Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
It took until after a brief, restless nap and the next sunrise for Spike to realize that he'd fled in the same direction that the other three dragons had been headed anyway. Applewhatever town, and eventually Everfree Forest, right next to Equestria. If he hadn't been too tired to care anymore, he probably would have turned and walked in any other direction. But because he WAS tired, and thirsty, and still kind of hungry, he kept on going forward. The three ponies from earlier never troubled to catch up with him, and neither did Garble or Frock, if the latter were even alive. Well, he was a little guy anyway. Easily to overlook. That was for the best.
The desert gradually became less loose sand and more and more hard-packed dirt baked by the sun into nigh-stoniness. He found a surprisingly short and gentle pass through a pretty big mountain range before long, glad to see no signs of it being used by ponies. How did ponies that couldn't fly get around in the desert? Oh, right, they had trains. As long as he watched out for train tracks he'd be okay. He stopped to sniff beautiful pink flowers blooming in cacti to calm his nerves and wipe away memories of poor Raggle, and it didn't really help him forget, but he did feel better afterward. Water was scarce, but dragons were used to going without for long periods of time. He thought he might be able to cut open a cactus for juice if he found a good stick or rock shard, if he had to.
Past the mountains, he saw what looked, at first, like boulders moving in the distance. As he got warily closer, shuffling from one rocky outcropping to the next, he saw shades of tan and brown, and furry textures. Tiny horns. Feathers, especially, vibrant white against the darker fur. They were hooved four-legged animals, but not ponies, thank goodness, for a change of pace. They were just buffaloes, and if he recalled correctly, buffaloes didn't have any grudges against dragons.
Maybe he could get some chow and a safe place to rest, or at least directions. The thought occurred to him to ask for help for the other dragons, but he realized that whatever had happened to them had probably already resolved by now. Either the other two had escaped or they were dead, and it wasn't his problem anymore, even if he still felt guilty about it.
He made his way over to them carefully, hands held up in the universal peace gesture. They seemed to be in the middle of preparing for something – lots of them were headbutting each other, others smearing paints over their faces. It looked kinda cool.
Even though he had to look pretty small by their standards, they noticed him almost immediately, and a group of three separated from the rest to gallop over to him. He just stood and waited, trying to look unthreatening (which was easy). They didn't seem like they were mad or anything, and there was one in between the two big ones, a much lighter buffalo calf, who was only a few times his size instead of a mountain of fur-covered muscles.
“Hey, dragon, no offense, but you really shouldn't be here,” the calf – a girl – called out, raising a hoof to wave away the clouds of dust caused by her pals. “We're kind of in the middle of a teensy war and stuff, and things are gonna get messy soon.”
“Whatta you mean, a teensy war? What would be a big war?” He winced as two buffalo a ways back headbutted themselves way too hard and saw stars. “You guys look fierce enough to me, and us dragons, we know fierce.”
One of the adult buffaloes snorted, sending visible puffs out to the sides of his nose. “Sure you do, kid. Yesterday I saw a buddy's head get almost completely torn off when an earth pony bit into his throat and started chewin' away. No magic, no wings, just one ferocious little bastard gnawing on something with at least five hundred pounds on 'im. You wanna talk to us about fierce, go check the cairns.”
Spike's eyes obediently followed the buffalo's gesture to the horizon, where small but numerous stacks of rocks were easily visible. A lot of them didn't even have bulges underneath the dirt or any sign that the ground had been disturbed. Markers for the dead who hadn't made it back from the last conflict. Which was most of them. There were dozens of rock stacks, scattered without order, as if each death had caught the buffalo completely by surprise and they'd just arranged a burial marker wherever there was an open space.
“That's enough, Stonehoof,” the smaller one chided. “He looks exhausted, we don't need to scare him, too.”
“Um, I don't mean to be a pain or anything, but I could use directions... a map, maybe... and if you have any spare food or water....” He almost cringed while asking, but with so many dead buffalo, chances were their supplies were pretty good, since there weren't many buffaloes left to eat or drink! “I'm sorry about your friends. So it's ponies, huh?”
Stonehoof and the smaller buffalo exchanged looks, while the third jerked at a order from one of the others in the distance and wheeled about to get to whatever his job was.
“Yeah. Ponies,” the smaller one said flatly. “We'll give you what we can, but you have to get going soon. It's best if you don't spend the night. We're pretty close to Appleloosa.”
The Applesomething Garble had talked about. That meant he was on the 'right' track, if he actually wanted to go through with the plan and find a nice place in Everfree with gems in it. And all he had to do was sidestep a warzone first, sweet, that sounded TOTALLY safe. Maybe he'd be better off coming up with another plan.
“Thanks, I really appreciate it. If you can help me figure out where I am, I'm sure I can figure out where I'm going from here.” He offered a hand to the smaller buffalo, and his smile to the bigger one. “My name's Spike.”
Stonehoof rolled his eyes.
“I'm Little Strongheart,” the calf said with a sad, tired, but genuine-looking smile. “Come on, you might not find a lot of smiles here, but we can at least spare you a bowl of chili pepper stew. I wish we could offer you some turquoise, but... but most of it is under the cairns now.”
Between mushy (but delicious) bowls of stew and some informative dirt scribbles to help him figure out where all the major bits of local geography where, Spike felt much better and much more informed. The geography lesson flowed somewhat naturally into an unintended history lesson, too. Unfortunately, most of the area around was hard living and full of rocky precipices where it wasn't simply near-dead wasteland. The exception was a relatively fertile and inhabitable strip that went along in a much larger mountain pass than the one Spike had recently walked through. This strip was an important part of the stampeding trail of the buffalo and they'd been using it for generations.
Quite naturally, the pony settlers, when they'd come, had considered it prime real estate.
“After the first few fights stalemated, the Chief thought we should talk,” Little Strongheart continued glumly.
“I'm guessing that didn't work too well,” Spike said with sympathy, patting her back.
“Considering that they made him into a corn and pepper HASH and drank his blood with salt cubes afterward, I'd say so!” Strongheart yelled at him, her surprisingly hard body stiffening and twisting away from the gesture.
“I'm sorry! I didn't mean....” He wasn't sure what he'd meant. Or what he should say now. Spike's head drooped. “I'm sorry,” he said again, sounding as tired as Little Strongheart looked.
“No, it's... it's my fault. I'm the one who should be sorry,” she said firmly, eyes staring off somewhere into the distance. That was a soldier's expression, even if she didn't seem to be much older than him from a buffalo standpoint. “Things have gotten... hard... since he's been gone. We tried to avenge his death, of course. But they got smart. Transplanted full-grown apple trees they imported from their farms elsewhere. There's barely any gaps between the trunks now big enough for a buffalo to get by, which is why I've been seeing a lot more action lately. Scouting work, raiding. Any time we try to take the fight to them, they use the terrain to their advantage. And if we stay out here, they keep on getting supplies from their train line and coming out to raid us when we don't expect it.” Her dark eyes shifted back to him. “Nobuffalo wants to just give up and leave after all we've lost. But we'll die if we stay here. I can feel it. And that's why you need to go to wherever it is you're headed as quickly as you can.”
“Are you crazy? I can't leave you guys in this kinda bind!” Spike said, surprising himself at least as much as Little Strongheart. “I mean, I know I'm just a baby dragon... but like you just said, small size can sometimes be helpful too. If we stick our heads together, we can come up with some way to get you and your people out of this mess!”
