I am not sure what hurts worse, starving or being forced to work to eat. I suppose starvation but, as I write this from the perspective of many years later, I realize that I was abandoned by my parents at the workhouse at such a young age that I remembered naught but the monotony of work, those times I felt truly frightened, and the rare occasions I found true happiness.
Since you've insisted I tell my story, I think I'll retell the tale when everything changed.
I was a big filly for my age, always, which was why the workmares always kept me bridled when outside. Probably. With these long legs, I ran as fast as the wind. As an earth pony back then, I had the endurance and strength to easily run away, not that I'd ever wanted to. I worked; I got my hay twice a day; what worries? I did as told and didn't have to suffer the other foals around me trying to trip me or poke me or cow me—or taunting me about my cutie mark.
"Bean stalk legs, are you a lunatic?" That was from the older foals who had learned the big words. The younger ones used the word 'crazy'. Even at my age, I had learned both words.
Stupid cutie mark! I'd gotten mine before I could remember much, while I slept in the wheat-hull-stuffed nailed-together wooden box the workhouse called a cradle. I'd realized the moon, which peered in through a window open to the summer night breeze, was my only friend. That's my theory of how I got it, anyway, based on how many times I remembered staring out a window at that beautiful eternal orb. Explain my cutie mark being a crescent moon in a big black sky of black ink, otherwise?
Doing as told and not playing meant that the workmares left me alone to work through the night. That suited me fine, even if that meant I worked outside summer and winter, tethered in the yard—rains and blizzards excepted. Remember, I was an earth pony. I endured the abuse weather heaped upon me because that meant the workmares left me alone with my friend. I could talk with her and nobody would look at me strangely. Done with my night-long tasks, I'd spend the early morning learning my letters and numbers with the other foals—only because King Veridi Pace required it of every foal—before sleeping until late afternoon while the other foals toiled.
That fateful afternoon, a dry breeze drove flights of colorful fallen leaves to swirl into the air to crinkle and hiss. Autumn smells lifted my spirits. I trotted through a field of ripening corn, the insects going buzz-buzz, leading a workmare behind me as I searched. The green forest of tall stalks rustled and pattered around me.
I won't describe this workmare, or any of them, because I had no interest in them and don't remember them other than this-one might slap me if I didn't hold my head right when she bridled me, or that-one might tug my bridle if I went too slow. I avoided that potential problem today by quickly dragging her so she trailed behind me as I searched.
Then I spotted a swooping shadow and that caught my attention.
I'd learned the word Babeloin early because it was the name of the kingdom in which we lived. Though ours was a fair and temperate land of earth ponies, other tribes lived here. As far as pegasi went, I'd learned as little as I had to about Far Fan, a snotty green pegasus colt who'd liked to pick fights; he'd been wing-clipped so that he had to mind like the rest of us foals. As a consequence, I'd not seen many pegasi actually fly.
My ears flicked as I looked around. A road ran along side the farm toward Town. To see, I had to cross rows and shoulder through scratchy stalks, dragging the workmare behind me. When I found what I wanted to see, I had to look into the westering sun to see the winged pony swoop and land beside another.
A giant amongst ponies she was, considering how she dwarfed her fluttering companion. The mare wore an all-enveloping black cloak that left her very subtly pink muzzle exposed, but as the blue pegasus pointed down the corn rows at me with a wing, the giant startled. Her hood slid back. Her long pointed spiral horn to my naive eyes looked—because of the obvious spiral—screwed painfully into her forehead.
I stopped and gawked.
The workmare trotted ahead of me and in a few heartbeats, jerked my reins—which slapped my face with the cheekpieces and clicked the bit against my front teeth. My cheeks burnt with embarrassment that I'd let that-one get pleasure from controlling me. Deep inside, I imagined myself rearing, tearing the lead from her teeth where she clamped them, and knocking her over. Forgotten recollections why that was bad kept it from surfacing from thought to action. I trotted across the rows, leaving the outlanders behind.
They had to be outlanders.
Ponies rarely wore clothes except in the depths of winter and pegasi hated unicorns so the two rarely congregated. It took another jerk on my bridle for me to concentrate on the task at hoof.
Finding moonstones.
