Fact or Fiction (v2.0)

It was written by A.K Yearling along with the short tempered mare, Pea Gravel, it was about the journey the stranger had from a dismal childhood to when she arrived on Equestria's shores.

The title page had nothing except the authors names; A.K. Yearling and Boatswain. Rainbow was puzzled of the seemingly random name. She soon realized it was just a pen name, like Daring's. She flipped to the first page and began reading the book she had waited two months to hear about.

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Hello, my name is Boatswain.  This may seem strange, but the world you know of:  cupcakes, rainbows, princesses, and even friendship is nothing but a fantasy dream for ponies like me, and others who don't live alongside you.  If you'll let me, I'll explain it the way I lived through it and maybe you'll appreciate the world you know and live in a bit more when you put down this book.

Where I was from ponies had no chance for royalty, fancy dresses, nobility, or even property. It may be an alien word around here, but we sometimes weren't even seen as thinking creatures. We were seen as simple animals by many races and slave labor by others.

I grew up poor with my parents on a ranch in the desert.  My father was an earth pony,  had and orange mane and tail, red fur, and a face that showed the labor he did to feed my mother and I.  My mother, she was a pegasus and a rarity to find as a free pony.  Both were nomads until they met each other, my mother's fair grey fur and dark platinum mane caught his eye and the fact she had wings meant her children could fly free, too.  Sadly what came out of her was a little grey foal and fiery orange mane; Me.

Having a family to care for was no easy task for my father.  In addition to food and housing for us, which was just expensive enough to keep us stuck where we were, the desert was monsters called Lepurics, deadly scorpions, and worse of all carnihorses.  Now for you at home yes, a carnihorse is exactly what it sounds like, an equine with razor like teeth that can only eat meat.  And these aren’t even the worst of what was out there, running wild.

With all of these dangers and a brewing territory dispute between the Ridge Dogs and the Sand Boars, my father needed to find a place as close to safety and as far away from the brewing war as we could get.

That was when we found a plantation in the Sand Boars territory who was willing to let a family of ponies stay and work.  It was at the edge of a forest that led into a mountain and compared to where we were, in the desert, it was heaven to a filly like me.

That’s where another difference lies between the world out there.  A plantation out there is a farm like place, but with livestock.  Along with barley, wheat, and hay, they raised practically brain dead horses, pigs, and cows for carnivorous buyers.  Unfortunately, ponies who couldn't keep up with feeding and tending the herds were lobotomized and added to the herds as an example.  After they were slaughtered they were turned into food, clothing, and works of art.

This was life as we knew it and my father didn't want this this to happen to us, so he made a deal with the rancher, a sentient boar, that as long as my father does the his share of labor in the fields while my mother and I clean its house and cook, we’d be left in peace as laborers. The boar accepted with conditions of his own that I was never told of.

I know what you're thinking, "Boatswain, that's a horrible trade.  What happens if your father can't work anymore?"

The truth is, my father would rather work out in the fields under sweltering heat then fight the Ridge Dogs. These diamond dog like things have a massive and well organized pack.  All they would do with a pony is eat it, no question.  The Sand Boars on the other hand are a much more lenient to other hooved creatures.  This band of wealthy pig lords would rather pay ponies to work for them until their use is out, sell them to the lowest bidder or use us as cannon fodder.

I was about eight when I started noticing differences with my parents. My father became thinner and sun bleached while my mother came back to our house on the ranch later and later from the boar’s main.  The later she came home, the more silver she came back with.  This was a reoccurring thing and at the time I thought nothing of it, the only thing that kept the two going was the stories dad would tell late at night.

They were of fantastic things like wish granting fairies and ponies who could slay dragons, tales of hope for the pitiful things we were.  I became fascinated with things that weren’t real to them, and I was often caught daydreaming when I should have been scrubbing or dusting, but I

wasn't the only one. He often told stories to the ponies that worked with him and his stories gave them a sense of hope and sometimes, purpose.

One night not too soon after I turned eleven everything changed. The desert air was blowing in hot for the time of year while all of the tired ponies and whatever other creature that was unfortunate enough to be stuck in the ranch, they all slept dreamless, except me. I lay wide awake between my parents on our dirt floor with a single layer of old wood as a bed and a wool blanket over the three of us.

I stared at the crumbling wooden ceiling with a sense of unknown fear.  I tossed and turned for a while until I decided to go to the open window, look at the night sky, and gaze at the stars.  My heart froze and my eyes blinked in disbelief at what I saw slinking through the other ranch houses with terrifying silence. It was a dragon. Each house was made of thin material and was two stories tall to house all the laborers, and the dragon was crawling silently, reaching nearly two thirds of the way up a the buildings.

I would later come to know that this dragon's name was Wiktet.  His body was long and a rust red color with porcupine quills running down his wavy back, but no wings like the ones I heard of in stories. His teeth jutted out to make his mouth look like it was in a permanent smile.  Wiktet slithered around the ranch houses like a snake. He peered his pale yellow eyes into the houses with a hungry look, he drooled as his arm carefully reached into a window and shuffled his talons through the room while a small grey filly watched from across the housing complex.

His eyes lit up when he grabbed something and he pulled his tawny arm back out and held a labor worn pony between his talons. Wiktet licked the sleepy pony who cringed from the unnatural touch. She opened her eyes for only moment before the dragon shoved her neck back with a push of his thumb, killing her.

I couldn't believe what I saw, but what came next was just as shocking.

The boar rancher hobbled his fat girth down the path that ran along the fronts of the houses.  Wiktet crawled out to meet him and his massive size dwarfed the fat pig. I saw an almost mutual look between them.

"Gracias, cerdo," the dragon drooled, "Your workers have a sabor especial."

"De nada, boss," the boar looked around in the darkness nervously, "I have a favor to ask of you, if you'll listen," he said through his fat mouth.

"For a few bites, I may take it.   What does my little cerdo want?" Wiktet hissed.

"I have this one familia in a pueblo," the boar pointed to my house and I ducked out of view, "the father in there fills my workers heads with stories full of azúcar y mentiras. If he keeps going, they might get ideas."

The dragon wheezed an awful laugh. "You want me to eat some caballitos?"

I could hear the dirt scrape against his belly and claws as he crawled closer. I had to think fast, I ran over to my parents and shook them awake.

"Mamma!  Father!  Wake up!" I cried.

"Eh, what is it pequeño?”  My father asked groggily.  He saw how frightened I looked and held me close in his forelegs, "you just had a bad dream, Boat.  Come back to bed-"  his eyes shot open when he saw the talons of Wiktet's claws slip through the window.

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Rainbow Dash left the book open on her lap and leaned back into her cushioned chair finding it far more comfortable than when she started.  She remembered Pea Gravel telling her about this part of the story.  Rainbow leaned forward and fluttered her wings, she felt sick as she thought about what happened to Pea's mother.  That pegasus was clipped for life, she went crazy being stuck on the ground. Dash turned a few pages and found a part where Pea was wandering alone away from the ranch. She ended up in the mountains as the weather began to change for the worse.

Rainbow found where Pea wrote of her encounter with the carnihorse.  The pegasus grimaced at the daunting paragraph telling of the meat eating horse's untimely end. Rainbow Dash skipped past that part and found a paragraph a little ahead and found it much less revolting.