CUSTOMER: House of Sparklore
HAIR AND TAIL COLOR: white w/ purple streak
COAT COLOR: pink
EYE COLOR: purple
PSYCHE CONFIGURATION: Type II – Includes basic understanding of owner's primary language and strengthened imprinting
LONGEVITY CLASS: Lifetime plus two years
OTHER MARKS: House of Sparklore's Royal Crest on flank areas, left and right
VERIFY SELECTION? OK
“Prima. Prima. Open your eyes, Prima.”
The pony known as Prima opened her eyes to a glorious light. Before stood a beautiful creature of purple hair, fair skin with a subtle bluish tint, and sharp elven ears. Her dress was white and frilly, and her forehead adorned with a jeweled platinum tiara.
“I’m Trista,” said the bipedal creature, “and we’re going to be best friends forever!”
Prima knew not why, but she found herself inexplicably drawn towards the creature who stood mostly on her hind legs. At first, she was frightened by Trista’s brilliance, but when Trista brushed Prima’s white mane, the pony felt a euphoric rush of warmth and happiness. Immediately she embraced Trista as best she could with her thin legs and hooves.
As the days went by, Trista and Prima were inseparable. They lived with many other bipedal creatures like Trista, but they were taller and sometimes wore heavy metal clothing. They all seemed to like Trista a lot, for many of these bipeds greeted her with pretty words and allowed her to go anywhere.
They had their own park where Trista and Prima would play in. As large as the park was, Trista often settled on one spot surrounded with a lot of books brought by her metal friends to read under an artificial sun. Trista would always read to Prima, and while Prima did not understand the words, she loved hearing Trista’s voice, eating snacks, and laying on her lap while she brushed her mane.
During these days in the park, Trista explained that they lived on something called a starship, and she, her father, and many others had been travelling in an ocean of stars for thousands of years. She mentioned that her ancestors came from lost planet called "earth", which was like a part but much bigger and shaped like a ball. It had more plants, animals, and other bipeds, as Trista showed Prima in an old book. It even had more ponies like Prima, though they were only colored black, white, or various shades of brown. Somewhat disconcerting that primitive bipeds with rounded ears and paler skin rode on these ponies and had strings tied to their mouths. It looked painful, and Prima looked up to Trista, expecting a simple explanation.
"Don't worry," said Trista. "The ponies and people were friends with one each other. They would do nothing to hurt ponies."
Prima hoped that was not the case, and she trusted her owner's words to the fullest. Trista often read that book over and over again, and sometimes she made drawings of earth. Prima tried to mimic her, but all she could do was roll up a ball of mud and add paint to it. It made Trista smile when she presented it her.
"It's beautiful," said Trista as she held up the dirt representation of planet earth. "You know, I never have been on earth. They say it's lost, but if we were to leave this starship, then we go there and find it. That's promise, Prima. We'll find earth and live there forever!"
Prima whinnied happily. She hopped and galloped around Trista before playfully tackling her and then licking her face.
Years passed. As Trista grew taller, so did Prima, and she was given saddle for Trista to ride on. Whenever they celebrated Trista’s birthday, they also celebrated Prima’s as well. Parties were often lavish and crowded, and Prima sometimes jealous if Trista spoke with bipedal creatures of her same species or petted other animals. Gradually, though under Trista’s insistence, Prima befriended her owner’s other friends, particularly the five who visited her on a regular basis. They were not like Trista or the other bipeds living on the ship. The first was very competitive liked to race with Prima. The second dressed more beautifully, and liked to groom Prima whenever she visited. The third also liked to groom Prima, but was very shy and brought a lot more animals with her. The fourth was hyperactive, and liked to give Prima lots of food while jumping up and down. The fifth seemed to the most normal one despite the large hat and the tiny spots on her face. Aside from Trista, only Prima allowed that female biped to ride her.
In one party, Trista and her friends had an unexpected guest. The guest entered her bedroom unannounced, and addressed himself as “Uncle”, and he was a well-dressed bipedal male with dark hair and a devilish beard. He presented Trista with a gift, which she took hesitantly, but lingering around speaking in polite yet slimy words. His words somewhat angered Trista’s friends. They pointed and shouted at him, but he kept on smiling and waving his hand dismissively. That made her friends even more angrier, and one got ready to draw out her dagger.
Trista’s kind father arrived with a pair of metal-wearing bipeds, and everyone calmed down. That father did this thing called an apology, and the Uncle left Trista’s bedroom along with the father.
Sometime after, these five friends stopped visiting, and Trista grew sadder. She smiled every time Prima visited her or licked her face, and her happiness returned, but only briefly. Something had afflicted the entire ship. The metal-wearing bipeds also looked sadder, and Trista’s father could be heard yelling from the down the halls. They all tried to put up smiles, but Prima could not help but feel that they were faking it.
