At first, he’d thought that he would be separated from the mare he’d come in with, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Apparently everypony else had already shown up by the time they had arrived, leaving them to bunk together in the farthest room from the main door.

“These are your temporary lodgings. One of us will come to grab you when orientation starts. In the meantime, I suggest you read your hoofbook. It will have everything you need to know, so don’t ask us any questions.” With that, the guardspony closed the door in his face.

Just sharing a room would’ve been fine, he’d thought, but where they had been led could barely be called a room at all. There was a bunk set into the wall and a desk closer to the door in a small alcove, but that was it. Just standing in the open space the two of them could barely turn around.

How long are we going to be staying here again? He thought as he stared into the darkened interior of the room. The blinds were shut, he noticed. If he let some light in maybe it would start to look more like a place two ponies could live and not like his mom’s walk-in closet.

“Charming. Mind if I take the top bunk?” His roommate asked. The sudden question broke the silence and started him out of his thoughts.

“Uh, um… yeah?” He said, still slightly dazed.

“Alright, though I don’t see a ladder around here for you to get up there.”

“Oh. No, I didn’t mean that. You can have the top bunk. If, uh, you want it.” Shining rushed out before she took her saddlebags off all the way.

“Hmm. Well, if you insist.”

“If, um, you don’t mind… could you, maybe open the window? It’s kinda dark in here.”

“Huh. I didn’t notice.” She said. As if it wasn’t unnatural that she could supposedly see perfectly fine in the darkened room when he could barely tell that his mane was blue.

She opened the shades and leapt up to the top bunk with a single flap of her wings while he climbed into his bunk. He stuffed his saddlebags into the small alcove in the wall and grabbed the small booklet he’d received on his arrival. As he brought the book up to his muzzle his eyes adjusted slowly to the lit room.

***

If anypony asked him what he had been reading for the last hour he wouldn’t have been able to give them a straight answer. He’d thought that he would at least make it through the first chapter, but whoever had written this booklet seemed to have no organizational skill and even less in writing. The booklet was even less engaging than that time Twilight had insisted he read her Peace and Peace as a bedtime story, and he was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep before she had.

What had been even less helpful for his literary endeavor was that his new roommate had been shuffling around above him and making the bunk creak the entire time. He wasn’t even sure how that was possible; the beds weren’t that uncomfortable.

He was going to ask her about it, he decided, just as soon as he figured out her name. In the meantime, though, he’d settle on the book.

“So,” he spoke at the bottom of her bunk, “find anything interesting in there?” Instantly the shuffling stopped, and with it gone, the room lapsed into silence for a moment.

“In where?” Came the reply from above.

“In y’know. The booklet?”

“All eighteen pages worth?” She paused. “I suppose the only real thing of note was that there’s an entire section devoted to duels. Why do you ask?” She said frostily.

“Oh, I’ve been going through it and it all seems rather… I dunno. Basic?”

“That’s because they’re not going to bother teaching that junk to you. They just expect you to deal with it on your own, like your physical training.”

“Just like my what? They expect us to do all of those exercises in our free time, on this schedule? Are you serious?”

“Yes. Did you even read the bloody disclaimers in the fine print of our sign-up papers? They explicitly stated that because of the need for ‘qualified officers’ they’d be teaching only leadership and management classes. They’re leaving everything else up to us.”

Shining’s head swum as he processed what he had just heard. They were going to cut every corner they could get away with just so they could get more ponies on the frontline. There were thousands — tens of thousands — of ponies in the EDF all across Equestria and yet they were still rushing the training. What did that say about his odds, their odds?

“What are we going to do?”

“Wait. Probably. They’ll probably come back in a few more hours. Wake me when they knock, yeah.” She said back, completely disregarding his distressed tone.

“How can you be so relaxed about this? We’re practically going to be training ourselves! How can you be so calm? How?”

“Because I haven’t slept in over a day! And if I have to deal with guard shenanigans I’m doing it after I take a nap! Now leave me alone!” She whisper yelled. Moments later he heard a whoosh of air as her head hit the pillow.

Shining deflated at her outburst. He didn’t want to be a bother, so he went back to reading the manual while he waited for the guard to return. Eventually though, now that the mare had stopped being so disruptive, he made it through the whole manual. Again. “Hmph, If all of those additions were only in the sign-on sheet maybe I should look there for what this year is going to look like.” Maybe if he went and found a copy of the enlistment papers he could figure out just how much had changed from what he had always been told boot camp would be, he reasoned.

His course of action set, he hopped out of his bunk and walked over to their door. “I wouldn’t recommend doing that. Leaving that is, not whatever you’re planning to do.” Shining whirled around to face the mare who now stared down at him from the edge of her bed. He hadn’t heard her move at all, which had him at something of a loss considering just how noisy she had been while he was trying to read. “Actually, now that I think about it, what do you want to do that’s so important that you’d leave the room against orders? ”

“How long have you been sitting there? I thought you were asleep.” He queried, completely at a loss as to when she had turned around to look at him. Had she done that just to surprise him, he wondered, or was he so focused on leaving the room that he forgot she was even there? He was too used to only being accosted at school, as nopony really bothered him away from there, but now that he couldn’t expect even a moment of privacy where he slept he would have to readjust his life all over again.

“Don’t redirect the conversation. I asked you first,” she paused, “but because we’re probably going to be doing a lot more together whether we like it or not: I’ve been seeing how long it would take you to try leaving ever since our last conversation. I just started paying more attention when you put that book down.”

Stick to the truth. That’s what Cadence said to do when talking to mares. She’d know. She could practically read his mind even when she’d just been taking care of Twilight for a few days, and he wasn’t about to doubt her. “I wanted to find a copy of the sign-up papers so I could find what else they’d changed about our schedule.”

“Look, if you’re that desperate I have a copy of my papers if you want to go over them. Not the magically binding ones we turned in at the gate, but the words are all the same.”

“Uh, no thanks. Those are your papers, with your personal information on them. I couldn’t go looking through that! That’d be… I can’t!”

“Okay? It’s not like it’s illegal for you to read these papers,” she said quizically while waving a small ream of paper about, “but if you have such strong moral issues with it that’s not my problem.”

“What, no. That’s not the problem, it’s just weird for me to go and read everything about you that the sign-up asks for. That’s like… bank details and house location and names. You know?”

“I really don’t, but if you’ve got problems with it I’m sure you’ll be able to find those papers somewhere else. They might also just explain that at muster tonight, I can never tell with those strict teaching types. They either tell you everything or nothing with no in-between. It’s annoying”

“Yeah, I suppose they might.” he said as he walked back to his bunk and hopped in. “so what are we going to do now?” He asked, already starting to resign himself to his new, unglamorous life in the EDF.

“Now? We wait.”

Author's Note

I’m really going to have to stop doing all this writing last minute. It can’t be good for me.

I had a club meeting and dinner that prevented me from publishing on time, sorry!

Anyway, comments and suggestions are always appreciated, and I hope y’all have a great Night!