Escape

Her neck hurts. The spring bed doesn´t have a pillow, nor will she get a pillow any time soon. They´re a scarce good. She can barely afford her daily requirements, like food, which consist of an egg, porridge, and if she saved enough, something with hay.

Her home isn´t known for its wide fields.

She takes out a cigarette. This is also a big blow to her budget, but they have become a necessity. She knows it isn´t good, for her health and cash, but she doesn´t care for the longevity of her live. All her saved up money, if any, goes to sudden and unexpected costs.

Maybe she could take a higher wage?

No, she won´t abuse her position. The Front needs every cent. She can´t waste them.

Also, it might be suspicious if she were to get richer out of nowhere.

What about a roommate?

Maybe, but they would have to be “in on things.” That would be a hassle she doesn´t have time for.

After the forceful resettlement by the griffons, they had to live in this concrete hell. Better than homelessness, certainly. At least for the ones lucky enough even getting one, like her. They weren´t enough for all relocated earth ponies.

The griffons, the government, didn´t care. Why should they?

Have the other races similar situations? Probably, if she wants to know, she just has to ask in the next meeting. Ideal Idea looks over to her mirror. Her green mane is short like that of Stallion, just as she likes it, needs less maintenance. Her white coat is … good enough, and her cutie mark, showing her fate, of a pickaxe is still unchanged.

She hates it. Being told what she is and should be, ought to be a crime. Her destiny is hers and hers alone and not for “fate” to decide.

While she can´t choose her cutie mark, she doesn´t even really remember when she got it, she can choose what to interpret in it. Maybe it represents her being good at mining. Maybe she is good at making pickaxes. But perhaps, that´s her hope, it shows her to represent the workers.

It is a nice thought. But just a thought, nonetheless, she tells herself, “Thoughts and symbols, they are just that.”

With the daily musing over she makes her usual breakfast.

In a basement poorly lit by single light bulb. A group of many races is meeting. Ideal may not show it but she is happy everyone made it to the building, lying far away of the earth pony township.

“Comrades” Ideal Idea says in a flat tone “Have the anti-disguise spells been cast?”

“Yes” says a unicorn “I still can´t believe these traitors are collaborating and fighting against their own interest.” She quickly looks to a changeling “Nothing against you or your kind of course, Mandible.”

“No offense taken.”

“Well, it is just like Caramel Marks said. They have been lied to into thinking that the interest of their oppressors is the same as their own ... or they are bribed.” The earth pony says in her unchanging emotionless tone. “To more pressing matters. How are your statuses?”

The griffon starts “If I may begin. It hasn´t been hard to get sympathies to our cause but no new members. As you can guess no one is willing to fight to the death if they have things to lose, so nothing new on our side. By the side, we may get into contact with smuggler. Otherwise, nothing new.”

“Very well. Let us go clockwise, mandible do you have any news.”

The changeling continues “Sources tell me our HQ has been compromised.”

All except Ideal react one way or another, the unicorn gives the changeling a death stare, the griffon groans, and the Pegasus says “Mandible, you imbecile. Why haven´t you told us sooner. We should relocate as soon as possible.”

“I agree.” Says Ideal calmly taking puff of her cigarette.

In a moment of cosmic hatred. Sounds can be heard throughout the building.

With no time for reaction griffon soldiers in black kick in doors and windows. All are knocked down with militaristic precision, tackled, immediately cuffed, and unable to fight back. While their faces are pressed down on the wooden floor the apparent leader of the soldiers speak “You have been accused and found guilty of treasonous activity. You are hereby sent to rehabilitative labour.”

Good, Ideal concludes, they don´t know she is the leader otherwise she would have been shot on the spot. Ever the optimist.

She could eat her own thoughts. The situation was anything but “good”. Not actually wanting to think at the ramifications of her situation, she thinks about the group’s situation. The movement is now without leadership. A power vacuum that has to be filled… somehow.

“The Front of Liberation” finds a new and hopefully competent leader. Or well, dissolve.

Her whole movement also needs a different name “The Front of Liberation” sounds fake. But names are secondary, she has more pressing issues.

She can dream, hope and think about politics all she wants, her current physical situation isn´t any good. It reeks of piss, someone relieved him/herself in the crowded train cart. She has to admit the “National Griffon Organisation”-also a stupid name in her mind- is very effective at their oppression. She already feels her pessimism and hopelessness seeping through. But she must always plan, think of long terms plans, and not get feelings in the way of revolution.

A little idealistic, sure.

They pulled a Razia so quick taking down the whole secret base in under few seconds. They made a trial on the spot and moved her on the next train, she wasn´t even able to comprehend what happened. She looks around the cart in an attempt to find someone she can recognise. No such luck.

No, it is luck in disguise. If no fellow earth pony she recognises is here, then that means that they weren´t captured. It would have been stupid, for all of them being in one spot.

If she had even a fraction of the resources that the National Organisation has, this revolution and liberation would be done in a heartbeat.

She heard stories of the labour camps of the tundra. Barely enough food except the bare necessities, everyone is crowded, making them hotbeds of diseases. And the cold will creep through the bare minimum of clothing that is given. There are also the guards which are probably the worst part.

