She reaches out toward you while you lie on the ground like a pig, an utter failure even though you claimed victory over her. She reaches out and you wonder what it is about you that makes her want you even though you are weak, nothing but a broken man. You hate yourself for being like this, for wallowing in the past, for needing your plants as bad as you need air and water and food. You hate yourself, so how can she even stand you? She must have something in her soul that you lack- forgiveness. Oxy, I'm sorry. You snort, but say nothing. Your mind is still flicking in and out of the past, though you're more focused in reality now. It's hard to stay there with the thrill of the fight and the blackness of the pit behind you. Perhaps it's better that way.

But something about her voice reaches deep into you, calming you, making your breaths slower, making the sand a warm blanket that reaches up around you and envelops you. And it makes you want to be mad, it makes you want to yell some more that you let yourself be calmed and hypnotized by this cremello pegasus that is so much like your past, but you can't. Try as you might, the anger does not come. Only peace washes over you as you hear her story. “Life does suck,” you murmur, but otherwise let her speak, let her voice fill the cavern, give the sandy darkness peace that your voice only ruins.

But what calmness her voice brings, her hoof ruins, spraying sand particles onto you, but they are nothing. Grunge has never bothered you before, it doesn't bother you now. And as she speaks, and you listen to her words and some of her story, you begin to remember what you realized before- you are not so grand as you make yourself out to be. You're weak, you require your plants, and without them you're nothing but a fraud. You can't even function without them. You are nothing, nothing at all, but a beast of a stallion that can't function without the mind-numbing effects of some stupid plant that you wish you'd never discovered.

And for once in your grumbling, hateful life, you find something good in yourself, not much, but it's enough. A few words for the winged mare who has broken you, for this moment. “You are meant for good things,” you say, quietly, a sigh, but nothing about her leaving destruction in her wake. That, you can't argue with.

@[Elsa]