There was a faint light coming from underneath the door in front of him, gleaming across the wooden floorboards and tossing small shadows as it hit grains of dust and sand. The light seemed to move slightly, pulsating like waves of water. Or maybe it was a shadow on the other side of the door breaking the light ever so slightly, he couldn’t be sure.
With his heart pounding in his throat, he reached out and nudged the door carefully. It didn’t make a sound as it slowly slid open, yet he could have sworn he heard a faint whisper travel round the room as it did. The light on the other side hit him straight in the eyes, momentarily blinding him. He shied away from the burning light as he felt as if his entire body was on fire.
Then he saw; saw what was in the light, what was beyond the door. He could see…
See…
“… See what?”
The sound of her own voice reached her ears as she spoke up. She didn’t recognize it. Except the two words she uttered, the room around her lay silent and in shadows, nothing but her face and hooves lit up by a small candle placed on her desk. It flickered slowly, and the words she’d written on the paper in front of her seemed to dance before her eyes.
Everything on the paper, every single letter and word seemed alien to her. She’d written them just a few seconds earlier, yet it felt as if she’d never seen them before and was just now reading them for the first time.
It was impossible to focus, as the words refused to stay in one place long enough for her to construct a readable sentence.
A sigh of disbelief shot out of her mouth, shattering the silence around her like a battering ram against a weak wooden gate. On the other side, ponies waited at the ready, only to be sliced in pieces as the enemy advanced upon them. The gust of wind that left her mouth with her sigh blew into the candle, snuffing out the light in the blink of an eye.
The darkness surrounded her, pulled her into a tight embrace. It furiously licked her body like flames, trying desperately to burn its way inside her. Unlike fire though, there was no pain. Just the feeling of emptiness slowly seeping into her, pushing itself into every strand of hair on her body, nestling into her mane to make its way into her mind.
Her flesh peeled off like charred paper as the shadows crept inside her, up through her stomach and into her lungs. Then it slowly made its way down again, pushing deeper, trying to enter her the way a lover did.
She shook her head violently to get that thought out of her mind, but to no avail. The shadows nestled its way inside her despite her attempts to stop it.
A muffled thud echoed through the thick darkness as she slammed her forehead into the desk.
“Stop it…” She whispered, even though she knew nopony would answer. There was nothing there, just her and the shadows around her. Dead shadows. Immobile and silent, not trying to violate her the way she imagined.
The paper rustled against her face as she pushed herself harder into the wooden board in an attempt to clear her mind of... those thoughts. She didn’t want them, not now.
“See what?” She asked herself, her voice distorted thanks to her mouth being pressed down unto the desk. “What… does he see?”
She didn’t have an answer. It was impossible to think clearly as the shadows twisted inside her like eels. A low curse escaped her mouth, followed by another thump as she brought her face down hard into the desk once again. A slight shiver of pain burst through her brain, moving across her skull like electric cords.
Another thud and another singe of pain. Attempting to shut out the darkness, she did her best to focus on nothing but the pain inside her head, hoping it would cause the shadows to withdraw. To her relief, it seemed to work as the presence slowly pulled away from her, replaced by her headache. But then, sensing her weakened defense as her mind instead got clouded with pain, it saw its chance to win this battle.
Once again it pushed inside her, forcefully and with confidence, fully aware that it had won over her, knowing that it managed to break the walls she built up around her and made way for guilty lust to build up in her. And she could feel it. Feel it build up, ready to burst out of her, ready to...
She shivered and opened her mouth to let out a scream. She didn’t even know if her voice would be that of terror or satisfaction.
“Mommy?”
The darkness disappeared in an instant, leaving behind no trace, no evidence of it ever existing. Scared away by the sound of a filly.
“Yes? What is it, sweetheart?”
Her voice was frail and shallow, about to break into a thousand pieces as the darkness she both loved and hated left the broken fortress of her mind.
“I can’t sleep.” The filly said through the darkness. “Can you read me a story?”
The mare sat up straight in her chair, looking down to where she believed the papers to be.
“I’m sorry, but mommy needs to work..” Without a sound she reached her hoof out, getting ahold of a small box on the desk. She opened it and use one of the small wooden sticks inside it to light up a small flame.
She touched the candle with the match, and it flickered to life with a low sizzling as smoke rose up from the wick.
“Pleeeeease?” The voice pleaded. Probably gave her a pair of massive puppy-eyes as well. “The one about the angels?”
“Sweetie... You know I have to work. I need to get this done by next month...”
A deadline she already knew she was doomed to fail. She would never be able to write an entire book by next month. Not in two month, not in six. Not in a year. Once again, she wanted to hit her head on the desk. Crack her skull open and let her thoughts drift unto the paper. Anything would be better than the nonsense about the light beyond that door...
“But I want to hear about the angels...”
She sighed at the voice’s persistency. Maybe it would be best for her to do something else, seeing as she probably wouldn’t be able to write a single word tonight. And so she caved in to the filly’s demands.
Her career had gone downhill the last year, for reasons she couldn’t understand. Ever since her last book, she’d been unable to put anything coherent down on paper, and failed deadline after deadline, shifting between publishers the way one shifts between day and night. But nopony wanted her works anymore.
A writer unable to write.
“Okay, then...” She whispered as she turned to face the young filly next to her. “But they’re Alicorns, not…”
Her voice died down slowly. There was no filly to be found in the room. No trace that she’d ever been there.
The broken writer drew in a deep breath in a futile attempt to hold her tears back. She wasn’t there. Her daughter wasn’t there. She never talked to her. With tears streaming down her cheeks, Flying Free slouched down over the desk, sobbing into the paper she was working on. Didn’t care about it anymore.
A miserable wreck of a mare.
Once again, the candle flickered and died. The shadows made their move, pushing themselves into her without hesitation. She let them.
The hot coffee burned Free’s tongue and pallet as it entered her mouth. She grimaced from the unpleasant sensation, her teeth feeling like they would crack any minute. Like what the ponies did in the mines scattered across Equestria back in the day; putting a fire close to the rock wall to heat it up, then throwing ice cold water unto it, causing it to break from the shifting temperatures.
