The Mailmare

by Bad Horse

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Derpy Hooves, Crossover, Dark, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 13046

The Equestrian Postal Carrier's Hoofbook lists three circumstances under which mail service may be suspended. The end of the world is not one of them.

Derpy just wants to bring ponies their mail. She's not trying to save the world.

It's funny how things work out sometimes.

My "More Most Dangerous Game" entry (7th place). Thanks to Axis of Rotation and AugieDog for editing. Drawing of Derpy is by Celebi-Yoshi. Wasteland by lindbalk. Reviews by InquisitorM, Titanium Dragon, Burraku_Pansa, and Pen Stroke.

Published 2015-01-21 05:20:03 UTC
Last updated 2015-01-28 00:30:27 UTC

1. The Flowers

“Pa!”

Wild blinked groggily. “Wha—”

Corn was pushing on his shoulder with one hoof. His lavender eyes were close, quivering in a sea of white.

Wild shook himself awake. Pink. Not white. White was gone. He rolled out of bed.

“Somebody’s coming, Pa!”

“Gimme the rifle.”

Corn pulled the rifle’s mounting yoke off his shoulders and draped it over Wild’s. Wild cinched the buckle tight under his neck. He followed Corn into the front room of the farmhouse, setting his hooves down carefully and quietly as he went. After five years, it was still “the rifle” to Wild, never “my rifle” like the sergeants made him call it during the war. The ugly black thing still looked to him like some predatory stick insect.

Corn pointed out the front window, down toward the road. The sky was still cloudless, and in the red glow of the sunset he could see something moving down by the old mailbox.

Wild pointed his nose at the binoculars slung around Corn’s neck and grunted. He kept one hoof on the rifle’s stock while Corn held them up for him.

“There’s a pony out there, all right,” he muttered. He couldn’t tell what color it was in the red light. “Got some kind of military saddlebags on. Look like they’re meant for flying.”

Corn drew in a breath.

“Wait… yeah, it’s a pegasus. Dammit.”

The land before the overgrown dirt road was cracked and dry, losing a little more topsoil every time a storm came through. Anypony standing on the road should see just another abandoned homestead. But up the hill from the road, hidden behind hillocks or thorn bushes, there were wisps of green, scrawny plants of whatever sorts could survive in the dim light of the eternal sunset. No carrots or potatoes, but peas, beans, lettuce, and spinach.

He heard Sun’s high-pitched voice, shaking with excitement. “Pa! What’s going on, Pa?”

“Ssh. Get in the cellar, Sun.” Wild kept his eye on the strange pony, who was sniffing at the mailbox. The mailbox flag, which had been down for the past five years, was sticking straight up, like a bright red cape beckoning any passing bulls.

“Dammit, Sun.”

Those town ponies must have been filling Sun’s head with stories again. He’d leave the colt at home next time he went, no matter what May said.

The pegasus opened the mailbox and reached inside. It pulled out an envelope.

Wild should’ve whipped the colt last time he put a letter in the box. Now somepony would die for his soft-heartedness. Any fool could tell the difference between a letter that had sat in a mailbox for five years and one that hadn’t. Wild shrugged off the binoculars. He unlatched the window and softly pulled it open a few inches. He heard soft hoofsteps behind him and knew now his wife was in the room too.

“Don’t, Wild,” she whispered. “Let them take the crops. You know we can’t stay out here on our own forever.”

“Hush, May,” he grumbled. “Town’s no safer. Just a big bullseye waitin’ to be hit.”

He took a deep breath, pulled back the bolt on the rifle, and aimed.

A hoof pushed the rifle to one side. In a reflex, Wild lashed out blindly with the stock before he could stop himself. He looked over, heart thumping, and saw shock on Sun’s face. He’d have bashed the colt’s head in if he’d been any taller.

“Celestia’s piss!” he snarled. “I damn near killed you, son!”

But the little colt grabbed onto his foreleg, pulling the rifle down. “Don’t, Pa! It’s the mailmare! I told ya she’d come!”

Wild tried to shake the colt off. “Shut up and get down. There ain’t no mailmare.”

“Pa—” Corn said.

“Get this fool colt offa me right quick, Corn.”

“Pa!” Corn said. He was looking through the binoculars again. “It—it took the letter!”

Wild kicked Sun under the elbow with a rear leg. The colt grunted and fell back.

“Pegasi’ll take anything,” Wild said, raising the rifle again.

“And it pushed the flag back down!”

Wild paused, his hoof on the trigger. “What?”

“I said it it pushed the flag back down, Pa!”

“She pushed the flag back down,” Sun said between gasps.

Wild lowered the rifle and grabbed the binoculars, yanking Corn toward him by the neck as he did so. He peered through the binoculars.

The pegasus reached over its shoulder with the letter still in its mouth. It flipped the saddlebag cover open and dropped the letter in. It nosed around in the bag, grabbed a different letter in its teeth, pushed that into the mailbox, and shut the door after it. Then it stared at the mailbox and... smiled. Grinned, even.

“You better leave her alone!” Sun said. “They say she’s the baddest pony in the Waste. Nopony can stop her!”

“Hush!” Wild said. But it was too late. The strange pony whipped its head toward them, and for a moment Wild and the pony looked straight at each other.

It was a mare. There was something wrong with her eyes. Not so much that he couldn’t read the sudden fear in them. She jumped into the air and was gone before he could blink.

“Dammit,” Wild said. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

And then that fool colt was running across the yard, on a cloudless day. A pegasus would see his bright yellow ass from a mile away. Not that it mattered now, Wild supposed.

“I am going to whip that colt’s hide like it’s never been whipped before,” Wild said. “And then I’m gonna whip it again in the other direction.”

“Wild,” May said.

“Don’t you even,” Wild said.

Then Sun was bursting through the door again, letting it slam behind him like it was before the war. Wild stood up to his full height and took a step toward the colt, even as his wife laid a hoof on his shoulder.

Sun spat a letter out onto the windowsill. “We got a letter from grandma!”

“Don’t lie about your grandma, colt,” Wild said. “You never knew her.”

“Pa—” Corn said.

“Go out into the yard and bring me a switch, Sun, and it’d better be thick or I’ll pick one myself.”

“Not now, Wild,” May said, looking nervously at the sky.

“Pa,” Corn said. “He ain’t lyin’.” He pointed his nose at the letter.

Wild stared at the envelope. “The Flowers,” it said, in his mother’s shaky writing.

He flipped open his jackknife, tore the envelope open, and shook out a letter. Everyone gathered with their heads in a circle around him.

“‘6th of Rain’s End, 1007,’” he read. “Two days before the war.”

“What’s it say?” Corn asked.

“What kinda crazy pony risks her life delivering five-year-old letters?”

“Wild,” May said. “The letter.”

Wild read it slowly, in a voice somepony might use in church. “‘Dear Wild, May, and Corn.’ That was before your time, kid,” he said, glancing at Sun.

His eyes wandered around the edges of the paper. The room, the ponies receded from view until he was aware only of the sound of their breathing. He waved the letter gently. It filled the room with an exotic crinkling sound.

“It's lighter than an eggshell,” he said.

“You haven't forgotten how to read?” May said.

“Naw,” he said quietly. “I ain't forgot.”

Wild cleared his throat. “‘Dear Wild, May, and Corn,’ he read again. ‘It was lovely having you over for Winter Wrap Up, and kind of you to come even though I know they don’t do it right in the city. Grandpa is still grumbling about it even as I write this. I think he enjoys grumbling about it more than he ever enjoyed the old festival. Celly knows he can’t do much else anymore.’”

Wild paused and swallowed. The family all looked at each other in the red light.

“‘Soon the robins will return, and the flowers will come up. We’ll go to the park in the afternoon again. He can grumble with the other old men while I gossip with the other old women.’”

“What’s a robin?” Sun asked.

“It’s a bird that don’t lay eggs for you,” Wild said.

“We haven’t had flowers in a long time,” May said.

“We’ve got lots of flowers!” Sun said. “The peas got flowers, and the beans got flowers.”

