//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 What do you mean I'm dead?! // Story: Heaven Awaits // by Ayla //------------------------------// Heaven Awaits By Ayla Chapter 1 What Do You Mean I'm Dead?! I've always had a bad life. It was dull, painful, and depressing. What I had no idea was my afterlife would be much more interesting. I've always been one to just stay at home, and I was completely unprepared for the journey that I was about to have. I've always thought that if I didn't have bad luck I'd have none at all. I was born sickly, I grew up in an abusive family, a lot of my so called former friends either betrayed or abandoned me, the only stallion I ever truly loved died in a carriage accident, and then I got the mental illness of bipolar disorder to top it all off. I wound up living off of disability, barely getting enough to make ends meet once I moved out and got away from my family. Being around a lot of other ponies makes me anxious, so except when I need to go out to buy groceries, I mostly just stay home. Pinkie Pie is my only real friend, since she manages to be friends with everyone. I admit that her visits do tend to brighten my days, and at least once a week I manage to go out and spend time with her and her other friends at her insistence. I have my good days and my bad days. I have to take medication every day to keep my mental illness under control. Rarely I get a highly elevated mood which I think of as a happy high. I mostly have depression and anxiety. The meds help some but not enough. I'm in limbo. Well enough to stay out of a mental hospital, yet not well enough to be a functioning member of society. I also have plenty of physical problems. I have a weak immune system, irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, asthma, and I'd had to have several surgeries to get organs removed due to infections and other problems with them. My weak immune system means that I get sick easily. If I catch something I tend to have it longer than most ponies. Not to mention I'd not feel well for a week both before and afterwards. The irritable bowel syndrome keeps me from eating anything very spicy, or else it will make me sick. Some days when it flares up I can barely eat, and I need to take medicine to make things calm down and only eat bland foods. The allergies I have are just ridiculous. I'm allergic to grass and hay for pity's sake! Not to mention a few other fruits and vegetables. I can't even eat peanuts or regular nuts. The allergies just make my asthma worse. The asthma makes it hard to breathe some days. All in all I was almost always tired and I rarely had much energy. Caffeine was my friend some days, giving me the strength I need to get things done. My little house is usually a mess. I hate to clean, I tend to be disorganized, and I don't usually have the energy for it anyway. I had tried to get a job before, but nobody wanted to hire a pony that didn't have a high school diploma. I'd dropped out when my bipolar got so bad I just couldn't concentrate enough to pass things anymore. I'd tried to go back three times, but by now my memory was shot. It was hard for me to remember a lot of things and I'd always have to write things down to remind myself about them. If I couldn't remember the answers, I couldn't pass the tests. If I couldn't pass the tests, I couldn't graduate. If I couldn't graduate, I'd have a hard time finding a job. Though with all the anxiety I have when I'm around a lot of other ponies, maybe that wouldn't be a good idea for me anyway. Not to mention I might end up getting fired for taking too many sick days. I get angry sometimes. I feel like I've never gotten a true shot at life. If I'd just had a loving supportive family, if we hadn't been poor, If I hadn't been sick... If I'd just had ONE of those things my life could've been so much better. If I'd had money I wouldn't have to worry about making ends meet. If I'd have been healthy I'd have been able to finish high school, maybe even college, and get a good job. If I'd had a good family to help me I wouldn't have cared about either of those things. Such is life. Life is like a game, and some of us lose early on. Oh I know I could be much worse off. I could have cancer, or I could be starving, or homeless, etc. I know that, and I do try to appreciate what I do have. It's just hard to do with that depression regularly coming back to haunt me. This particular day I could hear a lot of a ruckus going on outside. Something about Matilda's wedding being today when it was supposed to be tomorrow. I'd been sent an invite, but I know it was only them being polite. I wasn't true friends with anyone in Ponyville but Pinkie Pie, and that suited me just fine. Thanks to everything I'd been through I tended to have trust issues. I also heard a monster attack going on, and I looked out the window seeing Pinkie and her friends fighting it. I just shrugged. Things like this happening around here was pretty common by now. I sat down in front of my mirror and brushed my brown and white mane and tail before braiding them so the hair wouldn't tangle when I