Not a nice place, Ideal concludes laconically.

She lets out a sigh, she really needs cigarette now.

They were given “new” clothes, tools –she fittingly got a pickaxe-, their hindlegs were shackled, and they were told to move.

Oh joy, she thinks sarcastically, my new probably short life. To see is, well, a labour camp. Barbed wire telling the prisoners were to go and not go. Griffon guards in black positioned at every imaginable place with guard towers. She is already freezing, even with the clothing they gave.

Does this place make profit with that many guards? They probably want to just torture everyone with what is essentially slavery.

She also notes that all prisoner presents are earth ponies. They even segregated the labour camps, she concludes, probably to avoid the races noticing their similarities and developing solidarity.

Getting ripped out her theorising by a rude guard who pushes her every few seconds, because she is the last one in line, she walks by a concrete administrative and a barrack building for the guards.

The long walk to the actual camp, the wooden barracks for her fellow prisoners and her, comes to an end to an end. At which point they had to orderly stand in line. Her snot feels like it is freezing inside her nose.

There is a guard that says words and insults that are not worth to remember, then tells the prisoners that they will work as soon as possible.

Which is now.

She minimised work as much as possible, wanting to reserve energy. But that is not a possibility when a guard looked over her shoulders. She had to mine iron. With a pickaxe.

She hated it. Getting a little irony considering her mark. She rolled in her sheets totally exhausted with the days’ work. And her reward was porridge, which will be her main source of nutrition for the foreseeable future. It was a small change, but one for the worse, she missed the egg.

At the very least she knows that her cutie mark doesn´t reflect her talent in mining.

Will she escape, going through the death sentence that is the tundra? Inspire a revolt? Yeah, wishful thinking. She could hope. Hope for outside help. But that isn´t really a plan. Get outside contact by bribing a guard? With what?

She hears crying from another resident.

Ideal isn´t a mare of emotions but she could certainly sympathise with the sopping stallion. With her muscles aching and the little warmth in the barrack she quickly falls asleep.

Waking up by a shrill wake-up-siren, still with her clothes on, she doesn´t dare to take them off. She with her fellow ponies’ trot towards the gathering place. Her neck still hurts, thanks to the non-existent pillow, again.

Now standing with the others in the cold open, the griffon tells them what to do and splitting the ponies into groups. It was at this point that a stray realisation hit her, they will have no free time on Friday. The government is weirdly strict on having Friday a holiday, there isn´t even a working hour limit, but Friday still is a holiday. Rumour says, it is because of some esoteric belief that is held by the martial Theodoro. He still calls himself martial, even though he practically controls the whole continent.

The Frontier is at its peak of stability. Which is bad for her. Theodoro and his thugs imprisoned and killed all the opposition before they even got the idea of rebelling in a swift coup.

The Frontier was a great experiment, a paragon of equality. Even for her high standards. All gone, in what? A few years?

When was the last time she smiled? Did she ever? She remembers a probably happy childhood. With a tight knit community. Not only of earth ponies. Even going as far having non-earth pony friends. She doesn´t remember their names. But their faces. She had one griffon and one unicorn friend. She of course saw none of them after they were forced into the segregated communities.

Afterwards she was stuffed into an overcrowded school with too few teachers. With no friends she spent her time with hate, and some of those books she got, ~~although~~ because they were illegal. And with these books she had a face for her enemy. Not the griffon, but the rulers.

To be fair, she tells herself, even if she never smiles, she also never cries, or is angry beyond mildly annoyed. There is no reason for her to be too pessimistic about her life. She even considers herself optimistic.

Afterall she must expect the worst and work for the best possible future.

And for now she is allowed to hope for a miracle but not expect it.

Everything after her childhood happened naturally. She became leader not because of her charisma, she can´t raise her tone to save her life, but because she was the only one not to fear the position. The whole time as the leader, she tried to get equipment, gather support, assassinate important figures, as you do with a group with militant government haters, with no outside help. It is probably one of the most frustrating work someone could endure.

Fact is they, the government, have all the guns, and she is in a labour camp, with only thin clothing being her property.

She is getting lost in thoughts again. Time to work another day.

Guards shackled the hind legs of the ponies one by one. They weren´t too restricting, after all they still had to be able to work. But they made running impossible. And they made it clear from the beginning. A pony who escapes or breaks from their shackles will be shot. The leading Griffon was still telling them what to do, while the workers were taking their tools from a pile. They then start to walk to the mine. At least they have the luck not to live inside the mine.

*CRASH*

*BANG*

There is a short moment filled with murmurs, questioning the source of the explosion. “Shut UP!” screams a griffon. The leading griffon goes to one of his colleagues, picks up a radio that is bigger than her head. “Base this is overseer Catherin report status, over”. The walk didn´t stop but it slowed down.

After a few seconds of nothing and more sounds of gunshots she points at two other guard griffons “You two, scout the happenings at base and report back”. After seconds of thinking Catherin turns her back to the group “It is your lucky day, you will go back to the barracks until this is sorted out. We will get the lost working hours back, at a later day.”

And so, the whole group turns around.