Left 4 Derpy
Epilogue: Welcome Home
Derpy could feel herself falling, tumbling to the ground. Suddenly, she opened her eyes the instant before hitting the ground. The first thing she realized was that there was a moist, cloth-like material wrapped around her, blocking her view of the world. The new material made her panic, kicking at it and batting her wings to try and escape. But the more she fought, the more the thing seemed to wrap around her.
Ditzy’s struggle for escape continued until one of her kicks landed on something hard, resulting in a creak and a sharp crash as something fell to the floor. She froze instinctively, listening for any other noises. The pause in the battle gave her mind time to focus, realizing that the cloth-like object was, in fact, not moving at all.
After a brief moment of concentrated struggle she pulled the blanket off her head, resulting in a sudden bombardment of light on her corneas. She blinked and raised a hoof in-between the light’s source and her eyes, allowing them to adjust to the sudden change. As her eyes embraced the light, her surroundings began to grow clear. The morning sun’s bright beams shown in through the bedroom window and across the bed, gleaming off Ditzy’s morning-encrusted eyes.
The confused mare blinked, unsure of what she was seeing. She looked down, realizing that her sweat-drenched, sky-blue blanket was wrapped around her upper body. After struggling to get free of the constricting piece of cloth, Ditzy stood and looked around her room. All the pictures of her and Dinky (and/or muffins) hung in their respective places, her clothes hung on the adjacent wall where she had left them, and the cloud-mattress bed’s sheets were twisted and disorganized.
Ditzy turned around to see what she had kicked a moment ago, seeing that her bedside table was leaning against the bed. All of its contents had been dumped on the fluffy bed, save for one. The mare leaned over and picked up a picture frame from where it lay on the floor. Turning the picture over in her front hooves, she was greeted by a picture of her and her filly beaming happily behind what was left of the frame’s shattered glass.
As Ditzy continued looking at the picture, a tear crested her eye and fell onto the blanket. She clutched the picture to her chest happily as more tears fell. She was home. Her moment of solemn rejoice was interrupted, however, when the bedroom door creaked open. A blond manned, purple unicorn filly’s head poked into the room and looked up to Ditzy.
“Mommy, is everything alright? I heard a crash.” Dinky stepped into the room and looked at her mother worriedly. “…Why are you crying, mom?”
Ditzy placed the broken picture on the bed and sniffed, wiping the tears away with her open hoof. She looked down to her child, her derped eyes red from the crying. A gentle, reassured smile spread across her face.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just had a really bad nightmare, and accidentally knocked over the bedside. I broke my most favorite picture of us together. Do you remember? That day at the Summer Sun Celebration two years ago?”
The filly’s smile widened, forcing her eyes shut. “Of course! I think that’s my most favorite day I can remember!”
“Mine too, muffin.” Ditzy looked down to the picture. “…Mine too.”
“Well… don’t worry about the picture. We can always buy a new frame, right mommy?”
“Right, sweetie.” She paused. “…You go on downstairs and have some muffins. I’ll be down to make breakfast after I’ve cleaned all this up.”
Dinky nodded happily and skipped out the door. Ditzy could hear the filly as she made her way down the hall, then down the steps and into the kitchen. Realization dawned on Ditzy as she went out to get the broom and dust pan from the closet across the hall. It had all been a dream. The zombies, the city, the helicopter …even her four friends. It was quite possibly the most realistic, life-like dream she had ever had, but a dream none the less.
She walked back into her bedroom and set the broom and dust pan on the bed’s sheets before looking down at the wrinkled blue mass that was her blanket. The picture frame’s broken glass was between it and the tilted bedside table. Ditzy picked the mass of cloth up and tossed it behind her, so as to give her more space to sweep the glass.
The blanket let out a muffled, yet very audible clatter as it fell to the floor, causing Ditzy stop and turned to the blanket slowly. The last time she checked, blankets did not clatter. Perhaps something else from the bedside table had fallen onto the blanket and gotten wrapped up during her brawl with it.
Shrugging slightly, she turned around and grasped the first corner she saw between her hooves. The blanket un-jumbled as she lifted it as high as she could, followed by the sound of something falling to the floor heavily. Ditzy tossed the blanket onto the bed, looking down at what had fallen out of the bowls of her cover. However, the grin disappeared and her blood ran cold as her eyes came across what had been revealed.
The strength in her legs failed and she fell to the floor, though her eyes never left the item lying before her. Fear suddenly washed over her mind, causing her to shuffle on her back as far away from the item as possible. Pain shot through her side as she realized she was shuffling into the broken glass behind her.
She winced at the sharp pain and leaned the other way, gripping her side with a hoof. A drop of fresh blood ran across her hoof as she brought it in front of her. Another twinge of pain shot through her side, causing her gaze to shift from her hoof and to the wound. Her eyes widened in terror not at the trickle of blood running down her side, but at the three lines of pink scar tissue that ran across her ribs.
Her mind was in a frenzy at all that was conspiring. She continued staring at the scar for what felt like hours before turning her attention back to the item on the floor before her. Shock, terror, and disbelief continued to wreak havoc in her mind as she stared at the half-sheathed katana. The red liquid covering the exposed blade gathered along the sharpened edge before dripping to the floor. Through all the terror and shock reeling in Ditzy’s mind, a single thought continued to echo above the chaos.
“It was all real.”