I laid there in that hospital bed for what seemed hours, unable to move or open my eyes. Paralyzed by the repeating vision of my mother, the armor schlepping off her body and cascading to the floor. I wanted to run to her, but I kept stumbling over my legs, my wings snapping shut and refusing to unfurl. I stretched my left hand out, reaching for her as she laid bleeding out from a large stomach gash and the hole where her wing had been ripped out. I begged her to take my hand, hoping for her to stir. Before she could respond, I felt my body shake as the world around me fell away and me along with it.
“Wake up.”
I was greeted this morning just as I had every morning. A beaming face hovering over mine. Only this time, the face did not belong to a certain purple curl bearer, but a gruff bespectacled face.
“Magnum.”
“Kid.” He replied, “you ready to get out of here?”
“Yeah, but where is everyone else?” I asked, looking around the room for the three girls that said they be here.
“I told them that I would pick you up. Told them that we would meet up later. Vinyl and Dash almost had to lash Rarity to the couch,” he chuckled at the thought, “but eventually she agreed.”
“Oh...well...what then?”
“Nothing much, just wanted to do something nice for you two.”
“Umm...ok? But wouldn’t it have been nicer for you to bring Rarity along?” I asked, mostly confused about the statement. As soon as the words left my lips, my body hummed, surrounded in a familiar mahogany aura. Magnum placed me on my wheelchair and grabbed the shoebox as all the contents returned to their place inside, including the tape that whizzed out of the VCR.
“Ah…” was all that came out of the mouth of a man I had feared less than a month ago.
“What is it?” I asked, seeing tears well up at the corner of his exhausted eyes.
“I thought that day would cease to haunt me, but it always manages to come back in one way or another.”
“Yeah, it certainly was not fun from what I saw.”
“How much did you see?”
“What?”
“What was the last part you remember seeing?”
I hesitated. Just hours before I watched unable to do anything as my mother died on the floor behind a desk. Broken, alone, and failing to protect her only child. It was devastating to say the least.
“You saw her come back didn't ya?” All I could do was nod. “Heh, figured. It’s not an easy thing to see someone die. Even if you didn’t know them. It’s worse if you did.” He stated hollowly, as the tape floated out of the box and drifted back into the VHS.
It blipped on into life, back at where I had passed out. Must have fallen on the remote and shut it off or something…
“The day Amber died is a day seared into Pearl’s and my life.” He hollowly said as he looked on at the screen. The remote floated over to his hand as he fast forwarded ahead. After a few hours of time had passed, he continued on at normal speed.
The black and white forms of Magnum and Pearl showed up at the door on the screen, beaming and knocking. After several seconds of waiting for an answer that wasn’t going to come, they knocked again; Magnum’s fist pounding on the door. Again, he slammed his giant hand into the door, shaking it at the hinges.
Eventually, the coupled turned to each other with a worried look on their faces.
“That was the day we moved here. She told us that she was going to be at the library all day. At first we thought she was gone...but then we noticed…”
On the screen, the look of shock on Pearl’s face as she grasped for the handle and pulled the mangled remains towards her. The door snapped off its top hinge as Magnum and Pearl spilled into a different camera shot and into the library. I could see them calling out to her, to no avail.
“It was the longest two minutes of my life, finding her at her desk…” Magnum whimpered, a tone I never thought was conceivable from him. There on the screen where my mother laid dead… Magnum rushed over and scooped up my mother in his arms, his face morose. Pearl quickly followed and ran out of the room as Magnum yelled. Pearl dashed to another room and snatched up the phone.
“After Pearl left, I lost it… in my hands was the body of my best friend aside from Pearl. I cuddled her in my arms, weeping. That’s when I heard it, the smallest chuckle. ‘I never thought I’d see you cry again’ she said, coughing up blood.” Magnum’s eyes were visibly bloodshot as a tear began to descend his grizzled face, getting lost in his mustache. “Pearl came bolting back into the room, and collapsed as she looked at her friend’s eyes, the light slowly leaving them.”
“I can remember her tearing up, telling us that she failed Discord, that she failed us, that you were gone. She coughed up as she told us she was the worst mother in history….” Magnum sat down in the small armchair, bringing his hand up to his face, covering his eyes as he retold his worst day.
“We told her that help was on the way, that she would be fine, that she was a good mother… she smiled. I remember that smile, always will. She looked at us, and thanked us. She asked me to do her one last favor…her dying wish…”
I looked on at him. The one person I was truly afraid of over two week ago, sitting here broken, about the death of his best friend…
“Today I am going to do something I should have done the second you got to town.”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew who you were the second you walked into the door. Pearl did too. I honestly was more angry about the fact that you just walked into my house...a reminder about her. When I talked to Discord, he told me that we needed to tell you sooner or later about your mother...but I just didn’t have the heart to do it.” He rose off the seat and strolled over behind my wheelchair, the tape floating back into the box as he stepped closer.
He said nothing again as he wheeled me out of the hospital into the early morning. The light snow blocked the sun, making the sky bleak and lifeless, the ground shallowly covered in a crust of slush and water. I took a deep breath of fresh air and unfurled my wing to feel the cold winter breeze pass through my feathers.
We walked for an hour in silence. I took in the sights one last time. The difference from the day I arrived over two weeks ago was staggering. The river flowed with large chunks of ice floating along, the water choppy and frothing because of it. The dull tones waned from the bright whites and blues from before Hearth Warming. The wind grew bitter as the snow fell heavier. Pushing the wheelchair becoming a chore for the limping man pushing it.
