I was tooling around the 'discussions' tab here on Fimfiction, and I came across a silly little writing challenge from a soul here who calls themselves 'Artist'.
"I want you to write a short story about a pony or one of the EQG girls having a disability.
The story must be raided E, and it must be written in an hour or less."
While it is possible that Artist may not agree with me that words like 'Christ' and 'Damn' are for the rating 'E' for Everyone - what child or adult does not hear them regularly? - I somehow felt inspired and created the short-short story below. I really wish I had a solid inspiration to write, but I don't. I am grateful for this one. I finished his challenge with time to spare. Thus, I offer you... BLIND.
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BLIND
A Short Story By Chatoyance
written in forty-five minutes, twenty seconds to meet Artist's writing challenge
The corridor felt like hide stretched over stone.
I had worked out what the 'skin' was, it was old neoplastic flooring, probably in some kind of a tile pattern. The stone was plascrete under the thin flooring. The building was probably only about forty or fifty years old, before that, they used to use concrete and flooring made of petrochemicals. There are no petrochemicals anymore - well, not enough for anyone except for the elites, of course. Concrete is long gone too. But then, they say plascrete is better. Stronger. It almost feels like bone.
I felt bone once. Buttonwillow let me use my earthpony senses on her foreleg. She used to be a cosmetic nanosurgeon for the Elite, so she had all kinds of knowledge about bodies and senses and such. She reckoned that if earthponies could send their senses into the earth, there was no reason they couldn't learn to send them into other things too. She'd heard of earthpony doctors in Equestria, so they had to be able to do something as well as unicorns. It made sense to me. I sat down and put my forehooves on her leg and did the thing I do with the ground. That was my first lesson in overcoming my blindness. Learning that, in a way, literally everything was 'earth'. Everything was dirt or ground, sort of. Stuff is stuff. Like I said, it made sense to me.
I extended my 'ground radar' - that's what I call it - up. Normally, earthponies can't do 'up'. We can sense into the ground, with effort we can learn to 'feel' the stones and roots and even the burrows of little creatures under the soil. It's our 'other' power, that helps with our main one: making things grow. I'm pretty good at growing now. I made a strawberry plant grow to maturity in only a single hour. It took everything I had, mind you, but that's what I can do now. I couldn't do anything like that back when I was human, before my Conversion.
I was pretty happy, for a while. But then the HLF showed up. Human Liberation Front. They don't like ponies, they don't like Equestria, and they don't like the Worldgovernment. They absolutely don't like Conversion Bureaus, and we, well, our little village built out of the favela, it was next to a Bureau. I was one of the newfoals that weren't killed, but I lost my eyes. It was pretty terrible, especially because our eyes are so large. You don't want to imagine anything about it.
The good news is that they can fix things like that in Equestria. Their doctors can use their powers to regrow body parts like eyes. Apparently, earthponies are especially useful for that - we do, after all, make things grow. But I can't fix myself. I haven't a clue how. I even tried, several times. I just don't have the know-how. So, I'll have to wait until I get settled in Equestria.
I can't leave earth yet. Not while my son is here. Not before I at least try, one more time, to get him to see reason. I have to make him see.
I think I can feel the door. I think it is his door. I've gotten pretty good at 'pushing' whatever it is that I do to 'feel' the ground with the magic that flows out of my hooves. I can push it up into walls pretty high. Not as high as the ceiling. I'm a lot shorter as a pony than I was as a man. Also, I'm still new at this. But... at least that strange earthpony ground-awareness lets me do better than I would if I had been a blind human. I can feel ahead of me, around me. And now, after a lot of practice, a little into anything attached to the 'ground' - such as walls and doors. I've counted the steps, and I've counted the doors. Unless I got turned around, this has to be his door.
My hoof makes a deep, solid sound on the metal, reinforced security door. After the Collapse, security doors became the norm. And security buildings. Pretty much security everything. Only reasonable.
It takes a lot of pounding, but eventually, the door opens. I can feel the change in air. My pony nose is so much more sensitive than a human one. I can smell the man standing there, I can smell what he ate through the flesh of his stomach. He ate a Branston Nanodinner. Restructured waste, nanoconverted into synthetic chicken and simulated rice. He's living large! I feel happy he is eating well, whoever he is. I don't like the smell of the half-digested chicken. Equestrians are compulsory lacto-vegetarians. Meat smells like death to us.