This felt pretty much the same way she’d imagined that would feel, except it was done backwards with cold first, then burning hot. Still, it made her open her mouth wide and breathe deeply to try and get some cold air into her throat and try to numb the burning, almost spitting out the coffee in the process.
Quickly she placed the cup down on the kitchen counter next to her before she let her singed tongue fall out of her mouth. She waved her hooves frantically around it in a feeble, instinctive attempt to cool it. After a little while, the burning subsided, and Free felt her pulse going back to normal. With a sigh she sat herself down on her backside, staring up into the beige ceiling above her.
For a brief moment, she wanted to laugh. Laugh at her own stupidity, her refusal to be late to her appointment at the hospital. But the moment the laughter took form in her throat, it died down again. She sighed and turned her head to look at the cup of coffee on the counter. It didn’t look like much, just an ordinary cup made out of white china, almost sparkling in the morning light shining through the kitchen window.
At least she knew how to keep things nice and clean. Nopony could say anything different about her. Why, that Flying Free down the street, her apartment is practically shining! Everything is perfect, devoid of every little grain of filth or dust. Strange, seeing as her daughter would probably drag in a lot of dirt. Children always do that…
Free frowned at the thought, and raised her hoof to the counter. She grabbed the cup once again and held it up in front of her face. Her reflection stared back at her, tears slowly running down her cheeks. Free’s body began to shiver as she tilted the cup sideways and the black liquid inside it spilled out onto the floor like a thick waterfall of quilt.
A puddle formed around her, black and steamy hot. The smell of caffeine filled her nostrils, and the hot liquid started to burn lightly against the skin on her hind legs and haunches. She looked at the reflection one more time. Her distraught face met her again, perfectly clear yet somewhat distorted in the white china. The face staring back at her didn’t even look like herself. Right next to it, another face looked at her. A young filly with beautiful opal eyes.
Flying Free dropped the cup and it hit the floor with a shattering sound muffled by the coffee that once called the now broken cup its own temporary home.
She didn’t say anything. Didn’t flinch at the loud noise from the breaking porcelain. Tears still streaming out of her eyes, she got back up on her hooves. The coffee had begun to dry into her fur, and strained around her legs as she walked towards the living room in silence. She paid it no attention.
Nothing mattered right now, nothing but those shining eyes coated in purest opal, and the filly they belonged to.
She let herself fall limply across the couch, the worn out cushions offering little support, causing her to sink deep into the frame of the furniture. Her cat screeched angrily as the Pegasus body almost crushed her, and the offended feline scurried off through the doorway, its tail fluffy and erect. A sure sign that little Opal was - as Lightning Quill would put it - bucking pissed off.
Opal. Such a stupid name for a cat. Crawling into a ball on the couch, she hated herself for letting her daughter and pet share the same name. She would never be able to look at that cat without being reminded of her lost foal.
Then, in a fit of pure rage, she threw herself off of the couch and spread out her wings into the air. Instantly, she rushed through the living room and into the kitchen where she stopped, panting heavily as blood pumped into her head and caused her vision to blur. The edges of her mouth twitched slightly and a sly smile threatened to take control of her face.
The mare saw her target. Saw the cat. Opal. Sitting on the windowsill, she followed some birds outside the glass as they flew around and seemed to play tag with one another. The cat screeched once again as Flying Free’s teeth grabbed it by the skin on the back of its neck and lifted it up.
It tried to get free by swinging its legs and paws frantically into the air, hissing angrily at the winged equine carrying it in such a rough manner.
Free didn’t care about the furry creatures protest, didn’t care enough to wipe the blood off her cheek that streamed from a narrow cut that Opal’s claws had just caused. She simply walked through her apartment, opened the glass doors leading to her balcony, and stepped outside.
The sounds of Manehatten slammed against her like a ton of bricks, and the wind that instantly tugged on her wings spurred the desire to fly off into the clouds. But she couldn’t, she had more pressing matters to attend to. Getting rid of painful memories took priority over everything and everypony else.
Opal, now starting to realize what was about to happen, thrashed around in her owners grasp even more, hissing and spitting in a fit of panic and rage. Once her owner lowered her head out over the rail around the balcony, the feline entered such a strong state of panic it froze solid, and it stared blankly at the ground far beneath them.
It probably didn’t understand the concept of the height of nine more floors underneath Free’s apartment, but it understood the concept of danger and imminent death clearly.
Free opened her mouth. Her precious cat plummeted through the sky, finally free from its paralysis. Little Opal, with her golden fur and equally golden eyes. Her daughter loved that cat more than anything else in the world. Now it soared through the sky, screeching at the top of its tiny lungs. She never thought she’d hear a living creature make such a sound.
Silence followed the screech. Free stepped back and closed the door behind her.
On the couch, free unfurled her wings and let them hold her in a warm embrace. In the kitchen, Opal let out a low meow. The Pegasus shivered at her own thoughts. Never would she be able to do such a thing, to just let a living creature die like that. Never. She loved her cat too much to ever be able to harm it, even though she occasionally wanted to.
Yet she had. She’d let another living creature die right on front of her eyes, and she didn’t do anything to save it. To save her.
Once again, her sorrow took the best of her, and she screamed her quilt into the pillows of the couch. Didn’t care if anypony else heard her. The image of her daughter filled her head, those beaming eyes looking straight at her.
Sometime later, Free found herself in her bathroom, looking into the mirror above the sink that was now filling up with water. Her face looked like that of an old shrew; old, wet from tears and stripped from all sings of happiness. She hated her face, for several reasons. She hated the fact that she could still smile after what she’d done. She didn’t deserve to smile. And she hated herself for being able to sink so low as to become so ugly and revolting.
She didn’t even deserve to have a face in the first place.