One night, Trista started acting strangely. Instead of dressing in bright colors, she wore a dark staid dress. She told Prima to stay in her suite, but she attempted to follow her anyway. Trista ordered her to stay again, but Prima stubbornly continued to follow her.
“Okay, you can come along,” said Trista.
Trista saddled Prima, and she rode her out of the room and down the hallway at a leisurely pace. When they arrived, they ran into a group of metal-wearing bipeds who wore darker clothes than the usual ones. In the middle of the group stood the Uncle that Prima encountered many moons ago. Prima felt Trista shaking in her seat, and rightfully so. When that bipedal smiled, Prima felt Trista trembling. Even as Trista stepped down, Prima could sense the fear caused by that adult bipedal male. At the same time, she felt so much hate and anger directed towards him.
"Prima, please go back to my room and wait for me," said Trista. Prima felt afraid, and she wanted to come with Trista to dinner. She tried to force her way in, but Trista pushed her to the ground.
"Please go!" Trista cried.
She pushed me. Trista was never like that, and the trek back to the room felt the longest. Prima could not comprehend the reason only that it hurt her. All she could do was lay down in her sheets and cry.
Then it came without warning. Hours must had passed, and before Prima knew it, the metallics scrambled around Trista’s room frantically packing her luggage. Trista herself stormed in to grab her purse and waved to Prima follow her.
Prima and Trista pushed through a crowded hallway. The metal-wearing bipeds were yelling to each other. Everyone was in a panic. The starship was moaning. Red lights pulsed on and off above them. Prima felt a boom rock the entire structure, and felt herself floating off the ground for almost a second. A lot of the other bipeds, metallic, metal-wearing, and non-metallic, were trying to get her and Prima to a hangar filled with smaller metal spacecraft. They all stuffed her inside one of them along with their luggage. Prima did not like this new ship. It was too small, and it did not have a park.
The family and friends were in tears when they hugged Trista. Trista's father placed his hand on Prima’s head, and said this to her:
"Protect her, my little pony."
The door was shut. Trista and Prima rushed to their glass pods in their ship. The hatches sealed shut. Cold gasses filled in, and they immediately fell asleep.
Prima woke to the sound of coughing. The glass hood squeaked as it rose up to release excess gasses. The first face she saw was the very first face Prima beheld when she came to this world.
However, Trista looked a little older. She was thinner, and she wore rags instead of the pretty clothes her father bought her. Trista still had her smile, but behind it Prima sensed some pain behind it.
"We've made it," said Trista. "We're on a new world, and we're going to go on a new adventure, just like we promised."
Prima recalled Trista speaking about a home world where her ancestors came from, and that one day she wanted to visit it. Had they arrived? The pony needed to know, and clambered out of her pod towards the window. She nearly slid down, because the ship now rested at an angle.
The window was small, but outside the barren world was blighted with a half-red sky. There two bright objects suspended over the horizon, and she vaguely recalled Trista describing them from a book. One of them was the moon, and it supposedly changed shaped every night. The other was the sun, and it was supposed to move up and down. Prima watched them for an hour. Neither changed position.
Trista sat hunched over at her corner over by a fire localized in a canister. She was reading one of her books again, but the one she held her in hands appeared tattered and stained. In between pages, she had regular coughing fits that sometimes lasted for minutes. Usually these things occurred whenever Trista drank too much milk or smelled something bad like poop. Prima sniffed the air. There was no milk. There was no poop. It smelt of rust.
Hours passed until Prima realized that more than a week had gone by where the sun and the moon did not move. The only time she did not see them was when squid-like aircraft swam through the skies to exude clouds and storms from biometallic orifices. When these storms occurred, they were noisy and violent, and too often than not, the water leaked into their escape ship. Prima tried tasting the seeped water, and she did not like it.
She hated this place. There was not much room to move around, and there was nothing to eat. Whatever food they had, Trista hoarded them all to herself, but she ate very little. There were days that Trista stopped eating, and offered a few morsels for Prima to consume. The pony was not hungry during those times, and while she was a little angry with Trista for hoarding the food, Prima knew that her owner needed them more than she did.
Eventually, Trista stopped reading altogether, and she used her books to create fire on cold days. Her coughing became frequent and worse. Whenever she coughed, she covered her mouth with her white handkerchief, which soon turned red after a few minutes.
Her frame was almost skeletal, and color in her formerly pristine body had evaporated. Trista hardly did anything in her waking hours except glue herself at her computer terminal and read through digital manuals. This was unlike her. Trista had often stated that reading on glass screens gave her eye strain, which was why she preferred paper books.
