The Cold White and the Green Grass

Ferrotter, April 9, 2019; 00:33 / FB 53629
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> It was April 8, not that your feeble little mind understood that.
> But you understood that very little of the cold white grass covered the brown grass.
> As a little foal last year you saw that the cold white grass went away, then soon the brown grass was replaced by green grass.
> Somehow, you remembered this.
> Though you know nothing of such things, it is said by the hoomins that a fluffy pony can only remember something that is either very traumatic, or very wonderful.
> Perhaps it is true.
> Watching most of your siblings die of starvation in the cold white was certainly traumatic.
> Or when your father went out shivering in the cold white to bring back nummies so the rest (including you) would not share their fate.
> Or moments later when the scream of sky munsta concluded in a thud, to be replaced immediately by the recognizable screaming of your father before it degenerated into a fading gurgle.
> Or afterwards when your mother tearfully nummed each of your dead siblings so that at least you and your sissy, the only two left, would not also sleepies forever.
> But perhaps it was not the trauma after all.
> You can't recall a single time as happy as when a draft of chill, but not painfully so, air came into the hole of your den, and looking out to see what it was you saw tiny green grassies coming up from the brown ones.
> Probably because in your life there was no other such time.
> And for the first time in forever you saw not forever sleepies, but a strange emotion. One that if you ever had time to get to know it, you would have recognized as hope.
> Perhaps you remember this because it was wonderful.
> Soon the sweet flowers came. For a time your life was nice. Not the relief of the end of the cold white times, but nice.
> It was not long though before the sky ball became hot, and the sweet, green grass became brown.
> Under your fluff it was so hot, so uncomfortable, so hard to breathe.
> It was no longer nice.
> But it was not as bad as other things. The brown grass did not taste pretty, and it was tough and made your teeth hurt, but you did not have the empty pain you remembered from the cold white time.
> And your smarty friend, though you had no basis for comparison, really was smart for his kind.
> He was older, and had seen more than one white time and more than one hot time. He told you to gather nummies when the sky ball first woke up, before it became too hot.
> You had a lot of saddies when you realized the smarty friend of the red munstas with black legs and very fluffy tails with white tips must have also told them the same thing.
> Because one of them grabbed your smarty friend from right next to you before the sky ball was fully awake, and began to num him before you could even run away.
> Or before he was even asleep from the hurties.
> Remembering the sound of your father's screams, that was a memory forged in trauma. And you remembered it being exactly like the sounds your smarty friend made then.
> The sky ball then began to get not hot, then even cold.
> And the grassies, even the hard brown nu taste pwetty ones, became scarce.
> There was a happy time again, when the trees and bushes began to drop sweet things sometimes.
> But then it became cold, and the happy times ended.
> The morning you woke up and saw the white grass came back, some of the white grass became yellow below you.
> You remembered what that meant.
> The white snow in front of you also became wet, but remained white.
> Everything you remembered came back. Members of your herd went to sleep hugging their own tummy owwies, and kept sleeping forever.
> As did some unlucky ones who stayed on the outside of the fluffpile too long.
> You tried to get what nummies you could, but it was not much.
> You gave everything you got to your special friend, feeling more than thinking that may save your foals.
> You loved them more than you hated and feared your tummy owwies.
> But it did not. They were born too late, had too little fluff, too little fat. And their dam had foraged for her self again too little time before the cold came.
> Your tummy owwies and heart owwies never left, but instinct is strong even if the details are programmed in a lab.
> You foraged. You nummed.
> You made it to the end of the cold white times.
> The cold white went away again.
> But this isn't right.
> It wasn't replaced with brown grassies, but with dim grey haze, then black.
> You had not nummed enough.
> The brown grassies had in fact come back.
> But you were no longer there to see them.
> What was left of your herd found you a few minutes later, next to the first green grassies half of them ever saw, and any of them could remember anymore.