Please, call me Lily.
I suppose the best age for destruction--of ourselves or of other things--is youth. There’s a point between childhood and adulthood we call adolescence. We call it this because “temporary insanity” is rude and “horny, awkward, and destructive” is a bit harsh. Youth is good for setting things on fire, whether that’s a heart or a storefront. The same thing that makes us fall in love makes us rise up, I think. I’m not sure. I wouldn’t know! Not like she did. Not like all the others did. Because I’m always hiding. I always watch.
I think when you’re young you’re crazy. Maybe the old ponies are right, and we think we’re invincible. I don’t think I’ve ever felt invincible, though. I always felt in danger. But I was willing to try. Not right away, but eventually, I was willing to try. Maybe when you’re young, you don’t feel invincible. Maybe you’re just willing to try more things. Try anything. Babs told me once before we went to that terrible Zebraharan place, the one on Fifth, that she’d try anything once.
Sometimes I think youth is like a song. Maybe, just maybe, it’s a song we sing between childhood and adulthood, between beginning and ending, right at the height of life and abundance. Maybe it’s us trying to tell the world that we were alive, if only for a little span of days. I think a lot of things are like songs. I can’t sing at all. I used to say I was all out of songs, but that’s probably not true. I know it isn’t. I have one left. I’m going to sing it now.
Where do you begin a story? The beginning is not a good place to start. You have so much to explain and not enough energy yet to explain it. But see, if you start a bit after the beginning, then you have a bit of the good stuff under your belt for when all the explaining happens.
So I’ll tell you about the guards first.
When you live in a conquered city, when your life is Occupation, you adjust quicker than you thought you would. The world shrinks to a few blocks of city and you’re okay with it, not because you want to be okay with it, not becuase that’s enough, but because it keeps you safe. Sort of. It keeps you out of the street if the world is small. If the world is small there’s nowhere to go, few people to see, and little to do. So you see few people, you go nowhere, and you do little of anything. The streets belong to the guards.
They aren’t really guards.When I think of “guards” I think of the Solar guards who used to walk in twos on patrol. They waved back at foals sometimes, and they protected us. The Guard was the watchful eyes that saw the burglar, the shield against the push into the canal. They were the pony who put out the fire and saved your cat. They were good.
The Griffons are guards, but they aren’t the Guard. Because the Guard would help you. The Guard didn’t need weapons. Their strength was weapon enough for what they faced. But the Griffons carry long rifles, with wicked bayonets that glisten. Squadrons marching down the street seem to the imagination to play at being forests. The Guard had beautiful, well-crafted armor meant to assure and reassure. The Griffons have things made of leather--of living things, not the safe metal of the Guard. They have cruel helmets with spikes on them, and pads on their shoulders where sometimes they put spikes. I do not know why they have them. Perhaps they do not feel lethal enough with a rifle in their hands or with their claws gripping pony flesh.
When the Griffons sailed into port, the city was paralyzed. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. No one had any clue what to do.
What would you have done? Really think about it. Your country isn’t at war. It hasn’t actually declared war in centuries. The soldiers who went south last year to help the Zebras with the crazed cultists were the first soldiers sent outside of the boundaries of Equestria to fight in eighty years easily. You know the flags on those ships. Do you see them yet? Made of wood and tall like buildings in the street, their masts like a strange and unsettling grove. The Griffons are coming.
Your Princess is gone. People say that outside of town, there is honest-to-stars banditry. Not hold ups for cash. Ponies slicing other ponies throats and taking their worldly possessions. Leaving their bodies in the ditch. The world is undone. Things have fallen apart. That’s what ponies say.
And then the Griffons are here.
What would you have done? I watched from my mother’s apartment. My father lived in Canterlot. I do not know if he is there now. As I said: the world is smaller.
Babs? Now Babs was the one pony I knew who could do anything of substance. You know what she did? Well, before she went home and hid, I mean. She’s brave and wonderful, not stupid and dead. Breaking and entering is what she did. Specifically, as the first boatload of troops was marching into the port she was kicking down the door to the Fifth Guard Precinct’s armory.
