What did you think would happen?
Asylum
Admiral Biscuit
Rick Dicker looked at the man standing before him. Having a person who wasn't his secretary in his office was somewhat rare, but this was a momentous occasion—practically a diplomatic crisis—and so his presence was warranted.
Rick tapped his pen idly on the desk while he took another look at his visitor. Clothes disheveled, although that was to be expected, given the circumstances. Smelled vaguely like a horse; also to be expected. And a slightly wild look in his eyes . . . which, unfortunately, was also expected.
“Let's start from the beginning, Joe.”
The man standing in front of him withered slightly. “Again?”
“Last time, I promise.” Rick clicked his pen, a bad habit he'd had since college and never quite gotten out of. “I just want to make sure I've got all the facts straight.”
Joe sighed, and then began his sorry story one more time, while Rick dutifully took notes. And then when Joe had finished, Rick clicked his pen back shut and tapped it on the legal pad while he skimmed over what he'd written.
“I'm going to take your word that all the paperwork was in order. I could pull it, you know.”
Joe nodded. “Yeah, as far as I know everything was good. We got the visas, vet inspections, the whole nine yards. Weren't going to take any chances on it.”
“Of course not.” Rick looked down at the legal pad again, even though by now he had the second half of the story in triplicate. What he was really lacking was the first half, and although he could guess, it was better to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
“What exactly happened out there, Joe?”
“They took them! Andy and Baron and Jake and Mark and—“
Rick held up his hand. “I got that. I get that. That's why you're here. Something led up to it, and if you don't tell me, I can't help you.”
“Well, it was our first night in Canterlot. . . .”
• • •
It was their first night in Canterlot and it was a stunning success. Ponies filled the bleachers, many of them sporting brand-new Budweiser merchandise. In a massive marketing coup, the Anheuser-Busch company had seized upon the potential new market just the other side of the portal and while they couldn't export beer there yet, that was going to happen eventually. Equestria was simply too big an untapped market to ignore, after all, and it was vital to be first, to be the name on everypony's mind when they wanted an ice-cold beer after a hard day's work, and they had printed their logo on everything that they thought a pony might wear or carry.
And the culmination of their efforts were a demonstration by the world-famous Budweiser Clydesdales.
Everything had been going according to plan. When the Clydesdales came out onto the parade ground, there were gasps of awe from the crowd, flashbulbs popped, and little Budweiser flags were waved enthusiastically. The drover put the team through their paces, and perhaps inspired by the all-pony crowd watching, had the team kneel as their encore. The hoof-stomps and cheers from the crowd were so loud that Joe thought there was every chance that the entire grandstands would simply crash down from the physical and sonic assault upon them, and he was further convinced that if that did happen, it would not diminish the cheering one bit.
He could still hear it as the Clydesdales were led back to the trucks where they'd rest for the night, since they had been unable to locate any stables big enough to accommodate them.
Unhitching the team was an involved process. First, they split them into pairs and gave the commands to move forward a little bit, separating the lead team from the body team and the swing team and the wheel team, and then they had to unhook the chains, eveners, and doubletrees from each horse before they could begin removing the harnesses.
Each piece of the harness was inspected for wear as it was removed, and it would be inspected again before the horses were re-harnessed for their next show.
Once the horses were unharnessed, they were led by their bridles around to a washing area, and Joe supervised the whole process, making sure that things were running smoothly, which thankfully they were. None of the equipment had damage, and all the horses were in high spirits; perhaps they had been inspired by the large equine crowd.
He had stepped into his office/bedroom at the front of the trailer and was in the process of unlacing his boots when a knocking at his door made him curse under his breath, and he quickly re-knotted his laces just enough so that he wouldn't trip over them and opened his door, nearly tripping over his visitor as he leaned out to see who was there.
Joe still hadn't gotten used to how short the ponies were.
He wasn't sure if he should crouch down or lean down, and he wasn't sure if they did handshakes or what, so he kept his hands loosely at his side while the mare introduced herself and held up a shiny badge that he couldn't read at all. It did look suitably official, and her request wasn't that unusual: she wanted to inspect the boarding arrangements.
Things went downhill fast from there, and Joe felt a growing sense of unease as he awkwardly explained why the horses were gelded to the stern face of the mare. And she questioned him about the partitions between the stables, the halters that the horses wore, the road apples on the floor of some of the stalls, and the buckets of hay, and they hadn't even gotten to the end of the trailer when she stopped in the middle of the aisleway and announced that she'd seen enough, and demanded to know why the horses were kept in such deplorable conditions.
Any attempt at explanation was quickly forestalled, and finally Joe pulled what he thought was his trump card:
“Listen, missy, I appreciate you taking the time out to come over and make sure that we take good care of our horses, and I assure you that we do. This might not seem like the best arrangement and perhaps it isn't, but I promise you that they're very well taken care of—they're very valuable animals and cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and—“
“You own them?”
