The Destruction of the Self

by Cold in Gardez

Buckwheat

I wake up, and I think I would like to be a farmer today.

Spring Heath is asleep beside me, a purple shape in the dark. I give her a nudge with my muzzle, in case she feels like fooling around, but she mumbles and rolls away.

Ah well, perhaps tomorrow. I leave her to sleep while I get ready for the day.

The house is quiet without any foals. There are no thumps echoing from the bedrooms, or slamming doors, or shouts from tiny throats that they need a special lunch today for a field trip and sorry for not mentioning it last night. It is peaceful, and I hear the grandfather clock ticking in the parlor, even from my spot sipping coffee in the kitchen.

Spring Heath descends the stairs, her coat and mane still matted from sleep. I gesture to the steaming mug waiting at her seat, and she smiles at me.

I hope I get to be a farmer today.

* * *

“Buckwheat!” The administrator calls my name, and I step out of line. My heart is pounding, and even though the spring day is still chilly, I feel the first drop of sweat run down my side.

Please be a farmer. Please be a farmer.

The mare who called for me sits behind a folding wooden table set up in the village square. She has a pencil tucked behind her ear, and her mane is already frazzled despite the early hour.

I approach, and she fumbles with the paper tag that has my name. She glances between me and the list of names on the table before her. She looks at me again, then at the tag, and finishes back at the paper.

I don’t think she’s done this before.

“Uh, Buckwheat?” She waits until I nod. “Okay, good. You're the blacksmith!”

I wince, my ears falling flat against my mane. “Are you sure? Not a farmer?”

She runs her hoof down the list of names on her clipboard again, then slides it sideways to the column of jobs. “No, blacksmith. Do you know where to go?”

“Yeah, I’ve done it before.” I turn away to let the next pony take my place. There’s no point in holding up the whole village.

* * *

Whoever was the blacksmith last forgot to put their tools away, so instead of firing up the forge I spend the first hour of my day cleaning hammers, refilling barrels of water, oiling the bellow, sweeping ashes from the hearth and brushing metal shavings out of the swages. It’s easy work, and at sunset I’ll do it again without complaint.

But still, yesterday’s blacksmith should have done it before leaving. I make a note to speak with the mayor, as soon as I find out who that is.

Blacksmithing isn’t as hard as it sounds. You just heat the iron in the forge until it glows, take it out (carefully!) with the tongs, then hit it with the hammer until it’s the shape you want. I like to think I’ve gotten better at it over the years.

I consider the misshapen disk of wounded metal before me. It didn’t quite curve the way I’d hoped, and the sides are split in several places. If I squint, it vaguely resembles a pancake with curled edges, or maybe an ashtray.

Close enough. I place it on the shop counter, where a tan earth pony is waiting. “Here’s your bowl, sir.”

We stare at it in silence for some time.

“Okay,” he finally says. He drops a few coins on the counter and leaves with his purchase.

Rarely, maybe twice a year, Igneous gets to be the blacksmith, and she crafts masterworks of iron and steel for us. Plows, horseshoes, barrels of nails; on that day everything is perfect. The anvil sings when she strikes it with her hammer, and ponies stop in the street outside, forming crowds, all gawking at her virtuoso display.

But today I am the blacksmith.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll get to be a farmer.

But it’s fine if I don’t.

* * *

My new home is a small bungalow on the west side of the village. Beyond it, stretching out into the distance, are acres of wheat and barley, all waving stalks that fill the air with a faint whisper as the wind threads between them. I stop, and for a moment I feel like captain of a ship, watching the ocean sway before me.

I remember planting these rows the last time I was a farmer. It was early spring, and I trod across the bare ground with a plow strapped behind me. Each step was a battle with the hard earth, struggling to break it open to make way for the seeds. My legs and back were sore for days afterward. It was wonderful.

I surrender myself to the memory, letting it play out in my mind while the wind teases my mane and the scent of ripening grains fills my nose like the richest perfume. Even now, months later, the stalks grow in stately rows that obey my design. The bumble-hoofed efforts of hundreds of other villagers cannot erase the traces of my talent. The whole village is this way – a seed of genius, watered with good intentions and grown into something ramshackle but loved.

But enough reminiscing. I sigh and push open the door to my home, where there is a foal waiting for me. I vaguely recognize his lemon coat, and after a few seconds I speak.

“Saffron… Spark?”

“Saffron Lark,” he corrects me, then runs up to toss his legs around me for a hug. “Welcome home, dad! Mom’s making dinner.”

I walk into the next room, which turns out to be the kitchen, and sure enough a lime green mare is at work over the skillet. The smile on my face is genuine – the first of the day. Glenmore has been my wife before, and she makes a mean potato casserole. I can smell it cooking.

