Where All the Air Was Still
By sundown we came to a hidden village
Where all the air was still
Our hooves clopping is the only sound which breaks the silence. The air is still and stagnant here, the sky full of fog. The ground is charred and blackened, leaving smudges on my hooves as I walk. The village is in a terrible state. Houses have huge holes ripped in their walls. Some are barely standing. Many have fallen over altogether. Each window of every house is shattered, leaving shards of glass on the ground that we are careful to avoid.
"Alright, stallions," says the commander. Though he tries to hide it, I can see his discomfort. "Our assignment is simple: check around for survivors, and loot this place for any supplies we can. Move out."
We all salute him and break off in our assigned groups. My ears flick as another small sound fills the air, magnified by the silence. The steady dripping of rain from the blackened trees only adds to the dead atmosphere of the village. I hear somewhere in the distance a gate, swinging back and forth, squeaking as it does.
My unit and I keep walking forward. I turn my head to the right to see if there are any ponies alive here, and stifle a gasp. Through a broken window pane, I see a rusting cage swinging on a hook. Within the cage is a bird. Clearly, its plumage was once vibrant and beautiful, but now it is dull and sooty as it lays dead in its cage. The bird's beak is wide open, still in a silent scream, and its thin, tattered breast is pressing on the bars.
It did not die from the fire. Without ponies to feed it, the bird starved to death.
I tear my eyes from the scene and hurry along. Weeds poke through the ground in the street, somehow overcoming the devastation left by the firebombs. I hear a few of the stallions in my unit start to converse. I shush them. If ponies are still alive here then we must not let them hear us, lest they get a chance to flee and warn the rebel leaders.
I see movement in the shadows and freeze. A dog emerges from the dark corner. It walks slowly across the street and stops briefly to look at us, before it continues on its journey. The dog is gaunt, emaciated and frail. Its legs are thin, and look as though they can barely support its weight. The dog whines pitifully and lowers its head once more. It shambles off into the woods, partially burnt by the fire. As soon as it enters the living trees, the dog collapses, and I know in my heart that it will not rise again. The dog must have sought out a peaceful place to end its life, away from the struggles and desperation of its former home.
No one had told us victory was like this
We had been told a very different tale of victory. We had been told that by participating in the war, we would bring peace and calm to Equestria once more. The Princess told us that if we stopped the rebels, we would be hailed as heroes. I had no interest in that, but she told me that my sisters would be safe if I went to war. If I stopped the rebels and returned, I would be greeted with great glory and honour.
She hadn't told us about this. About the lives we would destroy. The homes we would shatter, the families we'd tear. The pets we would starve. The landscape we'd burn. The air we'd poison, and the life we'd extinguish.
Maybe the rebels were evil ponies. Maybe they dared to stand up against our Princess, when she was so kind to them. Maybe they have killed hundreds of us. But we have killed thousands of them. Are we really any better? The rebels sneak in in the dead of night and steal foals, but we drop bombs of fire and destruction upon them, wiping whole villages off the face of the planet. Are we worse than them?
It's a question I do not know the answer to. Unfortunately, I have no say in the goings-on of the war. I push the ideas out of my head and carry on. I find the squeaking gate; its hinge is the only thing besides the dog that we have seen moving. I pause near a dribbling stream to fill my canteen, only to stop at the noxious smell of the water. The water has been dyed a sickly greenish brown and reeks of death and despair. I step away from it and snort to clear my nose. Even something as pure as water has been tainted by our influence.
I spot another one of my unit peering into a window and recoiling in horror. Whatever it is he saw, I don't want to see it.
After several more hours, we meet up again in the center of town. None of us have found any sign of life, and by now, the sun is beginning to go down. The commander orders us to set up camp in the former town square.
It begins to rain steadily as we work to make tents, and I am quick to claim a spot near a doorstep for mine. As I begin to gnaw on my daily ration of bread, something catches my eye in the door.
Not one among us would have eaten bread
My breath catches in my throat. A small, broken form lies in the doorway.
Before he'd filled the mouth of the grey child
That sprawled, stiff as stone, before the shattered door
It is a filly. Her purple leathery wings are ragged and torn, full of deep gashes. Her eyes and mouth are wide open in a silent screech of agony, revealing tiny fangs. Her dark grey coat is charred black in places, torn viciously in others. The spot on her flank where her cutie mark would be is blank. All of her limbs are stiff, spread out as though she died reaching out for a loved one, but she is alone in her resting place.
I look at my bread. I tear off a chunk and ever so gently place it in her gaping mouth. She will not go hungry now. As I stare at the filly's body, it becomes hard not to see her with a different appearance.