And then she hid. We all hid. The Guard and the Mayor didn’t at first. I thought the Guard might fight. But there were only two hundred of them, maybe three. I wouldn’t know. There are thousands of Griffons. No one talks about the Mayor anymore. I think he is dead. I hope he isn’t. He gave up, but we did too. We all hid. Some of us didn’t have the misfortune to live in the biggest mansion in town in the worst hiding spot in town.
I think Babs and I may not make it. I want to tell you this now. The whole point of writing this is because the chances of us living through the week are very, very small. The chances of us having lived this far were also small. But my father was a gambler and I know that despite what you might think, probability doesn’t work that way.
This is all I have: My name is Lily. I’m blue. I like flowers but I don’t think I’m actually talented with growing them. I’m not a fighter. I’m a poor leader and an average runner. I’m a pegasus that loves flying but isn’t particularly good at it. I’m a little overweight, my mane is short, my glasses are broken but I can still see. That is all I have.
Babs dragged me a very long way on the third day of our occupation. The first few days nopony went anywhere. The Griffons controlled the street. But on the third day they didn’t crowd the streets and a few ponies went outside. Most of them scurried a few doors down to see if their friends were alright, or to ask for food. They commiserated in storefronts and in apartment building hallways. But Babs and I went a long way, and we went to neither of these places, and we did not commiserate. Not like they did.
I knew where we were going pretty soon after she coaxed me out of my apartment. I say coax, but she all but bullied me out. She was always a bit of a bully when we were kids. I told her that once, I remember, and she just had the strangest frown. It made me sad.
You’re probably wanting to know why I’m writing all this. I promise you, it’s important. Stay with me a bit, alright? Because this part seems a bit off topic.
See, we had a club when we were kids. You remember being a kid. Didn’t you worry about your cutie mark? Didn’t you spend ages wondering what it might look like, what your special talent might be? I mean, it’s supposed to define you. We were the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Isn’t that a cool name? I thought so.
We had a base. I knew we were headed there when she took a left past the old Batte furniture store. Where else would she go in that part of town?
We were fast. We were easily missed. It was a skill developed over years of childish adventures and mishaps. You learn how to get from point A to point B without pesky adult interference. It’s amazing what awful uses childhood can be put. I thought about that a lot in the days after that one. The days between that meeting and right now.
Our base is in the old Rockehoof Hotel, on floor 18. It was there. You’ll recognize it when you see it. Or, well, you would. The whole city is a bit changed now. But it was old, it was abandoned, and tearing it down had proved to be a nightmare for the local government before the disappearance of the princess. If that’s what happened to her. We slipped under the caution tape like we had when we were kids, opened the old doors, and climbed the long stairs.
I was out of breath when we reached the top. Usually I felt safe here, but the world is different after two days of soldiers marching up and down your street. Now I wondered if there were soldiers behind every door. I had vivid visions of our old hideout having been co-opted into some fierce griffon’s sniper nest. But as we walked down the hall, I heard nothing. Just an empty, quiet, dusty hallway of doors that led to rooms that no one used and no one cared about.
Babs kept looking back at me and grinning like we were kids again and she had some grand secret. At the time, I guess she caught me up in her excitement, her nervous energy. Just a little bit. Looking back, I think she was just afraid. I guess I was too. I know I was. Wouldn’t you be? The day before those griffons came, I had never seriously though about dying. Is that strange? I don’t know. But I hadn’t. I mean, I was afraid of dying. That’s natural. But I was only ever afraid of it in a distant, vague way. I never thought about it happening. I never expected to be shot. I never thought about what it might feel like to be shot. I had no reason to.
But now I was walking through the door to our little hideout.
“We really shouldn’t be this far from home,” I remember saying to her. I had started to catch up to her excitement in the hallway, but suddenly there were windows and I remembered the city. “Can we go back?”
And she laughed at me! Laughed. “We can’t go back! Where are we gonna go?” And then she stopped laughing. “Where are we gonna go, eh? Lily, we don’t got anywhere else. This is our home.”
“This isn’t my apartment,” I told her.
“You know what I mean.”
“This is too much. What if they see us? Stars, Babs, I was so worried they would see us,” I said. I remember sitting against the wall. I fidgeted. I got up and walked to the window. Nowhere felt safe. I felt too big for this room. I felt too exposed in it. I still don’t know how crazy this sounds, even after everything, but I had this fear that some griffon was waiting on the roof to pick us off. I swore I could see the glint of his scope on one of the rooftops. I hid again, pressed against the wall. I had started reluctant, grown excited, and now I was shutting down.
