That little purple bean had become my best friend. I was looking at it just before dawn on the morning of the day I met you.
It was quiet. In the barracks, we all knew that if there was any indication that we were awake, then our commanding officer would lay into us especially on the morning of a battle. Naturally that meant it was going to be quite, but, if anything the sheer silence was an indication that most of us weren't asleep at all.
There were a lot of things going through my mind. Most of it was just random stuff that I was trying to bring up just to avoid having to think about what was going to happen that day. I thought about how cramped my bunk was. I thought about how there wasn't a lick of privacy in the whole damn barracks, and how it always seemed to smell like old socks in there.
I thought about how we would all tease my friend, Pepper, that the stink in here was coming from him. We'd all have a good laugh, and he knew we weren't serious. He was a good sport.
I smiled and watched my bean as I rolled it around on the flat of my hoof. I was thinking about the time Pepper got his revenge by cutting a hole in my mattress, hiding a rotten egg inside, and sealing up the hole with twine.
I sure had a lot of fun with these guys.
I didn't want to, but I thought about the war. The Crystal Empire had been at war with Equestria for years. It started with some minor skirmish whose name most ponies don't even remember, and each side blamed the other for initiating it. The rulers of Equestria used the event as a rallying call to decry the evils of slavery, and pledge to free The Crystal Empire's entire slave population. King Sombra used it as a rallying call to accuse Equestria of duplicity, dishonor, aggression, and being a threat to its people's entire economy, its very way of life.
You know all of that already, though.
I used to think a lot about whether the war was right or wrong, before I lost my wife. The enemy claimed it was an accident; that they didn't mean to start the fire that cut through my town. It was a damned convenient 'accident', then. It put an early end to the siege, and gave them an advantage that they've been pressing for the last two years. I learned not to trust anything that comes out of the enemy's mouth.
I might have enlisted right then and there, if I didn't have my daughter to think about.
My daughter looks a lot like you. I don't know you very well, but I think she acts a lot like you too. She's a very strong willed filly. It can be tough for a single father earth pony to raise a unicorn daughter. Let me tell you, if she wanted to, she could get into some real mischief and there wouldn't be much I could do about it. Although, I guess it's the same way for all parents. We never really have any control over them. We just have to teach them what's right and hope for the best.
I thought back to the day I left her. She was excited to show me some new spell, and she didn't realize it yet, but it's rude to try to get daddy's attention when he's talking to guests.
The look in her face was filled with so much delight thanks to her simple color changing bean spell. It's amazing to see that much happiness in the eyes of a child. When you get older, the world seems so complex and miserable, but for her, that bean was joy, pure and simple. I wished at that moment that I could experience that joy, too. I wanted my foalhood back. I wanted to be back when things weren't like this.
She didn't know why I was afraid, but she could tell pretty quickly. "Daddy, why are you crying?" she asked me.
"It's okay, sweetie," I told her as I laid down to eye level. "Your bean is really amazing."
I forced a smile with all my strength. I don't know if she ever saw me cry before that day, at least, not when she was old enough to remember. I didn't want it to be the last thing she remembered about me. I didn't want it to be the last thing I remembered about her, either. I didn't want to see that confusion and fear in her eyes as she was trying to come to terms with what she thought was impossible. What force of nature could be so great and terrible that it would reduce her father to tears? Her father, who's always so strong, and always there to save her.
She looked up at me with a worried grimace. "Daddy?" she asked.
I drew in a tremulous breath, and released it quickly, trying my best to play it off with a smile and a laugh. "It's okay, Moonbeam. Go upstairs, honey. Daddy will talk to you soon."
The conscription officers weren't paying any attention. They just attended to their paperwork. Their quills scratched softly as they filled out various pieces of government record keeping. It sounds silly, but one of the things that hit me the very hardest was that my kitchen table was being used as their desk. I didn't want them in my house. If I had the power, I would throw them out. I hated them, but here they were, using my furniture like they owned it. It was like that kitchen table was a symbol of the personal violation they were committing on my life. I wanted to push them off my kitchen chairs, and scream at them to never touch my things; never touch my things, and get the fuck out of my house.
That's not how things go. I imagine you, of all ponies, would know that sometimes life just doesn't turn out the way you want. Sometimes somepony crushes your life underhoof like you aren't even there, while they stroll off toward some destination you don't understand or care about.
I was very careful to be deferential when I protested. I didn't want to be thrown into the stocks, but I had to ask. I asked them how they could take me away from my daughter. I was all she had.
To the conscription officers, what they were doing to me was very clinical and mundane. They didn't answer me directly. They just explained the various legal options I had when choosing where my daughter was going to live. They were some combination of bored and angry. 'Contemptuous' or 'arrogant' might have been a good way to describe it, if it wasn't clear just how little they cared.
