Chapter 60 - Awake
When Light Flow opened his eyes, he found... nothing.
Nothing looming over. Nothing baring its teeth.
Nothing lurking in the shadows.
Awareness pressed in. Sensation reasserted itself. He snorted back a film of built-up phlegm as he bent forward—oddly forward—to reach a sitting position in the middle of his bed, even though he was fairly sure he'd collapsed face-first on its edge.
He blinked away sticky flecks of sleep, sweeping a tingly hoof up to ruffle through his mussed mane as he muffled a yawn in his throat. When his limb fell to the sheets, a powerful shiver tugged at his nape, and his next breath came short. Why wasn't he in the position he'd been in when he'd gone to bed? Someone had moved him. Who'd been in his house? Was he in danger?
Three hyper breaths came and went in the short time it took for him to blink again, and as he did, his next breath was slower. Another blink, and he counted the milliseconds it took for his head to hit the pillow. His third exhale was calm as his eyes slid to lid lazily on the perpetually shaded ceiling of his bedroom.
A vague memory, half-obscured by a foggy veil of sleep, flitted by. Tossing in his sleep, unthinkingly reasoning with his sense of pragmatism that he didn't want to wake up yet. He'd crawled forward to hug his pillow, drifting away with the self-reassurance that he'd try not to drool on it, already come to terms with the knowledge he'd probably fail.
Ordinary. Nothing.
His eyes slid shut, and he blew out a long, unbroken stream of built-up air as he curled his forearms into his chest. It had been his first instinct at waking up to hold his breath—to find something wrong. Something to freak out about.
Everything was normal. There wasn't anything to freak out about.
His mouth drew shut, settling into a thin frown.
He opened his eyes and pushed himself up again, leaning on his hooves this time. He scanned the blank opposite wall for a moment, bracing for the ache as he slid forward on his butt towards the edge of his bed with... a little bit of surprise that there wasn't any.
His mind must've still been waking up. He'd feel the regular pains and aches any moment now, surely.
The floor peeked up at him from his bedside, while Light grimaced unpleasantly back. He counted off in his head, rolling over onto his hooves on two instead of three to let the expected ache come as a shock, only... as he pushed himself to unsteady hoofing on the springy surface of his bed, there wasn't any ache.
One good hoof forward, then four on the floor with a genuinely pleasant jolt through his legs—his legs that weren't screaming in agony. He didn't feel shaky and wobbly, his skin wasn't clammy, nor did his bones feel bruised and battered like he'd gone six rounds with an angry Manticore and gotten back up for another.
When Light fell off his bed to land on his hooves, his hooves felt fine. His body felt fine. Nothing hurt.
He wasn't in pain.
With a blink, cool air rushed in over his tongue as he let his mouth gape open, taking a moment to listen... and hearing nothing but quiet rustling. Light peered over his shoulder, first over his messy, black bedspread, then to the window at the bed's other side.
The panes were bright; it was morning. The four dew-clouded panels of glass graciously allowed a shy little ray of light to flicker in and lounge over the black surface of his dresser, as though the light itself was relieved and relaxing.
The air tasted fresh. Cool and earthy and kinda like dirt, like it always was near the Everfree. It was the scent of musty pines and cloying nettles—of thick greenery, so pungent that it even penetrated the walls of his home.
But it was fresh. Untainted. The air smelled... clean. His mouth felt clean.
Light Flow stood in the middle of his room next to his bed, unmade from his recent slumber. The risen sun was shining in through the overbearing Everfree, lazily lighting what it could find of his room. The plain, brown walls of his forest-side cabin did as little as they were meant to in muffling the quiet sounds of nature, however dead that nature actually was.
His ruby red eyes flicked one way, then the next, and finally came to a stop on the wall opposite him.
He didn't hurt. His head felt open and clear. His pelt felt a little scratchy, and his nose was a little clogged.
Regular things. Regular feelings and regular sensations.
He'd forgotten what it was like to be well.
To be okay.
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Swish. Brush. Sweep.
For all the onomatopoeia he could think of for sweeping, none of them really actually sounded like a brush on wood, and for the life of him, he couldn't think of one.
Not even with a clear head.
Light had stood around in his bedroom for a while—not just standing, actually. For judgement's edification, he'd done quite a bit while he was there. He'd... made his bed, and... checked his drawers, and....
Okay, screw trying to convince himself; there wasn't anything to do in there. His bedroom was as sparse as scarce and scant, and maybe another word he couldn't think of. He'd found his cape, at least.
The tattered, vomit-doused remains of his cape.
Light looked up from his efforts to work his broom both into and out of the corner of his sitting room, towards his desk that he'd made an effort to right. It was back against the wall where it belonged, and on its top was where he'd laid the sad scrap of fabric to rest. It was half torn in... half, and the embroidered skulls on its hem were all either shredded or stained beyond recognition. The whole thing was functionally unattractive, now.
His gaze lingered for a moment, and because he felt like he should, he gave a sagging sigh of pity.
Then he straightened and continued sweeping. Into the corner and scraping along the wall to nab some tricky stray glass dust, and away he busily swept it into the pile in the middle of the room while mindfully avoiding the little hole in the floor. After having been ready to drop for so long, it was nice to have to work his system, and to really feel the steady thrum of his mana humming in his veins.
He didn't feel great about his cloak, but it wasn't like it was the first he'd ruined, and—hey, Rarity was the Bearer of the Element of Generosity, now, wasn't she? She'd sewn him a free replacement out of pity once before, and he was not above victimizing himself to the fullest extent of the law to get free stuff!
By his name of Light Flow, on his secondary talent for whining, he would get a new one oh so Generously free!
With a satisfied, blissfully guilt-free sigh, he swept the bits of glass he'd been intent on into the sparkling pile of hazards, and let his mana trickle away to grab his broom in the crook of his hoof. Resting his hooves on it and cradling the implement in the cleft of his shoulder, he swept his gaze across his sitting room.
It was looking better, even after the measly thirtyish minutes he'd been cleaning. His desk was where it should've been; he'd stacked his books—what books weren't ruined, anyway—where they should've been next to his full-to-bursting bookshelf and around his desk, and his door...
Light's content smile dipped down. It was hard to stay marginally peppy or blissfully ignorant when he was still having to skirt mindfully around his very dead and soon-to-be-buried door.
The poor thing. Cut down in its prime, face-down in its own splinters. He didn't know if the other doors in his house knew, but he was not looking forward to breaking the news of their relative's breaking without just breaking their wooden hearts.
A few hoof-lengths away from the head of the kicked in door bathed in the mourning light of his open doorway, Light gave the formerly valiant defender a little nod of respect. It hadn't ever stopped anypony from coming in, but at least it'd made things more dramatic. He loved it for that, if nothing else.
He kept a solemn frown for another moment before he really couldn't anymore, and a quiet snrk escaped from his pursed lips. Shaking his head good-naturedly—because he was getting a little silly—Light stood with his broom and lit his horn.
Mana began to churn from that special place inside him, and he exulted in the pure feeling of total fullness it brought to him. Like pleasant warmth filling his every vein, from one end to the other and another, his entire body flushed in a gradual journey of crossing wires from his stomach up and up and up...
Red light seeped like gaseous liquid from the spiral line scored around his horn, filling and thickening until his skull's extremity felt thick and pressured, and at once, it expanded, and his horn blossomed with manifest mana. A sense of cramped feeling within feeling crept into the back of his mind as he reached out from that formless area behind his eyes, and wood, solid and sturdy, pressed back.
Light stood as his broom lifted from his hoof, held halfway up its length by a steadfast haze of red light.
