Wonders

We left the southern town early the next morning; we had a long train ride ahead of us.

On the train, the ponies seemed much more relaxed than last time; they chatted amongst themselves and even tried to talk to me once or twice.

“It’s your own fault you know” the princess said quietly to me after I had politely rebuffed the pink ones attempts to have a conversation about cake “they look at you differently know”

“All I did was laugh”

“It was enough”

“I do not care how they look at me”

“You will”

I doubted it, I could not be friendly to these ponies, I may need to freeze them later.

We were passing through the next town long before we got to the train station, it was very big. The buildings stretched across miles, without any walls to keep them contained, and they reached to the sky, the tallest ones went up until I had to crane my neck to see the tops.

And ponies, there were thousands, all the races, everywhere, all looking very busy, all in a hurry.

And many of them were unhappy, or disharmonic.

There was a blue haired earth pony mare with a hat mark waiting at the train station; she was quiet, like the yellow Pegasus. I decided I liked her, but didn’t bother to remember her name.

We walked with the quiet mare from the train station to a large building that seemed indistinguishable from the other buildings; apparently our accommodations were in there.

Then we began the tour.

As I had noted previously, everypony was always rushing around, and whereas in the previous towns ponies had smiled or waved to each other as they passed, the ponies of this town seemed to ignore everyone around them. I came to the conclusion that these ponies did not know each other, it seemed that the more ponies there were the more alone the ponies were.

And many of them were disharmonic.

It was mostly anger, but all of the elements were represented.

The obviously wealthy ponies were followed by an entourage of jealousy, venders on the streets positively reeked of deceit, and there were acts of violence committed in the alleys.

Acts of hate, of cruelty, and around these acts there were auras of cowardice, and despair.

And I couldn’t freeze them, that would cause a panic, and that would have only made things worse.

And my escort could not see through the shadows of the alley, could not sense the disharmony all around them, they were oblivious.

So the tour continued for hours, and by the end of it I was convinced the kingdom was doomed.