//------------------------------// // I don't think that was decaf // Story: Il Diario della Luna - Journal of the Moon // by EOW //------------------------------// I am a princess without a kingdom to rule. I've been alone for so long and for so long I have waited in vain. No one has taken me with him, nor has come to visit me. But what do I care? I’ve a lot of friends here. And also a great kingdom. Day 610 See dear Pebble, this is my castle. I know it is not much, it's four walls with a table and a bed. But there is the throne, do you see it? Quite suitable for a royal residence, isn’t it? I look at her, she has the same face as before. What a fool, I think, she’s made of stone. I take Scrib and ask him if, kindly, he wants to draw a smile on the doll of stone. He accepts without another word and allows me to make a mouth to Pebble. Now that I think about it, how did she speak before? I need to find an explanation, this inconsistency is really wrong. But I'll think about it later, now I have something else to do. After giving a new mouth to Pebble so she can wonder when I show her the beautiful expanses of the royal estate, that the Marquis Waddebuck has kindly given me for my birthday. The garden no, it isn’t here, it is in Canterlot. But being unable to bring it here I had to "pretend" that these stretches of gray rocks are the garden. The important thing is that it has amazed my friend. I figure it's time to turn off the imagination. I put the stone statue beside the bed and try to sleep. Day 702 Architect? The palace continues as decided? No? Damn it! I paid you with one of those damned crystals from the cave. I put on a fake sulk and crossed my legs, sitting on a chair. It's a stone, eh, I know. I remember that time Celestia asked an architect to redo my room, for the National Day of Sisters. I only remember one thing about that time: never trust an architect pegasus. They closed my room for renovations and I moved in to my sister’s one. It was so small for the two of us and that damn bad stallion didn’t let me to get into my room! Tia put there temporarily a table and a bed, I took a pillow and sat down on it. This is my throne, I said, at the time I was not yet a princess and I was just a little filly. If I think about it... I should have expected that the Blast IV spell was not to be used in a closed room. I sent to hell the pegasus architect and returned home. Sbam-Strush, the new companion, the sound of the door that welcome me as soon as I open it. I greet him back and sit on the throne, squinting my eyes. I'm tired, I had to solve a lot of practices today. + + + Who would have thought that while I was half asleep the Voice was coming to me? Nopony, because there's nopony here, only those stupid characters created by my imagination. I should try to calm down. Listening to the Voice instead I'm doing well to have a little fun with them, they were more friends to me than most of my old servitude. They aren't real, I explain to the Voice. They exist in your heart, like me. Like you? You are real, they aren't. And what if tell you that also I'm part of your imagination? I doubt it, look, I cannot imagine you whenever I want. That's true, she says, but only because YOU decided so, you self-compelled to evocate me only when you really needed it and you didn't expected it. That sentence left me a bit puzzled. Possible that I've deliberately limitated my mind, without even knowing it? Why should I do such a thing, it's stupid, isn't it? Next, she adds, why don't you come back to play with us? The Architect is waiting for you, then you should show your kingdom to Sbam-Strush, he hasn't seen it yet. I remain still, without answering. No, it's just something unnatural, I mustn't fall under the thumb of my own imaginations, by now are... Dunno, two years, I think, that I'm here alone and I had to use these stupid imaginary friends. How long will I stay here? I have to get away from them all, at least for a while, to preserve my mental sanity. I got really lost in my immagination. Day 715 After a week spent to manage supplies for the long journey. An aimlessly one. I mean, in fact, I have half a mind on where to go, there must surely be an unexplored cave, maybe I can get to the center of the Moon. I leave the house and greet, in order, Pebble next to the bed, Clop-Clop, I took off my shoes from hooves, Scrib, which I placed on the table and then Sbam-Strush, since I've last closed the door so that no one came inside while I was away. Unfortunately I can't rip my heart, which means that he will come. Tu-Tum. + + + I'm heading for the horizon, distinguishing the bizarre shapes of the rocks thanks to the pale light that the Earth reflects from the Sun. The Sun.... Sometimes I can see it from here, at this moment I can't see it though. One thing I can say, it makes me weird to see the morning star... at night. Here, as I have already