“That's nice of you, but I really don't think there's anything you can do. Unless you can spit enough fire to burn down those apple trees, anyway.”
“Even if I could, which I can't, that still leaves you all up against a bunch of ticked ponies. Look, it's all about pride at this point, right? You're proud of who you are as a buffalo. You're proud of the ones you lost. You're proud of your traditions that the ponies are messing up. You're proud of how good you are in a fight and hate to just quit because of some dumb trees.” As he started talking, she'd seemed skeptical and a little offended at first, but the longer he went at it, the more her face smoothed over into bittersweet understanding. He smiled. “See, that's something us dragons totally get. Pride. It's not a bad thing. But it'll get you killed if you can't think of a way around it every once in a while.”
She seemed scared to be hopeful. “And what kind of way around it do you think we could possibly have? We can't just run away. They won't listen to me even if I tell them to.”
“This is going to sound crazy, but you guys don't have anything to lose, so you might as well try it, right? Maybe we can bargain up a peace with the ponies.” The idea of buffaloes and ponies living side by side in harmony had immense appeal to Spike for reasons he couldn't understand. “If we can just convince them that they'll lose too many ponies fighting you, and then convince them to give up something big enough that it makes up for the Chief's death, everyone can stop fighting... at least, long enough for you to make it through this part of the stampede trail.”
“You're right, that does sound crazy. But it's better than no idea at all, which is what we're working with right now. What could we get them to give up? How could we even convince them to surrender in the first place?”
“I dunno, maybe-”
“YEEEEEEEEEEEEHAW!”
The multithroated cry split the air as though the source had just popped out of thin air right next to them, and Spike jumped and clutched onto Little Strongheart's back in a panic as he looked around wildly. The yeehaws were quickly followed by more generic hoots and hollers, high-pitched, joyously chaotic sounds that would have made a pack of rabid hyenas envious. With them came thundering hooves. Spike figured out what it was before the call from the furthest buffalo came in to confirm it.
“Ponies! Everybuffalo scatter!”
“Don't let them lasso you!” Strongheart yelled urgently, and it was a second before Spike realized she was talking to him, as she bucked and ran, her charge frequently interrupted by random pivots to the left or right.
He clung to her back for dear life as the world became a big mess of buffaloes and hat-wearing ponies rushing each other, performing dangerously tight dodges, snapping with teeth, lashing out with hooves, and just plain old lowering their heads to ram. It was a smaller pack of ponies than it looked at first, Spike realized – Little Strongheart's occasional aerial maneuvers, scary though they were, definitely gave him a good vantage point of the battlefield – and they had to keep moving at top speed, kicking up huge clouds of dust, to keep their offense from turning into a defense. They spread out as much as they could to make themselves seem a fair match for the buffalo, but converged whenever a buffalo got between them, briefly focusing all their aggression on anybuffalo that tried to exploit the supposed weakness of their loose formation.
Still, Spike would have thought the buffalo, with their size and numbers, to not have any problems handling it, until he saw the lassos Strongheart had warned him about. Coarse rope hoops whizzed through the air as sharp as whipcracks, tripping up hooves and lashing out to blind eyes or snap at faces distractedly. Worse yet, the ponies seemed to go out of their way to take advantage of the cairns to flee to whenever they were hard-pressed. Spike was reminded of what Little Strongheart had said about the apple trees as he watched the small, lithe ponies dodge through the rock piles with ease, not going out of their way to knock the things over, just mocking the buffaloes with their very presence in the area, while the buffaloes tried in vain to get at the ponies with their much bulkier, less agile bodies while simultaneously not disturbing the resting places of the dead.
It seemed to be a stalled fight without any serious injuries until two separate lassos just happened to catch onto Stonehoof from different directions, one settling around his midsection while the other settled on a leg. They both pulled fast immediately, and just kept on pulling, until the buffalo lost its leg with a scream that was as much rage as pain. Stonehoof's leg went flying through the air right in front of Spike and Little Strongheart, a tip of exposed, bloody bone skittering over their heads and off into the distance.
“WAAAAHOO, THAT DARK MEAT THIGH'S MAH FAV'RITE!” one of the ponies called out cheerfully as they reeled in their trophy and started arguing over whether to grill it with tomato barbecue sauce or mustard barbecue sauce.
Spike really, really couldn't blame Little Strongheart as she screamed in rage and lunged forward into the thick of it all as the ponies drew back into the cairns yet again. Instead, he just lowered himself down more firmly into her body and clutched more tightly at her fur, wishing he could be useful. Oh, to breathe fire, he would show these crazed ruffians a thing or two!
She jumped entirely over the first cairn in the way to land on the back of a surprised pink pony, knocking its ten gallon hat off as she stomped on shoulders and spine with a painful-sounding double thud. The pony, as far as Spike knew, was the first pony-side victim of the skirmish, and wailed in agony, tears streaming wetly down its face as it collapsed. Spike flinched as Strongheart, without the slightest hesitation, dropped her head to bite into the incapacitated pony's jugular and tear it open in a spray of red, spitting out the blood with clear disdain in the direction of the other ponies. Some of them cried out what was probably the pony's name in mixed anger and distress, but Spike's blood was boiling in his ears too much for him to tell what the name was.
A lasso came whistling for her, and Spike screamed out a warning. She dodged it just in the nick of time and he breathed a sigh of relief... that stuck in his throat as a second lasso came from another direction and settled to tighten around her neck. Little Strongheart choked and gargled as she was violently yanked and dragged off away from the other buffaloes, upsetting several rock stacks in her flailing desperation, unable to get to her hooves, her belly and sides hissing against the ground in agonized friction.
She couldn't breathe. The rope was too tight, and already Spike could tell her neck was going to be bruised like anything. It wouldn't take much before... before....
No! He was a DRAGON, and he was proud of it, and he was not going to allow this to happen! Maybe he couldn't fight, but he could at least save a buffalo calf!
Spike sank fangs and claws into the top of the rope, gnawing and scratching while his heart pounded, sure that any moment another lasso would come for him, or a pony would just trot over and smash him flat. Poor Little Strongheart, who had been so hospitable and so brave at the very worst of times, was being dragged very fast, too fast for the other buffalo to keep up with – there was that 'size' thing coming into play again, this time to her disadvantage.
Dang it, Spike, if you aren't going to do this, who is?! No one! Are you going to let her die because you can't beat up a stupid ROPE?! Her neck was supposed to be orangey-yellow, not red and swollen, and not blackening to purple, no no no....
The stupid rope was stronger than he was. The smart thing would have been to run. Just like he had with Raggle. Raggle, who was dead, like she would be dead.
No. Not yet. He wasn't ready to give up on her yet! Well, if Spike, if you can't take out the lasso at point B, there was always point A!
Wondering at what point he had gone completely nuts, Spike scrambled along the taut rope, glad that dragons were generally as good at moving on all fours as they were at moving on two legs. The air howling past him like a mad thing, taking the landscape at it at a dizzing speed, he skittered his way up to the other end. The part the stallion pony was clutching in its mouth.
“LET HER GO YOU JERK!” he screamed, swiping claws at the yellow pony's flank, which had a long leather vest draped over it. This was pretty much the opposite of what he'd done to survive his whole life so far, but no backing out now.
