The River

Silver Pines was a small town in the south of Equestria, on the edge of the badlands. The simple wooden houses that cluttered around the dusty red streets were home to perhaps three hundred souls, most of them earthponies.

On a moonless night, a pony who looked hard enough could see a few faint orange lights in the distance. Those were the flames of the factories in Manehattan, which never went out, whether it was Celestia or Luna who watched over them.

The only light Silver Pines gave off at night came from the tavern.

Once, a master blacksmith had come into town and set up shop. Nopony knew why he had chosen Silver Pines, but his forge had soon thrived and grown. In its heyday, before the recession, twenty ponies had worked there, tirelessly pounding on anvils and firing up furnaces to make everything from horseshoes to railway spikes to compasses. There had even been two orders from the Royal Guard, one for spears, the other for helmets. These had sent a flurry of excitement through the town. The Guard only bought from the best.

Two years ago, the old master had died, and the business had died with him. His name had been the only thing that could draw customers so deep into the middle of nowhere.

Not far from Silver Pines, there was a river, from which the town drew most of its water. Drinking directly from the river was a bad idea, and had been for ages. Industrial waste from Manehattan had seen to that. The town had a treatment plant, but it was an old and rickety thing – of the billions of bits flowing through Canterlot each year, there weren't many that ended up in Silver Pines. The plant's limited output forced the townsponies to conserve water. Over the years, many farmers had left town in search of greener pastures, or at least less dry ones.

At the bank of the river stood a young stallion.

Spark looked around. His eyes fell on the gently flowing water, on the tall grass that surrounded him, on the sharp grey rocks of the badlands against the southern horizon, before resting on the mare to his left.

The grass played around her legs, strong and firm from years of hard work. Her coat glistened with the sweat of late summer. A light breeze picked up a few strands of the deep red mane he'd nuzzled into so many times.

A bug landed on her haunches. With an annoyed flick of her tail, she swatted it away. Then she was still, staring at the river in front of her.

She reminded him of the sun a bit: when he looked at her, he was never quite sure if she was yellow or white. Unlike the sun, though, the sight of his Grace was never hard on his eyes.

He hoped she would meet his gaze, look back at him with those piercing green eyes. Those were the first thing about her he had fallen for, long ago. She just kept staring straight ahead.

'I don't know why I still bother coming here,' she said.

'Don't you like it here?' he asked calmly.

She finally turned to him, a small smirk forming on her lips. 'Well, I guess it can be nice,' she said. 'At least you didn't bring your guitar this time.'

That hurt. He practised with his guitar every day. His dad had a rusty gramophone with a hoofful of singles; he could play each of those songs backwards in his sleep. But no matter how he tried, he couldn't get Grace to like his playing. Even the serenade he'd written specially for her had only gotten a begrudging 'nice' out of her.

'You still think you're gonna make it big with that thing, don't you?' she said.

Tough question. He didn't know how much of a chance he really stood; he'd never been to the city, but there had to be a hundred guitar players better than him there, and that was just Manehattan. Still, he hoped that he would make it, one day. That his playing would get him onto the stage, maybe even onto record, and that crowds of thousands would cheer his name. And that he would get to see a lot of places that weren't Silver Pines.

'Dunno.' He shrugged. 'Maybe.'

Grace was silent. Far upstream, a heron cried.

At first the silence wasn't too bad, but after a minute or two, it started to bug him. They came out here to be together, not to just stand next to each other and say nothing.

'C'mon, let's walk for a bit,' he said. He started wading through the tall grass, following the river downstream. Grace fell in next to him, still not saying a word.

Spark started singing quietly, to the rhythm of his own hoofbeats. It was an old song, the first song he had learned to play.

'If I were a strong stallion, I'd wrestle with a bear

Win prizes in the boxing ring and charm a pretty mare

If I were a smart stallion, I'd study books of law

And never lay a hoof again on axe or scythe or saw

If I were a unicorn, I'd conjure up a way

To swim in gold and diamonds and be merry every day

If I were a pegasus, I'd have no doubt or fear

I'd spread my wings wide as I could and fly away from here'

'You know, I always hated that song,' Grace said. 'Every stallion who ever sings it knows he's none of those things. You know it too.'

Spark grinned. 'Maybe. I think I did pretty well in the "charming a pretty mare" department, though.'

She jabbed him in the ribs, a bit harder than he'd expected. 'Oh, knock it off.'

He chuckled softly. 'You're being too hard on yourself, Grace,' he said. 'And you're being too hard on the song. It's nice to dream sometimes. Wouldn't you like to fly away from here?'

Grace sighed. 'Yeah, but I can't, Spark. A dream that won't come true only makes ponies do stupid things. Remember old Dusty? That funny stock-market scheme?'

'Point taken. Still, I don't think anypony's ever gotten out of here without dreaming about it first.'

'Hm.'

A lone tree rose from the grass of the bank. A few birds sat in it, chirping about whatever it was birds had on their minds. The widest branches hung almost over the water.

As they reached the tree, Spark stopped. 'That's a pretty tree,' he said. 'How many tables d'you reckon you could make from that?'

Grace squinted and cocked her head. 'Two small ones, or one huge one,' she said after a while. 'Not that the boss would approve. The great master craftspony probably wouldn't be happy until I'd made it into a statue of Princess Luna or something.' She rolled her eyes.

'Well, maybe you should.'

For the first time that day, Grace laughed. 'Ha! Maybe I will, just to spite him.'

Spark grinned. 'Ah, but then you gotta study your subject first. Go to Canterlot, see the Princess. Maybe have tea with her. I'm sure she'd love that.'

'Yes! To Canterlot!' Grace was laughing wildly now, tears of mirth forming in her eyes. 'By first-class train, of course. A lady travels in style!'

