Wilson

by CompleteIndifference

Blood

Blood

In which there is much bleeding, and Wilson is rescued from nothing.

“Wilson!”

Minnows darted about the shallow pool, weaving in and out and around green algae and sharp, igneous stone. Among the wispy green and silt-laden brown they swarmed—unaware of Wilson’s net.

Wilson had a net. He neither made it, nor purchased it.

He was given possession… a gift of sorts.

The net was Wilson’s because Sandy said it was, but he didn’t care, and neither did the minnows.

“Wiiiilsoooon!”

Weaved from palm fibers and sinew from a deceased boar, the net was a beautiful representation of craftsmanship, patience, and ingenuity—the traits of a creature with a lot of time on its… hooves.

Wilson had no hooves; Wilson couldn’t move, and yet Wilson was fishing.

He was fishing because Sandy said he was.

Hoofsteps in the sand. “How’s the fishing going, Wilson?” Sandcolt questioned, jovial. He loomed above, gazing into the tide pool at the minnows still relishing in their dim, thoughtless freedom. “Not so well, eh? M’done getting’ coconuts, so lemme give ya a hoof wi’that.” Down descended a tan muzzle, wreathed in scraggly hair, to grab the net between rotting teeth. A quick jerk of the neck, and five pounds of hoof-made rope, clinging mud, and wriggling fish sailed above Wilson’s fishing spot, landing in a neat heap on Sandy’s withers. “G’job Wilson,” the fishercolt praised, old eyes twinkling with comfortable dementia.

Three tallies. It had taken three tallies for Wilson to go from “hoofball” to “bumpy, round companion”: a new record.

It usually only took a few minutes.

Some would say Wilson had charisma. They would be wrong, of course. Wilson had no charisma: Wilson was without personality… but he was a good listener. When one is without the ability to hear, listening was the easiest thing in the world.

“You’re a good lis’ner, yeh know that, Wilson?”

He didn’t.

“The sun’ll be settin’ soon…” Sandy observed, gazing along endless blue horizon. Suddenly, his countenance became sheepish and he pawed at the sand, avoiding Wilson with his eyes. “I uh… I got something to give yeh.” Blushing and muttering, the elderly stallion kicked Wilson from his perch at the edge of the pool, and, carrying the net on his withers and a peck of coconuts at his sides, he juggled his silent friend along the path into the jungle, bumping and bouncing and spraying sand. The motion was irregular, not like the soft, drifting waves of Mother Ocean—uncomfortable; not befitting an immortal.

Wilson didn’t mind, however. He didn’t have a mind…

Yet, with a little help from the outside, he moved.

---

“Y’know I don’t understand you, Wilson.”

Blood.

“Yer bumpy an’ white, like a volleyball… tha’s a Gryphonic sport…”

Sliding and gliding, red and black, LIFE and death—Blood.

“But if yeh are a volleyball, then what’s up with the palm mane… an’ the blood, huh? What’s up with tha’?”

Sandcolt’s hooves were heavy, clumsy and uneven from countless years of growth, but careful, spreading sticky LIFE in all the correct places.

Places of wet-living gone dry; familiar places, old places, new places...

The mask, faded under the wind, time and the endless rocking surf, was returning. Wilson’s oval face—curved-olive eyes, straight, anxious mouth of nylon seams—grew dark once more under cover of moonlight.

“An’ how in Celestia’s sweet porcelain flanks d’ja get out here, in southern waters? Yeh oughta be frozen in a block a’ ice up in featherhead territory er somethin’ like that.”

The quadruped’s breath carried the scent of fish, raw and cloying, but that was not where he got the blood. No: he ate the minnows for protein on a barren island. The mindless don’t have LIFE for Wilson, anyway.

Sandy gave the traveler a gift from the pulsing veins of his left foreleg; a most intimate gift to a single, quiet friend: one that would only ever be appreciated in the elderly stallion’s own mind. Sandy loved himself through Wilson, and that was fine.

All was well in the deep, red night.

Flickering firelight cast ink-black shadows upon Sandcolt’s face. Flowing like oil, settling into the cracks and crevices of dry age like water seeping into the parched earth of an arid wasteland, the shadows waited.

For a moment, in his damp offering, Sandy was young.

The painter shook his weary head and showed off his perishing teeth with a lopsided grin. “Fine, don’t tell me! I’ll jus’ have ta wonder forever, eh?”

