//------------------------------// // Silver // Story: Cursed Crusader // by Caffeinated Pony //------------------------------// Days were becoming my least favorite part of my life. I had hated going to bed, before. Now that I never had to sleep… I was beginning to realize that there wasn't much to be doing when everypony else was asleep. The sun was peaking through the curtains of my bedroom, much to my displeasure. I had accidentally crossed it earlier, and nearly woke up Rarity with how loud I shouted. The sunlight was like pushing live electrical wires into my skin wherever it touched. It had only been for a brief moment, so no real harm had been done. That hadn't stopped it from being painful though. I stared angrily at the single shaft of sunlight that bisected my room, the one spot where I couldn't tread. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't pull the curtains to cover the beam of light. I made a note to myself to ask Rarity if she had any blankets that I could cover the windows with. The normal curtains just weren't covering it. As I thought of her I heard hoofsteps on the stairs outside my door. I froze where I was, unsure of what to do. There was no way that she had missed the letter I'd left near her door. I did the first thing that crossed my mind, and walked to the corner of the room. I heard a knock. My fate was sealed, so I replied to it. “Come in! It's unlocked…” A moment later I covered my eyes, listening to Rarity walk in and shut the door behind her. Once I opened my eyes I could see her just fine. She seemed to have a bit of a harder time finding me though. There was only one light source in the whole room, and it was the inconvenient line that travelled a quarter of the way across my floor. I was positioned on the opposite side of the room from it, putting me squarely in the dark. I cleared my throat, guiding her eyes to me. She seemed to avoid looking at me directly as she began to speak. “Sweetie Belle, did you read my mail?” She asked. My older sister tried to give me a stern look then, but ended up looking away again. I nodded, and she let out a withdrawn sigh. She walked over to me, sitting down. Her horn flashed and the letter appeared in front of her. She held it out to me as if she was giving me permission to take it. “You should keep this… it's more important to you. The next time I'll be a bit more upset if you go reading my letters, though.” I took the letter, holding it with my magic. “So… you're not mad at me?” “No, I'm not. I realize that maybe trying to keep you in the dark about what's going an isn't the best thing to do anymore. If you really want to know what's going on so badly that you would read my mail, I think that you deserve to know.” I smiled, glad that she was being so understanding. Soon after that she stood, turning and looking at the beam of light filtering through the curtains. I tilted my head to the side, pondering her behaviour. She wasn't normally the type of pony to shift around when there was a serious conversation going on. “Sweetie, I'm sorry for how I've acted the last few days. I thought that I was losing you, and that my little sister was going to be changed forever.” I opened my mouth to make the point that I was, actually, permanently changed. However a moment before I spoke I realized that she wasn't talking about my body. She was talking about me, as a pony. It was strange… I'd never thought about myself as seperate or not directly related to my physical self. When I thought about myself I thought of a fluffy white coat, a curly pink and lilac mane, green eyes and my Cutie Mark. I'd never had to think about what I was while excluding my body from the equation. I pushed away that existential powder keg, focusing on my sister. “I'm still Sweetie Belle, sis… I don't know what you thought would happen to me.” “I thought you might lose yourself. Lots of ponies change, when something like this happens. Something life-altering occurs, and all of the sudden they're a different person. It's how we are, as ponies. It's how we all adapt to new things. In lots of ways, everypony changes. Just not for the better… and I thought that you might change for the worse. I heard from Twilight that most ponies do, their first week as a vampire.” I looked up at her, curious. “What did she say might happen?” “I don't think it would be very wise to tell you...” I walked over to her, looking her in the face. “Come on, I can handle it. I've been through a lot these last few days, and I'm still perfectly fine.” She looked hesitant to speak, but after a while she gave a long sigh.“Well… normally once a pony realizes that they will never age, they tend to do one of two things. They will either panic, realizing that they will outlive most ponies they love and will insist on making them a vampire as well. Or, they will grow depressed at their own misfortune, and be miserable that they will have to hurt others for the rest of their lives.” I felt myself secretly panic at her words. It hadn't crossed my mind until then, but she was telling the truth. I would outlive her, and my friends. All the ponies at school too. Miss Cheerilee, Fluttershy, AppleJack, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom… now that I didn't age anymore I would still look exactly like I did now, while they might look as old as Granny Smith. Rarity saw the look on my face and gave me a knowing pat on the shoulder. “That's