The Photograph

by TerribleSpeller

Rating: everyone
Tags: Original Character, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 1283

Listful Pen takes a photograph, right when the struggle of independence is about to begin.

Listful Pen takes a photograph, right when the struggle of independence is about to begin.

A one chapter test run before I properly commit to writing a longer form story.

Published 2023-09-11 01:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-09-11 01:10:00 UTC

Images say a thousand words and thousand melodies

With a flick of his magic, Listful Pen got his camera in front of him as he got out to the balcony. The creaking sound of the floorboards followed him as he reached it and slid the glass doors open.

“Down with the Za Lesitw regime! Down with Zaltuhsa’s Cronies!”

Those shouts are just one of the few Listful can hear now, his eyes traced over a crowd that had gathered just down the street from whence he was. Young zebras, he could tell, tall and proud, were shouting at the front of a police station.

His camera still felt right in his magic, as he took it up and through the small and insignificant screen that tried to replicate reality, he snapped a photograph.

Listful was Mleocunese, years of advancement in his homeland meant that even at sixty seven, he was still in his prime. So as he looked over the photograph, his ears folded back at the sound of more shouting. Clear. Chrisp.

He frowned at the image that stared back before him. The zebras here, static, unalive. Listful’s magic moved quickly and one of the buttons on the side clicked. Bytes of data were wiped as Listful brought the camera up again.

He felt his forelegs hold against the railing as his camera refocused on the students arguing with the police. From here, Listful could see their mouths moving, emotion threatening to boil over the rationality of language.

Language, he smirked, Listful’s magic once again pressured a button.

And again he pressed as a hoof was thrown from one of the police zebras.

Listful’s ears threw themselves forwards, open to the air as Listful’s heart quickened. He licked his lips.

The button fell into the camera, and popped out, and fell back in and popped out again.

This time, his ears stayed forward. His eyes jumped back to the small insignificant screen of the camera. This time, his mouth curled upwards in a smile at the sight.

For not once, but for an unknowneth time, the students were there on the screen along with the barest form of the police by the building. Barely their heads poking out to be seen. Eyes, shined in the fluorescent lighting of street lamps, and the shadows of the night behind them drew focus.

Listful’s ears moved.

He glanced back up, looking back down the street. The sound had stopped.

Listful watched, his eyes counting over the heads and realised their number had decreased, and yet they still stood before the station. Some of the officers were still there, yet they watched from the safety behind glass.

His camera was still in his magic, floating in unknown sound and his eyebrows furrowed.

He could see they were chattering, but silence reigned on the streets.

With a hoof, he held onto the camera as he quickly sprinted out of his room.

Listful’s muzzle wrinkled as he stepped out, his hoofsteps echoing against the hallway as he ran.

His heart echoed in his eardrums as his mark thrummed along with it. A faint thrum that stretched from his flank… he could feel it move up to his heart. The arteries stretched and began to hum as his hooves met the hard bricks that made up this hotel.

Momentum grew on his side, as his eyes drifted down the barely lighted staircase.

His pants played a minor tune that accompanied his hoofsteps’ bass. His brow grew with the distinct beads of sweat as eyes in the lobby, turned to face him.

“Tak mas!”

His hooves skidded against the archway of the door as he turned back. His hoof failed as his magic picked up the slack with the camera. Listful turned towards the zebra that was at the reception desk.

Light bounced off the spectacles on his petite muzzle, “Tak mas, is bad for… you! Bad, police tekan scuffle!”

Listful looked at him, his head tilting up and down as he looked. He knew, there was no reason to not distrust this zebra. He had welcomed him in.

Listful shook his head at the receptionist, “Sorry.”

His vision turned back and spotted the students standing by the police station. By the light of the few lampposts, their bodies danced like a single entity as they looked up at the flagpost of the station.

The colours of blue, green, and the mark of the Zamane Republic. In the colours of the night, as that mark grew larger and clearer as he ran. Dominating as it was, he could barely make out the colours other than the black silhouette of the mark.

Listful’s eyes drifted down from the flag to spot movement on the second floor of the station.

He skidded, as momentum came to a stop and physics’ laws aimed to make him a fool then and there.

A hoof of his dug made a mark on the road. Asphalt, denting and chipped bits off as his magic dragged the camera up against gravity.

In this night, perhaps it was the moon or the lamps, his camera was able to focus and him. The shutter didn’t create monsters out of silhouettes and shadows, and the overwhelming brightness of daylight photoshoots did not come to ruin this chance.

His camera focused forward, his eyes drifted over the digital lights translating reality into something beyond it. Reality blurred for a moment, as the digital made it so.

And in the glimpse of the dark, the flag was slowly retracted from its pace as a young zebra. Grabbed it by the lines and pulled it in from where it was…

His vision turned black for a few milliseconds. Followed by the sounds of a clicking.

Listful looked down at the camera as his eyes struggled to strain out the forms made manifest on those little diodes of his camera.

The weapon of choice raised itself once more to the frame…

He could barely make it out as a new flag crawled out.

In the darkness of the night, Listful could only see that it had with it the mark of blue… what shade he did not know even through the lenses…

His ears flicked forward as his magic fickled with the settings of the camera. The small whirring of it made ajar by the differing sounds of zebras voices.

He glanced around at them, his eyes slowly focusing on the zebras who had gathered.

None turned to face them, but he realised what he had to do at the sight.

Listful turned on his hooves, the asphalt tried to betray him but he skipped a steps or two and swivelled back as his camera screamed in its failure of focusing.

He drew it up at them, the dark sky above them battling against the lights of the street. His camera whirred again as it tried to swivel and correct…

Their mouths were moving, Listful could tell that. Yet only now did it make sense why so.

Hooves on their hearts as a melody of old came to the front.

Listful didn’t understand the song they sang, nor why they had chosen to do this now and then.

All he knew his camera had to snap this moment…

The stripes of green, white, blue huddling on the left as the rest was dominated by a shade of gold came out as the flag unfurled on the pole. Their voices rang into the night as he snapped a photograph.

For a moment Listful wished he had been a videographer.

But for the press back home? A photograph would do.

Author's Note

As usual, please deposit your constructive criticism in the comments below.