“Well, not me personally, but the Anheuser-Busch company does, yes.”
Her ears flattened back and she stormed out of the wagon, her clipboard floating obediently along behind her, and Joe shook his head and went back to his office, but he wasn't there for very long.
• • •
“You told her that you owned them.”
“We do own them.”
Rick leaned across the desk, his pen clenched like a weapon. “You went to Equestria with your team of horses, and when someone asked you told her that you owned them. Do you even know what that sounds like? How that would be interpreted? What on Earth were you thinking? 'Oh, yes, they're our slaves, so it's doesn't matter that you're not happy with how we're keeping them.'”
Joe had the decency to hang his head. “I guess when you put it like that it does sound bad.”
“You think?” Rick dropped back in his seat. “Okay, so what happened next? Was that when the Guards came?”
“Not right away,” Joe said. “It was maybe an hour later? I didn't look at my watch, you know.”
Rick nodded. “You weren't hurt, or anything.” It wasn't really a question; Joe hadn’t mentioned being hurt in his arrest in any of his tellings of the story.
“They took us back to a detention center, and we each got our own cell—“ the irony of that hadn't entirely escaped Joe— “and the next morning, we got deported, and, well. . . .”
“Here you are.” Rick tapped his pen on the notepad idly. “Well, I'm sure we can get the trucks back. And the wagons, for sure. The harnesses, probably. Can't imagine that they'd want them. As for the horses, I hate to say it, but you're not going to get them back.”
“What? Why?”
Rick permitted himself a small smile. “Princess Celestia granted them asylum.”
• • •
Getting the horses out of Canterlot had been a major undertaking. Luckily, they were docile and didn't object to being led around by their halters, and they got in the train cars willingly enough. They were far too large to fit in passenger cars, so the railroad ponies had provided four box cars with temporary fences built across the doors to let air in, and the horses had gotten up in them willingly enough.
Inside, fresh bedding had been laid down for them, and net bags full of fresh pasture grasses hung from inside the box cars, should they want a snack. Large wooden buckets full of water were lashed to the floor, and due to their sheer size, each box car only held one pair of horses, along with two ponies as traveling companions.
Much to everyone's relief, the trip had gone without a hitch, and a large crowd had gathered at the Ponyville train station to welcome the new citizens home. Nurse Snowheart was at the head of that welcoming committee, already examining her new charges as they emerged from the train, their enormous hooves shaking the platform with each step that they took.
The procession took on a parade-like feel as it went through town, each horse led by a pony with a lead-rope. Snowheart's teeth gritted at the thought of it; she'd seen their eyes and knew that there was a spark of intelligence deep down. Perhaps it had been suppressed by their years in servitude, but she was determined to bring it back to the fore.
Their medical files were woefully thin. All she really had was names, and those were nearly unpronounceable, and worse yet, they weren't even proper names. They were slave names, and the sooner they were forgotten, the better.
A large spot of vacant land had been set aside for them, and it had everything that a pony could want. Good grazing, a stream for fresh water, a pond to cool down in, trees for shade, and a quickly constructed house which was really more of a barn, but it would do for now.
As each horse was led through the gate, Fluttershy flew up to their heads—slowly, to avoid spooking them—and unfastened the hateful bridle, casting their final bonds of servitude to the ground.
At first, the horses clustered by the gate, unsure what to do, until at last Sammy finally began exploring his new home and before too long Commander followed, and Nurse Snowheart's spirit lightened as they spread out in the field and began grazing.
She stood with her forelegs on the hastily-constructed split-rail fence and watched them graze, and watched them spread out and explore their new home, and she almost cheered when Captain dropped to his knees and then rolled on his back in the field, stretching perhaps, or scratching an itch.
It was going to be a lot of work—years of work, and she'd already steeled herself to the possibility that they would never be able to live without supervision. Sometimes that happened; sometimes something went wrong inside a pony's head and it couldn’t be fixed . . . but other times, the years of slow teaching, of gentle instruction paid off.
Snowheart eyed the herd, taking their measure. Sooner or later she was going to have to assert dominance, to get them to obey her and listen to her, and that was hard. She didn't like doing it, but she knew how to apply pressure when needed and release when it was earned; she knew how to cut off a drive line and make a pony come to her, and it didn't matter that they were ten times her size and could easily crush her with their enormous hooves, she could get past that. She would get past that, and then she'd teach them to be ponies.
Fluttershy flew up to her, eight halters held against her chest. “Um, should we put these in the barn for them?”
It was tempting, but Snowheart shook her head. “Burn them.” She pointed her hoof to the open pasture. “They're free now.”
Author's Note
Blog Post!