"Oh holy... I cannot frickin' believe it. You came to the wrong door, freak."
I know from the voice it is my son. My heart leaps. I love my son. "It's me! Dad! It's me, son! I've... I've had a little trouble, and I know I probably look scary, with the bandages, but it's me! I'm so happ..."
"Oh god. No. God no." My son doesn't sound happy to see me. "How did you even get in here? How did you find my place? Are there more? Is this a raid?"
I don't have a clue why he sounds so afraid. "Son... no! I... don't know what you mean. I came to talk to you, before I ship out. I'm going to Equestria next week, to get my eyes restored. I'm blind. The HLF attac..."
"Jesus. Not... not you. You aren't my dad. You're one of them. You're not my dad. My dad is dead. Stop talking like you're my dad."
My pony nose is incredible. I smelled his fear. I smelled revulsion. Horror. Shame. Anger. It all smelled like bitter chemicals to me. I could smell it through his skin, from his blood, in his sweat.
"Son, please listen to me!"
I just kept smelling fear. He didn't move.
"Son, I don't understand why you haven't Converted already. You know the world is ending. Even if Equestria hadn't come to save us, the planet will be dead in three generations - that's what the scientists say! The oceans are dead, the plants are gone. The air is running out. There's not enough resources to do anything about it. Earth is over. But Equestria is our lifeboat, a second chan..."
"SHUT UP! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" I could smell his tears in the air. "You aren't my dad! YOU ARE NOT MY DAD!"
"But I am, son. Remember our time in the favela? It's a very pretty village now. We all worked together and brought a little life to..."
"I said SHUT UP!"
I smelled iron. Iron and carbon. Steel. I had a faint sense... maybe it was my earthpony power, I'm not sure, a sense of something sharp in front of me. I don't know how I knew that. My son was threatening me with something sharp, made of metal. Something large, too.
"I... I can't handle this. I can't cope with... whatever you are. Demon. You demonic thing. You sound like my old man. God, but you sound like him. You even sort of look like him somehow, under those bandages... god. I just... god. Listen. Listen to me."
I felt wind near my nose. I think the sharp thing was pulled away from my face. I couldn't smell it as strongly now.
"You have to leave. You have to run. I guess you can't run. Dammit. But you have to leave as quickly as you can. I... you aren't my dad... but... if you were my dad somehow... you have to leave. Now. They're supposed to come today. They could be here any moment. My friends are coming. You have to leave before they show up. Just go. Leave. Get away from me!"
I was glad my son had friends. "It's okay, son. Any friends of yours are friends of mine! I trust you to choose good friends! Are they newfoals?"
There was a surprisingly long silence. "No. No dad.... not dad. You arn't my dad. God this is weird. No, you have to leave. Now."
"Why, son? I won't embarrass you, I promise. I just hoped that we could get you Converted, and then go to Equestria together! I could use your help, until I get my new eyes. And we could be together, just like when you were growing u..."
"NO! No. No, that isn't possible." I smelled sadness... and now regret. "Dad... damn, you just feel like him so much, even though you are one of them. Listen, and listen carefully. Understand what I am saying. I am HLF. I am part of the Human Liberation Front. We kill freaks like you. All the time. If my friends see you, you're dead. I don't want anything to do with you. I don't want to be a pony. We're gonna overthrow the government. We're gonna kill anyone who tries to stop us... oh, Christ. God... you cannot be my dad. But if you are, just go. Just go. As fast as you can."
I felt numb. It felt like losing my eyes all over again. I felt my bandages getting wet. "I... I'll always love you, son."
"GET OUT!"
The door slammed millimeters from my nose. The door smelled old and metallic and hard, somehow.
My son... I thought I was blind. But my son was more blind than me.
THE END
That's the Chatoyance style I know and love! I don't know if it's why you write, but why I read your stuff is to share the pain. Whether it's the pioneer newfoals in The Taste of Grass or Jorge Jeitson at the barrier or this poor father, so much pain comes through.
