The Difference in Equality

I wake up with the same feeling I have every time I wake up. Grogginess and hatred. Grogginess because it's a Monday, and hatred because I have a strong disliking of the village I am forced to live in. Unfortunately I cannot leave this village because the village authorities won't let us leave. We never get the chance to leave. If someone tries to, it's village prison for them. If I told them I wanted to leave, there would be the same result. Why would anyone listen to me anyways? I'm only twelve years old.

When I grow up, I'm leaving this village behind and I'm taking my parents with me. In school I learned about an interesting place in Equestria. It is an amazing land named Ponyville. That place is a holy land compared to this poor and dusty place. The reason we are supposed to be equal in this village is because if we are all the same, there will be no different opinions. Nopony will be jealous of each other's special talents because nopony has any. If someone were to have a special talents, it would cause "disharmony".

If this place contained ponies who have different opinions, ponies here would argue that there will be arguments which leads to the shattering of peace. Since we're all the same, that won't happen. But if this village represents what it's like to be equal, then I hate being equal. Us ponies are supposed to have different talents because it is what makes us unique and special. Starlight Glimmer thought otherwise, which is why she made this village. Is this rule bringing peace or Tartarus? I can't tell.

My mother's voice calls to me from downstairs. "Nicky, time for breakfast!" she calls. I think "Nicky" is a cute but annoying name to address me as.

"Coming!" I yell back weakly. I take slow and wobbly steps across my room to get downstairs. My legs feel like they are weighing me down every morning when I walk. I approach the staircase and look down at all of the stairs I have to walk down. I find this work tedious because my legs feel like they are made out of soggy pieces of bread. So instead, I spread my wings and fly down the staircase. My wings feel tired, too. Every part of me is tired in the morning.

I sit down at the kitchen table looking at my everyday breakfast. Muffins. One time I tripped on a rock and my tongue happened to touch the ground when I tripped. The dirty ground is a very delightful meal compared to village-normal muffins. "Some ponies get nothing, you know," My mother once said. Even nothing would be better than these muffins. What would worse than these muffins? This village, of course. I'm getting tired of complaining. Avoiding the plate of muffins, I grab a glass of water. Water is the only drink this village has to offer. The only thing that doesn't taste like garbage in this village is water. I drink my water and my mother helps me put on my saddlebag. "See you later, sweetie!" My mom says as I walk through the door. She looks happy to send me off to school. She wouldn't be if she knew what I had to go through. I don't fit in because the other ponies my age act normal, or at least what this village sees as normal. Some ponies just stare at me as if I sprouted another pair of ears. I wonder what goes on in their head when they stare at me. What do they feel? Envy? Confusion? I normally just ignore it. I know I don't act like a village-normal pony. I push open the school door and walk into the beginning of another village-normal day at school.

I come home to see my father sitting at the kitchen table eating a muffin with a plain expression on his face. He turns to look at me and smiles. "There's my little stallion!" he says. He walks up to me and hugs me with that same expression on his face. When he hugs me, I get a feeling that I'm safe and everything is going to be okay. Maybe living in this village isn't so bad after all. I get to spend more time with my parents. "How was school?" It's funny how he asks that. Every day is the same. Nopony says a word except the teacher. We don't have any tests or schoolwork because that means that ponies would get different grades. It's optional to take notes in class in case you need a reminder of the lesson. I haven't written that much down.

I say the same answer as I do everyday. "Good," I say. The kitchen table has hay and water on it. I sit and eat my hay without saying a word. I don't talk very often because there's nothing much to say when every day is the same thing over and over again. I hear hoofsteps coming and I turn my head towards the staircase. I see my mother walking down the stairs and she smiles when she sees me. Though it's not a village-normal smile. It's a smile that would make anyone feel warm inside.

"Hey, sweetie," she says with her calm non-village-normal voice. "How was school?" I decide to say something different for once, so I say what's been on my mind for years.

"Mom, I don't fit in with anypony else," I begin. "That's because everypony acts the same and they all act strange." The smile fades off of her face and she assumes her lecture face.

"Your father and I were a bit skeptical, too," she says. She pulls a chair from the kitchen table and sits down.

"That's the rules," says my father. "Starlight has a reason for keeping that rule. It's her way of storing order." I already know that. It's a pain in the flank to think about all of those ponies forced to act that way.

"That's not the issue," I say. "Everypony my age is perfect and being equal. But here I am. An outsider to a village I've been living in my entire life." My mother looks worried about something.