“Those aren’t proper flowers, dear,” May said.

Wild resumed reading. “‘We’re so excited about May’s news! Do pick out a name ahead of time, one for a colt and one for a filly. Don’t put it off or you’ll end up naming it Wall.’” He rubbed Sun’s head. “She’s talking about you, kid. ‘The kettle’s at a boil, so that’s all for now. Write back soon. Love, Grandma.’”

He folded the letter up and slid it carefully back into the envelope.

“You think grandma and grandpa are okay?” Sun asked.

“I don’t know, son,” Wild said. “I sure do wish I could write them back.”

“I did, Pa! I wrote her a letter. I told her I was Sun and I’m her grand-colt, and that I take care of the peas, and also that my favorite color is yellow and my favorite food is fresh peas.” He looked down sheepishly. “It was a lot about me.”

“You sent her a letter,” Wild said. “You honest-to-Celly sent her a letter.”

He patted Sun’s head. Then he looked around the sitting room, and out the windows, out across the whole of their little homestead. “We’re Flowers, and by Celestia, we’re gonna plant some flowers around here,” he announced. He looked over at his wife. “Some proper flowers.”

Author's Note

The month name "Rain's End" comes from Superfortress78's Equestrian Calendar. The plot idea comes from David Brin's The Postman, which worked it better in the first half and then pissed it away in the second.

2. Company

Derpy closed her eyes and stretched her wings out to their fullest, feeling the wind rush over her face. It wasn’t really safe to fly, especially on a clear day. But her gray fur was hardly distinguishable from the dusty sky, and flying always made her feel better. On the ground, or with other ponies, she always felt like she was probably doing something wrong. Now, all she had to do was keep the sun to her two-o-clock and flap.

She shivered, and not from the cold. That farmer had been pointing a rifle at her, Derpy was sure of it.

Delivering the letters had seemed important. Even fun, at first. But now she just wanted to get back to her little tree house in what was left of Ponyville and stay there.

She looked down at the land sliding away below, red and orange in the endless sunset. Everything had been shades of brown and red and orange for so long, it was hard to remember there were other colors. Even her dreams were in browns and reds. Though sometimes, when her mind wandered, she still caught herself thinking that before long the stars would come out.

Behind her, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something flicker. She looked over her shoulder, but didn’t see anything.

The land below her now was all dry plains and scrub. Nowhere to hide. Off ahead to her left, a few miles away, a cumulus cloud was forming above the edge of a hill, its side glowing red in the reflected light. It was only half a mile off her path. She banked towards it. She could be inside it in two minutes if she pushed it.

She took deeper strokes with her wings, huffing with the effort of pushing great wingfuls of air. A snap at the end of the downbeat and a twist and flick back up, like they’d taught her in flight school, trying not to catch the air on the turn-over. She’d always been a sloppy flier.

She glanced back again and still didn’t see anything. Maybe she’d imagined it.

It wasn’t until she reached the haze around the cloud that she noticed it. Dancing ripples of dark amidst the sparkling vapor off to her left. Coming together to form… a shadow.

But the sun was to her right. That must mean it was her own shadow.

Then she noticed there were two of them, getting closer.

She spread her wings to pull herself up to a stop, and something grabbed her shoulders.

She whinnied in terror, flapped wildly, and bucked, but her legs just flailed wildly beneath her. Somepony had landed on top of her and was now grasping her with all four hooves. She felt a wet nose in her ear.

“Take us down on that hill,” a rough voice said. “That looks like a nice spot for us to get better acquainted.”

Derpy tried to shake him off, twisting her barrel in the air, but he gripped harder. “Ooh,” he said. “Or this works for me too.” He crawled a few inches further forward and wrapped his forelegs securely around her neck. “Now buck like that again.”

Derpy spun and rolled, screaming. His hindlegs were wrapped tightly around her flank. His rear hooves were wedged in under her hips, spreading her legs apart painfully. “Ride ‘em, cowpony!” the voice whooped in her ear.

The ground was coming closer, and she had to level off and just glide, panting.

“You’re overdressed for the occasion, honey,” the stallion said. “Let me get these bags offa you so’s I can slip into something more comfortable.” He reached down under her and began uncinching the straps of her Equestrian Postal Service saddlebags.

Derpy angled down into a dive. Then she tucked in her legs, folded her wings to her side, and fell like a stone.

The stallion still clung to her back. “Hah!” he shouted over the roaring wind. “You think I’ll blink first?”

She gulped and nodded. “‘’Coz my eyes are closed.”

She heard a few foul words, and suddenly she was free, and she spread her wings and banked and she opened her eyes and felt grass whip her belly until she tilted and rose and was gliding over a field. A line of trees rushed at her, and she whistled between them, hopping and swerving like a Wonderbolt. Her flight school instructor would have been proud.

She pulled up abruptly into a tall pine tree and landed near its top. She wrapped her forelegs around its trunk and tried not to move. She peered through its branches, down at the forest floor, up at the sky. Nothing. Behind her, all was silent except the rustling of branches in the wind. Only then did she notice her mailbags were gone.

She clung to the tree for hours. The sun, of course, stayed exactly where it was. The darkness she needed would never come.

Funny, she thought, how ponies had always been afraid of the dark. Only now that it was gone did they miss its protection.

She looked down at the ground fifty feet below, and felt a new sympathy for cats. Flying up here had been easier than getting down would be. The branches were too thick. She considered climbing down. Finally, she climbed up instead, until the tree bent under her weight, then jumped off and flew low over the trees.

She landed not far from where she’d entered the forest, on the other side of the hill above which everything had happened.

If she had any sense, she’d head straight home. Maybe hole up in the forest first, waiting for some some cloud cover, even some rain. Forget the mailbags. She could get more just like them from the wreckage of the Ponyville mail depot.

She’d been hardly more than a filly when Box Jumper had assigned them to her on her first route. She’d been so excited to put them on that somehow she’d gotten completely tangled up in them. He’d laughed, and then apologized, and showed her how to put them on and buckle the straps. He’d been so embarrassed for laughing at her that he went easy on her for days after that.

She sighed and started climbing the hill.

Halfway up, she saw her mailbags, lying in plain view in the grass. She was lucky they’d landed where they did; dense bushes sprung up on either side.

She stopped, sniffed the air, and listened. She heard nothing but the wind.

She stepped forward cautiously. Some letters had fallen when it hit. She began gathering them in her mouth. She was just pushing them back into the left-side bag when she felt a twig break under her left rear hoof, and heard a swish, and she felt something draw tight around her leg and pull it back and up.

Four shapes sprang from the bushes. She leapt up and spread her wings, but the rope around her leg held her fast to the ground. Eight strong forelegs grasped her and pulled her back to the ground. They pinned her wings to her side, and a rope passed under her belly and was thrown across her back and pulled tight, holding her wings there. More ropes went around her other three legs, and the four pegasus stallions yanked them back, pulling her legs slightly apart so that she couldn’t raise one without falling over. They quickly staked the other ends of the ropes into the ground.

Then she realized that they weren’t rope at all, and that was more horrifying than anything she’d thought the stallions had in mind. “Get it off me! Get it OFF!” she screamed. She kicked hard with both hind legs, but only fell and landed hard on her stomach, knocking the wind out of her.

One of the stallions, tall and dark, stepped up to stand over her. He looked down and smiled almost apologetically. “Out here,” he said, “we use every part of a pony.”

3. Introductions

“She doesn’t like the feel of leather,” another one said, and she recognized the rough voice at once. He was dead brown, the color of the deadest parts of the Waste, and his mark was a dirty wind funnel of the kind she sometimes saw spinning across it. “Don’t worry, honey. You’ll get used to it soon enough. Might even get to like it.”

“It’s just strips we cut from a dead wolf we found,” a third voice said.

“Shut up, Corkscrew,” the tall one said.

“I just don’t want her thinkin’—”

“Shut up, Corkscrew,” he said again. “You got no sense of the dramatic.” He sidled up to Derpy, who was still struggling to get back to her feet. “Lean against me and push,” he said.

