• Published 1st Nov 2018
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The Haunting - Admiral Biscuit



My new house in Equestria came with more than I'd bargained for.

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Chapter 44

The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit

I’d never seen a ghost cry, and I pray that I never do again. Windflower dropped her head down into her hooves and her whole body—what there was of it—shuddered as she wept.

There was nothing we could do to console her, either. She’d crossed over, and that was that.

Even so, neither of us was so heartless as to just leave her alone in her sorrow. We weren’t so shallow as to offer false hope where there was none, but we both knew that just being there for her would help. Her home wouldn’t be empty; she wouldn’t have to face her mortality alone, not this time.

I think she’d known all along, but she’d buried all the implications of her new form when she came back. Pretended that things were normal, found some way to justify new abilities and lost abilities and I couldn’t help but feel pity for her, now that she was forced to face the awful truth.

She cried for the better part of an hour, before she finally managed to get back to her hooves and shakily made her way over to her amaranth plant, sadly circling its pot. She wouldn’t move close enough to touch it, undoubtedly terrified of hurting it more, even though it was probably far too late for that to be a concern. Even to my dumb human knowledge, there was a difference between hibernating for the winter and having the life sucked out of it: seeing it in plain view, undistracted from Windflower’s distress, made it look even worse than I’d initially believed.

A year ago, I never would have imagined such a thing, but I knew it now for what it was—she’d drained the life out of the plant, stolen its life essence for herself.

Was that what was going wrong in the woods? Was that what Milfoil had felt? Something that she either couldn’t correctly identify, or something she was afraid to speak aloud?

It was a thing I didn’t know how to cope with. It was something that was in books and movies but not in real life, and the realization of it was more terrible than I wanted to consider.

She didn’t do it intentionally. That was a slender ray of hope, but even if it was unintentional, I wondered if there would be anything blooming in her grove this year, or if she’d sucked the life out of every plant there just to stay behind.

•••

We couldn’t just leave her plant like that. We had to try to save it, somehow. I didn’t know how, but I knew I’d do anything to make it happen.

Milfoil walked slowly up to the plant and touched her muzzle lightly against the stem, and Windflower watched hopefully, moving up alongside her.

I joined them by the plant and put my hand on Milfoil’s back. She glanced in my direction, and I nodded.

There was so much about pony magic I didn’t know, so much I didn’t understand. I didn’t know the method, but I’d seen the results, and I did my best to will my own strength into her. To reach out and join her song.

At first, there was nothing but the feel of her silken coat under my hand, and then I began to hear it, familiar and comfortable to me. Her ears perked, then Milfoil reached out and touched the plant ever so gently.

There was a slight change, a flattening almost, and I remembered back to her collapsing after the first time she’d fixed the plant. I didn’t want that to happen again, so I focused in on myself, on my feelings for her and for Windflower, and I tried to will that and my strength into her.

I could hear the song changing, and at first, that was all, but then I started to feel it. It was like standing on a beach and having the waves wash the sand out from under my toes, and then became a steady pull, almost like being caught up in a current.

And then behind that came the pain. Not physical, not exactly. And it wasn’t just psychological, either. It was something else, something I had no words for, something I had no experience of.

Nor was it bad. It was undeniable, and it was the price that I was paying, the price that Milfoil had paid alone the last time, because nothing comes without a cost but when it’s a thing worth doing, it’s worth everything.

It was a cost I would have paid tenfold if that was what it took to make things right.

•••

When I opened my eyes, the amaranth was whole again. Windflower had her hooves around the pot, her muzzle brushing lightly against the plant, briefly lost in happiness.

I felt like I’d run a marathon, fought a bear, run a hundred yard game-winning touchdown, and then gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel full of rocks.

Milfoil looked as strong as always. Stronger, even.

“I think I’m going to,” I said, and then fatigue hit me like a freight train and I collapsed to the floor.

“Steve?” Milfoil stuck her muzzle against my neck. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t remember how to form words, so I gave her a thumbs-up, which in hindsight was a completely meaningless gesture.

“Steve?” She leaned in and nuzzled my neck. She had little hairs on her muzzle, and they were tickly.

I’m fine. I just want to lie here on the floor.

She sat down and reached out for my hand. It felt natural to grip on to her hoof and squeeze it—it wouldn’t hurt her, it was a hoof.

Windflower finally noticed that I was laid out on the floor and came over to investigate. I’d never really paid attention to it before, but it was weird to see things through her. They weren't bent or refracted or anything like that, at least not that I could tell.

I also marveled at the fact that I was on the ground, probably helpless, and there was a ghost hovering over me. In any horror movie, that would have ended badly. But I wasn’t worried about that at all. In fact, when Windflower touched me I wasn’t worried at all, despite the chill of her ghostly hoof against my skin.

•••

There is darkness, and I am adrift.

I am at peace. I am drifting, afloat, aloft, beyond my physical self, and I do not know where I wander, but that doesn’t matter. I have become a part of the song.

I think that Windflower might have killed me. A plant isn’t a person, it isn’t a pony. No matter how alive it is, it isn’t alive enough. I understand this.

My family. They’ll be upset when they find out, and I hope that Milfoil tells them that it was for a good cause. They won’t understand. They don’t know what I know, they don’t understand what I understand.

I do.

A life for a life.

A fair trade.

•••

There is darkness. Not blackness, just darkness. My back is stiff, and most of me is cold. Not all of me—there’s a warmth against my right side, and in the hazy dreaminess I reach out towards it, not with my body but with my mind, needing to know it before I turn.

Milfoil has a forehoof across my chest, and her muzzle pressed up against my neck. She’s got little hairs on her muzzle and they tickle my neck.

My hand is clutched on her hoof, like a drowning man might clutch a life-ring. I relax my grip, even though I don’t need to. Her hoof is hard, unyielding.

I’m in the living room. I don’t spend a lot of time studying the ceilings in my house, memorizing their features, but I know where I am. I know who I am and what I am, and I squeeze her hoof lightly, and I don’t know if she can feel it but I know she feels it.

Her cheeks are moist from tears and I want to tell her that she shouldn’t cry. Everything is okay.

•••

Morning comes, as it always does. My back is stiff, and Milfoil is curled up against my right side. The sun turns her mane into a halo, and I marvel at it.

•••

We could talk, but we don’t.

She’s in the kitchen, making pancakes.

I’m off.

I don’t have the experience to understand how. It’s like I was on a slightly delay, or else the rest of the world was. Like a picture that’s out of focus, just slightly. Enough that the details can sort of be made out, but not really. Everything in the image isn’t as there as it pretends to be.

It wasn’t like being stoned or being drunk. Maybe there are other drugs which caused such an effect, but they were ones I’d never tried. Some part of my mind suggested that an acid trip might turn out this way.

But . . . I still understood the difference between reality and hallucination. And not in the sense that I thought I knew; this knowledge was fully realized.

•••

The inevitable scolding came after breakfast. After she’d washed the dishes and put them away. I insisted that she leave the soup pot for me, since it was my fault it had burned.

“You are such an idiot.”

“I know.” I wasn’t exactly sure how I was an idiot, but I knew she’d tell me.

“I’m an idiot, too.” She nuzzled my chest, and I responded by leaning down and kissing her ear. “I should have been more careful, worked more slowly. We don’t know how much—and you can’t focus at all. You’re like a minotaur charging through a shop.”

“And I could have given too much.”

“You did.” She smacked my leg with her tail. “You could have been laid out for days.”

I still would have done it. “We need to practice more.”

“Yes, but you need to rest before we do. It’s not good to work yourself so hard. You need to take foal steps until you know how to control yourself.”