Gruppa Krovi
Lady of the night.
Home sweet home, so they say. But there isn't anything sweet about this home.
Viktor is asleep, or at least, in the middle of sleeping. He has not dreamed of much in the past month, mostly flashbacks to that faithful day. The day that took his life away.
He is going fast down the highway, his car speeding down the asphalt. Like a bullet out of a rifle. His vision tunneling as the car keeps increasing in speed, then all of a sudden everything goes black. He can hear his car smash into a bus, and even feel himself perish while It happens.
The pain, the anxiety, the sorrow, all of it hits him like a freight train. The day when his place in the world was stripped away. In a brutal collision of metal and machinery, where only the bigger of the two will survive.
It has been haunting him since, being forever lost to your home, full of alien beings whom he has no relationship with. The only one here in a similar predicament is Vasiliy, who died during the war that ended two years ago. He and his friend Alexi came here, and even another followed. A person named Romanov.
The nightmare stops abruptly, everything fading into something else.
An endless pasture of vibrant green grass and flowers. Soft and gentle winds wash over him, full of soothing cool air that contrasts with the perfectly temperate sun. The fresh smell of rain ever lingers in this magnificent wind. For telling an era of lush greenery and bountiful food.
Viktor lays down on his back. The grass acts as a soft mattress, the sun a blanket, and the wind an air conditioner. He can live here in peace... Forever.
Soft feminine laughter rings through his ears, he cracks one eye open to see who has bothered him. Only for him to see the beautiful and ripe mare from last night. This time, not covered by a hefty cloak. Which allows him to see the pair of large wings on her back and sides.
"Get up, you goof." She teases him, "As much as I enjoy your company, I'd prefer to talk with you." Viktor slowly gets up from the ground, eventually reaching chest level.
"What do you want?" Viktor asks the slightly giddy mare, "I was trying to sleep on the soft grass."
"I want to speak with you," Luna answers matter-of-factly.
"We already spoke last night. I see you later, not now. You clearly aren't just here to talk to me." Viktor grumbles.
"Someone is a grouch~" She retorts snarkily.
Viktor huffs in frustration, "Yes, well, when you get woken up by a snarky unicorn. You aren't very happy."
"For one, I'm an alicorn. And number two, people wake me up all the time, yet I don't snap at them." Luna replies.
"Черт возьми, что угодно."
The two look away from each other and admire the natural beauty of the world before them. Neither has anything to say, well, until one clears their throat. "So..."
Viktor looks towards the direction the sound came from. Only to find the nightly mare standing there. Her body language asks for a reply, hell, begging for one even.
Viktor turns away and looks down briefly, before raising his head high. "So."
"What was that dream about?"
Viktor's breath is caught in his throat as his heart sinks to his stomach. Dread fills his bloodstream as the painful question is unraveled within his mind. Sorrow quickly replaces the fear and dread, as the deep-seated melancholy finally strikes.
Luna looks away as she can practically feel the pain radiating off of him, like radiation from a chunk of plutonium. And much like radiation, it hurts, and she knows how that feels. It is hell incarnate, the devil striking back for all that god has done. It is awful, so much so that death is a better alternative.
"I don't want to talk about it..." He says, his voice deep and hollow. Like a ghost. Haunting his very soul, like a burning metal stake to the chest.
Luna sighs, trotting up to the crushed human being, the pain becoming nearly unbearable for her. "Viktor... I know how you feel."
The man stays silent, looking down at the grass below him. The pain is now crushing, it is trying to make them cry, it is truly hellish to believe that god could make this be. She sits down next to him, draping a wing over his shoulder.
"It was a millennium ago. Trapped on a cold desolate rock, alone, in the vacuum of space, shrouded in pure darkness. The darkness of my soul." She laments, the pain rushing back as old wounds are torn open and heinously violated.
"The pain I put many beings through, because of my own inadequacies, the pain beings put me through. Many people and ponies who I cared about are now dead. All because of my naivety and innocence, I journeyed through the heart of darkness."
The two look into each other's eyes. He can see the honesty and the agony. She can see the regret and sorrow. They both have gone through pure hell over the years. Of course, one can argue that she has gone through worse, but this is not a sausage-measuring contest. "And I became the mare I am today."
Viktor looks forward, sighing heavily, "Before all of this, I had everything. A son, a wife, a group of friends, the adoration of an entire nation so large that it can qualify as a continent. Now, I have nothing. It is all gone."