Slowly, the mare lowered her hooves into the cold water in the sink. She brought them together to form a temporary bowl for the water, and then raised her hooves to her face. The water splashed over her face and mane, and once it cleared out of her eyes, her reflection looked even worse than before. As she observed herself through the veil of water, an urge to smash the mirror grew inside her. She managed to hold it back.
Instead, she managed to just kick the pipes underneath the sink in anger before she left the bathroom. As her hoof connected to the cold steel, it clanged loudly and echoed through her ears, followed by a low gurgle as something inside the pipes moved.
Before leaving her apartment, she made sure that Opal had enough food and water in her bowls, and that the door to the balcony was firmly shut. Of course, the cat would never get the idea to jump up on the railing, but her resent thoughts made her extra careful.
She said goodbye to the sleeping feline, which only responded by stretching its legs and yawning slightly, and then headed out into the hallway and stairs leading down to the street outside. The mare threw a quick glance at her neighbor’s door. The name “L. Quill” had been replaced by “P. Spark”. Unlike Lightning, she had never met this Spark-pony, and didn’t really care to either. Whoever he or she was, they would never be able to replace her former neighbor.
Before he had his accident, they often got together, and through the years they formed a rather special bond. It was love, yes, but not love as in a mare and a stallion. It was more in the lines of mother and son.
She shook those thoughts out of her head and quickly started trotting down the stairs. She hadn’t been late to the hospital even once for almost an entire year, and she wasn’t about to break that stream of perfect time today.
On her way down, she passed a familiar face, and greeted the stallion with her usual mask of happiness.
“Morning, dear.” She chirped at the white unicorn as he passed.
“Yeah, sure. You in a hurry or what?” Lightning Quill answered her as he disappeared past her up the stairs.
She was about to answer him, but stopped dead in her tracks with wide eyes. Slowly, she turned around to look behind her and up the stairs. Nopony was there.
“Stop, it, Fly...” She whispered to herself as she continued down the stairs.
The streets of Manehatten were as busy as usual as Flying Free made her way through town in the early morning sun. All around her, ponies hurried about their business just like they did ever y day, none of them ever looking up from their work. Their endless cycle of work never broke, but if it did, they probably wouldn’t pay much attention to the dark cyan mare, or her distraught face.
Just another pony in the crowd, another nameless face in the infinite sea forming the antlike nest that big cities had become.
Free hated it all. She hated the streets, the buildings and the ponies living in them.
Building after building, stacked in rows like giant coffins, filled to the brim with small cells, cramped together like sardines. And ponies called them home. It disgusted her. When she came to Manehatten as a young mare, she loved it all and could stroll down the streets hours on end.
She loved seeing the parks, the stores, and the sun reflecting of the millions of windows spread out across the tall buildings. To her, there was no place in the world more beautiful than Manehatten, and she nagged on her parents until they finally agreed to let her get her own apartment.
And so, she began her life anew. Flying Free, unstoppable and free as she soared through the skies. But slowly, the initial love subsided and was replaced with a sort of indifference to it all. She fell in love, and she had Opal. The stallion she thought had loved her left her and her foal, and she never saw him again. The Pegasus raised her foal on her own, with a little help from her neighbors. Even Lightning Quill who preferred to stick to himself and didn’t really seem to like children offered a helping hoof from time to time, and for that she was ever grateful.
She was on her way to visit him, just as she had done once a week for the last eleven months. Every Friday, she made her way to the From Dust Memorial Hospital in which he was a patient, and spent a few hours by his side. Apparently, she was the only visitor he ever had.
He never said anything to her, but she talked to him, believing he at least could hear her. His nurse, a kind mare by the name of Redheart, had become a close friend to her during this time, and she often joined Free in talking with Lightning.
After a while, the hospital came into her view between the rising buildings around her. A massive construction, probably the most expensive building in all of Manehatten, it, towered high into the sky before her. It had been shaped as a perfect ring, with all the different rooms spread out inside, and a big courtyard inside the ring, filled with lush vegetation and healthy trees.
It was a beautiful construction, and so unlike anything else ever seen in Equestria. Free guessed that was because of the fact that it wasn’t designed by a pony, but rather a human. This human had also financed the entire construction together with his wife, Princess Luna.
The entrance had been designed in such a fashion that it looked more like some royal palace, rather than a hospital. It was a big, oval shaped room, with reception desks lining the walls on either side of the entrance, as well as stairs spiraling their way through the room up to the next floor. On the walls behind the desks, water streamed down from the ceiling and into shallow lines in the floor. Lowered a few inches and incased by glass, they ran to the middle of the room in a giant whirlwind-like spiral pattern.
Flying Free didn’t need to check at any of the counters as she entered; she just tossed a quick nod and smile towards Redheart whom was standing on the opposite side of the room, talking to a family of unicorns and a young little colt that seemed to energetic for his own good.
The Pegasus mare stepped onto the spiraling stairs that led up to the floor just above her. She was thankful for this; the first couple of weeks Lightning had been placed all the way up on the seventh floor and the walk up the stairs weren’t too pleasant.
Then without explanation, they moved him down to the first floor instead. Suited Free just fine.
She emerged into the hallway on the first floor, and immediately took off to her left towards the same door as always. She knocked quietly on it before she opened. Even though Lightning couldn’t hear her knocking, she at least wanted to show him some matter of respect.
“Hey Lightning.” She said as she came up to the bed he rested on.
He was on his back with blankets pulled up to his shoulders, almost as white as his coat. His chest raised and lowered itself in a steady pace, accompanied by the wheezing sound from the pump-like device that filled and emptied his lungs for him day after day. A small tube had been inserted into his nostrils, and a similar tube went into his mouth and down his throat.
“How are you feeling today?” She asked cautiously. “I, uh... I brought you some flowers.” She quickly went through her saddlebags and pulled out a bouquet of white lilies.
“Aren’t they beautiful? I’ll just... place them over here, so that you can see them when you…”
She trailed off in her speech as she placed the flowers down in a see-through vase at the end of his bed. She looked up at his face, feeling her mouth purse at the sight of it. So peaceful, with no hint of pain or sadness. Just a closed pair of eyelids and an indifferent mouth. She told herself she could see a tiny smile on his lips. No doubt could he smell the lilies.