On top of her being glued to the computer, she was mixing various foul-smelling chemicals together that exacerbated her coughing fits with the concoctions smoked and fizzled. Trista sharply told Prima to stay away.
She did. Prima fell asleep one day, and then she was woken up by Trista who had a strange hand-blaster in one of her hands.
"Hold still," said Trista.
Before Prima could whinny, Trista injected something into her pony’s neck.
10011011 00001001 00010111 00100000 10010101 01001111 01110011 10001110
11000100 11011111 11111010 11011110 00101101 01011111 11110110 01101000
01001011 11100100 00001001 01000110 11001001 10101000 10000011 01000101
…
SHUTTING DOWN IMPRINTING PROTOCOL
RESUMING NATURAL FUNCTIONS
Prima woke up very hungry, and just her luck, a plate full of spongy rations sat before her. Greedily she devoured it and lapped up every drop of water from a nearby bowl until she noticed Trista’s body slumped over her chair. The panicked pony galloped over to lick her face. There was still warmth left, and gradually Trista opened her eyes.
“You’re still here,” smiled Trista. “Sorry. I forgot to open the hatch. Let me get that for you.”
A seemingly heavy cloak covered her thin arm as her emaciated hand struggled to reach over to press a button on the console. The escape ship moaned painfully as the side watch split open from the middle. A mix of hot and cold air breezed in followed by a blazing orange light. The smell of rust was stronger than ever, and the incoming dust stung Prima’s eyes.
Still, the prospect of finally being able to go outside excited the pony, but a huge worry anchored her back in the escape ship. Trista was unable to move.
“You’re free,” said Trista. “I’ve reprogrammed you so you don’t have to obey my words anymore. Go.”
Prima barely understood what she said. She nudged Trista with her muzzle.
“I won’t make it,” Trista said. “Please leave. Now!”
As far as she remembered in her conscious life, Prima had almost always obeyed Trista’s words without question, and there were only a few times the pony needed stern reminders. A sense of heaviness had lifted from the pony’s mind and soul. She felt as if she could gallop and leave Trista behind. She was free. She could roam the world as long as she wished.
Unfortunately, Trista’s orders were no longer valid. Prima wrapped as much food and water in a cloth sack, and slung it along with Trista onto her back.
She stepped out into the worst of two extremes. This Planet of Death felt both cold and hot at the same time. It had no day or night, and it left Prima restless while she carried Trista across a barren wasteland. This was not the planet Trista promised her. There was no blue sky. There were hardly any clouds. There was no edible grass, and no animals, let alone insects, appeared.
Trista was painfully light. Too often Prima had to look back to make sure she was still riding her, but seeing her each time made her sadder and anxious. Trista needed help. She needed a special type of biped called a “doctor” to fix her like how mechanics fix the metallics. However, the Planet of Death was unforgiving. No matter how far Prima walked, she saw no signs of civilization and other bipeds. There were only dust and dirt.
Prima’s body was in pain from all the walking. Occasionally she rested, but her worries surged back into her whenever she saw Trista’s body. A quick lick on her cheek confirmed that she was alive, but barely. Hearing her moan and cough served to increase the urgency, and it forced Prima to keep on moving.
Gradually, the walking slowed to a snail’s pace. Prima could barely keep herself standing. Food and water were gone, and Trista weighed so little that Prima hardly noticed her presence. The pony was almost ready to collapse right when she heard a loud boom behind her. A giant red mushroom cloud of smoke rose miles from where they came, but Prima was not sure their escape ship was in that general direction. Prima thought nothing further about it, and so she continued the slow march through the wasteland.
She barely made ten paces when large black aircraft descended above them and shone their spotlights onto the ground. Startled, Prima galloped a few paces before she tripped. After a hard tumble, the pony continued to lay on the ground, and was too weak to immediately get back up.
The worry over Trista increased her frustration as she slowly recovered control of her legs. At the same time, the large black aircraft landed, and a line of metal-wearing bipeds surrounding a well-dressed biped filed out from the side hatch. They gathered around a dark spot in the distance, which turned out to be Trista herself.
The pony’s heart raced. Somehow beneath his oxygen mask, Prima recognized the bipedal as Trista’s “Uncle”. The pony could not whinny. She could not get up fast enough as the Trista extended out her stick-like right arm right as the Uncle extended out a hand-blaster towards Trista in kind.
Beyond the aircraft’s roaring idle engines, Prima could not hear it, but she saw the flash of a loud bang. Trista’s arm fell limp, and just as they appeared, the Uncle and his companions filed back into the aircraft, which then shot up into the air before disappearing into space.
The shock and panic pushed Prima back to her hooves and galloped to where her dear Trista lie. The pony paced around frantically, whinnying in futility, and neighing in the hopes that Trista would wake up. She licked her cheek one more time.
Trista no longer moved.