For Auld Lang Syne

Chapter 4: Ignorance is a Bliss

MLP: FiM Fic by Mr.Dependable

February 1st 2012

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.
Harold Brodkey

Applejack and Rainbow Dash followed Twilight as she led them back into the boutique. Sweetie Belle was sulking on a chair with Fluttershy as Pinkie Pie tried her best to figure what was going on. Applejack knew what was happening as soon as the white and purple unicorn came into view. The left side of her face was distorted; drooping as if the muscles had been turned to putty. Her left pupil was massively dilated while the right eye remained normal. Applejack had seen this before; one of her farm hands had suffered a stroke right after Cider season, and she knew the severity of the situation.

“Alright yall, calm down…” she said without falter, “Twilight, get Rarity onto her right side, she’s having a stroke and we need to make sure the blood doesn’t pool in her brain.”

Twilight wasted no time, and swiftly, yet carefully, rolled Rarity onto her side, while Applejack looked towards Fluttershy. Sweetie Belle’s face was as pale as a ghost; her eyes were wide and bloodshot, and she held onto Fluttershy as if her life depended on it.

“Fluttershy, get Sweetie out of her, she’s suffering from shock, take her to the kitchen and try your best to comfort her.” She said before quickly turning to Dash.

“Rainbow, Ah need you to fly as fast as you can… Go get help, go to the hospital and tell them that Rarity’s had a stroke, and that the ambulance should meet us just outside of town.”
Rainbow was already in the air, fighting aching joints as she raced out the front door. AJ turned to Pinkie who had a worried look plastered on her face; her eyes frozen on the white unicorn’s crumpled form.

“Pinkie Pie, Ah need you to go upstairs, and get me Rarity’s blanket, and two long polls, we’re going to make a stretcher so we can get her outta here.”

Pinkie Pie disappeared up the stairs in a flash. Applejack sighed, and made her way to Rarity’s side. Twilight had left to get fetch a pillow or cushion of some sort, leaving Applejack and the stricken unicorn alone. The orange mare looked down at her ill friend, and felt her throat tighten up like a noose for the second time that evening.

“Dammit Rarity…” she said with disdain in her voice, “We’re too buckin’ old for this…”

The doctor stepped out of the repulsively white operating room. The smell of antiseptic and sickness flooded the six ponies’ noses. It had been almost an hour since they brought Rarity to the hospital, and each one of them was waiting with bated breath.

“Well…” the jet-black maned doctor began, “she’s stable… but I don’t know for how long. I recommend, with your permission, we get her into a CAT scan immediately.”

Sweetie Belle removed herself from her traumatized state for the first time since her sister’s collapse, and said in a bitter and cold tone.

“I can’t promise to make her healthy… but I can promise that we’ll find out why she had a stroke. She’s at top priority, but it’s still going to take at least forty-five minutes before we have any results. I recommend that you six go to the cafeteria, and try to get something to eat. This is a very emotionally distressing event, and it’s important you keep your energy up. Don’t worry, I’ll send a nurse to get you when we have completed the tests.”

Sweetie Belle waved the doctor away, returning to her sullen and silent disposition. The five friends all stared at each other with worried looks as Sweetie Belle hung her head and sobbed silently.

“Sweetie Belle…” intruded Fluttershy, “Do… Do you want to go get something to eat?”

The unicorn remained silent, but agreed to Fluttershy’s question by getting up from her chair, and shuffling towards the hall. Without saying a word, the rest gathered themselves together, and listlessly followed Sweetie Belle to the Cafeteria.

As Fluttershy pursued her friends, she dipped her head and let a solitary tear slide down her face. While she knew they were getting older - if they weren’t old enough already - she never expected to be faced with a situation like this. She understood the severity of a stroke; in fact she had witnessed a countless amount of clients’ animals die on her examination room table because of them. Fluttershy tried her best to suppress the growing fear for her friend. However, like a serpent from the deep in search of food, it manifested itself in the front of her mind, and held strong

The cafeteria was empty, which wasn’t surprising considering that it was half-past three in the morning. The only sound to be heard was the gentle humming of the vending machines, which sat on the opposite side of the room. The main running lights were turned off to save power, and the dim red glow of the fire exit sign cast elongated eerie shadows across the room. The only other ponies that had been in the cafeteria left long ago, a couple of doctors who were on call; pulling the grave yard shift. Cups of machine-made coffee littered the top of the table like fallen leaves, and silence swallowed the group of ponies with the chilling frost of reality.