“We have to do something. Lily, you’re running scared. Just look at you.”
“I can’t look at me. No mirror,” I remember babbling.
She rolled her eyes at me. “What are you hiding from?”
“Snipers?” I said and I sounded like an idiot.
“There won’t be any. Why would they be looking here anyway? Two mares, young, unarmed? Those big featherbrains think we’re drifters or somethin.”
I remember preening. I do that when I’m nervous. It looks stupid. Me just sitting there in this dusty, miserable little hovel ruin, preening. I didn’t need to preen. Why do I do that? I’m always panicking. Writing this is kind of me panicking.
And then she just… tells me. I don’t remember all of it? That’s stupid, I know.
She said we needed to do something. I asked what she had in mind, except when I asked it wasn’t nearly as open-minded as I make it sound. I demanded to know. What the hell did she think we could do about anything?
I’m not a fighter. Babs was, but only in a tussle kind of way. She got into some small-time school brawls. She bucked a kid in the face for picking on me once. She was a rough and tumble girl, but she was no soldier. Ponies. That’s what we were. Little ponies, frail and colorful and weak and small and without hope. What do ponies do against guns? They die, that’s what they do.I told her that before she’d even told me what she planned.
She was angry. I think she was angry because she was scared and she didn’t want to feel alone. She told me about stealing firearms from the Guard and hiding them here. I almost panicked right then. We were sitting on landmines. Contraband! They would find the stash and put us against the wall. No blindfolds, pow, gone.
“We can do something. We have to. Lily, they can’t just take it away from us. I mean look at that!” She pointed out the window.
“You and me against an entire army?” I asked her. I included myself. I think I knew then that I would not talk her down. I think I was beginning to realize where this would all lead.
She talked about all sorts of things. She raved and ranted, really. None of it was doable or feasible in anyway. It frustrated me. We couldn’t use the guns she’d stolen. I couldn’t fire one--could she? Maybe. Not well. She had shot one gun one time, and I had never touched one. Maybe with more ponies we could do something. But what would we do? How did one hurt an occupying army? How did… war work? It is a stupid question. You think you know from stories until the army is in your own town and then there are no options that seem like they’ll pan out.
I was going to say something. I don’t remember what. I never got the chance, because that’s when we heard the floorboards creak.
I’m not sure what Babs did at first. I was actually airborne. All the tension between us on top of nervous energy and the thought of being hunted down and I lost it. I flew straight into the wall, fell back to the ground, and found myself on the other side of the rotten bed. I hid behind it in a little ball.
I heard Babs ask who was there. I thought we were going to die. I thought she was going to be shot. I wanted to get up and grab her. I saw myself flying out the window, carrying a squirming Babs in my forelegs, taking her far away. That didn’t happen. Because I’m a coward and I always have been. I’m weak.
Remember that. It’ll be important later.
Babs called out again. I heard more creaking floorboards, and this time I had to look. I needed to see what happened. But my body wouldn’t move, not at first. It just refused.
So it took a moment. When I finally peeked over the bed Babs was awkwardly trying to put on one of those harnesses you see guardsponies wearing sometimes, the one you can put a lance on or a gun. She’d put it on backwards. Maybe. That part I don’t remember well. She was having trouble with it somehow.
That’s when the closet opened, and the old mare wandered out.
My first impression was that she was a lunatic.
Grand Veldt’s mane was wild and unkempt. Her coat had faded to a kind of greenish gray mess. Her eyes were always wide and always staring at you in a way that made even strong ponies feel a little uncomfortable. She saw too much. Everything about her was ancient and half-ruined or fully-ruined and about to fall apart, but I never thought for a moment she couldn’t kick me right out the window. She looked like she was considering it. But she also grinned. Once again, like a maniac, just this big wide grin.
“This is being a fine welcome, no? You are going to be great revolutionaries! Breaking into old mare’s home, pointing guns at elders, hiding behind beds! Very good, very good.”
Babs told her to fuck off. Stars, but she looked so humiliated. I was afraid she might hurt the old mare, but I know she wouldn’t. Babs has a temper, but she’d never hurt an innocent pony.
