Keep you free from sin
'Til the sandman he comes
Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight
Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
We're off to never-never land
Something’s wrong, shut the light
Heavy thoughts tonight
And they aren't of Snow White
Dreams of war, dreams of liars
Dreams of dragon's fire
And of things that will bite
Enter Sandman: Metallica: Metallica: 1991
Ponyville Police Station:
Icy Winds groaned as she mumbled in her half-asleep state tossing and turning on the hard bed in her cell, if you could call it a bed. It barely fit the qualifications of one. It was firm, hard against one’s back and the headrest was just metal. Above her, as the bed was a bunk, slept her husband snoring as loud as a freight train.
“Damn him, damn him and his whiskey and booze for getting us both in this mess.” Icy Winds had first thought when the guards had unceremoniously tossed her into the holding cell. “Damn that daughter of mine for blabbing to her dear old mom, her real one, and sending her right to us!” she had also thought.
Icy used a hoof to hit the bunk above her and hissed “Shut up! Some of us are trying to sleep here!”
But still, the snoring continued. Icy groaned and took her pillow and stuffed it on her head, hoping to block out the sound. It was no use and she growled to herself as she placed the pillow back beneath her head.
For the past few weeks, Icy’s nights were nothing but unpleasant, to say the least. And she knew that if she went to prison, they’d get even more unpleasant. It was a well-known fact that foal abusers never got the good life in prison, as that particular crime was highly looked down upon even by some of the worst criminals Equestria had to offer.
Icy Winds spent her nights in fear, wondering what was to become of her if she and her husband did end up losing the trial. She was an attractive mare, that was for sure. To be honest with you dear readers, that was quite possibly her only redeeming quality. Celestia knew that quite a few inmates in prisons really hadn’t seen a mare in years, and Celestia only knew how they’d look at her.
Icy shuddered in her bed. She could only imagine the hungry and ravishing looks the stallions in prison would give her once the guards marched her in in her orange jumpsuit. Of course, given her crimes and what the jury decided, the color might be different. Tartarus, for all she knew she might get the dreaded white jumpsuit, used only for high-risk inmates or (Again she shuddered) those on the infamous death row.
The death sentence was rarely given out thankfully, but there were the rare occasions where juries decided that a crime so heinous had been committed, the sentence was justified and warranted.
Icy Winds hoped this wasn’t one of those times.
Sighing, she propped her head up against the pillow and groaned again, hoping to get some sleep. It soon overtook her, and her eyelids began to grow heavy…
In her dreams, however, even that wasn’t a safe place as she was soon to find.
Icy found herself in a frozen wasteland, devoid of almost any life. Her hooves trotted through the snow beneath her as she used one of her forelegs to shield herself against the bitterly cold wind. Icy chuckled at the irony. Here she was, dealing with her namesake.
Icy wandered the wastes, the sky above her a stark and unforgiving dull gray of cloud cover. Not even the faintest glimpse of sun nor moonlight was able to breach the clouds and shine on down upon her.
Somehow, in some odd way, she found herself in front of her and Last Drop’s house. The windows had been boarded up tight, and it looked as if it hadn’t been lived in for years. Nervously, not expecting what to find inside, Icy used one of her hooves to gently shove the door open.
Shivering from the cold, she rapidly slammed the door shut behind her. She wandered the dusty and long abandoned hallways of the house in a daze, not sure why she had ended up here or where to go.
“H-Hello?” Icy asked nervously, her voice coming out as a stutter. “I-Is anypony here?”
Then, almost as if in answer to her question, the wind began to howl and thunder cracked outside as a jagged streak of lightning illuminated a nearby window and Icy Wind’s form. Then, the roof tore away in a cyclone of freezing ice and snow as the howling turned into that of a nearly deafening roar.
Icy Winds began to feel the ground being lifted up from under her hooves and she let out a scream, barely audible against the howling winds of the cyclone’s whirling torrents and the now continuous rumble of thunder.
Just as she was about to get sucked in, something took mercy on her, or so it seemed at the time.
A dark midnight blue aura of magic reached out and enveloped her and pulled her away from the swirling pillar of cloud just as Icy looked back to see the storm swallow up her home.
Like being shot out of a cannon, Icy Winds was then rocketed towards a stone underneath a single tree.
Groaning in pain as blood dripped from her forehead, staining the pure white ground beneath her crimson, Icy rubbed her head and discovered she was not alone.
Standing in front of her, a dark colored cloak flapping in the wind was a pony, massive in size. She’d never seen a pony this large, larger than even Princess Celestia herself. The cloak hugged the pony’s form and obscured her identity, covering her head and mane completely.
“Icy Winds!” The pony bellowed out in a distorted feminine tone as thunder cracked in the distance, “You dare abuse your own child? The one who was left on your doorstep?”