"How did you lose it all?" Luna asks. "I collided with a bus at high speeds. The crash was so brutal, that they never found my body, that is if Vasiliy is to be believed."
Viktor sniffles a bit, his voice breaking slightly as the pain fucking stabs him in the chest. "I was just trying to go back home from a fishing trip." Tears fall down his face, as the waterfall breaks. But the mare catches him before he falls, hugging him with her wings. The dead and dejected star sobs heavily into the soft warm flesh surrounding him.
"Shhh... Relax, relax Viktor, everything will be fine." The voice pierces through his wall of pain. The stress and anxiety that befell him from the events that led to his displacement were numbed by her comfort.
"Everything will be fine..."
"This is the place," Luna says, removing Viktor's blindfold.
Viktor's vision returns quickly, and before him is a scenic place deep in the woods. Or, so he assumes. He does not know for sure that this is not all an illusion or if this place is not deep in the woods.
"You brought me to a forest?" Viktor asks confused.
"Of course, I wanted to have some peace and quiet with my friend," Luna replies, before suddenly dulling as a rush of anxiety crashes over her. "I-is it okay? I-i mean, I can always-"
"Don't worry, it is fine. I was just curious, you do not have to fret over me." Viktor interrupts her. He walks over to a long fallen tree trunk, overlooking a large river, and sits down on it. He looks back at her and motions for her to sit down next to him.
"Come, sit beside me," Viktor says, Luna quickly trots over and sits down right beside him. Just like he asked.
The two watch the crystal clear river flow downstream. Ogling the creatures in the scenic body of water as they go about their business. Nature, whenever it is not trying to maim or kill you, is very beautiful. A shame that nature on earth is rarely as beautiful, even long before the industrial era. Or even the rise of humanity in Eastern Africa.
"Viktor?" Luna breaks the silence. "Yes?" Viktor replies.
"How are you, my friend?" She asks the younger man sitting next to her.
"I am doing well, at least as well as I can be. How about you?" Viktor answers with a question of his own.
She sighs, "Things have not been going so smoothly."
"How so?"
Luna hesitates slightly but gives as she looks into the eyes of the person she secretly desires. "Me and my sister, are not on the best of terms, as of recent. We had a large argument in the garden."
Viktor slyly smiles a bit, "Well, do not fret over it. Everyone has small quarrels from time to time. It is the nature of being a sentient creature."
"Yes, well, I already know that. It is a fact I accepted thousands of years ago, but this one was different." Luna retorts. "Well, what makes this one differ from the rest?" Viktor implores.
"It almost caused a fight. A big fight. One that may have even caused a civil war if it became big enough." Luna answers trepidly, "I see."
"I'm sure you can fix it, you have gone through a lot," Viktor says. "I doubt this will permanently affect you."
Luna smiles, "Your Ponish is getting better."
Viktor smiles back, "Thank you, it has been hard but thankfully the language is not too far off from English.
The two sat in silence for quite some time. Both are content with sitting silently and watching the river flow, life traveling through the cool waters like a highway at rush hour.
It reminds him of home, partly, it reminds him of the pain that is being stripped away from everything you knew. And then being dropped in an alien land with a lackluster understanding of the language. But the pain is dulled by her, someone who has been by his side since they first met.
Viktor is snapped back into reality by the sound of his female companion clearing her throat. "Viktor?" Luna asks.
Viktor turns and faces her. "Yes?"
He can see the anxiety on her blueberry features. Her blueberry face is hidden by her mane, hiding a thick crimson layering on her face that is a clear sign of attraction. Her eyes seem to avoid his, instead looking down out of fear of something. Rejection, perhaps?
"I care deeply for you, you've made me feel like no one else has made me feel in well over a thousand years." She trails off, tapping her hooves together as the words quietly tamper off into a thick word salad.
Clearly, she isn't being entirely upfront, is she...?
"I want to say that I... love you."
Viktor does not make a sound, still as a statue in the face of something utterly shocking. He turns around to face the lady of the night, instead of some confident mistress. He sees a much smaller mare, with a scrunched-up muzzle and a thick layer of crimson on her face. Her eyes looking down at the floor while her front hooves are pressed together.
He cannot lie and say that he does not reciprocate her feelings, but it is very shocking nonetheless.
He can only find one thing to say in response.
"I love you too."