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Pound and Pumpkin Tales 2

by Never2muchpinkie

Chapter 64: 8-9: Spring's heart

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Still blinked several times. “W-what is this?” he asked as he looked around the black void they were now in.

“This is my world,” said Mayhem.

“Your… world?” asked Spring. She spun around and looked up and down. “But there’s nothing here.”

“I create a blank spot, and then I let the people I’m with choose the paint that makes it up.” He snapped, and an orb of light came out of Spring, traveling to Mayhem.

“Hey!” Clear called out. “What did you just do to her?”

He extended his claw, taking the orb and lifting it above his head. “This is what you asked of me. This… is her heart.”

Out of the orb came boundless beams of light, and slowly a new area appeared. They were now outside in front of a house.

“See you later, Mom!” said a familiar voice. “I’m going out for flying practice.”

Spring gasped as another her opened the door.

Forest looked between the two. “Is this… a memory?”

Mayhem nodded.

He leaned back against the bed, trying to process it. It was what he had wished for, but he didn’t expect it to feel so real. He could feel a gentle breeze passing them by, and smell the usual scents around the area.

Clear and Still were both amazed as well. They didn’t think his powers were this realistic either. It really felt like they were in front of their house, and if it wasn’t for there being two of their daughter they wouldn’t suspect that they hadn’t just teleported.

Past Spring looked so happy as she began trotting away.

“Hold on!” said past Clear.

“What is it, Mom?” she asked, coming to a stop.

“Just… be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

The cheerful look faded as she rolled her eyes. “Okay. Got it.” She didn’t give her mom a chance to say anything else as she took off again.

The brightness of the world dimmed a little, and even Spring’s thoughts came to them like they were in her head.

‘Every day it’s the same thing,” she thought angrily. ‘Be careful, be careful. Like I’m some kind of idiot. I’ve been flying for two months now and they still treat me like just a little kid. I’m tired of it.’

She took off into the air about ten feet as she began practicing. Only a short while later she took notice of a high cliff in the distance, and the wheels began turning in her head.

She smirked. ‘That’s it! If they won’t acknowledge my skills then I’ll just have to prove it to them. When they see me doing just fine up there they’ll never doubt me again.’

Spring bit her lip. She could remember this perfectly, and she felt so stupid over it later.

Past Spring landed, trotting towards the cliff. She knew her limits fairly well, and she didn’t want to exhaust herself just getting to the mountain.

The parents were still having trouble with this. They were literally inside their daughters memories. It was one thing to have them transferred or even viewed in a little square, but for it to be this big and feel so real just felt impossible.

Past Spring got to the top of the cliff, about sixty feet above the ground. She looked down, and gulped at how high she was. As it was the realm of her memories the entire world grew hazy to simulate her brief dizzy spell.

She backed up a ways and got into a ready position. She was starting to have second thoughts about this. For a time she just stood there unmoving. Finally, she turned away. “This… isn’t a good idea.”

She walked a few steps, and her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, telling her to be careful. The world dimmed, to focus on her thoughts, and more echoes appeared, each one of her mother and father, always telling her to be cautious.

She growled, turning right back around as the color returned. “I’ll show them! I’ll show them I can handle it. I’m not just some stupid kid!”

Present Spring’s vision went blurry with tears. She had never been more wrong in her life.

Past Spring charged, unfurling her wings and jumping as she flapped. At first she was ecstatic. She felt a thrill of exhilaration being so high up. Usually she didn’t have such a big open area to fly around in. She played around, doing simple maneuvers like angling her body to the left to fly in a circle or angling upward and downward to gain and lose air.

She was perfectly content, enjoying the open air, when suddenly everything went wrong. She decided to try doing a loop-de-loop. As she reached the apex and was completely upside-down a strong breeze came out of nowhere, catching her wings and disrupting her concentration.

She was knocked off balance, heading down fast as she began screaming.

