//------------------------------// // Thirty Four Feet Across The Window // Story: Perhaps Death // by WritingSpirit //------------------------------// 1024 AC, ? Month, ? Day, ? h/min/s . . . Ah, of course... Yes, yes.... strange indeed... Yes... nearly there... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sorry, are you actually reading this? Don't mind the babbling! Don't mind it at all! I was simply measuring the thickness of the bars! Yes indeed! Harder without my sonic, but still possible! Then again, I would've spent less time if I had the sonic. Curse those guards and there picky, itchy little hooves! Take things that don't belong to them, eh? Well, tell that to the constable, which is a-- oh, forget constable! Just remembered who exactly the captain is. Scary little colt he was, back in the day. Brings the shivers in my rib-cage! Well, when I mentioned 'picky' hooves I meant they left a few things with me. My bow tie, for instance; bow ties are cool. Even better (at that moment) is the dental floss! Yes, it is manageable even with hooves and yes, it was one of my associates who prescribed it to me. And it was with this string for dental care that I've concocted a most brilliant plan! You see, I have done a lot of reading back in the day and I happened across this notably strange piece of information that involves dental floss. According to actual, trustworthy reports, there are cases where prisoners saw through the bars with dental floss! How bloody amazing is that, the minds of these ponies? Dental floss and iron bars! Wicked, one would agree! Well, there are choices to be made. One is that I sit here and rot like some blithering idiot, talking to magical chalk fairies and create spiderwebs around me and the room with all these dental floss. The other is that I saw through the bars, walk out the doors, get my sonic and finally, run into my TARDIS and ESCAPE!!!!...... And most probably Princess Luna would use her magic and cause it to explode. My, my, alicorns and their dirty tricks... Option one seems best! Forget escape! Spiderwebs it is! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spiderwebs. Articulate. Complicated. Boring~! Great! My adventure of a life, reduced to manufacturing real estate homes for arachnids! Don't get me wrong, I want a great plan, though I really do have no clear idea of a good plan right now. I'm stripped of all my precious belongings (yes, I do realize the TARDIS can't fit into my suit pockets) with only a logbook, dental floss, a small piece of chewing gum and perhaps one or two crumpled bow ties. Besides that, I have nothing. Why jail, I ponder? Why this horrid little place? They could just lock me in the TARDIS; at least I have a swimming pool and a library there. Luxury, resplendence and the soothing silence, all in one package! Absolute perfection, really! Top that off with a cup of tea and that's it! No! They go like 'prisoners don't need comfort; it's their punishment' over and over that they couldn't even remember we were ponies anymore! Well, by the time you're reading this, I'm staring out at the small little window. Apparently, they moved me to solitary when I was asleep; I could smell the air parched with companionship, not that you'll find any beneficial ones down in the dungeon anyway. Good news, however, is that they have an excellent view of the Canterlot streets, so I could see a little bit of the city from here. Quite an amazing place, Canterlot is. Complicated too. I remember the first day I figured out how complicated it was. Ah yes, clear as day, without any little obscurities whatsoever. It was a long, long time ago-- alright, maybe not that long. But it feels that way... maybe my memory is draining after all... But enough of that. Time to reminisce... . . . . . . 998 AC, First Summer, 8, 14:32:47 "And what's that suppose to mean?" "What?" "Your name, f'course!" the other kid said to me. "What kind of name is... The Doctor? Haven't you had a proper name of some sort, like a good one that your mother gave you? This 'Doctor' thing seems all made-up!" "Well, Missus Hearthfire called me Turner. Is that alright with you?" "Be'er!" he continued, almost yelling into my face. What a great friend! Back then I was acquainted with most of the kids in the center, so yes, I made a lot of friends, though neither are suitable to be a companion in my journeys. Don't be mistaken, I didn't travel in the TARDIS at that time; I was only eight years old! Do you expect an eight-year-old to go traipsing into danger alone? With nopony else to follow him? Whoever said yes must be mentally ludicrous! Despite that, I do have the knowledge of time-travelling. It's like genetic inheritance, only with memory stream. The more I grow, the faster my previous memories return to me, so you could say I have almost all of my knowledge of the TARDIS and my piloting skills effectively in my head. Almost. "But I like calling myself 'The Doctor' more!" I protested. I was a naive little foal back then, so you could say I was a little inexperienced. "It's... it's like getting a bow tie! I wear bow ties! Bow ties are cool!" "Only you would say that, Turner." Mrs. Hearthfire stepped into our small little bickering, and I would add loud, seeing how she was wearing her gardening hat and probably pruning the hedges in the backyard. I say, her ears are the most sensitive I've ever seen! Which mare you know can hear two whining little morons over the sound of birds, lawn-mowing, sprinklers and the laughter of children? Exactly! "Run along now, Whipper! If I recall correctly, you were the only one who made your bed yet! Wouldn't want to miss out on lunch now, would we dear?" Well, you know what happened next. Whipper was always a keener pony when it comes to any of the three meals. A little wordplay, perhaps... I guess what I said would be food for thought! Haha! Ha! Heh... never mind... "As for you, Turner." Mrs. Hearthfire turned to me, wearing a sweet smile. Really, that's a batter of honey right there on her lips, topped with a few dainty sprinkles of sugar, if I may add! "You still haven't unpacked your belongings yet! It's been, what, a month since we moved into this new place! What in the world are you keeping in there, young fellow?" "Just a little tidbits, Missus Hearthfire," I answered in the most innocent-looking way I could. After all, you wouldn't want your babysitter to find out that you had the TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver lying among your little childhood goodies now, wouldn't you With a laugh, she left me, making sure to pat my head as she headed towards the stairs. That finished, the one thing I could only think of doing was running off into my room, mostly to unpack my things because, well, it's a little risky to let her walk into a bedroom like mine. Speaking of which, I wasn't the most organized pony back in the day. If I were to describe my bedroom in one single word, it would be 'trash heap'! Wait, is that two words? Is 'trash heap' two words, with a hyphen somewhere or just one word? 