Welcome Home
They say home is where the heart is, but as I lay here, barely moving, I find that hard to believe. The weight that I felt inside my chest was not what I would call home. In my heart I felt no joy, as I have long since lost that emotion. The only emotion left inside my heart now is sadness. As I lay here in this dark room waiting for the end, I can still see all of them as if I were with them yesterday. Celestia had been the first to pass of those that I loved. I had been at her bedside when she drew her final breath, and released her final words, "Never forget your home."
The cryptic meaning alongside watching Celestia's eyes slowly glaze over as they lost their luster they always seemed to have, had left me extremely distraught. I had receded farther into myself after that day, almost a zombie to the outside world. The first to try and break me out of the shell I had cocooned myself in was a mare by the name of Dusting Feathers. She would check on me every day, bringing in everything that she thought could help the alleviate the ailment that I had caught. She had catered to my every need with practiced obedience, but I could always sense the underlying feeling of one helping a friend in need instead of one simply taking orders. One fateful day though, she was not the maid that I greeted on the opposite side of my door in the morning. When questioned the maid had answered that there had been a mishap in her house with the gas stove, and then had asked me if I required anything. She began to get a little on edge when I had not answered her, content to simply stare at the wall as if it were the cruel monster of fate himself. "I had never even said thank you," I remember thinking as the maid fidgeted nervously in front of me. "She worked tirelessly day in and day out for me for over a year, and I had never once said thank you."
It was after that incident that I understood the words that Celestia had said to me on her death bed. I had forgot my home, I had disregarded those that had treated me as a friend, and had slowly lost parts of myself with each passing day. Over the centuries I had attempted to gain back that hearth, the place I could call home. Try as I had, I could never reforge what had been lost. I had gained those that I would call friends, some close enough to almost call family, but each time reality would step in. The reality that their lives were short compared to mine, and each friend had left me just as the last had, with their last breath attempting to say something to comfort me in the coming years.
The last friend that I lost had been one of my closest. We had stayed up many nights under the cover of the starry sky to simply talk and enjoy the company of one another. He was the closest that I had ever come to falling in love, but before that love could grow and flourish, he too had succumb to the grim touch of death. But while he had lain there, cold sweats running down his body as his fever soared to new heights, is when those fateful words were said. As he protested my attempts to heal him, brushing it off as his destiny, he told me the words that will stay with me for eternity. "Never forget who you are" he had rasped out as I stared at him with my eyes brimming with tears, "because without yourself, can you truly live?"
Those words had struck a chord in me that day. Laying here, I finally understand what he meant by that. The shell that I had created had sealed part of me away, splitting my soul with a blade of sadness. I had for all effective purposes stopped living that day, as I had lost the one thing that you can't live without, myself. I had retreated fearfully into that shell when Celestia had died, turning away from what she had wanted me to do. She had wanted me to live, love, and hope, but all I had managed to do was wallow in despair. As each day had come and gone I lost a small part of me, until eventually I didn't know who I truly was.
I slowly started to close my eyes as the memories passed, as they had so many times before. Like so many times before my ragged breathing started to lull me to sleep, the one place where I could find peace with myself. As I started to drift off though, my breathing started to become more ragged. I knew my time was coming to draw my last breath, and I was ready to accept it when it finally came. I was a shell of my former self, beaten by time and torn by depression. When I closed my eyes for the final time it was with a small smile of acceptance mixed with relief on my face. I awaited death's embrace for what felt like hours until I saw a faint white light above me.
I spread my wings, noticing immediately that they felt stronger than before, as if I were back in my prime. As I ascended towards the light, it started to take the form of a sea of clouds. When I alighted on the clouds a set of large, golden trimmed doors lifted from the clouds in front of me. As I walked slowly up to the doors they began to open. I stopped to stare at the Alabaster white figure that had pushed them open. "Dear sister," she said as she stepped to the side, sweeping one of her wings towards the door. My eyes followed her wing as it made its arc, my breath catching when I saw what she had been obstructing from my view when she first opened the gates. My vision swam a little when I looked from one face to the next, all of whom belonged to the ones that I had come to think of as my only friends and family over the years of solitude. With a small smile on her lips, she beckoned me inside with the words I had craved to hear for so long, "Welcome home, Luna."