It was depressing just how disconnected he'd begun to feel from sensation. Back then, and even for the past two years, channeling mana had been like flipping a switch for a definite state of off or on. Now, he could so clearly remember that it had once been so much more.
The... other night, it'd been like that for a moment, but then...
He flicked a glance up to his broom, keeping his gaze steady for a moment before it creased with concentration. He hefted the weight of the broom up above his head, while its weight hefted in his mind.
Pressure. The most natural, unnatural pressure levied on his brain.
He'd been very tired. After a while, it had all just felt... the same.
The monotony of a broken mind.
His broom tilted down to the floor, and as he dragged its end forward, he could feel the reverberations—so strongly that he could swear they came just shy of rattling his teeth.
Everything had been so much more vibrant since he'd woken up this morning. When he stepped forward, skirting the pile of glass to make his way to the room's adjunct corner, he could feel how the wood floor had the slightest amount of give under his hooves. The space under his house was hollow, of course. He had a cellar, and he could tell that.
When he sidled up to the wall, nestled right into the unused corner between the hearth and where his bookshelf stood, he could clearly smell the wafting musk of stone and soot. The cloying scent of sick, as well; there was no use in ignoring how the large, stone-encircled pit of ash bore its many black stains.
He spared them, and directed towards himself, a glance of short regret before he moved up to the corner. He swept his broom in, then again, and on the third pass he let his broom carry too far to knock into the wall.
He closed his eyes. The reverb in his mind. The hollow sound. The tells of a room on the other side.
He'd been so tired... for so long.
Light's eyes slid open; his doe-eyed stare idly scrutinized his work as he gathered what dust and dangerous contaminants he could, watching how the film of grey on the floor streaked with each sweep. It was so indicative of his general attitude towards cleaning, not to mention the location. Of course there'd be so much extra schmutz next to the hearth; it wasn't like he ever maintained or even used the glorified conversation piece.
It was probably all full of brambles, anyway.
It was some trouble to work the dust out of the corner, but he worked it all the same, leaving the corner mostly clean—at first or second glance—as he shepherded his molecular flock towards the pile. He already had eyes for the next corner as he tidied the new addition with the rest, and made his way towards it in short order.
His kitchen nook, with all its stark facets. The little mana-battery powered fridge that he'd never actually bought a new battery for; the oven—in similar neglect—next to it; the two short, dust-caked counters; and the slightly out-of-order wicker cabinet next to them. Compact, utilitarian, and, most importantly of all, unused.
He'd never been very big on eating—not on an extravagant level, anyway. Most things just tasted kinda like ash to him, and his diet pretty much consisted entirely of apples.
Light stopped from where he'd been raising his broom to stupidly sweep it over the counters, letting the ill-conceived plan hang and fall along with his broom as his mind skipped off the record.
Then a dopey smile grew over his face.
The apples his marefriend would always bring him, because she loved him and cared for him and worried that he'd starve or something. So impetuous. So aggravating.
Light sighed—a dreamy, oblivious sigh—as his mana once again drained from his magical pathways and he leaned forward to support himself on his broom. He hugged it to his shoulder, and sure, it hurt to suspend himself on the pole, but what could he say? He was in love.
Applejack. Beautiful, annoying Applejack. Always checking in on him and bringing a box of apples for him even though he always told her not to and called her names for doing so. She'd throw one at him, and he'd chase her out with a bump on his head and bloody murder dripping from his lips. The easiest thing in the world. Life was always so much better when she was around.
He wished she was here.
He blinked bubbling hearts out of his eyes and straightened with a contented, slightly saddened murmur. He took his broom in hold of his mana once more—the wonderful feeling of channeling—and refocused his interest on his task. He mused an idle little pondering to himself as he swept his broom into the side of the cabinets, letting the wood rattle on the oven's front as he messily swept the utensil all about his kitchen area.
He missed her. Yeah, it'd only been sixteen hours, if even, since they'd last seen each other, but her absence just made his heart grow so much deliriously fonder! It didn't help that they'd left their interaction on such a cliffhanger, with so much unsaid...
Pursing his lips as he peered down to try to see any glimmers of glass in the wake of his broom, it occurred to him that he was heading towards the sad edge of an emotional cliff. He almost turned back, but what the heck.
What if things changed? It'd been a feverish moment back at the river for both of them, and they'd both come so close to dying, so what if she changed her mind? What if a good night's sleep cleared the fog of delusion from her mind? What if, when next he saw her, she looked back on it all as...
...some kind of mistake?
He nearly stopped. Halfway between turning to push his newly swept spoils towards their proper place, he nearly lost the will.
He didn't. He didn't falter, either. He swept right on towards the center pile.
Because he believed in Applejack. In their love. He'd been there, and he'd felt it. He'd felt her, and how she'd felt.
He knew it was real. The glimmer in her eye as she smiled at him, and the flutter in her voice. The pulse of her heart through their held hooves. The press of her lips on his.
The rosy hue of pink painting her soul.
There was no doubt. He wouldn't betray what they shared by doubting her.
After a moment, Light realized he was just standing and smiling at the pile of glass and dust he'd gathered.
He may have felt clear-headed and clean-minded like he hadn't in years, but it seemed as though he wouldn't ever quite shake off that little bit of core nuttiness.
Light considered that for a moment, eventually shrugging and turning around to retrieve the dustpan from where it sat hearth-side.
Nuttiness was flavor. Without it, he'd just be really dull.
His brain begrudgingly made space for the second weight pressing down as the dustpan raised on a mist red river, and Light turned back to press the receptacle to the floor. It was... a big pile of disconcertingly accumulated dust and grime, not to mention all the glass. The next obstacle for him to overcome.
He hoped he got it done before the end of the day.
His broom at the ready, he began to coerce half or so of the mound into the pan a little bit at a time, taking a moment as he did to glance up towards his desk.
Next to his cloak, making a stark impression amidst the obligatory stacks of books, he'd gathered up the metal remains of Bon Bon's strange machine. The arcanic crystagram, as Twilight—lousy, know-it-all Twilight—had called it.
He'd wrapped up its snapped wires, gathered up its scattered gems, and tried his best to unbend it in half from when it had hit the floor. For how evidently fragile the breadbox-like thing was, he kinda understood why society had apparently left it to be antiquated. It made him wonder why Bon Bon even had it. Was she not getting enough funding for her ultra important mission of stalking a teenager?
Hemming to himself, Light returned his attention to his work, raising the full dustpan and turning to the open door a moment later.
He didn't really think he'd actually get anything out of keeping the somewhat trauma-laden box, but he was nothing if not redundant. When it came to safety, he meant, not- oh... whatever.
Leaving his mental gaffe behind and keeping his new predilection for life in mind, Light did his best to not completely ignore his surroundings as he emerged from his home into the morning air. It was a little difficult—though he did take a satisfying moment to suck in the fresh air—because, all in all, nature was pretty unobtrusive.
He didn't really have to focus on it. As he turned from his door towards the Everfree, broom and heavy dustpan in tow, he would've had to try to ignore the spiky grass poking into his frogs. It was like that near the forest; the grass may have been more or less green, but it was actually pretty dead, and the ground under it was hard.
The breeze was alive and well, though. No birdsong near the cursed woods, but the wind howling through the boughs was a nice replacement. A little eerie—he'd never really noticed, before—but he actually enjoyed the aesthetic. Made him feel a little like his old self.
He cantered up to the hoof of a tree, about in line with the very edge of the darkly-shaded forest, and maneuvered his dustpan forward. He stuck his tongue out and blew a little raspberry as he jerked the receptacle forward, his ear instinctively flicking at the heavy sound of waste flumping into a bush.
It was fine. The Everfree might've been 'alive' or whatever, but it hadn't killed him yet, so it probably didn't care.