Pinkie Pie was dipping in and out of consciousness on a bench that was surrounded by candy bar wrappers. It was a wonder, to Twilight, how she had managed to fall asleep with all that sugar coursing through her system. She surveyed the room and spied Applejack and Dash huddled together over in the corner, where two large wing-back chairs and a modern looking couch surrounded a glass-topped coffee table. Moving on, her eyes landed upon Fluttershy, who was desperately trying to console Sweetie Belle, who was currently stuck in the second stage of the “seven stages of grief.”

A turquoise nurse pony who had silently made her way into the room interrupted Twilight’s focus. It appeared nobody else had noticed her entrance, so Twilight took the liberty of listening to what she had to say alone.

“We’ve finished the tests… right now she’s resting in room 205 down the hall. The doctor’s there, and he told me to come and get you.”

Twilight gathered herself, and before turning around to get the others said a quick “thank you”, and sent the nurse away. Going from group to group, she told everypony that the doctor had finished the tests, and that they were aloud to go visit. One by one, each of the ponies who had taken up temporary housing in the way of hospital cafeteria furniture, made their way down the hall towards Rarity’s room.

“Hello Ladies,” he began, “We finished the tests, and we have some good news and some rather bad news… in fact very bad news.”

“When we did the CAT scan, we found the source of the stroke… We found a large mass, which we thought, at first, was just a misreading of the machine. However it wasn’t. It’s a massive tumor, which originally manifested in her inner-ear, and has now spread to her cerebellum and brainstem. Did any of you girls notice anything wrong with her in the past few years?”

Twilights heart sank: She had read about cancerous tumors, and how dangerous they were. While some of them were dormant, the majority were malignant and killed anypony who was unfortunate enough to be diagnosed.

“Well there is one thing…” whimpered Fluttershy, “About 15 years ago, she started complaining about nausea attacks… She said they went away after a week, but we often caught her swaying back and forth, and even collapsing at some times.”

The colt in front of Twilight tried to hide his dismay, but she could see a flicker in his eyes that indicated that things were very bad.

“Ladies, I’m so sorry… In fact, it is a mystery to me why she’s still alive, but... Rarity doesn’t have much time left. There are procedures we can try, if that is consoling to any of you, but we need her consent first. Right now she’s resting, and I highly recommend we let her sleep. If you come back tomorrow at around four, we can discuss possible plans of action, but right now, you should go home, get some sleep…” he paused and took a deep breath, “…and prepare yourselves.

Twilight turned about-face, and sternly marched down the hall towards the entrance waiting room. Her mind was a scrambled mess of emotions; which made things considerably harder for the fast thinking Unicorn to analyze and strategize. She ignored the desperate pleas of her friends, and shrugged off Fluttershy when she came barreling towards her, trying to get her to stop and wait. She kept marching through the dimly-lit cafeteria, stormed past the reception area, and barged through the set of double doors that led outside. In her mind, an epic battle was playing out between emotional instinct and strategic action; both sides were well-equipped, and dug in for a long and ferocious fight. She was so focused on the war raging in her thoughts that before she could comprehend what was happening, the door to the library stood in front of her. Peering down from above, like a gate into the inner sanctums of hell, the wooden monstrosity mocked her. Behind the door lay the answers to many questions, the solutions to equations and problems that she faced on a regular basis. But yet, the remedy for the biggest problem she had at the moment was not included in her vast arsenal of knowledge. While she could try her best, the only thing she could do with time and death, was sit and watch as they grasped a firm hold around the necks of her friends and suffocated them into submission.

Spike was sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the nights depressing events. Twilight envied his ignorance at the current moment, as she spiraled into a pit of self-pity and depression. She had always thought of what time would bring, and she had told herself not to worry; that there was plenty of space between then and now. But, seeing her friends getting older and sicker - watching Fluttershy mourn the loss of her husband. It all made her realize the inconvenient truth: Everything she desired to avoid, was inevitable. A spark of rage flashed through her; A filling feeling of ferocity that was unusual for the usually calm and caring unicorn.

‘It’s not fair!’ she roared at the raging storm that was quickly forming in her mind.