Even higher up Forest and Sweet Pea’s brother Specter were hanging out on a cloud chatting. The sound of his sister screaming immediately had him jumping up and off the cloud. He didn’t know why he could hear her, since it was pretty far from their house, but reasons didn’t matter to him. He was sure it was her. Whether laughing or in fear he had heard her screeching enough to know that.

He raced downwards as fast as he could, so focused on getting down to the ground he needed to take a moment to figure out where she actually was so he could head there. He spotted her and angled slightly to line up with her.

He was rapidly closing the distance between them. “Hold on, Sis!” he yelled. “I’m coming.”

The world had been rapidly pulsing like a heartbeat to demonstrate her fear, but at the words of her brother it slowed down slightly, and she fought to regain control.

Forest watched his past self grab his sister. In the moment, with adrenaline running so high, he didn’t know what happened. He could vaguely recall it. He had had to rush so fast to get her before she hit the ground that once he actually got her he had too much momentum built up. He was going to crash into the ground if he didn’t do something quick.

With the extra weight of his sister added to the mix he couldn’t properly control himself, and if he was going to crash he wasn’t going to let her get hurt, so he angled himself so he was going horizontally upside-down. He flapped his wings just three feet off the ground, holding tight to Spring.

He thought if he could just lower his momentum he could land safely without incident. He was so focused on protecting her that he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings, nor that he was headed right for the cliff Spring had jumped from.

Clear and Still were both holding onto each other. They knew what was coming.

Spring was sweating and shivering with her hooves over her ears and her eyes clenched shut.

Mayhem bit his lip, then snapped. The filly gently fell to the ground, fast asleep. He didn’t want to exclude Spring from things, but he felt it would be best for her if she blanked out for a little bit. He didn’t think she’d be able to take the trauma of experiencing her brother’s accident a second time. He felt like it might shatter her already fragile psyche, and then they’d never be able to pull her out of the darkness.

All of them could see him getting closer and closer, ignorant of what was behind him.

Forest could feel his heart beating hard in his chest, seeing his past self seconds from the accident.

None of them wanted to look directly at it when it happened, but they couldn’t block out the noise of the impact.

Forest dropped to the ground unmoving, blood coming from the wound in his head.

For a few moments Spring didn’t realize what had happened. She had been so lost in adrenaline and fear that all she knew at first was that they had landed on the ground and she was unharmed.

She was panting slightly as she got up with a sigh of relief. “I’m alive. Thank goodness.” She looked down at Forest with a smile. “Thank you, For-”

Her eyes widened as she took in his appearance, her brain not wanting to accept what she was seeing. She fell to the ground in front of him, blinking repeatedly in a vain hope that one time she’d stop seeing the illusion in front of her eyes.

Her big brother, her hero, the coolest pony she knew… dead?

The shock began to wear off and she put her hooves to her face as she screamed in agony.

Specter landed on the ground. “Forest!” he called out in horror.

Spring began to shake her brother. “Wake up! Wake up, please! Please!”

“Stop, Spring!” he called out, pulling her away before she made things worse for him.

“No! Stop! My brother! Let me go, Specter!” She struggled to get out of his grip, but he wouldn’t release her. “Forest! Forest!”

Still and Clear were both hugging each other hard, crying on each other. It had been hard enough to hear about what happened after the fact, but having to see it personally, to see the suffering of both their children, was almost too much to bear.

A mare came by to see what all the noise was, and gasped loudly as she saw the body on the ground. “We need an ambulance immediately!” said Specter. The mare nodded and took off as fast as she could.

Spring was no longer fighting against him. She turned around and hugged him, bawling her eyes out.

The stallion hugged her back. It was taking everything not to break down himself.

Time sped up until they got to the point the doctors arrived. They did a quick cursory examination before placing him on a stretcher and into the ambulance.

“Is he alive?” Specter asked hesitantly before they drove off.

“For now, yes,” said one of the stallions, “but he’s in critical condition. There’s no time to chat.” With that he got in and they took off.

