A Word for Ponies Like You
“Back again, Caterpillar? And how was your last session?” The voice was the same. Scarlet Redemption sat in her chair, a sympathetic, fake grin plastered all over her muzzle.
“Fine,” I said. One word answers. Positive vagueness. Repetition.
“I’m going to need more details than that,” she chided.
“I’m doing better, I think. Only three shocks this time.” Spin the positive. As little detail as possible.
“Three? The goal is zero, young colt.”
Don’t flinch when she calls you a colt. Don’t react. Don’t let her know how much it hurts.
“And how were prayers?”
“They went well, Lady Scarlet. Very peaceful. I think Saint Applejack is giving me strength.” Saint Applejack was giving me nothing. None of them gave me anything. Nothing ever changed. Nothing ever got better. “I… I think I’m getting better.”
“Hmmm,” the Knight clicked her tongue. “Interesting that you would invoke the Saint of Honesty, young colt. Tell me, Caterpillar. How long do you think I’ve been working at Camp New Hope?”
“Um, I don’t know?” I mumbled. She was using her danger voice. I’d said something wrong. I had no idea what.
“Ten years, young colt.” I couldn’t help myself. This time I cringed. I saw the look of triumph in her eyes. “Ten years of therapy and healing, of fixing you poor souls cursed with unwanted feelings and attractions. Do you really think I’m fooled by lies, Caterpillar?”
“No ma’am,” I mumbled. “I’m not really lying, ma’am. I’m trying, I swear.”
“I see.” She didn’t sound like she saw. She didn’t sound like she believed me. She walked over to where I sat, rolling her hips in a gait that was supposed to be sensual, I suppose. I couldn’t help but cringe away. She always smelled like perfume, but underneath that was something metallic. Something frightening. “How hard are you trying?” She placed a hoof on my head. I guess it was supposed to be gentle. Kind. Like a head pat from a loving parent. That’s how we were supposed to think of Lady Scarlet, and even the other camp confessors.
It was getting harder to hate them each day. Hate took too much energy. I wasn’t sure I had much left.
“R-really hard,” I gulped. Her hoof traced down my cheek, towards my neck, and the iron collar bolted there. It would come off as soon as I was cured.
I would never be cured.
“Perhaps we need to increase your treatments,” she suggested. Her hoof trailed down, dragging against the rough, scratchy wool of my prison uniform. It trailed down my barrel, towards my stomach. Going lower and lower until…
The chair hit the ground with a wooden clatter, loud and shocking. The space between us surprised me, until I realized I was the one who put it there by jerking away. Lady Scarlet was shaking her head sadly. It was fake. She was never sad. She enjoyed what she did to us.
“Caterpillar, you disappoint me. If your treatments were truly working, would you have really shied away from being touched by such a beautiful mare?” Of course I would. But good colts liked mares. Good colts weren’t broken, like me. Good colts didn’t grow up thinking that really they were mares. Good colts did everything the Saints had commanded them. Good colts didn’t tell lies to try and get out of more treatments. My chest and barrel still felt warm from where the electrodes had been stuck.
“I… why would you want to touch me?” I stammered out. No. That was the wrong thing to say, and Lady Scarlet’s eyes lit up with joy.
“Well, pretty mares enjoy touching handsome colts. It’s natural. It’s the way things are. Anything else is sinful.” Her voice became patronizing. “You know that, Caterpillar.”
I hate my name. It reminds me of my father. But at least with my father it was just hooves. Not electrodes. Not clubs. Not starvation, and shivering with a blanket too small to keep out the damp of the constant rain and fog. Not the things we all knew they snuck into our food at night.
Lady Scarlet clicked her tongue again, moving away. Her Knight robes, light pink with Lady Pinkamena’s cutie mark stitched into the side, were slit high to show off far too much leg to be appropriate. But it was okay. She told all the prisoners, on their first day, that it was okay for us to view her as a sexual object. It would mean our treatments were working. That we were changing.
Nopony ever changed. The confessors, and Lady Scarlet, would sometimes tell us that so-and-so was getting better, that he was almost ready to go back to society. Sometimes those prisoners disappeared. Maybe they really were better. Maybe they were really good at faking it. Or maybe they were in the pit, stiff and cold and dead, like the ponies that tried to run, or the ponies that didn’t make it through the treatments.
“I don’t know what else to do, Lady Scarlet,” I begged. I’d be crying if I had any tears left. Or if I knew it would do me any good, and not just earn me more punishment. Colts didn’t cry. It wasn’t masculine. “I spend most of my day praying. When I’m not being treated.”
“You just lack faith, young colt,” Lady Scarlet assured me. “You can dig deep, and root out your hidden sins. Now. Begin your confession.”
