Dark Horse: Tales from the Ranch Ch. 05

I may have presented myself as such, but I am not flawless. I wasted my life in the vain pursuit of unimportant things, only realizing far too late where real value is. This endeavor, this Ranch, crystallized and fulfilled a number of things that had been missing. I helped people. Truly helped them, for once in my life. I nurtured, in my own warped way, the lives of those around me.

The sad truth, though, is that those wasted years impressed many unfortunate traits on me. I did my best to use those faults in pursuit of higher goals, but there was always going to come a time when I showed myself for what I truly am. Broken. Perhaps more so than any of you. I am the scorpion, and I can only carry you so far.

I was never going to be able to let go. I brought you here to help you, brought all of you here to help you, but once that healing was done... Do you see my dilemma? I could neither let you go nor let go of this place to let you take the role I had always intended for you. I wanted so desperately to actually take that trip, Isabella. To lose myself in Europe, and the peaks of Nepal. To find a deserted island somewhere and move on.

We both know I am incapable of that. It would only have been a matter of time before I checked in on you, or before I logged into the camera system remotely. To see if you were keeping things tidy. To see if you took Ghost as I had hoped you would (if ever there was a soul crying out for help, it is his). It would have come from a good place, from wanting to help, but I would have meddled. I promised myself that I was taking you to help you and not to turn you into something I owned purely for my own dark purposes; this is the only solution I could come up with to truly achieve that.

The best thing I had going for me was that I had the means to help, means I have ensured are now at your disposal. You have the capacity to be better than I ever was. You move forward from here with a better understanding of both sides of the dynamic than I could comprehend. I had to cheat to see inside your head, and to follow your thoughts. To stay current on your mindset, and choose the most appropriate path from any given point. You can do better than I did. You can do so much better.

Or not. Part and parcel with letting go is accepting the multitude of outcomes that could arise from it. You could leave. Call 911, report my death, and let the chips fall where they may. No court in the land would convict you. Chelsea, Stephen, and Nora are not your responsibility. Corey is not your responsibility. But they could be. And you would be magnificent with them.

The problem with helping people is that so few of us are able to admit it when we need it most. We stand in front of the mirror and tell ourselves that it's ok. My life is ok. It's ok that I had an abortion; the time wasn't right for my career. It's ok that I had a miscarriage; I have many fertile years yet. It's ok that my marriage is a sham. I'm fine with it. We're both fine with it.

This is your chance, Isabella. Your chance to help people. To be the leader and healer you should have been, and that fate robbed you of. My last gift to you.

I love you,

Elizabeth

P.S. I have taken the liberty of replacing the clothes in my closet. I hope you will find something appropriate for whatever comes next.

The girl wept as the pages slipped from her hands.

***

All of them came to meet her at the bottom of the steps, their eyes wide with fear. They all talked at the same time, asking the same questions with different words. What happened. Is Velvet ok. Where is Ms. Winters. What's going on. Is Ms. Winters ok. The girl swallowed hard, as she stood on the lowest step, and cleared her throat.

"My name is Isabella," she said, proud that her voice did not betray her fear, "and there are going to be some changes."

*****

//Authors Note//

First, a few words about the end.

Grue and I are proud to announce that, much like Chasing the Dragon before it, Tales from the Ranch has an open ending. The future of this story and it's characters, we hand over to you to persist in your imagination. Whether Isabella shuts it all down or takes over. Whether Isabella retains any of the horse themes. Whether she takes Ghost or not. What she would be like as an owner. We leave these particulars unanswered, and solemnly swear that we will never canonize any of them. We hope you enjoy the way the story played out, and we hope you take a moment to reflect on it before moving on to the next fap.

Second, a few words about the behind the scenes.

Sometimes these things take on a life of their own. Originally, Dark Horse was just going to be a one shot. A single chapter. We had most of the first story plotted out before writing began and thought it might be around 15,000 words. As we went along, though, we filled in little bits here and there and that one chapter became three. 15,000 words became 22,000.

Long before we were actually done with Dark Horse, though, Grue and I were already giggling over what the Ranch would be like with Beau and Belle. We had already named them and done a lot of work on their personalities, even though none of that shows up in Dark Horse. Now, Grue and I regularly have ideas we like that we have to keep out of the story because there's no place for them, but we still consider them canon. So as I went back to work on A Clockwork Green and Grue went back to Broken In (a fantastic story not yet posted on this site), we kept sending these little ideas back and forth knowing that there was no place for them.

And then we came up with an ending... and what an ending! Suddenly, we had a framework we could cobble some of those ideas onto. We quickly realized that Tales from the Ranch was going to be a very different kind of story, especially in tone, than Dark Horse was. We settled on an idea to have a chapter highlighting each of the ponies. At the outset, I was the most excited to get to write Peep and Winters, but as we went along, the character growth for each of them presented really wonderful writing opportunities. No part of this story was less than an absolute blast, from the initial concept to the last goddamn word.

Mostly, though, I'm thankful to this story because it was the story I needed to be working on. Light Rays Coming Out Of The Computer (a story not yet posted on this site) is an incredible journey with a fun set of twists and turns, but it has been absolute hell on my psyche to write it due to a combination of personal, emotional, and logistical factors. I'm really excited to pick it back up, and hopefully I'll have the fourth chapter done very soon (as it was nearly finished when I put it down six weeks ago).

On behalf of Grue, I would like to thank the small gang of talented writers who took a peek at this at various times over the last 6 months;

Apothecary29,

EmilyWinterCold,

fire_is_my_happy_place,

Monsinne,

and she who shall not be named, but is sorely missed.