Our wagon rumbled away from the breach with an expediency I didn’t quite understand. The only thing that remained to pursue us was the persistent, high pitched ringing that filled my ears. Two ears, each twitching lamely, but they were fully intact. That’s more than I could say for the rest of me.
I hadn’t got a clear glimpse of myself, but there was a cold spire between my ears that should have been warm, like a still summer sea. Most of my body was numb, and what wasn’t numb ached so much I couldn’t move. Each breath came from the labored swell and fall of my chest. I lifted one hand--hoof--and noted the dark foot and fur. Trying to move my other foreleg, I felt only pain and the absence.
The single singing note in my head faded and details began to fade in. Through a crack in the curtains behind the wagon, I could see the faint shine of the barrier that separated Earth and Equestria. The smoke from the other side collided with the metaphysical wall and swam in furious circles, almost concealing the crater of gray ash and broken concrete beyond. What little Equestrian flora I could see was bright, verdant, and yet everything in my vision felt dark.
Next came words, voices, frantic uttering in the Equestrian language that I hadn’t quite learned yet. An argument between an older stallion and a mare. She yells a few words for emphasis, slow and hard enough I can start to pick them out. Unicorn. Rest. Heal.
The stallion snapped a hoof to his head and barked out a few words. As the pieces of reality came colliding in my head, I recognized him immediately. Shimmer Glass. A stallion of pristine white and blue maned, thick chested, strong from tip to tail. He lost his helmet in the explosion, his armor tarnished. A strong wing braced around my barrel, holding me like a young ducklett and hiding the space of my missing left legs.
I loved that stallion. I hoped he still loved me. Wouldn’t blame him if he changed his mind.
“If he falls asleep, he won’t wake up again,” Shimmer repeated, but his eyes were on mine. The comfort was double edged; it kept the pain from driving me insane, but it also tempted me to sleep.
“Focus!” Shimmer barked. “Talk to me.”
I opened my mouth and my thick tongue lolled out. My body seemed to rebel against its commands. I was a terrible, ugly thing in the wings of my savior, existing helplessly while the guardsmare tipped a flask of water into my mouth and then wiped my face clean.
Water. Clean water. The pure and simple taste of it would have brought tears to my eyes if they weren’t already there.
“Talk to me,” Shimmer said again, his command fading into a plea.
Simple phrases start to come together on my tongue. “About what?”
“Anything. Everything. Start from the beginning.”
The beginning. How far back to begin? The moment I discovered magic? Or perhaps what life was like after they shut down the conversion bureaus. The spark of hope that ignited our race’s spirit in those desolate times. The promise of a better life, made and then broken. The appearance of a window through which we could see a place more brilliant and vivid than our own.
“It began with a dream,” I said, slow, filling out the words with his language and mine. “Of a stallion who flew above a wall, a wall that reached all the way to the stars. And on the other side was a young man waiting to be saved.”
* * *
Before the Conversion Bureau came to our city, I only knew it by the pamphlets that were smuggled in by vagabonds and evangelists. I found mine half-damp and sticking out of a public wastebin. Even the stain of sweet and sour sauce was more colorful than most things I saw in this part of the world. The front page was dominated by a single complex with a sweeping arch, sky-blue panels and a myriad of satellites on the roof. A simple pair of sliding glass doors in the front showed a calm crowd strolling in and ponies wandering about the fair streets of California.
The little literature proclaimed “Say Hello to a New You!” over an embossed rainbow. The inside flaps were shots of before and afters, young and old, frail and fine, trading in their human bodies for a new magical existence with just a few ounces of magic potion. It seemed unreal. It seemed far away.
Here, we didn’t develop much of a resistance force so much as a grumbling dissent. ‘Ponification’ was just another one of those devilish things that popped up in liberal cities. “They wouldn’t dare build one here,” they said, and I believed them.
Except they already had, and most of us were none the wiser. I only found it by virtue of ending a long day at my warehouse by taking the longest, quietest route home that I could think of.