If the forest had eyes, it very well may have glared at the careless unicorn as he turned back to his home and shortly disappeared into it. Further, it may have rolled its nonexistent eyes in exasperation as he reappeared a few moments later with the rest of his trash. What a prick that unicorn was.
It was true that the Everfree's perspective was a figment of his own imagination, as was the self-inflicted insult, but it was sort of funny, and it did make him feel a little better as he followed suit with the rest of the grime he'd gathered. Into the forest and out of his life; after his garbage-based projectile disappeared into the darkness of the forest's bounds, it may as well have been nonexistent.
The Everfree was nice and convenient like that. Provided one didn't get themselves disposed of in its endless maze, it was as convenient a dumping ground as it was a hiding place. Actually, the two kind of intersected. If he ever had... say, a spare dead body he didn't otherwise know what to do with, then he wouldn't have to look very far to find a place to toss it!
The admittedly creepy thought brought a fleeting smile to his face. A smile that predictably died in favor of a curious frown as his ear perked, and he turned to the growing sound of rumbling coming from somewhere out in the plains.
His eye instinctively caught on the burned tree husk some distance away, but he soon found more interest in the all-too-conspicuous wooden cart that had already passed it on a path towards him. Just as soon, he took note of the two ponies it brought along: the... stallion at the cart's head and the... mare trotting alongside him.
An earth pony and a unicorn, about the same height, wearing orange, denimish uniforms cut off at their barrels and forearms, complimented by matching purple hoofball caps. Sort of beefy-looking; their expressions were kinda peevish; their pace was as quick as was probably possible; and the hues of their souls—one brown and the other magenta—were both a bit... muddy. Not like Bon Bon's, but more purple and orange mixed together.
He was guessing... carpenters. Not that it was all that hard to figure out; the cart the stallion was pulling was full of rattling wood, and what he could already hear sounded like clanking tools.
They seemed annoyed.
He licked the backs of his teeth, chewing on a thought as he flicked a quick glance to his open—no, broken door. He could... no, he really couldn't. What in the world would hiding accomplish? At best, it would be an unnecessary provocation of the as-yet unexplainable strangers, and that was potentially dangerous.
It wasn't easy, but Light tore his gaze and his mind off the potential for running away with a sigh, setting his broom and dustpan on the grass beside him and letting his mana flow die down. He stepped forward, giving the Everfree a wistful glance over his shoulder before he picked up his pace and trotted to greet the approaching duo.
He only wondered what he owed the displeasure to. They couldn't have gotten lost, could they? What maniacs would trek so far out of town just to see him? They must've been lost.
It was a question he intended to ask, perhaps word for word, as the material-laden cart rolled to a halt, as did the ponies to whom it belonged. Standing before them, he was just a teensy bit intimidated that they were both so obviously muscled, and they were both taller than him. They didn't look all that pleased to see him, either. What if they ganged up on him? Could he defend himself? What if he couldn't?
...He needed to calm down.
Luckily, he was more than predisposed to wearing a mask of placidity, and he did so excellently as the stocky grey stallion with the equally stocky grey mane turned in his harness to unbuckle himself from the cart. His partner, the somewhat disheveled blue unicorn whose muzzle looked as if it had been dipped in a touch lighter shade of blue paint, stepped forward in his place.
"You Light Flow?" she asked—or maybe growled. It was hard to tell, what with her gravelly voice and definite air of hostility. It was kind of heartwarming in a weird, nostalgic way.
He stared for a bemused moment at the genuine invocation of his name before he shook it off and forced his eyes to lid nonchalantly. "Depends," he hedged, quirking an eyebrow noncommittally as he made a show of looking the mare up and down. He held his gaze on her face for a moment as it began to twitch with anger, and finally, he jerked his head up a little. Street. "Are you guys here to extort me?"
It was kind of his attempt at a joke, but all it seemed to do was sharpen the glimmer of aggravation in the mare's eye, while even the stallion looked up to give him a funny side-eye before turning back to his harness. He had to bite back a self-pitying lour as the mare snorted. "We was wonderin' what kind of nutjob'd live out here in just about the crack of the Everfree, but you sure fit the bill, mister."
The mare's dull, slightly Manehatten-accented retort had Light raise his other eyebrow, and a moment later, a chortle. He tried to cover his expression of genuine humor behind a hoof, but by the way the mare rolled her eyes, he was sure he'd failed. He could hardly help it; it was pretty funny that she'd labelled him so effectively, not to mention he'd just gotten done calling himself a nut. It must've been obvious.
Regardless of his mirth, the stallion threw the mare a glance as he finally unhooked himself and turned to sidle around the cart. "Don't fly off the handle, Nail," he ground out—or he might've been speaking normally; it was just so hard to tell with these two. The mare, Nail, shot him a glare as he rounded the cart's side and reared up onto it, speaking again as the poor thing half-buckled under his weight. "We got a job to do, so keep it friendly."
Nail, if that was her real name, gave a snort of her own. "Yeah," was all she gave as a response as her horn poking up out of a hole in her cap lit with an orange haze, and a flap in the front of her uniform opened. Now that he was closer and not otherwise occupied, he could spy a little label stamped on its front in purple text.
'Hammer n' Nail n' Associates'
So, with the mare, Nail, that either made the stallion Hammer or Associates, and he had a bit of an inkling which it might've been.
He focused out of the tiny text as Nail pulled a folded up piece of paper from her breast pocket, unfolding it with a busy grumble. Her eyes scanned over it as she raised her gritty voice again. "We got a work order from a mare named... Bon Bon, says there's a door needs fixin'." Light did his best not to double take—spectacularly failing—as the mare lowered the paper to hit him with a dry stare. "So, there a door needs fixin' or what?"
He shut his mouth to stop himself from spewing a slurry of incomprehensible gibberish, and instead focused on breathing. In and out. One, two. Deep breaths.
Bon Bon... had come through for him?! Yesterday... he'd snarked at her that she oughta pay for his door, and- sure, she'd said something along the lines of yeah, yeah, whatever, but he'd never really thought she'd... she'd never seemed like... he'd thought she was...
The squabbling voices of tandem confusion and discontent rose in volume for a moment, until a tiny, tenuous voice rose up on a quavering warble, and like Celestia parting the clouds, the din quieted and swept away.
It was a little voice. A little, angry voice.
This didn't change a thing.
And despite all the conflicting whorls of emotion making war in his head, that made sense to him.
Light blinked and refocused on the mare—on Nail. On her blue-furred, blue-tipped muzzle set in a pursed-lip frown, all a ways under her orange cap doing its best to contain a mop of straggly cyan mane. Blue eyes and a magenta soul; short, mussed fur; and a nail half bent out of a board on her flank.
Observation helped to calm him down. He was alright. Anachronisms just... wigged him out, was all. Bon Bon wigged him out. He was fine; he was perfectly awake.
Light blew out a short breath, and mentally gathered the scattered notation of his mind. He decided to play it safe, drawing back with a suspicious leer after a moment with his tail curled around his leg defensively. He had to make sure. "I don't have any money."
The mare snorted. "Sucks to be you." She waved the paper she still held into his face, and though it was tempting to freak her out, he cautiously took it in a hoof. "This job's all paid up, so that don't matter."
Once in his hoof, he lit his horn to then float the paper closer for inspection. Yadda yadda, technical info, boring stuff... yep, there it was. Amount due: a number that made him happy to see, and under that, the signed name of his nemesis slash stalker.
He passed the paper back to his hoof, then back to the mare looking at him with a quirked eyebrow. She was lucky he cared enough to spare her the apparent discomfort of his mana, otherwise, he'd be looking at a snarky mare with a whole lot less snark, and that would've been as vindicating as Tartarus set free.