Before her eyes, Lightning Quill had just moved one of his hooves slightly. She barely resisted the urge to scream out of joy, and rushed to his side.
“Lightning!” She laughed happily. “You moved! Can... can you hear me? Oh, please, hear me…”
Again, the unicorn moved his hoof. Free couldn’t help herself but burst out laughing even louder, and once he moved a third time, she threw herself upon her former neighbor, wrapping her arms around him and held him close.
“You can hear me, can’t you?”
This time, Lightning moved his other hoof, the right one.
“Could you... could you move your left hoof as a yes and your right hoof as a no?” Free whispered to him through the embrace.
He moved his left hoof.
“How are you feeling? Good?” She hoped he would move his left hoof. But instead, he moved his right. “Bad? Why? Is there anything I can do to help?”
No movement came to answer her question. After a few more seconds, she broke her embrace and pulled away from the bed. She looked down on the young unicorn in front of her, and saw his eyelids move as if his eyeballs moved back and forth underneath them.
She was about to speak once again when she heard the door behind her open. Free turned around and saw Redheart peeking in through the door. She had to fight her own mind to keep herself from jumping Redheart and embracing her as well.
“Everything alright in here, FF?” Redheart said with her normal smile playing across her lips. “I heard some rather loud noises…”
“It’s more than fine, Red.” Free answered her friend with a sigh. “He moved his hooves and answered me.”
Redheart looked at her with eyes partially coated by doubt. “Are you serious..? He… moved?”
Free nodded in response. “Come on, I’m sure he can hear you.”
The nurse entered the room and trotted up to Free, placing herself next to her. She glanced down at the seemingly sleeping figure of Lightning before she took a deep breath and cleared her throat.
“Lightning? It’s Redheart, your nurse… can you hear me?”
The stallion moved his left hoof slightly, and Redheart tried to smother a gasp by pressing her hoof over her mouth.
“That means yes.” Free said with a smile, feeling something wet on her cheeks.
Upon seeing her friends shocked face, she couldn’t help herself but feel waves of joy course through her. If this was enough to surprise Redheart, who was certain he would never wake up again, it was a good sign. For a brief moment, her mourning got pushed aside by the flames of hope now burning bright inside her chest.
Finally, there was something in her life to be happy about, to look forward to.
She wouldn’t lose him too. He’d be alright. She knew he would.
With a sudden burst of laughter, she embraced the white nurse in front of her, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. Her friend answered the embrace with a smile, and held her friend close as she herself burst into tears.
It was a warm spring day, the birds chirped in the trees, and the sky had been cleared completely of any cloud, thanks to the Pegasi. On the ground, foals ran around playing in the green grass, some of them having their families and friends with them on this perfect, cool day.
The sound of young laughter mixed with the birds singing, and from her spot outside the train station, Flying Free felt the world couldn’t be any better than this. It was the textbook example of a world and life in perfect harmony and peace, and she loved it to no end. Not only did the summer breeze warm her body, but the atmosphere around her warmed her very soul.
She was sitting on a small bench, placed close to the entrance into the train station, close to the wall. Behind it, nothing more than the platform which she presumed was empty at the moment, everypony waiting for the train was spending their time in the park in the front of the station.
To her right, a couple of colts tried to climb one of the many trees that dotted the park, but to no success. Free smiled at their fruitless and innocent attempts. They were still young, and would soon realize that equine have no place in the trees.
Her look tore away from the two colts as she heard Opal’s voice calling for her, and she turned her head just in time to see her little filly galloping towards her across the playground. She looked a lot like her mother with her dark cyan coat, but her mane she got from her father. Its blue strands swayed around her face as she hurried towards her mother.
“Is there something wrong, sweetheart?” Flying Free asked her only foal, as said foal placed herself down on the bench next to her.
“I’m bored...” Opal said with the same look she gave her mom when she didn’t want to do her homework. “Is the train here yet?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long now.” Free put her hoof on the neck of her daughter, brushing her shimmering blue mane.
“It’s never gonna show up…” The young foal let her head sink in boredom, complete with a loud sigh of annoyance.
“Of course it is, we just need to wait a few more minutes. You should learn to be a bit more patient.”
Opal didn’t answer her mother, clearly fed up with the waiting game. Free felt her motherly instinct kick in, and looked around her for anything Opal could spend her time with. Her eyes stopped at the unicorn colts by the tree once again.
“Look, sweetheart…” She said, and motioned her daughter to look at where she nodded. “Those two look nice, don’t they? Maybe you could go play with them for a while?”
“No.” Opal answered bluntly, squeezing her lips together in her typical ‘no-I-wont’ fashion. “Colts are stupid.”
Free couldn’t help but laugh at the filly’s words. Even though she liked to think of her as special, she still acted just like any other foal would do, and a general disgust for colts and germs came with it. Opal looked at her laughing mother, clearly not understanding what was so funny.
“I just realized something.” Free said as she finally stopped laughing, and looked at her daughter’s confused face. “Unicorns are not a creature of the air.” Just as she said this, one of the colts tried using his weak magic to teleport up into the branches above them. Instead, he materialized just halfway up, and landed on the other colt with a muffled thud.
“Like sheep?” Opal asked.
“Yes, like sheep. Remember that one sheep we read about in the newspaper? What was his name, Harold?” Free said with a smile.
“Mom, I’ve already heard that one thousands of times.” The young filly stretched her legs and got up from her seat on the bench. “Can I go and wait inside the station for a while? It’s so boring out here…”
“Sure, sweetheart.” Free answered Opal, lowering her head to nuzzle her cheek as she did. “Just be careful, okay? I’ll be with you in just a second.”
Opal smiled at her mother and nodded before she ran off through the doors unto the platform. Free followed her with her eyes until she disappeared through the doors. She would join her soon, but she wanted to soak up some more of the summer breeze and sun first. The two colts had finally given up in their attempts to scale the tree, and had run off somewhere, she couldn’t see them anymore.
