The Mercies: from Philomena.
Author's Note
He could still hear that monstrous laugh.
That "thing" looking like a man,
every man in every way,
dominating and pig eyed!
Like every man!
Like himself,
as he was.
Before.
As he was before.
Before he fell,
fell through the sky.
Fell through the clouds
in sunset's golden dream
a silvery, golden, red, dream of stars .
The Mercies: from Philomena.
Waking up now...in pain.
Not the pain of the thing on his back,no not the Rider!
That was a different kind of pain. The pain of an invisible monster driving its heals into your sides with cruel spurs.Driving them deep till your sides would visibly bruise and sometimes drip a drop of blood or two.
"Ya! Capricious pony!"said he."Point you to the cliffs, spur your side to make you slow, then to strike, to strike you, again and again with cruel spiked wheels, cruel spiked wheels to make you stop!"hissing in his ear. "Why do you ran fast? Faster and faster toward the towering cliffs with every jab!Then down and down and down!"It laughed and hissed in his ear when he was awake.
There was nothing like a bad translation of the song by Vladimir Vysotsky, to just somersault his stomach.
Sometimes it looked like a fatman in a suit, or a man as dark as pitch, times it wore leather, or had a crazy hair style, sometimes a Mohawk, or earnings, or piercings, clothes, no clothes, once a demure fox hunter and another time the complete opposite, an overweight middle-aged person who overloaded the horse, to old for fox hunting, typical farcical stereo type.
His wife, Marigold had seen it once, in a dream,a horrible thing!
"Slave..."she named it. Marigold, a mare who embodied what he read in Proverbs chapter thirty one!" That butter would look like it would melt in her mouth and yet combined with a satirical wit!"as C.S. Lewis would say in "Screwtape Letters".
She mocked this proud spirit, the rider,and found it laughably silly thing in whatever form it took,for always the chains!Darned, cursed or fallen, always the chains and by his torments, his deeds, his punishment, for whatever crime, was deserved.
Whatever airs it put up, it was still only a slave!
However,whenever she was with Smuggie, the pain the torments were made bearable, and sometimes went away.
Marigold: his intercessor!
His intercessor between him and the Rider.His intercessor between him and this delusional world of pastel neon multicolored ponies, that itself was a pain....
No,This pain was all over his body.
The pain of battle and sore muscles, as he would twist and bend and kick, the pain he knew full well added to the pain of multiple blows....
"Thank you for the massive walls of text! I feel nice and hemmed in!"Smuggie said to the author."....and I think they get the idea I'm in pain...which is ebbing by the way...Marigold?"
There was a borble, borble sound.
One eye opened. He was staring at a concerned Philomena, concerned that Prefect Smuggie Pie, Celestia's Select, Judge of Equestria was seemingly talking to no one.
Celestia, the steward and shepherdess of the sun(herdess?) whom he called the Oyarsa of Equestria, just so he could cope.
"Why me?"sighed Smuggie, survivor's guilt beginning to well up in him."Why did you have to heel me? Couldn't you find some native son more worthy that you waste your precious tears on me? Some foreign born creature with bad habits in the shape of a pony?"
Philomena grabbed his muzzle with her wing and stared him hard in the eye. She stared at him till he felt quite ashamed.
"Am I the only one left??"
He slowly got up and looked at the carnage around him.
"No pony...??"his eyes began to water.
Philomena grabbed him again and stared, there wasn't time for this, no self incrimination! He had to get up and walk.Marigold, faithful Marigold, waiting back home, would want him.
Marigold, the Oyarsa of his heart.
He shuddered under his armor, splitting barding and grieves as he balanced his frame then bent his neck waiting for his ever present, invisible tormentor to jump on his back like a cowboy in those old black and white westerns.
He couldn't avoid the Rider. Always, he found his way to the pony's back! The Rider had come to Equestria with the judge, trapped while the equine lived, and would only leave when Smuggie expired.
"Clumsy fool!"It had hissed in his ear as he tumbled off the cliff and down the mountain side. The mountain crumbling around, falling on this troubled herd.These Strange Thundering Ponies, these goads to Equestria.
"You'll expire and I will not have had to lift a finger to take you there!"The rider laughed, looking like some pig eyed fat man with large white hat, watch chains in his vest, whom Smuggie had seen on TV as a boy, a show about an orange race car.He hated that character!All the old folks in the home would cry out 'Yee Haw' ever-time the orange car would jump....old folks...
Cruel jabs, hateful whispered doubt into the pony's ear of the unfairness and unjustness of it all! That he, Smuggie Pie, had to judge the "thundering herds",being no better than they! He, having won life's lotto, being able to make good just decisions all for the love a mare who stood by him, even during the hot season, despite his inability to touch her without shuddering, while the other strange ponies of the "thundering herds" had given into the passions of the unending season, greed and group think!
It wasn't fair!
Why did he have to be put over his brothers to pound sense into their heads with hard, hard hooves?
Why?
"HA.HA!" he laughed but there was no mirth in it."It's like party politics! A convention out of control all the delegets running around! A party system and I have to run around, herding the masses, just like delegates!"His smile turned to a sever frown. He hated it."...and of course I'm on the wrong side with progressives and educrates! But I don't have a choice." He knelt down, he bent his back feeling just like it used to to be for the party bosses, he was defeated, bending his back waiting for the Rider.
Tears.
He was again about to begin his self abasement without the Riders help when he felt something small and warm softly alight on his back, on his back, were he dreamed Marigold would unseat the rider and sit as he walked out into the world after together they recited the "Rights of Megan".
It was Philomena!
"None of that." The phoenix seemed to chirp happily."Not today!"
She then gently prodded with her toes, steering the pony, encouraging the him to head back in the direction of camp to send back recovery teams to help search the collapsed mountain for survivors.
Besides, it had to be shown that Celestia's Prefect,her select, Judge of Equestria was still very much alive!
They hadn't brought him down.
Not today.
Prologue
As he walked along Philomena sang a few bars of "Ode to Joy" then stopped.
"That was very nice." Smuggie said.
She then sang a few cords "All Creatures Great and Small."
"Well done." Smuggie said.
Then she sang a quick rendition of "My Fathers World."
"Very good."
Then she noisily cleared her throat.
"What's the matter?"
She stared at him.
"You want me to sing?"
She nodded.
"You want me to sing a song?"
She shook her head.
"You.....want me to sing a hymn?"
"Squawk!"she said happily.
"Oh, I don't mind....singing is like public speaking, like testifying....which I'm going to do a lot of....at the inquest!!" Smuggie started to hyperventilate. "I can just hear Celestia, '..and pray, my judge....how does one bring down a whole mountain on ones self?' of course I'll say something about booby traps and strange ponies that hate my guts and of course there the likes and dislikes reviews....ow!!"
He felt something hit his head and it hurt.
"Skwak!"
"Fine 'whatsoever are pure and noble of good report,' think about...of course forget about real with multicolored...."
"Skwak!" this time she crossed her wings and glared at him.
"Oh! Your hymn!"as he wandered along the road his mind wandering inside the wonderfully straight corridors of his mind....he could remember everything when he had been human! All those hymns they had tried to have him sing in Sunday school but he had been too suborn and full of folly.
"Ok...got one....something nice and obscure!" and he began to sing.
Author's Note
You tell me the hymn, you can probably hear it better than I.
Just added this, the story seemed a little incomplete.
"One would not have power if it were not granted from above....one official is responsible to the one above him and so on..."
