Blowing In The Wind

February 20th 2012

A Story Inspired By The Book,
The Five People You Meet In Heaven

MLP: FiM Fic by Mr.Dependable

"There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story"
Frank Herbert

Dinky sauntered down the winding dirt path as a glowing empyrean orb began its placid decent towards the dark outline of the horizon. The last few weeks of spring, which alluded to the blistering summer’s months, were held dear to the 22 year old unicorn. The scorched earth and dry dusty air reminded her of days in her filly hood spent playing with her mother. Without any direct family of her own, the memories she possessed while faint would always be with her. An ever present reminder of the one who had raised her despite the complications of her clumsiness.

Things had never really felt the same without her only family member. While she was young when her mother so abruptly came to the cross roads of life, the time spent was enough for her memory to remain vivid in her mind. A memory that would always be with her through toil and trouble, offering the hand of support and amour that she remembered. But the pain of her loss still cut deep, and many nights Dinky would find herself alone in a world of cynicism and cruelty. It was in those desperate moments, when she felt the most helpless, that something reached out to her. Something with the supernatural power to pull her through the darkness and into the blinding white light of happiness and amenity. She couldn’t elucidate what it was, but it was always there by her side in desperate times of forlornness.

Dinky slid a matured key into the seasoned door of her home, her parents home. It had a certain aroma, fetid yet comforting and hospitable, that lingered in the air for over 15 years. It was always her home and it always would be. Nothing had really changed in the rooms of the house since her mother passed. Her friends were delegated to preserving it, so that when Dinky was old enough to move in on her own, all the photographs and memoirs remained.

She let the key lazily slip from her hoof and crumple onto the dainty table that sat patiently by the door. Using what little strength she had left after a long arduous day at the post office, she hung her mothers old mail saddlebags on a coat hangar. After many years of contemplation, Dinky had come to the conclusion that she would follow in her mothers footsteps and assume her responsibilities at the Equestria Post. It was hard work, but she still managed to struggle through it, despite all odds.

The sun had finally set, and darkness shrouded the home as Dinky prepared a late supper and began to look through the photo-books filled with mirthful memories and poignant frozen frames. Each photograph glossed over her mother’s momentous life. From the day she was just filly, to her wedding, even as far as a picture of the pair on the day she was taken from her. The progress through the book always brought tears to her eyes and a drilled a hole in her heart. However, while saddened by this, a mysterious feeling of contentment and acceptance would find its way into her mind. Beyond the pages of her mother, Dinky had begun her own life. Portraits of friends filled the empty spots where images of her and her mother belonged, in commemoration to the life of the grey Pegasus.

Flipping the last page was the most vexatious for Dinky, one picture always closed the cascade of memories with a stalwart performance of strenuous emotion. It was a picture that Dinky had made for her mother, a painting of the two enclosed within a crimson heart. She had made it when she was a little filly, and Dinky would always make sure to pause and let the image and the implications of it sink into her heat, like a rock in platonic quicksand. For some reason, on this night Dinky was compelled to do something she hadn’t done in over 10 years. With shaking hooves, she removed the stiff cardboard page from the book, and carried it with her to bed.

Dinky crawled under the coercive bed sheets and delicately set the picture down on a solid oak bedside table. The ominous “click” of the table lamps switch, echoed in the stiffly silent room as it was plunged into darkness. With an exasperating sigh, Dinky rested her head against the pillow and gently drifted off to dream land, as a night-tide orchestra began its reticent midnight sonata.

However, her arrival in the unconscious mind was anything but gentle. As soon as she slipped into a state of chimera, vivid thoughts and memories played out before her. Slowly growing more and more uncomfortable and frightening. Livid ponies barked in despotic tones as the triturating wheels of a monstrous locomotive forced its way into her succubus phantasm. She violently tossed and turned in her bed, until an image of her mother snapped her out of her fitful slumber.

Tears streaked down her red face and stained the pillow as her bedside clock blinked its macabre display of numbers against the bleak and imbibing darkness. She bit her pillow as her midnight lament flowed through the silent night. Eventually the roar of her deploring outburst died down to nothing more than shuddering breaths. With what little light the moon permitted, Dinky turned her head towards two pictures which were placed on her bedside table. The first was the painting she had been compelled to bring with her to bed, the other was a photograph of her mother. A complacent and reassuring smile stretched from ear to ear on the frozen image of the grey Pegasus.

Dinky sniffled as she reached out towards the picture, both physically and spiritually. The glare of the moon was just enough for her to admire the mare who was her mother, without the bleak and piercing unnatural fluorescence of the lamp. She gently and lovingly brushed her hoof across the glass frame in longing. Tears began to fall once again, but they were different now. Each bereaved droplet of water that landed on the photograph was tainted with happiness... acceptance. She missed her mother, but she knew deep down that where ever she was, she was happy and at peace. Dinky clutched the picture tightly in her hooves and pressed it to her chest as she lay back down on the bed of memories. In the final few moments before escaping into a peaceful sleep, Dinky smiled and whispered five words, each filled with genuine affection.

As her mind slowly began to slide into unconsciousness Dinky could have sworn that she felt the duvet covering her body settle, as if some-pony had tucked the half conscious unicorn in to bed. As her eyes began to droop from the oppressive and tantalizing notion of sleep, her ears perked up. Dinky could have sworn that in the last few moments before her mind began its mascaraed of visions and memories, she heard a voice. A voice which seemed to be so many millions of miles away, yet somehow closer than ever before. A voice she had heard many a time when she was just a filly. The soft, amiable, dove like voice of a grey Pegasus with a blond mane. The voice of her mother.

“Goodnight Dinky....” said a spiritual figure from her position beside her sleeping daughter,

Blowin' In The Wind

by Mr.Dependable

Epilogue