For a few seconds she scanned the park and playground in front of her, looking for any sign of somepony she knew, perhaps Lightning would be outside in the sun today as well. She often saw him as her own son, and if he wasn’t so old she would have gladly adopted him. But there was no way to change his age, and so that thought would never become reality.
A shame, even Opal like the young unicorn. She used to say his green mane looked like a misshapen mushroom dropped on his head. Lightning would laugh, and respond with saying that her blue mane looked like somepony had poured a bucket of jelly on her head.
All three of them really had a good relationship, and Free loved them both as family.
After a few more seconds, Free’s searching gaze came to a stop as she thought she saw Lightning Quill, standing by a tree close by. She was about to get up or wave to get his attention when she realized that it wasn’t him, despite the similar colors.
It was a stallion, and a unicorn just like him, but his mane and tail wasn’t green; they were white, just like his coat, almost glowing in the sun. She squinted, and thought she could see some sort of black object resting on the ground next to him, but it was too far away to make out any features. He seemed to look straight at her, and despite the great distance between them, she could feel his eyes burning into her skin like needles.
Suddenly, Free almost jumped as she heard the sound of the train rolling unto the station. She looked back to the place where she’d seen the stallion, only to realize he was now gone. The mare felt her skin crawl as she got up from her seat and walked towards the doors.
A few seconds later, she heard a scream coming from the inside, followed by several worried voices. Her heart stopped, and once again her motherly instincts made themselves known. She hurried through the doors, and the scene that met her eyes was one that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
The train had stopped halfway through the station, and several ponies, most of them station workers, had gather around the locomotive, scurrying around the train tracks like crazed ants. She could hear somepony calling for help, calling for medical attention, and another saying something about holding her head high to stop the blood flow.
Flying Free couldn’t move any longer. And even if she could, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. She was too terrified to even think, but already knew what had happened. Her brain did its best to deny it, tried to shut her down in order to spare her from the pain. But it was still all too real.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. Inside her head, she was fighting a mental battle with herself to stay connected to reality, no matter how horrible it was. And then finally, she gave up as the crowd of ponies parted, and she could see a piece of a dark blue mane, partially coated in something wet.
Once her brain connected the dots, it was already too late. The stallions that had gotten Opal loose from underneath the train were met by Flying Free’s lifeless body, passed out on the platform floor.
Free awoke from her nightmare with a scream, instantly feeling her eyes well up. Before she had time to fully register what was happening, she felt a hoof around her, somepony pressing her close in an embrace, trying to silence her terrified scream.
“Shhh…” The voice of Redheart reached her ears. “You’re okay. Bad dream?”
Free wiped her eyes with a hoof and looked around her. She was still in the hospital, sitting next to Lightning’s bed. She probably fell asleep, and it made sense since she spent the entire night by his side, hoping for another movement.
And Redheart was still with her, her comforting hoof placed around her. Free nodded in response to the nurse’s question.
“Was it… Opal again?” Redheart asked, hesitating slightly before uttering the name of her friend’s daughter.
Again, Free simply nodded. “It was so real…”
Outside the windows on the opposite side of the room, the skies had darkened and a light rain tapped against the sheets of glass, growing stronger each passing second. The heavens had opened up, and with its own tears it tried to lull Free into letting her own fall. It was offering her a temporary solution, a temporary escape from the horrors of the world.
“But it wasn’t. It was just a dream.”
The Pegasus mare looked at the nurse next to her. A pair of kind, pale blue eyes met her, one of them partially covered by a strand of the nurse’s bright pink mane. It looked unkempt, like she’d been awake for a long time, and she could see faint bags under her eyes.
Her usual nurse’s hat was gone, put aside only once she stepped out of duty and back into herself. A sure sign of how much she truly cared for both Free and Lightning. Out of all the ponies Free had known throughout her life, Redheart was the one she’d become closest to, and she wouldn’t trade this friend for anything in the world.
Free wanted to say something, anything. Wanted to thank her closest friend for staying with her, for supporting her after what happened to Opal, but the fading images of her dream made her incapable of speech. Wanted to say to her that she was so much more than the broken wreck she saw, more than a miserable heap of tears. To let her know just how much her friendship meant to her.
But Free couldn’t speak a word except a few strained breaths as she tried to hold in her tears.
A mare crying like a small filly, next to a stallion that most ponies would call a vegetable. Both of them alive on the outside, but dead within. And like the small filly Flying Free felt like, she let her head fall flat over the bed next to Lightning Quill’s hoof, and without any regard for anything around her, let her tears stream free from her eyes.
She’d cried a lot since she lost Opal, so much in fact, she wondered if she could ever cry again. And over and over, she proved herself wrong. But this time felt different somehow, it felt more real and important, if sadness now could feel that way.
Never before had she cried this way. It was as if the shock and truth about life and death hit her, and her only reaction to it was to scream. She disappeared from her body, disappeared from the hospital room and instead became nothing but the screaming and tears itself. She couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t feel Redheart holding her.
She never heard her friends whispering voice by her ear.
“You’re going to get through this, FF. I promise you that.”
The rain outside kicked into full storm, the loud rumbling of thunder almost rivaling the sound of the crying mare. Almost.
By the time Flying Free had stopped crying, the thunderstorm outside still hadn’t gone away, and only seemed to have picked up more force as the hours went on. Its howling winds haunted the indifferent mask that Free now wore over her face, distorted by grief. She watched the black grey sky above from her seat by the window, and the droplets of rain running down the sheet of glass made the town on the other side look like some sort of misunderstood piece of art.
Twisted beyond comprehension. Just like most things in her life.
She still hadn’t left the room, and refused to leave before the storm had passed, for several reasons, all of them ones she kept to herself. One was that, despite the fact that Lightning was still in deep coma, she wanted to remain by his side during the storm. She knew from first hoof experience that Lightning was, ironically enough, terrified of the lightning itself.
The other reason was more personal. She was afraid herself, though not of the lightning, but of the effects it might cause. She was afraid to head home only to find herself trapped in a power outage, surrounded by the shadows of her nightmares. Those shadows were the last thing she needed right now. And so she opted to stay in the hospital, where she could comfort Lightning should anything happen, and she would have both him and Red if the power went out.
And then, after hours of unrelenting winds and rain, claps of thunder echoed deeply through the building, and a few seconds later a massive crooked white line parted the skies in front of her, casting its pale light over the town and her face. She felt her heart skip a bit instinctively at the bright illumination.
The Pegasus took a peak over her shoulder, her eyes falling upon the lifeless stallion on the bed on the opposite side of the room. She wished he could have been as lively as the lightning outside, instead of… what he’d now become. She pursed her mouth and turned back to the window in time to see another flash of light in the clouds, this one much brighter than the earlier one.
It illuminated the room behind her, causing her own face to reflect in the window before her. During this short moment that didn’t even last a second, she once again saw her daughters face next to hers.
She turned her head away from the glass.
To try and clear her mind, she walked back over to Lightning’s bed and sat down next to it. Just as she always did, she reached up and placed one of her hooves on his, the one that wasn’t covered by the blanket since it always had a needle in it.
“I… I know this is too much to ask, but…” Her voice started out in normal speaking tone, but once she came to the end, it had become a low whisper. She leaned closer to the unicorns sleeping face. “Could you… Could you wake up? Please?”
Her last word was barely possible to hear, a whisper muffled as she let her face burry itself in the blanket next to him. She just wanted him back, that was all. If she could, she’d bring him and Opal back, and they would become a happy family together, they would… Be happy. Just happy.
“I just want you back…”
She twisted her neck slightly to free her face and mouth from the cloth of the blanket, trying to blink away a bit of hair out of her eyes.
“Lightning?” She began quietly. “Have I ever told you… Why I’m afraid of the dark?”
She waited in silence for the response she already knew wasn’t coming. Partially because hope still hadn’t abandoned her and partially because she still didn’t really want to talk about… the shadows. But she still needed to get it out of her, get this secret of her chest. Not even Opal knew about her mother’s phobia when she was still alive.
“When I was just a little filly, growing up in Baltimare, I didn’t have that many friends… And the few I had rarely wanted to do the same things I wanted to. So I felt left out, pushed aside. Not important, you know…? They never wanted to come over and play at my place, and I always had to come to them instead. I guess maybe they weren’t the best friends, but I just… wanted to belong.”
She looked up at the stallion in front of her. His face still showed no signs of consciousness, no feelings. But she was sure he could still hear her.
“One day, rainy like this one, I followed some of my friends to the house of one of the kids in my class, who had a much wealthier family than most of us. I don’t remember her name, but they had money… lots of it. And their house was big, close to what you might call a mansion. And then somepony got the idea that we should play hide-and-seek, throughout the entire building… I was only about 8 years old, and too unsure of myself to admit that the house actually scared me because it was so big. Anyway, we all hurried off to hide, and I somehow found my way up to the second floor, and found this room at the end of a long corridor. And in that room was a cupboard that I decided to hide inside.”
Her voice became more and more strained the closer she came to the part that always appeared in her dreams, and she almost felt her own sounds drowning in the sounds of the pump-like device next to them that was keeping Lightning from chocking. Every time the device sank, it made a wheezing sound like a pipe releasing steam. It made her shiver each time, since it wasn’t a natural sound.
“And then of course, the cupboard somehow locked itself with me still inside. Naturally, I panicked, and thought I felt… things. Things in the darkness.”
She had never been afraid of the dark before this happened, in fact she actually enjoyed the protection it offered her. But once she realized the doors had locked, her heart started racing in her chest. She threw herself against the door as hard as she could, but her young body was too small and weak to budge it even an inch.
And as she pressed herself against the thick wooden doors… it came. The shadows.
Dozens of hooves stroke against her skin, tongues licking her fur. Whatever it was, it wanted her, craved her, and made no attempts to hide it. The filly couldn’t do anything but scream as she felt it inside her, filling up her entire body, sinking into her heart and soul. But nopony heard her, and they didn’t find her until about 30 minutes later.
By that time, she had been reduced to nothing more than a crying husk, unable to talk or answer questions, unable to interact with the world. Her eyes where blank, staring off into nothingness without noticing what was around her.
“…. It took me years before I could move on and live again. I’m still terrified of the dark, but at least I can function like every other pony.”
And like on a given cue, just waiting to be called upon the stage by the director, another lightning bolt parted the clouds. The thunder roared above their heads at the exact same time, and Free thought she could feel the floor vibrate beneath her, trembling at the force of Mother Nature.
The pump by the bed suddenly stopped. Free looked at it perplexed before realizing that Lightning wasn’t getting anymore air. She threw herself upon the device, trying to get it to work once again.
The lights in the ceiling went out.
Panic building inside, Free turned her attention away from the pump and focused on Lightning himself. Searching through the darkness, her hoof found his chin, and she tilted his head slightly upwards to open up his throat.
She called the name of her best friend into the shadows, hoping Redheart would hear her. Then she drew in a breath and dove down unto her former neighbors face, pressing her lips against his and letting out all her air into his lungs. She could feel his chest raise itself.
Once she was out of air, she called out to Redheart yet again before giving more air to Lightning’s empty lungs.
For what felt like an eternity she repeated this cycle, alternating between breathing and shouting. But slowly, it dawned on her that this was a battle she was going to lose. And as doubt started to grow in her heart, the shadows came back, first as nothing more than a gentle knock at the door of her mind, only to eventually become a full-blown battering ram crashing against her, threatening to tear her down.
Distraught and seeing no other way, she removed herself from the stallion and rushed towards the door. Too stressed and frightened to use the handle, she instead threw her shoulder hard into it. And stopped instantly.
