Carry on
I’m sitting on a bench. That’s not unusual. What’s keeping me frozen rigid on the bench is that I have no idea how I got to be sitting on the bench.
Memory loss is kind of a cliche with me at this point, I’d say. You’d think I’d be over it, but it never really loses the horrible, horrible novelty. It’s extremely disconcerting just having chunks of your life missing, especially if the gaps are, say, immediately following being pinned by a crazy lady. Magic horse lady. Unicorn.
Well, her brainslave, not her technically. Not that that’s much better…
Kind of afraid to move. I’m hugging the book for emotional support but it’s not giving me much back. I wiggle my toes. Everything seems to be working again, which is nice? Umbra didn’t leave me back how I’d been before she fiddled with me the first time? She fixed me, unfixed me, and has now fixed me again.
Christ, that lady.
I don’t want to keep sitting here. Not sure if there’s anywhere specific I’d prefer to be, but basically anywhere that wasn’t where I was would be better. Under a duvet and behind a locked door would be ideal, but I’d be willing to settle for less. Whatever happens I need to move.
Bracing myself, I lunge upward. This works out alright and nothing bad happens. I am now standing up, still hugging the book. Let’s get this done quick, back to the palace ricky-tick.
Heh, rhyme.
Hustling from the little garden I’d mysteriously ended up in I hustled back in what felt like the direction of a main thoroughfare, found a main thoroughfare, and from there managed to get myself heading the right way. For all its faults the palace is at least easy to spot and head towards.
On my way I pass many ponies. This is perhaps unsurprising and, normally, wouldn’t have really warranted much concern. But today had stopped being normal, and I have concerns about these ponies. Some of them smile at me. A lot of them smile at me. Some of them wave.
Mean, that’s pretty normal, that usually happens. Just, this time, well, you know - are any of them her? Secretly? I wave back and do the smile but I’m also looking for red eyes, maybe little bits of smoke. Don’t see any, but so what?
Not a fan of this. Paranoia is exhausting.
Much happier once I’m into the palace, swanning in like it’s not a big deal on account of me shacking up the lady in charge - perks!
Right, that’s the first part of all this dealt with. I’m back somewhere home-ish. Now what? Well, now the next bit, obviously. The harder bit. Sigh.
Plan of action? Keep all this under my hat and just hope it never comes up again? As much as that would have been my first choice, sadly, I think not. I think we’re definitely past any of that, we’re into serious territory now.
The excuse of “Oh, I don’t want to bother my girlfriend, I don’t want to have her worrying!” isn’t going to cut it now, because we’re talking about someone who they’ve battled with magical laserbeams before. Right? Enemy of the state and all that, all round unpleasant tyrant queen lady. We need to draw a line under this, so we’re just going to lay it all out. And have conversations about things.
It’s going to be awkward, yes, but that’s it, we’re done. This whole thing has got out of hand and was a stupid idea back before Umbra stuck her oar in.
If you hadn’t decided you needed a secret project you probably wouldn’t even be in this mess!
Continuing to berate myself inside my brain (as is my custom) I wandered about the palace without paying a whole lot of actual attention to the route I was taking and, in the process of doing this, very nearly walked smack into Luna. Small world.
“John,” she said, tipping her head to me in greeting. I tipped back at her.
“Luna,” I said. “You going to bed?”
She looked at me oddly because of that.
“The day is drawing to a close, the moon shall be rising soon,” she said.
On a reflex that was perhaps a decade out of date I look at my wrist. Since I didn’t have a watch this didn’t tell me anything other than that I still had wrists. Had to play through though.
“Later than I thought,” I said, putting my arm back down again. Luna was no longer looking at me oddly, she was now looking at me flatly, apparently having concluded all of that had just been a bit. Fine by me. “Is, uh - Twilight wouldn’t still happen to be around, would she? From whatever it was she was here for? Or is she still busy or…?” I asked.
“Twilight has had to return to Ponyville,” said Luna.
Bugger.
“Oh. That’s sudden, isn’t it?” I asked.
“An emergency, apparently,” she said, though she didn’t sound especially concerned. I was concerned, if only because I liked Twilight in one piece. Lovely girl can handle herself, yes, but I still worry!
“Anything we should be worried about?” I asked.
“That remains to be seen.”
“Lovely…”
Twilight was my first choice for spilling the beans to, as odd as that might have seemed to any outside observers who just-so happened to be privy to my rich internal life (hello, outside observers). Some might have thought Celestia would have been my first port of call but, for one, that seemed too obvious to me, and for two, well, I’d still prefer not to bother my horse-girlfriend if I can soften the landing of the bad news by bothering my horse-friend with it first.
Being the runner-up in my affections (albeit wholly platonic, for which I’m sure she’s profoundly grateful), not to mention my study-buddy, it seemed somehow more fitting to go with this stuff to Twilight anyway. Don’t you think? Yes I do think, thank you for asking.
And why aren’t I telling Luna? She’s right in front of me, right now, and she’s just as competent and capable as any of the others - why not tell her?
Well, because she’s busy, obviously, or about to be, so I don’t want to bother her. It has nothing whatsoever to do with how she out of everyone else I might conceivably tell is the one I imagine is most likely to get upset with me. So don’t even suggest that. It isn’t that. It’s the other thing.
So with Twilight elsewhere and Luna not an option (because of all the busy-business she had to deal with, see my previous statements on the matter) that left Celestia. She was also busy right at that moment but I could, you know, wait for that to finish, that was fine. Different kind of busy. Transient busy-ness.
Thus, mooching around. I make a big effort of returning the book I had been lugging around and, once that failed to kill enough time to make Celestia magically appear, just kind of wandered a bit, went to some rooms, looked at pictures, and generally felt the slow crawl of time drag like a cheesegrater across my soul.
Eventually, blissfully, it ends. I was lying on Celestia’s bed (again, perks) staring blankly at the ceiling and giving serious consideration to abusing her washing facilities by having a truly luxuriant bath when I heard the doors open. In my mad scramble to see her I promptly fell off the bed, though I will admit to certain grace in my spring back to my feet straight after.
And there she is, tiredly coming into the room and - oh, be still my heart! - lighting up on seeing me.
Blaming the high emotion of the day, at the sight of her I find myself quite overcome. Before I even know what I’m doing I am running right at her. Given I’ve longer legs than most this works out surprisingly fast, faster than I actually expected, and given I’m not exactly a gust of wind the thought of how I’m meant to stop in time occurs only far too late.
I do my best not to bodyslam her in my haste to get to her, but there’s still an impact. I’m glad she’s hefty as well as wonderfully soft and lovely. If it had been Twilight I probably would have trampled the poor girl. Celestia, like a trooper, remains solid as a rock. I latch onto her like a limpet.
She laughs. The sound instantly evaporates maybe half of the anxiety at that moment constricting my brain. That still leaves the other half, obviously, but it’s still a significant reduction. She’s great like that.
“You know, with that sort of thing, somepony might start to think she’s been missed,” she says. I can’t really say anything to that because I’m too busy continuing to cling to her.
Only now that I’m somewhere safe - i.e. wrapped around Celestia - does the weight of it all start to settle over me. You know. What happened, what might need to happen next, blah blah blah. All that.
Sure, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big tough grr manly man who laughs in the face of everything and eats broken glass and gunpowder and shits out anvils, yes, but even so the experience of getting chased and dragged around is kind of unpleasant. It wasn’t something I had a lot of history with before, and I’d be happy if today’s episode remains the extent of my history with it. I did not like it.
And that’s not even getting into the whole getting zapped in the head thing again. However that’s working out. I don’t really want to think about it.
Something about my prolonged clinging and silence seems to tip Celestia off at this point that maybe I’m not just happy to see her. She pulls away a little and I can feel her peering down at me (or peering at me - we are, as I always like to mention, close in height (with me just coming out on top (because the horn doesn’t count))).
“John? What’s the matter?”
Alright, here we go. I pull back a little bit as well and take a breath.
“It’s-”
…what? It’s what?
What was she talking about? Why’s she looking at me like that? Did I miss something?
“What?” I ask. She raises an eyebrow.
“What what? You’re the one talking!”
I was?
Oh yeah, oops. I was.
“Oh? Oh! Oh yes, sorry.”
That gets a giggle, always a plus.
“So what was it?” She asks me, and I shrug.
“I’ve no idea, heh.”
Can’t be that important, whatever it was. Knowing me I can’t imagine it could be anything important. Important things happen around me, not to me.
“So just speechless in my radiant presence, then?” She asks, with delicious coyness. She can really nail coyness, my girl. One of her many qualities.
“Oh, totally. Your radiant presence has that effect on me, lovely. It’s an effort to speak most of the time, I’m so dumbstruck.”
“Not that much of an effort…”
“Oi, cheeky,” I said, and I would have accompanied this with a playful swat that may or may not have been entirely family-friendly but, just on the off-chance someone would see, I did not. A shame. Maybe later, when she least expected it. “You done for that day then?” I asked instead, and she nodded.
“Done,” she said.
“Excellent. Let’s do something ridiculous. Cram some fireworks into my underpants and roll me off a balcony or something. That’d be good for an opener, I think. Set the tone.”
She stifled a snort. The stifled snorts were always the cutest ones.
“Maybe tomorrow, darling, if that’s alright with you. I’d rather like to just relax. It has been a day,” she says, now stifling a yawn. A lot of stifling going on around here. I nod at her because I am free and easy.
“Tomorrow bright and early it is then, works for me,” I said, giving a thumbs up.
“You’re in a strange mood,” she says with a smile, and I can’t help but grin back.
“I am, aren’t I? Happens to the best of us. Ah! But speaking of ideas - and relaxing - how does this strike you: bath?”
After all, a luxuriant bath on your own to kill time is one thing. A luxuriant bath with your lovely significant other? That’s quite another. That’s a whole something else, that’s an evening or at least most of one. And a good one, too!
“Bath good,” Celestia said flatly, taking the laconic ball and running with it.
“Bubbles bath?” I asked. The smile - which she’d banished from her face in trying to be all stoic and terse - tried to get back, but she was a professional and managed not to crack, at least not completely.
“Bubbles bath better,” she said.
We screwed up our faces into expressions of frank seriousness and nodded at each other like the weighty statespersons discussing matters of gravity that we were. We could both agree that, yes, bubbles bath better.
Then we cracked up.
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Whoa, it’s been a hot minute for this story, I honestly forget it existed. Love to see a new chapter all things considered.
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I also tend to forget it exists.
The way you word these stories is something of a unique style. I could take a wild stab in the dark as to where you're from, but suffice it to say that your style of writing is fantastic and it makes you one of my favorite authors on this site. Well done as always.
Glad to see you are still working on this fic.
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RobCakeran once tried to follow my style, but said he had to tone it down to spare one of his pre-readers from suffering a brain injury. I avoid this issue by not having pre-readers (and not caring about the damage I do).
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Projected time of completion November 2134
11806844
Haha I don’t think any of us will be around still, heck don’t even know if this website will still be round by then.
Poor lad seems to be having memory issues, one too many drops on the head. But hey, bubbles bath!
Welcome back!
Also, urg, Umbra... poor John, he will always be our favorite brain damaged protagonist (Anon doesn't count).
Wow.
The memory-thing is so thorough, I might have just concluded he was being his typically flighty self if I didn't already know otherwise...
It fits so seamlessly with his personality, decision-making, and inner voice that we've seen so far. The moment it happens, even he can't tell.
All that dread and fear he was conveying last chapter... I'm feeling, myself, now.
Poor Celly's gonna wreck herself with self-inflicted guilt when she finds out.
Rather intriguing, that whole Umbra business, hrrmm...
And 2134? Perfect timing that!
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I'm curious when his special brand of luck will discover these magic blocks and build a nice castle out of them, letting the hidden memories loose like a bull in a china shop...