The pony whinnied and laughed at him, shaking his head and mane, and the rope with them. He swiped again, hard enough to get through the vest, but still only left bare scratches on the cutie mark, a red apple with a worm peeking out of it. Anxious of every passing second being agony to a Little Strongheart who might even already be dead, he hissed the serpentine battle cry of a young, ticked off dragon and jumped directly onto the pony's back. Then, in his desperation for anything that would work, he did something he'd never done before: he bit into flesh. Even baby dragon teeth were more than sharp enough to do some damage – and why not, after all, he crunched gemstones easily enough, and ponies weren't nearly as hard as those. He felt the blood pump into his mouth with the pony's heartbeat, tasted it through the sweat and dirty fur, and only bit down harder, feeling his teeth slice through meat. So easily. So easily. Was this what it was like for ponies? Right now, he was too angry to care. Little Strongheart had been nice to him!
“TARNATION, THAT SMARTS!” the pony screamed out, letting go of the rope as he did so. “TALK ABOUT A MEAL WITH A BITE TO IT!”
He laughed wildly and shook until Spike went flying into the dirt... headfirst. Spike had just enough time to realize that he was blacking out, and that he probably would never wake up, before it actually happened.
Getting the chance to wake up was a pleasant surprise, but his awful headache was doing a great job of putting a dent in his joy at being alive. In the middle of that throbbing, he heard a metallic sound, over and over. Schliiiiiink. SchliiiiIIInnnnk.
Spike opened his eyes and wasn't surprised at all to find himself staring at the yellow stallion from before, in the middle of sharpening a butcher knife on a big whetstone. They were in the midle of a not-quite-kitchen, sort of a shack with half the tools of a kitchen, including a counter, along with half the accessories of a jail cell. Iron bars were between Spike and the pony, and there were no windows so it was tough to tell what time it was.
“Where's Little Strongheart!” he yelled, instantly regretting it as it sharpened the pain in his head. He clutched at his face blindly before shaking it off.
The pony, seeing he was awake, put down the very big, very sharp, brown-stained cleaver and turned over to him. “Well, landsakes, you sure got up from your nap soonin' than we was expectin'! Maybe you can do us a solid, though, since you're present an' accounted for in all mental respects,” he went on cheerfully, peering over Spike with brilliant green eyes.
“I doubt it,” Spike growled, walking backwards to the other side of his cell and tripping over a bit of splintered bone in the process.
“Now now, that ain't how appetizers behave 'round here in AaaaAAaaAAppleLOOSa!” the pony hollered with grinning patriotism. “Don't you worry none, this ain't much of a headscratcher. All we wants to know is if'n you have any ideer what goes well with dragon. See, we're plain, unassumin' ponies round these here parts, and we don't have much experience in eatin' critters like you. Some folks think you'd be best with a nice tomato barbecue, an' others wanna stuff you with apples and pan-fry you with a fancy dee-jon sauce. Me, I'd say cactus pear an' onion shish kebab, on account of that bein' how we cook them rattlersnakes, but we're really just fishin' without bait here, if'n you catch my meanin'.”
“And exactly what am I supposed to get in return for telling you how to eat me?” Spike asked tiredly, flopping in the middle of a heap of leftover skin, fur, fleas and bones with a clatter. Mostly buffalo parts, but bits and pieces from the larger local birds and some coyotes, too. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, as far as death cells went. No entrails or anything really gross – 'waste not, want not' was a maxim most ponies lived by.
“Weeellll, I could just lop off your noggin, if you're so kind as to be cooperative. Nice and quick, no pain, no fuss. Or if you'd rather be a stubborn lil thing, we could just start with the tail and work our way up.” The pony shrugged, his vest rippling enough to let Spike notice the pristine white bandage patch job that had been done to the bite wound. “Makes no difference t'me, it's all in your sav'ry-lookin' hands to decide, pardner.”
Spike wondered if there were mice in the cell with him, because the bones and other rubbish seemed to be clacking around a lot. Then he realized it was just him trembling. Funny that you could be so scared and not even feel it inside. He didn't want to die. But, either way, he wanted to know that the poor buffalo girl was safe before whatever happened, happened.
“I'll tell you the best way to eat me, so I'll be all yummy in your tummy, if you let me see Little Strongheart and promise me you'll let her go. That's fair, right? A meal for a meal!”
The pony laughed and reached through the bars with a hoof to do... Spike didn't know what, because he wasn't going to step away from the far wall, and after a moment the pony figured that out and pulled his hoof back.
“Well, aren't you just a hot lil thang for a cold-blooded varmint. You're referrin' to that little buffalo girl, am I right? Yeahhhh, that's a trade that just can't happen, sorry. She's got at least a hundert pounds on you, pardner. But we ain't cruel here in AAaaAAppleloosa, we'll be happy to let you chat with her before you're both served for supper.”
“Swell,” Spike said sarcastically, picking up a snake skull and opening and closing its mouth. Its head was shaped eerily similar to his. Then a new feeling of outrage came over him. A little detail he'd known for ages but hadn't even thought to ponder before now suddenly became amazingly important. “Hold on a minute, why do you eat EAT meat in the first place?! I mean, you just told me you eat vegetables too! Why don't you just eat pineapples and potatoes instead of buffaloes and dragons and everything else that isn't a pony?!” He threw the skull at the pony, and it shattered into countless pieces against the bars. Bars which he was only just noticing had numerous scratch marks on them, as though things had tried to claw or bite their way out.
The yellow pony sat down and adjusted the tilt on his personal version of the hat that all the local ponies seemed to wear. “Well, that there is what my cuz Applejack would call a right philosoph'cal noggin nagger,” he said thoughtfully, clacking his hooves together. They had a deeper ring to them than most hooves due to the horseshoes, which were ringed on the edges with small twisted spikes like metal burs. “Why do we do it? Why do ponies take what they can when they can? Why do they hunt when there's plenty in their stores, or eat when they're not even that hungry, or pluck a nice, juicy buffalo calf out of a herd even though there clearly ain't that much fight left in 'em?”
Spike bristled but said nothing.
“I reckon every pony has their own answer to that their question, and which answer you get'll depend mightily on what kinda pony you're askin' it to. But for me an' for good ol' Appleloosa, it's all about one thing.” The stallion leaned closer, his eyes seeming to pierce the distance between them with their alertness, the perception of a hunter who'd lived rough on the brittle edge between civilization and wilderness, and learned to love it. “They call it... manifest destiny,” he said almost dreamily, like he was referring to a girlfriend or idol.
“Who with the what now?”
“Manifest destiny,” the pony repeated with narrowing eyes, irritable at being interrupted from his mood. “Ain't you got no poetry in your soul, pardner? Manifest destiny is the ideal all ponies should strive for! It's the magic that lets us all, unicorns, pegasi, but 'specially earth ponies, be fruitful. Multiply. Till the earth and make it our own an' spread out from there like a bee-yoo-tee-full tidal wave of life, unstoppable in our humble brawn and honest as the day is long. Why, if I opened this here cell door and trotted you out for a looksee of our town, I'm sure you'd be amazed at what we've accomplished here, all while under constant threat of attack from those tasty buffalo. Mmm, I tell ya, the way they go with ranch dressin' is just gobsmackin'... oh, pardon me, where was I.”
“Y'see, it weren't always like this.” The pony gestured around them. “Nice an'... civilized. Why, you can't see it now, but there's a thrivin' industry right here in Appleloosa. Salt-lickin' parlors, square dancin' circles, pianey teachers, buggy haulers, gardeners, plow pullers, carpenters, blacksmiths, miners, weavers, jewelers....”