Specter released her and kneeled down. “Get on.” She complied with no fuss, and they flew to her house.

When they arrived he banged on the door several times and opened it without waiting for them to come. “Hey! It’s me!”

Clear and Still came around the corner. “What’s wrong, Specter?”

“There’s been an accident. We need to get to the hospital right away.”

Clear felt a stab of panic, tilting her body to get a better look at her daughter. “What happened to her?”

“Not her. It was Forest.”

“Well, what happened to him?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“He crashed and hit his head protecting her.”

Spring felt a stab of guilt as she saw her mother’s expression, and, just as before, the world shifted slightly, growing darker.

The scene skipped ahead to them in the waiting room.

Still was pacing around back and forth, unable to sit still.

Clear was staring off into space, her mind too full to focus on anything.

Specter was sitting next to Spring. He had tried keeping her on his lap for comforting, but she chose to sit alone. She was curled up in a ball.

The feelings were so raw she thought she might break already, the entire world fading out into a black void just as it was before Mayhem worked his magic.

There was another skip, and the world came back into focus as a doctor came to them with a grim look on his face.

“He’s stable for now, but he did take a hard hit to the head. Right now his life is not in danger, but he also has not woken up. He appears to be in a deep coma because of the blunt force trauma he got from colliding with that cliff.

“Every patient is different, so I can’t tell you exactly when he might wake up.”

They went in to see him. Forest’s head was wrapped up in bandages, masking the seriousness of the wound.

Spring let out a pained wail as she stood over him. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!

“It’s my fault! It’s all my fault!”

“Spring,” said Clear, “please don’t blame yourself. It was a terrible accident. Your brother is still fighting.”

She tried to hug her daughter, but Spring pulled out of her grip, refusing to be comforted.

Time passed. Sweet Pea’s parents came in after Specter left to tell them about Forest’s accident.

They expressed sympathy and sadness for him. Spring’s parents gratefully accepted their words, but just like with her own parents Spring couldn’t.

The more sympathy that was expressed to her the more her world seemed to dim.

Spring accompanied her parents for the first few visits, but she couldn’t bring herself to visit after that. She couldn’t stand seeing him like that. It just made her feel worse.

They saw the nightmares she suffered, feeling the weight that was slowly accumulating on her.

It cut to her laying on her bed, the world dark as her thoughts became prevalent. Above her were memories of ponies she knew. Besides her family and Sweet Pea’s family was a bunch of ponies Mayhem didn’t know. Twilight thought she vaguely recognized some of them, though she didn’t know them personally.

The common theme of all of them was that each one was kind and sympathetic. “I’m so sorry for your pain.” “It must hurt so bad. I’m sorry you have to go through this.” “I heard about your brother’s accident. Hang in there.”

The world went completely black, all the scenery disappearing as the word “why” began popping up all over the place. “Why?” she said. “Why is everyone being so nice to me?

“Don’t they understand that it’s my fault? Why won’t they hate me?” She pulled the blanket around her, burying herself underneath it. “Why do they even look at me like I’m not a monster?”

It was another stab to the heart for Clear and Still. There was so much they didn’t know was going on in the background of their daughter’s life. They knew she was spending more time alone. They did coax her out every once in a while, but they just thought she needed that time alone to process her feelings. They thought she was just grieving, and thought it would be wrong to try to force cheer into her life.

It skipped again to another day.

“Mom and Dad are at the hospital again,” Spring said emotionlessly as she sat on her side on her bed. “They spend so much time there now. It’s not like being at the hospital is going to make Forest wake up any quicker, but they still keep going anyway.

“I guess it’s not surprising. Whatever they can do to avoid me.”

That made them tense. “Why?” said Clear, though she knew the memory couldn’t hear it. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to see me either.”

Mayhem tensed. He knew those feelings.

“They always treat me nice when they get home. I guess after spending so much time cursing me at work and at the hospital that they get it out of their systems, so all they have left is kind words when they see me in person.”

