Learning to see Luna, the story of Vivid Colour.

by Hope

Chapter 29. Comfort

“Again.”

Vivid could just barely make out the voice, but as instructed she reached out with a hoof, found the wooden box, and lifted her forward section up a bit to stand halfway on it, before resting for a moment.

She’d had a headache since she woke up, and a constant feeling of drifting, like every movement she made was just a suggestion her brain was making, not a firm command. She would twitch or lose strength at random it seemed, and her focus on the world outside of her own mind was tenuous at best.

Whatever medicine they were giving her made the pain fade enough for her to tolerate it, but it made her muddiness and confusion worse, she felt. Every time it was administered, she would find herself trying to wander away or use her magic, or babbling away incoherently.

It was humiliating, she thought. That fact she could hold onto, that she felt embarrassed, and it was a relief to know that Luna was not watching.

“Vivid?”

“Sorry,” Vivid mumbled, before stepping forward and bringing her hind hooves up onto the box as well, standing straight before slowly reversing the direction and stepping back down, and backing onto the floor and away from the box.

"Good. You're clearly tired, go ahead and lay down."

Every single word was too loud, but muffled and unclear. It was terrible, but better than the piercing pain of two days ago.

She stepped to the side by memory and found the edge of the bed, just two mattresses directly on the floor, so she didn't have to climb.

She rolled onto the soft cushion and sighed.

"Could you wait on the medicine for a moment?"

It was Posey. Vivid turned her head and found the faintest outline of a unicorn standing nearby.

"Hi," Vivid whispered, smiling.

Posey granted her magic to Vivid, letting her read her lips, as she spoke more quietly, barely audible.

"Luna sends from the Front. The war goes well, the Griffins seem to be retreating and leaving the dragons behind to fight."

"That… it's good?" Vivid asked, making sure she wasn't misunderstanding.

"Yes," Posey nodded gently. "She will probably be home in a week or less."

"Maybe… I'll walk by then," Vivid said, her thin smile holding all the hope she could spare.

"Even if you can't," Posey said slowly and firmly. "She will be happy to be with you."

Vivid hesitated, and laid her head down, as tears started to wet her pillow, and she shook slightly with silent sobs.

She could feel a hoof rest on her side.

“How c--- ho--- can you know?” Vivid sobbed.

Posey cleared her throat, and said clearly, “Because I know her, and I know that she will still love you.”

Vivid took her medicine, which numbed the pain in her head and all of her muscles, and she fell asleep.

Most of her dreams since the explosion had been muddied, out of focus and difficult to recall.

But this time she was curled against something warm, with a wing wrapped around her middle, and a hoof tracing slow circles on her back.

The silence was a comfort, no ringing in her ears and no voices telling her what to do.

The circles traced on her back became smaller, then ovals around her shoulders, hips, and then smaller wavy lines up the back of her neck, all with the tip of a hoof so gentle.

Vivid, in the numbness of a drugged up dream, accepted it without protest.

Then, the circles stopped, and she stirred a little, curious why, until a more deliberate shape was traced in her fur. A line, with two shorter lines at the top and bottom. A capital I.

She chuckled a little, and said the word out loud.

Then, another letter, a line with another smaller line from the bottom of it, to the right.

“L,” she whispered.

Slowly, a short message of love was sketched out on her back by her princess, before she squirmed to roll over and face Luna, burying her face in Luna’s neck, hugging her close.

“I’m sorry,” Vivid mumbled.

“You don’t need to be,” Luna replied in a whisper. “But if you ever do something like that again, I’ll have you declared infirm, and keep you in my room to keep you safe. The most dangerous thing you’ll ever do again is cuddle me.”

Vivid laughed softly, smiling. “Not so bad,” she admitted.

“The official royal pillow,” Luna sighed happily. “I am… so, so happy that you are still with me, Vivid.

Vivid was quiet for a moment, as Luna pet her. But finally she sniffled and admitted something.

“I… Didn’t think about it. I would have been so scared, if I did… I just… It was what I had to do. I had to.”

“I know,” Luna said softly. “I know. It’s ok.”

Vivid cuddled close to her, and after a bit Luna started to talk, her own anxiety driving her to share the state of things.

“The dragon army is routed… They have seized much of the propellant and weapons that were to be used, but cannot use them except by plucking captured griffins. The griffins have fled back across the sea except for a small contingent. We are uncertain as to how the dragons will handle the sit--”

“Please,” Vivid mumbled, butting her horn against Luna’s neck. “No war talk? Talk… About….”

She hesitated, trying to find something else to talk about, to listen to Luna.

“I could tell you about the town of Starcross, which we’ve stumbled across.”

“Starcross,” Vivid gasped, sitting up. “I’ve been there! I… They….”

“I know,” Luna said softly, pressing her to lay back down as the dream wavered from her excitement. “I know, it’s the place where you were attacked.”

“Noo,” Vivid groaned. “I… Yes, but I… There was a griffin there I was close with. She was still there.”

Luna hummed to herself. “Anie?” she asked.

Vivid nodded quickly.

“She’s still there,” Luna nodded. “Her home was fortified by the griffin invasion as a field hospital, but she’s still here. A bit worse for wear, but we’ve offered her our protection.”

“Good,” Vivid sighed, relaxing a little. “Good. I’m… glad.”

“Close with her, should I be jealous?” Luna joked.

“No, no, never,” Vivid said quickly, almost frantically, as Luna held her a little tighter.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. A poor bit of humor,” Luna reassured her.

"Well, as we push past Starcross, we enter unclaimed land," Luna said. "Land the Griffins will not even claim due to the impossibility of growing crops there. I'm thinking of just telling the dragons to settle it. Make it theirs."

"Mean," Vivid said, frowning.

"Not at all," Luna objected defensively. "They can eat stones and metals. If any race can settle it, they would be the ones. It's not even claimed by the buffalo as far as I know, due to the volcanic activity."

Vivid sighed and shook her head, resting it against Luna again. She didn't have the energy to argue, she just wanted to be here, quiet and comfortable.

"Are the doctors being good to you?"

But of course Luna wanted assurances.

Vivid sighed just the tiniest bit.

"Sorry..."

"It's ok," Vivid reassured her. "Yes. The doctors are nice. They help me. I can walk a little."

"Good. You wouldn't be able to come out in the gardens if you couldn't walk," Luna pointed out.

It seemed meaningless to Vivid, but if that's what Luna paid attention to, at least she was happy.

Vivid sighed, trying to remember what the gardens were like, but failing. Instead her memory brought back a trip to a dark stone room buried under an ancient castle.

“Moon… I… You should go to the… the buried place.”

Luna paused, trying to decipher Vivid’s words. “I don’t understand.”

Vivid concentrated, and she could feel the dream shift, as the feeling of the underground room surrounded her. The one where she’d cast the most powerful spell of her life. The one where she’d made a copy of herself, just for this reason.

“But that was just if… you passed away,” Luna objected.

“No… She’s there,” Vivid said firmly, relaxing again against Luna and fighting the aching in her head. “She… you go, and talk.”

Luna was silent for a moment, before she nuzzled Vivid.

“Can… Can you say my name?” she asked nervously.

Vivid grimaced, but tried.

“Y…. ly….” she felt like her throat wouldn’t cooperate, like the whole word just wasn’t in her head, but she knew she had to. She took a deep breath.

“Ona. Uuna, l-l-luna. LUNA!” she practically shouted, as Luna held her ever tighter.

“I’m sorry,” Luna whispered.

“N… no,” Vivid said angrily. “No, don’t… I… mine,” she said, grabbing Luna tightly, comforting her own loss of control over her language, by burying her heart and body in Luna’s grasp.

"Yours," Luna agreed gently. "All yours."

Comments

[McPoodle]

I haven't been commenting in a while, and that's because it takes me so long to to read everything on my list, that I feel my thoughts have already been said by somebody else, but these chapters being uncommented on is a crime. Maybe the other readers are waiting to see how much worse it gets, because I think it's obvious this is going to get a lot worse. So I need to say something.

---

It's just...I came back from my annual vacation with my sister in late September to my Dad's usual complaining from his home 50 miles away from us, and we really didn't want to go to the trouble of visiting him and putting up with his usual B.S. ...And then his neighbor found him passed out in the front hall, reaching for the front door.

There were misdiagnoses, and him refusing to take his medication. I tripped over his accumulated junk while trying to take care of him, which put me in a wheelchair for three months. We thought we had him fixed up, and we were so very tired of his B.S., so we returned home. He relapsed, so we had to send him to a post-acute facility, and try to figure out how to pay for it--while feeling guilty for being emotionally incapable of taking him in ourselves.

He apologized for the wheelchair. It was the first time he had apologized to me in his entire life. And less than a week later, he was dead.

He was the most annoying person in my life. He didn't like the fact that I was one of them, the intellectuals he blamed for all of the world's troubles. And he considered my sister useless because of her gender, and because she never gave him grandchildren. But he was still my father, I still loved him, and the idiocy that led to his entirely-preventable death makes me somewhat ashamed to be in the medical profession.

I'm rambling, and making this about me instead of about your story. I tend to do that. So here's where I stumble towards a point.

---

You edited my story. The one that wasn't supposed to be autobiographical, except it totally was. The one nobody is allowed to talk about. So you have some idea of how I felt about my father. And reading these chapters I feel that you also have had to deal with the drawn-out mental/emotional death of a loved one. The kind of situation where it seems so easy to just turn your back and walk away, to pay that person back for how much they hurt you. (And it doesn't matter that they weren't in their right minds--all those years together mean that they have all the ammunition.) And for that...you have my sincerest sympathy.

Also your writing is awesome.

[Hope]

10229570
Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so very much for your kind words, and sharing your own story. I've struggled with writing lately. But this story will end, and it will end well.

[McPoodle]

10229655
"Doctor"...that's funny. Nope, I'm still a Mister. My involvement in health care is writing reports for Sutter Health.

I was pre-med in college, but Organic Chemistry is a killer. And you needed something called "people skills". I didn't gather enough of that mysterious substance until I was in my forties.

Although "Doctor McPoodle" does have a certain ring to it...

I'm glad to hear that this story isn't going into the "depressing pile". It's way too big as it is.

[Hope]

10229693
Each story in Luna's series is going to be focused on the emotions and mental state of the partner. Prim Rose was a gentle and kind soul, who faded away. Vivid fights against the dying of the light, trying to grasp every change and every opportunity around her. I'm not sure if I captured that well, or if it's just all over the place, but the next story in the series will be more liniar.

[McPoodle]

10229655
...
...
...You meant Doctor Franklin from "Breakdown", didn't you.
...ugh.

[Hope]

10231129
Hah! It's alright, it's been a while!

[Hope]

10231083
It has a meaning, but it took me hours and hours to find a true old english translator back when I was writing the chapter. I think Luna was making some quip about "The people would pay me not to speak thus"

[Backlash91]

Hnnnnnng!!!! Need more!!!

Written so gooood

[theGECK]

I love these stories. Thank you for them.

[Hope]

10256301
I'm very very glad you've enjoyed them, and more shall come!