He went on like that for ages, until Spike finally tapped his claws meaningfully to get him to hurry up.
“...and jacks of all trades like m'self,” the pony finished, tipping his hat in Spike's direction. “Why, we've even got a train station, you might've heard! Our pride'n joy. Now, do you see any of that kind of thrivin' industry going on with them there buffalo? Or your feller dragons? With the griffins, maybe, or the, heh, hydras or manticores or timber wolves?”
Spike shook his head meekly. He didn't actually know that much about griffins, and the buffalo seemed perfectly civilized in their own nomadic way, but there wasn't any point in interrupting when the pony so clearly wanted to build up to a point.
“Exactly! Nowhere else in the world has magic, good old-fashioned stick to it-iveness an' sweat drippin' off your brow come together to create somethin'... well, somethin' magical, quite frankly. Over in Equestria everythin' is just dandy as the spit shine on a fresh-polished horseshoe. We're honest in word an' deed, kind to each other, generous with our humble belongings, loyal to a fault and full of laughter as we make it through the day. Appleloosa is still pretty rough around the edges, but as we settle in some more and really spread that good ol' pony magic around, it'll soon become the busiest, most hardworkin', productive and downright pleasant little outpost in this wasteland you'll ever see. Course, the wasteland don't have to be here indefinitely neither, that's what the Princess's magic is for, but t'ain't no sense in nibblin' dessert before you've had your main course, am I right?”
“You're making that up,” Spike accused the pony, who wasn't at all phased by it, just blinking his green big green eyes innocently. “No place could possibly be that good!”
“Have you ever seen it? Pardner, have you ever even seen the outside of APPLELOOSA yet?”
“Well... no...” he was forced to admit.
“Then maybe you should consider the possibil'ty... just the possibil'ty, mind you... that I'm not speakin' with a forked tongue here. Although them tongues are suuuuhhhh-weet if you fry 'em with jalapenos and a lil honey. Now, t'ain't your fault if you feel left out! It's just how y'are. How you were raised, prob'ly, but more importantly, how you were born an' bred.”
“Hey, just because ponies have lots of, of buildings and things doesn't mean they're all that! Dragons can do stuff ponies can't do! Like breathe fire!”
“Actually, we've got some yoo-nee-corns that specialize in that there kinda magic back in Canterlot.”
“...and fly...”
“Pegasi.”
“Right, right. Well, we can eat gems!” Spike finished hotly, flushing while the pony just looked and looked at him with a condescending, almost sympathetic smile.
“How's your letters, pardner?”
“My what?” He blinked in confusion.
“Can you read or write?” the cowpony asked with an air of distinct pity.
“Well... no... nodragon ever taught me... but....”
“Everypony in Appleloosa that's older'n a wobbly tot can at least put their name to parchment,” the pony said calmly. “Most of 'em a good bit more'n that. Y'see, pardner? While you're eatin' your rocks and dreaming about a hoard of your own, scratchin' somethin' out of nothin' away from the rest of your kinfolk, us ponies are workin' together. Buildin' history. Can you feel it, pardner?” He leaned in to the bars a bit more, and Spike shuffled around in the corpse debris with aimless nervousness.
“Could you feel it when you bit into me and tasted the blood pumpin' through these here veins? Everypony, each one of us, is part of something greater than his or her self. You nonponies, you just lack the intellectual capac'ty for greatness. T'ain't nothin' wrong with you, you're a fine, brave young dragon, and smart as a whip, too, if you don't mind me saying so. But you're still a dragon. An' dragons don't build proper empires. We're laying the way to paradise one brick at a time, lil guy, an' ain't nothin' gonna stop us now. But there's a place for dragons, too! Dragons and griffins and buffaloes and all the nonponies. As our food, you become part of us. You'll be used to fuel our bodies as we build the greatest things this world has ever done seen. By bondin' with our flesh, our blood, you'll finally become part of somethin' greater than yourself, somethin' that's really meaningful. It's your destiny to be prey. It's our destiny to eat you and our duty to use that life force and make you greater than yourself. Do you get it?”
For a few moments, black thoughts drifted through Spike's head. Shame about how he'd never really learned any skills except for those necessary to survive on his own. Frustration that his fellow dragons, while strong and brave, always seemed to be lacking some specific, important thing that he could never put his claw on. A nameless longing for a thing that he was unable to describe, only knowing that as he kept moving from place to place, it was never what he was looking for. An emptiness inside, like an empty stomach, but without any food for it. For those moments, Spike actually stopped to wonder, with a chill deep in his spine (and for a feeling to make a dragon cold, it had to be pretty icy), if maybe the ponies were right. If he, if every nonpony thing was just inferior, and that they best they could be was to be a meal for creatures wiser, more magical, more harmonious and industrious than themselves.
He'd never thought such things before. Why would he? Ponies had always been alien, monstrous things that seemed to attack, hurt and kill without warning or need. Spike had adapted to them like every living thing had, by treating them like unpreventable natural disasters. But what if it was more than that? What if there was purpose? What if they really were better, and this was just how things were meant to be?
Then he remembered ugly choking sound Little Strongheart had made as the lasso had tightened, the knot against her throat, and those thoughts incinerated themselves.
“I get that you're so stuck up that you think you have the right to kill anything that's not a pony without thinking about trying to help it, that's what I get. If you're so great, why don't you teach dragons how to write, or buffaloes how to make train tracks, or whatever? You're not better, you're just selfish!”
The pony blinked rapidly several times, his face going through several expressions that Spike couldn't really make out. Eventually those eyes widened with a glint of something like jubilation blurred into mania. “Why, mister dragon, isn't that just the silliest idea I ever done heard! Teachin' non-ponies to act like ponies, hah! Why's it's, it's so plumb crazy it's like you done plucked it out of my ma's book a' fairy tales.”
“You're just saying that because you've never tried. And if you admitted it,” Spike went on with a cold smile aided by his rising certainty, “that'd just make you a terrible pony for all those times you didn't give them the chance, wouldn't it? So you're not going to admit it.” His eyes narrowed. “You coward.” As a well-honed coward himself, he knew his own type.
“What's your name, pardner?” the pony asked as sudden and intent as a bullet shot, all his joviality melting away into pure seriousness.
“Spike,” Spike said, mostly to keep from being called 'pardner' again.
“Pleased to meetcha, Spike. I'm Braeburn. An' I want you t'know, pony to dragon, that we're on the up'n up here. Why, if ever a single soul showed even a sliver of aspiration to the greatness of ponydom, it'd be our solemn duty, wouldn't it, to lend 'em a helping hoof on the way to enlightenment!” He took off his hat and held it in front of his chest. “In fact, Her Princessness as my witness, I'd be happy t'make that offer to that juicy little buffalo girl we hauled back here. Assumin' she hasn't been made into stew meat or some such yet, anywho. Bit of a touch'n go on that, frankly,” he added with a shiny grin.
“Well what are you waiting for?!” Spike screeched, jumping the length of the cell and latching with all fours onto the bars, causing Braeburn to stumble back in surprise. “Come on! Your Princessness as your witness, I bet we can figure out a way to resolve all this dumb stampedey stuff if we just sit down and talk with each other!” He groaned and dropped down, stumbling dizzily as his headache started to surge back. It was tough being self-righteous. He hoped she was still alive. He hoped, he hoped, he hoped.
