Dark Sorrow
The oak tree stood solemnly over the black marble bench that sat at its hooves like a widowed bride...veiled from the world behind her veil of grief and sorrow. The sun was bright, as it always was during the youth of the month of June, and sat warm and majestic in the sky as I approached the once majestic and deep brown tree at the end of the field of tall white stones. The sun and my heart both turned many shades darker as I entered the shade of the great tree pervading the area around the black stone that stood starkly against the sun bleached bark of the tree. I looked back at the countless rows of identical white stones, all grim and silent as they gleamed like polished ivory in the sunlight around the tree and then turned again to the object of my desire. Ghosts of the past reflected in the polished Void that stood silently before me and beckoned me to come and ease my burdens...to forget myself in its depth and find peace with the blackness that lay just beyond my grasp. My body betrayed my will and I went to set myself upon it, to fulfill the purpose that it was created to serve...but my emotions...my guilt...froze my movements. I hovered there, poised to set my weary body upon the mirrored blackness that invited me to partake...but I couldn't. I slumped into the soft grass that surrounded the sombre stone and rested my body against it as I would my love. A breath of cool air stirred the leaves above my head, creating a soft murmur of rustles that calmed my heart a little and cooled my burning flesh. My eyes became low with sleep and I shut my eyes to the bright world and set my head gently upon the cold stone that leeched the fever from my skin and the woe from my Soul. "Another beautiful day..." I said quietly to no one. The breeze continued, spiraling through my hair and filling my lungs with the smell of the mountains a few miles away. An image of those white fangs of snow covered rock entered into my mind, piercing the cloudless sky with a savage contrast that was as terrifying as it was beautiful. "It's my little filly's birthday you know? She's turning sixteen...a young filly blossoming into a mare...as surely as time has predicated. But you know this...you remembered everything for everypony at anytime we asked..." I said to the quiet air surrounding my world of calm. A small snap caused me to open my eyes and look above me into the blue sky. I saw, of all things that ever could fall from the heavens like an angel of white, a single pink tinged lotus billowing in the breeze like a graceful monarch would descend a stair to greet her ponies. It fluttered on the breeze and settled itself silently on the marble next to me causing a flash of color to invade the black Void that had laid claim to the aged stone. I stared at the interwoven white petals that slowly faded into the softest of pink at its tips and marveled at its existence...at its significance. I picked up the soft mass with shocked amazement and caressed it in my hooves as I would my baby filly and a single tear fought its way free from my war hardened eyes and dropped silently onto a petal. It gracefully rolled among the petals before it rolled free and soaked into the soft yellow center and vanished from existence. "Your flower...our flower..." I said with a quiet sob. Memories of hazy days like this one massed on the edges of my thoughts and laid siege to my mind as they threatened to overwhelm my emotions and break the dams that held back my tears. I looked at the amassed armies of happy glimpses of bygone days, I fled my fortress. My mind ran from all it had ever known and into the dark woods of the unknown...where your thoughts are ever seeking for answers to questions that we don't even know how to ask. I ran among the boughs of the ancient forest in a blind dash that sent my crashing into the very white oak I sat beneath in reality. As I stared up at its aged branches and its yellowing leaves, rustling in the dark like the rasp of ancient parchment, I felt the breeze coil into my palms and lift the ever so light weight of the lotus out of my grasp and into the silent air. I snapped my eyes open and watched in horror as my thoughts had become reality and my flower...our flower, danced away on the Zyphir of wind like a flirtatious young mare after a party. With cold horror sinking its fatal teeth into my heart, filling my veins with icy fear, I lept from my place beside the polished marble and perused the precious flower as it fluttered among the silent white stones and further out of my reach. I ran...I ran until my lungs died and my veins pumped acid around my frantic body...and then I ran more. I lept from row to row, chasing the illusive breeze like a starved stallion, for starved I was. My body craved solace of solitary company...my mind desired silence from the whispers of 'what-if' and my heart longed for its hole to be filled by this bandage. When my body could take no more, I collapsed with no regard for where I ended up...and landed softly onto the black bench that lay forever silent under the white oak...carried down to rest by the very wind that had stolen my only solace. My chest heaved, my heart raced...and I shut my eyes as death creeped along my limbs and warmth spread from my heart as I realized...I no longer feared Him. The Hooded Stallion...the Reaper of Souls...he was an old friend who had visited all I had known...but left me alone. The results of his careful visitation laid around me...Sargent Robert Paulson...Lieutenant Anderson...Private Sanders...my soldiers...my stallions...my brothers. As my last breath was inhaled, my mouth was filled with sweet softness...it sent a tendril of will to my blackening mind and caused me to reach up and remove the new friend in my demise. As my fingers closed softly around the flower...my face brightened to a smile. Not a smile of joy...not a smile that bespoke of my triumphant return into the arms of the Reaper...a smile of contentment that fed my Soul a single drop...the tear I had shed before...the only tear that I had ever shed in my long and troubled life had become a drop of light that fed me...my limbs received their strength and I sat up and breathed deeply the smell of the lotus. I looked at the mountains...the sky...the forever silent tombs of my fallen brothers and sisters...and felt life invade the circle of shadow that I sat in. I stood with renewed life and set the flower upon the black stone that no longer beckoned me to fall into it...but rather encouraged me to walk away from it and remember...remember the reasons I... we had set out to give ourselves for. As I walked away from the great oak, I gave the bench inscribed with the words, 'Brother' one final glance and saw that the flower was gone and the stone had taken on the colors of the delicate blossom leaving the site as one of peace. I walked from the rows and rows of white graves and out into the world that had flourished because of these stallions and mares had laid down in stone to protect it...and knew that my work was with life...not with death.