'Trashheap'... that does not sound right. 'Clutter' then! And a clutter it was! Try to picture your bedroom. Yes, the very same one! Now, imagine a stack of cardboard boxes at each corner, some half open, some still sealed and brand new, though all coated in varying degrees of dust. Instead of a cupboard, in place there is a blue police box. The bed is right under a square window where outside is a plain, Canterlot street, with another row of houses right across you that bore the intricate designs of Canterlotian architecture. Yes, I know it's not much, but it's better than the other dreary one back in the older house. "Sonic! Sonic, sonic..." Disorganized as I may be, I always find it what you, my dear reader, might call... order in chaos, if I phrased it correctly. It took a little time to look around, but I soon saw it lying innocently at the window. Shuffling across the cluttered floor and being careful not to step on any sweaters and bow ties, I reached my tiny little hoof out for it, standing at the edge of my hoof before falling over and landing on, much to my luck, my soft bed. "Got it!" I cried happily. Yes, I must admit, I was rather a silly little colt back then, even for a child. With a sigh, I picked myself up, stretching my hooves as I planted them on the bed. That's when I saw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No! Forget what I said. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nothing... I saw nothing... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1000 AC, Third Winter, 24, 22:21:06 "Happy Hearth's Warming!!" Today was exceptionally busy as well as joyous. Which child wouldn't be excited on Hearth's Warming Eve? It is where the first drops of snow rain upon the houses of Equestria, as triggered by the weather-pegasi in their factory in Cloudsdale. It's one of the many things that a standardized pony must learn in school, about where the weather comes from. But enough of this nonsense! To all of us here, it was one of the most special days ever, mostly because we received a few presents from charity! At least, I assumed it was charity; the other kids kept mentioning this Santa Hooves pony who sits on a sleigh, with tiny pony elves to help him and reindeer to pull him. It's ridiculous, I thought to myself back then! Really, who in the pony world would call upon the help of the cervines as a method of transportation? It's pretty obvious that he's a pegasus! Trust me, we took a photo together in the Crystal Empire! Anyway, unlike the rest of them, who were having a scrumptious and fulfilling (I assume) Hearth's Warming feast, I was inside my bedroom, eyes solemnly gazing out the window. The snow had picked up a little, judging from how I could barely see through this... this barrage of white. Beyond that was the focus of my attention; the upstairs window of the house across the street, black without any trace of the light that once flickered there. My mind couldn't register: why did they leave? Did they know that I was watching them? That I was gazing at their family the whole time? No, there must be a reason. At least, a better one. "Turner? Aren't you coming down for lunch?" "Not now, Missus Hearthfire," I shouted back. I was too disappointed to join them for the frivolous occasion. Everything seemed fruitless... mundane... desolate even, and joining them for dinner would only prescribe all of them with depression. All that remains is me staring at the house on the other side of the street, thirty four feet across the window. That one window in particular looked darker than the rest, as if eating out every ray of light it could find in the whole of Canterlot. It's like staring at the sun. For the longest time. Every day, you spend at most half an hour staring at it until you get so used to it, it became from a routine to... some sort of addiction. As if you wanted more. Then, one day, the light of the sun just... went out. Just... poof. What you see instead became darkness eternal; what you hoped for lost. There wasn't a meaning in anything else. No, there was only... there was only a maze; a labyrinth that keeps you away from the rest of the world, and you fight so hard to get back up to your hooves... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yet I kept wishing there was something there. Something. Anything! Anything that can whisper to me and tell me... 'I'm still here.' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . They were gone when the first leaves started to turn brown, and ever since I wondered if they would ever return. I tried to look around for only one of them; the one that drew my interest. I wanted to know who she was, where she goes for school and such. Yes, yes, y-you could say I had a foalhood crush. Who would've thought of it, a ten year old Doctor having a foalhood crush. W-Well, it's something we all expected when we were children, so don't judge me! And whoever is snickering back there, please do shut up. Yeah, yeah, har-dee-harhar. She was beautiful, even though I don't know who she was. Every day that window would glow a faint yellow and I see her silhouette doing a pirouette (sorry, I really wanted to use that) with her doll in her bedroom! Then, when she opens the blinders and I get a glimpse of her face... Wow... She was... just plain beautiful... And now... I might never see that face again. Yes, it might seem a little too much to be a foalhood crush, adding to the fact that I'm not just any normal pony you would meet in the street. You could say that as a pony, I might have all the privileges that every normal pony would have, but I'm the Doctor and, as it turns out, I'm being watched the whole time by a higher power. I found that out the hard way, but that's an entire story altogether. Well, I had been down in the dumps for six months, my head still wandering over that filly who once lived across the street. Don't worry, I never eavesdropped on her or spied on her in the bathroom (which sick moron would think of that?) but I did look around the streets for her face on the way to school. Sometimes, I thought I spotted her and-- well, you know the rest. All this rambling... Perhaps you know her. Perhaps I did too. But I can't remember. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No. No. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It's not that I can't remember. It's that I don't want to. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I don't want to remember. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .