The Loneliest Holiday

by Limonene

Chapter 1

Wallflower Blush shifted lazily on the couch. She turned over to her other side, almost as if she was going to get up.

She thought that maybe going through the motion would make her want to get up. It did not. Without any actual reason to get up, she continued to lay on the couch.

The winter holidays were shaping up to be the most boring part of her year. She had spent her first week of vacation binging a few shows, browsing websites mindlessly, or just plain doing nothing.

She had nothing to do. She had no homework assigned. She had nobody to interact with. Her parents were out of town on business, at their other house halfway across the continent, and wouldn't return for months.

She couldn't even do any of her normal memory stone mischief, due to its destruction seven months prior.

All her plants were dead for the winter, and her parents hadn't responded to her query about setting up a grow light for some indoor plants.

What day is it? she wondered. Saturday? No, it's been about a week since school ended. Must be the twenty-third. Without a weekly schedule to synchronize herself, she had no reference point. Each day was indistinguishable from the previous.

Sometimes even the transitions between days blended together in the dim, cloudy weather. Wallflower didn't make any effort to maintain a normal circadian rhythm when school wasn't in session. One day she had slept for 20 hours, and then stayed up for the next 48 hours without sleeping at all, bingeing two seasons of some TV show she couldn't even remember now.

She didn't even know what time it was. Even though it was gloomy and cloudy out, it could have been noon.

Wallflower was just plain bored. It was a deep, existential boredom that made her feel hopeless about her future, garnished with an appetite for social interaction that had gone unfulfilled for too many months, and paired with a side of mental understimulation.

She needed something to do, preferably with someone else, even if it was just listening to them talking about themselves for an hour.

Of course, she had friends now. For the first time since elementary school, she had friends -- and seven of them! But they weren't real friends. They had all given generic supportive statements: "You can call us any time!", "Come sit with us at lunch today!", and "Let's join some clubs together!"

Those invitations hadn't lasted. They had stopped calling her. She had found herself sitting alone at lunch more and more often. And the gardening club, which Applejack and Sunset Shimmer had joined, was now disbanded for the winter.

Her seven friends were now barely acquaintances.

Maybe I should call one of them... but what would I even say? 'Could you please tell me about your experimental gyrocopter, Twilight? Could you send me an hour's worth of puppy pictures, Fluttershy? I just need someone to ramble on for an hour to distract me from life. Sunset Shimmer?'

Wallflower's stomach did a flip at the thought of Sunset Shimmer. Eventually she would work up the courage to walk down that path, but today was not that day. She needed to redo her introduction, first. Sunset had undoubtedly forgotten all about her after so many months.

She couldn't even remember Sunset's phone number. The reintroduction would have to wait until the next semester. But on the first day of school, certainly. That would be the day that she would make her reintroduction to Sunset, so that she could make her move later in the year.

Wallflower just needed to lay low for a little while. Spending the remaining weeks alone should have been no big deal, but she already felt like she was falling apart.

She rested her head back down on the couch. She tried to think of a way to spend her time, but nothing came.

Eventually, she dozed off.

Comments

[TCC56]

Damn but if this chapter ain't A Mood.

[HomuHomu]

This how summer be like for me.