The door didn’t budge. She pressed down the handle and pushed, but nothing happened. She tried pulling but with the same results. The mare shook the door as hard as she could, shouting at the top of her lungs, only to be smothered by the shadows creeping into her throat.
And just like when she was a filly, trapped in the closet, she broke down. Free fell to the floor, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. She didn’t scream for help anymore, believing Lightning to be lost already, and she was now trapped inside the room with the dead body of the one living creature she loved almost as much as her own daughter.
Inside her head, she gave up. She fell down into the embrace of darkness.
“… Fly…”
A voice reached her ears. A wheezing, strained voice.
“… Flyyy….”
The entire word was long and outdrawn, clearly pronounced through an inhale. She knew who the voice belonged to, yet it was deeper than she remembered it to be. For a short moment, she managed to push the shadows aside.
“ Quilly…?”
She answered the voice meekly; afraid of what it would answer her back. Without realizing, she had just called him the name that only his mother used. She knew Lightning didn’t want anypony else to call him that, but she couldn’t hold it in.
“… Help… Me…”
Without answering or even thinking further, she forced herself up from the floor and darted across the room towards his voice. Lightning needed her, and she didn’t offer even a single second to think about the fact that he wasn’t getting any air and probably would never wake up from his coma. He needed her.
She couldn’t see much through the darkness around her, but she knew by instinct exactly where the bed was and when to stop to prevent herself from crashing into it.
“Lightning? Lightning, what’s wrong?” Still she ignored the voice in the back of her head telling her something wasn’t right. “Listen, I can’t see you in the dark, I…”
The sound of movement and ruffling bed sheets filled the room with such immense force that Free for a second thought her eardrums would burst. As the sounds slowly faded, her heartbeat replaced them, banging hard and fast inside her chest. She could see him.
Lightning was sitting up in bed, looking back at her. His eyes were open, fixated on the Pegasus mare in front of him.
“You’re awake!” Free exclaimed through her breath. “Oh, thank Luna, you’re back!” She readied herself to jump up and embrace him, but was stopped instantly by his voice answering her.
“We’re coming for you, Fly.”
His voice was deep and raspy, nothing like the one she knew. Every word sounded like it came out in one long inhale, yet she couldn’t hear him exhale.as if his lungs were just a bottomless pit that never emptied itself completely.
“What are you talking about?” Free asked, trying to sound calm and soothing, despite her skin crawling like a thousand ants had crept in under it. She had to be strong, for Lightning’s sake if any.
“Opal and I.” We’re coming for you.”
Free’s heart stopped pounding as the building fear inside her finally won. She froze in place, unable to move, talk or even think. Lightning didn’t say anything else, and he didn’t move. After a few seconds, Free’s mind fought back against the fear, trying to push it aside and give way for reason.
“Maybe… Maybe you should lie down again…” She began cautiously, tripping over her own words as one last string of the fear refused to break. “You’ve been out for a long time, and you’re being delus-“
“I’m not delusional.”
Right after his interruption, something changed in the room, something in the atmosphere. It grew colder, like somepony had opened the window and let the storm inside. Free began to shake, both from the creeping cold and that one last bit of fear still lingering in the back of her head. Now it grew larger once again.
Suddenly, a bright light filled the room. It took Free by surprise, and she instantly turned her head away from Lightning, since it seemed to come from him. It was blindingly bright, pulsating in bleak shades of green.
The mare looked back at the awakened unicorn, and finally she gave in. A screech of fear forced itself out of her mouth as she saw her neighbors face.
It had turned grey. Not just his face, but his entire body, grey and rugged, like he’d been lying in filth and mud for a long time, letting it sink into his coat and destroy it beyond repair. His usually puffy green mane laid flat against his head and neck, bleached into a sickly color. Rotting. His horn had been broken, yet somehow the light still shot out from the jagged edge like it was still intact.
But the thing that made her scream, that made her heart threaten to burst out of her chest and her lungs to collapse, was what she saw in his face. The stallion she’d known for so long, loved and even cared for, the stallion that she’d refused to give up, didn’t have any eyes.
Instead, all she saw in the bright green light was black holes. Infinitely deep and dark, like mouths waiting to swallow her up and send her into permanent darkness. His mouth was wide open, that too no more than a black abyss.
Even though she couldn’t scream any louder than she already did, it felt like she did once she saw several black lines take form round the holes. Like black veins of blood they shot out from his eyes and mouth, moving randomly across his face.
Flying Free’s scream was silenced by the body of Lightning throwing itself upon her.
For a brief second, she could sense his smell fill her nostrils. It was a horrid aroma of something rotten, like meat left to spoil in the sun, mixed with something moist.
What little air she had left in her lungs escaped through her mouth as she landed on her back on the cold floor with Lightning on top of her, pressing her down. She tried to squirm and get away from him, but he’d placed his hooves on her forelegs, holding them down and making it impossible for the mare to move.
The only thing Free could do was to hold her eyes shut and twist her head away from him in her attempts to avoid his unnatural face. Once she realized he wasn’t doing anything other than hold her down, she slowly stopped resisting, understanding that there wasn’t any use to it anyway.
And then without warning, she felt something press against her. Deep down, a foreign object intruded, trying to push into her. She understood instantly what it was, but refused to believe it, refused to believe something like this would happen. Lightning would never do this to her.
“… You’re not my Lightning.”
She didn’t open her eyes as she spoke, didn’t want to look up and see those black holes staring back at her. Or even worse, Lightning’s normal face. Either way, both sights would rip her apart.
“This is what you want, isn’t it?” Lightning spoke in the same voice as earlier, and Free clearly felt something cold and wet drop down on her chest as he spoke. “You wanted me back. Opal and I will be back, and we’ll love you forever.”
At the word “love”, Free felt her body giving in, allowing the intruder to sink into her. She didn’t move or flinch, refusing to acknowledge what was happening, what was being done to her.
“You’re not my Lightning.”
“We’ll love you and never leave you. We’ll become one with you. We’ll sink inside; fill your entire soul with our harvest of darkness. And you’ll love us back. You’ll feel it build up inside you, and you’ll love it. You’ll embrace the shadows and let it spread within you.”
