Indigo's Obsession
At her high school of choice, Crystal Prep Academy, she was respected. No, 'respected' was an understatement.
Ever since her freshman year, Indigo Zap had been interested in the sports teams, and had left her mark within her grade. Sometimes, she surprised herself with the things she was capable of.
From leaving the former star of the track team in the dust, to actually winning a contest of strength against the boys' weightlifting team, to the time a member of the football team tackled her head on, and she walked it off like it was nothing. Those were things that spread quickly and gained her quite a bit of notoriety from students and faculty alike.
‘Indigo the Invincible’, she had become known as, and it did nothing to deflate her ego.
In CPA, she was a legend.
However, now, as she ran home, she didn’t feel so incredible...
Every day, it was the same routine: finish practice, offer a quick goodbye to her teammates and coach, and rush back home as fast as she could. Today, she could have sworn she heard something behind her, but never once did she bother to look back.
Being the fastest girl in school had its benefits, and plus, her home wasn’t too far from this area. She could make the trip in 10 minutes, right back to the 2-story piece of heaven she’d been blessed with.
Stepping inside, she found it empty, like usual. Though like most days, she didn’t really mind, since her parents both working meant she had the place to herself. And that was good, since right now, the girl wanted no distractions. She had something very important to her to pass her time.
Something she could never share with others.
Practically sprinting up to her room and placing her backpack on the bed, Indigo sat down at her desk. On her left, a small sketchbook lied, probably her 20th one by this point; truth be told, she’d stopped counting when it got into double digits, so it was probably more than that.
So many pencils she had gone through, so many poorly done drawings, so much effort and time invested, all in making sure it was perfect.
And like most days, her obsession got the better of her.
Taking out a freshly sharpened pencil and turning to one of the final pages in this book, Indigo let her hands work their magic. From the first few lines, she knew exactly what her mind was forming on the paper.
She started with the hills, rolling on like they never ended, and covered in flowers and greenery. Secondly was the background, small cottages and buildings in the distance, barely more than a small shape, but vividly represented in her mind’s eye. The middle of the picture was blank, like she always left it whenever she did this particular piece.
In the skies above, there were clouds, that much she knew. It took her so many tries before she figured out how to make gentle enough lines, lines that helped convey the puffy nature of the clouds. Many more for her to figure out that ‘sweet spot’ to make it not contrast too much with the brick-and-mortar houses in them.
To this day, Indigo never understood why her thoughts had conjured the image of a city literally built on clouds, or even why it was such a hang-up for her that it be perfect.
But it was an obsession, just like everything else in these pages...
The Moon came next, followed by little stars everywhere in the sky. For some reason, on the surface of the Moon, she went into great details on the spotwork. Everyone was privy to the idea of the ‘Man in the Moon’, but in her case, it was more of a… horse in the Moon.
Every spot, meant to represent a pock mark on the Moon’s surface, it all congealed together to form the profile of a unicorn. This time, it finally looked just right, at least until next time.
All that was left was the middle…
Suddenly, a blaring guitar riff pulled her from her thoughts. Her ringtone had always been obnoxious to most, but rarely did it actually bother Indigo herself. Picking up the phone and doing her best to relax herself, the girl answered in the calmest way she could.
“WHAT!?”
… Or at least, she’d wanted to. Unfortunately, emotions always ran high with this.
“Whoa, hostile,” a rather mellow voice said from the other side of the phone. “I didn’t interrupt you in the shower, did I?”
Wincing in embarrassment yet sighing in relief, Indigo thanked the stars that it was just Lemon Zest. While not an actual member of any sports teams, Zest was one of the few classmates Indigo really liked.
Not so much that she’d willingly give up on her project, but still, she could deal with this.
“No, you just…” Indigo paused, twirling her pencil between her fingers. “Ugh, look, now’s not a good time. Can I call you back?”
“Sure. Sorry about that, I just… well, you rushed off when I was about to ask you something.”
“Yeah, I know, I was just tired.”
From the other side of the line, Lemon Zest chuckled. “Tired? Indigo the Invincible? I find that hard to believe.”
“Hey, even I have my limits!”
“Right, right… I’m sorry. That was inconsiderate.”
“No no, it’s alright. It’s just I’d just REALLY like to get back to what I was doing.”
There was a brief pause, before Lemon answered back. “I’ll leave you to it. Just promise you’ll call back, alright?”
“You got it, Zest. See ya.”
Before the other girl could even say ‘goodbye’, Indigo disconnected from the line, placing the phone down and internally begging for no more interruptions. She placed the tip of the pencil back on the paper and picked up right where she had left off.
The middle. The most important bit.
The point of her obsession that she’d been determined to get correct all her life.
Within it, she began slowly forming the shape of a creature. She started around the back, getting the shape of the hind end that transitioned into a long tail, curling off to the side of where she was sitting. As she continued on the back, she moved her way up, finally transitioning into the wings.
Wings…
Something about them just felt right, like even though she knew she was drawing a horse, it felt like it needed wings. Like if she didn’t put them on, nothing about the piece would be correct.
Or rather, if she didn’t get this right, nothing else would matter.
‘Why?’ she asked herself, as she kept sketching the lines of this little filly’s mane. ‘Why do I keep coming back to this?’
In truth, Indigo had been asking herself that for years, and never once did she come close to an answer.
Once upon a time, she’d thought she knew. But that was a long time ago, a time she barely remembered, and one she’d rather forget. And yet it persistently kept coming back to her. Memories of when she was a little girl, found by her parents, or rather, the people she’d come to know as her parents.
