Ponywatching

by ThunderTempest

Legacy Prompt #15: Year's Birth

One of the most fascinating things that I have seen, I think, is this notion of days of merriment, where the ponies below cast aside almost all responsibilities in exchange for a single day of carefree abandon. I could see them, in City-On-Mountainside, suffering the snow and cold winds, scurrying about, buying material things. In the days when I was mobile, we would have called such things tributes, gifts meant to appease us, to entice us to not eat them, or burn down their villages.

Perhaps I should remind them of this custom. But I am far too attached to my perch, and the ponies below have not yet ceased to intrigue me.

Sometimes, when the air is still, I can hear their songs drift up the mountain. Their melody is pleasing to my ear, though not necessarily pleasant. It reminds me too much of my first mate. Oh, such melodies she would sing. Such melodies would float through the air, wrapping my and our unhatched child as we huddled, the fires within our bodies keeping us warm through the winter. Such melodies would sing through the air with joy as the screams of those lesser than us fled before our song.

I once sang, joyful and full of life. I sang every year, as the moon rose upon Year’s Birth, in chorus with my brethren, my brothers and sisters of air and fire. I sang, casting my spirit and breath high into the sky.

And oh, how we would dance. The sky and earth was ours. We had none to fear, we, the masters of the world. Our celebration would go long, sometimes for days. Our feasts would empty fields and forests, our drinking would empty lakes. Our dancing would shake the earth to the very core, and our singing would shake the very heavens themselves.

But even beings such as me are subject to the terrible mastery of time, and though my own being has gone unclaimed and unwearied by it, it extracts its toll upon me by taking everything it can. Now, all the ponies’ singing reminds me of is what I have lost, and all I can muster now are tears.

Tears, and rage.

Not for the first time, and likely not for the last, I can sometimes see the winged unicorns, the sisters of dark and light, look up to the peak of my mountain, as if they know I am here. I do not care. Sometimes, I even see them begin flights upwards, yet they remain ever uncompleted.

As the ponies’ day of merriment draws to a close and they lay in their homes, exhausted, I raise my head to the sky as the moon slips into the sky, and I let a lick of flame big enough to swallow a small town, perhaps the size of Town-By-Forest, escape my mouth.

Perhaps the sisters of Dark and Light see these when I breathe them upon Year’s Birth. Perhaps they do not. It is perhaps the only way I can celebrate. My soul no longer has the joy to sing, dance, feast and drink, and this mountain of mine is comfortable.

Author's Note:

Written for Legacy Prompt #15, on the TMP Group Forums
The Prompt: What holidays do the non-ponies of Equestria honour?
Or
The prompt: home for the holidays

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

Very beautiful, I like how alien the mindset feels.