Bedrock

by RazedRainbow

IV

IV

Pinkie is crying.

Somewhere. Darkness and flashes with each blink, pitch shifting with each turn of my head, the sights never changing, until...

She stands next to a packed cart. Father frowns, as does Limestone, as do I. Their brows are furrowed. Mine are not. An elderly mare helps her up onto the seat next to her and pats her head.

She keeps crying.

Smoke fills my nose. Marble has Limestone’s hoof in hers, gray on burnt gray. Others blur around them. Some cough. Some moan. She leans against my shoulder. I do not raise a hoof or lean closer. I am stone.

She keeps crying.

She swipes rubble off her uniform and her eyes grow wide. Upon the gray sleeves is a new dark red glistening in the moonlight. She falls on her haunches. It is on her hooves and face. Mine too. The other troops are off in their tents or around the campfires singing and drinking. She bows her head and shakes. I watch from the fire pit. She shakes. I study the pulse of coal embers.

She keeps crying.

I lay on a rough mattress. She is there. Always there. I try to lift my hoof for her to grasp, but the magic holds it still, just as it does my lips. She hugs me and is at the door before I can comprehend. I want to follow but my legs refuse. A doctor pushes my head down. My last memories of her are tinted in a sea of black spots and morning breath. She leaves my vision.

She keeps crying.

And she keeps on. Here. Among the black. A memory? A dream? I take a step towards the sound, but fall. I end at my flanks. A nightmare, but a real one.

Dark paints all, as always. But I stare anyway. Blink. Rub my eyes. Stare again. There is a line of pink at the edges of all this. Somewhere, in another space, she coughs. The pink streaks shake like seismic waves. She is buried somewhere in all this. Somewhere in another space. Not somewhere in another time.

Right now. Distant. But right now.

I go to run. No wheels here. No good. Too aware, too real. I can only lay and wait until waking beckons.

And she keeps crying.

Comments

[Ice Star]

And she keeps crying.

OOF