Chapter 2
The Infinite Information Station
The pegasus laughed at my words and the unicorn gave her an annoyed look. "What? It was funny!"
While I tried to get my scattered wits in order, I took a closer look at the two in front of me. The pegasus had a white coat, a sky blue mane and tail, sky blue eyes, and a sky blue silhouette of a laughing pony head for a cutie mark. The unicorn had a golden brown coat, amber eyes, an orange and red mane and tail, and an open book with an orange cover for a cutie mark. I closed my own chocolate brown eyes for a moment to steel myself against whatever lay ahead.
"So... this is Limbo." How ironic, I thought. I'd always felt like my life was in limbo, and now in death that's the first place I ended up.
"Yup! I'm Giggles, and this is my friend Autumn!" The pegasus grinned at me.
"Nice to meet you, though I wish it was under better circumstances. I'm Meadowlark."
They seemed like ordinary ponies to me. How had ponies like them ended up in Limbo? After a moment I decided to ask. After all, what else was there to do? "So how did you two end up in Limbo anyway?"
"Well the way the afterlife works is like this," Autumn began to explain. "Ponies who are good and have done mostly good in their lives end up in Heaven. Ponies who are bad and who have done mostly bad in their lives end up in Tartarus. Ponies who are neither really bad or really good who have done an equal amount of good and bad things in their lives end up in Limbo."
"So we're all stuck here forever?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Not necessarily." Autumn pointed at a sign at a tree and I went to look it over.
Welcome to Limbo. You are currently in The Wildland of Regrets. The only way for anyone in Limbo to be admitted into Heaven is to manage to do enough good deeds to earn your way in. But beware, doing enough bad deeds will be a one way ticket to Tartarus. Have a nice day!
"Seriously?" I muttered.
"Oh! Oh!" Giggles started bouncing up and down excitedly. "Maybe we can help you find your way to Heaven!"
"Really? You'd do that for me?" I'd been afraid I'd either be stuck here or have to try to find my way there myself.
"That does seem like a good course of action." Autumn said thoughtfully. "After all you don't really belong here. Besides in helping you, perhaps that can count as a good deed for us."
I nodded. That made sense. In helping me they'd also be helping themselves. That way everypony might win. Hopefully anyway.
"We can head for the nearest Infinite Information Station." Autumn said. "They should be able to help us. It'll take a few hours of traveling, but it should be worth it."
"Okay great." I replied, though I mentally sighed. So far Giggles seemed to have a fun loving personality while Autumn seemed to be more smart and bookish. Swell, I had here a Pinkie Pie with wings and a Twilight 2.0
"And on the way maybe we can stop at Looking Glass Lake!" Giggles chimed in. "When you look into it you can see what's going on back in the world of the living. If you want you can find out for sure how you died and what's going on there now!"
"Yeah that might be interesting." Who had named these places anyway? So far all of them sounded like a bad punch line.
So we started to walk. There were the normal things you tended to find in the woods. A few animals, some insects, even some berry bushes here and there and the like. The longer I walked though the stranger I felt. I kept remembering things in my life that I regretted doing. The times that I'd hurt or angered other ponies. All the times I'd done things I shouldn't. I finally stopped with a shiver.
"What is it?" Giggles asked, tilting her head to the side curiously.
"I don't know why, but I keep thinking of things I wish I hadn't done." I told her.
"That's why this place is called The Wildland of Regrets." Autumn told me. "It's for the ponies who had a lot of regret in their lives. You get used to it after awhile and you only think of it sometimes instead of all the time." I could only groan hearing that.
As we started walking again we started telling each other about our past lives. There wasn't much else to do but talk to pass the time after all, and it helped divert me from getting lost in my own mind.
"I lived in Manehatten. I ran a joke shop." Giggles told me. "Some of my jokes other ponies thought were really funny, but other jokes some pones thought were mean." She looked down at the ground, her brows furrowed and her ears laid back, sounding a little sad. "I guess that's how I ended up here."
"I was the secretary of Fancy Pants. I didn't do much with my life but read books and do my job. I suppose that's how I ended up in this place." Autumn added matter of factly.
That got me to thinking. I had ended up here, but I wasn't supposed to be here. Or was I? After all I'd been an average pony with an average life, and I had never really done anything especially good or bad. Why hadn't I ended up here permanently? Maybe I WAS supposed to be here and the mistake wasn't that I'd ended up here, but that I'd ended up with the wings and a halo.
