Since I’ll be leaving the community soon, I thought, what would that mean for the characters I’ve made and the story they’re in? So here is my final piece. Thank you for the support, everyone!
This takes place after the events of The Meta and its subsequent short stories. Most of this will make no sense unless you’re familiar with all of that lore.
–
Everything felt normal when Leo woke up. He was in his own bed, in his own house, with his own pet fluffy next to him. He got up, made breakfast for himself and his fluffy, and checked notifications on his phone. Nothing felt out of the ordinary.
Then he looked out the window.
There was a house across the street. That in itself wasn’t strange. But something felt “off” about it. He glanced over the area, and noticed a “For Sale” sign. That was unusual. He was sure someone lived there… but he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember who.
Leo went out to get a closer look. He approached the house, a simple one-story with a pale paint job like all the others on the street. The spacious front yard was dotted with brightly-colored popppies growing from the lawn. Why did that feel important? What could possibly be important about popppies? Yet he felt like he was missing something obvious. Something in his subconscious was asserting that Of course popppies are important, you idiot. Don’t you remember? But he couldn’t.
With no further clues to be found outside, Leo knocked on the front door. There was no answer. He knocked again, and still nothing. He tried the doorbell, which rang through an empty-sounding space.
“Hello…?” He was about to say a name. What name was it? It was right on the tip of his tongue. But that didn’t make any sense… nobody lived here. He never remembered anyone living here… and yet, something in the back of his head was screaming at him that there had been somebody here. How could he remember nothing, yet be sure there was something?
He looked in through a window near the front door. There was a completely empty room, which felt wrong somehow; Leo felt like there should have been furniture in there, but why? Nobody lived there, why would there be furniture? Still, he could have sworn there was supposed to be not just furniture, but a person, and… fluffies?
That thought stuck with him. Were there fluffies in there? No, there couldn’t be… but there should be… but that didn’t make any sense! None of his thoughts were making any sense! Something was wrong, but what was it?
–
Something was wrong, Crystal knew, but what was it? Her daddy had run outside to go look at the house across the street, and now he was just standing and staring at it. Maybe he needed help! Crystal wanted to be helpful. Luckily, her daddy had left the front door open just a crack, so she nudged it open a little more and trotted over, careful to look and listen before crossing the street like she had always been told. She was quite proud of herself for being helpful and safe now, and was sure she would get a treat for her efforts.
“Daddeh need hewp?” the little unicorn piped up as she approached her daddy, trying very hard not to be distracted by the grass and pretty flowers all around.
Crystal’s daddy looked down at her with surprise, then sighed and picked her up. “No, sweetie, I’m fine. Don’t cross the road by yourself again, okay?”
“Buh Cwystaw am supeh cawefuw cwossing woadies! Nu eben see metaw munstahs ow anyfing!” She was prepared to deliver a whole speech on the subject, or at least a minor debate, but her attention was pulled by the window she was now in front of. On the other side was an empty room that looked rather boring, but somehow, Crystal felt like it was a good and important room. Maybe there was something good and important where she couldn’t see it? Sketties, perhaps? No, sketties go in kitchens, and the room wasn’t a kitchen. Maybe a fluffy friend? That sounded about right. Fluffies go in all kinds of rooms.
“Anyone in dewe?” Crystal pawed at the window.
Her daddy ruffled her mane. “No… but…” His sentence trailed off and was never finished.
Now that she thought really hard about it (possibly harder than she’d thought about anything in her life), Crystal was sure there should be at least one fluffy in there. She had a blurry mental image of one with dull colors, but that didn’t make sense; she didn’t know any fluffies like that, and she certainly didn’t know any fluffies who lived across from her house. It was all very confusing to her, and she didn’t like thinking about confusing things, so she tapped her daddy’s arm with her hooves and asked if they could go home. He obliged, and soon everything was back to normal, with the strange house utterly gone from Crystal’s thoughts as she busied herself with a jingly toy ball.
If only she had a friend to play with, though.