why I didn't want to tell you… but I suppose you'd come to that realization on your own, eventually. Just remember that even though you had no choice in becoming a vampire, you shouldn't force it on somepony. Living for such a long time will be a very hard thing. You should always let somepony make a choice like that theirselves. Most ponies don't want to live for hundreds of years.” I looked at my hooves. I felt the immediate urge to ask her if she wanted to be a vampire. Something about the way she'd talked just now told me not to, though. I had the feeling she didn't want to live forever. Even in my panicked mind I could see it being a curse more than it would be a blessing. How much could one pony remember and have weighing on them before it became too much? I already had plenty of secrets and I was nowhere near the age of somepony like the Mayor or my Mom. I could just imagine it all piling up, every mistake and bad experience biting at me from all the years gone by. I shuddered. Maybe I should learn some kind of spell to make me forget things, if I wanted to last. Rarity saw me spiraling into my own thoughts, and pulled me back to reality. “Sweetie, and Twilight's letter she told me to ask you if you've had anypony to… you know, drink from these last few days.” I pushed my thoughts of eternity out of my head, answering her. “I had some of Apple Bloom's blood two days ago, so I'm okay. Thanks though.” She nodded, then looked at the letter again. “Are you going to do that regularly?” I shrugged my shoulders, reading the part of the letter that had to do with a feeding schedule. “Apple Bloom seemed okay with it, but I don't know if Scootaloo would want me doing that to her. She seems pretty okay with everything so far though. Rarity nodded, falling silent again. She seemed to trust me enough to let me pick the ponies that I would be drinking from. As I thought about that, my thoughts wandered back to my immortality. I shook my head and tried to think of something that could distract me. I looked around the room before my eyes lighted on the ineffective curtains covering my window. “Uh… can you do something about my curtains?” I asked, smiling up at my big sister. “They let some light in, and I don't like hurting myself walking to the bathroom.” Rarity looked at the curtains she herself had designed, sighing. She had a certain fondness for them even if they weren't the most efficient at keeping light out. She motioned for me to go into the bathroom, and I scampered away as her horn lit to take the curtains down. Once the door was shut I heard her take them down, summoning what sounded like a bag and a container of nails. I was careful of the light filtering beneath the door, listening to the sound of a hammer. After a few minutes the light was gone, and I cautiously opened the door to look into my room. She had stretched an enormous, pitch-black plane of fabric over the window. As she secured the last nail it was very obvious she had absolutely no sight in the room anymore, as she missed the nail three times before hitting it, securing the thick fabric over the window. “There… not the most elegant solution, but until I can make a more decorative one it will have to do. Is that alright with you Sweetie?” I nodded, even though she couldn't see me. “Yeah, that's okay. Want me to help you clean up in here?” “That would be very nice, thank you.” She replied, not calling attention to her total blindness. I began to take the hammer, nails and fabric she hadn't used and set them by the door. I then opened the it just a hair, then quickly dashed back to a corner of the room where sunlight from the stairwell wasn't shining. Now that she could see the exit Rarity made her way out, stopping in the doorway to pick up her things and call back to me. “If you need any help… or you just want somepony to talk to, I'll stay up a bit late tonight.” With that she shut the door, leaving me alone in my own dark world. I walked over to my bed, laying down and staring up at the ceiling. What would life be like in a hundred years? Or five hundred years? A thousand? The sheer scale of what I was thinking about hurt my head. Cities could be built and abandoned in those times. I only read about timespans like that in history books. The more I thought about it, the stranger things became. Did anything else besides me live to be that old? There were only a few things that I could think of. There was Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Discord. I supposed that, now that she was an alicorn too, Twilight also lived indefinitely. I smiled as I also realized that dragons could also be extremely long-lived. So I still had Spike as a friend for quite a while. I nodded, consoling myself. That wasn't a bad pool of ponies to know. Most of them were royalty, and I was sure that Twilight was a great pony once I got to actually know her. Spike was… Spike, and I heard he knew plenty of other dragons that I might get to meet. Things would be okay, I just had to make some new friends. First I needed to talk to Apple Bloom and Scootaloo though. They needed to know about this. No matter what, I had to ask them if they could find some way to live like me. I couldn't imagine a world where I couldn't explore with them anymore. Even after we all got our Cutie Marks we still went out and set off on our own adventures. We were still a team, no matter what. I couldn't just leave them all behind.