"Heeey."

Gliss moaned, rolling to the side, slowly recognising her mothers' bed, soft to the touch, a bed she wanted to spent the rest of the day in. "Mmgway," she mumbled and went back to sleep briefly until a telekinetic field lifted the blanket off her. Grunting, the filly opened her eyes, only to see Golden String, a beautiful mare of golden coat and rusty mane, and, coincidentally, her best friend, grinning at her and holding the aforementioned blanket with her telekinesis.

"Rise and shine!" Golden String urged, tossing the blanket aside. "Your mothers told me you had a concussion so I felt it my duty to check on you."

As soon as Gliss came to terms with her existence in the room, and String's undoubtable presence, and having been woken up from a particularly pleasant slumber, she glared at the intruder and wondered honestly, "In how many ways do you think I can kill you right now?"

"Seventeen?" Golden String guessed with a wide grin. "Lemme tell you about today's uni instead." The young mare sat on the edge of the bed excitedly.

"Uh," Gliss replied. "A source of joy and all the happiness in the world, I presume." She yawned, retrieving the blanket and cuddling up into it contentedly.

"There's a new colt, an overseas student," String told conspiraciously. "He's at the Vocal department, and boy, does he have a smooth voice! Sineightra's crying with envy." Gliss doubted the comparison, but listened on, half-snoozing, her head still aching, not in the least fuelled by the sudden wake-up. "And he's hot. So smooth. Imagine a pristine coat, neatly brushed and all, and such muscle underneath... but he's not a jock, not overpumped. Name's Silver Chord. Mmm."

Gliss chuckled with a yawn. "Looks like he really struck a chord with you." Hehe. So punny. "Why aren't you stalking him as of now, instead of talking to me?"

"Wellllll..." String drawled reluctantly. "You know, I'm a bassist mare. The rough kind who likes beer and anal sex." Gliss cringed at the mentioning of the eighteen-year-old's mare sexual victories. "And he's... real gentle-like. You know? All brushed up and silk scarf and fur lotion. You know, I think he even might be... well, playing for another team."

"Uh?" Gliss dumbed at the question, her head splitting.

"Swinging anticlockwise," String elaborated.

"Uhm?"

The bassist groaned in exasperation. "Likes to take a cock in his ass?"

Gliss almost did a spit-take on thin air. "W- Couldn't you be... less blunt?"

"I tried!" String countered. "Oh, and the age difference too. He's sixteen," she concluded. "A prodigy accepted early, like you. Only from the Crystal Empire."

Gliss raised her head slightly. “Huh?” She paused, her hazy mind trying to analyse the information. “Interesting,” she finally settled.

“Interesting?!” String laughed, patting Gliss’s small belly, which always made her deeply uncomfortable. “He is your age, Gliss,” she pointed out unnecessarily. “It’s a pact made in Heaven.” She grinned.

“Har har har,” Gliss replied, burying her aching head in the pillow. "You don't even know I prefer colts," she mumbled from underneath.

"Oh, I do," String laughed. "I've read your diary, remember?" Gliss jerked up. Oh buck. True. "You are a fine connoisseur of the penis variety," the bassist wrapped up grandiloquently.

"Yeah..." Gliss mumbled into the pillow. "Not that I'll ever get some." Ugh.

"Don't worry." String patted her on her back. “The right dick will come along.” She laughed at her bawdy joke. “But say, Silver’s mighty interested in meeting you. Another young prodigy. He’s all glee about the…” She nudged the young guitarist. “Musical possibilities.” She winked at Gliss, who groaned and went back to her pillow.

“If you haven’t noticed, String,” Gliss replied, “I’ll be in this bed at least for a week.” She paused. There was hissing noise from the corridor. “Knowing my mother, two weeks.”

“What’s that white noise?” String wondered, rolling her head about.

More like white and grey noise. “My mothers,” Gliss said simply. “They’re arguing.” String looked at her sympathetically. “I’m used to it.”

Golden String stood up. “Chins up.” She patted Gliss on the back - which, frankly, was more preferable than the belly. “And about your meet-up with Silver… I’m sure she can arrange something.” With that, she winked again and ran out of the room.

Gliss groaned and faceplanted into the pillow again. Now, sleep.

***

Why do we suffer? Or, rather, why do we have to suffer? The masses of equinity will always have to suffer, I get it. There’s war, and poverty, and disease. If nothing else, there’s old good Life herself. But why bear torture?

Say, in a world where all is good and right, everypony is absolutely healthy, everypony is rich, everypony is happy - won’t that make everypony ill, poor, and sad? How can we achieve happiness without comparison? We may lie to ourselves but we are only happy either for somepony or in comparison to somepony. We see that there is war, and poverty, and disease, and we think ourselves happy to have avoided all that. It makes us happy, this exemption.

But even if we are happy, our brain will always find something negative to focus on. We always have to suffer, we always do suffer because we choose to. It is a conscious choice that we all make. We may pretend we are all right, but guess what? The foals are never all right. You were never all right as a foal, and when you grew up, nostalgia replaced the pain, the unease, the oppression, the feeling of being incomplete, an under-being.

We carry our problems into adult life, and they stay. We pay loads of bits to escape them, but guess what? They are always there. It is our nature to suffer, and, by dealing with it, we evolve. But bringing our nature to terms with self-realisation, self-approval, self-achievement, we take a step towards what really makes us equine.

Is this what separates us from griffins? ...They always say about something, about this and that: “This is what separates us from griffins.” I don’t know. I can barely see anything that separates us from griffins apart from physiology. I don’t know. I think griffins suffer too, maybe even more that we do. ...If that’s even possible.