Buried in the Meadow (The Will to Live)

Everything was quiet. Ponies trotted along, talking flamboyantly among themselves with jubilance. The shouts of peddlers trying to sell their wares and the buyers arguing or negotiating right back. The chittering of rats and other pests scurrying about trying to find any scraps that hadn't been cleaned by one of the many homeless that took refuge on the streets. Despite all this, the world was desolately empty, audio void of its existence in this alley. Everything was quiet. A cardboard wreckage. A dropped ice cream cone. Dirt and grime were the wallpaper of the scene, a crimson splash and dot pattern accenting the grey stone hues of the walls. Boxes torn and crushed, along with trinkets. Keepsakes. Memories. Cast aside like a tree to a monsoon, the cardboard walls were ripped to shreds as a vision of tainted snow laid below. Countless feathers and fabric, stained in the dark red hue of life and death. And there, strewn about among the blood-soaked nest, three bodies. Two of them lifeless, one of them wishing for the same. His eyes were empty, aching, numb. The young colt was curled up in the warmth of a hug that had been reduced to ashes. Cold, pale, ashen embrace. The two lifeless bodies were pulled together, the young colt at its core. His fur was stained dark, deeper than the hue of his own coat. It was not his blood, but the blood that had stopped flowing, he wished it all could be reversed. Drip. Drip. His body was a leaden shell, a vessel for the weight of his own suffering and torment. He had not moved since. Hours, nights, days. All to find some semblance of...what? Hope? Respite? A means of waking from the horrid nightmare that he was in? It all didn't matter. He found none of it. The rain came slowly, a few drops at first. Each drop against him was a sensation. A beat. A pulse. A reminder of that there was a world that existed. The pitter patter of rain were so loud. Deafening. Crashing against his ear drums in an attempt to rouse him from a slumber that he wished would last forever. It gave him a mournful vigor. He rose, ever so tiredly, his body creaking and resisting despite its youth. The rain began to crash all around him, loosening the hardened blood against his coat and letting it wash away. Letting it all wash away. He stared upward, his face by the downpour. He wished his own tears carried such ferocity and aggression. He began to rise, lifting slowly upward. His cold eyes began to tinge with a bright blue light, like the bite of frost as it began to shine ever brighter. And brighter. Hovering over their bodies, his eyes began to illuminate with an intense and blinding blue light. The two corpses began to rise up along beside him, as if pulled inward towards the colt like a black hole before A crater laid there in the middle of the alley. No cardboard boxes. No trinkets, keepsakes, memories. The bustle was all pushed to a halt, onlookers left speechless at the sight. The pests all fled and scared off. The three of them in the alley. They were all gone. Everything was quiet.