The Unwanted One

I have simple questions with an annoying rate lately, on which I haven’t got answers. Yesterday it was “Who am I?”, today it’s “Where am I?” An unknown room, where I have awoken, reminds a lavish and kind of pompously formed bedroom: a high ceiling with ornate luster, paintings on walls, huge windows with heavy drapes, surely not cheap furniture and vast, in my opinion, for like five or six persons bed, on which I, actually, rest. By the scenery conclusion suggests itself — I’m, allegedly, in Celestia’s palace. There’s no another obvious theory, so the first one would be the current hypothesis. Feelings… I lie on the left side that is not injured. Softly, warmly, widely — head, against tradition, do not lean against the back of the bed, legs don’t hang from the edge. Injured side and legs are keeping me in touch about them by unpleasant aching pain, but surprisingly, not a very painful one. The side is not aching when I inhale, but there’s no desire to move the leg, don’t want to hurt it — it’s almost normal, let it be like this. Hunger and thirst, surprisingly, are not being felt by me, albeit the body is not fed minimum since yesterday. Feeling sluggish — it’s like I slept well, but I’m still dead and curved. There’s no even a slightest wish to get up, to do something, to go somewhere. “To get up”, ha… Where must I get up to now? Something tells me, that I don’t have job anymore — who needs dead employees now? I got sacked for sure. A dead body rots as does the collective… They don’t appreciate me, can you understand?! Yeah, not funny at all somehow… Yesterday there was no time to think about what’s happening around me, and now, in silence and rest, thoughts are not waiting to show themselves. The moment of my own death has not stored in memory, I can remember only the wave of heat and my last thought: “A bright finale, isn’t…” What was it? A fire? An explosion? God damn, does it even matter now?! I got everything left behind me, everything, that was important and dear. Friends, parents — I don’t even remember their names now! For example: I remember how we got in a car crash with my friend, and after making sure that all the formalities are done, we were on the move again, but it was crawling with a destroyed car without headlights back in town, during evening. We were discussing what had happened, talking about something to boost the mood… And that’s all. Not the friend’s face, nor name, nor the talk itself — I remember absolutely nothing! This is bullshit, how is it possible? All my life left there… Where is nothing left of me. That’s all. I swallowed a lump in my throat with an effort. The chills gone down the spine because of the realization, that the life back there is over, and there’s no return to it. When all bridges are burned, the only way to go is forward, yes? Damn it, what if I don’t want to go anywhere?! I have there… I have… I shivered from my own teeth’s creak. I sleep six feet below there! It’s over! This topic is closed! I shook my head abruptly, like trying to force unpleasant thoughts out of it and with a struggle turned my attention to another topic. For one thing, let’s get a clear picture about the situation I’m in. What do we have now? Shallow analysis is showing a pretty pessimistic result: firstly — the leg is broken, secondly — I’m in captivity. I chuckled joylessly because of the last thought: by looking at the surrounding, it’s not a captivity at all. No gloomy wet dungeons with rusted lattice and dark guardians, no wooden barracks with barbed wire and machine gun posts. Yeah, it’s strange, but am I against it? While I was unconscious, they could’ve thrown me in a cell with fetters on my legs, send me to the Moon, just in case. Reputation of the former owner of the body, I suppose, was not the best example of a good one. By the way, about her. Who am I now? Or even this — what am I? I associate myself with a human and think about myself in masculine gender. I have a human memory, but strangely specific. I remember facts, I remember some feelings and emotions, but absolutely do not remember any of the personal information. But the memory constructs our own “ego”. Based on it, we make decisions, we keep them in mind, make conclusions, and by relying on it, we grow as a personality. In other words, if I hadn’t done it in that way, but another, there could have been another me! With different memory, different conclusions, and, as a result, with different personality! And now my memory is like a goddamn sieve! How much me is me without this memory? Me is still me or not anymore?! Damn it! I understand absolutely nothing! Because of too intellectual thoughts, a headache came. Stop. Inha-ale Exha-ale. I should end with these thoughts about memory, last thing I need is an outburst, I’m on the edge already… Another question, demanding brightening — Nightmare Moon. Am I alone in this body or her personality is somewhere here too? If yes, then why she doesn’t manifest herself? Does not want to? Cannot? Is it possible that my theory is right, and her identity couldn’t hold much longer in the exile? But did she disappear for good? How much left of her if no? Does she recognize herself or there’s only some emotions and memories? Did she even have a complete personality? By Luna’s memoirs it’s hard to say. And what should I do with all this? Nothing but questions! I abandoned all hope in trying to puzzle out the depths of my mind that became strange and unclear, and decided to switch over to the body. It would’ve been a different matter, if it was easy and understandable, but no-o! From the fry pan into the fire: I’m a mare. This word is