Derpy did, and together they pushed her back up into a standing position. He stepped back and studied her.

“So you’re the Mailmare,” he said.

“I’m—I’m a mailmare,” Derpy said, keeping her head down.

“You seen any others?”

“Not lately.”

He whinnied in amusement, and grinned at the others. “I like a girl with a sense of humor.”

From the slow way he said it, like he expected them to listen and to laugh when he finished, Derpy guessed that he was the leader.

“Look at me when you talk to me,” he told her.

She raised her head.

He jumped back a step. “What in Tartarus is wrong with your eyes, girl?”

She blinked and looked back down.

The dirt-colored pony walked around her slowly, inspecting her like she was something he’d bought and thought he’d paid too much for. “Who cares about her eyes? It’s her other end I’m interested in.” He stopped by her cutie mark. “Bubbles,” he said. “Mind if I call you Bubbles?” He ran one hoof slowly up and down her flank.

Derpy shivered, and her hind leg twitched.

The tall one looked at each of her eyes in turn. He waved a hoof over them, and she followed it with the good one. He snorted, as if it were some kind of cheap trick.

“I heard about you a week ago, in Gadfly Gulch. And you know, I wanted to believe in you. I wanted to.” He spat on the ground. “And now I find you’re just a crazy mare with a sack of old letters from dead ponies.”

Derpy kept her head down. She stomped her hind leg, as if she could shake it clean of the dirt pony’s touch. “Doesn’t mean they don’t matter,” she said softly.

He snorted. “I looked at some of them letters.” He nudged one of the envelopes towards her over the dry grass with his hoof. “This one’s an electric bill. Five years overdue.”

“Uh-oh!” Dirt Pony said. “Somepony’s gonna get his power shut off!”

The tall pony stepped on another envelope. Then he lifted one hoof and flicked it, and a blade snapped out of something strapped to the inside of his pastern with a snick. He cut the letter open, flicked the blade shut again, and pulled a letter out, which he spread on the ground.

“Hey!” Derpy said. “That’s not yours!”

“Dear Sweet Mint,” he read. “Thank you for interviewing with us and sharing more about your background and experience. After giving our full consideration, we have decided not to move forward with your application at this time.” He looked up at Derpy.

“T-tampering with the mail is grounds for suspension of service,” she said.

“Oh no!” Dirt Pony wailed. “She’s gonna cut off our mail service!”

“I was almost feeling sorry for you,” Tall Pony went on. “But the way I see it, you brought this on yourself by coming back here for those letters. Hell, you’re probably too crazy to care.”

Derpy shut her eyes. Maybe she was too crazy to care about the right things anymore. Things like staying safe and getting by.

And if she wasn’t crazy, well—maybe she could be. If she could shut her eyes and go away for a while, maybe everything would be better when she came back.

Or maybe she’d never come back. She tried that thought out, and found it seemed at home in her mind, and worn smooth with handling, like it had been there a long time already.

“But where are my manners? Updraft, bring our visitor food and drink. The finest we have.”

A dappled Appaloosan pegasus hurried back into the bushes and returned shortly with a sack hanging from his teeth. He set it down and took out two wooden bowls, which he set between Derpy’s front legs. Into one he poured water, and into the other he dropped a pile of dry and dusty carrots.

“Eat up, Bubbles,” Dirt Pony said.

Derpy looked at the faces of the other ponies, wondering if this was some kind of joke. But they all watched her seriously, waiting. She plunged her nose into the bowl of water and began lapping it up. She hadn’t had a drink for hours, and nothing to eat in longer than that.

She tried to chew the carrots slowly. It wasn’t herself she was worried about, she decided. It was her friends. Wondering what happened to her.

The ponies stood watching silently until she had choked down the last of the stringy carrots, barely noticing the grit and dust that had already begun to settle on them, and lapped up the last drop of water.

“Well,” Tall Pony said. “Now that we’ve wined and dined you, I guess it’s time for you to do your part.”

“Wha—but I didn’t—I didn’t mean—”

“—Then you shouldn’t’ve eaten our food,” he said. “It’s just a business transaction. Always has been, if you ask me. I’m just making sure everypony plays it fair. I reckon we’ve already given you more than you’ll give us, by today’s market prices.”

“S-some ponies would share their food out of hospitality,” Derpy said.

“And some mares would give a fellow what he needs out of the kindness of their hearts. Oh, wait, I forgot: They won’t.” He began pacing back and forth. “I don’t see much of a difference between them that take, and them that have and don’t give.”

“Shut up and get on to the takin’,” Dirt Pony said.

“You’re going to be our guest for awhile,” Tall Pony said. “We don’t get many lady callers in these parts, let alone a celebrity like yourself, so the boys are all right eager to welcome you.”

“Speaking for myself, I got enough welcome stored up in me to last for days,” Dirt Pony said.

“We’re kind of well-known around here ourselves,” Tall Pony said. “My vulgar associate here is Dust Devil.”

Dirt Pony flashed a grin with about twice as many teeth as might look friendly. “Friends call me Dust. Enemies call me Devil. Take your pick.”

“He’s lying. He’s got no friends,” Tall Pony said.

Dust Devil. Derpy shivered. Why did he have to tell her their names? Now she would never forget him. Those two little words would always be enough to bring him back. “Please,” she said. “Just get on with it.” She was shivering all over, and her legs were burning from the effort of standing with her legs stretched apart.

“Sorry,” Corkscrew said. “We’ve never—”

“Shut up, Corkscrew,” Dust Devil said. “And speak for yourself.”

“I can’t do both!”

“The stupid one is Corkscrew,” the leader went on. Corkscrew, a pale blue pegasus, lowered his ears. “The quiet one in the back is Updraft. And I am Tale Spin.” He took a bow.

“Tailspin?” His cutie mark might have been a spinning wheel, but then again it might have been a spinning pony. It was hard to tell under the thick layer of prairie dust.

“Tale Spin,” he said sharply. “Two words. As in a spinner of tales.”

“If you say so,” Dust said, and snickered.

Tale Spin stopped in front of Derpy. They stood there for a few moments looking at each other without speaking.

“I’ve got a letter for you,” Derpy said, and collapsed.

4. Postage Due

When she came to, the leather ropes around her legs had been let out enough that she could stand up if she wanted to. But she stayed lying on the ground. Tale Spin was looking down at her.

“Is it over?” she asked.

He snorted. “You were out for half a minute. Even Dusty here isn’t that fast.” He tossed her mail bags where she could reach them. “Well, Mailmare. Do your job.”

Her bags were carrier bags, so they were full of pockets for organizing letters of different shapes and different destinations. “What city?” she asked.

“What?”

“What city would your mail have been sent to?”

“Appleloosa,” he said.

She leafed through the pocket she’d reserved for standard-size envelopes for the Appleloosa area. There it was—a plain number 10, with “Tailspin, c/o Bottlecap’s Boarding, Appleloosa” written in a flowery hoof.

He glanced away sheepishly. “Always gettin’ my name wrong,” he muttered.

There was another snick as he opened his knife again. He fished the letter out, then held it up with one hoof and turned so that the sunset was at his back to read it. From the glance Derpy got of it, it had looked like a short letter, but he held it up close to his face for over a minute, remaining stone-faced the entire time. Then he folded it up carefully and put it back in the envelope.

“What about me?” Corkscrew asked. “Anything for me?”

“Shut up, Corkscrew,” Dust Devil said. “Reading time’s over.”

“What about me?” Updraft asked, stepping forward for the first time. “Updraft. One word. Dodge Junction.”

“I—I think I’d’ve remembered a name like Corkscrew,” Derpy said. Updraft was a pretty common name, though. She looked through the letters for Dodge Junction.

“Sorry,” she said after checking twice. “That’s all.”

“Can you take a letter to Canterlot for me?” Corkscrew asked.

“Shut up, Corkscrew!” Dust Devil said. “And you know Canterlot’s nothin’ but a smoking crater.”

“I’m headed that way,” Derpy said, and it sounded true to her when she said it.

