Correspondence.

"Urgh..." A hoof reached down to pick up the scattered tickets. After gathering them together she extended them to the Guard. After brief inspection the Guard shut the door and moved on. Crimson Quill sighed heavily. The train seemed to take forever. To fair, it did stop occasionally to let lines of tarpaulined wagons full of unidentifiable objects pass by at speed. She wondered what was under them. She had a faint idea, given her destination. Soon, she notice the landscape change dramatically. Houses became smoking ruins, county fields became a maze of abandoned trenches and the calm skys turned black with the lingering smoke. The train had slowed to a crawl, presumably incase of enemy activity. After pulling into an abandoned town, the terminus for her train, she wondered just why she came here. "Some holiday" she muttered after alighting the train.

The town itself seemed fine; it's inhabitants were the cause of Crimsons concern. Most of the stallions were here on leave from the trenches, covered in wounds from enemy action. Many had limbs missing, presumably amputated as a result of infection. She watched a Pegasus building crew working on boarding over a buildings window. Crimson moved through the autumn evening. It would have been a fine evening were it not for the scent of sulphur and burning assaulting her nostrils. Spying an open cafe sporting a sign announcing its ownership of real coffee, crimson decided to rest for the evening.

It was strangely calm for a frontier town. Far calmer, Crimson admitted, than she first expected. As of yet, noone she met had tried to kill her yet, which in her book was a serious positive. She watched the waiter being over her coffee. He was clearly not Canterlonian, instead he had a more Nordic feel about him.Spying an open cafe sporting a sign announcing its ownership of real coffee, crimson decided to rest for the evening.

Crimson Quill noted how calm everything was. Certainly it surpassed her expectations in that area! So far no gunfights had broken out, nor Pegasus bombers blowing everything to the moon. It seemed quite a miricle that she wasn't dead yet, going on the few newspaper reports she had read, but as a journalist herself she knew to take these with a pinch of salt. Settling down at a window seat, she hailed a solitary waiter, the only other apparent person in the cafe, and ordered a coffee....

"Ah, thank you sir! And how ..... AHHHHHHH!" Crimson was cut short by the sound of gunfire followed by the window shattering across the room and stray bullets scarring the walls. Crimson jumped back from the window, smashing into the Waiter and sending the coffee across the room. When the gunfire, and her screaming, stopped, Crimson removed herself from the waiters chest before apologising sheepishly. "I'm so terribly sorry sir, I...I..er...am, not quite use to gunfire." She smiled awkwardly, trying to avoid eye contact. "Oh, your poor cafe! The window the tables and chairs... Oh and that delightful little painting on the walk is quite ruined!" The waiter got up and looked about as if assessing the state of the cafe himself. "Ah, worry not Madame, you will find, I think, that soon the tables will be rebuilt, and painting redrawn!" Crimson looked at him astounded "You're Russian!" She exclaimed. "Not Russian, but close. I left my home after the battle of Stalliongrad. I had lived under communism for so long, only for Fascism to take over when Germaney invaded. I did not want more conflict to engulf my family , so we moved to Canterlonian for sun and democracy, only for war and political termoil to engulf us again". Crimson had by now started taking notes on her pad. "Sorry, you don't mind do you?" "Not at all, let the people hear! That is what a democracy is, no?" She smiled. Something told her that these six weeks would be more influential on her life than any other.