Finally, Free opened her eyes. She could see the broken body on top of her, the horrible face looking down upon her, drops of black saliva dripping from its mouth, and she could see… It was inside her.
“Your wish was to have us back. Here we are. Love us.”
The more opened her mouth and gather up enough air. With a look of anger, she opened her mouth in screamed once again. But not out of fear this time, but out of disgust, anger and resentment.
“You’re not Lightning Quill!”
The moment she closed her mouth, a new sound echoed across the room. Several loud, hard knocks on the door behind her head.
“Free? Free, what’s going on in there?!”
It was the voice of Redheart, followed by more knocks and the twisting of the handle. The door still refused to budge.
“I can’t open it!” She shouted from the outside.
Free was about to answer, but was silenced by the face of Lightning nearing her. The black holes leveled with her eyes, but all she could see was darkness.
“We’ll come for you.”
And suddenly, the light shining from the unicorn’s horn disappeared without a trace. She felt his body disappear, and her insides went back to normal as the shadows within her recoiled away from her. Everything was silent for a few seconds as Free held her breath. Then she screamed again.
“Just open the fucking door, Red! Kick it down!”
Merely seconds later, the door swung open on its hinges, moving in a half circle before it slammed into the wall and stopped. Still on her back, Free saw Redheart and a stallion in white coat standing outside the door, up-side-down thanks to the angle she saw them in.
The nurse rushed in the room, hurrying to aid her friend on the floor while the stallion made his way towards Lightning’s bed. As Redheart helped Free up on her hooves, she saw the stallion leaning down over the bed and the sleeping form of Lightning.
“Don’t get close to him, he’s not…” Free didn’t manage to finish her sentence.
The pump next to the bed came back to life with a wheezing sound, and a few seconds later the lights above their heads returned. The doctor gave Free an angry look as she went over all the cords and needles connected to Lightning.
“Just what were you thinking?” He asked with a bitter tone. “And what was all that screaming about? Have you gone completely out of your mind? We could have lost him, and all you did was scream? We have enough patients with mental disorders here as it is, and unless you want me to put you with them, I suggest you leave.”
“Fine then, I will.” Free answered the stallion bluntly as anger built up inside her. She didn’t look at him; she just turned around and headed for the door. Didn’t want to stay here anyway. Before she could exit however, she felt a hoof on her back.
“F, he didn’t mean it like that, he-“
“Don’t touch me!”
The Pegasus shied away from her friend, feeling tears welling up in her eyes. Not awaiting a response, she took off through the door and galloped down the hallway. She could hear the voice of Redheart calling her name behind her, but she didn’t stop.
She hurried to the stairs leading down into the entrance, rounding another corner at full speed, not realizing a pony appeared in front of her. They slammed into each other and Free was sent to the floor. She rolled around and moaned, more out of anger than pain.
“You okay there, ma’am?”
She looked up towards where the voice was coming from, and through her tear soaked vision she saw a tall, white stallion looking down at her, one of his hooves stretched out to help her up. She mumbled an apology as she accepted his help.
Once she got up on her hooves and wiped the tears from her eyes, she once again froze in her place. The stallion before her had white coat and a matching white mane. There was something about his eyes, how they looked straight through her and seemed to change color. And on the floor next to him, resting against one of his legs was a black briefcase.
“Haven’t we met before?” The stallion asked in a wondering tone, his speech almost perfectly articulated and coated by a strange accent.
They had, but she let her fear once again drown her. Before the stallion had time to repeat his question, she spun around and ran down the hall again. After all that had happened, seeing the same stallion she saw when Opal passed away became too much for her, and she need to get away. Anywhere, as long as it was far from this place.
Emerging in the staircase in the entrance, the constant drumming of her hooves against the steps disoriented her, and she felt herself loose balance. She fell, but managed to get herself upright before she slammed into the stairs. Running towards the exit, she could hear somepony calling out to her, wondering if everything was alright.
She paid the voice no heed and a few seconds later she found herself outside in the rain falling through the orange light of the sun rising on the horizon. Ponies around her looked at her, some with worry and others with fear. She didn’t answer when they asked if she needed any help.
Still with tears streaming down her cheeks, she strained her body to get ready. Her back tensed up as she moved muscles she hadn’t used for almost a year. She could feel her wings stretching out on either side of her, spreading out like flowers in the spring, eager to once again feel the sun.
A flap of her wings later, and Free took off into the skies.
What’s going on with you? I haven’t seen or heard from you for weeks now, and you won’t answer your door when I’ve tried to visit you. Is something wrong? Did something happen that I should know of?
Look, I know you’re still in pain after what happened to Opal, but it’s been almost a year now. You need to pull yourself out of this ditch. And I still stand behind my promise to help you get through this, but how am I supposed to help you if you won’t even talk to me anymore? If I’m going to help you get out of all this, you need to help me as well. Help me help you, please.
I don’t want to see my best friend like this anymore.
Not that I see you anymore, though. Whatever happened that day, Free? I’ve never seen you act like that before; you looked just about ready to kill anypony in your way. Did the power outage really scare you that much, or was there something more to it? Please tell me, I don’t want to be left out like this. Please just come back to the hospital; I’m sure we can work things out.
It’s almost Heartswarming Eve, and you’re not here.
Again, I understand you’re in a lot of pain, and I could never begin to imagine how you feel, but have you ever stopped and just considered the fact that you’re not the only pony with feelings? You’re not the only one that’s hurting. It pains me not knowing what’s going on with you, where you are and how you’re feeling.
And there’s been some development here you should know of, but I think it would be best if I could tell it to you face to face, rather than through this letter. It’s important, and you really should know about it before it becomes too late. I’m sure this sounds overly dramatic, but there’s really no other way of doing it.
It’s about Lightning Quill. You could say he really needs you right now. Please, don’t let the poor colt down.
He needs you now more than ever, and so do I. Don’t shut us out.