He slid his gaze past her, to where her cohort was... already at his door and inspecting the frame. Huh. He droned out a bemused syllable for a second, drawing Nail to look back with a disgruntled murmur as he found his tongue. "Well... there's the door, I... uh, guess." He focused back onto the mare. "You can go ahead and-"
...and she trotted away. She promptly turned on a heel, walked around the side of her cart to retrieve something from it, and then joined her partner in assessing the doorframe's condition. Her wordless dismissal left him... very slightly dismayed as he chewed on his lip, but somewhere in the back of his head, he was a little relieved. Despite the mare's obstinance, it was a professional encounter, through and through. Simple and clean.
He had to relish the little things in life, like not abruptly and very expectedly becoming embroiled in a tangled web of emotions and entanglements with every stranger he met. Come to think of it, he was rapidly growing more appreciative of a lot of little things.
He spared a moment to... just appreciate the situation he was in. He took a deep breath, and after a moment, he craned his head up to the bright, blue, perfectly cloudy sky. It was getting to be noon soon, which only lit the picturesque scene of the sky with ever more beautiful rays of sunlight. With the subtle sound of grass swaying and trees humming in the breeze, it truly seemed completely idyllic.
He liked looking at the sky, and he liked the feeling of fresh air filling his throat. The warmth of the sun on his pelt, too, and the endless rustling of the trees behind him. The earthy scent of grass and mud.
Life was so wonderful. A true gift. There were so many reasons to live everywhere he looked.
As Light kept his neck bent back and his eyes on the sky, his instinctive smile began to hue a little wistful.
No matter how beautiful it all was—and it was—he couldn't stop his mind from straying. Every moment he'd been in his house, even feeling so clean as he did, there lurked a dark secret just underhoof. It was almost like the Dash-donated hole in his floor was a reminder, and for as stark as he still remembered the flash to be, it was hard to forget.
That there was a mare who he'd robbed of peaceful days in the sun.
Even then, her heart beat inside of his own.
He could feel it.
Light let his eyes drift closed with a soft sigh. A sigh such as this was a true testament of melancholic reminiscence. The guilt of it all. It was like remembering a horrid memory of a past self long dead and buried, as mortifying as it was truly regretful. Why did it see fit to surface, then? Why did it ever?
Because life itself was an invitation to the past—of that which was dead and buried. As long as the living remembered, nothing truly died, and even the sinful act of forgetting wouldn't cause the pure reality of such things to cease.
Even if he forgot, and even if he ran, there was still a body under his house. There was a soul not his own inside of him.
Running wouldn't make it better, and neither would forgetting.
When he opened his eyes, there was a cloud over the sun. A wandering, fluffy reminder. The sight made him smile a little for how fitting it seemed. It was almost as if the heavens themselves were corroborating his thoughts. What had occurred to him, then.
Maybe it was time to stop staring at the sky and go own up.
Light rose on all fours, shaking a growing cramp out with a shiver and turning just as promptly to where he'd laid his cleaning tools. He cantered to retrieve them, lighting his horn with a thought and having them follow along after him as he turned again to make his way to his front door.
The workponies Bon Bon had apparently sent over were still peering and prodding at his doorframe, and Nail had even pulled over a toolbox that sat in the grass beside them. He was assuming it was Nail, anyway, since she was the one holding a measuring tape to the corner of the frame. Could've been indicative. Maybe.
He eyed her, then her partner standing just inside of his home. Luckily, he didn't have to raise his voice to catch the grey stallion's eye, who then none-too-subtly let out a sharp whistle that actually kind of hurt his ears. While he grimaced and pressed a hoof to his stinging ear, Nail looked up from her measuring, first to her partner, then back at him from where she was kneeling on the grass.
Her expression never left annoyed, but he could imagine that it hit the second stage then as she growled—yes, actually growled. She rose with an assuredly indecent grumble and stepped back, emphatically gesturing at his open door with her tape as her partner stepped back into his house.
He averted his eyes from the scorching gaze of the irate carpenter as he dipped his head in thanks, trotting forward with a courteous murmur as he crossed the threshold into his home. As the darkness crawled over him and he passed the stallion, he felt the stallion move back in behind him.
Light jerked a glance back to see the both of them returned to work, then his gaze landed on the door on his floor. "Hey, um..." He caught their attention as he turned, drawing them towards the fallen portal with a discreet hoof gesture. "I... don't know if you're gonna need to put in a new one, since... this one is pretty beat up, so..."
He trailed off, pursing his lips as he took a moment to think. After that cursory moment, he shrugged, and took on a more casual tone. "Whatever you need to replace it and to take the old one with you when you leave, you can bill Bon Bon for." Over the placid stallion's shoulder, he caught the edge of Nail's raised eyebrow, so he went a little further. "Tell her it's compensatory damages if you need to."
He waited for a moment until he got a gradual nod from the stallion—a scoff from the mare—and the two promptly returned to assessing the frame's condition. He watched them for a moment until he was sure they were alright on their own, waving the broom he held in his mana back and forth for a moment of thought before he turned to trot across the room to his desk.
He laid the animate broom into its corner while the pan settled onto the floor, idly perking an ear to listen for the workers' murmurs to each other as he pulled his chair to the side. He spared a glance to the contents on the desk's top, then another over his shoulder to check if any eyes were wandering.
Nope. Those ponies' eyes were raptly kept by their job. Feeling somewhat safe, he kneeled onto his knees and craned his head around to look at the underside of the table. After a bit of shuffling, he gently reached a hoof out and pressed it into an innocuous spot beside one of the support beams. There was a little bit of give as he pressed up, and the quiet sound of a scrape.
The edge of his mouth quirked up in a sneaky grin as the false square of wood gave way after a bit of prodding, allowing him to sidle it off into the side of the hidden compartment.
It wasn't really a hidden compartment as much as the desk was built hollow and he'd cut a hole in the bottom, but it worked for his purposes regardless. Nopony but him knew about it, and it was a compartment, so it really didn't matter if it wasn't nearly as cool as was implied. All that mattered was that he thought it was cool.
He withdrew his hoof and threw another glance over his shoulder as he urged mana through his system. The feeling of security as he found the carpenters still absorbed in their task only compounded the plump feeling of mana circulation, as showed in his grin as he peered back into the revealed hole to snake a trail of mana inside.
It was... hard, he had to kind of feel around without actually being able to feel much. He knew the key was in there somewhere... though it was hard to say where after all the flips his poor desk had been through.
The phantom hardness of wood brushing against his brain... wood... wood... more wood... oh!
The shiny coolness of metal pressed back at him, and he pulled at the impending sense of victory. There was a subtle sound of dragging, and after only a moment, a haze of red receded from the hole with a shiny golden key in its center.
He stood with a full smile, inspecting the key for impurities for a moment before he placed it gently onto his desk, bending back down as he did to pull the square of wood back into the hole in his desk. With that short task over in a moment, he rose again and grasped the key in the hold of his mana once more, floating it up to turn it this way and that.
Looked good. Nightmare Moon would've been the only other pony who could've messed with it in any way—not that there was any reason to. Sure, She was an enormously enigmatic jerk who no doubt would've jumped at any feasible chance to generally inconvenience him, but denying the both of them access to his cellar probably would've been self-defeating.
He passed another glance over his shoulder—still uncaring of his escapades—as he pressed the key to his chest, doing his best to hide the sparkle of mana as he turned to trot towards his bedroom. If he had to be honest, the secrecy probably wasn't necessary or even very smart, but it made him feel a little daring, and who was he to deny his recently revived sense of whimsy?
The door opened before him and closed all the same, and he was alone in his room. With his rear pressed to the door, Light blew out a small sigh of overblown relief, though a moment later, as he stood in silent contemplation, he began to feel a little like his ears were getting hotter.