All they had done… All the good they had done was nothing but dust in the wind. She gazed at Spike once again, but this time she felt a pang of regret and sorrow flush away the bad thoughts. At that moment, she realized that even she would die some day; Even the strongest of wills eventually succumbs to the massive forces of minutes, hours and days. She grasped the fact that the poor dragon who regarded her as a mother would be alone. Spike, though about sixty years old, aged much slower. While Twilight and her friends were reaching old age, Spike was just entering his pre-teen years. How was he going to survive; alone? How was he supposed to recover after outliving all his friends and family? Twilight twitched, and she snapped her head to the cedar pedestal that stood between two of the bookshelves. She gingerly edged closer, and did something that always reassured her in times of need. She used her magic to lift a long extravagant feathered quill, and began to write…

Rainbow Dash’s wings pumped methodically as they carried the light boned Pegasus towards the murky dreary sky. The moon had retreated behind a blanket of sinister clouds, which threatened to release a profuse amount of precipitation. A waterfall of melancholy drowned the pain of her throbbing joints as her streamlined body streaked across the sky expeditiously. Worrying was not her forte, and the consequences of such an encumbering emotion were much too enervating for her liking. While she cared acutely for her friends, sometimes the burdens they carried were so grand, that they would glissade over onto her plate. The current crisis with Rarity was much more critical then her usual conflicts, and it affected her considerably more then she would care to let on. The fast paced life of a member of the Wonderbolts was taxing, and required you to draw a curtain on past lives. While Rainbow had discovered a loophole, many days were spent practicing and rehearsing choreography... And ignoring her friends. Now that her striking career as the captain of the ace, air-performance squadron was over, she began to question her actions and decisions in the past. While the extravagant life of a celebrity was awe inspiring, the calamity of Rarity’s stroke was nagging at her morality.

The Grecian cloud fortress protruded from the horizon in front of her; magnificent columns constructed purely from condensation growing larger and larger. As she approached her home, she began to contemplate the chaotic evening, and the events that took place. The last she had seen and or heard of Twilight was when she was hastily escaping the tense confrontation with the doctor. It was understandable, but yet, deep down Dash knew something was amiss, and there were ulterior motives behind the purple unicorn’s actions. Mutual feelings were had about Pinkie Pie, who had managed to somehow stumble her way to a gurgling creek just outside Ponyville, which was in an entirely opposite direction of her abnormally-pink home. However, when confronted, she seemed just as confused about her location as Rainbow had. And Fluttershy, the delicate and elegant soul, was taking a beating much beyond its threshold. While Rainbow and Fluttershy had the oldest friendship, their relations had boiled down over the years. They still retained the titles of each other’s substitute sisters, but the bond had weakend, and Dash noticed a growing one between the marshmallow-white unicorn, and the timid pegasus with the intense demure. After loosing Macintosh, Dash had expected massive repercussions, and internal damage that would leave scars that would never heal. However, with the assistance of Rarity, she had almost fully recovered; even to the point where she had opened the veterinary school she always dreamed of. Now that the driving force behind Fluttershy’s recovery was terminally ill, she had no way of knowing what would happen next to the delicate heart of her oldest friend.

Rarity sat in a dinky wheelchair waiting on the monotonously toned doctor. All but Sweetie Belle were faithfully waiting by her side in anticipation for the doctor to fill the gaps of information. In retrospect, Rarity never expected something so abrupt and crude from a professional’s mouth. However, years of tedious work and delivering news that would bind people to their death must have desensitized the entire situation to him, and in a way Rarity felt pang of pity for the cold stallion. Everything about him seemed mechanical, as if inside his head were tiny cogs and springs; like it where some kind of antique clock.

“Ms. Rarity, it seems that from this point onwards you have two options…” he said looking up from his clipboard, “…the first one being to continue on like you are now, if you choose this option, I’m sorry, but you’ll have about five weeks left.”

The doctor shuffled a pile of miscellaneous papers in his hooves like playing cards before taking off his glasses.

“And the other option?” quirked Rarity, slightly annoyed at his lack of sympathy.

“The other option is...Chemotherapy. Let me warn you, though. While this might prolong your fight, it will be painful, and the side effects will be taxing upon your body. Not to mention that at your stage it is highly unlikely that the treatment will be successful.” He concluded.

