Chicken.
It was my nickname at school, and a joke by everyone. My friends started calling me it as a joke one day, and they overheard. Once they got ahold of it, it usually referred to the fact that I couldn’t fly. I still can’t, mostly. It was almost always used as an insult. Hardly anyone even cared if there was a reason behind my flightlessness, they only saw my tiny wings and assumed that I was a worthless chicken.
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were the worst about it, their hooves in my face every day and night and in between. Sometimes, I think they just followed my friends and I to pick on me, on us. They kept alternating between ‘Blank Flank!’ and ‘Chicken Wings!’ I would yell back in defiance right in their faces, calling them “Snobs” and “Bullies” and “Jerks”... but it didn’t help.
It never helped.
Cheerilee would get them to lay off during class, but there was nothing she could do about after class. She had no way of knowing that even with her divine intervention, I still went to an empty home each day with invisible cuts and scars that hurt worse than any mishap with the Crusaders. It was a battleground after class, with Diamond and Silver being the enemy commanders, and their words being their weapons. I was nothing but cannon fodder, my friends and I being the ones to endure the brunt of their wrath. We said nothing, but held in everything, and turned to each other for solace.
We weren’t the only ones.
I had a classmate. She was a cute little unicorn filly, about my age. A normal filly, who thought the world of everyone around her. She saw no evil in anyone, and thought that the only reason people would be mean to her is because she did something wrong. She was the very picture of all that was good and right in the world.
And they attacked her.
Not about herself, no-there was not a single thing they could say about her looks or her smarts or her friendly nature. So they attacked the only other thing they could, the thing guaranteed to bring any child’s world tumbling down-they attacked her mother.
Her loving mother, hurt in an accident in her youth but the kindest, gentlest pony you could ever meet. Those mismatched eyes looked down at her child with the strongest of love and care, and I admit, I was jealous of her. My own parents were long gone, taken from me in an accident in foalhood. Every day, I thank Celestia that I never told anypony what happened.
But it killed me inside to sit and watch and see these bullies, these jerks, these snobs, come down on her adoring mother for having strange eyes. It killed me to see Dinky’s face drop, undefended against the sudden ambush from somepony she likely considered a friend. And inside, she felt as if it was her own fault. She felt as if she had done something wrong. They made her feel as though her own mother was too ugly to be deserving of the same love and adoration she gave to everypony around her. As if it was her fault that her mother had been disfigured at foalhood. As if she herself would never be worth anything as long as she continued to be the willing and loving daughter of a freak, a retard, a moron.
They snickered behind her back, spreading rumors about that moron’s daughter who was too stupid herself to befriend. And I would see those brilliant golden eyes grow larger and even brighter as the dam broke and she wept. And, of course, they taunted her for that too.
I should have told her, should have gone to her and told her no. Don’t listen to them. I should have hugged her and comforted her and made sure she knew that loving is always superior to hating. Told her that she always has a friend, that somepony out there still loves her and by it’s very nature that made the other pony worth loving back.
But foalhood cowardice runs deep, and jealousy deeper. I went home those nights to my own home, empty and still, and curled on their cold bed and just cried, wishing to Celestia, to Luna, to anypony that would listen-even Discord-that I could have my parents back.
She left last year.
Ditzy Doo, that loving mother, had to see her own child off. And I know that behind those strange eyes lies an intelligent brain that blames herself and curses herself for an accident that was not her fault that drove her child from her. Blaming herself for the cruelty of a filly who saw fit to torture her daughter. Dinky is in Canterlot now. When we ask if she’s written any letters, or if she’s coming to visit, I see that brave smile on Ditzy’s face as she assures us that she’s just... busy.
I should visit. I should bring her muffins, and tea. I should sit beside her and let her cry on me, let her know it’s alright, let her know that I was there, and it’s not her fault. Let her know that every mother is the epitome and definition of beauty to every foal because their foals do not care one whit about what Mom looks like. They care what she is like, and it is not and never will be her fault that some spoiled brats shook her child’s world down.
I hate Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon these days, or as close to hate as pony hearts can get. The spoilt princesses. The beauty queens. The foals whose hardest decision in life has been which strand of pearls or over-elaborate tiara to wear that day. Whose only problem is whether or not they’re still hip with the latest trends.
They never understood. And for all that I may hate them with some part of me, I hope they never will. For everything that has happened, that they have done to myself and my friends and others, I still cannot wish the hardships seen by any of us on them. I couldn’t wish that on anyone.
It wouldn’t be right.
As I started to grow up I thought, maybe, they would stop. Maybe ponies got nicer. Rainbow Dash had a huge circle of friends, all loyal and true to the end but I found out later-she was a lucky pony.
It’s hard to be a pegasus teen that can’t fly. Everypony else is up there, doing tricks and flips and playing tag through the clouds and all I can do is just sit there. As much as I have learned to love myself and know that flying is not absolutely everything in life-I still hear it.
Chicken.
Teenagers are mean. Children are cruel. Princesses are wise and just but even they, the divine goddesses of Creation itself still wave it off with golden-shod hooves saying, They’ll grow out of it.
They might.
But some of us never grow through it. Some of us are kept back by the chains, by the unhealed wounds of having the core of our very selves broken down day after day after day by these ponies. We grow up, thinking that no one would ever really love us, that no one ever really cared, that we were unworthy. That the only reason we were alive was because they needed targets.
It’s not true. But it feels true. On those empty nights curled in my dead parent’s bed and remembering their words and actions, all I could do once the tears had stopped was wonder. Wonder if maybe they were right.
I think, maybe, this is how love finally dies. When it hurts more to love than to just be indifferent or even hate. When we are taught one thing by adults and then turn around to receive the opposite from our peers, the very peers that should understand this more than anypony.
Apple Bloom got mean, for awhile. Lashed out at everyone just for saying “hello” or telling her she’s pretty. Even with the big sister and brother she has that raise her right and show her love-they still got to her.
I sat her down, one day, and asked why. She got angry with me, told me that after what she had endured, what her friends had endured, nopony deserved her trust and if it made her feel better to unload on somepony, she would. And under that, between the words and excuses she wove so expertly over the years to hide her pain and sorrow and anger... clear as the town bell I could hear and because I’m not worth being kind to.
I don’t think she expected me to cry, enfold her in my forelegs and still tell her she was wrong now but wasn’t when we were children. I told her I wanted my friend back. I wanted cheerful Apple Bloom, who even when she scraped her knees up because I dumped the cart by accident like a stupid chicken still hugged me and said it was okay because accidents happen.
We’re still close, and she’s been getting better.
Standing between being a foal and being a grown mare, straddling that strange line known as ‘teen’ I look around and wonder more. Wonder why, when foals are so miserable at school and after that the adults still chuckle indulgently, looking down and saying how they wish they were still foals and how good we have it. It doesn’t feel good.
Maybe they forgot.
Maybe they wanted to forget.