He'd been hoping that Braeburn would've been dumb enough to just let him out with no catches, but Braeburn wasn't half the idiot that cowboy accent had led Spike to believe. Even before opening the cell door, Braeburn had passed through the bars a set of cuffs that were treated with some chemical coating that would even break dragon teeth. Then Spike had to pass them back because they were too big, and they went through four more pairs of cuffs before they found a pair that would fit without sliding off. A similar pair of cuffs went on his legs, so he couldn't run – not that even his best running speed was exactly a match for any pony's, particularly the kind of earth ponies they had here.
“Poor nutrition,” Braeburn commented mildly as they tried different restraints. “Stunts your growth. Wouldn't find that in a pony, not with family takin' care of family an' makin' sure of a square three meals a day.”
Spike grumbled meaningless broken syllables but made no more protest than that as he followed Braeburn outside.
The very first thing that met him as he stepped outside was a random pony yelling 'Don't make the food exert itself too much, now, you'll toughen up those beefy thighs.' It was met with much laughter from the other ponies nearby. Braeburn just chuckled and shoved Spike along with a pat on the back while Spike was busy glaring.
Ponies were like that. They played with their food, and the food often played back, just to stay sane while hoping for escape. Because when someone talked to you, you talked back. When someone joked at you, you joked back. You got offended when they insulted you, as if their opinions mattered, and acted like they were just regular fellow living beings, not eternally hungry predators that feasted on anything they could catch. Dragons might not have had that oh-so-great civilization stuff that Braeburn boasted of, but anything that could talk had instincts that were a lot deeper, more basic, than that. Instincts towards... conversation.
When it came right down to it, it was hard for Spike and, he thought, for most people to treat ponies like irredeemable, merciless enemies, which was why it seemed so cruel that ponies had zero problems taking advantage of that. It reminded him of a traveling caravan he'd once seen that'd included a griffin family. They'd kept chickens in cages as food supplements the way Spike carried around a few spare gems when he had the chance. The chickens had been too dumb to even know they were included on the menu, and responded happily to the idle pats of griffin claws and tossed corn like any lazy, well-fed domesticated creature would. Even as their numbers grew fewer and fewer, they could never do more than cluck mild protests, unable to put two and two together – and even if they had, what could they do about it? They were chickens.
But were ponies irredeemable? Braeburn hadn't shown any shame or regret so far, but maybe just the willingness to talk it out would be enough. Maybe he and Little Strongheart could both get out of this alive, and with Braeburn to cooperate on the pony's side, issue in a new era of peace. Yeah. All that from one little dragon's angry-scared random babbling. That was totally going to happen.
Spike snorted and choked on a fragment of passing tumbleweed.
It was still mid-day, plenty of light although the sun was starting to head in the direction of evening. Appleloosa wasn't exactly as glorious as Spike had expected from Braeburn's description, but it certainly had a lot of different wooden buildings, all of them dedicated to different, seemingly important things. Maybe if he'd been able to read the stupid signs he'd be more impressed. Down the main street to the left, he caught an eyeful of the apple trees Little Strongheart had talked about, a viciously green field with row after row of trees, more than he could count, evenly spaced with the rows staggered to prevent straight movement through them.
Braeburn saw him looking.
“Yep, that there's whatcha call a fine specimen of agriculture,” he said proudly, hefting his chin. “Ponies don't need fruit, but we like 'em. All part of bringin' order to the earth, and who better than earth ponies for that, yippity-doo-daw. Cousin Applejack just planted the latest sapling last week. She loves them trees so much she even names 'em. Last one was called Bloomberg, have you ever heard a' such a fanciful thing in your life? Full of imagination, my cuz.” He chuckled fondly.
Spike thought that through, and also thought about two unicorns who'd given up the ground to follow a less than ideal navigator into the sky.
“You sound like you care about each other. Other ponies, I mean,” he said as they passed a group of ponies in black formal wear (had to be mad hot in this climate, but whatever).
“Care about each other?” Once again, he'd genuinely surprised Braeburn. “Course we care about each other! Why, look over yonder!”
He pointed a hoof at the black-clad ponies. Spike looked closer, saw they all had their hats clutched to their chests, except for one pony who was sobbing into her hooves with her hat – the only one with a black veil – still on. Through the constant murmur and bustle of Appleloosa's extremely busy and somewhat rowdy daily routines, he made out one particular voice emerging from the ponies he was looking at. A strong, solemn voice. Still, he only got fragments of it.
“...to the ground... earth to earth, ashes... certain hope....”
“That there's Lariat Swish's fun'ral,” Braeburn clued Spike in, holding his own hat to his chest briefly out of respect. “The one your buffalo friend stomped and bit up real bad. We could've saved 'im if she hadn't gone for his neck like that, but once the jugular goes, it's all over. His widow's takin' it awful hard, though not as hard as some I've seen.”
'He deserved it,' is what Spike wanted to say and did not say.
“Maybe he didn't have to die,” is what he actually said. In hope of peace. In hope of... anything other than being dinner, or running from being dinner, for the rest of his life until he grew big enough to just fly away from all these scary ponies and hide deep in a cave somewhere.
“Maybe,” Braeburn said thoughtfully, looking the dragon over in an inspecting way that made Spike fidget despite himself.
Little Strongheart was in another little shack much like the one Spike had been in – with the notable difference that it was A) heavily reinforced, and B) rattling regularly from violent, steady thuds.
Spike grinned.
Man, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been so happy to hear a constant stream of vaguely-intelligible curse words. Buffalo swears were weird.
Angry Little Strongheart was good. It meant she was alive and had the energy to waste on silly little things like being mad. Not to mention attempting a breakout! That was one tough freaking buffalo girl.
“A right firecracker, that one,” Braeburn muttered, grabbing his ring of keys and unlocking the mini-prison's exterior door.
Strongheart's furious, panting expression lasted just briefly before she managed to interpret through her rage and actually see what was in front of her. “SPIKE! Let him go, you monster!”
“Now that ain't no way to start up an amicable conversiculatin',” Braeburn objected gently, closing the door behind them and (Spike couldn't help but notice) locking it. “You may not believe it, but it's your lucky day, miss... Strongheart, ain't it?” he addressed the buffalo whose purple-bruised neck still had a vein visibly pulsing in it. She looked ready to jump through the bars and eat him, given the chance.
Little Strongheart didn't even say anything. She just snorted repeatedly in that way that seemed inherent to buffaloes, staring with her head half-lowered, full of pent-up aggression that was probably covering over fear. Spike was relieved to see that her tough hide had protected her from the worst of the sand burns, although it hadn't done much for her neck, and she sported a nasty gash on her side that was probably from being dragged over a pointy rock.
“I-it's okay, Little Strongheart,” Spike told her, though he wasn't sure himself if that was true or not. But someone had to be the cool head here and it sure wasn't gonna be her. “I've been talking with Braeburn here and convinced him that a truce might not be such a bad idea. He just wants you to show that you can be, you know, civilized about it, by pony standards.”
“Pony standards.” She gave him exactly the look he'd expected to get. “The standards of creatures who blocked our ancestral stampede trail and proceeded to pick us off one by one. You saw what they did to poor Stonehoof, Spike! Tell me why I'd want to meet the standards of creatures so, so VILE!”