Twilight sighed with disgruntlement behind Rarity before asking a question everyone was thinking.

The doctor shot Twilight daggers with his eyes, annoyed with the fact that the knowledgeable unicorn was probing for standard information.

“Well… the first step that will happen is you will go into surgery. There we will install a port, which will feed the chemicals needed directly into your blood stream. These will stop the cancerous cell replication, along with normal cell replication. This is where things get hairy. The most common side effects include appetite change, general aches and pains, weakness, vomiting, loss of weight and hair loss.”

The last lines, ironically, made Rarity contemplate her decision the most. Her beautiful mane, which she had obsessed over for her entire life, would be destroyed; removed by the chemicals that were going to save her.

“Once again,” continued the direct doctor, “there is only about a 5% chance that this will cure you.” The doctor took a quick, raspy inhale, before speaking once more, “Is that what you want to do?
Rarity thought as hard and as long as she could in the several seconds she had before the doctor would become, once again, impatient.

“Very well… We’ll book you an appointment tomorrow. If at any time you want to stop the treatment, we will remove the plug and send you to a cancer recovery resort.”

Rarity glared at the indifferent colt across the desk from her, and said abruptly.

“I presume that I will be doing many things but recover there… won’t I? So, doctor, tell me… once I am checked in, what’s my due date?”

The lack of compassion and worry in her voice perturbed her friends. None them knew how to respond to her appalling bluntness.

“Well from that point onwards… you’ll have anywhere from a week to two months.”

A look of pure horror sparked behind her eyes. It really boiled down to choosing the lesser of two evils. But if there was a chance. If there was the smallest glimmer of hope, a north star to her shepherds, she was willing to try.

So with a moment’s hesitation, she reached outwards with her shaky magic and signed the form that would leave her life in the hands of fate. While the pen scratched the paper, Rarity cursed her past self. If she had known, if she had just seen a doctor when her nausea attacks refused to subside; when sharp pains that jabbed at the back of her head began to accompany her spells of dizziness... They were wrong. Ignorance was as far from bliss as possible.

“How… How long has she been out there?” whimpered a sorrowful yellow Pegasus.

The head nurse who, unlike the doctor so many weeks ago, seemed to genuinely care for the dying unicorn, sighed, and turned away from the large stained window which overlooked the bewitching gardens and placid lake that lay beyond. It never got easier for him - watching them come into his care and withering like a clipped rose. Only a handful of his patients were blessed with the opportunity to leave this bucolic place. While beautiful and lavish on the outside, the implications of being sent here were enough to cast anyone into a deep pit of despair.

Rarity had come into his care two weeks after beginning her Chemotherapy. At first, the elderly unicorn had been tenacious towards the side effects, doing her best to fight the taxing byproducts of the treatment. She remained vigilant while her weight took a drastic leap off of a ten-meter diving board into a pool of sick. She held her head high while the aches and pains of chemicals eroding her innards manifested themselves in every simple movement. She even tried, in vain, to keep her hopes up while her mane, the glorious lush flowing mane that she had prided herself upon, began to split, and die and fall from her head. Eventually, the psychological and physical torture became too much for the already weak unicorn, and, deciding that the small chance of recovery was not worth the suffering, she ceased the treatment.

When Fluttershy had come to greet her after what she presumed were weeks of torture, she was horrified at what she saw. The mare whom had once been the definition of beauty and youth had aged more in two weeks than in her entire life. Crows feet stretched across her face like cracks in dried, hard desert sand. Her once lavishly adored cheeks were hollow and concave. Her hair, or what was left of it, hung in thin, stringy clumps of dulled purple mess; like seaweed splayed across a craggy shore. Her ribs protruded gruesomely from her sides, and her eyes… Her eyes were the most horrifying of them all. Beady, yet sunken into her skull, as if they were dogs hiding in their kennel, trying to escape a ferocious beating. But all of this, all the pathetic traits that she currently carried, were remedied with two simple factors. When Fluttershy stared deep into her friend’s eyes, past the misty and clouded over pupils, she saw something… something that made her forget the horrors her friend must have gone through: Determination. Even in the darkest hour, where doom lingered just above her head like a precariously perched anvil, Rarity was determined. Determined to meet the face of death with courage and strength. The twinkle in her eyes, and the soft, weak, yet somehow strong smile playing at the sides of her mouth, showed Fluttershy that she wasn’t scared.