noticed a long time ago, there is no atmosphere, so while the Sun shines in the sky, the sky doesn't becomes blue, but it remains like if it is at night, with all the stars scattered here and there. If Celestia was here we would made a laugh, she would've raised the sun and I would have kept the night. Sigh. You can't have everything in life, eh? Unfortunately a normal pony can not survive up here. Tu-Tum. + + + I deliberately chose not to fly, for not having to hear Flap complaining about being left at home, and unfortunately it costs me a lot of effort. Even be without shoes is annoying, I wasn't used to this and my hooves already hurts. It isn't an easy thing, I'm walking now since two whole days. I crouch under a rock that looks like a roof and try to sleep. For every heartbeat I remember leaving everything at home, all my "friends" are there. I'm sure they have realized that ... Hell, they are fake, shove it in your head! But .... I feel lonely. Very, very lonely... Day 716 Phew! Finally I arrived at the cave that I had to explore. I pick up a pebble from the ground (why I think of a doll of rock while I do it?), and I throw it into the pit inside the cave. It takes like a minute till I can hear the sound, how bucking much is deep? I take a deep breath. I jump. If this hole here brings me to the center... Maybe I'll find some answers. I don't know if there will be those answers and if will serve for something. But my heart tells me so. Not Tu-Tum. My heart. They are two different things. I spread my wings and savor the fall plunged into the darkest darkness, a black so heavy that seemed to crush me to the ground. Despite falling more slowly it seems to me one of those flights swooping down from the Canterlot mountain, those who I did to better learn to fly. Hehe, once I had almost risked my neck, I remember, I jumped down the waterfall, but I estimated wrongly the opening time. I fell into the water and the rapids carried me up to the Great Jump, that high and uninterrupted waterfall that leads to the lake below. If my sister hadn't arrived... Brrrr! I opened my wings, I feel I am close to the ground. Vaulting into the air and landed, I made my horn glowing. Before me there is an unusual scene, a labyrinth of tunnels, there are either to right and to the left, some going down, some up ... Ah, no, that one is where I came. Well, which one shall I take? I must go down, so I should take one pointing down. And if it starts downward and then rises? Woah, it is difficult to choose, more than I thought. If I get lost I'll be in trouble, what should I do? I pluck up courage and I take one at random. + + + Uh, I went right before, so to go back I have to turn... Wait, I turned here or at the next fork? WHAT SHOULD I DO?!? Day 720 It's one week that I'm here. Yeah, I discended ten days ago and I was there from the moment I stopped here a fortnight ago. It's been twenty days since that time. I would like to return to myself of thirty days ago and say not to go. But I'm here. Alone. In the dark. The light spell is exhausted. Hehe. ... Fuck. + + + Flap-Flap? Would you keep me company? I move my wings, I flap them faster but ... Nothing. Flap-Flap doesn't makes himself hear. It will be ... It will be because I betrayed my friends? Yeah. But... But they are not real! They are just ghosts that I created with my imagination to escape from loneliness! And by running away from them what you got? That sentence burns within me and hurts me like a flame in the chest. I bend down, with head between my forelegs and I begin to cry. Oh, I cry, I cry a river. A river of tears as that one in which I nearly drowned many years ago. Alone I would be dead, if there wasn't been Celestia to protect me. Yeah, alone... All alone... No, no, no. I must resist. If... If I accept them as real beings they... I... I'll become crazy? Or maybe I already am? + + + Find your way, find your way. Here I already passed? It's hard to say, I can't see anything. I'm thirsty. I'd like a coffee. Pebbles would have prepared me... NO. Enough thoughts, stop ... Tu-Tum. AAAAAAAARGH!! Day 730 I roll on the floor laughing. Day 729 What had I done the day before? I laughed, yeah. Why? I started to shake a rock. Then I put its content into a cup. Ah, I love coffee! I put a bit of sugar, I shake and drink it. I Spit. It tastes like sand! Oh, it's sand. Moondust, precisely. I scratch a little my head. I turn around. I turn around again. Yay, I didn't do anything useful! But wait ... Damn, it was not decaf! Day 731 Why I came down here? I can't remember, it happened a year ago. I think It was a year ago, I guess. And I think ... I think I left someone behind. No, don't try to remember! But I want to know who... No, don't! C'mon, do it! Damn, STOP IT! I appeased the voices in my head and I made some order. I have to make order, I must or I go crazy. Then I take a sip of coffee, not decaffeinated (Ugh) and gulp. This time mixed with less sand than before. Maybe it's just that I had to get used to it. So, I was rearranging my mind. I've those memories that I shouldn't remember and some stuff that I left behind. A part of me says that I should remember, the other says I should not think about it and a third voice, that of the mysterious mare, supports the first. Two against one, but I where I stand? I want to remember or not? What... what I've left behind? And why am I here? + + + I get up, my head has finally calmed down and I can easily think about where to go. So, if I follow the wind maybe I can figure out where the air comes from. Damn, if it were not so dark, even with the light I see nothing. I even forgot the place I had to reach, maybe I've always been here and now I have to get out. Ah, no wind, I think, realizing that even licking the hoof I can't feel the air flow. So, I think I swallowed lunar sand in the past few days believing it was coffee and it doesn't make me very happy. And... the strange thing is that I remember I've come here to escape the madness or something like that. Memories... Yeah, memories... Why the more I think the more I feel alone? I... + + + PEBBLE! TU-TUM! FLAP-FLAP! CLOP-CLOP! SCRIB-SCRIB! ARCHITECT! SBAM-STRUSH! I... FOR... FORGIVE ME! Day 732 I slam my head everywhere. Why, why, why? Why I fled from my friends? Why haven't I trusted them? Why am I here alone when I could be there to have fun, to be pampered a little? The architect will have finished the palace, right? I know that he is a good person from the bottom of my heart, I can feel it. No, calm. Calm down. You came here to get away from your fantasies and not go crazy. But... If i don't imagine a little I end up worst than crazy! Well, do it for a while, but do it! It's the Voice, that mysterious voice that I forgot it's following me. I forgot a lot of things. Too many. But why of courtesy, I should do so? Because I finally understood, she said, that they aren't looking for you, it's you who're looking them. You need companions that are around you, real or not. You must be able to express your own soul pouring it in them. I swear I didn't understand anything of what just said the voice, but I think she's telling me I should ... I should let myself go at the visions. It's only two years that I'm here, who knows how long I will stay. Not for long, right? Day 745 Somehow I get out of the cave, in some way yes, because ... Oh my God, when I flew up to come out from the abyss, I heard it. It was Flap-Flap! He was with me and he helped me! You're my hero Flap-Flap, thank you! I mean, I don't lose that much my composure usually, but after five months down there my heart was filled with emotions. Tu-Tum. And this time to beat were both my friend Tu-Tum and my heart. If I'm not mistaken I had decided that the two of them were two different things, eh! When I step out of the cave I remain blinded. Not for the light, but for the gray that envelops me in the middle of a vast expanse of monochromatic rocks. That familiar feeling, yet so fresh. I take a deep breath, I get close to a rock and touch it with the hoof. And I feel it. I feel the energy of the satellite, the magic of the place. A thing that down there was missing. Here's what I went to look for, it was my heart (not Tu-Tum) that pushed me to deprive me of everything to understand how are important even the most trivial things. Now, after a year in that dark cave, I realized that I can love this place, I have to let my emotions free to flow till the bottom. If they will come to take me back they'll make me sane again in some way, my sister is the greatest magician of all time, after all, isn't she? Day 718 But what shall be happened to my dear friends while I was gone? Well, from what I understand they've given themselves to the mad joy for a few days, then when they saw I wasn't returning they were worried to death, for example Scrib-Scrib has drawn and then erased his drawings, drawn and erased again. I arrived he had deleted everything. Sbam-Strush did very little, but I hadn't yet decided his personality I think that he will close one eye. Clop-Clop he did some tipical dances of southwest and the Architect ... Oh, he ... Day 801 I walk on the grass, stroking the primroses. I open the door slowly. Strush. I enter the house and close. Sbam! So Princess, she likes her new house? Asks the Architect. Of course, by golly! I'll call it the Castle of the Great and Almighty Queen Luna, Queen That Is No Longer Princess! I say slamming a hoof on the table. Clop! Isn't better something simpler like Castle of Greyrock? It's the voice that suggest. I smile and try to touch her, then remembrance that she's intangible. Thank you very much, it is thanks to you if I knew what was important for me up here. Now ... Give me a cup of coffee. Of real coffee, not the gray sand. Oh, and possibly decaf!