It's finally quiet.
Another day at home. It was beginning to feel repetitive. Wake up, stay in bed, eat a small portion of something from the fridge, then go back to bed. She used to take walks all around the town, it helped clear her mind when the house walls began to close in on her, but today? It was going to be one of those special days. Picking herself up from the bed, she was greeted by a sharp pain that stung through most of her limbs. She couldn't figure out why they still hurt, she had all her legs back now after all…
But she had little time to ponder, staggering out of bed and trudging out towards the hall, she stopped short of a tall safe that was leaned up against the wall. She had little need for what was in it, but rather, what was behind it. With a shaky hoof reaching behind, out she pulled a semi dusty small book. Her journal. A new friend she had made had told her to start journaling her thoughts, and so she did. Heading back to the bed now, she flipped it open, the pages producing more dust that dotted the air, dust that she had little reaction to.
She was never good at writing. Or reading for that matter. But she had been learning on her own time. She never cared for it before, but it was something that mare had said to her that sparked something within her.
“Who will tell your story?”
It was a question she thought was obvious at first. Nopony needed to tell her story at all! But as she had thought about it the following day, something did occur to her.
She did want ponies to know her story. So as the years stretched by ahead of her, and as the seasons changed and everything seemed to age. All but her it seemed. She had begun to notice, things would wither away and crumble, things that lasted years had finally begun to decay. And yet, here she stood, only minor changes to her body. Her mind however, was another story. It aged with the seasons, and learned with time.
Her journal was almost out of pages by now, and the mare whom she would have gone to before had since passed. The book itself looked more like a tome, thick with many wilted pages that had been added through the passing years. All written on. All that was left was just one page.
She should probably hurry now. Shuffling for the pen that laid near the bed, she began her descent, her hoof gliding over the pages while her eyes scanned each line as they were written. As she wrote, she reflected on what had led her here, from her earliest memories, to now.
She really missed him. The thought struck her hard then, her hoof sharply veering off the lines of the page for a moment.
She took some time to right herself. Back to work.
She had been watching closely, at the time. At the changes. She noticed it in him first, slower movement, less energy it seemed. Aging like all the things around her. She didn't understand at first. Maybe if she did, she would have invested more time that nopony else had.
She held his hoof when he passed. She noted how the vibrant green that it was had faded to near pale…but it could have been her vision blurred by the onslaught of tears that never seemed to cease.
She understood then.
But why? She soon grew to find her answers from the very same hybrid zebra that had once saved her life before. As it had turned, this was simply her fate. She was not immortal, no. But her body now had the means of staying alive much longer than anypony should have to endure. Age was no longer an ending factor for her.
She had exploded on the zebra. How could he have done this? Let this happen? Let her go on full aware of the consequences? It had taken the calm zebra a few minutes to calm her down.
She had been the one to agree to this in the first place. She had calls with death many times, and crawled from the gates back down to the living. This was now the price.
She understood.
The children she mothered with her stallion also seemed unaffected by time. But the reason she knew was something far beyond her, a technology she herself did not understand. Age will not claim her children, and neither will death.
She could not stay. She had left the town she called home ages ago, left it for her children to protect and keep. She had finally begun to see small signs of age, and time.
But it was not fast enough.
As the mare paused in her writing, her eyes glanced to a ring that lay carefully on the bedside table.
She will see him again soon.
Back to writing.
She never really expected to reach this position. After rounds with death and self destruction, she was sure she would not see the bright age of twenty five. Yet here she lay. She did not expect to outlive those she had known for all her life. Images of ponies flashed in front of the page. Silent, Ambience, Gilly, Chorus, old and new faces that had joined their gang and then company. And of course, Tyrant. Gone, gone gone gone. One by one, taken by time. Time she had too much of.
But not much longer.
A breeze shuddered through the walls of her cabin. And her hoof stopped gliding along the pages. Melancholy. It was a word she learned late in life. It was a perfect word, perfect enough for the title of her tome.
` Melancholy, by Bear Trap. `
The book is closed now. She wanted ponies to read her story, to learn something from it.
She trotted to the door, opening it brought a flurry of sharp wind and snow that stung the fur on her muzzle.
It was perfect outside. The landscape was covered in a cold blanket, and flurries of frozen soft ice fell down from the dark clouds.
She made her way over to the nearby tree that towered over her little home. There was a decent sized hole that served as a borough that belonged to some large animal long ago.
It had new purpose now. Crawling inside, her tattered cloak flapped and fought against the wind that assaulted her.
It soon came to an end, as she placed herself down onto the ground with a hefty sigh. Tome in hooves, body curled around it to protect it from the elements.
The mare would lay there. As night fell, the cold creeped into her fur, past her flesh and down into her bones. The cloak served little protection from the frozen wasteland. The wind was merciless against the large tree, the air swirling and biting away at the curled up mare. And yet, as her body shivered and shook violently with the winds, she did not move.
It was midnight, and the wind has ceased. The mare had long since stopped shivering, and her breath gave out like a silent whisper. It was quiet once again.
Quiet like the snow.
The sun would rise the next day.