The next few days for Rarity were spent sedately wandering the various rooms of her boutique. Dresses she had spent days, if not weeks, making latched onto memories of a specific time of her life like a leach. The gala gowns, the sapphire disco suit, the full spectrum fall clothing line; all captured moments of her life like as if they were in a crystal ball. In her mind, she was mentally preparing herself to say goodbye, but in her heart, she screamed in agony. Years flashing before her, decades of her life now only taking minutes to remember. She wasn’t ready; there was one more thing she needed to do.

On a dreary Monday morning, while the grey gloomy clouds skipped by, dancing on the wind, a carriage pulled in front of the Carousel Boutique. On the side, in mature Victorian styled script, was the name Duck Lake Cancer Recovery Clinic, followed by the sickeningly ironic motto, Building Hope for a Better Future. Two handsome young colts, dressed in ghostly-white nurse scrubs, trotted to the front door, before beckoning the ill unicorn to take a step closer to death. The past few days, life had been kind to Rarity- as if it were taking pity upon her battered soul. She allowed herself to give the quaint shop she had made her home a disdained glance; a tear, fueled by the cold burning of reality, departed her eyes and stained the ground where she stood. The curtains on her life were being drawn closer and closer together, all the while blocking out more and more from her life. She gave one last curtsey to the world she had come to call her own, and with the assistance of the two colts took her seat on a soft cushion, which was filled with death, sorrow and bereavement. She gazed longingly as her town streaked by outside the window. The shops, the street vendors and the carts, the cascading flower baskets and cobble stone paths all seemed to be waving a sorrowful goodbye.

Finally, the last cottage on the edge of Ponyville retreated behind a knoll, and Rarity, with tears streaking down her face turned the page in the book of her life to the final chapter, and began to read.

Fluttershy had employed herself to Rarity’s care the moment she left the Hospital. The initial shock of seeing her friend in such a state started a fire beneath her heart, and while she couldn’t stop the inevitable, she could help make Rarity content. Even after a few days off of Chemo, she began to see drastic changes for the better. Her body was beginning to retain the fat it needed to fill the skin, which hung loosely on her bones like towels on a clothing line. Her demur to go out like a ragdoll greatly aided in Rarity’s recovery. Her mane began to grow back, and after a week, with the help of Unicorn witchcraft, was at half the length it used to be. The colour, which had drained from her face like water from a bathtub, began to make itself present once again. And her eyes, which had made Fluttershy overly sympathetic towards her best friend, no longer churned her stomach whenever she looked at them. It was a counting game now, days ticking by, and not a moment of Fluttershy’s current life was spent not worrying about her closest friend.

The recovery clinic was decadent and exquisite, and the room Rarity had was much the same as the one back at the boutique, save for the sewing equipment. Each night, Fluttershy would sit with her as she fell into a fitful slumber, before making her own way home. Before she could comprehend the time spent at the clinic, a week had passed. Rarity, though originally perturbed at the thought of leaving her home, finally settled in for the final call. Afternoons at the spa together, trying to recreate forgotten times spent together on lazy afternoons. However, it wasn’t long before Fluttershy noticed changes in her friend’s comportment. There was a sever degradation of energy, and her pains had returned, causing many nights of turmoil and insomnia. Eventually the spa’s healing remedies lost their touch, and it became more of a burden for the ailing unicorn. Instead, she began to sit on the bench in the extravagant gardens, which overlooked Duck Lake. Each day, she spent more and more time sitting desolate and unescorted, requesting that Fluttershy leave her be.

The torment of watching her friend slowly decompose before her very eyes was twisting Fluttershy’s stomach into an impossible knot. Rarity was never really a pony-mare, and tended, in times of emotional distress, to push ponies out if they were not her closest friends. This lead to many failed relationships, and her obsession with becoming the next fashion celebrity of Equestria didn’t help. In the end, she had never found the perfect match, and opted to be alone, instead of with somepony who she couldn’t be open with. Fluttershy feared that somehow, in her protective nature, she had over stepped her boundaries, and ruined a friendship she had no time to rebuild.

His eyes were glazed-over, and a look of disapproval and disappointment splashed across his face. However, he motioned with his hoof towards the door, indicating that it was not an issue in his mind.