Clear went weak-kneed as Still put a hoof to his forehead. Was that how their daughter really felt?

More memories played, but it was just more of the same. Spring masked her true feelings, pretending to be okay while thinking her parents were similarly pretending. They’d see a scene where Clear or Still would tell Spring they loved her, and on the outside Spring would return the sentiment. However, above Spring’s head would be her true thoughts, saying things like “You don’t really mean that” or “How can anybody love trash like me?”

There were more nightmares, more self-loathing, and her heart just grew heavier and heavier in her despair. It was just an endless daily loop of pain.

“Please!” Clear finally said, tears streaming down her eyes. “I can’t watch this anymore.”

Mayhem snapped, and the flow of memories stopped.

Still looked at his daughter asleep on the floor, his heart breaking. “I didn’t know,” he said miserably. “All these feelings she was hiding inside…”

Clear was quietly sobbing on her husband. “We got so caught up in our own pain that we weren’t there for her when she needed us the most!

“Sweet Pea’s family was so understanding and always took care of our daughter when we were at the hospital, but Spring was right. We couldn’t do anything for Forest but wait. We should have been there for the child that was in despair and we could actually help.”

Tears slowly came down Twilight’s face. “Flurry,” she said quietly, thinking of her niece. Though the source of their pain was different the two of them suffered from a common thread. They were both small children holding in a pain too great for them to handle, and feeling unable to speak about those feelings.

Unlike Flurry, who didn’t have an obvious source of pain, everyone knew that Spring was suffering because of her brother’s accident. However, because of that obvious pain they missed the deeper pain she was hiding beneath it.

“So,” said Forest, his expression heavy, “this is what I’ve been missing out on all this time. Even if it was necessary to understand a part of me wishes I hadn’t seen it. “

“So, then,” said Still. “What do we do? How do we fix this? What’s going to save her from this pain?”

“Um…” Clear took a deep breath as she rose off her husband and wiped her eyes. “I know this isn’t exactly… good, but couldn’t we just… erase her memories of that incident? Could you do that for her?”

Before Twilight could say anything Mayhem said strongly, “Not a chance! I could erase the thoughts in her mind, sure, but it would amount to nothing. When I took my friends memories away they were still able to remember each other in their hearts. There are things that go beyond memories.

“If I took her memory away of her brother’s accident I’d have to change her memories of the next three months as well, and that’s too long. I could change the source of his accident to just being that he lost control while practicing a trick or something, then she wouldn’t blame herself, but then she’d just feel some deep sense of unease she couldn’t explain the source of whenever she looked at him. She wouldn’t really be any better off.

“And even if I could make it so that it’s completely gone from both her mind and her heart it’s still wrong to alter her memories like that. The past is there to learn from. If I forgot what I did to my friends it wouldn’t help me. My mommy told me to keep the feelings of fear I had deep in my heart so that if I ever tried to do the same thing again I’d remember that pain and stop myself. It would be wrong to stop her from learning too.

“If she won’t accept love then we just have to keep reaching out our hooves, or paw in my case, until she does.”

Twilight gave him a warm smile. She hadn’t interacted with Mayhem much, but it seemed like every time she saw him he had made progress in leaps and bounds towards understanding friendship. He had made a giant leap backwards when he got bored, but he had come out of it with new knowledge he was trying to pass on. She hadn’t had to speak a word, but Mayhem had said more or less exactly what she would have said.

Clear sighed. “You’re right. I already knew it was wrong to ask. Now that we know her true feelings it would be immoral to take such an extreme measure without even talking to her first.”

“Well,” said Still, “it’s not going to get any easier from here. Let’s not put it off any longer.”

Mayhem nodded. “That’s what I want to hear. No matter how long it takes or how painful it is we’re going to rescue her from the darkness.”

Next Chapter: 8-10: Break through the darkness Estimated time remaining: 10 Hours, 33 Minutes
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