“Might be on account if you knowin' a losin' fight when ya see it, I reckon,” Braeburn put in mildly. “I don't blame you for takin' it awful hard, what we've done to your kinfolk, but as far as we're concerned, you done attacked us for no reason. After that, well, we did what came natch'rally. But even in the best of hunts, we lose one every once in a while. I gotta pay my respects to a prey that can manage that. And I've been givin' it a little thought while we moseyed on over here, and I think I can offer you a solution that'll help to keep both of our kin from havin' t'hold any more funerals, if you're up for it.”
Little Strongheart's nostrils flared. “My people won't accept it, whatever it is you're offering. I'm not sure I would.”
“Strongheart, please!” Spike actually clasped his hands in front of her in pleading. “At least listen to whatever he has to say with an open mind! I know it sucks, I know it's horrible how ponies enjoy eating other people, but that's just how they are, they don't... they....” He fumbled for words, trying to explain what he'd realized intuitively but never really had a reason to express till now.
“T'ain't nothin' personal,” Braeburn supplied helpfully, patting a hoof on Spike's head. “That's how it is. It'd be a mighty tragic misunderstandin' if you died thinkin' we hated ya. But it ain't in pony natural t'be spiteful. Sure, we might kill ya... eat ya... and have a dang good ol' time of it doing so, but would it be better if we all wailed and wept while doin' so? You all'd still be dead and bread, as it goes.”
Little Strongheart scuffled around in her cell with uncertainty, hooves stirring up dust in the hard-packed floor. It was uneven, as though she'd tried to dig through it in a few places before giving up.
“Just say what you have to say,” she said finally, noncommittally.
“Now, as to sops for your pride,” Braeburn went on easily, tilting his hat to shade his eyes as he leaned against the opposite wall, “I think it worth a mention that you've taken darn good ratios of kills to casualties for any prey species. Right up there with paramilit'ry griffon flocks, which speaks mighty fine of your organizational skills. I expect you're still smartin' over losin' your bigwig, but confound it, we lost Sheriff Silver Star not a fortnight back, so that'd put us about even.”
“Besides that, you're all four-legged hoof plodders much like ourselves. Why, aside from your, pardon me for puttin' so fine a point on it, big-boned physiques and off-kilter wardrobe choices, y'all'd fit in trottin' the streets of Manehatten just fine. Physically speakin',” he stressed very clearly, “there ain't that much to separate a pony from a buffalo.”
“Under frontier law, technic'ly, there's prey, an' then there's varmints. Prey are free meals. Varmints are meals what likes to fight back. You understand my sayin' that you've long since climbed your way up to the second bracket, which limits our options for dealin' with y'all peaceably like. In fact, there's just one way that comes to mind, so far as I can cotton, and that's if we make y'all honor'y ponies. Accorded all the respects an' rights of a real pony, as long as y'all don't stir up no further trouble. Though I'm not sure if I'd care to test the strength of those there rights, heh, right in the middle of Canterlot, if'n you get my drift.”
“So you'd let us go through Appleloosa and continue on the trail if we did whatever we need to do to be... honorary... ponies? You wouldn't try to eat us later or anything?”
“Y'got it right on the nose, miss. Why, violatin' a sacred tradition like that would have the Princess herself clappin' us all in irons if word got to her! Mind you, we'll all be missin' that savory smell of barbecue bison waftin' through the warm breeze on a midday, but there's plenty of each prey 'round here, and we ain't so stubborn that we can't import right along our train line if neces'ry.”
“You know, maybe we'd have better luck with a truce if you could stop talking about how delicious the people you're trying to make peace with are!” Spike hissed in Braeburn's ear. Braeburn chuckled and mumbled an almost embarrassed apology.
“Right... so what would we have to do, exactly?”
“Oh, not much, not much. Just show you're willin' to participate in the basic mores of pony culture. Attend a proper hoedown or two, maybe partake of a salt lickin' contest. And, a'course, eat meat. We'll need somethin' properly symbolic so's the townfolk don't get uppity an' start questionin' your dedication, y'understand, but I'm thinkin' you can just nosh this ol' dragon babe here and we can call it a day.” Braeburn poked a hoof in Spike's tummy, his friendly tone and relaxed pose never wavering while Spike's mental world just exploded in renewed terror.
Spike tried to stare past the hat's shadow to Braeburn's eyes without moving and couldn't do it. This was crazy. “But... I'm the one who came up with the idea of you guys making peace in the first place! Why would she have to eat me instead of a rattlesnake or a chicken or something?!”
He wasn't whining, because whining was childish, and he was a fierce loner dragon who could take care of himself. And he was definitely not trembling. It just wasn't fair, that was all. It wasn't FAIR. All of a sudden, everything about Braeburn that had seemed reasonable and likable seemed to be just honey coating over poison. All that time he'd listened, and talked, and tried to be patient and hopeful even though the ponies hadn't seemed to deserve it, and Braeburn was just going to KILL him like THAT?! Like he was a... a....
A chicken.
The chickens hadn't wanted to die either. He'd watched once when one of them had had her neck wrung. So casually, so businesslike, because it was just a chicken. You might talk to a chicken while you fed it, since you saw it every day and all, but you didn't get attached to your food. But the food, if it was stupid, might get attached to you.
“Well, I don't think we could exactly call you a pony in any way, shape'r fashion, lil feller,” Braeburn explained with a smile, leaning his head to look Spike right in the eyes. Green, green eyes in a face so rough but still so carefree. It wasn't fair, Spike thought to himself. “I mean, look at ya. No hooves, you walk on two legs so far as I can tell, and you don't even have warm blood or fur! Dragons are obvious prey, or varmints at best. And proper ponies put down varmints.” The pony turned his gaze back to Little Strongheart. “So what'll it be, missy? Can you be the putter downer, or would you rather be the put down? Makes no difference to me, neither way.”
Little Strongheart's hooves slammed into the bars so violently and so quickly that even Braeburn nearly fell over in surprise. Spike, in contradiction to everything he'd learned, everything he'd taught himself throughout his whole life, just stood there, the hum of vibrating iron thick in his ears, his legs locked and his brain just about iced over. This was seriously Braeburn's best and only offer. For Little Strongheart, the buffalo girl whose life he'd kind of maybe at least halfway saved, who he had, he liked to think, befriended, to EAT him. To chop him into chunks for a stew, or maybe grind him into mush like one of those bowls he'd had back at the buffalo camp, or just skewer him and roast him whole....
His imagination flashed to a scene of him being covered in honey and seared on a grill. The ponies would probably complain because dragon scales didn't sear easily to give those black criss-cross marks. Then Little Strongheart would close her eyes and take a bite... and another, and another, swallowing it down without tasting, like medicine. And then his life would be over and he would be part of her, the energy that gave her the strength to charge through the stampeding trail with her buffalo brothers and sisters. The ponies would hoot and cheer the buffaloes on with hats waved in hooves, and no one would be around to be sad for him, no one would care, he'd just be GONE, the end of the Spike story forever.
IT WASN'T FAIR.
Then his brain caught up with the essential animal fear of being cornered and messed up by life with no recourse. Of course Little Strongheart wouldn't agree to it. He felt ashamed for even thinking for a second that she would. She was better than that.
“You're nothing but monsters,” Strongheart snarled quietly, her breath a gargle of spittle. She looked so strong and so frail at the same time, the vein at her neck no longer bulging but her bruise still vivid against the rest of her coat, legs shaking just the littlest bit. “It's either thing or the other, pony or food, and there's no room for anything else with you ponies, is there?”
“As a cousin of mine would say, yyyyyyup,” Braeburn replied, spitting a yellow glob into a corner.