They had obviously presided over this kind of heartbreak hundreds of times. They even had the names of the forms I needed to fill out all committed to memory. It must have just been noise to them, by that point, or perhaps they never had a heart to begin with. At the time, I preferred to think the latter.
Moonbeam didn't understand. She didn't know why this had to happen to her. All she wanted was for us to stay together forever, and live peacefully as a family.
Just like me.
I was looking at her color changing bean just before dawn on the morning of the day I met you.
The first beat of the war drum hit my chest with a pang of fear. For every beat of that damned drum, my heart would hammer me with a half dozen more. I scrambled from my bunk and stood at attention just in time before the sergeant smashed open the barracks doors.
He walked down the corridor between the rows upon rows of bunk beds, eyed every one of us sternly, and gave us a rousing speech about how the enemy is evil; how the enemy wouldn't hesitate to kill any one of us; how the enemy wants to invade my home, and tell my people how they can and can't live their lives. He told us that they have no honor; that they are cowards who would stab us in the back if we showed them a moment's mercy; that they are the face of an invading evil and each and every one of us is a hero for standing up to these tyrants.
At least, that's what I think he said. It was hard to hear him over the sound of my own heart, and I already knew all those things.
On the entire trip to the battlefield, I was thinking about being a hero. I was relishing the opportunity to kill somepony. I wanted the enemy to die for what they did to me. They murdered my wife, and they separated me from my child, and now they want to kill me and my friends too.
I tried not to tremble. I didn't want to look weak in front of my friends. I didn't want to look weak in front of my commander, especially, but damn it I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry out my rage and my fear. I wanted to scream in the faces of my enemies for all the pain this war had wrought. I would have my chance soon enough.
Pepper put his forehoof on my scruff. "Just like they told us. The front lines will protect us with a shield wall, and we take up the rear with our spears. It's just like training."
I nodded fitfully and tried drawing a breath to calm myself.
Pepper smiled at me and said, "And if you get into trouble, always keep your tail facing toward me. I'll watch your flank and you watch mine. I'll be just like the time we got into--"
Pepper's neck craned back limply at the force of the arrow strike that pierced his head. His legs buckled like they were the helpless limbs of a marionette and he crashed to the earth limply. The momentum of his slow march moments earlier carried with him, and it twisted his body sideways as he slumped onto his flank and shoulder.
I gasped with shock, but I couldn't hear my own breath. The army around me broke into a roar of war cries, hoof stomps, and the screams of pain, fear, and panic.
I tried to stay with my friend. I dove onto his body and lifted his limp head with shaking hooves. I had to stay with him until the medics arrived. I had to take him and run. All around me, ponies hunkered low, and raised their shields to the sky, blocking out the orange twilight above.
My muzzle curled with grief, and I wrenched on pepper's barrel. "Pepper!" I screamed with horrified incomprehension. "Pepper you're hurt!"
There was a chorus of whizzing thumps as arrows struck the canopy of shields above my head.
The stone that had been weighing on my gut since this morning was turning cartwheels now. "Pepper!" I coughed my words, and I felt tears streaking my muzzle. "Pepper, you dopey bastard!" I screamed. "Don't be dead!"
I felt a cruel shove from one of the other soldiers. "Raise your damn shield you moron!"
Choking down tears, I stumbled to my hooves. I grabbed my shield out of the mud and it slipped in my grip. I fumbled to get it in place in formation, but I was shoved from behind.
They say that these are battles of numbers, and that there's no chance a ragtag group of conscripts straight off the training grounds could possibly face off against Celestia's army on equal terms, with equal numbers. We outnumbered their forces three to one, but the commanders weren't stupid. They knew that no number of soldiers will achieve anything if we all panic and run. Forming a circle around the rear flank of the army, the commanders created a shield wall, and forced the soldiers forward.
The wave of flesh surged from behind. It pressed me away from Pepper's body, and I lost my shield under the force of it all.
As the commanders pushed forward, the army around me bellowed out cries of bloodlust, and charged toward the enemy. The stampede shot up divots of earth around me in a roar of thumping hooves. Forsaking my shield, and my friend's body, I turned to charge with the group, rather than be trampled. I pulled my spear from my back and bore it in my teeth, with its tip held high toward the enemy, just as I was trained.
In training, however, they didn't teach me what to do if I got caught next to a surging fireball. Beams of piercing white were shooting down from just above the enemy encampment, and an explosion tore at the earth to my side. My ears rang sharply, and I suppose it was a small mercy that I didn't have to hear the screams. I stared, horrified, at the ponies who were unfortunate enough to have been caught in the blast. They writhed next to me and clutched their wounds. They arched with pain from the searing heat, and twitched as strikes of falling stone and earth peppered their bodies.
