When the Circus Came to Town

Back to when I was a small colt is the best place to start my tale. I was born in a small province of Equestria. It was called The Tail Plains, due to the fact that it was off of the lower part of the land. The plains were inhabited by ponies of all kinds, from zebras to unicorns and everything inbetween. The entire province was dedicated to farming, and as such we had a vast amount of small villages with friendly ponies.

Tail Plains was taken up as a province when we had a surplus of food that the princesses thought would benefit Equestria. They sent a messenger that said "you are now a province of the great land of Equestria and under the rule of Princesses Celestia and Luna."
Not a single soul said anything against it.

As I said before, we were friendly and spaced out. No military existed to contest the princesses' rule even if we wanted to.

My name was Squirt. Squirt Ironhoof. My mother had a sense of humor or something, because the reason for my name was due to the fact that I was the smallest of all my siblings, and I had a lot of siblings. I grew as any other zebra does, going through the common trials of growing up, but I wasn't the run-of-the-mill citizen of Tail Plains. Where others would pull a plow through the dirt and wrestle in the mud, I took to trying my hoof at whatever came to mind. One day it was books from the public library, the next it was tinkering with some of the rusty scrap metal in our backyard, another day it would be herbalism (which is how my eyes turned red), and the next it would be another random thing. I dabbled in these like hobbies, but it was always the same thing over and over. Do this for a day, then that, and repeat. Until something unheard of in tail plains happened.

The circus came to town.

***********************************

I was fifteen, slightly bruised from the night prior when my father came home after drinking too much cider.

Looking down the dirt path that led to our town I saw something extraordinary, colors that were so outstanding that one would have to be as serious as my father when he hasn't had something to drink not to want to go see what they were about. I ignored my siblings off in the field having fun with their friends. It wasn't hard to, since they never spoke to me, never invited me to play. I squinted and saw a hazy blur of ponies and wooden carts and blue and yellow and orange and-
"SQUIRT!!" yelled my father "WHAT ARE YOU DOING! THERE'S WORK TO BE DONE!"

Why did I have to go do work? My siblings didn't. He never made them do anything, they were his perfect little phillies and colts, not fuck-ups like myself. Even if I tried I couldn't have done what he wanted, I would always have a plow locked to my back that I couldn't pull and as I struggled in a losing battle with the earth he would go into the house to drink some more and only occasionally come out to yell "Why isn't that little patch plowed up yet? Is it too much for the widdle filly?".
So I stood there, looking down the path at the colorful blur, wondering what mysteries were hidden by the heat induced haze on the road.
"SQUIRT! GET YOUR TINY FLANK HERE NOW!"

I sighed, knowing there was no way to avoid the punishment of not running at his first word. Yet I remained there, on the path, staring.
So he came to me.

Usually I would leave, run away for a period of time to let him cool down so that he didn't administer his usual physical and verbal punishment laced with his insults about me being weak and not like the others, but not today. I was too mezmerized, drawn like a moth to a flame. It was as if it called out to me from a place beyond this plane of reality.

"ARE YOUR LEGS THAT WEAK THAT YOU CAN'T DRAG YOURSELF-"

All the anger that I stored for years surged forth. "SHUT UP! SHUT THE HELL-" I roared, while turning to face him, in defiance from all the times he insulted me, tortured me both physically and mentally.

Thwack. He punched me with his front hoof across the left side of my face. I fell backwards, down to the ground. A taste formed in my mouth, it was a delicious taste, it tasted like victory, pride, the sensation of finally standing up to the stallion that beat me, insulted me, and tormented me for all that I was. It was blood, my own blood. I had never tasted anything better in my entire life.

Then his words came again, in a low, stern voice like that of an angry behemoth.

"Don't you EVER talk back to me again. Do you understand? DO YOU!?"

My face was a mere decimeter away from the hot, dusty ground. I watched as a trickle of blood came from my mouth and the side of my face where his blow broke the skin.

"I'M TALKING TO YOU, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE ASS!"

The crimson trickle formed a small pool about half the size of a hoofprint in the dust. I grinned, looking at a pool of victory, sweet, salty, crimson victory.

Smack. Another blow landed, this time on my exposed side, just behind where my ribs protected my organs.

"YOU LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!"

I looked away to the colorful and hazy blur in the distance. His voice pierced my ears like thumbtacks, this time in a tone of sarcasm and malice.

"You want to go see that, don't you?, well you're not going to be able to where you'll be."

He grabbed my tail with his teeth and dragged me down the path toward the wooden structure me and the rest of my so-called family shared with ease. I stared at the blur all the while, silently vowing that I would see what it was before it passed by, half from defiance and the other half from my curiosity.