Several city blocks had been decommissioned by the perfect combination of obsolescence and high property value. What remained was row after row of fenced off, boarded off toaster box buildings. Their vents silent, their parking lots empty save for the occasional shell of a van with the logo scraped off. In fact, the only color in the neighborhood came by the virtue of the more stylistic graffiti. For the better part of my journey, I walked beneath the piercing gaze of a green serpentine dragon, wild whiskered and the earth cradled in its claws.
On better days I would stop and stand beneath it, longing for some magnificent power like his. That day, I simply walked by.
I would have walked right past the bureau, were it not for the single pegasus guard standing in front of the ramp. The building had nothing in common with its predecessors. The entire facility hid somewhere behind a single steel shutter, which was at the time closed and guarded. The building unmarked, no one coming to or from that I could discern.
I was too stunned and too overjoyed to wonder why he was there. I fell to my knees on the sidewalk and stared wide-eyed at the pony. That stallion struck my heart with a hammer, shattering the cage of ice that had formed from long working days and hopeless dreams.
How horrible it must have been for him, his professional duty sending him worlds abroad. To stand here upon this wasted sidewalk, and watch as I wept stupidly and silently at the sight of him.
He was beautiful. I was almost relieved to learn that he was beautiful by pony standards, too. Six hands higher than even other guardsmen, with fur of such pure white that even the sun cut through clouds and smog still shimmered off of his sides. He had deep blue eyes and a darker blue mane, mostly hidden by the perfect polish of his armor. And the wings! Those envious wings tucked at his side.
“Okay?” he said in awkward tongue, tilting his head my way. I wiped my eyes on the back of my sleeves and tried to compose myself. I imagined I’d already disgusted the stallion and thrown away any chance I had of connecting with him.
For my part, I managed to get a hold of myself. The stallion looked left, and right, and flicked his ears up. He muttered something in Equestrian before taking slow steps over towards me.
“Do you require assistance?” he said, more clearly. This bit of English was far more practiced.
I wanted to tell him that I needed more help than he could possibly give. And then, maybe he could, if he could get me to a bureau. So many hundreds of things I could have said and saved us all this trouble! Instead I stood up and shook my head.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
The stallion looked at me a bit longer, nodded, and then marched back to his post.
Still standing in the middle of that empty street, I continued to watch him. I probably made him uncomfortable long before I began to feel it myself and asked, “what are you doing here?”
The guard did not answer me, but only looked over his shoulder.
Curiosity continued to sink its claws into me. I walked towards the steps he guarded and he didn’t move. I approached the shutters and he didn’t care. I gave them a tug, peered around the corners, listened at them. There was no way for me to figure out what, if anything, existed beyond those doors, and it became clear that I was not the thing he was meant to deter.
So I sat down on the stoop beside him and stared at the same stillness he did. I listened to the sound of him breathing. Smelled… gods, the smell, the life of grass, the whisper of mountain wind, a bit of fresh cracked hay, and the slightest amount of sweat. To this day I cannot sit still when that scent hits my nose.
Every mundane twitch and inch of him was a miracle to me, and even sitting next to him filled me with such a drive for life and being that I’d lost long ago.
I asked him a hundred little questions like “where are you from?” and “what do you like to do?” and he answered none of them. His stony silence didn’t bother me, because I knew he had a job to do, and somehow could tell that he at least didn’t mind my company.
And since I couldn’t figure out how to talk to him, I started talking about myself. “My name is Raymond,” I said, “but folks just call me Ray. I was born here, went to school here… I’ve been working in a food distribution center here for five years. I’m hoping I can save up enough to get out of here soon.”
The pegasus still didn’t reply, but he looked into my eyes for every word.
“I would love to make it to Equestria,” I teased the thought.
He looked away again.
It took me the whole evening, but I managed to get him to answer two questions. The first, which I am embarrassed to have asked as late as I did, was for his name: Shimmer Glass.
The second I added as a waning thread of hope, over my shoulder as I walked away.
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
Author's Note
Yeah, uh... people still care about this theme, right?