[INSERT MORE WORDS]

'You ever been on a train?' he asked.

'No. Have you?'

He shook his head. 'Nah, me neither.' A faint smile grew on his face. 'When I was little, my dad showed us something he'd brought in from work. They'd had this big order for all kinds of parts for steam engines, and there was this one brake handle that was just the tiniest bit off, so they couldn't use it. He took it home, as a souvenir, kinda. He took me on one knee, my little sister on the other, and he told us all about how the thing fitted together with a ton of other parts, and how it could make the train stop.' He chuckled. 'I don't think he'd ever been on a train, either.'

It was a sweet memory, but the gods knew it was a painful one. When the forge closed, his dad had gone out looking for a new job. He'd even gone to the city a few times, but nopony would have him; his bones were too old, his muscles too weary. One day, he’d come home, crashed onto the couch, and just said, 'I quit.'

He seemed to have gotten twenty years older in the two years that had passed since then.

Spark had fared slightly better. He helped out on the farms around town, scraping together all the bits he could get. All the bits he could get weren’t enough to support the family by a long shot, and the farmers only needed him in summer anyway.

His mum had, after much begging and pleading, managed to get a job in the city. She went there to clean rich ponies' houses, and came back with a sack of bits. She was often gone for a month or longer at a time, and whenever she came back, Spark asked her ears off about what the city was like.

He'd had his dreams of Manehattan since he was a little colt, but with what he heard from her, those dreams became more solid. He saw trams, theatres, pubs, streets bustling with thousands of ponies. He saw the Grand Plaza, big enough to cover half of Silver Pines. He saw the station, where trains departed for all corners of Equestria.

What always struck him most about his mum's stories, though, was how different things could be in the city. There were fabulous houses with nine or ten rooms, like the ones she worked in, and tiny shacks that could collapse at any moment. Broad lanes with perfectly-pruned trees, and alleys covered in mud and filth. Stallions in immaculate blue suits, and unwashed beggars slumping on street corners. And anything and everything in between.

One day, he would go there and try his luck. He didn't know if he would make it, if he would end up on the good end of that scale, but he sure as hell was going to try. He wasn’t going to waste his life away here.

Like his dad had done.

He sighed. 'I just… I just don't wanna end up like him,' he said, as much to himself as to Grace.

She snorted, and kicked a pebble into the river. 'Yeah. I hear you.'

At the sheer bitterness in her tone, his instincts took over and he wrapped his forelegs around her in a tight hug.

Grace's dad had worked in the sawmill a little farther up the river, until an accident had cost him most of his left forehoof. Now, he received Disability Compensation, which was a fancy way of saying he got a check each month because he couldn't work anymore. Two thirds paid by the sawmill, one third by the Crown, and most of it spent on hard drink.

Spark remembered the one time Grace had brought him home to meet her parents. He'd been scared of her dad, not so much of the mangled hoof as of the fierce determination to shut out the world, to let it burn and not to care.

Grace just leaned against him, without saying anything. No tears fell on his coat yet, but he could feel she was fighting hard to keep them in.

[INSERT MORE WORDS]

'I love you, Grace,' he said slowly. 'I love you, and I wanna marry you someday.'

She looked up at him, eyes glistening. Her voice trembled as she spoke. 'What are we gonna get married on, Spark? Are the royalties from your hit records gonna pay rent?' She was crying now, all the tears she had been holding back bursting out at once. 'You're a summer farmhand, for Celestia's sake! And I'm gonna end up working in the same damn sawmill that took my dad from me – if I'm lucky!'

With a sudden jerk, she tore herself out of his embrace and skidded down to the waterline. Then she broke into a gallop along the river, splashing up big fountains as she went.

Spark didn't have to think for a second. He bounded after her. 'Grace, wait!' he called out as the river splashed around his legs. She was everything he had, and he wasn't going to let a million tears take that away from him.

He caught up with her soon enough. He threw his forelegs around her again, and they ground to a stop. She didn't struggle.

She crashed to her haunches on the smooth pebbles at the water's edge. He didn't want to let go, so he was pulled down with her.

Minutes passed without either of them saying a word. The water gently lapped at their rear hooves. He shifted around awkwardly, trying to offer her a comfortable position; she just sat there, huddled up against him, her panting and crying slowly getting softer. The only other sounds he heard were the river's flow and the rustling of the grass and reed in the breeze.

Then Grace spoke up. 'You wanna know why I never like it when you play your guitar?' she sobbed. 'Dreams, Spark! You're a dreamer! You've got your dream that you'll get out of here and break big. Manehattan, Coltventry, Trottingham, why not the Royal Theatre in Canterlot!' Her voice rose from a sob to a loud cry. 'A-and every time I see you play, it makes me think of that dream, and how it's never gonna come true! You'll never make it out of here! We'll never make it out of here! We're gonna grow old and die in this godforsaken town!'

She let her weeping head fall against his chest. As he softly ran a hoof through her mane, he pondered her words. Could it be true? Was there really no hope?

He looked at the river, at the afternoon sun lazily gliding towards the west, and at the beautiful mare pressed against him – and refused to believe it.

'Don't worry about dying just yet, Grace,' he said. 'We're alive right now. 'S all that matters.'

She looked up at him. Even when they were red and stained with tears, her eyes pierced into his soul like no other eyes could.

Without warning, her muzzle shot forward. Her lips were on his before he had a chance to react.

Not far from Silver Pines, there was a river. At the edge of the river, there were two young ponies. Their bodies burned hotter than any smith's furnace.

No forge, no sawmill, no stack of bills could stop them. They were alive, and they were free. The world was theirs.

Three weeks passed before they learned of their mistake, and of the new life that would soon see the light in Silver Pines.