Tale Spin stepped very close to her and bent down to where she was still sprawled on the ground, almost touching her nose. He held her muzzle with one hoof until she looked into his eyes with her one good one.

“If we let you go,” he asked slowly, “will you deliver one letter for each of us?”

His eyes looked as calm and trusting as a child’s, and she knew that for that moment he was speaking to her as another pony. But if she lied, if she said something and had the least bit of doubt in her mind about it, he would see it, and he would scratch her off from his list of ponies and treat her from then on like a thing he owned.

“Yes,” she said. She took a breath. “Anywhere between here and Canterlot.”

He eyed her dubiously. “How’ll you get past the Everfree?”

“Fly,” she said.

“You are not seriously considering this,” Dust Devil said. He marched up and slapped Derpy’s rear end hard with one hoof. She’d have tried to kick him, she told herself, if she’d been standing. But it was so much easier just to lie there. She looked away and tried to ignore him.

“Look at that ass, gentlemen. Look at that ass and tell me you’re gonna send it away without so much as a farewell kiss.”

Wait a minute, she thought. Tale Spin’s right. I am a pony.

Only then did she realize she had already crossed herself off the list of ponies in her mind and begun to try to act like a thing.

Her cheeks burned. And now she’d promised to deliver their letters for them, like she was grateful. And she knew she’d do it, too.

Would a pony do that?

She got to her feet. “Wait,” she said.

Everypony fell silent and looked at her, and she realized something in her voice had changed.

“Postage,” she said.

Tale Spin stared at her. “Postage?”

She nodded.

“Are you shitting me? I’m offering to let you go.”

“Every letter requires postage.” She was surprised to hear herself say it. But if she left without pushing back, without demanding something of them, something in her would remain forever in chains.

Dust Devil walked up to her side with a wicked grin. “You do things by the rules, don’t you, girl?” He smiled in Derpy’s face, and his breath smelled foul when he laughed. “I say we have fun with her first. She’ll deliver the letters anyway. Long as they have the proper postage.” He stroked her under her chin. She pulled away as far as she could, but he just leaned in further and grinned at her with that timber-wolf grin. “Because that’s the kind of crazy dam you are, isn’t it?”

She forced herself to look straight in his eyes. They looked like eye holes in a pony mask, with something entirely different, something with sharper teeth, looking back at her from underneath. The color hazel would never look the same to her again.

“H-harassing a p-postal worker is grounds for sus… suspension of service.”

He snarled and dropped her muzzle. “I’m done talkin’.” He shoved her head away from him, and suddenly jumped up and wrapped his forelegs around her back, and she couldn’t see anything but the sun’s red eye on the horizon or feel anything but icy cold, but in her mind she saw not a pony but a great shadowy serpent rising up behind her and bending over her and spitting sibilant curses in her ear.

Behind them was a loud snick.

Dust Devil froze with his belly pressed against her left hip and his hoarse rasping breath in her ears.

“You heard her,” Tale Spin said. “Harassing a postal worker is grounds for suspension of service.”

Dust Devil pushed himself off her and turned to face Tale Spin.

“I’ve got a knife, too,” Dust Devil said. “And a revolver, in my bags. You know that. Is that really how you want to play this?”

“It is,” Tale Spin said casually, “if you think you can ignore what I say.”

Dust Devil backed away from Derpy. Tale spin flicked the blade away.

The two ponies faced each other, breathing heavily.

“Maybe sometimes we should do what I want to do,” Dust Devil said.

“No,” Updraft said from the sideline. “I’d leave.”

Corkscrew nodded in agreement.

“Shit,” Dust Devil said. He turned away and spat.

“Get them ropes off of her,” Tale Spin said. Corkscrew and Updraft began loosening them with their teeth while Dust Devil sulked off by himself.

“Thank you,” she told Tale Spin when the last of the ropes had fallen to the ground. Her legs and wings felt suddenly light, like if she didn't hold them down she would drift away like a dandelion seed.

“It’s just business,” Tale Spin said. “Gotta keep him in line. Sometimes he forgets that we all hate him.” He bent down and rummaged through the sack Updraft had left on the ground, and came up with one dented, unlabelled tin can, which he passed off to Derpy.

“Postage,” he said.

She tucked it away in her bags.

“Guess we’ll just write those letters now,” he said.

Derpy stretched out her back and her legs. Then she picked up her mailbags and slung them across her back with a practiced shrug.

“Although,” he added, “as long as you’re here, there’s no reason we can’t have a little fun.”

She cinched up the straps and looked off to the north.

“You aren’t fun,” she said.

5. Appleloosan hospitality

After the run-in with the raiders, Derpy didn’t dare take to the sky. She crept across the southern Waste, its stiff, dry grasses scraping her belly raw. She would stop and sleep in dry culverts when she was too tired to go on, waking with a start every time the wind scraped two twigs together. She wished again for a pocketwatch so she could know how many days it had been, or whether she was tired because she’d earned it or just out of fear.

She saw the smoke of Appleloosa’s cooking and heating fires rising up on the horizon before she could see the town. She picked up her pace, but the thin columns of smoke didn’t seem to be getting any closer. It seemed to be taunting her, staying just out of reach.

A coldness came over her. After everything—all the flying, the empty plains, the suspicious strangers, the raiders—she would never reach safety. She was never supposed to make it back. She began to run, stumbling in the long shadows of the endless twilight.

Something rustled off to her left, and she sprang to the air and flew. Soon the safety of the town’s walls were only seconds away.

There was a flash on top of the walls, and a crackling sound. Fireworks? she wondered. It wasn’t until the second flash, and a whistling past her head, that she realized they were shooting at her.

She dove to the ground and rolled to the side. There was a pattering like hail, and puffs of dust rose from the spot where she had landed. She stayed frozen, knowing she would be nearly impossible to spot in the deep grass at that distance.

“Did you get ‘im?” she heard a voice call.

“Don’t think so.”

“Damnation.”

Silence, then the creaking of a gate. Were they closing it or opening it? She tried to remember if the gate had been open. Probably not. She stayed still and willed her heart not to beat so loudly. For a long time she heard nothing but the wind in the grass

If only the shadows could move, she could have some idea how long she’d waited, but they stayed stubbornly in place.

Finally she heard hoofsteps, and she knew she’d done the stupid thing again by waiting. If she ran now, they’d shoot her down. If she didn’t, they’d find her and shoot her down.

“I’m over here,” she called out as loudly as she could.

The hoofsteps stopped. “There!” someone shouted.

Five or six earth ponies stepped out of the grasses. One of them opened the shade of a lantern and shone it in her face, blinding her. She wondered why they hadn’t surrounded her, and then realized it was so they wouldn’t have to risk shooting each other.

“Please,” she said, shading her eyes from the light. “I’ve come to deliver the mail.”

Hooves shuffled.

“I’ve heard some dumb excuses, but that one would take first prize on fair day in Canterlot,” a male voice said.

“She’s a spy for sure,” said another. “I say we shoot her.”

The dark shapes and the light came closer.

“Naw,” the first voice said. “We’re too close to town. We’d be smellin’ her for weeks.” A rifle poked her in the side. “Get up, girl. We’re going for a walk.”

She drew her legs in closer. “I don’t want to be shot!”

“Life’s full of disappointments, honey,” the same voice said.

“That don’t make sense, Clover,” the second voice said. “You should say, ‘Death’s full of disappointments.’”

“Or, ‘Life ends in disappointment,’” a third voice suggested.

“Please don’t shoot me. Just take the letters and let me go,” Derpy said.

“Oh, we’ll take the letters. They’ll burn real nice. But we can’t let you go tell all them pegasi what you saw,” the first voice said.

“What? What could I see? Everypony knows where Appleloosa is. It’s on the rail line!”

“She has a point, Clover.”

More hooves shuffled behind the glare of the lantern.

“Or,” Derpy said, “I could… you could…”

“We could what?”

She sighed. These ponies weren’t raiders desperate for anything on four legs.

“What you could do,” a new voice said, “is tell us what you pegasi are planning.”

“I’m not planning anything!” Derpy cried, sitting up and looking toward the voice. “Please believe me!”

