//------------------------------//
// Blank Slate 
// Story: Tales of the Veiled Ones, by Beloved Craft 
// by I Thought I Was Toast 
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Forgive the blood and chicken scratch. It’s hard to write in perfect form when I’m coughing up my lungs. My minds as sharp as ever though – another knife of stabbing pain. I don’t have much time remaining, but I finally remember my name.

Quail!

That’s the name of the bird whose feather is in my mouth.

Forgive the blood and quail scratch – not chicken scratch as I thought. The quill is moist and red now like the deepest twilight sky. Specks of cloudy black mar the surface, yet quails are not black.

I think my stomach is revolting. Perhaps I missed the lungs

Forgive the blood, bile, and quail scratch – not chicken scratch as I thought. I was never sure of what was in those dainty dishes my horned hosts favor so. It tasted ever so sweet going down, yet now appears an inky black – a poison for the soul.

I have not much time remaining, but I finally remember my name. This parchment is dated – stained with my soul – but it will have to do. I shudder often at the taste of me that lingers on this quill. But I am of the earth not of the horn. I remember now how my blood and sweat and tears are what really work the land. A little more will not hurt me.

I finally remember my name, and I need to write the tale.

I was almost passed by in that abandoned quarry. My coat was blackened with dust. I would have been taken for another rock if I hadn’t been all but trampled.

The foals were playing hide and seek that day in tempting and forbidden places. Craggy midnight fangs bit into the sky along the cliff’s side. And I recall it as a hole in reality trying to clutch where it couldn’t belong – a parasite of twisted space I’m sure. The stone was black and pockmarked with a strangely lustrous shine. It was filled with a stifling silence that still brings my mind to a graveyard.

And when that silence broke, and the ghosts awoke, the land would shake and shudder. It would heave an ominous sigh, and the winds would flow through its hollows and holes like a beast that was close to awakening.

The foals and their parents ‒ although I wonder who was who sometimes – did not see the evil of this place. They did not feel the silence of the rock within their very bones. The rock was not a rock. I refuse to think it so.

The evil of that place is all I remember of my former life. Even with my name now, it is sad to say I’m left with simple conjecture.

I hope I had been happy before that evil claimed me.

Regardless, they found me and took me in. They were surprisingly pleasant and tolerant for a family of noble horns. After I woke within the mansion – a scant few miles from the quarry – I found myself regaled with the tales only innocent youths could muster. They spoke of playgrounds and icky bugs and high adventure. It was the normal excitement of youth, describing a place I knew as evil.

I knew not how or why I knew. I know not still today. I wonder whether that is good or not, since it spares my mind the pain.

However, there is the faintest burning in the recesses of my head. There mental wounds were cauterized, and they caution the need of a warning of which I have none to give. I only have my tale, and it seems to tell the end. It lacks beginning and middle. It has lost the truth I say. Perhaps this is my warning, but I am merely happy to know my name.

My hosts – I know you read this – burned with the usual sorts of irrationality found among their kind. Only the judgmental stares were missing. Their heads went beyond the clouds, where pegasai roam, to the airless void of space. They were as kind as I could ask for though, and I fear their curiosity will be their end.

They studied the stone for magic, and I know that will not end well. If I escaped, then surely the beast that lurks there now sleeps in hibernation. I fear they might just wake it.

That is neither here nor there. This is my tale – not the beasts – and the beast is finally behind me.

I hope – or maybe I don’t as the phantom sound of chittering whispers in my ears. Forgive the jagged dash of ink. I had to look for myself.

My hosts, however doomed they are, took me in none-the-less. I was as much a curiosity to them as the sinister place they found me. When I was cleaned of the charnel dust that coated me I was found to be naught but grey. My coat was grey. My mane was grey. My eyes were grey.

My flank was bare and grey.

That was what drew them. I lacked color and life and purpose. I could not remember a thing.

They asked if they could call me Blank Slate.

I smiled and told them yes.

I was not particularly educated before my hosts took me in. I could not remember my life, but facts and misconceptions jumped to my mind with ease. They jumped with so much ease, however, because no clutter filled the vacuum.

