Holes

by Nestromo

Chapter 1

When he was born, his parents had come up with a long, elaborate, and honestly ridiculous string of names, in emulation of the royal caste. Consisting of some six separate words, the name was embarrassing and completely unnecessary, and as soon as he had earned his cutie mark, Quillyn Pen had come up with his moniker, which he thought rather clever if he did say so himself. He soon had his name changed to this legally, so that the name his parents had bestowed upon him would finally be cleared away from the annals of history, or at least as close to that as one could hope.

Quillyn, or simply Quill, Pen, or even a further contraction, such as "Q", "P", or "QP", had a typical upbringing in the suburbs of Ponyville, which was no large city in itself. The town had one elementary school, and one secondary school, which rounded out the rest of education that could be had in the area, including an 'early college' program, from which he had graduated with an associate's degree in creative writing. However, this all speaks nothing of his experiences during that typical upbringing.

As a colt, he'd been short, stringy, and frail, prone to sickness and crippling bouts of shyness. He rarely spoke to his classmates, in or out of school, and went straight home to play alone in the modest yard of his home. His chestnut roan coloration was not particularly exotic, and the freckling across his nose and flanks made him look splotched with mud even when he wasn't. When he wasn't playing outside alone, he was inside, playing video games or with his toys. To others, he seemed a very lonely, dejected child, imprisoned by his inability to reach out.

If only they had known that the opposite was true. True, loneliness reared its ugly head occasionally, but most often, the colt that grew to be Quillyn was enveloped by his imagination. The simple, mis-matched toys were powerful cavalry storming the towering, impenetrable walls of the enemy. The time outside was adventure, climbing through giant trees and making death-defying leaps, with no wings or magic to help him. A lone earth pony striving to make the world a better place for all, despite everything he had been through.

The colt was strong inside, though he did not realize it quite yet. Not so strong as to be an invincible, unfeeling rock, on the contrary, he bent and flowed like water. His emotions were strong, but soon learned to pick and choose when to reveal them. The other schoolfoals were sometimes cruel, but most times avoided the strange, quiet, spindly colt that rarely spoke. When he failed to react to the larger colts' goading, they soon left him for easier targets. He felt sorry for them, since the younger ones hadn't learned what he had, but he was not yet bold enough to try and dissuade them.

No... young Quillyn still kept to himself for many years still, growing from a spindly youth to a lanky one, almost all legs it seemed at a glance. Thin of face but of sharply angled features, it was obvious that he had to grow and age for his looks to wear well on him. Instead, they looked rather awkward. His body did not fare much better. Maturing much earlier than the other colts and even most fillies, his voice dropped nearly three octaves in as many weeks, and he suddenly became aware of his drawling accent when before it hadn't mattered a whit. Carefully, painstakingly, he worked through his manner of speaking for months, listening to himself and correcting the way his tongue moved until he spoke clearly and without accent, making sure that the others would not have any more ammunition to use for their teasing.

The teenaged colt had soon perfected his speech into a clean, accent-less delivery, and through that added confidence, he began to speak to others. It was awkward and tedious to others, he felt, though years later he'd discovered that they felt he was extremely intelligent, surprisingly so. He didn't feel particularly smart at the time, stumbling through conversations and fumbling with gestures, especially as he began to garner acquaintances. Eventually, he fell in with others similar to him, with like interests and goals. He even made a few friends.

His popularity had unexpectedly exploded when he had delivered a rather heartfelt performance during a play, with several memorable quotes and gestures. Colts and fillies he'd only seen in passing came up to him and smiled brightly, greeting him with such zeal. It was overwhelming, and most often he mumbled a thanks with a quick, sheepish smile, quickly retreating from the crowds that would sometime surround him should he be spotted moving between classes. Others begged him for a small recounting of a scene from this or that, and most times he would oblige, to resultant applaud and laughter. Being laughed with was a new sensation to add to the rest of them at the time, though he'd learned to try and appreciate it for what it was, rather than reading into meanings that were not there.

