The hot summer sun was at its zenith, gently playing with its rays with the water of a small lake. The sandy golden shore gently flowed into a pond warmed by the generous sun. It must have been unbearably hot here that day, but the deciduous forest adjacent directly to the lake would have given a cool shelter to anyone who entered its shady domain.
Idyll. Yes, this is the word that could describe the surrounding landscape. Looking at such a one, any creature wanted only one thing – to live and enjoy the creation of that almighty entity who created this planet and this place on it.
"Beauty." Sighing, a young pony in a green uniform stretched out. The red star on his cap unmistakably gave him a soldier of Stalliongrad.
"Yes." The second one answered him sparingly. There was a barely noticeable longing in his voice, and memories from the past flashed in his eyes when he looked at the same point as his colleague.
He was his exact opposite. There was already gray in his dark hair, and wrinkles had marked their channels on his forehead. From the outside, someone might have thought that they were father and son. But their families remained far, far beyond this lake, where their native lands could not be seen either from the world's highest tower or from the most advanced high-altitude aircraft.
Remembering his native lands, the elder of the two warriors took a puff on a self-rolling cigarette and the smell of makhorka took his thoughts somewhere away from these places to his native village, where his wife and a beautiful just a cub filly are still waiting for him.
A soldier is always a soldier. Even on such a bright day, when no sane creature couldn't have any dark thoughts, they kept their rifles near to them – just in case.
The young soldier stretched, flexing the muscles tired of lying on one side, and only now noticed that the small campfire had almost gone out. Catching himself, he hastily threw firewood into the coals, with an awkward movement almost knocking over a green mess kit in which a simple soldier's tea was warming.
Under the reproachful gaze of an older comrade, feigned, paternal, performed, so to speak, for prevention, the young pony, smiling shyly, returned to his place.
A branch snapped nearby. The idyll was cut short at the moment.
The soldier grabbed the rifle in one motion and pointed it to where the sound came from - after all, the lessons of the company sergeant major in the training company will never be forgotten years later. The target was taken in sight. A soldier is always a soldier.
Following the actions of the young, the elder warrior also turned his head, steadily assuming that there was nowhere for the enemy to come from.
Young soldier briefly carried out a visual inspection the guest who had come from nowhere over the sight, after which he lowered the muzzle, surprised at what he saw.
A pony in a gray tunic stood in front of him. He smiled affably and held his right hoof raised, showing off his rifle hanging from his right side, which, if something happened, it would be very inconvenient for him to reach from his current position. By the wide-brimmed steel helmet, he unmistakably recognized him as an Equestrian soldier.
"Bah, ally!" The soldier said in a surprised voice and turned to the elder, as if trying to figure out if he was seeing the same thing as he was.
"Sorry to bother you, gents." The alien spoke in a polite tone and continued to smile.
"Where are you coming from, fellow?" The elder asked, squinting his eye. It was for the first time he sees the Equestrian soldier live, earlier he only heard that they had some kind of ally unit as "neighbors" from one of the flanks, which replaced the recently suffered heavy losses regiment of their division.
"From the Second Battalion of the Manehatten Regiment of the 1st Division "Harmony"".
The old soldier calmed down. It was about this part that he once spoke with the commander.
"Oh, isn't it someone from yours who shot down the Changeling aircraft with a rifle?" The warrior with red star on cap asked with a share of delight and respect, completely relaxing and putting away the rifle.
The Equestrian seemed to be shy and began to pick the ground with the lowered hoof.
"Well, yes, it was me." He said modestly, but at the same time looked at the rifle on his side with a bit of proudness.
The young warrior whistled, thereby expressing his respect to the ally.
"Sit beside us. Rumor has equestrians are still tea lovers." The wrinkles on the old soldier's forehead became even more noticeable after he smiled affably. "And we just boiled."
A soldier of another power, rejoiced at the friendliness shown to him. Accepting the invite, he lightly jumped over a crater in the ground that had once been a funnel from an air bomb, and now was barely visible on the surface of the earth and settled down next to a campfire exuding a pleasant aroma, in which branches crackled.
"We have, of course, a soldier's simple tea. Don't be angry, Your Honor."
"Nothing, your Stalliongrad tea it is my cup of tea." The communists smiled at an idiom they had never known before and with sincere generosity filled the iron soldier's mug of a brother-in-arms to the brim.