"When we moved into the village, I couldn't help but bring a little thing to keep the memory of being at Ponyville," says my mother. She has never told me where she and my dad used to live despite the amount of times I asked. Now seemed to be the right time to admit it for her. But what was she keeping? She stands back up and walks across the room to the dusty old bookshelf. She uses her wings to assist her in reaching the top shelf and she slowly pulls a book from the shelf. This must have been to assure her that the thing she was hiding was actually there, because she nods her head when she sees it. She sets the book on the floor and takes a few more books and places it on the floor along with it. She finally pulls out a long gold picture frame that is unlike anything I've seen in this village. I have never seen an actual painting in my life.

While still flapping her wings, she turns around to show the painting to me. The other "paintings" in the village only has a picture of an equal sign on it with a gray background. No additional details. The picture takes place in a peaceful field of grass with a clear and blue sky. There are two ponies in the painting that I immediately notice as my mother and father trotting happily in the field. I have never seen something as beautiful as this. My mother smiles when she sees the astonished look on my face.

"Do you like it?" she asks. I'm glad she asked because I have finally seen something different under all of this equality. I nod happily.

"Are you allowed to have it?" I ask my mom. Starlight Glimmer is very strict about any sign of talent or difference of any kind. When I ask her this question, her ears go down to the sides of her head and she starts looking nervous.

"No," she says. "that's why I'm hiding it. Nopony except us can see it because if that were to happen, then it would mean we would be thrown in the village prison."

My dad makes a small hum of approval and says, "Word's been going out that someone has gone mad in there once," He says. "Fought the guards and all that. No wonder why he's not here today."

My mom scowls and says, "That's not a nice thing for either of us to know, thanks,"

In my bedroom that night I lay down facing the ceiling on my bed thinking about the painting. The painting is the only thing that has been in my head ever since I have first seen it. Maybe I should make a drawing of my own I think. I have to represent the ones I love the most, don't I? I reach down from my bed and wrap my hoof around my saddlebag that I have lazily thrown beside my bed when I got home from school today. I lift it up and place it on my bed, reaching for the zipper to get started. I zip the bag up and take my notebook from the saddlebag. I rip a sheet of paper from the notebook and place it on the bedside table. This room is very small so it isn't much of a challenge to reach for it. I grab a pencil from the saddlebag and go to the table, thinking about all of the ideas for drawings zooming around my head. Then an idea comes to my mind.

I have always dreamed about my parents and I would one day leave the village for good and move to Ponyville. That's what I'm going to draw. At the bottom of the paper, I draw a grassy landscape just like the one in the painting I saw. I'm not going to color it because of course there is nothing to color with. Everyone's favorite color just so happens to be gray. After I finish the landscape, I begin to draw my mother. I picture her white coat and brown hair in my head. I'm not comfortable drawing this, because then I have to draw village-normal hair. For stallions and mares there are assigned haircuts that is mandatory for stallions or mares in the age of sixteen or higher to have. I draw the bases or both of my parents and smile with satisfaction. Over the years, I have practiced drawing in the basement. That's there's a lack in notebook papers.

I make the bases of my parents run because that's the idea. Running away from this village and never coming back. When I think about that, I draw the base of myself flying above my parents. I imagine my mother's hair being the same brown, long, and bushy hair she told me about, so I draw that minus the brown.. She didn't tell me about her tail, but I assume it's almost the same thing as her mane. I then begin to draw my father. I draw his hair style similar to mine. Almost all of the non-village-normal stallions' hair looks like a younger pony's, so it won't be hard. My father's hair and tail is light green and he has a brown coat. I draw myself last. I draw my hair and tail with the same look as my father's. I then draw faces on all of them and notice one thing that's missing. The cutie marks. Of course I'm not going to draw the village-normal cutie marks, so I leave them blank. It's better to have no cutie marks than village-normal cutie marks.

I look at the painting proudly and approvingly. "Perfect," I say to myself. I take the paper and slide it under my bed. Now I'm hiding a drawing, too. A smile comes on my face as I put my notebook and pencil back inside of my saddlebag. I then climb into the bed and wrap myself in the warm blanket and close my eyes. Shortly after curfew has passed, the lights shut off on their own. I then delve deep into a thought about my parents and I leaving the village. It's going to happen one day. No one is going to stop me. I'll never let Starlight interfere with the plan of my parents and I leaving. As I drop further into my thoughts, I slowly fall asleep. Tomorrow will be non-village-normal.