Snowflake flowers and Gingerbread Hearts
I stood there, in the outskirts of the small village, trembling, trying my best not to cry. Fifteen years had passed, but I still remembered it as if it was yesterday. It still hurt me. I'm not going to lie, I'm not good at leaving things behind, something which any and all ponies probably would blame my mother for.
"Where are you going mother? Why are you leaving us?"
I remember how my innocent question hit her in the heart. Or it would've, if my mom had been a normal, sane mare. I rember there was brief pause before my mother answered me, saying those last words that still haunts me in my nightmares.
"Mom just needs to go away for a while. You just stay here with grandma and everything is going to be alright."
Her voice had been like ice, her heart too cold and frozen for her to feel my pain as she lied. I had been a stupid filly back then. Stupid and weak. I had grabbed her hoof, trying to stop her. As she turned around, facing the frozen wasteland beyond the small village, I let go of her hoof. I knew she would go out there. I knew she wouldn't come back.
I look at the never ending fields of lush, green grass before me. I look at the mountain peaks barely visible at the horizon.
I took it all in, and I trying to figure out what my mother was thinking. I stand there for another five minutes or so before giving up. It's no idea, I thought, I will never figure it out. My mother couldn't even see what lay before her, yet she walked out there in the middle of the cold, unpleasant winter season.
My mother always had a thing for snow and cold, you know. If she had been like any other normal mare she'd probably would have named me something winter related, But she didn't. Instead, she named me something as stupid as Enamorada! I felt a rage building up inside me as I pained myself, thinking about the name my mother gave me again. Another thing I can't seem to let go of. Enamorada means in love, yet, as I always told my self, she couldn’t have loved me enough. Angry tears filled my eyes, slowly dropping down on my chins, burning as they landed. Soon enough, I would feel the weight of them leaving my chin and dropping down onto the cold, unforgiving ground.
An vaguely familiar sound brought my attention as the first teardrops landed. It sounded like.... like a crystal teardrop! You see, my mothers tears, they had been special. When falling from her eyes and landing on her chin they would freeze to small crystals in the form of a droplet. My grandmother told me that my tears could do that too, and that they had done that when my mother left me. I never believed her. I bow down to take closer look at the crystal tear, and when I did so, I noticed a beautiful flower. The flower looked like a small, fragile snowflake. Standing back up and looking out at the fields, I notice more of those flowers. I don't know what I was thinking, but I started following the trail.
Subconsciously, I think it all was about my mother. I wanted to know what she thought when she was walking out into the fields in the middle of the winter, fifteen years ago. I want to know what drove her to leaving her only daughter. I'm not very good at leaving things behind. After walking for what felt like an eternity, a reached an ensemble of maybe a dozen or so snowflake flowers. After walking for so long, I was tired. The lush grass was oh so tempting. I lay down and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep.
Opening my eyes, I expected to be laying in the grass, surrounded by the fragile, snowflake shaped flowers, the stars on the night sky greeting me. That wasn't what I saw. Instead, I was laying in the middle of a long corridor of white fog. On the sides of the corridor, there were big screens. I stood up and walked up front the first screen in the hallway. As I approached, it lit up.
The screen was showing a small and oddly familiar filly. She was laying on a grey cloud and talking with herself, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. Thinking I was dreaming, I felt suspicion getting a hold of my mind. I knew this filly had to be my mother, oh so long ago, when she wasn't much older than I had been when she abandoned me. I see a dark blue, regal looking alicorn walking up to my mother from behind, embracing her. I find my self getting hypnotised by the heartly embrace between the filly version of my mother and the alicorn. She obviously loved the alicorn princess much more than she had ever loved me.
I blink as the screen turns black, standing there for a few seconds before moving on to the next screen. The image on the next screen would have made me scream, running away the second it appeared, if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't move. Instead, I watched the regal alicorn from before getting embaded in darkness, her barely visible body, twitching and turning inside the orb of darkness. A blinding light appeared, and for a second I couldn't see anything. When I could see again, there was no longer any regal, blue alicorn. Instead, there was a monstrous mare, so mad with hatred and despair that there was no one that could separate her from the darkness that trapped her heart.
Her name was Nightmare Moon. I wasn't much more than a year old when she tried to create an eternal night, making the moon shadow the sun and refuse to lower it. Her sister, Princess Celestia, was forced to use the Elments of Harmony, legendary weapons that only she and her sister had had the power to control, and banished her sister. The battle had been so horrible and left the ponies of our beautiful land so horrified, that only within a couple of years the happenings of that day had been reduced to nothing more than a story told to foals at night. But my mother always made sure to remind me of the truth, that it had happened for real, and that one day she would return.
But if I had thought Nightmare Moon was terrifying, the picture on the next screen would have killed me. On the screen, I saw a dying mare in a frozen field. I saw my mother. No one could possibly understand how truly horrifying that is to a pony. Suddenly, I was standing there, face to face with the nightmares that had tormented me since I was a child. My mother, laying there, slowly fading away in the middle of a frozen field. And she didn't even seem to mind.
"I really did lie to her. It's never going to be alright, not for me nor her."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was it? Yes, it was my mothers last thought's before she died. And she thought about me. Some ponies would ask if that was all there is. She walked out in the frozen fields in the middle of the winter, practically committing suicide. She destroyed her daughters life forever and all the recognition that poor little filly got in her mothers last thoughts was that she admitted to have ruined her life!?!? But for me it was more than enough.
Screaming, I sat up straight in the bed. Confused, I look around. I was laying in a bed, in some ponies bedroom. While I was sitting there, trying to figure out how I ended up in some ponies house, a young stallion walked into the room.
"Ah, I see that you're finally awake! I was starting to get a bit worried."
Upon hearing the stallions words, I got even more confused about what had happened to me and decided to ask.
"What am I doing here? How long was I asleep?"
The stallion looked at me, sympathy clear in his eyes, closing the door before answering.
"You've been in a coma for 3 days. Me and a couple of friends found you when we were having a picnic. My name is Ginger Snack."
Ginger sat down at the end of the bed, hesitating before asking.
"Could you tell me why... why were you out there? If you don't mind, of course."
He looked down on the bed sheets, clearly ashamed. He probably felt like an idiot for asking me such a question. Well, he wouldn't have to feel that for long, I had already decided what to answer.
"I guess I could. But be warned, it's a long, depressing story about a stupid filly who couldn’t let go..."
Now it was my turn to feel ashamed.
"Oh, I don't mind. You'd be surprised how much you get to hear when living in a small, far off town that only the most lonely travellers can find their way to."
So we sat there, me telling my story, from beginning to end, and he listened, carefully memorizing every single word that escaped my lips. Back then, none of us knew, that it would be the end of a decade, but the start of an age. It would be the start of new chapter in history, and a new life where no memories of the past would come to hunt me. A life where crystal tears would finally bloom to flowers.