Fluttershy slumped past her friends, ignoring their volley of questions and continuing down the effusive hallway towards the courtyard. Sweetie Belle was standing beside a bed of azaleas, plucking the flower petals somberly. Fluttershy appeared beside her with distraught emotions plastered across her face like a mask. With out uttering a word they continued together towards what they feared would be the last confrontation with Rarity.

Fluttershy sat on the grass with her hind legs lazily slumped to one side. Her hair was parted and a lone strand played childishly in the wind. Sweetie Belle was sitting with her older sister, her head resting gently on her shoulder. The soft sun was inching closer to the horizon; spreading it’s marvelous, firy beams off of the reflective lake surface. Fluttershy observed as Sweetie Belles shoulders shuddered like an old engine starting up after a long cold winter. With a loving peck on the forehead, she arose from the bench and trotted towards the casually sitting pegasus at the edge of the garden. No words were spoken, only silence and presumed conversation were present. Fluttershy wearily rose to her hooves, her aching body begging her to sit back down again. She brushed of the imaginary crust that had set in on her joints and somberly stepped towards her friend.

“Isn’t the sun exquisite?” asked Rarity as Fluttershy tenderly sat down beside her.

Rarity’s mane was back to the way it used to be, with the odd exception of a stray strand of grey hairs. The ends were curled; similar to the time that she had sulked alone in her room after her friends insisted upon creating the monstrosities they called dresses. A soft royal red Kashmir and silk lined cotton bathrobe was draped around her like a mother protecting her child from the devilish cold.

“It rises, and falls each day… never once pausing, slowing down or resting. Constantly illuminating our world…” Rarity continued.

“I always thought that candles were just like a ponies life. In the beginning, they are meek and vulnerable, fighting to get the flame started. But then… Then it gets its chance, and while others might loose their drive and flicker out, they usually catch the wick and begin to burn brighter and brighter. Sometimes, they go out because of, unforeseen and unexpected events, like a window letting in a gust of wind. But usually… usually they burn bright and long. Then one day, it begins to reach the end of its wax. At first you don’t notice a difference, but gradually you see it get smaller and begin to flicker more than before. It continues to burn though, trying it’s best to grasp onto life and survive just a little bit longer. Finally, once the wax is gone and only a small portion of the wick is left, it accepts its fate and greets it with open arms. Flickering one last time before petering out.”

Fluttershy’s mind was in shambles, her heart ached and her stomach twisted. There was no doubt in her mind that this was the final curtain call for her friend. The sun had lowered more in the past minute, and the leaves lazily danced in front of them on the wind, performing their improved choreography.

“It’s uhh… great…” began the confused mare, “we have five students so far and, we’re… we’re expecting more soon. We even have some new equi...” she drifted off; this was to be too much for her.

“Rarity, please… lets go inside. It’s getting cold, and late, and we’d hate for you to catch a c-” The white unicorn cut off her friend before she could finish.

“No Fluttershy… I’m afraid that the time has long passed… please talk… tell me how your school is.”

“Please Rari-” she couldn’t complete the sentence because she was interrupted once again, but this time more forcefully.

“Dear… Like I said, the time has passed…” Rarity paused, “All these years seem so insignificant don’t they? I never did hear anything about you during our spa days, even after that one afternoon you were so kind to me. Fluttershy, the spa days are done now… but there’s one thing I want you to do dear…”

She stopped, her throat was tightening and a pain in chest squeezed tears from her eyes.

And so she did. Fluttershy talked, and talked. She discussed her school, her students. She talked about how happy she was that were so many people interested in the care for animals. She talked about how sometimes she would wake up crying because of Mac. She talked about how she would read the letter and everything would be okay. She talked about their friendship, as the gentle wind began to die down and subside. She talked about their memories as half of the sun descended behind the horizon and set fire to the clouds that were in the sky. She talked until the first star began its luminescent mascaraed in the most easterly quadrants of the sky. She talked until Rarity began to shiver and she pulled her dearest friend into the warmth of a loving embrace. She talked until the sun left only a sliver of its massive being to be seen on the hills across the water. She talked until Rarity’s breaths became more intermittent. She talked until the sun finally disappeared behind the horizon. And she talked until her closest and dearest friends breaths ceased, and her soul gently floated up into twinkling stars of the clear night sky.