suddenly breaks and hugs me. She hugs me. She pulls me close to her. I can feel that warmth. That warmth that I had been missing. The stone moves it just enough. But I feel it move. The dam breaks and a cascade of water flows from me like never before. I don’t cry. I bawl. I bawl like a baby. A blubbering ball of inconsolable mess. I can feel my fur matting that I know is supposed to be called hair and don’t care. I don’t know when it happens but I start to be aware of shouting. Shouting in my voice. I am shouting. The words flow with the tears and mix together in a cacophonous jumble that would have caused your ears to stand on end.
My voice finally cuts through the tumult of pain and loneliness and forces its way to my ears. “What am I supposed to do now?” the pathetic voice whines. It has just enough inflection to let me know that I am whining.
Starlight pulls me in close. I smell a waft of cinnamon nuts. Her hair is so soft. Her voice is barely a whisper over my own sobbing.
“Live…”