“It’s that googly-eyed mailmare from Ponyville!” the second voice said. “The one helped bring that giant apple for the State Fair some years back!”

“Ponyville? Pokey, you’re turned in the head. Ponyville’s in the other direction.”

“Look at that face! You tellin’ me I’m mistaken?”

Derpy craned her neck up to let them all get a good look. They crowded close and shone the light in her eyes, and for once in her life she was glad to be different.

“Sorry about that, Miss Hooves,” a moustachioed bay stallion who identified himself as the sheriff told her after they were inside the gates and she’d slurped her fill at a water trough that turned out to be for cattle, who were however very understanding about it. “It’s just that we don’t get anything but pegasi coming in from the south.”

She glared at him with one eye.

“I mean raiders, begging your pardon. Now I would’ve cleared it all up quick if I’d been awake when you came in, but it was Clover’s shift. Clover the not-so-clever, we call him.” He chuckled. Derpy didn't.

Other ponies were coming up and gawking at her wings and her eyes. She kept her good eye straight ahead.

“Now about them letters…”

Derpy stopped in the middle of the street. She snapped the mailbag with the letters for Appleloosa out of its harness, opened it, and dumped its contents onto the ground. Letters spilled and fluttered about their ankles.

She started walking again. Some of the gawkers stayed behind to chase down the letters as they began to blow away.

“Ma’am?” the sheriff said, still following her. “Ma’am, I understand you’re upset. It was a terrible mistake. Please allow me to extend some Appleloosan hospitality to you. The ladies are putting together quite a spread for you in the town hall. Their pies are not to be missed! I believe I can smell them from here. And if you would, please allow me to offer my own guest room for your use. We’ve cold water in the cistern, and if you want a bath we can heat some up for you right quick.”

Her stomach rumbled. A meal, a warm bath, and a soft bed all seemed so wonderful that she felt like a hungry donkey starving between three piles of hay because he couldn’t pick just one. The only thing stronger than her hunger, her tiredness, and her unease with the sweat and dirt chafing her leg pits each time she took a step, was her anger.

She stopped at the entrance to an alley between two wooden buildings. It was just dust and dirt, but so was everyplace else. She took a few steps into the alley, pulled off her mailbags, and slung them on the ground. “All I want from you people is not to kill me for one night,” she said, and lay down with her back to the sheriff. “Or day. Whatever.”

The sheriff stood over her. “Ma’am?”

Her stomach grumbled again. “And a can opener,” she added. She turned her face to the wall, rested it on the bags, and closed her eyes.

The sheriff turned to the crowd of ponies following them. “You heard her,” he said, waving a foreleg at them. “Don’t stand about where you ain’t needed.”

When she woke, the sheriff was still standing guard at the end of the alley, and there was a can opener lying on a tin plate near her on the ground. She used it to open the can Tale Spin had given her. It was green beans, which was not the best thing that could be in a can, but not the worst either.

The sheriff stepped up and coughed politely when she’d finished licking her plate clean. “Now that you’ve rested and eaten,” he said, “we’d like to discuss your delivery terms.”

“Delivery?” she asked.

“Folks all over town have been writing letters since you got in,” he said. “I tried to get them all to stick to just one apiece.”

She got to her feet and put her mailbags back on. “I’m four letters from retirement,” she said.

He planted his forelegs well apart and puffed out his chest. “We’re prepared to offer you one jar of good Appleloosan preserves for every letter you deliver,” he said.

She stepped past him into the street and leapt into the sky.

“Two jars!” he called out after her as she flew away.

7. Special delivery

Some time later—perhaps a week, perhaps a month; it was impossible to know—Derpy delivered the last of her letters from the raiders. It was to Tale Spin’s mother, a pegasus named Summer Rain who’d lived in one of the sprawling suburbs outside Canterlot. He’d written it on the back of Sweet Mint’s rejection letter, which Derpy admitted she probably didn’t want anymore, and also listed the names and last known locations of some of his mother’s friends and relations. He didn’t even seem to consider that Derpy might harm them. Not that she would. But his trust humiliated her. As if she were harmless. Or maybe he thought she felt grateful to him.

It had hurt Derpy almost more than she could bear to fly in the shadow of the mountain. She’d tried not to look at the scar where Canterlot had been. A fine black powder blew down from it, drifting with the wind, that made her nose run and her eyes water. Once she’d heard what sounded like a bird cawing from the mountain’s upper reaches, but in a deeper tone that would be produced by something with a much larger lung capacity. She’d stayed low to the ground and well away from the mountain after that.

The area around the mountain had been abandoned. Derpy had found the survivors, mostly unicorns, banded together in a new settlement in the plains to its north, which they called New Canterlot. It was a grandiose name for a shanty-town that looked like it had been constructed from the odds and ends left over after building Appleloosa. Unicorns didn’t have the earth pony knack for such things.

Derpy had tracked Tale Spin’s mother down there. She was living with a broad-shouldered stallion named High Hopes. Probably, Derpy thought, she’d squeeze out another sturdy foal or two and give them whatever negligent mothering it was that led a pony to become a raider of the wastes.

Summer Rain had cried when she read the letter.

“Did you see him?” she’d said. “Is he well? Is he getting enough to eat? Has he settled down?”

“I wouldn’t say he’s settled,” Derpy said. “But he’s doing all right for himself.”

“Has he got himself a mare?”

“From time to time,” Derpy said.

Summer Rain smiled and tsk’ed. “He always was a rogue.”

“I expect so, ma’am.”

“Please,” she said, and nodded towards her hovel, little more than a lean-to made of siding from an old barn and a corrugated tin roof. “Come inside. Have some tea. Tell me everything.”

Derpy backed away. “Sorry, ma’am. I have to fly.”

Summer’s face fell. “Surely you’ll wait for me to write a reply?”

“Mail service to his location has been suspended,” Derpy said, trying to keep her face neutral. One advantage of her lazy eye was that ponies were seldom able to read her face.

Summer leaned in close. “Then take me with you! Take me to him! I’ll pay you... “ She looked around her little patch of dirt, and sighed.

Derpy took another step back.

“Please,” Summer said. “Are you a mother yourself? Have you got a little one somewhere?”

“No, ma’am,” Derpy said stonily.

The older mare sniffled. “Well,” she said. “Thank you for your troubles, miss.”

Derpy said nothing.

Summer leaned against one of the posts holding her roof up. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking off toward the mountain. “It’s just… he’s so far away. Life isn’t fair.”

“No, Ma’am,” Derpy said. “It isn’t.”

8. Ponyville

The Everfree had pressed in on Ponyville, rising around it like a slow vegetable tide, sweeping over outlying farms and cottages, as the ponies who remained hacked and burned to keep it at bay. The ramshackle walls around the town’s center, mostly pieces of blown-down barns and houses, looked from above like small and pathetic barriers against it.

“Halt!” a sentry called from the top of the Hayseed grain tower, the tallest building still standing. “Identify yourself!”

She ignored the voice and flew over the wall. She hadn’t spoken to a pony in two days and didn’t intend to start now.

“Come on, Derpy!” he called after her. “You’re supposed to identify yourself! And welcome back!”

She touched down on the open landing outside her little tree house, thirty feet up in a silver maple, wedged into a fork in the trunk. She kicked the door open, hurried inside, and kicked it shut behind her, making a slam loud enough to warn any welcomers away and kicking up two months’ worth of dust into the stale air.

This was supposed to be her triumphal return, but all she felt was burning anger at Summer Rain. Derpy’s wings quivered. For the first time in her life she was so angry she wanted to kill somepony. She hadn’t even been this angry at the raiders. She wanted to fly back to that ungrateful dam and kick her face in.

Her beastly son was still alive, and she had the gall to complain about unfairness. If life were fair he would be dead. She wondered whom he’d killed to stay alive. Probably ponies like Dinky.

But he was alive and Dinky was dead, and Derpy risked her life to deliver letters to townsfolk who shot at her and to the mothers of the rapists and killers who’d terrorized her.