“Babs, she’s just…” I didn’t finish. Babs got the harness on, but there was no gun to put on it. Or, there was, but she couldn’t find it right away and she didn’t want to take her eyes off of Veldt.
I really thought that old mare was going to go full-crazy on us. I did. But she didn’t. No, you know what? I take that back. She did. She was too crazy to just go berserk. That’s small change. No, in the land of the blind the one-eyed was king. She was just sane enough to be lethal.
“I have heard of your plannings,” she cooed. “Do you think you can do this thing?” She didn’t speak to me. She didn’t talk to me much at all that day. To be fair, I was cowering behind the bed when she met me.
“Like hell I can. I can try, can’t I?”
“You can try, yes, yes.”
“Look,” Babs started. “Don’t say anything to anypony, got it? I’m serious. We’ll use another room, just don’t tell anypony we were here, and we’ll be even. I mean, hell, I had this room first.”
“You claim it? I do not see your name on it,” Veldt hissed. Babs recoiled a little.
“Sorry. And forget what you heard.”
“Oh, oh! I will not be forgetting,” she said. I remember the way she said it. She almost danced as she did. “But you will be needing other ponies, hm? I think you will. I see many things. I know many ponies. I know almost all of them, I think. Yes, yes. You will need others.”
“Well… yeah. I mean, do you… Oh hell.” Babs facehoofed. “Look…”
And then she asked. She actually asked to sign up. Right then and there. Babs said yes. Of course she did. She’s Babs. You think she thinks this through? You think the mare who stole guns from Guard, dragged me through occupied Manehattan, thinks anything through? Remember that, by the way. Ask yourself that a few times.
I think what finally did me in was the way Veldt talked after that. Because wow, she talked. A lot. On and on and on. She knew a lot of ponies, and a lot of dangerous ponies at that. She knew the sorts of ponies I would never run with. Babs knew a few, and that’s why Babs believed her. I believed her because Babs believed her. When Babs talked about “resisting” even I knew it was bullshit. But when Veldt talked about what two ponies could do when one pretended to be crippled or, Celestia help me, a prostitute… Stars, that was a gruesome conversation. She was a gruesome mare. The light in her eyes whenever she talked about anything even mildly violent bothered me. I mean, how could it not? I have never hurt anypony. Even now. I have never raised my hoof in anger and hurt anypony. I have not. I will not. I have never. If I tell myself that enough I believe it. I mean, it’s true. But…
Direct and indirect. You’ll see. What’s important now is that talk.
Babs talked a lot about organizing. Veldt talked a lot about hurting griffons. I didn’t talk at all until the sun was gone and then I talked a bit.
You know, I was the treasurer when we were Cutie Mark Crusaders. I mean, sure, our “Treasury” was never bigger than fifteen bits at a time, but somepony had to look out for it. I am a coward. I’m not a fighter. I don’t exactly inspire confidance. But I am good at maps, and I am pretty good at organizing. I was the one who set our agenda, even though I wouldn’t say I would help Babs. But we both knew I would. Sometimes I’m mad at her for that. She just assumed I would help her, that I would just follow her. But I can’t be too mad because I knew I would too, in the end.
We would watch. We would watch at least two more days. Babs had brought a map and I wrote all over it. I looked for that first map tonight, but I couldn’t find one. I accidentally cut myself in the wreckage looking for that stupid piece of paper. Why? I mean, it’s long gone now. If it didn’t burn up then the rubble would have torn it to shreds.
I marked the Griffon base, and I tried to chart out some of their movements. Like I said, I watch. I am good at attaching to the wall and watching everything. Even when I hide--especially when I hide. But my charts and my marks were incomplete. I had no idea if the griffons had other encampments besides the one I had seen near the port. I had no idea how many patrols they sent out, and on top of that I didn’t know if they’d settled into a routine yet.
So I told her to wait. She would need more ponies. Veldt promised to find her some cutthroats. I suggested she prowl the neighborhoods. I started keeping a daily journal after that. Just notes, a chronology, so I knew when what happened and why and how. At the time I figured that no matter what, Babs wasn’t going to keep things straight. Now I’m grateful for it. This last little testament.
It’s like watching somepony fall from a balcony in slow-motion.