The guest's rifle lay down next to his sisters, left by the tovarish. Such dissimilar in appearance, one was technological and verified, it felt like a lot of capital invested in it, and the other two, simple as an oar, but no less effective - they were united by one thing – a goal. The same one for which the fate of these three brought together here.
"What are you doing here?" One of the soldiers in the green uniform showed interest.
"Well, we encamped down here nearby..." The Equestrian replied, looking through his mug full of fragrant black drink. "The shelling rocked us."
The young soldier of the country of workers and peasants winced and grimaced when he heard these words. The Changeling artillery was very familiar to him. He felt her work on his own skin.
"That's where everyone... lay down." It was obvious that these words were hard for him. Sad memories for everyone associated with their last battle enveloped the trio and plunged the soldiers into a lingering silence.
Realizing what he had done, the Equestrian was the first to pull himself together. His cutie mark was a butterfly and a rainbow. He was the ringleader of all events in his hometown of Manehatten, charging everyone with his energy. When the war began, both his friends and compatriots went to defend their country at the first call of the Princesses, and he followed them to support in those difficult times for Equestria.
"Beauty." He said, pulling his comrades out of the painful silence.
The bright sun in the sky dispelled the gloomy thoughts of the allies like rain clouds. Enjoying the view, the soldiers shook their heads, agreeing. But the young warrior clearly had a frozen question in his eyes. He was looking at a point at the other end of the lake, and the thoughts did not give him rest.
The older comrade noticed this and looked at him questioningly.
"What do you think..." The young pony began with hope in a not firm voice. "Do they remember?"
The sun's rays continued to play on the lake. The birds were singing songs in their own languages, known only to them. A clearly civilian airliner was slowly crawling across the blue sky, cutting it in half with the contrail of its engines. Peaceful life flowed in a country that had long time ago victoriously ended the war.
On the other side of it, the city grew and developed from year to year. In the recent past it was the size of a village, but now multi-storey buildings occupied a half of the shore. A new era was blooming and fragrant, piercing the world with radio waves, digital signals and the light of electric lamps.
How much he would like, who has not really seen the life soldier, to go there, to those who live now, to see at least with a little peek a new peaceful life, so different from the one that was decades ago. But he, like hundreds and thousands of his peers, when the harsh hour came, decided to go to the front to help the Equestrian brothers fight against the Black Plague that the Changelings carried to these parts on their bayonets.
He was a wireless operator, and he didn't even manage to kill a single enemy. In his first and last battle, when the Changelings were madly rushing to break through this lake and the river flowing into it, he only over and over again wheezed his call sign into the radio with chapped lips: "I am a Fortress, I am a Fortress. I'm fighting, holding the line. Requesting backup." But for his voice, lost in the world ether, was nearer to the Galactic Filament of Pegasus than to the headquarter of the Division.
In the summer of the terrible year, he was buried without a grave by enemy artillery near a village so far from his native home that even his mother could hardly come to his wake. His eyes dimmed, the flame of his heart went out, the earth rightfully took possession of his ashes. Since then, he has been here, dissolving into the earth and guarding it from enemies.
Like hundreds and thousands of his peers, he had to stay in that war forever. And like hundreds and thousands of those like him, he wanted to know only one thing - that at least occasionally those who are alive now remember those who with their chest stood in the way of the ideology that drove the Changelings to death, so that they, in turn, would bring death to those who live on these lands. Regardless of race and whether you are an Equestrian or a Stalliongradian.
A soldier with gray in his mane looked into the face of a young radio operator with pain in his heart; in one puff he finished smoking a rolled-up cigarette with his own hooves, looking into the point at that end of the lake. The remaining stub, which almost singed his lips, he buried with his hoof in the ground of the coast, erstwhile pitted with trenches and craters by mines and shells. However, now only pits overgrown with grass and memories remain of them. To the very land that the Changelings tried to take away from them once.
Once upon a time, on sunny and bright summer days like today, the 7th Stalliongrad Rifle Division reinforced by an ally battalion, washed with blood and hacked the enemy. And only the smoke of the extinguished cigarette rose up, as a reminder of the land that erstwhile was burning from shelling and bombing.
"They remember." He answered affirmatively. "They definitely remember."
Author's Note
It is dedicated to all those who united, regardless of the country of origin, who gave their lives, or who reached victory alive in the name of life itself, who stood in the way of death.
English is not my language. And this is my first MLP fan fiction. Please excuse me for possible mistakes when writing.
