Nowhere, Never

by amastelaire

White Spaces

“Where am I?

The only thing I can see is this white void, stretching left and right.

I don’t feel the time passing by, as it been an hour, a day, or maybe just a minute?
I don’t know, and, to be honest, I don’t really care.

I just really wonder where I am.
Or who I am…

Yes, Who am I?
I don’t remember anything else than this white.

Do I even exist?
Do I have a name?
A house?
Friends?

…

…

…

Is something supposed to start?”

The whole world shifted, if you could call that a world.
Out of nowhere, but it wasn’t like space mattered, walls jumped out around me, and closed me in this room, devoid of life and colors.
Just a white box.

But it didn’t last long, as from the ground, pieces of furniture where rising, couches, chairs, drawers, tables, carpets and finally, a door.
While the place was filled with what you needed to live, it was weirdly arranged, like it wasn’t made for ponies to live in, like the one who made it didn’t quite understand what a house was used for.

The multiple drawers and countertops where too high, and you would need to stand on your hind legs to even be able to use them correctly, the bed was weirdly proportioned, and was more long than large, which is quite unaccommodating for a pony, and the doorknob was weirdly placed, and locked in a way where you could just push it, needing you to reach for it and twist it just to open it.

Talking of the door, it led to a seemingly never-ending corridor, the walls intersected by openings, doors and windows without a real logic, the corridor was also less stable than the room, like it was undecisive on what it wanted to look like.

I stood there, not moving even one centimeter, I didn’t know what I was looking at.
Where was I?
And why?

“Hello” I shouted to the corridor, hoping for an answer, but I was only greeted back by my echo.
I started to walk slowly, carefully putting one hoof before the other, and the corridor seemed to stabilize as I walk through it.

I quickly arrived on the level of the first door, it was the same weirdly proportioned door, and radiated a sort of ‘unpony’ aura, I reached for the knob and pushed the door open, letting a loud creaking sound throughout the empty space the door led to. Just an empty room, nothing more.

And because I didn’t know what to do, and didn’t want to be flooded by weird existential questions, I just walked right back where I came from, the corridor still stretching forever.

It’s been quite long now, or at least it felt like it was, I had opened dozens of doors, and still none led to anything. And even weirder was the fact that, whenever I turned back, it didn’t seem like I did any progress, the first room was always there, a few steps away.

I don’t want to resign yet, but I couldn’t say that the thought of walking right back in and lying on the couch was persistent.

I slept a little, and in the meantime, the corridor finally ended its shifting ways and is now stable.
Well, ‘stable’ lost in meaning in this place, just like every other word.
But it didn’t seem to move anymore, and wasn’t endless anymore, instead the back of the corridor was plunged in darkness, contrasting with the all-white of this world, and now that I think of it, it is the only time I’ve seen shadows, this place feel like it was immersed in light.

Well now at least I had a goal, walk through this hallway and find what lie beyond this dark,
It might not be the best idea I’ll ever have, but at least it’s something.

And it’s with that idea in mind that I entered the hallway again, this time I was less preconscious, and rather than walking one hoof after the other, I decided to trot, the hallways wasn’t that large, but it didn’t felt like it was that narrow either. The hallways was also noticeably emptier than last time, while it was now furnished with sparces empty drawers and some useless ceilings lights, it had almost no doors, I wasn’t able to discern more than three from where I stood, and the first one seemed hundreds of meters away.

Well, the drawers weren’t all empty, I quickly found one with what seemed to be a notebook. At first, I thought it was empty, the pages seemed like brand new, but the last one was not, a little paragraph was written on it, and the words didn’t seem like they had been written by a pony, the angles were sharp and the lines straight, it almost felt… Robotic, generated, just like this place, a little off, and while I was absorbed by the shapes of the words, I almost forgot what was the most important about a note, the words themselves.

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa,
I wasn’t ready for that, so let me get this straight, this note knows who I am? Well, not the note obviously, but that ‘Stargazer’, who is he, I would have said that his name doesn’t ring a bell, but it’s not like I remember the name of anypony, if I ever met any before…
And what does he mean by ‘too difficult’?
And why was this note in the drawer and not somewhere else, I don’t know, like the place I woke up ?! This is like, vital-level information, and it’s just here in a random drawer I could have never opened!

I need to pause for a bit, just to put my thought together, maybe I could ask him?
But how would I, I don’t know where it is, who it is, what its like to talk with ponies, if it is even one.

Okay, I’ll just take a deep breath and continue on, and apparently, always look in drawers, it’s important.
At least the first door isn’t too far, but I made it way closer to the shadowland than I thought I would, or was it that the shadows came closer? They now almost stretched to the door, and were creeping underneath it.

But it will not frighten me, I came a long way, or at least I think, and it wasn’t a little darkness that would deter me from entering this room, so I put myself on my hind legs, twisted the badly placed doorknob, and pushed the door open, ready to enter

The first trial is starting