outside the manor
by the silent symphony
First published
the ballad of how one's life crossed paths with many others in a seemingly harmless place
the garden was a place for him to stay, a place that seemed alive in its own mind. next to the rigid manor, he decided to do something about his second chance at life, or perhaps his procrastination of ending it, to at the very least make an attempt at helping theirs.
he does not know yet. do not let this into the wrong hands.
prologue
There once was a bright red pony, his name is forgotten to almost everyone, even those who know the story well, but most just call him the lumberjack. As you may guess, his profession was just as his title stated, he chopped down the tallest and most hefty trees, to make such pleasantries such as furniture and houses, he cleared thickets and otherwise chopped his way through several forests along the countryside.
It was his favorite pastime, he loved his job more than any other thing in the world, who could tell why really, for it seemed such a mundane task of repeatedly beating his sharpened metal weapon into the roots of a fresh tree, but he seemed to find satisfaction in doing it as though he could be able to do it until the end of time.
The trees would bend over in the rain and mourn their lost siblings that had been prematurely taken for the impatience of the lumberjack. And you could almost hear their cries as the wind blew and whipped across the forest, creaks and snaps would be a splitting headache of guilt to the normal pony, but the lumberjack seemed to not notice, he kept on his path.
If the lumberjack would have known earlier what he had inadvertently caused, he possibly would have been able to stop what was undoubtedly coming. He may have gone home, he may have had to break the news of unemployment or employment elsewhere to his family and watch as their tired and sympathetic faces looked upon his.
But no, he was too far in, he was too deep into the forest. He was out cutting lumber ever since 6 that morning, he had decided not to leave a trail or go with any of his co-workers, for he suspected he could find his way back to the dirt path on his own, as time and directional experience had shown. But the day was long and he kept working.
He forgot about lunch as that trance of muscle memory and repetition lulled him into a sense of belonging and numbness to time. He didn't notice how long he had been gone until the setting sun hit his eye with a sharp crimson ray as it peeked behind a storm cloud that it had been hiding behind for the past few hours. He stopped and looked up at the sky, the clouds were red, and the golden streaks of dying daylight lines the horizon.
But the lumberjack for once did not stop to admire the sunset for he knew that he was late and should have been home by then, he didn't want to become food for the timberwolves after all. So he turned his attention to his surroundings which he had ironically not been paying the closest attention to in the past day.
It was a large circle of stumps, and he stood in the direct center of it, there were small paths out to the sides, but he did not remember which one he had taken to get there, it was all a fog. It was like a dream a few minutes after you had woken up, the longer he tried to recollect what happened and what he did that day, the harder it was to remember anything at all. He looked around him once again, it seemed to become more alien by the minute.
He just decided to try a path a random, and if it didn't lead back to the road then he would come back and try another one until he had eventually found his way out. But he didn't realize that the forest wasn't on his side if it ever was. As he walked down a corridor of aspens and pines he heard a whisper, if that even, it felt like something tugging at his soul that needed to tell him something, to show him something. He followed.
It led him off the path and down into a small clearing that was filled with damp bushes and colorful flowers that were closing as the sun grew more distant. He stood in the center and looked around, the tugging had stopped. He was about to return to the path until it happened.
He knew.
Something had shown him the eventual fate of objects and ponies that he had somewhat directly caused by his actions, he knew that he had done an irreversible action that would affect so many lives of those that he in no way was a part of or would ever meet save for the afterlife. He saw the pain, he looked back and it all became clear and somewhat distorted by the immense pain at the same time.
The lumber company did not need the vast amounts of wood that he had reaped that day. They would use it for something else, they would give it to someone else. The forest would be scarred for the foreseeable future, and nobody would ever know what he saw.
No one could ever felt what he felt at that moment, which must have been divine intervention, a conscious being put into his skull, a reckoning. And in that very moment he felt overwhelmed, he could not bear the immense guilt he knew he would be made to have. Too many souls he saw, too many lost childhoods he saw. That lumber would be used in the construction of a building, a three-story manor, those mahogany logs would be carved into a door that sealed the fate for so many.
He did not see all, but just enough to overpower his mind at that given time, he felt as if he could not move on, he could not walk another step. He felt the overwhelming urge to fling his axe at himself, to be the next victim in the cycle that he had unknowingly created, and hoped to be the last, but sadly he was mistaken.