Soon ponies would be gathering around her tree, with their welcome-backs and their unspoken I-told-you-so’s. They’d begged her not to go. Said it was dangerous. But they’d never said what they all must have known: it was stupid. She should’ve known that any idea she’d come up with would be stupid. Like sending Dinky to Canterlot.

She shut her eyes and let the tears run down her cheeks. Stupid, stupid, stupid Derpy.

She looked around the little treehouse, her home since the war. One corner was walled off to make the bedroom; the nook next to it held the kitchenette and the little folding table she ate on. The table still held a pile of things she’d decided to leave behind at the last minute: extra goggles, a mane brush and a violet ribbon, a half-finished romance novel.

The house felt like a museum diorama. She glanced at the decorations on the walls and the half-finished projects on the shelves, and tried to imagine the pony who had lived here and thought them worthwhile. A birdhouse, nearly-finished for the past two years because she didn’t know how to drill the entrance hole. A collection of pinecones that looked like faces. A book of fancy Prench recipes she’d never tried. Naked now as mere things, oblivious to the passion and attention she’d given them. If she’d died in the wastes, this would have been all she left behind. Some pony would have stood here, taking inventory of her life, and consigned it all to the garbage heap; there was nothing here anypony could give away.

She’d been outraged that the raiders had tied her up, had taken her freedom. Now, looking at what she’d done with her freedom, she felt selfish. On her own, she was no good to anypony. The raiders would have made better use of her.

To her right was her worn-out sofa. To her left, the sacks of mail she’d rescued from the ruins of the post office. She gave a particularly stuffed-looking mail sack a good kick. She’d hoped it would burst like a severed artery and spray letters across the room, but it was thick canvas, well-tied, and it just flopped like a dead body.

“Stupid”—kick—”worthless”—kick—”letters!”—kick.

She stopped, huffing, and glared at the bag, which stubbornly refused to break.

A match. She walked over next to her table and began yanking the drawers of her kitchenette open. Where had she put the matches?

The bag would go up like a torch. The whole place would probably go up like a torch. Maybe she wouldn’t get out in time. It seemed an academic question, from a textbook for a course she’d already failed. All the good ponies were dead, and all she had to look forward to was years of the humiliation of being herself. Clinging desperately to a pathetic life. The only things she’d ever been were a mailmare and a mother. Now she was nothing.

She could at least have the dignity of choosing when to let go.

Finally she found the matches in the very bottom drawer left of the sink.

“Always in the last place you look!” she said with a laugh. She struck a match and lit the candle on her dining table. Then she took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her eyes, and turned around to look for something that would burn.

Her eyes were drawn to a single letter lying on the floor by the door. There! That would be her tinder.

She picked it up in her teeth. As she was carrying it over to the candle, it suddenly struck her: How had that lone letter gotten there on the floor?

She hadn’t carried it in with her; her mailbags were empty. It hadn’t fallen from any of the sacks, which were on the other side of the room.

She dropped the letter on the table. It was addressed to her.

She recognized the bold, uneven strokes immediately. She took a knife from the wooden block and sliced the envelope open neatly at the top. She shook out the letter inside it, reverently unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table, and began to read in the candlelight.

7th Rain’s End

Dear Mommy,

I miss you very much! The school is very big and made of stone. It’s loud when a herd of students walks down the hall! We had steamed carrots and mashed potatoes for lunch. It wasn’t as good as yours but I didn’t complain. My best friend is Fizzy Pop. She’s a unicorn, like everybody else here. Some of the kids are mean, but I remember you said there will always be mean ponies and I have to be brave. I think I am a little brave but sometimes I am not sure.

Love you very very much!

Dinky

She read it over several times, imagining every torch and flagstone in the hallway, a grim-faced cafeteria mare ladling out mashed potatoes, a pink unicorn filly with frizzy blue hair. Each image found its way to someplace in her mind that had been waiting for it, pushing out some of the cold gray mists that had rolled out for her every time she thought of Dinky’s last days in Canterlot.

She picked up the letter and sniffed it. The paper smelled fresh and rustled crisply, as if it had been folded yesterday. She’s getting better at keeping her lines straight, Derpy thought, and smiled.

Then the letter fell from her hoof, and she laid her head down on the table and cried.

Some time later, she realized that the candle was guttering, and that she had finished crying. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and folded the letter up and put it back in its envelope. She set it down on the table, centered and lined up with the table’s edges like it was on display. Then she looked back at the door, where the envelope had been lying, and at the letter slot at its bottom.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Then she blew out the candle and went to bed.

Author's Note

Having someone deliver the letter to Derpy was AxisOfRotation's idea. I think it made a big improvement.

9. Banter

It was bright on the southern wastes, for the times. The sitting sun was sandwiched between earth and clouds, which reflected its red light back at each other. The four raiders walked in the grass alongside the dirt road.

“How about that one?” Updraft said, pointing to a rut in the dirt that looked like it had been left by a wagon wheel.

Tale Spin stretched his neck toward the road and peered at it. It was hard to tell, what with the sunset casting long shadows in the tracks. He shook his head. “Looks old to me.”

“Nopony’s been down this road in forever but us,” Dust Devil said. “We should hit the farms around Shawneigh. They’ve probably got some new crops in.”

Tale Spin shook his head. “Too soon.”

“Hey,” Corkscrew said, looking up at the dark clouds high overhead.

“Shut up, Corkscrew,” Dust Devil said.

“Somepony just dropped out of the cloud cover,” Corkscrew said.

Tale Spin followed his gaze to where a lone pegasus glided down from above, headed toward them.

“You think he’s seen us?” Corkscrew asked.

“Naw, he’s looking at those wagon tracks,” Dust Devil said. He smacked Corkscrew in the head. “Of course he’s seen us. Ain’t nothin’ out here to see but us.”

“Bold fellow,” Tale Spin said.

“That ain’t a fellow,” Corkscrew said. “It’s her!”

A grey pegasus mare with straw-colored hair touched down on the plains in front of them.

“I do not believe this,” Tale Spin said.

He studied her as she drew near, looking for a protruding rifle, or for a threatening bulge in the canvas saddlebags. The bags were different this time; they had “E.P.S.” stamped on their sides. She didn’t seem afraid, but not threatening either.

She walked right up to Updraft, and gave him a letter from her bag. “Sorry, Updraft. She wouldn’t take it.”

The Appaloosan said nothing, just took the letter in his teeth and held it there as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

“I couldn’t deliver yours either, Corkscrew.” She didn’t say why. The blue pegasus looked down and sighed, as if he understood and had been expecting it.

Then she turned to Tale Spin. “I delivered yours.” Her one good eye gave nothing away.

“You didn’t deliver my letter,” Dust Devil said.

“It was addressed to a dragon,” Derpy said.

“That’s racist.”

“It said, ‘This pony is tasty.’”

He cackled like a murder of crows. “You’re getting smart, Bubbles! You just might live a while longer yet.”

“You came back,” Tale Spin said.

She looked down at herself, then back up at him. “Looks like it.”

Tale Spin shook his head sadly from side to side. “You’re an idiot.”

“Probably,” Derpy agreed.

“How’d you find us?”

“Just followed the smell.” She walked over to him and began taking off her mailbags.

“Whoo!” Dust Devil called. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Guess those civilized stallions didn’t do it for you, Bubbles?”

Tale Spin stared at Derpy, dumbfounded, as she tossed the bags across Tale Spin’s back. and carefully pulled the straps tight on him. Then she took off her cap and placed it on his head. She took a step back and studied her work.

Dust Devil pounded the ground with one hoof. “Kinky!” he said. “I like it!”

The hard, lumpy bags pressing into Tale Spin's ribs felt distinctly unsexy. “Um,” he said. “These are kind of heavy.”

“They’ve got fifty-five letters headed for Dodge Junction, and twenty-seven jars of Appleloosan preserves,” Derpy said. “One jar per letter to post, minus my half. One more jar or can each on delivery.” She called up to the sky. “It’s them! Come on down!”

Another pegasus appeared in the clouds above, gliding down towards them.

