Rag Doll

by No one is home

Chapter 26: Reconciliation

Magic crept in like a thief, and it left again like a thief who’d been caught. I never needed magic to lay down my Jinx. I didn’t need magic to find my cutie mark. The jinx quill. The feather pen. Ocellia can’t hold her form. She’s an awkward ladybug filly with a shell that’s just a little too big. The… thing that’s trying to steal Charlie is having a harder time. She’s only one creature. I’ve already seen through her.

“NO!!!! Talk to me! Not again! You don’t get to leave me again!” She can’t even hold any one form without magic. She’s like one creature pretending to be a crowd of ponies, but squeezed into a tube of toothe paste. I’m curious, what is she? I’m also curious, does she even know what she is? I could almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

“He can’t hear you without magic.” I stop my rhythm. This isn’t a jinx. “He can’t see you without magic. But he can feel you shaking him right now. He felt every season and every storm on the rubbish heap you left him on for me to find. He can’t hear you, he can’t can’t see you, but he can still feel everything.”

I can feel the dramatic pacing.
This only lasts just a moment in time.
But time is a slave to the rythm,
Like ryhme is the slave to the words.

“Make it stop!” She screams thrashing.
“If I could then just maybe I would.”
“Charlie doesn’t need magic and neither do I,
You’d do best to back down while you can.”

Magic comes back like the distracting snap of a magician’s hooves.
“You little bitch!” She snarls like I didn’t just see her.
Suddenly she’s the threat she needs magic to be.
When magic comes back she hears Charlie laugh.
I heard him scream the whole time.

“I don’t care!” And she doesn’t care.
The way only a child can fail to care.
“Ocellia, that isn’t you’re Nopony!”
“I don’t care!”

And like that, the rhythm takes the trade.
Do I trade an evil queen for a princess?
I can’t even hear him anymore.
Just those button eyes.
Always the only real questions.
“What do you want?”
“What will you pay?”

“I want Ocellia to have Ragdoll Charlie.” My control over the rhythm breaks. “I’m willing to give up my lifelong friend and mentor to pay for it.”

“How could you?!?!” The mad queen glitches in and out of existence.

“Did you ever love Charlie more than the moment you threw him away for me to find?” My question only draws angry sputtering, so I continue. “I don’t know your story, but I know enough to make a good guess. Tell me if it sounds familiar. A sad little filly is trapped in a place she doesn’t want to be. Then she finds a magical doll that says it can open a path to anywhere she wants to go? But then magic glitched, and she lost the connection. There were two last questions…”

“I wanted revenge… and I didn’t care what it cost.” The glitching shark tooth queen is smaller suddenly… and weeping openly. “It cost becoming what I hated most… for what it’s worth I didn’t leave him in a trash pile, I left him in a donation box.”

She tosses the doll over to the panicking ladybug, who hugs it like a lifeline as the glitches in magic built to a crescendo. This strange creature that doesn’t quite exist walks over and sits down, and for a moment we’re just two mares in the bodies of fillys watching a light show on the horizon.

“Man I bet that bitch up on the other mountain is throwing a party right now.” This seems like a fairly odd way to start a conversation. I non-verbally communicate this with my eyebrows. “Oh, it’s just this evil bitch who lives in a castle over that way. She has her own thing going on. We don’t like each other. She actually called me an evil bitch.”

Then it hits. Magic is suddenly like a washing machine spinning with everything on one side. Outside I hear ponies panicking. And she chooses this moment to say, “So, I kept you out of Maritime Bay until exactly right now, so I’m good with Mr. Sunshine. And hey, you passed my doll down to my greatest grand niece. She’s right to call him “Uncle” by the way. We were legally married at one point. Princess Cadance herself refused to officiate the ceremony. You gave me everything I ever wanted, why?”

“Jinx.” I smile as the deal closes. I’m a fully grown young mare. I am proud of my jinx-mark. My would-be rival disappears like a star at sunrise as magic comes rushing back into the world in full. For the first time since I was very small, I see colors again. I’m not gray at all.

-=-=-End Of Book 1: The Sad Poet-=-=-

Author's Note:

I did some weird things here, even for me, giving Gloomy the chance to showcase what she's learned. Her Official cutie mark is a feathered quill. She was always a jinxed wordsmith in a universe made of words. She has passed on her muse. She seized the narrative and found common ground with her enemy. I'd say she'll be missed, but all the cannon post-mark cameos...

Comments

[Booster Spice]

I have a bad enough time with normal chess. I dont have a chance with this 4D chess.

[No one is home]

11347408
You don't win the game by wielding power. You win by passing power on.

[Booster Spice]

11347412

A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

[No one is home]

11347419
"If I don't know how to love you, I'll leave you be..." Monika had minimal influence and didn't make me say that...