The young pony left the rests of his camp to the crows and kept his way. He was close to his destiny, he could feel it; he could smell it in the thick morning air. His heart followed his uneasiness. How long had he been on the road? A month? Maybe two? Certainly a lot more than he ever been away from his small town near the mountains. There wasn’t a night he wouldn’t think about his mother, father, little brother, or his friends. He even realized he actually loved that filly he always played with since their foalhood. Remembering their company, their voices, and their smiles was the only company he had in his journey, and he held on to them all he could so he didn’t fall to fear. This time, though, he didn’t think about anypony.
All he could think was the City. The lair of mysteries and monsters and all the ancient magic featured in his grandparents ponytales. He knew those were just silly stories with a deeper moral to them, like being generous to everypony. He tried not to feel that growing excitement in his chest, but he couldn’t help it. It was in the air, it was in the wind and it was going to be in his mind for the rest of his life.
The small town he was from had this tradition of sending their teenagers to a journey of self-discovery, a ritual of pass as important as a birth itself. Every young pony could choose where they were willing to go, which part of the old fallen Empire they wanted to see with their own eyes. Many chose Canterlot, mostly pegasi and unicorns, since it’s location in the central mountains got a little troublesome to get to after the war. Others played it easy and chose Ponyville, home of the Last Alicorn. It didn’t matter the site as long as there was something to be learnt there.
That wasn’t, though, the reason why he had chosen Manehattan. Of course, he loved the stories his grandparents told him and he got to read the few history books at his hometown. What he wanted from the massive island was another kind of experience. He wanted to experience the sheer scale of their buildings, described by books as ultimately humbling. The buildings that composed it were considered the final proof ponykind was as close to a divine entity as the very same alicorns. Maybe that was one of the reasons the war exploded years ago. Many years ago.
War wasn’t a reality anymore though, nor were the Alicorn Princesses. He wanted to feel like a god who survived the toughest day of creation. He wanted to admire the beauty of skyscrapers, wide streets and the massive bridge that kept the island attached to the continent. He wanted to feel as part of that people of the past with a community so huge his own village would look like a tiny dot.
He kept those thought in mind while climbed the last hill, just about to see the foggy silhouette of the Island. His knees shook a little bit, his eyes widened and his heart skipped a beat. Manehattan was there alright, but not as he expected it to be. The huge skyscrapers that delimitated the shadowy figure of the scenario were far from magnificent; they were ruinous, dark grey, windowless and in such a funeral state the young pony started feeling the urge of running away.
He didn’t though. He shook his head, breathed deeply and crossed the looming bridge. Even though its massiveness it looked very frail, with some steel cables loose. He walked carefully, passing by abandoned old carts still with their old owner’s personal possessions inside them. The carts looked fancy and distant, from a more sophisticated time. He wanted to look at the purses and suitcases, rummage and discover new exciting things from those people, but the way the bridge was shaking under his hooves made him keep going forward in a constant pace. He only breathed in ease again once his hooves touched the island and he was surrounded by that spectral place.
“What happened here?” he wondered. “I didn’t know war got this place so badly”. The buildings were falling, the streets were shaggy craterous paths littered of more abandoned carts. He saw something that could be a skeleton, but quickly snaped his head and looked another way.
Once he was there, there were a million places he wanted to go to. The Times Square was going to be his first stop though. It was the center of the capitalist Empire of Equestria, where all the roads led to. Maybe there he could find out more about how things went to this city at war.
Sure enough he could start putting some pieces together as he walked through empty streets trying to figure some signs out. There were purple and white posters covering the remaining walls, papers of the same color covering the floor at some points with criptic propaganda. He got one and read “Save the Generous and Kind!”, followed by a number he didn’t understand. He could also see shattered diamonds all over. The young pony knew from the books that diamonds were the formal coin of exchange at old Equestria, so he certainly did not understand why there was literally broken money at the floor. He put some diamond dust at his backpack and followed the trail of chaos.
The sun was at its peak when he saw a sign indicating he was almost there. Since he hadn’t have any breakfast in the excitement of getting there as soon as he could, he was almost starving. His stomach shrunk a little bit when he saw it, not sure if of fear or confusion. There was a name written in purple graffiti over the original name of Times Square. Now it was Ra… Rar… Rarsomething Square, he couldn’t read the hurried calligraphy. He prepared himself to be surprised once more. Put a cookie back in his backpack and kept walking.
When he finally got to R. Square, he felt sick. Since his stomach was empty all he felt was an extreme pain in the back of his head and a dizziness he couldn’t explain. There it was, Times Square, as huge as the books described it, with signs bigger than the biggest building at his old home town, with an enormous thread of roads crossing and disappearing between ruinous buildings and abandoned carts. Everything was as he expected: dead. What he did not expect was the head in the middle of the square.
It was made of bronze; a giant bronze head, shining under the midday sun. It had a tiara, a pointy one, and a determined face despite the fact it was laying there, bodiless, in the middle of a dead metropolis. He recognized it at once: the Statue of Liberty. It was its head, only the head. But what really made his colt shiver was the graffiti on it. A purple, quick and poorly done ink covered its mane and big bold purple words covered its face:
RARITY: The Generosity Goddess
Author's Note
Special thanks to Ekevoo for helping me with this English thing.
