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Heart is Where the Home is
Jeffrey C. Wells
www.scrivnarium.net
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I didn't expect to find myself back here at the wreckage so soon.
Then again, I didn't expect a lot of things that happened today. Weathering the assault of a giant, bellowing creature who towered over the rooftops of Ponyville annihilating everything in his path remains high on the list.
I've never been a grieving sort of mare. The world has closed any number of doors on my past; and I know, both in my heart and my brain, that the only solution that ever works is to not give up, to build again. To laugh in the face of a sometimes-cruel world. To never let them see that falter.
I'll get there. I will.
The certain-sure knowledge that there are bigger and better things waiting for me just over the horizon is its own sort of comfort, too. I know that I am a mare of destiny, marked for great things. Maybe, in the eyes of the universe, it simply was not right for me to occupy such a humble home. Maybe the universe is slowly trying to mold me into the mare I am meant to be by, as the famous sculptor once said, chipping away every part of me that is not great. My home was small and cozy and safe, but in the end, not exactly grand. Perhaps, in the larger scheme of things, it had to go. An inevitability. Sure as water flowing downhill. Sometimes it is beyond the power of one little pony to fight a current that strong.
I tell myself a lot of things to make myself feel better. It doesn't make the hurt go away.
So here I am, standing before a mass of splintered and sundered wood. I shouldn't even be awake at this hour, but I don't exactly know how the public works division operates in this town. Efficient, I'll bet. It'll probably be cleared away soon, like the worthless ruin that it is. And this is why I awoke and made my way back here tonight. By tomorrow, it might be gone, and I couldn't stand the thought of leaving it forever without one last goodbye. For years this pile of rubble was my castle, my sanctum, my home. A warm retreat to hunker down in on a cold winter's night; and in the heat of summer, a bright open space in which to practice my craft. Whenever despair hobbled my steps, this was the place I would return to, to seek comfort in memories of obstacles surpassed and triumphs achieved. It was the first home I ever really had, and, other than the clothes on my back, it literally housed every object that I ever called my own.
I know what you're thinking. You're just like the rest of them, aren't you? Everypony will tell you that they're just things. "Things can be replaced. Ponies can't." It's one of those aggravating reflexive pleasantries that ponies will always offer whenever this sort of tragedy strikes somepony else (not themselves). Do you have a photo album? Of course you do. Why not just rip it up? Put something with a little functional utility in its place! It's just things, right?
In your heart, you know it isn't true. Experience and memory transform simple trinkets into artifacts and totems. They're not just "mementos." They are the moorings to which our memories are hitched so that they do not float away and become nothing more than lost flotsam on the foggy ocean of time. Costumes. Books. A single dried rose. These aren't just globs of cotton and silk and wood pulp and decaying vegetable matter. In a very real (albeit metaphysical) sense, they are my experiences. They're my past. They are who I am, everything that made me the great mare I am today.
And now, they are nothing but garbage. Fodder for a street sanitation crew.
I kick listlessly with one hoof at my entire old life.
So, this is it. The close of another chapter. A season ends, a season begins. "Change is good," they tell me (usually the same ponies who earlier trotted out the "they're just things" chestnut). "Change is not to be feared, but embraced." And I grudgingly must admit that this time, they do have a point. It's hard when change seems to fly in the face of everything you thought your Creator intended for you, when you worry that the future looks like nothing more than a long, slow slide toward mediocrity and oblivion. But I'm better than that. I've endured worse, and I will probably endure worse than this. In the end, this will be remembered as nothing more than a short, tragic setback, a tiny illegible footnote of despair in a long, illustrious life filled with amazing accomplishments. I draw myself up to my full height, taking warmth and strength from the greatness that is to come, and turn my back on my former home for the last time. The brightest of all possible tomorrows awaits me.
I just wish I had some, you know, friends or something. A couch to crash on, at least.
I shake away the treacherous thoughts. Friends are for the weak. Twilight Sparkle needs friends. The Great and Powerful Trixie does not. I have a cloak. I have a hat. The night is not so cold, the woods are full of edible pine nuts, and the pegasus ponies high above have promised us no rain for the entire rest of the week. It is a comfort to know that my immediate physical needs will be taken care of, so that my mind will be free to think about the important things. A new town. A new act. A new wagon.
Revenge.
It's good to have a plan. And it's good to have a refreshed perspective on life. The show must go on, even if for no other reason than that you have to give the bits back otherwise.
Still and all, I really do hate giant monsters.
"Stupid Ursa Minor," I mutter to myself.
I wheel about and gallop off toward the future.