Intermission. Anecdotes for the End of Your World - Haren
“In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.”
-Deepak Chopra
“Thanks for all the help, Mrs.Night.”
“It’s no problem, Anthem, feel free to come around again the next time you get jumped!”
All that he gave back was a chuckle before the door closed behind him. Limping out to the front yard and around the bend, he saw Haren sitting on the sidewalk, scraping the dirt out of the cracks in the cement like a child.
She hated this, having to sit outside like some sort of misbehaving brat while the adults said their goodbyes. It was always like this around mothers.
“Hey Haren. You doing okay, gal?” he asked, the sweet concern in his voice a welcome distraction. If one would misunderstand the depth of Anthem’s care, one would only need to observe the permanence of his consideration of Haren’s welfare. It was constant, even ignoring their newborn relationship.
“Yeah. I’m okay. Sorry I’ve been kinda flaky,” she apologized, pressing her index talons together anxiously.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just sorry I got you dragged over here for my sake.”
“Alright, alright, let’s put our dicks away for this pity party, no need to apologize anymore,” Haren chortled, scratching her shoulder and covering her beak as she smiled. “Let’s just get home and get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, closing his eyes, no doubt imagining the comfort of his own home. “That sounds nice.”
Haren took a step forward and stopped, glancing back at her coltfriend behind her. He did his best to make it look like his bandaged leg wasn’t any pain. He actually did pretty well. But... no, this wouldn’t do.
If anypony could make it back to their home with a sprained leg, it would be Anthem. He wouldn’t have to with a marefriend like Haren.
“Listen, Haren, don’t worry about me. I’ve gone through wor-AGH!” Whatever he was trying to say was interrupted by the feathery menace that was Haren. Still full of energy since she wasn’t the one covered in bruises, she deftly hopped back without any aid of momentum behind her coltfriend. Then, in one swift motion, dove under him in between his legs and pushed up, sliding the stallion onto her back. “Uoof, hoo, woah! Woah! Hahaha! Haren!” Anthem squirmed a bit and tipped back and forth from the sudden displacement of his body, but thankfully Haren was skilled enough in manipulating his weight that she was able to aid him to stabilization.
Eventually, the two made a short totem of themselves, with Anthem sprawled out over Haren’s ample griffin body. At least her body was good for one thing.
Anthem’s body, however, was another deal altogether. He wasn’t light, but wasn’t heavy either, this muscular structure more lean than massive. He may as well have weighed nothing at all, the comfortable proximity of himself providing more than a small burst of vigor. Haren could move mountains with Anthem at her back... metaphorically or literally.
“Haren! You uhh... you don’t have to do this. I can walk.”
“I know,” she hummed, beaming. “I want you there.”
It was so easy to make him blush. “Oh... heh. Alright.”
“Just relax, and we’ll be home in no time.” She glided along the street, taking great care not to jostle Anthem, and made her way to their humble abode.
Anthem obeyed quite quickly, resting his head on her feathered neck as they walked the empty streets of Canterlot.
“Man. Are we gonna turn some heads, huh?” he chuckled suddenly without any preamble. “A griffin and a pony, doing something romantic like this.”
“Perhaps. I doubt it though. No one’s going to assume we’re a couple, probably.” Maybe it was better that way.
Clearly, Anthem didn’t feel the same. “That’s bullshit. Anypony else doing this would get strange looks from passersby. Hell, they’d probably cover the kids’ eyes and shit.” Anthem shoved his muzzle further into Haren’s feathers, close to where her ears were. He was so close, his breath tickled, sending shivers down her spine and legs. “Maybe we should start making out or something, huh? Maybe... even spread ‘em right on the street?”
“Anthem!” she giggled, prodding his nose with her middle talon. “Geez what’s gotten into you. Don’t be such a deviant.”
“Deviant, ha!” he laughed, returning to a more relaxed position. “Please. According to some other ponies I’m already a deviant for kissing you.” He started to grumble. “That’s what pisses me off about all of this. Ponies thinking we aren’t allowed to be together. That feeling was so strong I didn’t even consider sleeping with you once despite living together for four years. That sucks.”
Haren could understand his frustration. So could her talons and bedsheets, by extension. She couldn’t bring herself to be angry about that social convention anymore, however, now that she had gotten what she wanted. Satisfaction was an amazing cure for contempt. “Well, we’re here now,” she reasoned. “That’s what matters, right?”
“Yeah. I guess.” His tone of voice suggested otherwise. He pressed himself against Haren’s neck again, nearly causing her to trip from the sudden stimulation. “Mmmmph,” he moaned, sending vibrations into her brain. “You’re so soft. How do you do it?”
Haren was struggling to concentrate on the road in front of her, trying to shoo some of her darker thoughts away in the interest of getting home on time. And not... well... slipping over herself. “Anthem, please,” she begged, trying to be firm but unable to wipe the grin from her face. “We’re never gonna get home by morning if you keep being awesome.”
“Hehehe. Sorry, I’ll dial it down.”
After a comfortable swathe of silence, Anthem asked another question without preparation from either party. “What did you think of Sketch’s mom?”
That made her cease in her tracks. Just an indirect and offhand mention caused the feathers on the back of neck standup. Annoyed with the sudden dissipation of the excellent sensations of Anthem’s presence, now replaced with a cold sweat, Haren sighed and covered her beak. “I don’t know, Anthem. How should I know?”
Haren felt him shrug. “I don’t know. It just seemed you were doing better near the end of the night. I was wondering if you were getting used to her.”
“Getting used to having a knife shoved into your liver isn’t the same as not feeling it.” Haren unintendedly had let indignation creep into her voice. Before she could preemptively squander any misunderstandings, he apologized.
“Sorry, Haren. I know it’s hard for you, it’s just... I can’t understand it, so I can’t help you, and it’s... disheartening.” He rubbed his hooves on her chest tenderly. “I wish I could destroy everything that causes you pain. I’d do it. No matter how long it took.”
Haren instinctively scratched the side of her beak, feeling her cheeks get hotter. Sometimes, none of this felt real, especially when Anthem got all sweet like that. He acted just like she imagined a coltfriend should, sometimes even better. It gave her the distinct feeling of not deserving it. Especially when...
The memories of her mother surfaced.
Fayvel instinctively wiped the blood off the side of her beak, feeling her cheeks get hotter with rage.
“Huh?! Answer me!” her mother screamed, slamming an errant fist into the counter next to her, knocking over a few stray glasses littered about the tiles. “You did this shit again, even though we had a whole fuckin’ conversation ‘bout it! Lazy, no good fucking cunt! Good for fucking nothing, eh?!”
Fayvel hated this. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. She repeated the word in her head while her eyes narrowed. Her cheek, where she was struck, was already swelling. Talking in her head was all that she could do, because... “I was going to do it lat-”
“Shut the fuck up!” she screamed way too loud, causing Fayvel’s ears to ring with their proximity. There was the familiar soft thud of the talon-to-face contact as a new fire was born in Fayvel’s jaw. Immediately, she could taste the blood from the open wound it created in her mouth. “I’ve said it once, I said it a thousand times, I say to do something, you do it! You drop every little thing your doing, and you do as I say, then and now! I don’t care if your leg’s broken or yer taking a shit, you do as I FUCKING SAY!” She slammed her fist into the counter once again, breaking the ceramic.
“Okay,” Fayvel resigned, furious tears running down her face, mixing with the blood that had been spilled.
“Okay?! OKAY?! That’s all you have to say for yourself?! After the shit you pulled- no.” Fayvel’s mother, Lorret, dug her talons into the forelegs of Haren, drawing blood once again. Fayvel yelped involuntarily, the small victory that it gave her mother infinitely frustrating for her. Lorret pulled, ripping both flesh and feathers out and causing her daughter to kneel on the floor. “Kneel down and beg for forgiveness, ya leech. Maybe then I’ll think about letting you off with a warning.”
A bit too late for that, she bitterly retorted in her head. But lord, it was only in her head. Voiced defiance would only lead to hell. “I... I’m sorry.”
“What?!” she shouted back. “I didn’t hear you!”
“I’m sorry,” Fayvel said louder.
“I’m sorry, what? What are you sorry for?!”
“I’m sorry I didn’t clean the dishes as soon as you asked. It won’t happen again. Please, forgive me.”
Lorret grunted in satisfaction and released her daughter. “There. Now was that so hard?” Fayvel got up from the ground with some difficulty after a time, pain shooting through the gashes in her legs. She was careful to keep her head down, lest she incur further wrath from the matriarch. “Finally. No balls, fully castrated, limp dick just the way I like it,” Lorret taunted. The male-inspired degradation got under Fayvel’s nerves again, just like it always did. She hated how effective it was on her, despite the lack of logic attached to them.
Today was different, though.
Today Lorret added something on top of it. Something unforgivable. Something to reignite that white hot fury that rarely shows it’s head.
Lorret faced up, looking down at her daughter. And with as much venom as she could muster, she chuckled. “Just like your bitch of a father.”
Haren’s eyes flew open, her teeth gritted, and her breath became as hot as the fury of the sun. She faced up to look her mother in the eye, who only got the chance to transition to a face of shock before Fayvel had her talons around her mother’s throat, pushing forth with the force of a freight train. Blood flew from Fayvel’s open wounds as she tensed her muscles, digging her talons into the weak neck of the fucking bitch as her fucking airway got fucking clogged. Fuck her, fuck this, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! “DON’T YOU DARE SAY A FUCKING WORD ABOUT HIM!” Lorret’s face of shock remained ever unchanging as Fayvel pulled back and slammed her into the side of the wall, earning a grunt from the fucking bitch. “YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU FUCKING CUNT! TAKE IT BACK! TAKE IT THE FUCK BACK!”
Still, the bitch made no sound. In fact, the look of shock was gone. Now it was drab -- deadpan. Desperate, and adrenaline rushing through her veins, Fayvel grabbed a knife from it’s holder at her side and wasted no time driving it through the wood next to her face, cutting a feather off in collateral damage. “YOU TAKE IT BACK RIGHT THE FUCK NOW OR I’M PUTTING THIS GODDAMN KNIFE IN YOUR GODDAMN-”
“Go ahead.”
Fayvel released the knife in disbelief as her mother spoke -- completely calm, and with a smirk beginning to pour onto her features.
“I... I-I-I’m not bluffing! I’ll do it! I’ll-”
“I know,” she laughed, causing Fayvel’s grip to weaken. “I know. Do it. Kill me. Come on. You want it. You want it, don’t you? Come on.... come on! Show me you got some balls, coward. Show me you weren’t a waste of seed, you pathetic whore. Show me that maybe, maybe, it was worth it not shoving a blade into my uterus when I was pregnant with you. Show me something that you weren’t a waste of everyone’s time, that you’re not a scourge of life on the planet from the sheer worthlessness of your person. Show me. Come on! Kill me! Do it!”
Fayvel shook violently, adrenaline fading fast from her body, causing pain to flare up in her fresh wounds. Aches echoed in her body, the creeping dread overtaking her heart. “Ahhh.... I.... Eahhh... Urrrrvvvv....” She tried to make sounds with her mouth -- a threat or a rebuttal. Nothing but pathetic mumbling came out.
Lorret looked disappointed. “Really? Come on. You’re not gonna do it? Man, I was almost proud. Shows me right for getting my hopes up and expecting something of you.”
“Shut up!” Fayvel yelled, putting her talons up to her ears. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!” Fayvel shut her eyes and retreated, nearly slipping on her own blood as she did. She was hyperventilating uncontrollably as she escaped, her vision blurring and sounds becoming muffled as she scrambled up the stairs. Reality alternated between slow motion and fast motion for Fayvel as she crashed through the door to her room.
“Go ahead, run away like the bastard you are!” her mother called from below. But she couldn’t hear. She chose not to.
...
As her breathing regulated in the calm of her room, and her vision returned to normal, the pain of her encounter surfaced its head. She groaned and winced as she limped to her desk. Sobbing, she grasped the scissors on the desktop, and pointed them at the base of her beak. “Just go away,” she hissed at herself. “Go away, go away, go away, go away...” All she had to do was cut it off. Cut it off. Cut it off. Get rid of that beak. Stop being a griffin. Then everything would be okay. It would all be okay after that. Just a little bit of pain, and it’ll all be okay.
Except, it wouldn’t solve anything, the rapidly depleting logical part of her brain argued with the last of its strenght.
She exhaled sharply, tossing the scissors back on the desk so hard they slid across the varnish and fell behind the space of the desk between it and the wall. Slowly, she crawled to her bed, weakness enveloping her. When she climbed on top of her bed, she allowed the cuts covering her to staunch themselves with the fabric of the sheets.
Some sheets were already stained with blood, one way or another. What would be some more?
...Fayvel cried into her pillow.
A pillow stained with the past.
After what could have been hours, after the initial sting of the cuts had dispersed, she weakly raised her head and faced her nightstand. A photo stood on the desk in her sights, a photo she was only too familiar with. One of her father, and a happier Fayvel. A Fayvel that felt like a different griffin than her. A Fayvel that was a different griffin than her. A Fayvel that knew love from a parent.
“I have to get out of here.”
She was never strong enough to leave. All that she could think about was how much worse it was out there for her. After all, the problems wasn’t just her mother, it was griffins altogether. She was weak, she was nothing here.