remarkable not only for its gender, but also for its species. I simply don’t have a clue how this body functions, even on the primitive common level! I have wings now — how to move them? How to fly with them? And what bad or good can happen with them and because of what? Strangely enough, I panicked partly because of nothing. It was not a big deal to move the wings as I stopped to concentrate all my force on the process. Stands to reason in fact: brain with trained-and-tested reflexes is still within the body. Now this deletes a mass of problems: there’s no danger of learning how to walk again. There’s no possibility to try it, but I’m sure, that when I stand up, I’ll not tie myself up in a knot with the legs. The rest is a dark forest. What I can eat, how long should I sleep, how high can I fly, what and why can I get sick… Generally speaking, on an opportunity base, I should definitely find a book about anatomy, where it would be written in easy and short way. In your dreams, pal… Returning to the question of gender… No, I’m not, hell with it! Enough of these funny thoughts for today! Of course, this question should be solved sooner or later, there’s no way out of a submarine, but I won’t do this now, out of harm’s way. I have more than a lot of reasons to be sad today, so let’s give it a rest. The mood, that wasn’t on a high level even at the moment of awakening, now, after all of these thoughts, was straightly dark: I know only a bit about myself, wounded, have misery rights and don’t have a clue about what is going to happen next. With me, and in general. Distracting from the thoughts, I started to accurately examine the room. Turning my attention to the paintings — landscape pictures and a pair of still lifes, but there’s no portraits amongst them. I like these snowy mountains, but this sunset above a lake on the near painting is too sketchy for my taste. Brushworks are too big. I die for a second, while staring into the painting with gaze. Since when I can distinguish separate brushworks on a painting from a distance of around 3 meters? While a human I could barely see the “E” without glasses, and this is unbelievable! “There you go, actually, it’s not that bad!” I smile to myself crookedly. Nevertheless, an advantage for the new body. After the paintings, my glare fell at the clock, that was hanging on the wall. What time it is? “15:48” — automatically noted brain. Carefully gazing into the squiggle on the clock face. Human memory stubbornly saying, that these aren’t familiar for me, but if I’d stop thinking about it and would just look — it strangely becomes very understandable. I hope that it would be the same with letters. Continuing to look around, I note a sheet of paper on a small table near the bed. Strange, I didn’t see it before, it’s under my nose. Lean to it closer. A note? Interesting. Now we will know if I understand letters or don’t… “Nightmare Moon, you have a fissure in your ribs (pain of it can irradiate into your wing, but everything is normal with the wing itself) and a fracture of leg. I handled everything and connected the bones, and if there is no complications, you will be on your feet after a week. Will stop by during the day. Celestia.” Text shapes into understandable words and sentences with ease, despite the awkwardly-looking letters, which human memory, like the numbers, declines to understand as known for me. An interesting effect. I have an impression, that I have two parallel memories, that intercommunicate with each other… Damn it, I’m dumb! Nightmare’s memory literally dropped at me yesterday, this is why I know all these squiggles and dashes! Yeah, it was an interesting movie… Not without a reason it is said, that the most bitter enemies are clashed relatives. In fact — everyone did a good job. Celestia, who went with her head into politics and ruling the country, had been almost ignoring Luna when it comes to talking, except for work, and Celestia thought that Luna should be happy that there’s no much of job to do, and don’t get on the elder sister’s nerves with her own “non-essential problems”. Was it really that hard to find two-three hours during evening and just carefully listen to Luna, hug her and say: “Everything will be okay”? No, it’s a good thing, that country and its citizens are important for a Queen, but abandoning the only relative you had in the whole world because of the job so straightly… no, I can’t understand that. Luna, in her turn — just flawless “Great job you did!” Complains all the time that she’s not important to her sister, while neglecting that she doesn’t really need a sister either! For once in the year I’d have liked her coming to Tia not with complaints and reproaches, but with a cup of coffee and a piece of cake! And she had rational thoughts in fact, but she didn’t mature to it, minding her own insults and jealousy. However, it’s easy to judge, I’ve never been in situation like this, if leftovers of my memory can be trusted. But enough about the sisters. I have to thoughtfully examine legacy — it’s not a bad thing to get one memory instead of two and get rid of this doubleness. “It seems both, that I do know and don’t”. Besides, maybe, I’ll be able to find answers on all the questions, that have been devouring me after awakening. Concentrating, trying to remember something from the presence on the Moon, but instead of simple memories, surprisingly, I fall into the past once again: thoughts, feelings, emotions are overwhelming me… I’m not remembering — I’m living it once again that was in the past! I can’t think about anything — all force is going to not fall into the action, like in the last time.

