Manehattan.
City of hope and progress.
Where changelings realized that to have ponies with love meant pampering them on a reasonable scale. Ponies to changelings are what cows are to ponies. Cattle, sapient commodity. Only more delicate, soft, and prone to breakdowns.
The war really didn’t help with that, but with passing years and great effort by the Protectress to do as her namesake told, ponies eventually somewhat warmed up to the idea of a mutual coexistence.
Boosting interspecies relationship was the invention of painless love extraction methods, which substance would be processed for both changelings and ponies alike. Food for one, legal recreational drug for the other.
True, not all the efforts came from ponies fighting for their freedom. The protectress, Lilac, ensured ponies get recompense, repaired living conditions, and a return to Manehattan’s former status quo of bling and glam. She kinda had to, else her position as Protectress meant her head will be the first to go as ponies recovered and readied a liberation movement.
For the first time in years, Manehattan became the land of opportunity it once were. For both ponies, and changelings too.
Coexistence took a toll on both parties, and it showed. As I walked down the refurbished streets, changelings sneered at the ponies, angry on how they had to rely on such uppity creatures. Ponies sneered back, angry at their supposed captors sucking the souls out of them.
Few decided working together meant betterment for both, but few was all it took for the protectorate to begin it’s rise as a country better than both Equestria and Changeling Lands combined.
The adults traded glares, but the foals and nymphs played without a care. No politics, no speciesism. No memories of past wars, for they won’t remember what they never saw nor told. Once diminishing Magic of Friendship, alive once more, in a place least expected. A pair of them approached my lanky self with candies in hoof, and bright smiles on their faces. Eager to share, ready to compromise. Even to an aging stallion like me.
Manehattan hadn’t grown into its former glory, but it needed none of it. For children’s laughter in sunny open spaces, adults swallowed their pride and strapped on their boots. A resurgence like no other. Manehattan Economic Miracle.
Commemorating the miracle was a new statue, built to replace the former Lady Friendship. A pony and a changeling, lifting a torch, under a beautiful green robe. A symbol of a new future of understanding and cooperation.
One such example was the revamped Love Tax. Tax in nothing but name, really. Love became a commodity, given by ponies, paid and processed by changelings, consumed by both. Huge competitive markets emerged from both public and private sectors. Increasingly satisfied ponies led to tastier love, which led to well-fed changelings. Those changelings would work and satisfy ponies more, and the cycle continues.
Even for a waste of society like me, they would open soup kitchens for the weak, disabled, and unfit to contribute. Segregation between the two species wasn’t an unusual sight, but neither complained. Better that way, than forcing an unstable equality between two disparate sets of beings.
Love became a prominent additive in the rising New Manehattanite cuisine. Wisps of their unique, sixth taste sensation caressed my mouth as I took another gulp of the free soup graciously ladled by a young changeling. Her bright smile with two cute little fangs shyly peeking out of her lips lifted the taste even more.
Shame she already has a lover, but even I knew when to quit.
Finished from lunch, I walked back to my humble abode: the same broken van I had lived in for years on end, the same alleyway I saw everytime I woke up, the same grumpy janitor entering from the backdoor by the crack of dawn. The thing about hygiene was that you never knew how sorely you missed it, until you eventually got it back. Thank that janitor for my habit of cleaning the van and the alleyway every Saturday.
The building itself became an outpost, an administrative building. As with the rest of Manehattan, gone was the obnoxiously undergroundly changeling architecture and colouration, replaced with a mix of superior changeling tastes and superior pony design expertise.
No longer did the protectress walk alone with a single jumpy changeling as guard. Now both ponies and changelings stood right beside her, serving their duty as guardians to the de facto leader of New Manehattan.
One of them stood in all his stoicness, withered eyes spacing out into the unknown. Even as he was relieved of the day’s duty, his only instinct would be to grab a smoke and puff it out on the sidewalk. Old habits die hard, even as the cigarettes became actual cigars and tobacco pipes. Might have to do with his cutie mark, but I beg to differ.
I nodded, and he nodded.
We took a smoke together in all our glorious silence, before he went home. I followed, if only to steal myself a bath. He never did seem to mind.
During the walk, he wasn’t the only being I recognized. Life came full circle, with some rising back into the stars, and some slumping down into the dumps. The changeling junior, Steviosol, stood tall and proud, guarding a banking building, his trusty rifle in hoof. A stage performer and her wagon, displaying colourful magic to entertain and amaze both adults and foals alike. Good to see Trixie having her life back.
Some weren’t so lucky. Coloratura stayed out of her pop business ever since her slump. Never saw her since that one time way back when. An actual bum searched through Cigar’s trash, familiar light fuschia mare under a familiar purple starry cape, now weathered and torn.
She reacted with anger upon my gaze, and stormed off with a gait fit for nobleponies.
A wise pony said you can judge how advanced a civilization really is by its trash. Considering the trash that bum took was used thaumatronics and last night’s leftovers, I’d say Manehattan became quite the well-off city it had used to be.
I entered the house, took a bath, and left. After sharing a smoke, of course. No words said, only nods and understanding.
Walking back to my van, I spied a mom-and-pops shop. Before, I would’ve gone straight for the trash bins, but I learned that I could skip the process entirely. Entering, an elderly changeling couple way past their prime greeted me with a serene smile only found in loving parents. They had expired food they couldn’t return, and I took them for myself.
In the end, it was still dumpster diving. An act I knew and loved, the only thing I’ve ever mastered, streamlined so efficiently that even the “dumpster” part became arbitrary. My everlasting constant in this newly-minted Manehattan, so far removed from its original.
In my world, nothing ever did change. Only me, and the dumpsters. The streets, the alleyways, and the one gun I had took care of ever since that time during the war. And perhaps the smoker stallion.
The world, however, changed. Swept my own world away from me. No more damp alleyways with slimy dumpsters I had to dig through for a piece of moldy bread. No more sleeping in cardboard boxes under fierce storms. No more uncertainty of war society had felt for X-years too long.
Looking back at the old couple, and the help wanted sign by the door, it was apparent that the world changed around them, sweeping their own world as well. The way granny changeling limped as her hips sagged. How grandpa changeling would switch between three different glasses, constantly flicking his gaze to a family portrait with all heads crossed but theirs.
The both of us, victims of war. Not of the theatres, not of the fighting, but of the mundanes. The results of war no one ever took time to analyze. The deeper nuances of the homefronts, the little changes in a happy ending that everyone forgot to ever look.
My world, the unhappy corner I stuck my guns in, just because it was familiar. Their world, a failing shop too traditional for the changing times, most likely kept because they had no choice.
But I do have a choice, don’t I? A small step towards a greater change, and maybe easing a bit of their pain as well. Might it be the time? After all this time? At my age?
I looked once more. Staying for too long made them anxious. Expecting me to take the step, take the offer, take the job. Improve their situation.
Waiting. Hoping.
Grandpa flicked his graying pupilless eyes once more to the portrait.
Maybe it was indeed time for me to get up my rump and join society once more.
A small change for me, a giant leap for my world.
“May I apply for the job?” I asked. Their faces lit with joy, reversing their ages by several decades as they taught me the tools of their trade.
This is it. For the better or worse...
...maybe it's the former, for once.