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Thank you, Pjabrony. I've perhaps seen a little too much pain in my life, I guess it seeps out. I'm glad you appreciate it, definitely, but... I also hope I am not seen as only a... well, a 'pain and sorrow' author. I don't want to be that. If I can help it. But, yeah, I've - as the saying goes - I've seen some shit. Thank you for the kind words.
10640725
It's like how Spider Robinson said: Shared pain is lessened. Shared joy is multiplied.
You hooked me in with the earth pony magic. You knocked it out of the park with the tragedy of fear leading to hatred, contrasted with hope, love, and forgiveness. Devastatingly effective piece.
For what it's worth, your Equestria going full BSoD is still one of the funniest things I've seen in pony fiction.
Dang ... that's one heck of a tale there. What a tragedy, losing a loved one to that kind of toxic ideology; it'd kill me if one of my joyfriend's kids went down that path. At least the main character's son has enough good in him to tell his dad to leave before trouble shows up, especially when the trouble is his friends. Was this inspired by the recent ... incidents in the US, by any chance? On a different note, the main character's earthsense reminds me of Toph from Avatar: the Last Airbender. Is that a conscious influence?
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Yeah... recent events (an attempted coup to overthrow the US government) was a factor in this story, and while I love Avatar and Toph very much, that wasn't where the idea came from. The earthpony powers came from an earlier story of mine, I.D. That Indestructable Something, where I established for myself how earthponies would work. I just expanded on that with this story. I think it is a fair statement though, that earthponies - at least in my mind - have subtle versions of earthbending powers, more or less. Geomancy, would probably be the more correct term.
10641351 Thought so, and yeah that attempted coup was wild - especially living within day-trip range of DC, and dreading recognizing someone on the news. And I remember now, haven't read that tale in years, but I was more thinking about how the abilities were applied versus their origin. And geomancy is a good word for it, especially since - unlike Earthbenders - they seem to be able to work with metal just fine.
You didn’t happen to write this during 2020, did you?
Even though this week has been chock-full of occasions worth a smile, seeing you back on the site and posting a new story (even a sad one) was a worthy addition to my feelings of a world on a gentle trajectory back to each day being just a bit better than the one before.
I hope all is well with you and your family, Chat.
10641538
We are doing well, and I dearly wish only the best for you and yours as well, Dafaddah.
No, I just wrote this yesterday. This was done last night. It was influenced by the coup attempt, of course, but it is super fresh.
10640725
Pain and sorrow? Perhaps, but there is good here. This earth pony father has learned so much about the kind of magic that few newfoals will ever understand. Their human pasts make them blind to it because they have no need to open themselves to it, and because all new things are scary, they would rather stay away from it. His eyes will be regrown, then he will be more than most newfoals, maybe even more skilled than native Equestrians. I think his experience will encourage him to become a healer, which is such a difficult task for the kind for they cannot close their hearts to the pain of those they are healing.
He was destined to come for his son one last time regardless of whether or not the bureau was attacked. If he would have seen his son standing there wearing an HLF uniform holding a knife covered in pony blood staring at him with hate and fear, he would have been forced to carry the memory of his son as a murderer for the rest of his life, which may have ended in that moment if his son could see the sorrow in his father’s eyes. There would have been no hope for his son at that point, nothing could dislodge the shame of having killed his own loving father out of a feeling of guilt, and that shame would have driven him to kill as a way of running from confronting himself. Perhaps this vulnerable moment could turn the son around.
All stories have conflict which ultimately are pains and sorrows. I cried in thankfulness of what this pony didn’t have to see. I don’t know what to call that other than glorious sadness, but it raises me up beyond the pain and sorrow within this story, so it must be good.
10642335
Wow... thank you kind PeachClover.
Another well written and thought provoking piece of work Chatoyance. I really enjoyed reading it, just like all your works. And I truly hope you find inspiration soon, so I can read more of your awesome work. Blessings on you and you loved ones.
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Thank you very much, Silver Tail. And thank you for reading my short story!
Didn't know this series was updated.
Good short story.
For some reason Chatoyance not announced this specific story - so I found it by just looking at table of content ...
THANKS!
I missed the new chapters in this story.
I always imagined that the Earthen had these abilities: