//------------------------------//
// Day 17 
// Story: Unfamiliar Skin 
// by darf 
//------------------------------//

Log, Entry 17:

Disaster. Unending disaster. Take me now and crush me like the help that I have destroyed.

Last evening. She leaned to me. The trinket I gave her around her neck. Where the metal would have been comfort, now it was a shining dagger-beacon beckoning me to abandon all hope.

Her face came so close to mine.

I cannot.

It is a miracle I was not sick. If I had spewed biofluid onto her face, surely I could have given up then? If I was at last fully revealed, with no more of the charade she has put on, could I be set free? To the cave, or the shedding ground, or simply to be abandoned to the ponies and have them torture me until I expired? I don’t care anymore. I can't.

I wish so badly to cry, even though I know it is only an instinct of the flesh surrounding me. These eyes will not work. Nothing works.

One more ration remains. Every second is a shaking weakness. The hiss is gone. There is a dull thrumming now. I feel that it is death.

Tomorrow is my last hope. When she is exposed, I will feed for the first time, and perhaps the last. I am not sure if I will survive.

Perhaps, in that moment of glory, my true body will spring forth from this cage. The sickness of the love I know I am meant to crave will finally feel real, and I will draw the last of it from the one creature I am led to believe has any reason to care about me. Mother’s love does not reach me here. The hive is cold and dead. The world is dark, and when I close my eyes, I see a shattered skeleton. Mine.

Let this be it. Lyra is.

Tomorrow. The swell of her room’s aura reaches me even here. My hooves over my head cannot block it out.

Perhaps my last entry. I am sorry.