It becomes impossible to see her without removing her wings in my mind. It is impossible not to see her coat as a shade of yellow, and her mane a dark red with a large pink bow. It becomes difficult again to not imagine her as a full grown mare, with an orange coat and a blond mane.
"Stay safe, Apple Bloom. You too, Applejack," I say, tears forming as I imagine my sisters in the same position as this poor filly.
There was not one who did not think of home
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Very good. Very good, indeed.
That better not be cowardice or doubt I hear Macintosh.
forgeworld.co.uk/Images/Product/DefaultFW/xlarge/comtc.jpg
Ehh.. Stap it
God damn... just... whoa. That was one huge twist, especially finding out it was Ponyville and Big Mac!
This was a nice sad little fic (the good kind of sad). The only problem I see with it is your fragment sentences.
As my editor once put it: "War, in all its splendor..."
First, the technical stuff: the grammar is good, I spotted only a few typos, like:
Should be "Equestria" and "Through".
Good choice of the narration – present tense works well, as it makes the reader discover things at the same moment as the character, thus making them easier to relate to. It especially works in fics like this one.
Well, now to the best part – the plot. Generally, while I write warfics myself, I rarely read them – usually everything in them is black and white, we have heroes and villains, while the war is mostly about good guys doing bad things. Here we have that moment of reflection. The plot is simple – soldiers scouting the village, finding a dead bird, a dying dog, and a dead filly. But in terms of symbolism, there's much more than that. Abandoned animals show what war takes away from us – the joys of everyday life, our sensitivity... And of course, something I also explore – children, the innocent ones, who are supposed to be the future of the nation – they're the first victims.
What's interesting in this story is how universal it is (note, how easy for me was to switch to "us", "our" etc. in the previous paragraph). As it is a one-shot, there's no information about the war itself, so it's open to interpretation. There are, however, some hints, like mentions about the rebeliants, or the appearance of the dead filly – she's a bat pony, which makes me thinks of racism and prejudice as the cause of the rebellion (or maybe I'm just influenced by my story).
Of course, it'd all be for nothing without the proper atmosphere. The way of achieving it is interesting: there's almost no dialogue (the only line is said by the commander), and what's easily noticeable is the overwhelming silence. There are some background noises, but generally everything happens in a completely quiet environment. It's easy to imagine what happened in Ponyville before the soldiers' visit (and it's good that it's left to imagination – any description of explosions and fight isn't as good as what the reader's imagination conjures). We also know that town from the show, how lively it is, so seeing it desolated like that only strengthtens the effect.
To sum up, I really enjoyed that story. Though, maybe 'enjoyed' isn't the right word. More like 'that story made me think; it tug at my heartstrings and moved some rusty gears in my head'. Which is also a form of entertainment, after all. Definitely it's worth to read it.
4395434 I thought I fixed the second typo
Anyway, thanks for that. I appreciate it.
This story was a nicely written piece that set a strong atmosphere for despair and misery, which is what war is known to do. How you did it is very gripping and your attention to detail easily painted the mental picture for me to follow and enjoy/cringe at. I can see any individual who has served or been part of war can relate to the setting of your story. I can almost feel the misery of those who once inhabited the village they are scouring through. I also enjoyed that you kept the identity of the soldier a secret until the very end.
My only thought is that his dialect, even in his head, is un-accented; but that would be hard to pull off with just the one line, so it is acceptable.
I am not the best judge of grammar so I cannot make any real comments about it, but what little I do know I saw no mistakes.
Overall this story was a very thoughtful and moving piece; one I would suggest to others to read if they enjoy this sort of story. Have a thumbs up sir.
Okay, so, um, going in to read it the first time, I accidentally spoiled the ending for myself (my phone scrolled down too fast, and I saw the comments)
Anyway, it's a brilliant piece. I love how you described the deadness of the village through the bird, the dog, the water, the filly. The other comments said it better, and I agree with them in that this really captures how there are no winners in war.
Now this next part is just me being nitpicky:
My unit and I (?)
The dog must have sought out (?) or The dog must have been seeking (?)
I know it's correct, but it still strikes me as... odd.
Kinda redundant.
I keep going back to reread this sentence 'cause I can't seem to parse what it's trying to say. But that might be just me.
A bit redundant, considering the previous paragraph.
Now I'm curious how it would read in 600-or-so words.
Hi. I'm Starman Ghost, and I'm here to review your fic on behalf of WRITE.
FORMATTING AND GRAMMAR
No problems here. At least, none that I saw. Your sentences are composed correctly, you didn't misspell any words, and the formatting is perfectly readable. Good job.
