A Recollection Of Memories

by Rutilus.Luna

Bags Are The Opposite Of Fun

It was exactly two and a half days later that I got the letter in the mail. How do I know it was exactly two and a half you may ask? Earlier I stated that chaos is relative, well, time is also relative I've found. When you're going to school, and hanging out with friends, and just having a jolly good time; time has a tendency to move a lot faster then when you happen to be grounded for "mingling with the enemy" and stuck in one's room. Turns out that my parents were not convinced by my "but it was funny" excuse.

Anyway, so I got a letter in the mail. An invitation to a luncheon at the Grand Citadel De Discord. Grounded for mingling with the enemy, then said enemy invited me to lunch. At the time I thought life simply couldn't get any more awkward, not because of the situation at hand, but mostly because I felt that my life was simply not going to last much longer. How do you tell your parents the one being they actually loathe invited you to lunch without losing your head?

Penny says I should stop ragging on my parents. She does have a point, they raised me well and tried their hardest to make sure I grew up safe and sound. They also passed away before Penny was born and therefore she never knew them. I rest my case.

In hindsight I wish that I had kept the original letter, it really was quite extravagant. I also think it may have been enchanted. The words and letters would move about of their own volition, only displaying the original message every few minutes. It really was a sight to behold. Unfortunately it is lost to the vestiges of time...and fire. Yes, my parents reacted in much the way I thought they might and burned the invitation. Said it was for my own safety. I couldn't disagree with that, outside of my one meeting with the spirit all I heard was bad news about him, so I never pushed the point. Discord; however, pushed the point for me by sending invitations every single day after that. Rather plain ones after the extravagance of the first. Nothing moved, nothing changed, just plain invitations. This ended up continuing for two entire weeks. I would get an invitation and my parents would get kindling for the fire.

Sadly, my reputation amongst the town also diminished during this time. Not to say that I was an outstanding member of the community before hand. When you are the town prankster, that tends to proceed you in most social situations. This was a whole new level though. I laughed at Discord, spirit of chaos and master of disharmony. Most ponies didn't take kindly to it and were not afraid of voicing what they thought. Many were concerned for me and proceeded to rant and rave about how horrid a monster Discord was, as if I had never heard any of it before. Some shunned me for a while, presumably afraid I was either in cahoots with him, or I was of special interest. The other remaining group, the fewest in number but most hurtful in message, branded me a traitor to all of ponykind. Anything I said in defense was met with skepticism and outright disbelief. I suppose that when you can't harm your enemy you go for the closest to him that you can. If it hadn't been for my closest friends Graze and Lightning I'm not sure I would have held out against the onslaught.
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I suppose that I should give a bit of background on my sanity saviors before we go any further. They ended up helping me a lot throughout my life and it wouldn't be fair to not give them their dues. I ran into them, or rather they ran into me, a few years prior to all of this. I was seven or so at the time. Our fathers were good friends and eventually it would make sense for us all to meet. Our first meeting started off as all great friendships tend to, with physical injury and lots of screaming about who was at fault. Ah, those were the times. Anyway, I was out soapskating, one of my favorite hobbies, when these two ended up sliding right into me, causing an interesting pretzel of limbs.

So it started, I bellowed out a "watch where you're going!"

Lightning countered with a rousing; "no, you!"

A fun game of "no, you!" commenced back and forth until Graze started struggling to untangle herself from the mass. Mostly that just made it worse since we all started to struggle, pulling in all different directions. Shouting at us all to stop, Graze untangled her self and helped us do the same. After a bit of fuming and otherwise unpleasant thinking; we finally exchanged names and were able to get a good look at each other. Graze and Lightning are identical twins. Identical flying twins. If I shut my eyes and they switched places I probably wouldn't have been able to tell them apart the first several months I knew them. So of course they loved to do this and mess with me all the time. Loving friends, eh? To make a long story short, we ended up in the same class and became close friends. Spreading our own brand of fun throughout the town, much to the ire of the town.
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After the two week mark we stopped getting the invitations. My parents were certainly plum pleased by this, figuring that Discord had simply lost interest. The loss of kindling was considered acceptable. A few days passed and life returned to as normal as it ever got. Everypony started to lose their irrational fear/hatred of me and resume disliking or liking me for the usual annoyances.

I never studied the weather. It was considered a useless skill during the rule of Discord and for good reason; it was as unpredictable as Discord himself. Snowing to fog, hail with the sun still shining, water coming down at a rather pleasant bathing temperature, and that was just when normal precipitation felt like happening. I recall the travesty that was the maple syrup showers. So much sticky in all manner of locations unpleasant. I learned this phrase much later in life and have found it to be one of my favorites; the calm before the storm. If I had known it earlier in my life, I would have probably made it my catchphrase. The reason I bother to bring this up, is that in hindsight, that was probably my first introduction to a calm before the storm.

It was a mostly standard day; I went to school, did chores when I got home, went out for play after that; all of that stuff that young colts are supposed to do. When i got back home from play however was when I noticed that things were a bit off. The air was an odd, palpable tension; and even at that age I realized that home was not a safe place to be at that moment. I called for my parents, hoping to hear a reassuring response in turn. When i was greeted with silence I chose to heed my budding self preservation instincts. I proceeded to back slowly to the front door keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of immediate danger to my person. It was about that time I ended up in a bag. Being in a bag is more or less the opposite of fun, its rather quite terrifying when you are forced into the position. So I did the only thing I knew to do in that situation...I screamed my head off and flailed about.

Comments

[Rutilus.Luna]

And now there is a Chapter 2, for better or worse.

Thoughts?

[Luna Eclipse]

Looooooooooooooooooooove it. The Thought of Maple Syrup Showers really makes me feel bad for the ponies (and laugh my ass off).
-imagines ponies with syrup stuck in their manes-