I told them about my own life and they looked appalled at the things that I've been though. Giggles immediately started telling me jokes after that. I think she was trying to cheer me up.
"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?" I rolled my eyes a little. I'd long outgrown these types of jokes, but I knew that she was trying to be nice, so I decided to humor her for now.
"A herd."
"A herd who?"
"A herd you were home, so I came over!" Giggles burst into well... giggles. Her name definitely suited her, that was for sure.
"Why did the radish kiss the banana?"
"I don't know Giggles, why?"
"Because he had appeal! Get it?!" I tried to force a laugh to satisfy her, but she wasn't fooled. "Aw... don't you like my jokes?"
"They're very nice Giggles, I guess I don't really feel like laughing right now." Not that I'd tell her, but I was more into dark humor most of the time.
Eventually we finally reached Looking Glass Lake. Looking into the water I wasn't surprised that it was called that. It was so still and clear I could easily see myself in vivid detail. "So how does this work exactly?"
"You look into the water and say something like I want to see a place in a city in Equestria or wherever it is you want to see." Autumn explained.
I nodded. That sounded simple enough. "I want to see my house in Ponyville in Equestria please."
A ripple went through the lake and after a moment I could see my old home... or what was left of it. Half of it had been smashed to bits. No wonder I'd been killed! Pinkie Pie was sitting there crying surrounded by her friends as a couple of paramedic ponies carried out a stretcher covered with a sheet. It was pretty obvious that there was a body... MY body, underneath that sheet.
"I just talked to her yesterday!" Pinkie sobbed, her mane and tail flat as Fluttershy hugged her, tears going down her own face. I noticed that there were other ponies around, some of who were crying, had teary eyes, or sad looks on their faces with their ears drooping and I was surprised. Other than Pinkie I didn't think that anyone would shed tears for me after I was gone. I didn't think that anyone else would really care.
"It's so awful." Rainbow Dash was staring at my house. "If we'd only been more careful to try to keep that monster away from other pony's houses."
"Most ponies were either busy with the wedding or ran off when the bug bear got close." Applejack sighed. "Meadowlark was asleep with headphones on. She couldn't hear it coming her way."
"We should have kept the creature to one area and made sure that area was evacuated." Twilight had an incredibly guilty expression.
"I shall donate money to help pay for her funeral. I feel that it's the least that I can do." Rarity dabbed at her eyes daintily with a fancy looking handkerchief.
"There there Pinkie." Fluttershy tried to console her. "I'm sure that Meadowlark is in a better place now."
"I just hope that wherever she is... that she's happy." Pinkie Pie whimpered.
I had seen enough so I backed away. The lake, as if sensing that I was done, turned clear once more.
"Don't you want to see how your family is taking the news?" Giggles asked me.
"I doubt that they even care, and even if they do, it serves them right. They were horrible to me."
"But don't you think you should try to forgive them?" Giggles asked anxiously.
"No. They helped ruin my life and they don't deserve my forgiveness." I said firmly. "Lets keep going."
We fell silent after that and just walked, my somber mood seeming to infect the others. I don't know how long we walked, but when we finally reached the edge of the woods it was just starting to get dark.
Off in the distance we saw the station, but it looked more like a large office. We opened the door and went in and I went up to the window where a bored looking green earth pony stallion was looking through some papers.
"Excuse me. I hope you can help me."
The stallion looked up and put on a professional smile. "Well if you're looking for information I can. Here at the Infinite Information Station we have all the information about the afterlife that you could ever need."
"Well I think I might have ended up in the wrong place. I have wings and a halo and yet I woke up in Limbo in The Wildland of Regrets."
"Name, date of death, and place of death?"
"Meadowlark, today, and Ponyville."
The stallion opened a drawer and started looking through files. After a minute he pulled one out and started looking through the papers in it. "Oh yes here's the problem. It looks like there was a mistake made. A dot was moved over in the wrong direction of how many good deeds you'd actually done, so even though you're marked as a good pony, you woke up in the wrong place."
"Are you telling me I ended up in the wrong place due to a FILING ERROR?" I demanded.
"It sure looks that way." The stallion shrugged, unknowingly mimicking Giggles from earlier.
"Buck my life..." I groaned.
"Language!" Autumn gasped sounding scandalized.
"Isn't this the afterlife?" Giggles pointed out helpfully.
"Whatever." I sighed.