She trots over and kisses my cheek. “Welcome home… Buckwheat, right? How was your day?”

“Not bad,” I say. And it’s true.

* * *

I am supposed to be asleep beside my wife, but instead I lie awake in the dark. This happens, sometimes.

I can see, dimly, the square shape of a picture frame standing sentinel on the nightstand beside our bed. Tomorrow, when I am assigned a new home, it is the only object I will take with me, and I will set it on the nightstand beside my new bed. I will fall asleep staring at it.

We are each allowed this – one item, to remind ourselves why we came to the village. For Glenmore, snoring softly beside me, it is a gold locket in the shape of a treble clef she wears around her neck. A cutie mark, but somepony else’s. Sometimes, when she thinks I’m not looking, she touches it with her hoof.

In time, the others tell me, the need to keep these things close will fade. One day I will leave this old picture behind, and the transition to my new life will be complete.

Outside, a cloud that has occluded the moon completes its slow passage across the sky, and silvery light shines through our bedroom window, casting pale shadows on our bedspread. It is enough to see the mare smiling at me from the picture; her bright teeth, her dark green coat, her eyes that never stopped sparkling. Behind her, Canterlot’s towers rise like trees toward the sky.

Ponies who visit our village ask, bewildered, how we do it. How we can stand to change everything –everything – about our lives every day. How we don’t go insane.

These ponies have never suffered. They’ve never stumbled out of their home, no longer hearing the doctor shout behind them. They’ve never buried their wife and stillborn foal in the same casket.

They cannot understand how oblivion draws us like iron filings to a magnet. How it becomes the vortex into which we swim, heedless, welcoming. They cannot comprehend this hatred of the self.

These ponies have never suffered. Maybe, if they did, they would understand the solace we find here, where every pony can be any other. Where I will never lose my wife or my child or my home or my friends, because no matter what happens, there will always be another to take their place. Where I need be nothing more than the drop of rain that vanishes in the river, flowing with the current into the whirlpool’s maw, indistinguishable from all the other drops around me.

I love it here.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be a farmer.

Comments

[Freleania]

This is pretty good, but in the episode the ponies lost their special talent along with the cutie mark. Also, they didn't move around like that.

[Lurks-no-More]

6052025
This is clearly another take on the same idea, not set in Starlight Glimmer's nameless little cult compound but instead in what looks like a volunteer commune of sorts.

[Zoetic Zebra]

I love how you write this! Ending it it with the farmer hope is genius!

[Shadowrain1000]

This is very good, but I think it might need a dark tag. Still, awesome work!

[Alondro]

Ah, a bunch of ponies with severe depressive disorder and/or PTSD.

They don't need "The Village"... give em some Xanax and lithium! (So I can make evil pharmaceutical profits!)

[Lucky Star 33094]

I like this but by the time I started reading it has the completed tag,
I hope you have other stories as good as this, for now I'll just read the other chapters/

[Autocharth]

Interesting story, a different take on an idea, but really, one thing struck me more than the others.

These ponies have never suffered.

The arrogance of that. The sheer, unvarnished arrogance of him to believe that. "You've never suffered, or you'd be just like me." Whatever else, that belief is one i look at and think how self-centred someone's worldview must be to think that the only way others might not understand you is because they haven't suffered as much as you. Your suffering makes you special.

But then, I tend to respond more strongly to concepts than to characters. I can understand how he'd come to think that, but I just really dislike it when people use that to give their beliefs or actions validation. Even fictional people, it turns out. Suffering doesn't make you special. It can make you feel special, but just saying anyone who doesn't understand why you do what you do is because they've never suffered is ridiculous and more closed minded than anyone who questions what it is you're doing.

Still, though, this is amazingly well written, and I enjoyed reading it. Even if one of the character said something that got such a reaction from me, which is really just a sign of how well you've written the character that it can elicit such a response.

[Spike of the Bastion]

Where I will never lose my wife or my child or my home or my friends, because no matter what happens, there will always be another to take their place. 

That there, just... what kind of mentality is that, that's horrible. Everyone you care for is easily replaceable?

To the Author: I like the concept of the village but this buck's mentality bugs me.

[Enduring Man-Child]

An interesting alternative to the episode.

[PresentPerfect]

She has pencil

[Corejo]

6066504

She can has pencil

There I fixed it. I think.

[Movie Reel]

For some reason I'm getting an Anthem by Ayn Rand vibe from this.

Great read as usual CiG.

[Yami Vizzini]

Yipe.

This kind of reminds me of Holy Motors.

[ForSpite]

6054383
It's Cold in Gardez, your hopes are answered.