“Alright,” Little Strongheart said with her voice barely more than a low whisper of a rasp.
Spike stopped breathing.
“I'll do it,” she confirmed, not even looking at him.
This couldn't be real.
“Well, swaller my britches an' call me a laundry line! Didn't think you'd have the gumption, missy, don't mind me sayin' so.” Braeburn shook his hat to the very back of his head, fully exposing a face that was so honest, so open. So merrily cruel. “Now, you do understand it's as much 'bout the spectacle and the symbolism as anythin' else. We'll have to call out the town and make a proper hunt of it, so's they all know where your loyalties lie.”
“Fine.” Her voice was alien to Spike now, like a completely different person's. He stared and stared at her and saw nothing of her earlier warmth or steadfastness. Just tired grimness as she panted through the bruised throat he'd saved from rope, her sides heaving slightly. “Whatever, just be quick, before I change my mind and decide on honor over living after all.”
Braeburn left them alone in that one-room hunk of splintery planks while he went to make the, as he put it, 'preparations.' For so long, Spike couldn't say anything. Couldn't think of what to say. He was torn between fear, anger and a feeling that it was all just a dream. How could she? It wasn't fair. Life should be fair. Why wasn't it? What had he done to deserve this? Had he walked under a ladder, broken a mirror, kicked a black cat? Why did the ponies have to mess up his life so completely? Why couldn't he just be allowed to be safe and have friends?!
Tears dripped down his cheeks to steam gently on the floor.
“W-why-”
“DO YOU THINK I WANT TO?!” Little Strongheart screamed.
Spike stumbled back against the far wall, eyes wide, tears startled away.
Words kept on rushing out of the buffalo girl like a river. “EVERY DAY I WATCHED SOMEONE I CARED ABOUT DIE! FRIENDS AND FAMILY I'D KNOWN MY WHOLE LIFE, STRANGLED, CUT UP, TRAMPLED, BASHED WITH ROCKS BUCKED BY HOOVES! THEY CALL THAT LAST ONE TENDERIZING! THEY CALL IT TENDERIZING!” she repeated, her voice cracking on the screech of the last word. “I DON'T WANT TO DIE AND I DON'T WANT ANYBUFFALO ELSE TO DIE, AND THIS IS ALL I'VE GOT!”
“I'm sorry,” she said after a long moment where Spike just stared and watched her panting, panicky foam flecking her lips. “I'm so sorry. But either someone I've known for just a day dies, or everybuffalo I care about dies. I watched it happen over and over and over and I can't do it anymore. If you can't beat them, join them. I'm sorry... but....” Her voice shook. “Would you rather we just laid down and died?”
It was her turn to cry this time, and he watched her tears fall down and moisten the dust.
He couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't absolutely hateful, so he kept quiet.
Maybe, if he was lucky, he'd stick in her throat and she'd suffocate.
But did he even want that?
Before Spike could figure out what he wanted, Braeburn was back, and the two of them were hustled off to the town square. More ponies than he'd ever seen in one place before were there, a huge crowd of pastel with tan and brown and black and white hats, each hat almost as big as Spike himself. The ones from the funeral were very obviously in attendance in their thick, hot black clothes, sweating quietly with intent eyes trained on him and Little Strongheart. The rest were more lively, cheering, joking around, a few of them offering Little Strongheart tips like 'work the paunch' or 'cut his saphenous short.' They seemed to expect a good show of it, talking about watching out for his fire (hah, oh what he would GIVE to be able to breathe fire), his claws, his teeth, even his little tail. All of which might have been dangerous from even a teenage dragon, but Spike didn't have much confidence in himself. All he was good at was running and chatting, and both of those things had failed him so far.
He wondered, feeling numb, how she would eat him.
There was a big empty space in that crowd of ponies, and he was shoved into it, his shackles unlocked, for all the good that did. By now, the sun was starting to get pretty close to the horizon, shooting mottled purple and orange across the sky in a beautiful display that set off the ponies' buildings (mysterious buildings with mysterious purposes written on mysteries lettered signs that he would never live to learn to read) just perfectly. The ponies parted politely to let Little Strongheart through, her head bowed so it was a wonder she even saw where she was going. But her steps weren't dragging or uncertain, and her posture was strong and well-balanced. Determined.
Spike's stomach rumbled, it having finished off the last of the stew the buffaloes had given him. He hated it, he hated being hungry, he hated the very existence of food itself as he looked around at all those bright, shiny round ponies eyes staring and watching and waiting expectantly.
“We are gathered here today,” Braeburn said loudly and authoritatively, in a tone unlike his usual one, and a good few ponies laughed and catcalled. He chuckled. “Aww, just joshin' ya, folks! Ain't no call to be a stick in the mud over a joyous o-kay-SHUN like this! Y'all all know the rules: no throwin' things, no stickin' hooves out, no interferin' whatsoever b'yond cheerin' our gal on. Any questions, miss buff- ah, that is t'say, miss PONY?”
Little Strongheart shook her head. Spike looked for gaps in the crowd, some place to run or hide, but there was nothing. Unless he spontaneously sprouted wings and flew, anyway.
“In that case-”
“Shouldn't we bless it first?!” a pony in the back called out, and a couple ponies near the front laughed so hard they had to hold themselves to stay standing.
“Why, that's a fine ideer! Hats down, everypony!” Braeburn lowered his hat to his chest and closed his eyes as everypony else did likewise. Spike tensed, ready to run, but saw Little Strongheart still with dark eyes wide open, staring silently, expressionlessly. “Good food,” Braeburn said with his voice balancing expertly between homey cheer and ritualistic seriousness. “Good meat. Good golly... let's eat!”
The ponies cheered and threw their hats in the air. Braeburn himself leaned forward to slap Spike on the rump and holler, and Spike ran forward a few paces out of sheer surprise. Little Strongheart lunged, and after that there was definitely no stopping running. The air was full of the happy mania (leaning more to the angry side, for some ponies who had recently lost loved ones) of the crowd, a twangy-accented roar that became an indecipherable earthquake in his ears. Spike ran without thinking of the point of it, ran without hope or a plan, ran just to live for another second of a life that he was increasingly questioning the fruitfulness of.
With the encroaching shade of evening, the pony background and the dust kicked up by claws and hooves, it became more and more difficult to actually see Little Strongheart in the quick glances he could afford to give to check back on her position. He ended up letting his eyes unfocus a little, paying attention to the movement and vibrations than anything else, although the sharp contrast between her bruised neck and the rest of her still kept itself burned in his vision.
Dragons weren't made for the ground like buffaloes were. Before very long, his breath was a panicked whistle in his throat, his lungs were searing iron, his feet and knees were mud. He didn't want to die. That was all he knew. He ran into the ponies, attempted to get through them, but they just shoved him back. Surprisingly gentle shoves, their hooves were almost soft.
Little Strongheart's hooves swung for the back of his head, probably with some idea of knocking him out before things got worse. They got a little closer every time. The air between her hooves and his head whistled harder, louder, and soon her hooves were grazing his prominent head spikes.
She hit him, and he went flying facefirst into the dirt, eating a mouthful of grit and banging his front teeth so they ached terribly. Still, he got on his feet and was dodging the followup blow he sensed rather than saw coming, as his eyes whirled over the crowd disorientedly, seeing a little filly in front with cactus flowers in her curly orange mane grinning and stomping her hooves in excitement. He ran a quick circle just to give himself time to catch his breath back and outrun the shock of immediate pain, and the filly nagged at him. She was about his size. Maybe a big bigger, but not too much so.