The first few months were spent on my diction. I was apparently quite vulgar before I was found, and my hosts preferred I be prim and proper with a scholar’s vocabulary. The lessons that followed were many and varied. I fear my tribe may no longer see me as their own.

I was truly a blank slate, and I came to relish the learning. My mind may as well be a unicorn’s, but the salt of the earth fills my bones.

The lessons continued, and tests came and went. I was poked and prodded for progress, but such tests only happened in stages. Dead end after dead end meant each study bloomed from inspiration anew.

I find it ironic death is what it takes to truly get the progress they craved. All those jokes of autopsies rang truer than we thought.

The days went by and I was content. I had no purpose other than to find my purpose in my studies and tests. Yet every day at twilight I found myself staring towards the quarry. I could barely see the blackened fangs of that place savaging the sky from my balcony in the breeze.

At times my heart would freeze in a flash – no source to the sudden fear. It took me months to see the change since I never used the mirror. I am not vain, and I did not care for balancing my looks. But within the house the silver, glass, and tarnished brass held my reflection still.

Whenever I caught it within my eye – whenever I thought I was going to die – that icy dread filled me. Another pony was staring at me. I was sure it was the beast of the quarry, yet it never claimed my life. It simply looked at me and waited.

It knew that which it shouldn’t know.

Paranoid is the word my hosts began to use when I finally found the beast. They assured me I only saw myself. They described me as I was.

I knew that reflection wasn’t me. I couldn’t see myself in the mirror. The beast had taken my purpose and life. It could have taken my reflection as well. I knew without a shadow of doubt that I was seeing the beast.

It stalked me unseen from behind, and it knew what it shouldn’t know.

I became skittish and jumpy. My eyes may have well been in the back of my head for I spent more time looking backwards than forwards. I snapped at the foals one time – only one time. I avoided them after that. The beast knew I knew and used that against me. Thus it made me do its dirty work without ever lifting a hoof. All it did was watch me and follow when I moved.

I tried to protect my precious hosts through my current isolation, but that only made them distraught.

Everything I did was to shield them from the beast – He Who Watches and Waits. The moniker burned in my mind as a name for the beast. It was not a true name nor memory, but actions speak louder than words. His actions drove me to my actions. My actions led to my hosts actions.

Now they are beating at the door and pleading with me for something, but I dare not heed their calls.

For I remember my name now.

When the door began to quake in my isolation, I realized I only brought on them the evil of that wretched place. Drunk on the wine of despair, I raised the knife I kept close by to slay the source if not the beast.

I was quick but not accurate. I am thankful for that, because now I remember my name.

I stared at the wound after leaving my mark, but the blood was a trivial concern. I was bleeding in a different way – a way most strange and peculiar. Color sprang from the wound to fill the grey. It was a lovely toffee brown that I could not help but smile at, and I watched it spread up my coat.

That was when my mark appeared.

Appeared is perhaps a misnomer, however. Forgive me for that. My vision is swimming. My clarity is fading. The twilight is calling my name.

The color bled from my body in at least three ways I could count. The red of twilight mattered naught, but I cared for the grey and the brown. The grey bled from my body, and I wept for that dreadful loss. It was who I was in this noble home, and I mourned for the death of that color.

The toffee brown gave me sugary joy.

It trickled from my wound to drown the ignorant grey.

I knew what I wasn’t supposed to know, and I laughed at the idiot I had been – even as the tears continued.

That richest of browns I had seen in the silver and glass and tarnished brass now bled across my body. It chased the grey off of my flank, and I saw the mark that had always been there.

I saw a slab of stone – grey and dull as my coat had been.

Then I knew my name was Blank Slate.

I was a quarry worker I think. The salt of the earth in my bones tells me that, yet no memories come to me.

I can live with that – or not I suppose. The earth calls to me, and I yearn for its cradling arms. My only request is to be buried in warm sediment and sentiment as far from that place as possible.

Rest easy my friends. You will break down the doors to find a pony at peace once more.

And do forgive the blood, bile, and quail scratches. I had no time to clean up.