[PRP] An End to Sleepless Nights [ Sleepless / Bitter End ]

[Maxx D]

Bitter End had kept her head down the entire time, but was surprisingly efficient in leading Sleepless back to where she'd found her. As they made their way there, she recalled clearly her steps from the two times she sought her out, and followed them like a ritual of closure to end their period of acquaintance. When she reached the lush little ground that she remembered her standing in, she lifted her head just slightly, indicating Sleepless' release.

"We'll never have to see each other again," Her voice sullen and weary. "And I suppose that guy can live. Not that I had a choice in the matter."

On the sour note, she waited for Sleepless to return to her place in the swamp.  

[Jun D]

Uncertainly, Sleepless trotted back into her sanctuary. The journey back had been the most awkward experience she could have imagined. Not once in her life had she ever felt the need to fill any sort of silence - but they had been travelling together for so long, and Bitter End had never been silent. Usually, it would annoy her - well, for the past few weeks she had gotten pretty used to it (or tuning it out, at least) - but she had found herself hoping, wishing, willing the doe to speak. She had said not a word.

Till now.

She looked around her beloved abode. Her precious bower, in her absence, had become somewhat unkempt, the grasses and rushes she kept neat and trimmed around her tree-cave straggling and overgrown. There was her garden - but weeds had crowded up around the spilling herbs. Part of her wanted nothing better than to rush over and put her life back in order again, pull out the weeds, trim back the grass, check on her specimens and wade back into her perfect world.

And part of her kept her limbs frozen, standing there in the middle of the marsh, looking but not quite looking at Bitter End, wanting so much to say something more…anything...

But she couldn’t find a word to say, and could only think to shrug, a little, helplessly.  

[Maxx D]

Now that Sleepless had been properly deposited back into her home, End turned away, wondering where she could go home to sulk. She supposed that the closest she had to home was her mother, and perhaps she would be at the little brush she last saw her - now that Heart-Shaped Phlox has had so many children, she was more prone to staying in one place. Maybe, just like the two most important...what was the two most important does in her life, she would settle in one place too.

As she tracked the familiar steps back to her mother, she felt completely defeated. The Swamp had thrown her a bigger curveball than she'd ever anticipated and it somehow felt much more real than trying to kill a filly-fiddling ex-significant other. She stepped around insects and the little rodent that wandered past in her silence, feeling at once much more aware of her insignificance and the transience of purpose, and also being uncomfortably aware of her self-pity.

She resolved that she would merely stare at the ground until she reached her mother's plot.  

[Jun D]

When the last of Bitter End's steps faded into the distance, Sleepless made her hesitant way back into her tree-cave, pushing up the curtains of moss and vine that cloaked the mouth. The wide, hollow cavern of trunk and root that she made the heart of her home was her pride, neat stacks of stones everywhere, holding her tidy specimens and study markers. She was almost afraid to inspect the damage, but found to her wonder that there was barely any. Some of the fresher samples, that she hadn't gotten to properly preserve before her rude ejection, were overtaken with mould and had to be thrown out (read: properly disposed of a distance away from her home proper), but otherwise everything was as she'd left it. She felt a dim sense of pride that her careful calculations in constructing her bower, with the neighbouring groves blocking the bulk of the wind and storm, had obviously paid off...but more than that, she felt the dull ache of a strange emptiness that even that pride could not slake.

That was not the way she’d wanted it to end.  

[Maxx D]

"Watch where you're going," Phlox said amused, as her daughter bumped head-first into her coming back from a berry hunt.

"Mom," she said plaintively, looking up.

"Have you been crying? About what now?" the mare murmured, nudging the fringe out of her eyes. "It's serious, isn't it? I can't remember when was the last time you didn't call me," she paused to change her tone. "Mother."

"Don't laugh," she moaned, her legs folding under her. "You know how Pristine told you I was on a journey?"  

[Jun D]

Sleepless pulled at the weeds, meticulously, each intruder extracted and cast off to a side, till only her carefully curated herbs and plants remained. She looked for the areas that Bitter End had trod over, but she looked in vain – the vigorous growth had taken care of that in the months they'd travelled, healing over holes till there was only growth, rampant and luxurious.

Amazing, she thought as she nosed through her yarrow, ever marvelling at the power of nature.

And all the same, it felt strange – not right – that so quickly, all traces of that weird adventure were gone. As if Bitter End had never happened.  

[Maxx D]

"The one with your friend?" Phlox asked while she organised the branches of berries that she'd brought back into ripeness and colour.