After a while, the snow laid in my lap a good inch deep, we stopped near a hill on the south side of the town. All over the hill, speckled throughout the snow layer were gray stones protruding up from the ground. The graves wound up the hill, reaching all the way to the top where a grand mausoleum stood proud, protecting the bodies of the passed from the elements.
“What are we doing here?” asking, even though I was certain I knew…
“I told you it was good for you two.” Magnum replied heavily. His breath shortened as he pushed me towards the right of the hill. Finally, I understood what he meant by the statement ‘good for the two of you’. He was never talking about his daughter. We turned and stopped at a small marker, barely taller than my wheel, on it read...
Amber Cressida Sheen
Librarian, Mother, Friend
That was it, the final resting place of my mom… I just stared at the stone, not believing what laid in front of me, but it was literally set in stone for me, right there. My mother…
Magnum passed my left hand, placing his large hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him, finding his eyes glistening with tears. He looked on at the grave marker...and smiled.
“I told you that you were a good mother, Amber. And if only you could see him now,” Magnum stated, looking down at me. We locked eyes and there I saw the most genuine smile I have ever witnessed. He turned his head back towards the marker, kneeling down in front of it and placing his hand on the top.
“I kept my promise… as ludicrous as it was. I’m sorry it wasn’t me that found him, it was Rarity. You would have loved her just as I do. She turned into such a beauty, just like you said I would never be,” he chuckled, wiping the tears from his eye. “She brought him back home to you. He grew up brave and kind just like you said… like you wanted him to be. He may be a pain in the ass sometimes but he is just like you were back in school….” Magnum trailed off as he muttered his final statement. He stood up and walked back behind me, grabbing the handles and rocked them slightly.
“If you have anything you want to say, this is just a good as time as any.”
I looked down at the marker at my feet, I didn’t know what to say. There were so many things floating around in my brain that I had no idea where to start. I sat there for minutes, just staring at the stone.
“Thank you.” was all I was able to manage. A smile crept along my face as a few tears fell from behind my glasses. I wasn’t abandoned, she had fought for me, died trying to bring me back to safety.
I couldn’t figure out anything else to say. I was completely bewildered. My mind raced on about why I felt so strongly about her. I never knew her as my mother but she was, and she loved me. But I didn’t know how to feel or even think about it. I began to feel guilty, not knowing what to do with the wealth of information that had been dumped into my lap.
“What am I supposed to do….” I asked quietly, waiting for an answer from Magnum. When none came, I turned around to find myself alone, the old man leaving me alone with my mother for the first time in twenty years.
“The only thing that we can do,” a familiar voice quietly stated from behind one of the large support pillars. Disord walked around from behind the pillar slowly walking over towards me. He stopped just short of me and turned toward the small marker. “The only thing we can do is take advantage of the gift that she gave you.” He smiled warmly at me as he bent over, holding the cane he had made in his hands.
“Don’t forget this, wherever you go. Think of it as a last gift from your mother. That crystal skeleton and skin of your’s will protect you as she would have always.” He said as he walked out of the mausoleum, waving his goodbye as he did.
I turned back around to the marker, and just stared at it. Time crept by as my gaze never faltered from her. The wind grew increasingly bitter against my body. I retracted the wing inside my coat, and brought up the collar to protect my neck. I wish I still had my scarf, it always manages to keep me warm. It felt like Rarity was always there to keep me close to her and keep us safe.
“Crisp!” Someone bellowed from outside the mausoleum. Vinyl was being just as loud as ever, but how did she know I was here?
“Hey, Crisp, are ya ready to go? I’m freezing my feathers off here!” Dash chimed in, the voices getting closer with every word.
A few more seconds passed as three figures appeared in the doorway, darkened by the oncoming stormclouds. Rarity lightly brushed the snow covering their shoulders off as they strode in out of the blizzard. A small gust blew in, bringing snow and a chill that hit my core. I soon was unable to control my shivering, the only thing bracing my battered body from the cold a thin windbreaker from the hospital.
She looked as lovely as that day I crashed into her on the street racing Dash. Even without all her fancy makeup and hair styling she still could command a room. I was in love with a girl that I met when I was a child, and lost her as well as my mother in the same day. I could never describe well how much I felt for her.
“Here,” she said, holding up my scarf and coat she had given me, “I tried to get all the blood out. I managed to get the scarf clean but there was not much more I could do with the coat. I’m terribly sorry dear-”
I stopped her as I threw my arms around her, as much as it pained me to do so. She tried to hold it together but after a couple seconds, she finally broke down in my arms. Tears streamed down her face as she buried it into my chest. Her sobs shook me to the core as I just held her in my hands, stroking her hair and rubbing my forehead against the back of her head. I could hear stifled cries from off to the side.
“It’s ok, guys.” I laughed, attempting to be reassuring. “I’m alive and I should be fine as long as I have you three in my life.” I held Rarity’s face to mine, and kissed her softly, “especially you. Someone is going to have to help me into bed.”
She laughed as she kissed me back, standing up as she did. The three of them walked in front of me and smiled, except Dash, who tried to look as though she didn’t care enough. I laughed as I motioned them towards the way of the apartment, ready to start my new life with the three best people I could ever hope for.
I looked back as we left and quietly thanked my mother for letting me have this day. Rarity looked back as well, and I knew she had the same thought. I smiled at her and no longer felt the sting of the bitter wind, for I was finally starting to feel whole again.