“This must be heaven, because it’s raining mares!” Dust Devil called out.

“If this is heaven, why are you here?” Updraft said.

An older pegasus mare with a cutie mark of rain falling from a fluffy white cloud landed beside them.

“Hmm,” Dust Devil said, looking her over. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers!”

Tale Spin’s jaw fell open and he stared stupidly at the second mare, blinking.

“Mom?”

Summer Rain ran to him and threw her forelegs around his neck. “My baby!” she cried. “My baby’s all grown up!”

“Mom?” he asked again, as if the answer might still change.

“Derpy told me all about your new job with the postal service!” Summer said. “I think it’s so exciting!”

“Um…. yeah.” He glared threateningly over his mother’s shoulder at the other stallions. “My job.”

She pulled her head back. “Let me look at you. So handsome. I hope you boys are careful. There are dangerous ponies out here.”

“So we’ve heard,” Dust Devil said.

“Mom, you shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe.”

“Don’t you worry about me, Tailspin!”

“About that. Is that one word, or two?” Dust Devil asked innocently.

“I had to see you again,” Summer said. “I couldn’t wait until you got back to Appleloosa.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Derpy said to Summer. “I need to speak with your son. Postal service business.”

“Of course! Of course!” Summer said.

“You can talk to me, Tailspin’s Mom,” Dust Devil said.

Tale Spin shot him a warning look before stepping a few feet away with Derpy.

“So,” she asked him. “How do you like your job?”

“Twenty-seven jars,” he replied. “That’s a lot of jars.”

“Yup,” Derpy agreed.

“I notice you rounded my half down.”

“Yup.”

“You still hate me, don’t you?”

The glare she gave him with her one good eye made him feel lucky she didn’t have two.

“So why are you here?”

“Because there are ponies down south who need to hear from ponies up north.”

“Yeah, but why us? Why not get somebody else?”

“I would if I could,” Derpy said.

“Guess I can set my own terms, then,” Tale Spin said with a sly grin. He licked his lips in anticipation.

“You’re already getting all the cans you can carry on each trip. What more could you want?"

Tale Spin smiled his smile that he’d practiced on the mares in Shawneigh, back before the sun stopped, and leaned in toward her. “Well, me being new to the postal business and all, I was thinking I might need a little… personal instruction.”

Her eyes went wide, both of them, and she pulled back with a jerk and a sharp intake of air. She looked away from him, not at anything, just an unfocused look. More so than usual.

That was not a reaction he’d gotten in Shawneigh. Maybe he should’ve emphasized the pause less. Less roguish, more casual. He reached down and tore out a mouthful of the prairie grass, not because he wanted the dry, stringy stuff, but just to avoid staring while she stood there looking nowhere, taking deep breaths.

Suddenly she narrowed her eyes and turned her head toward him, her lips drawn tight. “How about this. You can take this job on my terms, or we can have a talk with your mom about how to treat mares.”

He gulped. “On second thought, um, I can probably pick most of it up on my own.”

She kept looking at him with that bulldog stare until he looked back down at the grass.

“You handle the mail between Appleloosa and Dodge Junction. One can per item on collection, and another on delivery. No theft, no opening the mail, no preferential treatment, no jacking up the rates. And,” she said, and gave him that glare again, “no raiding!”

Tale Spin looked over to where his mother was talking to Dust Devil, her hooves making broad gestures and her eyes gleaming as they did only when she was telling stories about his childhood. Dust Devil laughed, and turned his head to grin evilly at Tale Spin.

“Well? Do we have an agreement?”

He lowered his ears dispiritedly. “Take my mom back to Appleloosa now, and it’s a deal.”

“Oh,” Derpy said. “One more thing.” She lifted a book out of one of the mailbags and showed it to him.

“The Equestrian Postal Carrier’s Hoofbook,” he read.

She dropped it back in the mailbag. “Read it,” she said. “Find yourself a uniform in Dodge Junction.” She turned her head. “Summer! Say your goodbyes. We hafta hurry and leave before the weather clears!”

“Hey,” he said. “How are you going to get the mail down to Appleloosa by yourself?”

“I was sort of trusting something would turn up,” she admitted.

He snorted. “Smart ponies don’t just trust.”

“I guess the world needs a couple of dumb ponies, then. Hey, Corkscrew!”

The blue pegasus looked over at her and raised his ears.

“How’d you like to come back to Ponyville with me?”

“Me?” he said in amazement.

“Him?” Tale Spin said.

“Him.”

“Now, wait,” Tale Spin said. “That ain’t how this movie’s supposed to end. You’re supposed to end up with the tall, dark stallion. Hell, you deserve it.”

She smirked at him. “Shut up, Tailspin. Come on, Corkscrew. Let’s get out of here.”

“But we were bantering!” Tale Spin neighed after her.

“That was some good banter, too,” Tale Spin grumbled as Corkscrew and the mares flew away.

“Pretty sure that was mostly you getting bridled,” Updraft said.

“I’ll banter with you, Tailspin.”

“Oh, shut up, Dusty.”

10. The beginning

“It’s not much,” Derpy said, “but it keeps the rain off, mostly.”

“That’ll be nice,” Corkscrew said in a hushed voice. He seemed awed by the inside of Derpy’s little treehouse.

“Get some sleep,” she said, pointing to the sofa. “I’ll make you breakfast when you wake, and then show you around town.”

“You mean I sleep on the sofa?”

She spun and was about to snap at him, but then she saw he was looking at the ratty old sofa with colt-like wonder and excitement in his eyes.

“Yes, Corkscrew. You sleep on the sofa.”

“Thanks, Derpy!”

She held her smile back until she stepped into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. It was refreshing how grateful he was for everything. When ponies weren’t yelling at him, he had an upbeat personality. That was something she’d missed in herself lately.

Derpy, Summer Rain, and Corkscrew had had good cloud cover most of the way back to Appleloosa. They’d navigated by the sunset and kept together by singing as they flew through the bottoms of the clouds. They dropped Summer Rain off in Appleloosa, and Derpy explained to the sheriff about the three new fliers that would arrive in about a week. “I’m not saying to trust them inside the town,” she said. “Just don’t shoot them.”

The flight over the Everfree had been uneventful. Corkscrew found it more exciting than frightening, which was worrisome, but kind of cute.

She pulled the curtains and flopped down onto her mattress, exhausted. She supposed a smarter pony would be terrified of having a raider in her house. But she’d brought him to Ponyville, so she was responsible for him. Plus, it was pointless to be afraid of him now, when they’d come so far together, and were planning to go still farther. If he were going to try anything, better here than in the southern wastes.

And anyway, Corkscrew would be all right. He wasn’t bad, once you got him away from the others. It had been an impulse to ask him to come, but when she thought about it, it felt like the kind of impulse that had been a long time growing. It had probably been stupid to trust him, but it seemed the world needed her kind of stupid right now.

She rolled onto her back and contemplated the challenges still ahead of her. She’d have to get somepony in each town to write a few copies of a summary of all that had happened there lately, to give out in the other towns. It was too tiring trying to answer everypony’s questions herself. Maybe she could find some writers in each town, pay them in cans for news reports, and then get paid back by the ponies who wanted to read them.

The big problem now, though, was that the number of letters she could carry was limited by the weight of the cans she was asking for postage. She’d had to leave a stack of cans and letters behind at Appleloosa. She’d given ten percent of the cans to the pony who’d used to own the bank, to put them in a box with her name on it and lock it in the bank’s safe until she returned. He’d been thrilled to unlock the bank’s doors and step behind the teller’s window again, calling her “ma’am” and bowing every few minutes, like it was a part in a play that he was excited to be called back to act again. “Ever reckoned you’d be a bank’s biggest customer?” he’d said, and laughed, looking at the little box of cans surrounded by piles of worthless currency.

She could try making coupons. Dig up some paper in an unusual color, something hard to find, and write “One Can” on it. Then stamp it with something from the Post Office, maybe the postage-stamp-cancellation stamp, and sign it “Derpy Hooves, Postmistress General.” If she made the townsfolk pay postage in coupons, her carriers wouldn’t have to carry bags full of cans everywhere. She could even pay her carriers with coupons she made up, and the townsfolk would have to honor them to be able to send or receive any mail. That seemed like cheating, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought it should work.

