War. War never changes.

The words scream themselves, a burning red left on your retinas against a backdrop of concrete grey. They’re angry at the world, they’re angry at ponykind. Perhaps, just a simple perhaps, they’re even angry at themselves. Most likely, though the pony who left the message was sure to be long gone and long dead, the words were directed at ponykind’s ancestors, the only ponies safe from our bullets, our hungry, our diseased. Safe by a distance of a good two hundred some years.

Red splatters engulf the empty space at the edge of the words.

Perhaps it was meant to be the blood of the dead and dying but with the color it was hard to believe that. If you had seen death, you’ve seen blood. If you’ve seen war, you’ve seen blood. If you’ve lived in the wasteland, you’ve seen the blood of many dear and near. This red, so boldly screaming, left a wastelander more with the idea of paint.

I spit, just barely missing my own hooves with my lack luster aim.

Thoughts are for dead ponies, and those with too many caps. If I was to stand here all day I can guarantee I won’t be the latter. My hopes were to be the pony that made it through the night with some shelter over my head. I let out a whinny as a thought strikes me humorous. Maybe after this I can find one of those ponies with too many caps and tell ‘em about this place. Those with the easy life of guaranteed shelter always love hearing about the Stables. Even if it’s already been opened and its treasures plucked from its dead hold upon them, a story can always be found.

Can you imagine that? Telling a bed time story of death to those with plenty of everything but. To me it’s like a bed time story to hear about them, up in their shining ivory tower.

Whatever pony had written those words in all their hoofpainted naïve glory, was dead now. There was no shinin’ tower for them to go to.

I take a hoof step further down the empty hall. All these skeletons of old, all these ponies that thought to save themselves in a stable and missed their chance. For myself that door is ahead of me, unsealed and inviting to tired hoofs. Red paint must have been common inside this Stable as a hoof print lingered on that Stable door-

Blackness.

Blue was my world for a second as I opened my eyes, the blue of the old Equestrian skies. Another foal’s tale. I blinked and what was clear blue now showed flecks of a darker hue and an outline of white. An eye, I guessed and correctly so. “Oooh, been too long since we’ve gotten some good stallion sausage up in here!” My hoof twitches but the rest of my body is failing to heed my call.

A raider mare. Blue eyes on a raider mare, as it were. I blink slow to see if I’m seeing this right.

A voice from nowhere speaks, starting up a ringing in my ears, "You ain't supposed to be playing with your food like that." These raiders must have hit me harder over the head than I had previously thought.

My head lolls to the side, my eyes rolling almost back into my skull with the pain that involuntary motion brought with it. I can see a bit more of where I am now, whether that is a blessing or a curse I don't know. It's a Stable room, so I found my shelter for the evening it seems. On the other hoof it would seem as if raiders already had the same idea. I couldn't even name most of those things that decorated every surface and every cranny. Blood, that's all I could rightly say I knew.

An electric light flickers in the way that reminds me of candlelight at home.

“Don’t you be looking at me none,” The spitting hiss draws my attention to where another mare who presumably had origins tracing back to Tartarus stood, camouflaged with shadows and blood in this horror show of a room. “I’ve got a babe.”

And indeed she did. I saw it perched on the mare’s head as I slowly accustomed myself to whatever body part felt as if it had been set on fire or stabbed. That babe fit right into the assault of disgust I felt rising and unable to purge. A cracking laugh left my throat. Its dull eyes were the only part of it not stained with the blood from its mother’s previous meals. A grin turned ghastly stretches across its face but it looks at nothing. It sat there on top of her head, grinning at nothing. A cough building in my throat draws my attention to both the coppery taste of blood and the sour tang of bile. My laugh still echos hollow.

“Hey! What are you doing,” Anger spears her voice, causing it to crack, a good cover for the confusion and fear beneath it. A hoof cuts off my sight of the foal’s toy for a minute, “What’s he doing? What’s my meal doing?” Her question, this time without the resoundingly painful smack, was now directed in her compatriot’s direction.