Although... she didn’t feel like nothing once. When she won that contest at school for a trip to Canterlot, years ago. The ponies there valued intelligence, they valued emotional empathy. Everything griffins didn’t. Every minute in Canterlot was like heaven. Ponies smiled when one walked past them. They listened when one spoke. They solved problems through debate.
Oh how she wanted to be a pony. It’d never happen, but...
Well, it was her last shot. Try to be a pony or die a griffin. The way she saw it those were her two options.
“Seven months.” Seven months she had to endure this hell before she became of age to travel alone to Canterlot. “Seven months.” Seven months to gather enough funds to travel alone to Canterlot. “Seven months.”
She eyed the old typewriter she had bought years ago, still sitting unused on the desk next to the window. “Seven months.”
She grabbed the paper out of her drawer, along with an ink ribbon, and placed it in the machine. “Seven months.”
Taking a seat, she pecked at the letters on the keyboard, each click sending chills down her spine. “Seven months.
“Seven months is all I need.”
Words appeared on the page like magic. The only magic a griffin like her was going to do.
The words on the page? Wandering, Not Lost, by Fayvel Divickson.
No, that wouldn’t do. She needed a pen name. The last thing she needed was her mother’s last name plaguing her for the rest of her life. But what pen name should that be?
She looked back at the photo of her father, and the photo seemed to smile back. Cassidy Haren, her father’s name.
Yeah, that’s it.
Wandering, Not Lost, by H. Cassidy.
The stench of kerosene. Haren never thought it would be so intoxicating. After double checking, no, triple checking that her mother had truly left the home, Haren, for the first time in what felt like years, smiled.
She wasn’t going to kill her mother, she had decided.
Just destroy absolutely everything she had ever touched. After wrecking her other properties and getting her fired from the council, there was only one thing left. Her stupid house, and her weak daughter, up in flames. Oh, how therapeutic.
Haren released the lit match from her talons, and delighted as the sparks flew and trailed to the house. It took a good few seconds, but the whole thing went up with no resistance, it being made out of old wood and all. She may have been not entirely prepared at how hot the raging inferno was going to end up being, but the sting of the heat felt good on her skin. A reminder of how she was still alive. She could still feel. Delicious delicious pain. Anything to distract from the real pain.
Clapping her talons together, and satisfied with her handiwork, she slung her briefcase over her shoulder, the portable device looking quite dashing with her expensive suit jacket. Haren checked her watch. Three... two... one... and now she was eighteen years old. Happy birthday, Haren. Oh look! A burning house! You shouldn’t have. She laughed as she walked the dirt road to the train station. Maybe from this moment on, she was going to be doing a lot more laughing.
Haren opened the door to her apartment, trotting inside and gently placing Anthem on the sofa. “Thank ya, dear.”
“Don’t mention it, you giant bruise.” She placed her hoof- er, talon on her coltfiend’s hoof, and stared into his eyes. She couldn’t help but smile. It appeared she made him nervous after an extended beat, and he cleared his throat to get her attention.
But no, she was well aware of what she was doing. It may have been a non sequitur, but she felt like it was an important thing to say given the recent introspection. With a resolve like no other, she admitted, “Y’know, I think Mrs. Night is a decent mom.”
Anthem blinked. “Wow, Haren, you’re still thinking about her? Are you sure you’re not the deviant?”
“Heh,” she chortled. “Yeah. I probably am. Oh well.”
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So many tragic backgrounds. Guess the world isn't as nice as many might believe. Glad Haren found some happiness for herself.
I’ll be honest, when I first started reading this a couple weeks ago, I was skeptical. It took me a couple of chapters to actually realize what a fugin’ masterpiece this thing is. I don’t usually enjoy drama stories, and don’t really like social dramas in general. But, like, holy shite. Characters that actually have depth and arn’t 2D/singleminded for the sake of plot. The main antagonist isn’t just a dick to be a dick or because of a cliche superiority complex. Hell, for a good chunk of the story there wasn’t even a physical antagonist. I guess, what I’m trying to say is good job. And thank you, pleasant surprise, much joy.
9899258
Ancient griffin saint, I dunno :P
9898500
Aww thanks, this is the kinda thing I like to hear. I'm trying, I just wish I had the patience to rewrite earlier chapters :P
Quite a good story i'd like to see how this goes on!
I really miss this story. I hope that whatever you're up to nowadays is going well.
11167829
Well guess what I'm finishing it :P
This is always in the back of my mind. I feel like I can never move on to better things unless I close this chapter of my life. Look forward to it.
11268733
Good to hear! Lots of authors resurfacing recently. Thanks for the heads up!