"Turns out she's not my friend after all." End's head sunk to the ground, and she rested her muzzle on the grass mournfully.

"That's a shame." She took a break to nuzzle her forehead comfortingly, and firmly asked with a stern look, "was it your fault?"

It took her a moment to register what her mother was saying, and some part of her - an old part of her, always present - cried no, but in her state, her state where she was no longer a filly and knew more of the world and of what it could hold, she looked away. It was very hard to countenance. It went against every fibre of her being to admit it to herself.

"Kind of," she then resolved, "mostly. I think mostly," and blinked away the tears.  

[Jun D]

It was when the final rush had been clipped, the garden groomed, her sanctuary restored to its former glory, that Sleepless finally admitted to herself:

This familiar silence was great and all, but...it felt almost strange, almost too quiet...without Bitter End’s endless bleating in the air.

Oh, Swampmother, she thought, caught up in guilt and dismay and an odd sort of excitement, I’ve grown accustomed to that doe.  

[Maxx D]

Phlox gave her daughter a moment, finishing up the rest of her berry sorting before seating herself next to her.
"Good call. I'm proud of you." And she patiently licked the tracks away.

"Do you want to hear it?" End sniffed, pressing her head into her comforting neck.
"No," Phlox said primly, "Not because I don't love you, but I suspect it's irrelevant and that I'll only scream at you once I've heard what you've done. She's not maimed or anything, is she?"
"No, she's fine. I saw her home and came to you." End confirmed. "I - maybe I should go see her again, but it's so meaningless...I don't think it'll change anything, in the bigger scheme of things.  

[Jun D]

”That’s not right,” Sleepless muttered to herself as she paced back and forth, trudging through the marsh water, occasionally giving her experiment gourd another lick-polish as she passed, ”look, I’m the victim here: she stormed into my life and she forced me out into the world. I only lied to her because I had to.”

That’s not quite true, a traitorous little voice needled, you made up the root because of your pride. You talked yourself into trouble, missy.

”Well - yes,” she frowned, ”but I only went along with it when she came back because she threatened to kill me.”

Was she really going to kill you, though? Was she?

”I don’t know! I didn’t know then - I didn’t know anything then.”

And now you know so much more…  

[Maxx D]

"It might to her." Phlox advised, ruffling her hair to rise. "End, one of the things that really drives me crazy about the weird bucks I shacked up with, is that I never knew what was in their heads. Your grandfather was like that too. Too coy. Too crazy."

"The weird bucks are me, aren't they."

She looked around, surprised.
"You're learning."

"I guess..." End sighed, shaking the pounding post-cry headache away, "I guess I'll go back to apologise."
"Good girl," Phlox said, approvingly, and picked out a juicy branch of berries for her. "At least you walked her home. That's more than they ever did for me."  

[Jun D]

Sleepless didn’t know where, didn’t know how, but she was going to find Bitter End. She could follow her tracks - that doe had never cared much for covering her tracks - she could...she could ask around. She could do that now, talk to people...a little. Now that she had seen how. She was going to find her, somehow.

And when she found her, she was going to...oh, she didn’t know.

She was going to thank her. For forcing her out of her little cocoon. She loved her cocoon, but she had seen so much, learnt so much out of it. The sum of her knowledge - her knowledge, that she’d always prized, not knowing how little of the world she knew - was so much the greater for having had Bitter End push her into the deep of it. So she was going to thank her.

...And maybe apologise. A little.

She just had to figure out where to start.  

[Maxx D]

It took a while for her to return. Her hoofsteps were slower, more deliberate as she tried to plan what she had to say. So many possibilities ran through her head, each more dramatic than the other until she decided to tone it down a little. The journey felt to her, however, much shorter than it was because of that - she ended up on the edge of the familiar grove once more, looking a little wide-eyed and lost, with a branch of berries in her mouth.

"Hey," she said, which came out a little slurred past the branch.  

[Jun D]

At the sudden reappearance of her quarry, the part of Sleepless that had worked out exactly what she was going to say once she found her went blank. She stared, instead, slack-jawed.

Then she cried out, ”I wanted to find you and - I dunno - say thank you.”  

[Maxx D]

And at exactly the same point, upon seeing her and being thrown out that she'd started to say something, she flustered, dropped the branch and remarked at the exactly same time "I wanted to come back and - I dunno - say sorry."

After registering Sleepless' words, she was speechless. And trying very hard not to cry again. Instead, she looked at her with wide eyes beyond her fringe, seeming quite vulnerable in the moment.