It didn't always work. Still uncomfortable with others, Quillyn still made his way home as quickly as he could, attempting to take more secretive ways through Ponyville to confuse anypony that might've been watching him. He fled home to what he had learned was his most favorite thing of all, above acting, above playing, above all else... he loved to write. It had started when he was even younger, when he was taught to read. Almost immediately, he wanted to write his own stories, much like any other foal at that age, but the urge never really left him. It simply evolved, his imagination growing as he learned, articulating the words that failed to emerge from his mouth and putting them to paper. He was no prodigy by any means; his stories were exactly what would have been expected from any foal that age. But he never gave up.

The night after completing his first poem, Quillyn's cutie mark had appeared. A white-feathered penned quill, in mid-stroke, scrawling black ink behind in a graceful arc. Simple. It was exactly what he felt he deserved. He'd received his mark a full year before any of the others in his class, going into secondary school, and had accompanied the rest of the changes to his physiology that made him the awkward, leggy pony that everyone seemed to know him as. He was proud of that poem, though after a few years, he had lost it amidst all the others he wrote. Quillyn still had no idea where it had gone to.

During the last two years of school, he'd been extruded from his shell rather forcefully. Thrust into the equivalent of the school's limelight, the gawky colt with the odd, old-world features gained confidence by the barrel. He'd made friends or at least smiling acquaintances with at least half of the school by that point, no small feat in his eyes. His school marks had also improved as well, and he began to enlist himself in extra-curricular activities with zeal. Quillyn's confidence combined with his soft-spoken demeanor earned him at least some modicum of respect amongst everypony he interacted with, and was often lauded as the 'leadership' type despite the shyness that was still very much apparent. He was one of the 'good guys'.

Too soon, it seemed, school had ended, friends parted ways to go into the workforce or additional schooling for whatever they wished to pursue. Quillyn, left suddenly alone once more, decided to opt for a life in the Royal Militia. The physical training and endeavors were extremely difficult for him, never having been a particularly fit foal despite all of his time outside, even compared to other earth ponies. He was never strong, but he just passed the threshold for military service. He was fast in a short sprint, but soon tired and grew sluggish, being outrun by most everypony else. He was intelligent, but his wit wasn't sharp enough to contend with the debaters of the squadron, much as he had been in school. Much preferring quiet contemplation and steady work, Quillyn had been relegated to desk jobs rather than anything in the field.

His imagination, however, was not content with such things. All through the tedium, he wrote of fantastic things, worlds of fantasy, battle and intrigue, and even sold a few of the stories to magazines that dealt in such things. Admittedly, few of those magazines were sold in Ponyville, the populous generally preferring more practical themes, but Quillyn wrote more for himself than anyone else. Even after his time in the Militia was done and he was discharged after not renewing his obligations, he continued to write. He'd won a few obscure awards by this point, and the magazines in the larger cities were buying up his works as fast as he could send them out at times.

The fiction market was always a fickle thing, however. The tastes of readers moved on to genres that Quillyn had no desire to write in, and the sales began to slack off. Before long, he signed up with the Ponyville Express as a column writer, having a next-to-back-page slot he called "Entreaties to Worlds Unknown". It was a semi-successful column where he answered various questions on science fiction, fantasy, and other such things, mostly consisting of 'what-if' scenarios in established books. At times, he was surprised when someone who had read one of his stories would send in a question, and it always pleased him greatly... he would often take the entire column to reply to the sender, delaying the others for the next week's section.

All through this, he wrote still. He wrote what pleased him. However... after more than ten years, he had come to a dry spot, so to speak. He could not write. It became difficult to focus. Despite the activity that always seemed to be going on around Ponyville, especially when those younger mares got up to something, Quillyn found it nearly impossible to put pen to paper and write anything meaningful. The glasses that he was now forced to wear after years of staring at screens and papers only a few feet away from his face felt pinched and constraining. His head throbbed. Finally, he could take no more.

He needed to fix it.