Icy quivered under the pony’s gaze, the glowing white eyes and the pony’s midnight blue horn being the only visible features under the cloak as the blizzard began to pick up, the wind blowing ever harder still and the snow becoming almost impossible to see through. But it seemed there was a bubble between Icy and the unknown pony, as the snow seemed to blow around them missing them entirely.
“She was never my child! Just the little-feathered brat of some drunken whore! She should be grateful that I took her in and cared for her. Fed her! Bathed her!” Icy Winds shouted back, not considering even for a moment that this might have been the wrong thing to say.
“Funny,” The pony chuckled in amusement. “Only one who I see around here that fits that description is YOU, Icy Winds. Grateful? She had no choice in the matter, you took her in yes, but care?” The pony then snorted in disgust at her fellow equine. “Don’t make me laugh. I hardly think driving your child to the point of running away in an ill-conceived storm was a product of a mother who “Cared”,”
The pony scoffed and her horn glowed again and the ground under Icy began to crack before she found herself falling into what she knew at once was a coffin. It was about that time Icy realized that stone had not been an ordinary one, but her grave marker.
“Please… NO!” Icy pleaded, but to no avail as the lid began to close. “Just give me another chance! I’ll do better next time, I promise!”
“You’re all out of chances, and there is no “Next time”.” The pony laughed as the lid slammed shut and Icy screamed as the ground began to cover up the coffin once more, leaving no trace of Icy’s presence or that she was ever there, to begin with. The pony smirked before she faded away into the winds as the snow swirled around her…
Canterlot Castle: Luna’s Quarters:
The Princess of the Night smirked vindictively as she heard Icy Wind’s scream echoing through her ears as she emerged from the dream world and pulled aside her curtains as she stepped out onto her balcony and let her eyes wander over the city of Canterlot. She had very low tolerance for foal abusers in general and Icy Winds she despised even more than usual.
When the foal in question was one she had grown quite close to, not to mention the child of one of the Element Bearers who brought her back from the living Tartarus that was being Nightmare Moon, she let her dark side out to play, even if just a little.
Luna growled to herself as she thought of the upcoming trial tomorrow. As much as she hated taking Windy off the case, it was for the better. The law had to have been upheld, for better or for worse.
“Is that what you tell yourself to help you sleep at night?” A nasty little voice in the back of her head asked snidely. “Or are you one of those ponies who really believe their own bull? Drink their own Kool-Aid, so to speak?”
“No…” Luna whispered to herself. “I only want what’s best for everypony, and if Windy Whistles has to be taken off the case to save her own reputation as a lawyer, then so be it,”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Just keep thinking that everything will be fine and it’ll all work out, won’t it?” The voice asked sarcastically before inquiring: “But ask yourself this… What if whoever replaces Windy loses the case and Scootaloo goes back into the hooves of those monsters? What then?” it remarked and Luna let out a snarl as she stamped her hoof.
“Shut up… That’s not going to happen,” She hissed, not sure if she even believed herself by this time. At about that moment, her Captain of the Guard knocked on the door with a hoof.
“Come in,” Luna said and the Captain strode in with an eyebrow raised.
“You alright ma’am?” He inquired, his golden eyes seemingly burrowing into Luna’s soul. “Heard you talking to yourself. Got worried,”
“Then you needn’t trouble yourself any, Captain. I was just… thinking some things over, that’s all,”
“Well, got some news you might be pleased to hear. Rainbow’s just named her who she wants to use to prosecute the case. Princess Twilight’s personal recommendation. No bias in who she chose,” the Captain said and handed Luna a small portfolio of the pony in question.
“If I may?” Luna requested and the Captain nodded. Luna, grabbing the portfolio in an aura of magic, levitated it over to her bed and she quickly began using her eyes to scan through it.
A small smile found its way to the Princess of the Night’s face before she let out a sigh of relief as she saw the photo. It was that of a light gray pony, black mane tied in a bun with glasses resting on her face.
Luna knew the pony in question, Raven Inkwell. While she was Celestia’s personal assistant, and while Twilight had chosen her, Luna knew exactly why. Raven had never met Rainbow, Fluttershy nor Scootaloo personally so she didn’t know a single thing about them aside from hearsay and had never met them face to face. That meant she was the perfect choice and there would be very little if any bias involved when she worked this case.
Luna chuckled and thought to herself “Twilight, you’ve chosen well. Even if you can be hooves on yourself this case, I know you’re trying your hardest to help your friends no matter what. My sister chose wisely when she picked you as your personal student.”
Yeah, everything was going to be alright now, and no matter who Icy Winds and Last Drop chose, Scootaloo would wind up in the proper hooves where she belonged.