One of our knight commanders ran past me, contemptuously body checking me as he made his way. He slid in front of me, turned back to his troops with a snarl, and roared out his orders. He pointed above the enemy encampment. "Archers! Target the sun princess! Third and fifth, with me!"
I wheezed, and leaned down to bite my spear out of the dirt. My entire body ached from the blast, and I could still barely hear, but I understood enough to know that the commander wanted me to charge. My mud caked spear tasted foul and gritty, but I bit it tightly, and charged toward the enemy line. There was a thunderous crash, and a song of clashing steel as our warriors were joined.
The arrow barely missed my muzzle. I felt a pound in my jaw that resonated with a painful tingle down my neck. The arrow embedded itself into my spear, and sent it was hurling away from me and back down into the dirt just as an Equestrian knight was descending upon me.
I ran. Everything was going to Tartarus around me. I couldn't fight without my spear, my friends were dead or dying, and I was scared. I was so scared I barely even realized I was running until I was galloping into the Equestrian camp. I dodged enemy and friendly arrows alike as I slipped through a gap in the lines. I'd had enough of this battle. I was intent on running into the forest on the far side of the camp and not looking back.
I don't know how long I ran. I was dodging tents and small stands set up to provide weapons, armor, and provisions to the Equestrian soldiers stationed in the camp. I could see groups of royal guards while they were scrambling from position to position as war raged at their doorstep.
By the time I was half way through, The Equestrian lines were splitting, and The Crystal Empire was surging in to take the camp. I weaved between the tents, dodging close encounters with royal guards. I needed to move fast. I knew I'd be labeled a deserter for leaving the line. Everypony was my enemy now. I needed to get to that forest.
I don't know how I managed to survive without being discovered by the royal guard. It was simply bad luck, I suppose, that I survived long enough to meet you. I think you were just as surprised as I was when I slammed into you. When we collapsed over that balcksmith's station, I thought that was it. I thought I was dead. I thought I had finally been caught by soldiers from one side or the other, and it was over. I was scared, but you were just as scared as I was.
I don't know what miscalculation caused you to be so close to the lines, but I could see it in your eyes. You had never been face to face with the enemy before, and it terrified you.
They say things happen slowly in situations like this. That's not how it works. It goes by in the blink of an eye. It just seems like it was slow afterwards, like it couldn't have possibly gone by that fast. Something just doesn't seem right about something that significant going by so fast.
You barely had the time to choke out a tearful plea for me to stop before I grabbed a nearby sword from the blacksmith's rack. You skittered back in the dirt and stared with transfixed horror at my blade as I charged toward you.
I suppose, if things actually were moving more slowly, I might have thought about why I was doing this. Thoughts of being a hero had been pounding in my head all day. It seemed like, although I ran with disgrace, fate decided to give me one last chance to redeem myself, and become a true hero after all.
I was about to kill the princess of the night, and, by my own hoof, strike a decisive blow for the Crystal Empire. More than that, though, I was about to finally get my revenge. I was going to take the sweetest prize I could have imagined. I was going to drive that sword so deep into your breast, they'd have to bury you with it.
You barked out an anguished sob as I lunged forward. The blue flash was almost blinding. I didn't know what happened at first. I just knew that I felt too weak to strike. "No!" you cried out after the flash, lifting your hooves to your mouth and widening your eyes as I stumbled to a stop.
The tip of my sword fell away, then another slice, then another. It crumbled into shards in my mouth.
I coughed sharply as I felt the taste of blood surge into my muzzle. You were hysterical now. You were screaming and sobbing. I couldn't believe my eyes. One of the rulers of Equestria was crying for me, and I wasn't even dead yet.
You lunged toward me. There wasn't much I could do to dodge. I was already falling over into a heap. My skin was warm and sticky with the feeling of blood soaking into my fur. I slumped across your fore legs and coughed.
"I'm sorry!" you shrieked as you stared down at me above my muzzle and wept.
You really do remind me of my daughter. That's what I was thinking, when I died. You have the same eyes and fur, and you both curl your nose just like that when you cry.
I lifted my hoof to touch your cheek for as long as I could. The sky above was filled with flickering orange as the flames of war licked the heavens, and the piercing rays of the early sunrise shot golden beams across the clouds.
I hate you for everything you've done. I hate you for what you've done to me, and my wife, and my daughter, but in my final moments, as I watched your eyes, I could see that you never wanted to be here. You never really wanted to do any of this. You just wanted to go home, and live peacefully with your family.
Just like me.
Author's Note
This story was originally going to be a dream sequence in Sleep Walking, but I thought it deserved its own story. I intend to reference it in upcoming chapters of Sleep Walking.