The lumberjack then used the axe on himself. Before he did it, a part of him wanted to hold back, a part wanted to be responsible, but the other half would rather end it all then be held accountable and even worse, witness what would unfold. He fell backward as the steel cut through his ribcage like snapping twigs. The thud of the landing jolted the weapon out of his chest cavity and it hit the mossy ground softly.
One would think the blood of a red pony would be hard to notice, although it was a dark red, it flowed through his fur and onto the ferns and undergrowth of the forest, staining everything in its path the same shade of scarlet as itself, and eventually a sickening brown.
The lumberjack's last sensations were the grass and dandelions nestling his back as he looked up at the sunset one last time. His eyes stayed still as tears seemed to solidify and leave his expression to capture so vividly his last emotion, better then the best poet could describe.
The body was found the next day by his co-worker, who called the lumberjack's wife and child down to break the news and bury him. They say that his body sprouted with flowers, and foliage surrounded him as if nature had made a small shrine for the one who most thinks he tormented. But if you listen carefully, you can still hear the trees crying all the same for the lumberjack as they did for their brethren, as if they also knew what he had seen, or what he left behind.
01
He woke up to a fuzzy black ceiling and dark surroundings, his door being knocked on violently. So he decided to emerge from his bed and see who was at the door, but strangely enough, he couldn't make out where he was, and his memory was foggy.
When his feet touched the ground they were coldly greeted by an inch of water, on the carpet where his slippers should have laid was a still layer of icy seawater.
He opened the door to find a somewhat short brown pony, with a curled mustache and sporting a red suit and cap. He now remembered where he was; he was on a ship, on a voyage home from a failed business trip, he wondered why he was so rudely awakened at such an hour in the night by this attendant, but he didn't wonder for long, for when he greeted the man, he said:
"Hello sir, good evening. I am regretful to inform you that our great ship is sinking."
"What?" He replied, taken slightly aback by this proclamation, "Why is the ship sinking? and am I going to die to the hands of an angry sea?"
"Sir we are very close to a nearby harbor, but we will not be able to make it before the ship sinks completely," The attendant answered "We advise that you gather your luggage and such, before coming to the top deck and jumping off. Perhaps you can swim the rest of the way there. Sorry for the inconvenience."
"Oh no problem at all," He replied, "But what if some people cannot swim?"
"Them they will most likely drown"
"Can you swim?"
"I cannot."
"Alright thank you."
"Have a good day sir."
He was now in his room all alone, with the one inch of seawater rising to two, and he stood in silence while pondering what his life had become. He was going to jump off into the frigid ocean, in the middle of the night, carrying his luggage, half a mile to an unknown harbor.
Living wasn't that great to him though, as he had just wrecked his career the day before on the failed trip. Pus he had practically no one back at home to care for him. He silently hoped that he would possibly drown, the thought crossed his mind only for a split second before his common sense told him that his body would naturally react to try and save itself.
So he grabbed his two suitcases and exited his room to the top deck of the vessel. And standing there was around 100 ponies, all nervously fidgeting or swaying or looking in complete shock.
He asked a nearby assistant why everyone was standing around, she replied: "Because nobody wants to die."
Fair enough, He thought to himself. So he approached the edge of the cruise ship and didn't even bother to look back before he walked into the sea.
All he could hear was waves, waves crashing upon more waves. Every once and a while he would become completely submerged and then hear for a millisecond the distant underwater noises of creaking and moaning as if some far off whale was crying in despair, but then his head would surface again and he would be thrust into the frozen air again.
His body stopped reacting so violently to the cold once it was numb completely. And he couldn't tell if his head was attached to his shoulders anymore, but he felt the force of his muscles as he slowly swam towards distant lanterns on a shore.
A shrill high pitched string rang out endlessly as he swam closer and closer, the thunder becoming like a chorus of horns signaling an impending demise. He didn't know what drove him to swim all night, maybe it was a spark of hope that was telling him that he still had a use, or perhaps just plain fear of death, but soon the sun was peeking over the horizon and he could see the black ocean waves turning to blue.
He soon could walk on the beach floor. He noticed that he has lost his luggage in the sea, but he had to let it go to be able to continue swimming. He emerged from the sea, greeted by barnacle-coated docks and freshly awoken seagulls.
He hit the sand as soon as his feet were out of the water and he felt an urge to lay there for a few weeks. He didn't believe he actually made it, but somehow he was lying on the shore of an unknown country, with nothing but the clothes on his back and light at the end of the tunnel.
Author's Notes:
it will all make sense in the end