The route, though… From here to New Canterlot wasn’t so bad. If they could find the pony that had delivered Dinky’s letter to her, the three of them could manage it with some pretense to safety. She’d gathered Dodge Junction had some irregular communication with the coast. But the Everfree and the mountains divided Equestria into two halves, and the dry plains to their south divided the southern half in two again. The Ponyville-Appleloosa-Dodge Junction run was the roughest stretch, and the one that would link them all together again. It was long, hard, dangerous, and what grazing there was on the way was dry and bitter.

Tale Spin and his gang could hold down the southern end of it, but Derpy was going to need ponies faster and stronger than herself to handle the Everfree leg on a regular basis. Maybe if she gave the route an exciting name. Something dramatic that would appeal to somepony like Tale Spin. The Ponyville Express… something like that.

For that matter, how many of the younger ponies like Tale Spin could even read and write nowadays? If she used some of the postage in each town to pay somepony to teach the foals to read, it would pay itself back in the long run.

She drifted off to sleep, and dreamed of dotted lines spreading across maps to join together in the middle, and letters, and far-away ponies reading them.

11. Sunrise

In the Dodge Junction town square, a tall, dark pegasus in a postal uniform was checking over his straps and buckles one last time in front of some admiring onlookers. His dark fur shone in the red light. A honey-colored mare came up to his side.

“Been a long time since I’ve seen a pony in uniform here,” she said. “My name’s Sugar Roll. What’s yours?”

“Tale Spin,” he said. “Two words.”

“I saw you dancing with some of the mares at the hoe-down last night,” she said.

“The mares of Dodge Junction have been very welcoming to this humble mailpony,” he said.

“You’re so brave,” she said. “Travelling through the waste, with all those raiders lying in wait for you.”

“Just doing my job, Ma’am,” he said. He reached up and straightened his cap.

“Well, Tale Spin,” she said. “Maybe next time you come, I’ll have a letter for you.”

Tale Spin lifted his head and gazed off stoically to the north. “I can’t say for sure as I’ll make it back, ma’am. Raiders and monsters at every turn, and all. But duty calls, and I answer. Now, my fellow carriers await me.” He snapped her a salute and flew off into the sunset.

“Damn fool can’t see a thing, flying into the sunset like that,” an old grey mare standing nearby said.

Sugar Roll sighed. “But it looks so fine.”

“Also, Appleloosa’s that-a-way.”

“Hey,” Sugar Roll said. “Why do we always call it the sunset, anyway?”

The grey mare blinked. “I don’t follow.”

Sugar Roll shaded her eyes with one hoof. “You ever think that maybe it’s a sun rise?”

.

.

Author's Note

The Mailmare took 7th place in EQD’s More Most Dangerous Game contest, 3rd in the Fallout: Equestria-inspired stories. I didn't read most of the stories that beat it, so I don't have an opinion on that. I'm hyper-aware of what I think the problems are with the story. But I think more readers are bugged by things I did deliberately.

There are only two kinds of stories about good and evil:

Stories in which virtue is rewarded and evil is punished

Stories in which virtue is not always rewarded and evil is not always punished, and a major theme of the story is angsting about this fact

There are only three kinds of stories with villains:

Stories in which the villain loses

Stories in which the villain is reformed

Tragic stories in which the villain wins

But Fallout: Equestria (F:E) is not any of those five kinds of stories. F:E is a story in which the hero and the reader gradually realize that the world didn't come with a guarantee saying virtue would be rewarded, and that when you're tossed into a world where ponies are being killed, the important thing is not to go around judging people and dispensing justice, but to stop the killing. Virtue is not rewarded and evil is not punished, and that's beside the point. The failure of the world to meet your childish expectations is no excuse for despair, nor a reason to angst instead of rejoice when you've stopped the killing.

Which brings us to Tale Spin. Tale Spin is the bad guy. Or is he?

Well, he is pretty bad. He wants to be bad; he's trying to play the part of a bad guy. But he's an actor first. He'd rather be the hero, but if he can't be the hero, then he wants to be the bad guy. What he really is, is a self-absorbed douchebag. Bad, but no worse than some people you encounter every day. I wanted to show that it doesn't take a black heart to do evil things. Just a warped sense of priorities, or stupidity, or apathy. The problem isn't in the pony as much as in the environment.

In the end, Tale Spin wins. He gets exactly what he wants: to play the hero and to be adored by pretty young mares. Derpy has used him and neutralized him, but not punished or reformed him.

I already compromised on that point by suggesting that he never actually raped or killed anypony, and by making him slightly comical toward the end. But I definitely wanted to end with Tale Spin no better than he was before, and for that lack of reform or punishment not to detract from the triumph felt at the ending. Derpy has gotten past her desire for revenge in order to do the important thing, which is to stop him and to use him to help other ponies.

(I'm not saying revenge or punishment are bad. Just that the real world, unlike the worlds we see in books and movies, doesn't make sure that you never have to choose between saving the world and punishing the villain.)

InquisitorM said that this story is very pony because the ponies don't save civilization by using the Magic Doodad, but through individual personal connections. I think that's right, but it has an unpopular twist to it: Moral progress isn't made by teaching ponies the magic of friendship, but by delivering the mail. Now, that mail wouldn't be as important if ponies didn't care for each other. But while love and friendship might be the most important things, they aren't great points of leverage for social change. For thousands of years, people have tried to improve society by teaching people to be nicer to each other. This is a good thing, but not as effective in doing good as ignoble economic development.

Historically, humanity's moral progress over the past few thousand years, though it has ebbed and flowed, has not been due to people getting nicer, but to technology. The Dark Ages were not ended by Christianity; they were ended by the horse collar, the loom, irrigation, three-field crop rotation, wind mills, water wheels, paper, trade routes, the invention of corporations, insurance agencies, banks, and all the things that made it more profitable for people to make stuff than to fight over the stuff they already had.

In the end of this story, Tale Spin is just a harmless douchebag. He was never "reformed"; he was put into a different environment in which it doesn't pay to behave in his old ways. Millions of douchebags today might rape and kill to get what they wanted if they found themselves in a wasteland devoid of law and order. We don't kill them all, satisfying though that might feel; we build a society in which they can get what they want more easily by doing other things.

6. Everfree

Derpy held her wings out at full length and looked down as the Everfree rolled by far below. From this height, it looked like a thin coating of moss on the world. Delicate, like you could scrape it off with a knife. Ponies feared this place more than any other now, but Derpy found it relaxing. It was the only place she felt safe anymore.

Well, not safe, exactly. But as long as you were well-fed and rested, and could fly over and well above the whole thing without stopping, it was relatively safe. Safer than the plains north and south of it, anyway, which were infested by ponies more malevolent and cunning than anything in this forest.

If some great winged beast rose from the forest to snatch her from the sky, at least she’d see it coming a long way off. At least it would be a predator that had some kind of birthright to do it. It wouldn’t try to frighten her, or justify itself to her, or try to make her confess that she deserved it.

Ponies thought this was where the world’s sickness had started. But as she looked at the miles of green stretching out in every direction—it looked green to her now; the eternal sunset had stripped her world of all but shades of red and brown, but her mind had begun to learn to repaint it—she realized they had got it backwards. This was the only healthy place left. Everywhere else, where ponies had ordered wind, clouds, rain, and plants to their liking, it had all died when the ponies stopped forcing it. Twisted to meet the needs of ponies, it had lost the will to live. As she would have if the raiders had kept her for their needs.

The sickness didn’t come from here, she thought. It came from us.

The Everfree had already surged back over the boundaries ponies had set for it, spreading out in slow, leafy waves. She imagined it rolling east and west and north and south until it reached the mountains and the sea, burying farms, cities, and ponies in a warm blanket of green.

“Don’t worry about me,” she whispered to the forest far below. “I’m on your side now.”