Forever was a long time, but Wilson supposed—he didn’t—that eternity was relative, so he was silent. All around, the sound of night ululated under the lusty gaze of the moon, pouring and filling and encompassing Wilson.

Noise flowing into blood; into mask; into face.

Sandy gave Wilson a gift, and, in return, he would receive what he needed most: virtual companionship.

And probably counseling...

Time crawled ever onward.

---

The cave was covered in tallies, lines in groups of five—four parallel and one striking through—that marked the inexorable passage of time. They coated the ceiling and the walls, stalagmites and stalactites, wood and stone, outside and in.

Magnificently flat, they were. Time was flat and Wilson was round; so he rolled along, leaving all who would know him behind.

Except Mother Ocean, and Matriarchs Sun and Moon: they were always there.

Wilson’s mask was new. New and beautiful like the 1976th, 1977th, and 1978th tallies, etched onto a palm log that was dragged inside the cave over one hundred tallies ago. Sandcolt’s blood was

and dark and everlasting and Wilson would love him if he could... but it was impossible. That was why the old equine was gone: left at first light one tally ago—left Wilson in the cave of time.

So Wilson waited.

Sunlight faded, returned, faded again, and in the night Wilson’s old charge returned. Slowly, sifting dirty, blood-caked hooves through ancient sand, he came, entering the cave like a crimson-splattered wraith fresh from the grave. Sandcolt stumbled dizzily, caught himself, and approached the log in the center of the cave; approached Wilson. Tradition was to be upheld.

Wilson sat sentinel to the recording, as he had done on many a day in the past and would continue to do every day in the conceivable future. Wilson sat… because he could not stand.

Sandcolt, ceremonial stone in hoof, carved three tallies into the rotting lumber of the once majestic palm tree that was now the temporary keeper of time: alone in the dark, bleeding silently. Soon the job was done, and Sandy settled onto his back with a heavy wheeze. His mane gritted and flowed upon the dirt, and with a turn of his head he cast leaden eyes toward Wilson, whose duty was finished for the day.

Wilson sat, and Sandcolt stared. They stayed like that for a long time.

Naturally, the mortal broke first.

“I had a wife yeh’know, and a daughter… pretty mares, the both of ‘em.”

Wilson didn’t know. He still didn’t.

The prone stallion shifted, eyes losing focus. His voice was weak: a whisper in the winds of waning existence. “Lane Dancer and Breezy. Lane named the little one—Sea Breeze—and I always thought it was just a li’l too romantic. Heh… My only companions were the breeze and myself ‘til you came along. How’s that for romantic?”

Raising a foreleg into the glowing moonlight, Sandy addressed Wilson with a look. “I did it yesterday, but I woke up. It di’n’t work, Wilson.” The aged colt was crying now, thin tears streaming from blighted, scarred irises, wetting the grit and the sand below. “W-Why? I don’t want this anymore, Wilson! Why di’n’t it work?!”

Wilson didn’t know.

A tally passed, and Sandcolt lived.

---

Mortals burned, and Wilson melted.

“Wilson? I’m goin’ out to the cave fer a bit. Don’t go anywhere, kay?”

Coals cooled slowly under the lean-to, and Wilson didn’t go anywhere. Smoke didn’t bother him, and he was far enough away from the glowing embers of last night’s warmth, dinner and protection that the eternal plastic of his dulled casing was safe from seeping away.

Not that it mattered, anyway.

The palm log had been exhausted long ago—a testament to the mercilessness of time—and Sandcolt found a new cave. It was halfway up the rocky mortal in the center of Anonymous Island, almost a tally’s journey up the cliff face and back. Sandy spaced his trips by seven tallies, keeping track on a shaft of driftwood until he would make the climb.

It had to be done, for it was tradition. Time must be catalogued; its sins recorded so that others may know how Sandy was wronged.

“Sorry, Wilson, but you know you can’t come. Just… guard the coconuts. I’ll be back tonight.”

Scarred hooves trudged away, kicking aside the driftwood counter and disappearing through the low, prickly underbrush toward Mt. Mortal. Sandy hadn’t bled in over a hundred tallies, and the long, sickle-shaped scars would fade in about a hundred more.

Wilson’s mask had begun to chip away since first gift, but that was of little consequence.

All was well.

The sun traveled across the sky, reaching its vertex and dipping back toward the ocean, and Wilson felt nothing. Ashes, still warm, stirred softly in the breeze.