...Maybe whimsy was better off dead, because he felt kind of like a doofus.
Trying his best to shake off... whimsy, he made a beeline to the window across the room from him. He skirted the edge of his bed and slowed as he came up to the squat dresser under his goal, wasting little time in pondering the logistics before he confidently reared two hooves onto its top. He gave a small huff as he worked a back hoof up, teetering on two as he spared one to shakily push the window open on its hinge.
The surreptitious rear exit from his home opened wide with a none-too-pleasant whine on unoiled hinges, allowing him to grab hold of its small edge and pull his last hoof up. He gave a puff as he let his other forelimb join it, and pulled himself forward with all the massively inadequate strength he possessed.
He scrabbled against the wall as his head passed the threshold, giving him a faceful of fresh air for a surprisingly peaceful moment of stability before he began to tilt. Once upon a time, he'd had no idea how to follow up the routine gymnastics as he'd just done them, but after a while, he'd figured out how to catch his back hooves on the windowsill.
As he did, he let his front hooves swing out as he pushed off with his back, landing him squarely in the shaded grass with a satisfying fwump as the key carried after him. He straightened, taking a moment to close his eyes and breathe a sigh of relief that he hadn't forgotten how not to land on his face. There was no telling whether dying had killed off any parts of his brain like whichever grey matter bits made him not dumb.
As the adrenaline of movement ebbed away in a chilly tide, he took a short glance around the back of his house. Dark, dead, and silent, like it always was in the Everfree. The Everfree never changed, and pointing that out was getting to be a bit redundant. At least there was a bit of sunlight beaming down from the short gap between his house's roofing and the treeline, so it wasn't all gloomy.
Not that he didn't enjoy gloom.
Light surveyed for another moment before turning to make his way around the corner to his left. He slowed for a moment to take a cautious peek from behind the corner's edge, though, thankfully, nothing had taken initiative to guard his cellar door. It sat alone, benign, and otherwise totally unnoticeable by itself in the cleft between his bedroom wall and what may have also qualified as a wall of thorns and brambles blocking the house's side.
It was hard to quantify what he felt as he came to stand before the inset of stone with its thick wooden doors staring up at him—though not because he couldn't find the words. He just didn't really want to. It felt... invalidating to bring it up so directly. Like spitting on her grave.
Maybe it was the environment. He didn't like applying the word accusing to everything that he didn't like, but the heavy chain looped through the doors' handles and held together by a padlock of similarly intimidating heaviness had the sharp sheen of a thick glare.
Which was why he only wasted time to grimace at it for a moment before he brought his key to bear and slipped it into the lock. With the colluding click of a latch undone, he pulled the key out of the padlock and slipped it out of the chains' junction. He set the lock aside, then did the same with the rattling chains. Darn... heavy things.
Unlike the last time he'd pulled on the handles, the cellar doors came smoothly out of place with nearly unsatisfying prudence, leaving him to blink owlishly into the spray of must that wafted from the doors' opening. He took an unthinking sniff—then a choked half-breath as he spit thick dust over his shoulder.
Eyes watering, Light let gravity take the doors from him as he shied away from the dark. He pumped one hoof against his chest and waved the other in his face in an attempt to clear the air for a clean breath, and though he was still on the verge of choking, he forced himself to turn back, straightening marginally as he gathered himself as best he could through the tightness in his chest.
For a moment, Light considered what awaited him in the depths of his cellar. With the sun's overhead glare as overbearing as it was even on the edge of the Everfree, it was just about impossible to see a hoof-length into the shadows of the staircase, even with his gift for adjustment. It was symbolic, certainly, and if he were anypony else, it'd even be a bit frightening.
Well... in a way, he was a little frightened. Not of the dark, but of... what he'd hidden there. To an extent, it wasn't even really fear, it was more like...
Light tensed his jaw and took a heavy swallow, hoping the next breath of musty air would bring him comfort.
...it was like... reluctance, in a way.
He didn't want to go down there. He knew very well what would make him happiest, and going to look at Zecora's dead body wasn't it. However much corpses may have fascinated him, this was... it was different. It was real. It made him think of bunnies, and the more he thought of it, the more the air tasted like it.
Copper and iron and mushy flesh under cold, dirt-smeared fur. The ill, beginning taste of decay.
Okay, he was starting to freak out. Imagining the sight in store for him and his own hoof in it was making him nauseous, and he was starting to think too much—the memories were flooding in. He didn't want to go down; he wanted to run off and be with his marefriend and maybe give her a kiss. Her warm, soft lips that tasted like cold, saggy flesh and copper and iron and-
He pried his jaw open, and cold metal hit his tongue. His bit down on the end of his cellar key—hard enough that his gums ached and his teeth wobbled. It didn't matter; it helped take his mind off. The actual taste of metal was helping to shoo away what he remembered it tasting like, and each time his nose flared to heave in a breath, he smelled scentless iron instead of mush and decay.
He had to go. Right now, or he might lose his nerve and lock the door back up.
Slightly jittery, Light forced one hoof in front of the other and took his first steps down the stairs into his cellar.
Darkness pressed in on him, and after only a few steps into the growing blindness, he paused in chewing on the key to try to recall where he'd left his lantern. He had no idea, obviously—he'd not been him the last time he'd walked out of here—which suddenly had him wondering whether the venture was altogether inadvisable.
It wasn't too late. He could still go back up and... go out to buy matches! Yeah! He could do that, and while he was in town, it wouldn't kill him to drift a bit off the path to drop by Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack's family was still around, so maybe this was the best time to come out about their relationship! What better time than in front of all her relatives? It'd be like killing a crow with—no, that was a poorly chosen example. Regardless, he was certain beyond any doubt, anypony else in his situation would turn around and-
His hoof bumped something. He flicked a glance down, and in the barest ray of light shining in from outside, he caught the reflection of glass. The key flew from his mouth as he spat a furious curse, forcing him to press his ears back from the deafening clatter of metal hitting stone echoing through the tiny room. How apt the pain he caused himself felt.
He simmered on his foul invocation of Luna's name—he needed to not invoke Her name, ever—for a hot-blooded moment before he bit back a second ill-considered likening to a mule and lit his horn.
It was Her fault, though. Stupid insane Goddess not smashing his lantern and making him have to follow through.
He leaned into the mental heft of the oil lantern to assuage his anger at the proactivity he was being forced to endure, shuffling his hoof forward on the next step until it bumped something softer, and he lit his horn to lift the matches along with the lantern.
Crank the wick up, open the window, light a match, light the wick.
He took a deep whiff of smoke as he shut the lit lantern's window, smothering the burning match in an unthinking press of mana that made him wince. He tossed the impetuous match aside with a grumble and lifted the merrily flickering lantern up, casting the room in receded shadows running from its glare. Instantly, he recognized the shape of his cellar's desk at the other end of the room, sitting at odds with the upturned chair with its legs sticking into the air beside it.
Seeing the carelessly strewn object, he sagged with a frustrated groan. Between his bookshelf and now his chair, he was starting to think Nightmare Moon had some vendetta against properly arranged furniture.
Or him. Either or.
He began to trot forward with the intent to right it, already simmering on the thought of plopping into it and reliving some torrid memories. He had a second heavy hoof in the air when his eye caught the reflection of fire on metal, and without thinking much of it, he flicked a glance to the nearest corner of the room with a questioning tilt of his head.
He stopped. His mana flow wavered, and it was only through what he could only assume was some mental failsafe that it didn't cut out completely and drop the lantern on the floor.
Not that it was much of a concern to him, then. At that moment, Light only had eyes for one thing in the room.