It was always the same. No matter how hard I tried. No matter how hard I prayed, there was always some sin. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had to come up with something. Every time. If it wasn’t enough, she’d make me dig deeper. Or she’d call for a cane.
“Um, today in the breakfast line I committed the sin of envy,” I began. It was okay to start out small, as long as I got to the good ones later on. “The pony in front of me. I wanted his porridge. He was sick, and I know he’s been throwing up, so I thought why waste it. Couldn’t I have some?”
“Very greedy of you, Caterpillar. Tell me, what was the pony’s name?” Her voice was casual. Too casual. It was a trap. We’re not supposed to know each other’s names. We’re not supposed to make friends, or even care about the other prisoners.
“I dunno,” I mumble. “Number twenty four, I think.” It’s completely honest. I only know one prisoner’s name, besides my own. Terminus Flash. I would have taken the Coward’s Gate if not for Terminus.
“Caterpillar, you know greed is a sin,” she said sternly. I nodded. Now would come the sermon. It was fine. The more energy she spent on this, the less time she’d spend digging for more stuff. “It says in the Book of the Saints…”
I never got to hear what she was going to quote. There was an explosion outside. The windows rattled, and I lurched underneath the desk, trembling. Lady Scarlet seemed fearless. She rushed over to the window to look outside.
“What the…” she muttered, then glanced sharply down at me. “You. Colt. Stay here.” She glanced at her desk. “Don’t leave until I come fetch you. Unless you want to take the Coward’s Gate.”
That was always an option. She made sure to tell me every time. I nodded, and she rushed out the door, slamming it behind her. I glanced up at the desk, where the Coward’s Gate rested in its sheath. I reached up with one hoof, caressing the wood and leather that surrounded the polished blade. I knew that Lady Scarlet kept it sharp. We all watched when she sharpened it.
“Don’t let it break you,” Terminus had whispered to me, every time she made us watch. “Don’t let her win, Cat.” He called me Cat. It wasn’t exactly right, but I loved it. It sounded feminine.
“I’m not strong enough,” I whispered to the sheathed knife. “I don’t know how long I can wait, Terminus.” But that wasn’t true. Terminus lifted everypony up around him. He got it the worst, worse than me, worse than anypony else. But he was still around. He still survived.
We weren’t supposed to be friends, and we weren’t supposed to know about each other’s pasts, but I’d heard about him. How he had been training to be a Knight himself when they’d found him, in bed with some noblestallion’s son.
Terminus never lied. He never tried to pretend that he was getting better.
There were more explosions. On instinct, I grabbed the knife and rushed to the window. There were ponies fighting. Ponies in dark clothes, struggling against guards in armor. Lady Scarlet was facing off against a pony in yellow-painted armor, complete with the ill-fated symbol of Saint Fluttershy on the flank. A heretic!
My heart began to pound. A Knight Discordant. A fallen, dark creature, cursed for heresy and full of bitterness and hate. If that was the case, we were all doomed.
The walls to Lady Scarlet’s office shook violently, and I was thrown to the ground. There was a loud crack, enough for me to try and cover my ears with the tips of my wings. It was the wooden walls, cracking and groaning and straining. Suddenly something began to break, and with growing panic I rushed out the door.
Something had hit the outside of the wooden shack that served as Lady Scarlet’s office. The walls were slanted, straining. There was a large hole in the roof.
Now that I was outside, I could hear the screams and the gunfire. It smelled like burning and gunpowder outside. A large figure rushed past, standing upright on its hind hooves. I gaped in shock. It was a minotaur, with horns tipped in iron and a brown and white spotted hide. I’d only ever read about the twisted, infidel creatures; I’d never seen one. He was screaming a battle cry as he charged towards a group of guards.
“Good, you’re safe,” came Terminus’ voice behind me, and I leapt so high I nearly took flight. His dark fur was marred with blood and sweat, and he was panting, but looked otherwise okay. He held a club in his hooves. “C’mon, this is what we were waiting for, Cat. The heretics are raiding the camp. We have to help them.”
“Help? The heretics?” I yelped. “How can you say that?”
“You’d rather stay?” Terminus asked incredulously. “They’re just going to torture you until you die. You know it, I know it. Just because you’re different. But you and I both know there’s nothing wrong with you, Cat. You’re a mare, even if they can’t see it.”
“T-that’s heresy, Terminus,” I stammered. He had a sad look on his face.
“You need to choose, Cat. You already have your way out,” he gestured to the Coward’s Gate. “You just need to decide how to use it.”