A bird cackled, and Sandcolt returned early.

“Fire! Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire!”

Sand sprayed over Wilson’s mask as the yelling colt skidded into camp, eyes wild and hooves flying. He was bleeding again: the red fluid drenched his withers from a gash hidden beneath his frayed mane. Wasting no time—the monster would be proud—Sandy clutched at the fire-stones with invisible fingers, bringing them to bear on the ashy pit… only to freeze.

“Kindling!”

Moment’s later, the equine returned with a muzzle-full of dried palm fronds and mosses. Spitting them unceremoniously into the pit, he nearly buried Wilson in his scramble to retrieve his fire-stones again.

*CRACK* Stones met in a violent crash, and sparks rained upon Sandy’s dead fire.

“Light damn you.”

*CRACK-CRACK* More sparks, and still nothing.

“LIGHT! WRAU-GH!” The stallion let out an unearthly yowl of frustration, bringing both stones—one midnight-black and the other a shining silver—together one final time.

The ebony stone shattered, showering sparks and slivers of jagged rock about the camp. Wilson was peppered with flying splinters, and Sandcolt was bleeding from his nose.

But then there was fire.

Screaming in triumph, Sandy snatched a flaming palm frond from the pit and darted away, breathing heavily through his bubbling, bleeding nostrils. Thumping hoofbeats faded into the distance, and the relative silence of the island returned.

Fire crackled in the pit, eating away at what little kindling Sandy had left behind, and Wilson lay on his side… or his face? Wilson was a lumpy sphere, but a sphere nonetheless.

Wilson had no sides. Wilson took no sides. Yet Wilson was often SET aside.

The sun sank lower, and in the growing twilight, an orange-red phenomena grew brighter to the south. Excited shouting rode the sea wind inland, and, though Wilson could not hear it, it spoke the prophesy of an end… and a new beginning.

“Help! Help! I’m right here! Please! I’m right HERE!”

---

Wilson was alone.

Night had come, and the orange-red light still burned on the southern sands of Anonymous Island.

Sandcolt no longer prophesized on the beach. The ailing, bleeding stallion was gone, and Wilson could not feel lonely. Wilson could not feel, and that absolutely didn’t make him sad. It wasn’t wrong… but it wasn’t right, either.

An animal wailed in the distance, and choruses of insects cried their sympathy to the humid night.

Wilson was alone and he could not mourn, so the jungle mourned for him.

Dawn was almost upon him when the voices came.

“Helmspony, Richter! We don’t have much time left before the tide recedes! Get back here!” shrieked the first female voice ever to grace Wilson’s mask, cutting through the grieving creatures of Anonymous—now Wilson’s—Island.

“The old pony said something about a colt named Wilson!” rumbled a second voice: deep, gruff, and unmistakably male. “There could be somepony else out here!”

“Three minutes, Richter!” cried the first, fading away, “And then we’re leaving with or without your fat flank on board!”

“Aye, Sister.” The gruff voice grew louder, sanding the trees with its abrasiveness; its newness. Dirt shifted and bushes cowered away as small impact tremors shook the camp.

A monster was coming.

Tremors grew louder, and an enormous figure broke through the tree line. Enormous and green, somehow it failed to blend in with the green of the jungle. In moments, it was upon him.

“Hello? Is there anypony there?”

No, there wasn’t. Earthy eyes suddenly alighted upon Wilson’s mask, and the behemoth let out a surprised grunt.

“What in Celestia’s name are you?”

Wilson.

Comments

[nobodyreallyimportant]

This fic made me cry.

[primeoetgrunn]

Wilson is awesome

[Shahrazad]

This story has been reviewed by: The Equestrian Critics Society

Story Title: Wilson

Author: CompleteIndifference

Reviewed by: Shahrazad

“Wilson” is a crossover between MLP and Castaway (the movie). If you haven’t seen the movie, much of “Wilson” may seem bewildering. The story is experimental in nature and fails on some fundamental levels to actually be a story. It’s still worth reading, if one is willing to accept that the story is going to be very different than what one normally sees as a ‘story.’ It has the random tag, and “Wilson” certainly deserves it.

Full Review

Score: 7.5/10

[Anonponymous]

This story... this story is the very definition of win.

[CompleteIndifference]

2557610 and it will be updated as soon as I finish the next section of Xenophobia

[Redwolfmoon99]

That ink blot looks like two bears high-fiving.