NARRATION
Let's talk about word choice. You describe homes having "huge holes ripped in their walls." The word "ripped" seems like an odd one to use here. I don't know what the houses are made of, but ripping makes me think of paper or fabric. You mentioned they used firebombs, meaning they have explosives, so I think it'd make more sense to say "huge holes blown in the walls."
There's a later paragraph about a dog, and you use the word "dog" multiple times when describing it. It feels strangely redundant. Once you've established that it's a dog, you should just be able to refer to it as "it." Readers will know what you're talking about.
Next subject, being overly wordy. I realize that at least part of this was probably from the need to pad the story out as you mentioned, but it's still worth talking about. For example, at the part with a dead bird, the story says: "It did not die from the fire. Without ponies to feed it, the bird starved to death."
This line is offset for added impact, which is a good technique, but the description is overlong, which drags it out and reduces its effectiveness. You've established that the bird is dead in the previous paragraph, so you don't need to say "[it] starved to death" when you can just say "[it] starved." Furthermore, you can remove "without ponies to feed it," because the reader should have a pretty good guess why it starved. Given that this story's all about the devastation of war, nobody's going to think that this is some random aside about its owner being cruel or negligent. When a character finds a caged bird that died of starvation and the entire scene up until that point has been describing how the town is desolate and everyone in it is dead, they're going to have a pretty good idea how it died.
In fact, I would argue that you could chop off the second sentence entirely and just leave the line with "The bird did not die from the fire." The bird is thin, it's caged (preventing it from getting its own food), and everyone who might have fed it is dead. When the reader realization of the significance of the dead bird is their own, the scene makes more of an impression.
The reveal of the narrator's identity is also well-executed, but on the whole, it brings the story down by being there. It worked much better when he was an anonymous young stallion. The whole story is spent setting the mood of this ruined town, but that's promptly forgotten when I hit this and I'm left wondering "Oh, wait, it's Big Macintosh? Come to think of it, is he the type to join the royal guard? I mean, when you think about it..." Overall, it's a needless distraction that pulls the reader's attention away from the atmosphere rather than enhancing it.
I do like the technique of having one of the soldiers seeing something terrible that the narrator doesn't, though. Lets the reader's mind start to work on all kinds of awful things.
PLOT AND CHARACTERS
I've split this into two subsections.
The characters we see
Even though it isn't explicitly stated, we can infer from their shock and dismay that the soldiers present are green troops, who haven't really had a chance to get accustomed to what happens in war. That's good.
However, I have to wonder about the commander. I would expect that he'd be paying attention to his soldiers' morale, and would be trying to do something to rationalize to them why it had to happen and restore their faith in the cause. I'd think even an inexperienced, incompetent commander would belt out an empty platitude or two.
The ones we don't
I kept having a lingering thought throughout this story, one that made me question the whole scene in a way that distracted from the atmosphere you were building:
Why is Celestia apparently okay with ponies who are supposed to be serving her, carpet-bombing villages in her own damn country?
I mean, that just doesn't make sense. Celestia's over a thousand years old. She has to know that the "level the place and deal with the survivors if there are any" is going to kill a lot of innocent ponies, including - as the story establishes - children. Beyond that, she apparently encourages ponies to fight by saying they "would be hailed as heroes." That seems to me that Celestia herself is involved in pushing this false narrative of glorious war. I would think Celestia would be more likely to gain support by emphasizing the necessity of the war by saying that it would save more lives in the long run, rather than appealing to ponies' desire for personal glory.
Anyway, the Celestia you have here is... not the Celestia I saw in the show, and since this isn't marked as an AU, I think it's a fair complaint to say this feels grossly out-of-character for her. Even if you subscribe to the Tyrant Celestia meme and that's what you're going for, it's an unnecessary angle that alienates readers who might otherwise have enjoyed the story.
CONCLUSION
Overall, it's kind of hard to judge this story. You've admitted you had to pad it out to far longer than you would've liked, which must have made the quality suffer. I recommend that you write a shorter version (if you haven't already done so), upload it as a blog post, and get critique on that.
Starman Ghost, WRITE's Unpaid Intern
As a story I think this falls a little flat, giving us "war is terrible" in the most simplistic terms possible. However, I see that you were going for atmosphere more than story, and in that regard this is a rousing success. :D
6259506 My intention was more to capture the atmosphere than to come up with a plot, so I'm glad that succeeded.
jeez. Listened to Solar Pony's reading of this and... man. That's just... man.
Nothing I can say to this that hasn't already been said, but I'm surprised you didn't use this to make your story's picture
Poor Big Mac...