Memories of a time where she was all alone, scared, and clearly not in the right state of mind.
But then again, she didn’t exactly consider herself to be in her right mind nowadays either.
Drawing the same open fields and castles, all of which looked like they belonged in a little girl’s storybook. Every evening spent trying to get it perfect, and every night spent envisioning it in her dreams, only making her want to get it right more.
Yet no matter how hard she tried, she was never satisfied. It never felt right. So, she’d try again the next day. Like clockwork, she’d go through the same motions, her only reprieves from this cycle being school, practice, meals, and homework.
She knew it wasn’t healthy, but she couldn’t stop.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t deny this obsession.
When Indigo looked down on the paper, she noticed a few wet spots, pulling her from her focus and causing her to sit back in shock.
Had she been crying? Bringing her hand to her face confirmed her suspicions, as she shook her head to try and calm down. Scooting back in her seat, the girl stood back up, stepping away from her sketch, and taking deep breaths.
This was getting to be too much. She needed to stop for the day.
‘Calm down, Indigo,’ she reminded herself, desperate to get her mind off it. ‘Horseland can wait for now. You don’t have to finish it right this minute…’
But of course… Indigo knew she would finish it by the end of the day. She was too invested to leave it unfinished.
‘Horseland’...
That was what she’d called it. A land that invaded her mind every night, feeling like nothing more than a figment of her mind from back when she was 6. Yet at the same time, it never left, feeling more real sometimes than the reality she knew. She didn’t even have a real name for it, yet this world full of sentient talking horses she’d imagined up was somewhere she couldn’t escape.
Sometimes, in her stranger dreams, she saw fragments of a life not lived. From the perspective of one of these horses, she and another always journeyed together. Sometimes, other fillies would make fun of the one she was seeing things through, and the one she traveled with would stand up for her.
It made her feel warm inside, and that usually got her closer to crying than most things.
The only thing that made her actually cry nowadays was the knowledge that it wasn’t real.
And that scared her.
There was a reason why ‘Indigo the Invincible’ was known as the biggest loner at Crystal Prep, but it wasn’t the reason everyone thought it was. She was a loner because every night she repeated the same process, as if trying to capture something that wasn’t there. If most people knew she drew about talking ponies and fairytale kingdoms, she might get a bit of hazing and some mean comments thrown at her. But if they knew she desperately wanted to believe in these fairytale kingdoms and talking ponies, that would be a totally different story.
Indigo Zap could handle people thinking she was a dork. She was terrified of people thinking she was insane.
Once she had a moment to calm down, the blunette glanced to the full-length mirror that was on her closet door, and realized she’d not changed out of her soccer uniform. The shorts did little to hide her legs, but she’d always been so thankful that they were just long enough to hide… those.
Taking them off for a second, she looked to her hips, and there they were, like they’d always been since the day she’d been taken in. The reason she could never wear normal panties, and instead opted for boxer briefs. The reason she always changed away from others, and never showered at the school.
A symbol.
A purple cloud releasing a blue lightning bolt, with a magenta star in the middle of said cloud.
Where she’d got it, Indigo did not know, but she despised it. No one else she knew had random symbols on their hips. Sure, a lot of people wore symbols on their outfits, but emblazoning it on their skin was not something she’d heard of or seen.
While her parents had considered getting rid of them, they didn’t want to subject a little girl to that, and so she kept them. And with every passing day, her disdain for the little symbol became stronger.
The fact that they almost seemed to grow with her…
The fact that they were a constant reminder of her unclear origins…
The fact that she had them at all… she hated all of it.
‘Why me?’ she asked again, the question so commonplace in her own head it was almost automatic. ‘… Whatever. I need to get my mind off it. Maybe I could go to the mall?’
The thought had some merit, Indigo reasoned. When she’d opened her current sketchbook, she’d noticed she was on the last 5 pages anyway, and no doubt she'd just soaked through them slightly. She’d need to pick up a new one, and probably some more pencils anyway.
It might have just been feeding her metaphorical addiction, but at least it was an excuse to get out of the house.
As she picked up her phone, a slight beeping alerted Indigo to the fact that she’d received a text. It was from her mother, who had said this:
Hey sweetie, your dad and I are on the way home from the office. We’ll be back in about 30 minutes.
This brought a smile to the girl’s face, but only briefly. Parents back home meant dinner, and dinner meant another welcome distraction. Whatever they’d have tonight would be good enough for her, and she’d probably be back before it was done cooking anyway.
She texted back in kind:
Probably won’t be here when you get back. Heading out to the mall. Need a new sketchbook.
Done with book 33 already?
Indigo winced. Apparently, her estimate was way off…
Almost.
One of these days, you simply must show me some of your art.
‘Not on your life, mom,’ she thought. ‘There’s no way I’m sharing this with anyone…’
Still, she answered with a half-hearted ‘maybe’, and put away her phone. Changing into her more casual getup, Indigo gave herself one final once over, ready to leave. For a moment, she considered inviting Lemon Zest. Given that the rocker girl knew about Indigo’s ability to draw (though not necessarily what she drew), it might have been a harmless idea.
“Well, I did say I’d call her back…”
A long, drawn-out sigh escaped the athlete’s lips, before she finally said, “Screw it.”
Pulling out her phone, she dialed in the number once again. The last thing she wanted right now was to be alone – ironically enough, given how this had started. But now, some company sounded like exactly what she needed.
And so, she walked off, away from her house. Away from all the troubles she felt, all the constant questions that she struggled with, everything that had made her so sad right now.
And most importantly, away from an incomplete drawing, of two fillies sitting on a hilltop.