//------------------------------// // Chocolate Milk // Story: Not Here // by ulcuran //------------------------------// Ugh, I feel like shit… but if I am feeling something then that would mean that I’m still alive right? That would mean surviving the fall. I don’t think I would have even the slimmest chance of staying alive from that height, but maybe this pony body can withstand that kind of fall. I did hear someone's voice it sounded like, Luna’s? I’m not sure. I’m scared to open my eyes. What if I am in a coma? What would I do then, just lie on the bed, alone with my own thoughts, and lose my mind slowly? Maybe Moonlight or some other maid will take care of me? Probably not, maybe Moonlight would but I think the crown would rather just pull the plug on me, that’s what I would rather have. I’m not going to live like a plant in this world, not here. …there is no other choice, I take a huge breath and prepare for what’s to come. Slowly my eyelids part ways. I’m in my room and it’s really dark, is it nighttime? Turning my head towards the right I see the balcony… not going there anytime soon that’s for sure. I hear a faint noise to my left, is that snoring? ‘’Oh, oh Moonlight…’’ Turning left I see at the edge of my bed a gray pony whose head is lying down on the bed. Did she stay with me all this time? I don’t even know how much time passed hours, days? How did I survive the fall though? It can’t have been Moonlight she doesn’t have wings like the princesses or other ponies, and she doesn’t have a horn too so she can’t do any of that weird glowy thing, so how? ‘’I hate this place, can’t even have peace for one day.’’ I mutter quite enough so that I don’t wake Moonlight up. She stirs a little and my body goes rigid, did I wake her up? ‘’C-mer I’m gonn- eat yo-’’ She mumbles and continues her light snore. Yeah no, she is dead asleep, what kinda dream is that? Wait, are these new bandages? Looking over myself, and yes these are new bandages, huh. I wonder if Moonlight saw that I have no weird magical ass tattoo, looks like I lost that whole mysterious thing, oh well. I wonder if I can leave? Is the door locked? But where would I go if I even left the room without alerting Moonlight? The castle is probably crawling with guards and I don’t think they will allow me to leave, and I am not going to mess with those fucking armored and armed ponies no sir. I even kicked one of them, maybe they still hold a grudge because of that, I mean… I would, don’t think that I forgot about you, you orange bitch! Shaking my fist in mock rage in the air. My eyes fall on Moonlight again, she seems really… tired. Her hair is a mess her dress is the same, her eyes look puffy… has she been crying again? How can one pony cry so much in one day, please don’t tell me it’s because of me. ‘’Hwaaa-’’ With a yawn, she wakes up but cuts herself short when she realizes that I’m awake. ‘’He-’’ I don’t get to finish my sentence as she throws herself at me and I reflexively open my arms to catch her, and like a flash of light she is on me. She is not making any noise though. ‘’...’’ ‘’...’’ She continues her silence and I don’t dare to disturb it. She finally breaks the silence of the room. ‘’I’m-’’ ‘’Don’t say you’re sorry.’’ ‘’...okay.’’ ‘’And don’t cry either.’’ ‘’...okay.’’ I don’t think she would even have any tears left to shed after crying so much in such a short amount of time, but even if she was able to, I still don’t want her to. ‘’I’m-’’ is she really going to apologize? ‘’-glad you’re okay.’’ ‘’...I’m glad you’re okay too.’’ ‘’I was so scared, I couldn’t even think straight, I couldn’t even breathe right until the doctor said you only needed some rest.’’ Moonlight says with a shaky voice. I don’t like her tone, it doesn’t suit her, I want a cheery Moonlight, not a sad Moonlight. ‘’I even got in a fight with Princess Luna.’’ She got into a fight with Luna? So Luna saved me? ‘’Did Luna save me?’’ I ask while petting her mane, so soft. ‘’Yes, when I brought the doctor she wanted me to leave I… refused, I didn’t want to leave you alone.’’ Wow, she has quite the courage to refuse a princess’s order, she is just a maid. ‘’Oh, you sweet little idiot of mine, you do know that I’m not wort-’’ ‘’Shut up, you are, you saved me.’’ Okay, she is not going to argue about this. Best not to push it any further. ‘’So? What happened?’’ I hope she doesn’t get fired or even thrown in the dungeons for insubordination. ‘’She relented.’’ Wow, she made a princess relent? ‘’Remind me not to get on your bad side.’’ That gets a small giggle out of her, yes! ‘’Feed me enough ice cream then we will see.’’ ‘’Of course, Your Majesty, only the finest of ice creams!’’ ‘’Hmm yes. I only eat ice cream from the which has been made by cows that eat the best grass so they can produce the greatest milk.’’ She replies in a mock snobbish voice. She breaks the hug and looks at me with a small smile on her face, yeah a smile does suit her better, and I smile back. ‘’Are we disturbing something?’’ I and Moonlight looked towards the door and Luna was standing in the doorway, how the hell are these princesses sneaking up on me all willy-nilly? ‘’No, come in.’’ I say while Moonlight gets off the bed. Luna slowly makes her way towards the bed and then she sits on the left side of it. It looks like she wants to say something, opening her mouth and then quickly closing it. Is it because of Moonlight? Maybe, I don’t know but Luna probably still wants to talk one on one. I turn to Moonlight. ‘’Hey, Moonlight can you get me something to drink maybe milk?’’ She gets rather surprised, most likely she didn’t think that I would talk to her now. ‘’I-you-... okay.’’ She quickly heads towards the door and with one last look, she closes the door. ‘’We thank thee.’’ Yeah, seems like she was the reason Luna couldn’t speak. ‘’Ah, no problem, I heard you guys uhh got in a fight?’’ She winces a little. ‘’Thou would not be wrong but we would not call it a fight, we didn’t want her to be with thou since she was the reason for your current state, but she seemed quite adamant about not leaving thine side.’’ she says and looks over my body again quickly checking every place with her eyes. ‘’Hey, looking ain’t free you gotta pay.’’ I laugh and her face gets painted with a streak of crimson. ‘’That was not our intention! We were just making sure that you were well!’’ She tries to hastily defend herself. ‘’Of course, of course.’’ ‘’If thou can joke like this then we see no reason to stay any longer, hmph!’’ she huffs and turns to leave but her steps get slower and she stops at the door. ‘’Not going to leave?’’ I ask with a sly smile. She turns back and makes her way back to the same place she was sitting. ‘’Thou were supposed to stop us.’’ Luna says frowning a little. ‘’Oh really?’’ ‘’Yes.’’ ‘’Luna, no stop, please don’t leave me.’’ I say with a robotic voice. Her frown disappears and she looks amused. ‘’Thou needs more practice.’’ ‘’I thought it was perfect?’’ We talked about other things such as breakfast this morning, seems like we ate the same pancakes and we both agreed that they were delicious and we wanted more. She told her sister about what had happened and thankfully I’m not going to change rooms, in fact, her sister wants to talk to me too, I don’t know about that, I mean she called me her little pony, that makes me uncomfortable. But Luna seemed excited about it so I eventually agreed. ‘’She seems quite fond of thee.’’ ‘’Hmm, Moonlight?’’ ‘’Yes, did she tell you she jumped after you?’’ What? Moonlight…she jumped after me? ‘’S-she did?’’ I ask with a weak voice. Luna nods. I try hard to find the next words but they don’t come to me I can only make one word. ‘’Why?’’ ‘’She said she wanted to save you and didn’t think about it, crashed onto our back when we caught you she wasn’t even aware of our presence.’’ Oh god, I don’t… I don’t know what to think of that, should I be happy? should I be sad? should I be angry? I don’t know. I feel like crying but I don’t want to, are these tears of joy because someone wanted to and tried to save me even if they knew they couldn’t, or are these tears of sorrow because someone tried to throw away their own life to save mine? I feel the droplets of water landing on my arms, am I crying? Huh, I even told Moonlight not to cry, but what am I supposed to do when Luna told me this? Through blurry eyes, I see Luna getting closer. She wraps me with both her hooves and her wings and I cry into her chest for a solid minute. Luna’s horn glows and I see a tissue fucking levitating towards me. A magical pony princess is levitating a tissue for me to use, I can’t help but laugh at my situation. Luna looks at me worriedly and asks. ‘’Are thou okay?’’ Luna asks with her eyes wider and her eyebrows raised slightly. ‘’Yes, yes. I’m just laughing at, ah forget it you wouldn’t understand.’’ I take the tissue the use it to wipe my face. Luna opens her mouth to say something but she gets cut short by the knocking on the door. Oh, Moonlight’s here. ‘’Do you wish for us to send her away?’’ Luna says as she looks towards the door. ‘’No…no it’s fine, but can you leave? I want to talk to her alone.’’ ‘’We understand.’’ She nods and moves towards the door. Luna opens the door and comes face to face with Moonlight with a tray on her back that has two glasses, oh? She got one for herself too, of course she did. Moonlight and Luna look at each other, with Moonlight craning her neck a little to look her in the eyes. ‘’Princess.’’ ‘’Maid.’’ Luna leaves and lets Moonlight in, she closes the door and carefully puts the tray on the nightstand. ‘’So, I didn’t know what kinda milk you would like so I just brought you plain old delicious white milk, I like chocolate milk the best but-’’ ‘’You jumped after me?’’ I cut her off. ‘’...’’ Her eyes widen. ‘’Did you?’’ ‘’Y-yes.’’ She looks away. ‘’But why?’’ ‘’Why?!’’ anger is evident in her voice she yells. ‘’Because I didn’t want you to- to…’’ but with each word, she gets quieter and her head gets lower, her head is almost touching the ground now. I take a huge breath and get out of the bed. She tries to protest. ‘’You shouldn’t get o-’’ ‘’I’m fine.’’ Well, every part of my body aches and I just want to sleep but that’s not important right now. ‘’You, stupid crazy pony! What did you think would happen?!’’ I blow up at her. ‘’I-’’ ‘’No! You would have died with me! What would happen if Luna didn’t save us both?!’’ I yell even louder. ‘’Ple-’’ Moonlight seems like she wants to cry. When she opens her mouth to say something, I cut her off. ‘’You don’t even have wings! or a horn!’’ I’m out of breath, taking small and quick breaths of air, I continue. ‘’But despite that, you still jumped after me without a thought… just to save me?’’ My voice is barely above a whisper. Moonlight looks up and she speaks her voice is so quiet that a kitten would make more noise than her. ‘’ye-’’ Moonlight falls down backward as I tackle her onto the ground and wrap my arms around her. She gets confused but she realizes that I’m hugging her she wraps her arms around me too. ‘’...thank you for trying to save me, you stupid crazy pony.’’ Moonlight doesn’t say anything and we stay there for some time in silence only the howling of the winds can be heard. I try to break the hug but Moonlight just pulls me in closer, well. It’s not that bad. So we stay on the ground a little bit more but after five or so minutes she lets go of me and I get up and extend a hand to her she takes it with her hoof and smiles, and I smile back. ‘’I don’t know about you but I’m really sleepy.’’ I say with a yawn. ‘’Me too.’’ She yawns too. I walk over to the bed and turn to say my farewell to Moonligh- is she following me? ‘’Uhh, Moonlight, I’m going to bed.’’ She doesn’t say anything and just smiles. Does she want to sleep together? ‘’No.’’ Her smile instantly turns upside down and her eyes widen, is she…is she trying to give me the puppy eyes? ‘’Don’t give me those eyes.’’ ‘’Pleeeeaseeee, my room is so far away! Just this one night.’’ She begs with her hooves joined together. ‘’I-...fine, get in.’’ I gave up, those eyes were too much, and she stayed with me when I was knocked out, what’s the worst that could happen? ‘’Yaaay!’’ She dives into the bed and gets inside the covers crawling to the other side her head pops out of the covers and she lays her head down on one of the pillows. With a smile, I enter the bed and lay my head on the soft white pillows. ‘’Goodnight Moonlight.’’ ‘’Goodnight Laika.’’ Just as I close my eyes, they open, as if I didn’t sleep at all. But I’m not in my room with Moonlight no. This place… this place is all white. ‘’Hello, buddy.’’ A familiar voice dripping with anger calls out to me turning to the origin of the sound, I see… me.