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

"You can't hang yourself with candle wick. That's unfortunately all I have."
"Who are you?"
A nightmare. The shop burning, the door sealed shut. And walking, in corridors she'd only ever seen in her memory, running away from something she never managed to outrun. Her secrets found and yet forgotten. Dying alone. She awoke in cold sweat, her cheeks damp with tears she didn't remember crying, her lungs sore. She looked around.
Her room. Her room as she always remembered it, as it always was, her desk messy and uncleaned with garbage pushed aside and some tumbled off and unfinished projects she never continued to work on. She would probably never clean it. She'd die sooner, or end up somewhere else. The window was opened. It was hot enough outside during the day to justify keeping it open at night. Some wind was coming in. Not unpleasant. Not cold enough to be.
She didn't want to get up. Didn't feel like it. She pushed the light covers aside, then pulled them back over herself. She looked at the ceiling without really looking at it, lying on her back, thinking back through her dreams in her mind. It was all crashing and crumbling together, bit by bit fading, only moments retained in her mind that she knew would sooner or later be gone too. They weren't real memories though they felt like it.
Try to sleep again? She should. She would. Not right then. It would just be pointless thrashing around and turning and shutting her eyes trying to empty her head only for her mind to wander about aimless unable to find rest. Much as she was doing then and she would do, but it would be on purpose, not frustrating when she remembered she was instead supposed to sleep. Maybe she would collapse from exhaustion sooner or later. She pulled up her pillow to dry her tears on it. She didn't want light, but she had no candles anyway in her room. She cried into her pillow some more.
Her mane was getting tangled. She'd need to brush it in the morning. Or maybe not. Would anyone care? Would anyone ask about it? Would they just look at it and think to themselves, and maybe talk behind her back, or would they just ignore it? Was it worth it at all? Was it worth it to get up, to go to sleep, to worry and wonder about any of it?
She was falling asleep. Again drifting into unconsciousness and the unbound recesses of her mind, for her unshackled fears and secrets and worries to play with her. It would hurt, and she would cry, and she would forget, and nothing would change. Just like it always was. Changes came during the day and night never brought her anything new, only visions and torment from what she'd already lived through, already thought through.
A library with no books in the middle of the night. She looked up at the sky. The Moon was there, but nothing else. She was not alone, and the other spoke first. "There are no stars in the sky. I ate them all."
"Who am I?"