And I Will Love You...

by Scootareader

Until I Awake

I disinterestedly gaze over the land which I have sat upon for years now. It is as grey and bland to me as the stone which composes my body; I see nothing new. I feel nothing new.

My caretakers long ago left me to my own devices. They dropped me into a pit and had faith that I would survive on my own.

That has not made every moment that I have been trapped here any more bearable. Very little light makes it all the way back here, and no living things at all.

I am alone. As I have always been. As I always suspect I will.

One of the greatest and most irritating things about having a conscience is that, from time to time, you must let it go. Some call this “sleep,” or “rest.” I call it “waiting.”

Waiting for what? For the world to end? For some freak accident of nature to split the earth and drop me into paradise? For my solitude to finally be broken?

Waiting to wait some more. That’s all I look forward to. I let myself go and drift, waiting for change that will never come.

Am I opposed to this life? I guess you could say I am. Nothing should ever have to feel such loneliness. Finally freed from my old life in Canterlot, I am only imprisoned once again, here in this awful forest. This is a fate worse than death to me.

I can’t stand the horrific monotony of my waking life. Another day of this is liable to drive me insane.

Is waiting an escape? It numbs my senses. No longer do I have to stare at the same scenery I have for so many years. It just feels like holding off the inevitable, though.

Perhaps I should just stop waiting altogether. It only makes me more miserable when I am observing.

Today, though, my pathetic life is simply too much to bear. I retreat into the farthest corners of my mind, letting the loss of perception overwhelm me.

---

It appears that, just to further ruin my life, waiting no longer holds an escape. I am dreaming.

I am in an orchard. Trees stretch for acres, their limbs entwining with one another, lives joined as surely as their roots are to the earth. With their free branches, they reach up to the sky, reveling in the sunlight they bloom under, their precious, lovely fruit hanging low on their branches, tantalizing creatures for miles to come and partake of the feast.

Were it so easy for me. Were I born a tree, my life would never have been so excruciating. Now, all I feel is how alone I am. It is my only birthright.

The dream draws my spectral eyes to one particular tree.

Instantly, I sense something different about this tree. It stands alone on a hilltop, looking over the rest of the orchard forlornly. The others have offered branches for him to join, but he grows apart from them. He is alone, just like me.

Who is this tree? Why does he enrapture me so? In this terrible, lonely existence, perhaps I am grasping for something, anything that may ease my burden. I want to latch on to this tree, to be held within his branches and never feel this apartheid again for as long as I still exist.

Is that dream so wrong to hope for?

---

---

I gaze longingly at the beautiful blue sky, clear but for a lone cloud scrawling across its features.

Oh, to join that cloud in the sky. If only I were able to make her just a little less lonely.

To say that I miss my old home would be an understatement. There, the ponies grew us far enough apart that it truly took some effort to find one another. Here, it is like a constant orgy. There is no love. There is no trust. There is only touching. There is only feeling. None of it means a thing to any of them.

I think Applejack knew how I felt about touching other trees. That’s why she made sure to set me apart from the others. She knew how miserable I would have been if she had tried to place me in their midst.

The Appaloosans disgust me. They reach their branches up, teasing me incessantly. “Virgin, virgin,” they cat-call. They only want me to join in their deviancies, their perversions of what it means to feel closeness to another.

I thought I felt a love that would last centuries, once. There was a beautiful tree just a short distance from me. I had been trying to reach a tiny root to her for years.

When Applejack and Big Macintosh dug me up, I was hoping against hope that they would move me next to her.

Now, I strain to get through each day with these bullies all around. All they care about is my bark and my branches. They don’t want my heart.

The sun dips below the horizon. Time to stop sucking in sunlight, to hold out and wait for sunrise, then face the rigors of another day just out of reach of those who despise me for being faithful.

As I shut off my chloroplasts, I feel myself departing conscious thought and retreating to a safe place in the back of my mind.

---

I find myself in a nightmare.

The forest I look at is dark and abysmal. The plants are all overgrown, each trying to reach above and kill their compatriots. The small amount of sunlight that reaches the floor will never be able to sustain so many; more than half will never make it through the coming winter.

The trees are even worse. Not only do they rise tall to prevent sunlight from reaching in, they don’t even touch each other. Not a single one. There is... something far worse.

They produce seeds—acorns, pinecones, fruit, it matters not—and produce offspring. The tiny saplings begin to stretch tall out of the forest floor, subsisting off tiny sunbeams that they let through their foliage.

Then, once these trees are tall enough to be reached by the elders, they are violated.

I am witnessing a sapling being accosted by three larger trees. Their branches wrap around his young bark, biting into it and cutting him to the wood. Their roots, massive and gnarled, snake through the ground, sticking out visibly from the ground in odd spots only to dive down once more, tearing his own tiny roots away for their own sick pleasure.

These wild, uninhibited trees care not for their fellow tree at all. Even the Appaloosans are saints compared to this firewood. That their victim is so young, so innocent, and they do it anyway....

There is a word for this. I can’t utter it, though.

I cannot take any more of this. I turn away from the ghastly sight, my leaves quivering with anger and resentment that such injustice exists in the world.

It’s then that I catch sight of a solitary shape set partway into the ground.

He stands apart from the awful world around him, his steady gaze unbroken of the green pastures he can see in the distance. He cares not for the horrific things he can watch, instead finding the beauty of what he can see.

I admire him. I already know this for sure.

I feel his gaze shift.

He’s looking at me. In my dream, he is looking at me.

---

I awake with a start, the rising sun peeking its head over the Macintosh Hills. It was a dream, only a dream.

But that awful place exists. That place with, with....

Hope. That’s what I saw.

Hope.

Author's Note:

This is one of the most bizarre things I've ever written.
--Scootareader

Comments

[JustAnotherTimeLord]

Well... this is a first. Like, I have literally never seen a story like this in any place... ever. I have to say, I am most certainly intrigued by this. However, while the grammar is perfect, you definitely need to work on show v. tell. Specifically, the first section was awfully telly. Here is a couple examples and associated suggestions, but you should go through and find more yourself.

I cast my stony gaze over the land which I have sat upon for years now. All of it is familiar to me; I see nothing new.

This line particularly is awfully telly. First, what does the land look like? After that, the second sentence is fine, and the third will be fine with the first sentence fixed.

I can’t stand the horror of my waking life.

That's great and all, but what is the horror? If this character were... well, sapient, then more could be done, but I honestly have no idea how you could show "him" not standing the horrors of his waking life.

Honestly, I feel that a few more things could be cleared up in sequential chapters in terms of show v. tell, but if not, then I'll probably have to come back to this.

[PaulAsaran]

I heard whispers through the grapevine that this was a story worth taking an interest in, and so it's been sitting in my RiL for the past few months.

Now I'm here and, well... this fascinates me. Let us see how far this peculiar rabbit hole goes.