…

In the first hundreds of years Luna and Nightmare had been working together. They even could be named friends: they had been supporting each other. Luna had helped Nightmare solidify knowledge that were from Luna’s memory, but she couldn’t use them on practice. It was especially hard with emotions: being, in a big part, a product of negative emotions, Nightmare had a hard time understanding the concept of positive ones. There was a revealing moment, when Luna was paralyzed of a question: “What is happiness?” What can you answer on this question? “Happiness — it’s when you’re joyful”? How to describe happiness to someone who never felt that? But Luna, to her credit, tried her best, although her actions didn’t give any evident success. Nightmare, in her turn, repeatedly dragged Luna from assaults of melancholy and self-recrimination. They had been developing spells for creating a proper building material from the Moon soil and painting spells for it together, for the purpose of building a huge castle amongst gray dusty wastelands. After this they did bas-reliefs, statues and stained-glasses in the castle, and they were especially loved by Luna. For Nightmare it wasn’t a very interesting thing, but as long as the process of building and decorating the castle helped Luna to take mind off dark thoughts and get back to the main task with fresh force, Nightmare was not standing by. And then, they got back to this very main task: Luna and Nightmare Moon were trying to find a way out together, any possibility of escaping from here, from the Moon. Endless brainstorms, magic experiments, constant attempts to do with their prison, anything! But it all was in vain: as it turned out, there’s absolutely no way to fly on the Moon, and teleportation more than a few meters was impossible due to the overfilled magic background of the Moon. But the most horrifying of all was that Luna couldn’t control her Moon anymore! Her dream-walking ability didn’t work as well: she just couldn’t find a way to the world of dreams! In result, the only thing that could be understood from all of these attempts was that the defense of prison isn’t endless and sometime will fade by itself, but it’s impossible to damage it from inside. Elements of Harmony left no loopholes. In the end, constant failures gradually created a discord amongst Luna and Nightmare Moon. Fruitless attempts to find a way out and impossibility of Luna’s special powers to be casted buried her in deep depression and soul searching, and the result of it was a conclusion: “It’s all my fault!” Nightmare, while trying to cheer up Luna in her common way, like: “There’s no time to melt down! We have to prepare our retaliation! We have lost the battle, but not the war! The Queen will have that belongs to her, and we will rule Equestria together under the cover of endless night!” Surprisingly ran into a harsh reply. Luna lost her grip and said a lot to Nightmare, and the fact that these words were mental didn’t make it less painful. “Luna, why… why you’re saying it in that way? We are friends…” These are the only words that stunned Nightmare could manage to say. Her emotions during that moment reeked of… It is not even grief or soreness — it was crush of the ideal. This is where I surprisingly understood that Nightmare treated Luna as Luna herself treated Celestia until their dissension and events after that — like elder sister, who nearly replaced her mother. “Friends with whom? With a reflection in a mirror? You are nothing but a collection of negative emotions that by some irony has been given a semblance of consciousness! This beautiful landscape around — this is your achievement, monster! I would never have gone against my own sister if your words had not pushed me to do it!” Luna spat out with fury. By taking control of the body from stunned and terrified Nightmare, she spelled something powerful from the magic of dreams: something hit head like a hammer, there was a flash before eyes… when the light show came to an end, control of the body swiftly moved back to Nightmare. She didn’t feel hidden presence of Luna’s mind anymore nearby — her body was only hers… But it didn’t really matter anymore. She was beaten and destroyed. For the first time ever, her own tears ran down her cheeks, not Luna’s, and pain and emptiness flew in her soul, like a big piece of it was cut.

…

I dashed away tears with anger and threw my head back, trying to keep down tears. Fuck me, Luna, I beat the hell out of you when I’ll meet you! Hoof in the face, so that your teeth will fly like a fan! Nightmare’s emotions in this memory are breaking my heart apart. Her memory and feelings said, that Luna was for her something like mother and elder sister rolled into one, and she even took care of her in her own way, how she could. When a creature, that was created from hate and fury, loves you and takes care of you — it shows something! Yes, Nightmare hardly could be characterized as gentle and fuzzy, but Luna was, practically, everything to her! And the most cruel part of it is that Nightmare didn’t understand what was the reason of that reaction. Hardly a surprise that simple and deadly thought “Luna, why?!” occupied her mind for very long. What Luna did? As far as I understood later, she buried her personality in something like a stasis or suspended animation, simply turned herself off for the rest of the exile. Nightmare tried everything she knew trying to achieve Luna’s attention, but it all was in vain. Magic of dreams was known to her only by Luna’s memory, but she didn’t know how to use it on practice, and learning it herself via fragmentary memories was out of her reach. After several months of unsuccessful attempts, Nightmare dropped the idea of reaching Luna and had entirely fallen into heavy and hopeless depression. Nightmare Moon was left alone. Alone on a desert piece of dusty rook from which you cannot escape. But there were around six hundred years until the freedom… I shook my head abruptly, banishing deep memories. I’m not sure if I want to watch more. There are six hundred years of full solitude in the privacy of your own mind and gray rock. Maybe there are answers for my questions about who I have become, but is it worth it? On another side — these are my memories now. Is it wisely to have white blots in your knowledge of yourself? You never can tell what surprises can be thrown by my new body, and I will not know about them, because I missed something important. In the end, it’s not bad to know more about progenitor. To learn from her mistakes for my own sake. I sighed deeply, like before a jump into water. Here goes nothing.