There was a rectangular, dull metal box snugly nestled into the corner, laid with its length across the wall with the stairs. Carelessly strewn about the floor around it were small, discarded piles of dull blue crystals, all of them the same size and shape. It was unmistakable, and in a room as small as this, it was unmissable.
Light had never seen it before in his entire life.
The matches fell to the floor, barely making a sound over the beginning movement of a chorus of lilting hoofsteps echoing through the deadened silence of the buried storeroom. With the melody's tragic conception came the solemn lantern's dancing flame, carried along a running river of red. Its passage marked a tired rite of remembrance through the stoic dark, carried with purpose, yet moving with dissonance.
The subtle sway of the metal pyre in the air clashed horribly with the off-kilter sound of intermittent hoofsteps, each one a monumental statement for their sheer existence. For they came with such fear, and such hesitance, and yet they came.
All the same, he walked. For though the bob of the lantern cast his path in uncertain shades, and though he could scarcely hear the noise of his own steps through the din of his heartbeat, and though he felt something deep within him tug him back, he went on.
One step at a time, for as few steps as it took, for as much as it hurt.
Until his lantern found home at the side of the freezer, and Light Flow's hoof came to rest atop its door.
It was cold to the touch—surprisingly so, even for metal. Still running, he guessed. He supposed... if he focused... he could hear the subtle hum. The quiet tinkling of mana transference. If he looked, he was sure he'd find the occupied slot for a mana battery on its back.
The little bumps of gently rough metal played ticklish games with his frog as he swept his hoof slowly across its surface, following the lidded path of his dull eyeline until it came up to a jutting metal protrusion. Like playing with fire, his hoof crept into the air with foolish daring, making a mock show of keep-away as the limb hovered nearer to it, then away.
Back and forth, toying with his own emotions. Feeling his confidence swell with the noxious heat of fear as his hoof crept in, then growing cold with incertitude as his hoof flitted away—all of it in time with the flicker of crackling fire. A maddening exercise, and for what? What was he trying to convince himself of?
His hoof crept in.
Was he going to do it?
His hoof shied away.
Or was he not?
Only you know the answer.
Of course he knew. It was obvious.
His hoof crept in, and as he closed his eyes, he felt something cold. Something slim, made out of metal.
He was done with reluctance.
It was like a pop. A squelch of displaced air as his hoof lifted, and the door of the freezer came with it. As he forced his eyes to peel open, he was met with the shy emittance of mana light brimming in the door's barely ajar opening. The hum was a little louder, and growing louder as his other hoof gently raised to work into the widening crevice.
Little by little, bit by bit, he pried the door open. Slowly widening, slowly approaching, something began to tickle at his nose, and his nostrils flared to take it in. It was like... it was scentless, and septic, but as if the smell of nothing had begun to decay. A rotten core of illness, difficult to discern, yet impossibly relentless.
It was so much like that incessant smell he'd grown so fond of, but... off. Dulled.
The curious light of the lantern began to meld with the subtle blue of mana as both lights fled from where they were cast, and with a rush of billowing cold air that stung at his eyes, the door had opened wide enough to show its contents.
The signifier of the final threshold. The stolid beckoning of eventuality. His heart beating at the backs of his teeth, Light inched his way forward to cross it. How the dread mounted in his heart.
He blinked, and he could see her face again.
Even after two years, he could remember the intense curiosity of her appearance. The foreign flavor of her facets: her stark colors so unlike the fur of ponies; her inquisitive cyan eyes that seemed so tainted in retrospect; and the lithe way her toned physique shimmered under her fur as she moved. Graceful and mysterious. Foreign and exotic. The only Zebra he'd ever met, and such a contrast she'd struck.
She'd looked at him like there was something only she could see under his skin. She'd moved with the flexile insistence of rushing water, yet it hadn't been enough. She'd smiled at him with creased eyes full of humor. She'd bared her teeth with focused eyes full of sharpened intention.
She'd spent her last moments choking on blood.
Pop.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap—he could hear it. He could still hear it.
And now, he could see it.
He didn't know whether to shy away or not. He didn't know how to feel. Was he disgusted? He should be. Did that mean he was? Could he force himself to be? Would that even mean anything? It wouldn't make up for it.
The door of the freezer swung back and hit the wall with a solid thunk, leaving Light to crouch back with his hooves on the box's rim, simply... staring. His face a dim, melancholic expression of pure, integral apprehension, he only stared.
He didn't know what else to do. How else to pay respect if not by... just revering the sight?
Regretting it. Wishing it wasn't true.
He'd seen dead bodies before—he'd gotten his cutie mark by touching one—but he'd never seen one so... desiccated. What lay inside the slate metal inside the fridge was as identifiable as a corpse as anything sharing the same general shape would be, and he was thinking that on a course of reverence.
His eye wandered from one area to the next. His first glance had landed on her neck—or, the shredded, frost-riddled tatters that had once been... a neck. He knew her spine had been displaced from its suspension, and he remembered how the bones had jutted from her limp flesh, so... they must have... skewed and torn out.
Because there they were. Inside of the open hollow of her blackened, frosted-over husk of a neck, where her entropy-hued flesh had been peeled away in once-limp, now hardened tatters, he could see the white chunks of broken vertebrae amidst the ice that had taken her body. He could... barely tell what was bone and what was hunks of ice inside her torn-open throat. What wasn't swollen black or colored with faded red was just white.
Her body laid straight out barely fit in the freezer, leaving no room for her hooves to lay at her sides. They'd been tucked into her chest—her chest that was now... peeled and chipped open. It was like a horribly twisted-out-of-shape anatomical diagram. He could barely stand to look without... blinking.
Further down, uneven hunks of rusted gold seemed to have melded into her forearms as... he guessed as they froze and crumbled. Her hooves were little more than swollen hunks of blackened flesh tinged frosty white, laid just into the open dip of her yawning stomach.
That was another sobering sight. It almost looked like... she was grasping into herself.
It was less upsetting than the gunk at the bottom of the fridge, at least. Underneath her, made of what he could only assume was the liquefied refuse of whatever had decomposed from the zebra, was a frozen film of... it was a slurry. If nothing else about her corpse's appearance put him off, then the grainy pool of gory red chunks and frozen gobs of viscera that had congealed around the sides of her back would have.
It... somehow didn't. His throat felt a little tight, but he wasn't really feeling the telltale pressure rising against his jaw that would've signified a coming mess. His stomach felt a little queasy, and the scent in the air—like flavorless decay—was upsetting for what it signified, but the smell itself didn't really wig him out.
His gaze flicked away for a moment—a necessary moment of shame—before he once again focused in on her carcass. Her chest, this time, barely even recognizable with how the frost had mangled it. Her grey fur, dappled with shining flecks of ice, was a far cry from the beautiful dichotomy it had once signified. When most of her body had been burned to the bone with ice, everything was hued a little grey.
Even the blackened flesh of her chest cavity had been overtaken by the cold color. He was thinking... most of her organs must have liquefied, but he could see a few chunks of ice in her open stomach that seemed... irregular. They didn't even really fit inside the small space of her body, and certainly not beneath the jutting jaws of her gaping ribcage. He... thought that was what those stalagmites of ice were.
With how jutting they were, and with the little icicles speared up through her coat in random places, it was almost as if ice had burst out from inside of her. That sounded fantastical, but that really was how ice worked.
Flesh would harden and begin to chip under frigid temperatures. Everything gave way to the pressure of water as it cruelly solidified, even the body. The body was mostly water, after all. With her skin made so fragile by the cold, all of that liquid running through her would naturally just... expand. It was a matter of pressure.
The end product was startling. Macabre. It was hard to believe the body could be so mangled—her flesh rubbed raw to red strings, frozen again and again until it was all composite ice—by something so common as the cold.
