Speak Not Of The End Of The World

by Shaslan

Call Me Back

–What went wrong?

The pony across from Strawberry extended a hoof in her direction.

Strawberry stared at it like it was a foreign object. It took her mind a few seconds too long to make the connection, resulting in an uncomfortable silence, but she raised her hoof to bump it in return. The other astronaut winked and laughed.

“Team, we’re reading good up here,” came a voice over her earpiece. “Finish your checks and let us know how it looks.”

“Copy that,” replied the lead astronaut, prattling off a long line of commands.

Glancing to her right, Strawberry tried to smile.

Against all odds, Cheerilee was going to space. She had fought and protested the notion for years, but eventually she came to accept the fact that they simply needed researchers up at the orbital space station. That wasn’t to say she had changed her mind on things, though.

Currently she was wound up like a spring about to explode. Strawberry reached over and gave her a pat on the shoulder. “We’ll be okay.”

“I hope you’re right,” she whispered back.

“I always am.” With a quiet sigh, Strawberry tried to relax in her seat. They were aimed upwards now, sitting perpendicular to the ground, above a massive contraption that would produce an unspeakable amount of force, propelling them to the atmosphere.

She remembered back when Redheart and Blossomforth had first launched, and the reverie and admiration surrounding their mission. There was none of that anymore. No more fanfare, no more camera flashes. Just another ship in a long line of ships. Nothing that hadn’t been done before. No closer to an answer.

At least the sun was out for now.

“Horseton, we are go for launch.”

“Copy that, standby for launch sequence.”

Strawberry turned to look at Cheerilee. “You know… I’ve been dreaming of her lately.”

“Oh?” Cheerilee blinked in confusion. “But I thought that after Luna died…”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember much of it, but she’s there. They’re not always pleasant dreams. Sometimes I’m underwater, and I can see her above me on the surface. Sometimes I died that day instead of her. A weird one lately is where I get a text from her and we have a conversation. But I know full well she’s been dead.” Strawberry sighed quietly, unable to see Cheerilee’s eyes because of her visor. “I guess that makes me a hypocrite. All that talk of letting go. Still can’t do it.”

“10, 9, 8, 7…”

“It’s harder to do than they spell it out to be,” Cheerilee offered. “But I’m still proud of you. You’ve come a long way, and I know Cherry’s proud too, wherever she is.”

“...6, 5, 4…”

Strawberry chuckled. “I hope so.” She looked up towards the sky, releasing the breath that she didn’t know she had been holding. “You know…”

“3.”

“I hope she’s not waiting for me up there.”

“2.”

Strawberry closed her eyes and sighed.

“One.”

…

…

…

…

…

…

Sensation.

Her heart leapt to her throat. Her eyes bulged, her body was thrown back in its seat. The cabin s hook and shuddered violently, and an angry roar filled her ears.

And Strawberry looked up and saw it all. Space. Stars. The sun, the moon. Everything in between.

It was all laid out before her like a picnic blanket.

She reached up to touch the stars and…

“... I’d like to thank my mother for starters.” A sea of nothing sat before her: empty chairs, tripods without cameras. Answers without questions. From her seat on the platform, Strawberry scanned the absent crowd before continuing. “We haven’t spoken since I started here, and to be honest we haven’t truly spoken in over a decade. I was always confused about the way she treated me. And how I never really felt like she respected me. It took me a long time to understand what was really happening, but… Knowing what I did doesn’t make fixing it any easier.”

She looked down at the water bottle sitting on the table.

“You can’t fix a broken heart with tape. You can’t make the sun stop blinking with only one rocket.” She chuckled to herself at that. “I spent days staring at my phone. Wondering if she’d call. She does sometimes, in my dreams. We talk, we fight, we yell and scream and swear. Sometimes I tell her I’m sorry. Sometimes she says that she loves me. But no matter what, every single time I wake up, I stare at my phone and I hope she doesn’t call.”

Strawberry unscrewed the cap and raised the plastic bottle.

“So… Here’s to you.” She leaned back and drank.

When she opened her eyes again she was standing amidst an empty, faceless crowd of ponies. They were all moving in tandem with each other, hurrying for some goal unknown. A pure white fog surrounded the background, and as Strawberry looked around, all she could see was one building: the house she grew up in.

And sitting on the front lawn was a foal, one with a yellow coat and a red mane, staring up at her with wide, curious eyes. Before she could approach them, one of the ponies bumped into Strawberry’s shoulder.

Strawberry turned and watched as this figure passed her by, their gray coat slowly gaining color until it became a vibrant pink. Until they became… “Cherry.”

Cherry stopped and turned around. In the time it had taken Strawberry to speak, they had made it to the opposite end of the street. For a second neither of them spoke, until Strawberry took the first step forwards.

After a few seconds, Cherry matched it, and Strawberry advanced again. Slowly, surely, they continued this dance, until the two were standing in front of each other. The crowd around them began fading, petering out and clearing, until it was only them in the empty space.

Cherry looked just as Strawberry remembered her, bu indescribable all the same. As she stood there, all she could think about was how much time was lost between them. How many nightmares and panics had passed since their last real meeting, and how the hole she left behind only ever seemed to get deeper.

But Strawberry could voice none of this. So instead, she laughed.

And after a moment, Cherry began laughing too.

Memories embraced her then, but it was nothing compared to the warmth of Cherry’s hugs. Words became empty vessels, unfit to even try to convey what Strawberry was feeling as emotion threatened to burst forth from her stomach.

Pain. Love. Anger. It all flew by in an unrecognizable blur, too fast to catch and not worth the effort. In that second, Strawberry finally felt whole again.

“Are you going to miss home while you’re up there?” asked a nonexistent reporter, seated in a nonexistent press room.

Strawberry chuckled. “Nowhere feels like home.”

Comments

[Bicyclette]

At least the sun was out for now.

what does this mean???

“Horseton, we are go for launch.”

“Copy that, standby for launch sequence.”

always simultaneously love and hate the horse puns

Pain. Love. Anger. It all flew by in an unrecognizable blur, too fast to catch and not worth the effort. In that second, Strawberry finally felt whole again.

“Are you going to miss home while you’re up there?” asked a nonexistent reporter, seated in a nonexistent press room.

Strawberry chuckled. “Nowhere feels like home.”

and oof, the guilt and grief all tumbling around each other. very dreamlike, i had to reread this chapter a few times