…

I looked with stupor at the gnawed pillow that is wet from my tears. I suppressed the hysterics and calmed myself down only ten minutes ago. Fucking hell, if only I had knew what I was going to see — no way I’d have agreed to do that. Except from profanity in my head, there was not a very correct by its meaning, but very correct by its soul, phrase: “The sleep of reason produces monsters”. With all my force to not deep into emotions and to not live it through once again in full-time, to examine memory only cursory, I still determined that even death is better than an exile to the Moon. And, to my own fear, I have understood, that if this perspective is real — I’ll crush my own brains against a wall without a doubt. One time I saw a history of a guy, who got tired of being in a city and decided to live sometime in solitude in taiga. He occupied a hunter’s house and just calmly lived by himself. He hunted, fished, chopped wood, delighted in stars. Only after a month and a little bit more he started to lose his sanity: phantom strange noises, and even further — visible pink elephants. It all ended with a hospital, good enough for him — no serious consequences. Two months in solitude — and it was enough! And if no one had come just in time — it’d have been a lost cause, the man would have been lost. But here are six hundred years of loneliness. Full and absolute. And Nightmare understood, that her personality is being destroyed, she understood, she felt that disintegration! It’s very, very scary, when you feel, that your mind moves away like a wet paper. A cold, sticking fear pierces me only because of the mere feeling of it. But Nightmare, nevertheless, tried to keep herself busy and to take mind off solitude by any method — continued finding a way of escape, development of spells and experiments with them on the castle, which she had been building with Luna in the old days, preparing of plans when she returns, building of her own fortress and art… The last one is something. Sum up undeniable availability of a talent and a drip of magic of illusions with overwhelming depression and progression of disintegration of personality and you’ll get what the only soul on the Moon had decorated her dark palace with. It was openly terrifying from the statues, bas-reliefs and paintings that Nightmare Moon tried to have fun with. …And this — one of my old work — “Sight” Light-gray, almost white sand is everywhere, horizon-to-horizon, as far as the eye can see. Bottomless cosmos with numerous stars. In its background, there’s a hint of a silhouette of a black alicorn, standing with her back to the viewer and looking into the infinity of the cosmos with endless sparks of stars. I look at her for a period — and suddenly immersed in the picture, and a feeling emerged, that it is not the alicorn, who is looking at the starry sky, but the endless Abyss, which is eying on a pathetic bug with her countless eyes. You cannot run from this gaze, you cannot hide — the eyes of the Abyss are everywhere around you! They’re looking! Waiting for something! Glimmer in the darkness, narrowly spy on their prey! Abyss are quivering above your head, smiling, like a predator, with her eyes! She’s everywhere! I shivered and swallowed a lump in throat with force. Her drawings give goosebumps, but it’s only the beginning! During the last hundred years, Nightmare, who had lost her last pieces of sanity for good, drew hell of a… DO NOT REMEMBER! I shook my head, trying to banish absolutely needless memories and to force myself to turn my thoughts on something different. It went really crappy — there was a full disarray in my soul after all I have seen. In the great scheme of things, I must think out a talk with Celestia, if she wanted to come by, make a tactic, my policy… But even this talk mattered little for me, and its result — I’ll be pleasured with anything expect new exile. I felt sorry for Nightmare Moon, with so little of her mind left. She, as possible, tried to save her, but alas… It was especially distinctive by her actions after return: she straightforwardly followed her initial plans — take revenge on Celestia and make an eternal night. Afterwards, she wasn’t able to overrun the Elements of Harmony because of the exhaustion by a spell, that exiled Celestia on the Sun, her well-worn mind tried to overcome them with experience, but wasn’t able either. And then the strike of the Elements woke up Luna of stasis, and at the same time, brought me here, while throwing us in different bodies. And this is how I came to the question, that was amongst many others and felt like a burden for me all this time. To the question, which already traditionally, never had an answer: “Why am I here?” There were no ideas. Saving Nightmare from loneliness on the Moon is already late. It was the same with acting differently immediately after the exile… Nightmare Moon — and me, as well — shouldn’t be here at all. But I’m here. And I’m absolutely unwanted here, an useless element, because who and why in peaceful, pastoral Equestria, needs Nightmare Moon with a soul of not the very best man?

So, exhausted with these sad thoughts, I fell asleep, almost unnoticed by myself.