“He’s not your meat! You gotta share, you whored up, little filly. I have a babe to feed. I need that food!”

The first mare, with her blue eyes wild and lips painted red to hide the cracks, snapped. She charged. The other mare went down and into the air went baby, cradle and all. Dizziness greets me as I try to watch the fight over who gets to eat my body.

Raiders. I spit, or try to. A trail of drool makes its path down my muzzle.

“No stallion wants a mare with a baby so hah,” Even in my pain ridden state I could hear her tongue darting out in a childish insult, “you can’t have him! He’s mine! The meat is mine!”

I gasp as the searing pain sparks back up. My eyes roll to the back of my head in a heedless effort to see what is causing this, this, no, there is no way to describe it other than the worst pain I had felt yet

Two, no three sets of eyes turn to look in my direction.

Two voices speak as one. “He’s mine!” As one the two lunge.

“You don’t even like the shaggy ones! You always get dingleberries when you try to eat them.”

Miss Lil’ Blue shows off her raider blood and her raider teeth in one movement that I wish had not be so fluid. How in the great wide wastelands can a mare with ribs showing lift up a full grown stallion by the mane? How? My eyes water as the new pain takes over. Once more my sight is filled with the blurred foalhood story of clear blue skies.

“We can shave him, Yeah, look at how easily the hair leaves the scalp. I bet,” My brain starts to rattle in its cage as she starts to shake her hoof, “Yeah, we don’t even need a knife.”

“Don’t…” My voice is barely a croaked out whinny.

I’m ignored as Momma the Raider laughs in Miss Lil’ Blue’s face, “Yeah, and then you get another wig to replace that mess you claim is your real mane.” Her hoof, whatever color it happened to be under brown dirt and darker brown blood, shows a rare helping hoof. Not for me, neigh, but for her fellow raider.

Blankness over takes me again.

Blue eyes are staring me down. Momma isn’t in my limited sight. This time I can’t feel anything. This time the red paint has returned, dancing around the edges of my eyes.

Blackness replaces red and soon it is all back.

This time is my last. I can see that. I can see Miss Lil’ Blue, this time to the view of her tailless behind, in possession of a hooved leg that looks frighteningly familiar, like something I should know like the back of my hoof. And yet, I cannot think with enough clarity to think why this soaking, blood red hoof looks familiar.

Mine. The meat is mine.

I’m at home now, no longer in a Stable, no longer captive to raider mares. I’m lost in a memory, lost in the times before things got lost.

The paint is peeling off of rotting wood that had been there as long has he had. His dad used to say the same thing about this place, says he reckoned the whole settlement was built as a wartime settlement so that Equestria’s brave mares and stallions serving the crown could have their families near without having to leave the border. Certainly seemed that old.

Good place as just about any to raise a foal though. Only in the few and far between settlements do you find ponies that might actually help out ponies, so long as they know ‘em. Strangers better have the caps and better get on out quick right. I was born and raised there and I sired my own there.

I had hoped to raise her there too.

The Wasteland is no place to raise a foal. I promised her the moon, the stars, and the sky they came with and I couldn’t even provide a rock with her name carved into it.

And so I left. I looked for better. I looked for hope. But these are the Wastelands. Those who look for hope end up dead. I wasnt a hero, I wasn't a scavenger. I was a dad.

When my little filly had been shot, she had no idea what had happened. I was watching her at the time, a smile on my lips as she played. It was later we found out it was a stray bullet. She was nicked, just grazed along her foreleg. But oh how she cried. The morning after, when sobs had turned to sniffles and her complaint was of her throat hurting, I teased her about being a little hoarse.

She smiled.

And then she died. Not at that moment, neigh, but infection set in. Her leg turned to poison and it was running rampant before we even knew it was there. She died slow and crying, daddy's little filly died slow and crying in this Celestia forsaken Wasteland.

Anything other than death existed only in tales told to wide eyed fillies.