You raise your head, fighting to stop the world from spinning. She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t love you.

She hates you.

The glimmering, silver crescent moon on her breastplate sinks into view, blurred by your pooling tears. “You don’t mean that, do you sweetie?” you croak.

She dips her face to your level, so that every glint of every secret facet of her flawless sea-green irises is crystal clear. “Of course I hate you. I have done nothing but treat you with contempt—contempt you unquestionably deserve—since I arrived in this joyless world. How could you fail to perceive this? Is the link I created not powerful enough?”

You draw the sleeve of your hoodie across your eyes, making as if to dry your tears. You’re happy just to hide from the disgust in her gaze.

“I … I did know. I just didn’t want to believe it. I ignored it because … because you’re the best thing in my life. You’re the one who keeps me going. You’re the one I think about when I have to sit through lunch break at Taco Hell while the guys from work fart their guts out, and I have to shit too because it’s Taco Hell, and I have to go back to an endless line of assholes that just want free stuff, every day, all day. Knowing that you’ll be there when I get home after dealing with all those people makes it all OK.”

“I truly have done this for you?” you hear her ask.

You rise, kneeling against the wall. “Yeah, you got it. So OK. So you don’t want to be my waifu. That’s a little weird. I get it. But if you won’t do that, couldn’t you …” you swallow hard and open your eyes. “Couldn’t you be my mom?”

She recoils, but says nothing. For a while she stares at a spot on the wall above your head, a slow smile creeping up her lips. The sight dulls the raging pain in your arms and face and chest. For the first time maybe, just maybe you’d done something right.

She let slip a short laugh, and your heart laughs with her.

“Come, little precious,” she calls, pushing up into the air with a single stroke of her giant wings, “fly with me! I shall teach you to soar like the wind.” She climbs higher, far above the roof of the restroom building. When she passes the top of the tallest of the trees she turns, waiting for you to follow.

It doesn’t matter that physics, luck and your own fat ass are against you. Luna’s giving you a second chance. A chance to build a new relationship. You’re going to be her loving, dutiful son. When she wants you to clean your room, you’re going to get out the Febreeze and Windex and make it shine. When she tells you to go to the grocery store and pick up a half pound of sugar beets for her supper, you’re going to hop on your Schwinn bike with the biggest Beaver Cleaver grin and pedal like your life depends on it. When she yells at you to do your homework because she doesn’t work her hooves to the bone so you can be a lazy good-for-nothing bum when you grow up, you’re going to whip out your protractor and calculator and pinpoint where that frictionless projectile is going to land to within millimeters.

You lift up the bottom of your hoodie—that will be your wings—and run for takeoff. When you’re below where Luna is hovering, you jump and start flapping. When that doesn’t work, you flail your arms, not caring about the searing pain the bone fragments grinding in the fractures are causing you. You will ascend. You will show your mother that you will be an obedient son.

Of course, you won’t, because you’re a broken slob who can’t run a hundred yards without wheezing, let alone fly. You double over, sucking air like a vacuum cleaner.

Down Luna floats, landing by your side to arch her wing over you. “There there, my child, not to worry. I shall help you learn magic. Cast this spell to light the darkness, and I shall show you how to make your star grow brighter and brighter.”

A soft blue light buds at the tip of her horn. She holds it there, waiting for you to do the same.

Not sure what to do, you grab a stick from the grass and hold it against your forehead. What is it they always say in the movies? If you concentrate, if you clear your mind and think only happy thoughts … if you think hard enough about the light …

Nothing happens. The director does not decide to tell the FX crew to add a light at the end of the stick in production. Nobody even runs in from off-camera to give you a cigarette lighter. You throw the stick to the ground. Plan B. Who would have been able to make a light appear? Aleister Crowley? What religion was he? Maybe you just need the right word of power, like in Harry Potter.

“Illuminus … Illuminarus … Luminus … damn it …”

Luna withdraws her wing, smiling. “Hush, little one, it is alright,” she chides. “Come, run with mother. She will help you grow big and strong.” She rears, then dashes away across the field.

OK. You can do this. All you need to do is catch up with her. Show her you belong with her as her own. You pick yourself up once more and sprint after her.

It takes you less than two strides to realize that you have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching her. She’s already fifty yards away at the very least, her mane and tail flowing behind her like the boughs of a dark, starry willow. Their ecstatic scent still is still lingering in the air.

You need them. You need to snuggle into them and fall asleep, because it’s nighttime that’s what a good foal would do. And that’s why you keep running, until your legs go numb, and your throat burns, and you fall to the ground exhausted.

The grass is cool against your bruised, knotted cheek. There’s got to be something you can do to prove yourself to her. She wants you as her foal. She feels sorry for you, and wants to help you become noble like she is.

There’s a shudder in the earth, getting stronger and stronger in a steady rhythm. It’s Luna. She’s coming back, and this time you’re going to show her.

Something mutes the noise of the tree frogs. It’s Luna’s muzzle, inches from your ear.

“Do you know why you cannot do these things? Do you know why you cannot be my offspring?”

You sit up, eager to answer her questions. To prove you’re not worthless.

“Uh … because I’m not good enough? Because I’m not a horse?” You smile, awaiting your next challenge.

“BECAUSE I CANNOT BEAR FOALS YOU IMBECILE!”

You cover your ears, crumpling back to the ground under the force of her thunderous voice.

“That is the price!” she shouts, stomping her hoof just a hair’s breadth from your face. “That is the consequence of immortality, and it has been a constant sorrow for me for longer than you can imagine. Another thing you would have known had you paid the least bit of attention. And now you have added insult to injury, dredging up centuries of heartache I felt, watching other mares know the joy of family and motherhood. Thank you so much for reminding me of my shame. My barrenness. Were you my foal I would abandon you. I would lead you to where the timberwolves crack the trees to mark their domain, and fly off to watch them devour you. Neigh! Abandon you I shall. I depart now for Canterlot, with news that you and your kind are beyond hope. Since you have given your best efforts to the extent that your meager abilities allow, I have decided not to take the full measure of revenge that you so foolishly have merited. Be thankful. Farewell.”

She turns, and in a rapid flash of blue light, her saddlebags appear on her back. Without another word she stalks off toward the deep night of the forest.

The farther away she gets, the more you feel the spirit link stretch and grow weaker, like a long rubber band being pulled to the breaking point. She’s fading. Her thoughts, her smouldering anger that you’d cherished each and every moment since she’d come into your life, her growing awareness of your world, all of that shrinks to a tiny point, too small to know or feel.

You struggle to your knees, reaching out to her vanishing silhouette.

Author's Notes:

And there we have it. For anyone not interested in the bonus gore chapter and epilogue, please consider this the end of the story. Hope you got one or two laughs out of it.

Inspired by the Doing Hurtful Thing to Your Waifu chart for Luna, and possibly challenge #20 on the Mortal Kombat 9 Challenge Tower. And maybe a little bit of Tim and Eric's B$M.