Time to Dream of Crystals and Gems

Dream

A young unicorn pony faltered as she hit the ground hard. Her legs finally gave out under her weight as the last of her strength left her body. The young mare knew that her life was at the end, and she couldn't give no more. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't pull herself off the forest floor. She squeezed her eyes tightly as what remained of tears fell to the red-stained grass beneath her. She was going to die, and she had to accept it.

"Whatever happens, happens. Right, Ponies? We can't just stop here!"

                The young mare gritted her teeth. The sound of an old friend's voice echoed through her head. "Ribbon..." she weakly mumbled under her voice.

"We're still breathing, right? We aren't dead yet!"

                The unicorn cried out in pain. Trying to find her resolve, she struggled to get to her footing. The disease that was coursing through her body felt like her soul was tearing itself apart. She cried out again as she tried to fight to get off the blood-stained grass.

"We can't just sit around in our last minutes! We can't just sit around and just die now!"

                Tears streamed down the sides of the young mare's face. "MOON!" she cried out, calling forth all the strength she could muster she forced herself upright. "MOON! RIBBON! PLEASE!" she called out to her friends. But there was no answer.

"Do you ponies see this? It's a Crystal Memory. It's going to record our last moments. And I don't want it just recording us lying around feeling sorry for ourselves. I want it to remember our happy faces-"

                "Moon..."

"And I don't know who is going to be watching this in the future, but I want them to remember us. That we lived in our final moments. I want them to see our smiles on our faces. So, I want to play. I want to play until we can't play no more." The unicorn pony named Moon smiled to her friends.

                "Moon..." the young mare's mind was etched with the smile of her friend. Despite the blood that poured from Moon's mouth, she continued to smile through her blood-stained teeth.

Everypony agreed. Despite the pain of death, the group of five ponies started to play. The disease that coursed through their body was stealing everything from them, but they decided that death wasn't going to take away their happiness. The five of them, through the searing pain, played until they couldn't play no more.

                The young mare's neck fell. What little strength she mustered finally gave way. She couldn't even bring herself on all her hooves. "..." her eyes were getting heavy as her head just hung down.

"I-I'm...I'm getting sleepy, Moon." A young unicorn colt voice came up just above a whisper. Perhaps it was because he was the youngest of the group, but it seemed that this young pony was the closest that was on death's door.

It was another pony that turned her attention to the young colt. "Then how about a song?" the pony named Ribbon brought up.

Moon, without losing her smile, turned to look over at Ribbon. "I like that idea." Then she weakly turned her head to look at young colt. "Then how about we sing a song?"

Despite it could have been the colt's last, he took a deep breath. "I would like that very much, Moon." He smiled.

Ribbon smiled. "Then how about the Sleep over sing-along, would that work for you?" she asked the young colt.

The young colt eased himself into the ground, not by choice but from the lack of energy to keep him sitting upward. "Yeah, I would like that." He smiled as puss started to drip from his lips.