Nature was a thing to fear.
His gaze, ever the weary traveler, made its way up, and Light had to close his eyes for a moment.
It was disconcerting, remembering how Zecora had looked at him. Remembering the life in her eyes, and having to see the open sockets in her head in front of those faded memories.
She'd smiled at him. She'd laughed. And there were her teeth in the black stumps of her gums, grinning at him once more from the peeled-off flecks of her muzzle. An eternal smile.
She looked so happy.
It was only as his chest began to pang that Light realized he'd been holding his breath. That his heart had been racing. He couldn't hear anything else.
When he opened his eyes, and the empty expression of Zecora's frozen corpse stared back at him, something tugged at his lips. So hard and so suddenly that he bit his lip on instinct, and his lips kept shaking.
His horn lit. The freezer door began to tilt down. He closed his eyes, but she was still smiling at him.
Such a wide smile.
So happy.
The door of the freezer fell down and closed with a satisfying fwump, but it didn't make him feel better. There was something wrong. Inside, something hurt.
He turned, falling back on his hocks and pressing his back to the cold metal of the fridge's side. His hoof, trembling, made it way up from the floor to press at where his heart was. Where the pain was. A stab. A sting.
He was having trouble breathing—every breath felt like it was being choked out of him. He could barely stand it; he half wanted to hold his breath again, just so the pain of it would stop. So his throat could just keep clear for just a second to let him think!
Something cold fell to his lap, and Light sucked in a startled gasp. He swept his hoof against his fur—something wet—then raised it to touch his cheek. Something wet. Tears. He was crying.
He snorted a glob of snot back, trying to blink the sudden blurriness from his gaze as he scrubbed at one eye then the other with his forearm. It was fine; he was fine. Crying was alright. Crying was a perfectly natural response to staring a corpse in its liquefied eye. Sure, it had come on incredibly suddenly, and he didn't really know why he was crying, but crying was weird like that! He didn't understand the occurrence in the best of times!
It was fine if he cried. It wasn't like he was smiling. He wasn't nine anymore.
He lowered his hoof from his face, touching his frog once more to the warm fuzz of his chest. It was fine if the tears wouldn't stop. He needed to focus on something else, anyway. Something more important.
Inside. He needed to focus inside, because he knew it wasn't his heart that was hurting. That was illogical. Hearts couldn't hurt unless they were being attacked. A heart couldn't bear the weight of memories.
But souls could.
The last time he'd done this, he'd had an external locus to help him focus into himself. He didn't have Nightmare Moon to help him, this time. He had to do it by himself. He had to stand on his own, and find his inner peace.
He caught a frantic breath, holding it with a shiver as he shut his teary eyes. He pursed his trembling lips, ignoring the slick trails of warmth running off his cheeks to bead on his chin. He focused on his breath, instead. How it built within him. How it raged to be set free. Like water, dammed to a stop and made to wait.
Water. Water. The flow of his breath was like water. An internal system of flowing water at his beck and whim.
It would guide him to where he needed to go.
He let his breath go. One stream, long and unbroken.
As he emptied, he would then refill. It was a matter of his will. He made it so.
It was a matter of perspective. Separation and distinction. He had no flame to focus upon, but the flame was not all there was. It was only a metaphor. All he needed was the focus—what it represented. The perspective.
Out, then in. From without came air, and from within it flowed through him.
As without, so within; as within, so without. What lay outside was the same as what lay within, and what lay within could be controlled as what lay outside. They were the same: that was where his focus laid.
Air. Fire. Mana. If he could manifest it, he could control it; if he was able to control it, then he could manifest it. It was all the same; if it existed in one place, then its existence was omnipresent. There was no difference between them.
Mana came from within him, and air came from without. If mana could be felt outside, then air could be felt within. Exhalation was an invitation for inhalation. What laid without must come within. As without, so within.
All he needed was to follow his breath.
In and out. From without to within.
He could feel what laid inside.
In his lungs and in his magical pathways; the flow of air and mana was so similar. His blood vessels carried blood and air to every part of his body; magical pathways carried mana to his every extremity. A constant stream of power, of unceasing life ebbing and flowing by autonomous rote. By nothing but its own insistence.
It was warm. It pulsed. He could feel it scrape over the bumps that made magic possible. He could feel where it sat heaviest, and he could feel what it wanted.
And within his heart, within his core being, he could feel its pulse. He could feel their pulse.
Two.
Only two of them.
One of them lingered. One of them hurt.
It wept.
As did Light. When he opened his eyes, he could only silently weep.
It was all cold. Everything was cold, and the fire that lit the room only made him feel colder. There was no warmth to be had. Not outside, and not within.
He could do little more than pull his hooves closer, hugging them to his chest as his hindlegs shook. Not from the cold stone of the floor he sat on did he shake, nor from the emanating chill from the fridge he rested against.
From the cold within. The cold of two souls in his chest.
One of them was Zecora's. It had been her pain; it had been the pain of looking upon what had become of her. It had overcome him. He had felt what she felt.
Forlorn woe. A deep, emanating sadness.
He'd remembered how he'd spoken of her. He'd used the memory of her death as a snide weapon. He'd relished in its impact against the agent. He'd not cared.
Regret. Pain.
Knowing.
His head lolled back on a full-body shiver, and by consequence, Light was left to stare at the blurry, flickering ceiling of the lantern-lit cellar. He could hardly even see through the tears rolling freely down his cheeks, yet through the labored breaths he couldn't help but take half-heartedly, he smiled.
With his lungs aching and something deep within his chest mourning, and with the quietest, warbling waver in his voice, Light spoke.
"Zecora..." he whispered out in a rasp, shutting his eyes on a tremble of fear for breaking the silence. His voice hoarse and thin, he went on. "-I'm sorry for what I did to you, and for what's been done to you since." He trailed off on what he thought was a cough, until it rose, and his chest began to flutter with a broken chuckle. "I wanted to... give it back. I wanted to give you back everything you'd lost. Everything you deserve to have."
His voice fell on deaf ears. There was nopony to listen. Nopony to grieve.
His head fell. As it shook, jerking from side to side as though his strings were being tugged, Light continued to laugh. Like the quiet rumble of the quaking earth—like the last rattle of death—the empty sound trickled out through the empty cellar.
As he spoke through gritted teeth, struggling to form words through the laughs that sounded so very much like sobs, his hooves came up to rest on his head. The motion barely hid how every inch of his body shook.
And it certainly didn't hide the hollow fear in his whispered voice.
"I don't know if I can, anymore..."
Within him, there beat two hearts.
One was the stolen heart of an outcast. One who had run from her home and whose life had been taken from her after she'd already lost everything. A heart that wept alongside him. A heart that ached.
The other was the heart of a crow.
Because there was no gift in the world that did not demand an equal price.
Surprise! I learned how to use em dashes while I was gone!
In other news: I return!
Whoof. Been a while, huh? I'm glad I'm getting this out to you, today, and I'd like to pat myself on the back for spending nine hours straight last night editing this. Good job, me! This work rides on the back of your backbreaking effort!
...Hm? What? You don't want to hear my neurotic self dialogue right now? What, you're confused? Well, I don't see how that's my problem! I mean, it's all right there on the very long page you just got done skimming through. Plain and explicit. 
Okay, okay! I get it—this might be a 'lil confusing. It's okay, don't worry! I promise this makes sense! It might not right now, but it will someday! Just hang onto your soulless horses, and eventually, we'll figure out why Light's still up and walking around as himself without... you know, his own soul.
I had a lot of purposes for this chapter! Most evidently, this advances the plot and the mystery of how Light resurrected, not to mention it gave me a chance to write some squicky descriptions of a desiccated corpse! This is practically mandatory for a story ostensiblyabout Necromancy!