He was pretty sure he could jump that high.
With absolutely no better ideas occupying his head, Spike ran full-tilt for the pony girl. Her parents gasped and started to pull her back once they got an idea of his intent, but too late – he jumped the best jump of his entire life (which still wasn't that amazing, given legs of his size, but whatever, he wasn't trying to impress anyone here!) and landed square on her snout. She shrieked and flailed around and, even now, with his foot-claws digging into her fur, he felt the tiniest bit guilty. Then he got over it and grabbed onto her mane, scrambling up to her back. From there, the backs of other nearby ponies were available.
And from there... was freedom.
Maybe.
It wouldn't have worked if the crowd had been even half the size it was. The popularity of the event, with seemingly the whole town turned out to see it, worked against the ponies, because the crowd was packed so thickly that even the littlest bit of chaos had a ripple effect, and there was absolutely nowhere for anypony to go. Some of the more level-headed ponies were yelling at the others, trying to calm them down and get them organized to capture him and resume the hunt, but Spike was faster than he'd known he was capable of being, and kept on the move – with all four legs, wouldn't the ponies be proud of him being a quadruped for a change? – without so much as bothering to look where the heck he was going. Anywhere, any direction, would be better than where he'd just been. As long as it was away from the ponies.
All of the ponies.
Near the edge, he slipped and fell to the ground, and then Spike became totally certain that he was doomed. But to his amazement, they didn't seem to be able to catch him. In all the panic, with all the dust they were kicking up, with the sun just a bare orange sliver against the sky now, he was safe on the ground even in the middle of the enemy... as long as he kept moving quick enough so that any one pony couldn't notice him and do something about it. As soon as one figured out what was going on, he was ten ponies away. Little Strongheart and Braeburn were long gone, and the ponies couldn't understand each other through the clamor of yells any more than he could understand them.
He ran right through an empty barbecue station, a huge pit of unheated coals with several dirty iron rotisseries big enough for something huge (like a buffalo...), picked-clean bones and dishes both dirty and clean all around in neat piles. Long tables nearby provided cover with their benches and their red and white checkered cloths.
That was the good. The bad was that there were still ponies crying out and chasing vaguely in his direction, swarming all over. Even aimlessly in the shadows of the late day, there was no way they could keep on missing him forever. And the further away from them he went, the further he went from cover, which only made it more likely for individuals to spot him and catch him. Appleloosa had too much open space, too many wide streets to allow for easy galloping, not enough things to hide around. Worst of all were the glimpses he caught of the land beyond Appleloosa. There was nowhere to hide once he got clear of the buildings, the rocks weren't nearly frequent or big enough. Apparently he'd had the bad luck to run in the opposite direction from that stupid orchard that would've been useful. Nice going, Spike. Time to die for your dumbness, just like Raggle. At least the ponies wouldn't let him go to waste, hah.
His stomach churned with exhaustion-enhanced nausea and he licked at dust-coated lips. He would have given almost anything just to be able to sit down and have one nice glass of water.
And then Spike heard the train conductor's call as the horizontal column of black iron loomed before him.
“LAST STOP BEFORE-” was all he got, the clanking of train machinery drowning out the last word. What had it been? Somethingville.
Spike got an idea. A very bad idea. But, like Little Strongheart, when all you had to work with were bad ideas, maybe picking the last bad one would work out. It looked like a cargo train, not one with tons of passengers, and the employees weren't taking any breaks to watch the show. It was a way out. Maybe the only way out that didn't involve turning around and running through the whole stupid town of bloodthirsty ponies again to get to the orchard, where they'd probably find him anyway even if he lasted that long.
What would he do when the train arrived at the next town of bloodthirsty ponies, though?
Well, for a start, at least they wouldn't be actively hunting around and looking for him.
Making up his mind, Spike ran for the train. The very back had several whole semi-open cars of just a bunch of heavy gray bags that looked like they had sand or some other fine-grained, heavy minerals in them. And no ponies. No ponies, thank goodness. He tried to climb in, banged his head until it bled and fell down in the clumsiness of his haste, then climbed in for real while muttering a few words that baby dragons weren't really expected to know yet. Spike took no chances; he wedged himself directly beneath and underneath several bags, even though he felt like he was suffocating, because being hidden was more important than being comfortable. It felt like cement in the things, not just sand, but the physical pain somehow had a distance to it and didn't seem to matter. There was still somehow just enough light while entombed in canvas to watch his blood cut a stark red trickle down through the dull gray cloth sacks.
She'd been going to spill a lot more of his blood than that. She'd really been ready to kill him and turn him into dinner. Just like that. And Braeburn had put her up to it after Spike had given him the idea in the first place.
Spike started to shake.
Come on, you might not find a lot of smiles here, but we can at least spare you a bowl of chili pepper stew.
Why, Little Strongheart?
I'm the one who should be sorry. Things have gotten... hard... since he's been gone.
Had it really been as hard as that? How hard would it have to be for him before he was willing to do the same thing to someone else, someone who trusted him, someone who he might have called a friend? Was this the ponies' fault for being cruel, or Little Strongheart's fault for being weak... or maybe even his fault for just not being smart enough to come up with a better way or keep her from getting caught in the first place?
Nobuffalo wants to just give up and leave after all we've lost. But we'll die if we stay here. I can feel it.
The train was moving now. Its pipes were choo-chooing.
Don't let them lasso you!
Little Strongheart had been a good buffalo, was still a good buffalo at heart. Spike believed that with his whole being. But when forced to, she'd turned into something bad. As bad as the ponies themselves. Ponies... ate things, and transformed them in the eating, into badness, into viciousness, forcing their ideas onto creatures and MAKING those creatures behave in the ways ponies needed them to behave. All the trappings of civilization around them were just a fancy, sophisticated backdrop to a basic drive to fuel their stomachs. Come rain or shine or the death of loved ones, nothing put off a good meal. Nor could anyone be equal to a pony without... not just the meat... but the hunt that preceded the meat. The murder.
That was all they did.
Manifest destiny. To gobble up everything, without pity, and leave only your own droppings behind. A whole nation of mouths that would never stop till they ate their way from ocean shore to ocean shore, and maybe further.
The train's pace quickened, and Spike knew he was free... until he got to the next destination, at any rate. One problem at a time, though. One day at a time. Just like always.
They wouldn't catch him.
No matter what, Spike swore that they'd never catch him.
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excelent. i see big things for this little dragon, perhaps he destroys everything.
This story is awesome!!! I LOVE this
This is freakin' AWESOME
I'm quite intrigued by this new way of placing the hierarchical food chain. Keep it coming 
Very interesting I gotta say.
Wow. So the ponies have become arrogant, racist, predatory, imperial barbarians.........How strangely intriguing.
It's like an extreme combination of some of our worst habits all in a very large kingdom.
Hang in there, Spike......
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TURN GIANT AND EX-TER-MIN-ATE.
It's so weird...YET I CAN'T STOP WATCHING!!
like this:
The only place these beasts belong is between the dirt and a jackboot.
1964687 reminds me of the nords in skyrim
Yeah, I'm not gonna read anymore. I'm not a fan of the trope of well civilized ponies (or anyone for that matter) being portrayed as racists.Not my preferred of tea.
9723402
You call a bunch of cannibals civilized?
And yes, they’re basically cannibals, though not technically, i think its what seems closest.