//------------------------------// // Locked Things // Story: The Things Tavi Says // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------// I feel like I've been homeless for the past seven years. It is only when I'm out here... Mobile... Trotting random, winding paths in public that I am truly myself. And it is such a bleak, harrowing, hellish place to be. Perfect lucidity—exposed before my own banal qualities. No longer I never want to be here. When I am, I have music to distract me—a pair of clamshell oracles shrieking beats and refrains into my ears. But that is not the case now. Part of me wants to return—but to what? It's not my home now. Perhaps it never was. I've been a bum... an emotional and psychological bum, squatting on Octavia's sofa for years. I found a place—a niche where we were both comfortable, and I dominated that spotlight. I occupied it with every atom. And I deceived her to keep the shroud hanging over it... using coy smiles and lies of omission. It worked so long as she was happy... so long as she was deaf and blind. And that is no way to treat a musician... an artist... a friend. But her words... her words... I draw a hoof over my muzzle. Maybe it's daytime... nighttime... a gray malaise in between. I dwindled between Everfree and Ponyville, lost between the twigs. My legs give way and I sit in the shadow of something far more material than I've ever been. Tavi... If you can only understand... I never threw anything away to be with you. At least... not anything that mattered to me. Nothing like... like... I hug myself. I stare up at the fading sunlight. I try breathing, but all I find are sobs—like rocks and shoals. I navigate the tears downstream, and yet I strike every boulder along the way. Feeling your lovely voice, like a velvet blanket, wrapping around me every morning... The way the kitchen dishes and the bathroom mirror vibrates with your harmonious voice... The soft glint in your eyes and the rosiness to your cheeks as you rest on your favorite cushion, enjoying a delicate glass of wine with reds that match the sunset. For seven long years, I've been part of something far more beautiful than I... ...a life-giver packaged in elegant silk, laced with bittersweet dreams... ...whom I could make smile despite the stagnant tug of daily ennui. A grimace overcomes me. I fall over the edge and into the depths below, where truth waits with frigid breaths. Seven long years... ...and nothing changed. I saw something that was beautiful, and I clawed my way deep inside. I possessed it... ... infected it... ... ... ...and so long as there was plenty of mirth, plenty of music, plenty of wine... ... ... ... ...it all didn't feel so bad. But the best poisons are the flavorless ones, given in tiny doses, day by day, until one gets numb to the future by proxy of an epic past. Be it epically gorgeous... or epically horrible. Tavi... We've been molding our paths together for a decade now... The one I wish to avoid... and the one you can never forget... ...now the future has come crashing in on us, and it took you with it. It ripped you apart, and I almost lost you... only to lose you again... ... ...only to lose you now. Tears are hottest after the sun's gone down. I melt into the green hum, a little island of swirling tan and magenta. There's no drowning in this tempest. I've grown used to it. What's worse, I almost dragged Tavi down with me. Thankfully, she's too honest to try holding her breath... and that's when the currents separated us. Tavi... Tavi, I'm so sorry... ... I think... yes... I realize now... ... ... Comfort is a poor substitute for love. I let loose a painful squeak as the realization hits me. It's a glorious song. A sad song. It knocks me out with a righteous left hook, and I float lonesomely into darkness, seven years younger.