Something else that might not be as plain, though, is Light's mental state. He's obviously feeling way better than he has in a long time—he emphasized that to himself very clearly—but that doesn't mean he's not... tortured. Whatever he says, and however much his ability to function may have improved, he's still not well.
...Illness such as the kind Light has doesn't just... go away.
So, the next chapter. It's hopefully gonna follow the example of this chapter for plot progression, but we won't know for sure until I write it! More importantly: I dunno when it's happening!
I've got the frame of it in mind, but it's probably gonna take a while to write! It's even more than my indolence; I've still gotta write a lot of notes. You know I stopped for a month to solely focus on the notes, and while I was writing this chapter, I focused entirely on the chapter. Going forward, I'll be dividing my attention between both, which might mean sporadic updates.
Don't hold it against me? 
leave a comment! they give me writing power!
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11728509
Oh, well, guess you not gonna like this then
note of one of those
ooOOooOOOoooo wee havv com tuu huaanntt yuuu
If he returns his soul, what will become of him?
How did the cutie mark stay on Light?
And the final question, aren’t you tired?
11728545
I am always tired.
11728549
Nice
Welcome back! Always happy to have more.
Coulda swore this chapter was about Lights Front door…
Without his own soul? I had assumed that they can't see their own since the start of the journey. Otherwise, Nightmare Moon would have said something about it.
The three souls... I assume Light had used the filly's soul to ressurect him. Probably a reason why his eyes is red is because the filly's was?
But you bringing it up does sound like they should have been able to see their own souls. So in other words, Light is probably a revanant from the start.
... or it has something to do with his unknown father Sombra.
When you brought Light into the basement but he gets buffetted by a musty stench, I can't help but think back to something I have learnt a few years ago: rotting potatoes are a silent and deadly in an unventilated room. It's how a little girl got orphaned, losing her sibling, father, mother, and grandparent, all because they went to their cellar that contained a sack of potatoes that are past their due.
I like how you've describe the state Zecora's body was in. Very vivid and interesting. Did you do any research into how a fresh body that is placed in a long term freezer would react? I didn't know that the blood could expand or organs would liquify below the freezing temps.
Light Flow acting like a little gremlin when he realised he has to do social interactions with strangers. Peak necromancy.
Luna knows of Zecora's body but doesn't say or do anything. Either she is expecting Light to try and practice his magic on her, trusts him enough to bury her, or maybe forgot about the body until something reminds her.
I believe Light will start practicing his craft before Luna does something about this. I don't think anyone takes well to the idea of anyone owning a body.
Hey. I really want you to speed up the pacing. Your book makes me very anxious, but it's so abysmally slow, I don't even want to keep reading like this.
Anyway, improved theory: Light had resurrected himself with his own soul as a price, but still alive because he has more inside him.
That might lead to moral question of giving up the soul inside him and dying or keeping living selfishly later on.
Of course, with the precedent of killing himself for saving others, even if it was out of love, I don't think he will make the right decision. Even if he will bitch about it for a long time. And I'm sure you got some weird foreshadowed (hopefully) bs to save him.
Anyway, when the hell is he going to get a bath? I'm absolutely certain he looks like shit and smells like shit. Surely, he doesn't think to go meet Applejack in this state again?
He really should have his life set on track and get a fricking job instead of being a lich (pun intended) on everybody. And only then start his creepy hobbies.
Anyway, new life goal set: resurrect Zecora.
You seem to be implying "life for life" sort of rule? Idk about that.
11729379
Wow! Thanks for voicing my intrusive thoughts! I'm suddenly filled with tremendous writing energy to get off my sorry rear and prove you wrong!
Just kidding. I'm fine with you nagging about the pacing, because it's a tired line, and you're have every right to. I write for an audience, and thus, my audience is justified if they choose to complain about what I provide them with. What I really don't need is a comment on how I foreshadow things and, perhaps unintentionally, a remark on my creative integrity. It's not nice to imply that the things that happen in the story aren't warranted. You can insult my writing speed, my characters—because they really do deserve it—and my attitude, but I take pride in how I approach the construction of my writing.
I don't expect you read my blog, but in the two month long dead zone when the story wasn't being updated, I was writing notes to flesh out the details of the plot, worldbuilding, and the systems of magic. I wrote for an hour or more every day in the process of writing this chapter, and it took a total of thirteen hours to edit. I put thought and effort into what I do, and that effort is the one thing I will defend about my writing.
Sorry for not taking the insult with a smile, but I'm a person. I have emotions, and sometimes I'm even vulnerable to them. I can't be Mr. happy-go-lucky, I take criticism without the negative mental effects, all the time. I'm sure I'll regret speaking in this way in an hour, and maybe I'll even apologize for daring to stand up for what makes me happy, but your words hurt me, and this is how I'm expressing that.
So... thanks for commenting, even though it made me feel bad. I appreciate that you're thinking about the story's events, and I'm glad you read the story even though its pacing is unbearable.
Have a good day, and know that I always mean that.
this is a petty afterthought that I really shouldn't levy, but my birthday is the day after tomorrow. that shouldn't have any bearing on what I said, but it helps to provide context for how i'm feeling
zombie zecora certainly be interesting alteration to canon events, i wonder how it will effect her personality
11729308
Weeze, Luna trusting Light to bury the body? Are we talking about the same Light?
Actually, now that you got me thinking of souls, kinda wonder what it’d look like for Light to nom on his own soul to revive.
11729448
Uhhh?...
Sorry, I don't quite get what you found offensive from your answer. I wasn't trying to be?... I still like the story as always.
If that about "weird foreshadowed bs" part, I realize now it sounds kind of bad, but I wasn't trying to insult you, I think I called it "bs" in the meaning "whatever", as in I just wanted to finish the thought and didn't want to think deeply about it.
Sorry, it just came out wrong. I guess my mood affected the way I speak?...
Basically, it was just a bit of casual whining, a theory, and personal opinion of actions of main character. Nothing wrong with a chapter.
Anyway, I totally see that your are unaffected by criticism (that's why your wrote so much and even said so explicitly). Yeah. Great job.
But seriously thou. Happy coming birthday.
I love this story! It’s one of my all time favorites! There are A couple things I’m wondering though. Is this story also going to include things like the episodes events of the show like the tickets or spikes growth spurt episode? Also how strong is light relative speaking, is he as good as twilight? Will he become Lunas student and basically the counter to twilight? Will he end up reviving zecora, or is she doomed to be a a soul forever? How did he revive exactly, and are there consequences? Is he basically immortal? Will he interact with the friend group more and become integral to the main plot? So many questions! That’s how you know this is a masterpiece l!
11729882
Um... hey, so, you remember how I said I'd probably regret the way I spoke in... about an hour? Well, I did, but I've only just worked up the courage to take responsibility for how I acted.
So, I'm sorry. It wasn't right of me to speak in the way that I did, nor was it moral to take my unrelated frustrations out on you. It wasn't mature or proper of me to express my negative feelings like that, especially not when I should solely thank you for reading and for commenting. I stand by what I said in the last part of my message, but the rest of it might as well be an indelible ink stain for how constructive it was. The relationship between an author and a reader should never be antagonistic; it was wholly wrong of me to say what I said.
I don't want to dwell on what happened, but I knew I had to apologize, regardless. I don't need rebuttal or confirmation on this; I'm putting this apology out there because it's right. I was in the wrong.
Again, I'm sorry for how I spoke, and I hope you don't hold my untoward attitude against the story.
Zecora is his own little brain buddy now.
Good chapter, I'm alittle late to reading this one but it was well worth it. And good to see you back