lay down for my nap. I then grabbed my other brush, my coat brush, and brushed my yellow body, carefully smoothing it over my eighth note cutie mark. I had always loved to sing, and everypony had always told me that I had a good voice, so nobody was surprised when it turned out to be my talent. It was fitting, since my name is Meadowlark. My parents had been inspired to name me that since my colors had matched that particular song bird when I was born. Before I'd gotten this depression I'd considered becoming a professional singer. But now that I have all these anxiety and health problems I know that's just a passing dream. Professional singers have to travel a lot, and be around a lot of other ponies. I knew that my health and frayed nerves would never be able to take a life like that. Sometimes I hated myself for being so weak. Sometimes I felt if I just tried harder maybe I could get something accomplished, but I was always so afraid that I'd fail. I've failed so many times already. I shook my head as I thought about all these things. There was no point in dwelling on them. This was my life, such as it was, and parts of it I couldn't change no matter how much I wanted to. Thinking about it would only make me feel worse. That was why I always tried to keep myself distracted with something. I tended to read a lot. When I was reading the only thing in my mind was the story instead of my own morbid thoughts. I was tired. I hadn't slept well last night and I knew that a nap would do me good. I lay down and got under the covers, grabbing my stuffed rabbit and holding it. I know it's childish, but I can always sleep better when I'm holding a stuffed animal. All the noise outside soon started to annoy me so I grabbed my headphones and put them on, putting on soft music to use as a lullaby. It blocked out the noise outside and soon I drifted off to sleep... When I woke up I was confused. I seemed to be in a forest. It wasn't dark and creepy enough to be the Everfree, but it wasn't a bright and cheerful woods either. I looked up and saw that the sky was partly cloudy. My brow furrowed as I got up and I felt my wings ruffle. Wait a sec... wings?! I looked and sure enough, I had wings. I was an earth pony! What was I doing with wings?! I spotted a sort of glowing over my head and tilted it, seeing a glowing golden ring floating above it. This has got to be a dream, there was no other reasonable explanation. It was strange though, ever since I started taking all that medication I rarely remembered dreaming. I especially rarely have a dream this vivid. I could smell and feel the grass under my hooves. This felt odd too. My allergies were so bad I tended to not be able to smell things very well, and with all this grass, normally I'd be sneezy and itchy if I stayed outdoors too long. Then again this WAS a dream. After a moment I started walking. Eventually I started hearing voices, and I quickly picked up my pace. I didn't try to use my wings yet, I didn't know anything about flying after all. I finally came upon two mares, a unicorn and pegasus talking to each other. As soon as they saw me they looked very surprised. "What are you doing here? We don't normally get angel ponies here," said the unicorn. "Um... where IS here exactly?" I asked. This wasn't any place I'd ever been to before, I knew that. "This is Limbo of course," said the pegasus. "Limbo? That's an odd name. Do you live in a village or something nearby?" I've definitely never heard of a place called Limbo! "Oh dear, you don't know do you?" The unicorn looked concerned. "Know what? Why are you two looking at me like that?" I was starting to get nervous. "If you're here, that means that you're dead." The pegasus said simply. "Wha...? No that can't be. This is just a dream!" I frowned. Was this dream turning into a nightmare? "A dream? So you last remember going to sleep?" Asked the unicorn and I nodded. "Well then I'm sorry to tell you that you must have died in your sleep somehow." "But how could I have... I was sickly I know, but I wasn't THAT sickly!" I protested. "Think," urged the unicorn. "Was anything unusual going on today?" "Not really. I mean there was a monster attack but Princess Twilight and her friends were fighting it." I remembered. "Maybe this monster killed you somehow?" The pegasus suggested. "But that's impossible! Nobody has ever gotten seriously hurt during a monster attack before!" But even as I tried to deny it I thought about the bad luck I've always had. I swear my cutie mark should've been something like a pony walking under a ladder! I face hoofed big time. "It just figures that I'd be the first. This is so typical!" The unicorn and pegasus exchanged glances. "So you just died and now you're here? That's odd." The unicorn sounded worried. "Why's that?" I sighed. "Because with those wings and halo you're supposed to go to pony Heaven. Someone should have showed up to take you there but well, you're here." The unicorn said. "Are you telling me that not only am I dead but I'm LOST?" I demanded. "It sure looks that way." The pegasus shrugged. "Oh... shiitake mushrooms." I grumbled.