He rushed off towards the fighting. Somehow Lady Scarlet had found a spear, and was darting about the battlefield. She was skilled and graceful, and the heretics were giving her a wide berth. She faced off against the minotaur, and he was losing, with several wounds already deep in his flesh. Terminus looped around behind her, trying to help the minotaur by flanking the Knight.
Suddenly something hit my face. I flinched, yelping in terror, then looked up. It was rain. Of course it was rain, what else would it be? I stared up at the sky, shivering as the cold liquid seeped into my fur and feathers. I should really find someplace to hide, to wait for the storm to be over. Both storms. I glanced over again. Terminus was down. The minotaur stood over him, defending him from Lady Scarlet. My hooves started to move.
The minotaur held a large blade, thick as a pony’s neck, in his strange foreclaws. He swung it wildly, forcing Lady Scarlet away from Terminus’ prone form. My breath caught in my throat. No. Not Terminus. He was my only friend. Now he would go in the pit, just like all the others. All the runners. All the starvers. All those who took the Coward’s Gate. And all the ones who were ‘cured’. It wasn’t fair.
“Saints, don’t make it true,” I prayed, rushing over. Terminus was limp but breathing. His eyes were open, but unfocused.
“Cat? Cat, you have to run,” he whispered. “She’s too good. If she sees you here, she’ll kill you too. She enjoys it. This will just be the excuse she needs.”
“Okay, Terminus. I’ll run,” I sobbed. I was crying. Or maybe it was the rain. I hoped Lady Scarlet wouldn’t see. She said real colts didn’t cry. “I’ll…”
Something hard struck me in the side of the head, sending me sprawling into the mud. It was the butt of Lady Scarlet’s spear. I looked up. The minotaur was down. Lady Scarlet stood over him, over Terminus, a vicious, cruel look in her eyes. The point of her spear was wickedly sharp, and glinted in the dim light as she angled it down towards the minotaur’s chest.
“A painful death is fitting for an infidel,” she snarled. She was going to gut him. It would hurt, and take hours to die. I drew the Coward’s Gate out of its sheath. She wasn’t watching me.
“You can do it,” Terminus whispered. I nodded. I was going to die. She would kill me. It would be over. But maybe…
Maybe…
I spread my wings, just for a leap into the air. My wings hurt. My legs hurt too, from when I leapt. I was glad she wasn’t wearing armor. I came down on her back, just as she spun in surprise and anger. She didn’t have time to move her spear to block me. The Coward’s Gate flashed in the light, just like her spear had. It bit into the soft flesh of her neck. Blood sprayed onto the ground.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t deep enough. Lady Scarlet bucked her hind legs, throwing me off into the mud. I struck head first, my vision swirling for a moment. I tried to stand. Impossible.
“I’m going to rend you, traitor,” she snarled. Her voice was raspy and bubbly. “I’m going to pierce you over and over, then I’m going to hang up your wretched corpse for an example to all the camp. You’ll dangle until there’s nothing left but your bones. You’ll…”
She let out a cry of dismay as her speech suddenly ended. I managed to look up, wiping mud from my eyes. It was the minotaur. He’d stood, somehow gotten ahold of Terminus’ club. Lady Scarlet was limp in the ground. He walked over to me.
“Can I borrow that?” he said gently. He was talking to me, but looking at the Coward’s Gate. I’d somehow held onto it. Wordlessly I held it out to him. “Thanks. Don’t watch, little pony. And don’t be afraid. She’ll never hurt you again.”
I didn’t watch. My eyes were hidden behind my hooves. I heard, though. I still hear those sounds in my nightmares. At least it was less painful than she would have given me.
“You okay, little colt?” the minotaur’s voice came again. I don’t know how long. I looked up to see Terminus sitting up, watching me with awe. The minotaur was looking down at me. All around me were other prisoners, staring at me as if I’d done something impressive. There were a few heretics as well, wearing black uniforms. One even wore the yellow armor of the Knights Discordant.
“Um, yeah?” I said. I didn’t know. The rain kept getting in my eyes. That must be why I was seeing impossible things.
“She’s not a colt, she’s a mare,” Terminus insisted. The minotaur looked at him, then back at me.
“Oh, really?” he said, reaching out a claw and patting my head gently. It was the same as Lady Scarlet had done. Except…
Not at all.
“What’s your name, mare?” he asked. I gulped.
“Ca…” I began, but that was wrong. Terminus had called me Cat, which was better, but still wrong. The old me was dead. “Colibri. My name is Colibri.”
“Colibri. That’s a hummingbird, right?” he smiled. “Did you know there’s a word for ponies like you, little mare?” his voice was gentle. Like a blanket. Or a warm hug. I leaned into the caress of his claw. “Beautiful.”