From storybooks teachers read us while we learned our letters, I'd learned that gems grew best in fertile fields. They attracted dragons, so farms liked the ponies that could dig them up, if for no other reason than to spare their plows because dragon migrations were rare. They paid bits to the workhouse. That paid for my hay and kept my tummy full.
In the same manner that I felt the moon's location below the horizon, where she hid from that bully that burned in the sky, the sun, I sensed the moon's tears of fear and sorrow where they condensed into gems in the soil....
My breath caught in my throat as my heart skipped a beat. "Prithee, wait," I said, pawing the ground.
My heart felt the heat radiated by the tear of fear before I revealed a bright ruby and rainbow moonstone encrusted by grey rock. A milky tear of sorrow would appeared a somber aquamarine or blue, and would have radiated melancholy.
Overhead, a whoosh made me look up as the workmare at my hooves scooped the stone into her saddlebag. A sky-blue pegasus floated midair ten pony-lengths above, or rather hovered as her wings slowly flapped. She made me think of a tear of fear—her brightly colored mane and tail of blew in the wind. Red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I'd never seen hair so lovely. She studied me, amber eyes pausing on my flank, before she zipped away, leaving a rainbow streak as an after image.
The workmare jerked me back into motion.
Coincidentally, it wasn't minutes later that the sun sunk below the horizon. Moments earlier, I'd heard a loud distant whinny that struck me as forlorn, an maybe a whoosh of a bonfire flare up—but standing in a field of cornstalks that played and clattered in the wind, I might have been mistaken.
The sun had recently gone to bed early with unnerving regularity. As long as I could remember, and at that point in my life I had only six total years, the sun or moon would hang on the horizon for days without setting or rising, until the land became unbearably hot or painted in frost that would endanger the fields.
When happenstance meant a long enduring night, I reveled in my friend's happy visage shining blue-white down upon me. With my encouragement and earnest prayers, I helped her stay in the sky. We fought together against the sun's rising until the last possible moment.
Night made my heart sing. The dark starry perfection under the gaze of the moon left the land looking blue, the way I'd come to believe the world ought to look. Crazy were the ponies that slept by night. They missed a peaceful beauty I witnessed daily.
"Blue Moon!" shouted the workmare when I got lost in thought again and hadn't moved when she jerked the lead. "We're going home. You want to eat, don't you?"
She tugged again. I followed.
She led down the road in the hastening twilight. I prayed for the moon to rise. In my head I told her there was naught to fear. The sun was gone. The stars were so pretty. I felt the moon in my heart. It took little coaxing; she rose full and bright and gleaming.
The farm was far from town and the workhouse, thus the true dark had long since fallen.
"The other brats are a-bed," the workmare said as she went directly to the farthest point in the yard and tethered me to the stake beside my tools. She shrugged from under her full saddle bags and left.
I stood staring at the workhouse, the earth-bermed building nestled within and surrounding the dozen grown-together oak trees that comprised its girth. The long grass and weeds that covered its roof waved in the light breeze. Dark. Silent.
Cold.
Alone. Forgotten...
I had had no fear she'd forget my dinner. None. I swear. I stood there unmoving because my stomach growled and complained; standing made it more bearable.
She returned after a long while to clank down a tin pail of hay. I smelled the garlic and onions of her dinner on her breath when she asked, "What are you waiting for?"
As I worked, I thought about the startled unicorn giant and the astonishing rainbow-maned pegasus. Unlike all the other brats, I had steel horseshoes. I used them to hammer away the rock surrounding the moonstones I'd gathered, so they would have no chance to rust. I'd wedge a raw moonstone in a vise of boulders and by the moonlight I'd judge my strike.
Chip, chip, bang!
I'd laboriously break away the stone from the gem and thus shine my shoes, both fore and hind. When done with the load, I'd throw the raw gems in one of the tumblers with course grit and oily water and peddle the set of them, with finer and finer grit, the rest of the night, listening to the contents slushing and clunking. That left time to wonder what it would feel like to fly through the sky, to be a pegasus, free to fly wherever curiosity led me.
Foalish. One had to work to be fed, but a filly could wonder.
That white unicorn giant: With long legs like I had, would I grow up as tall as she? When the rare family toured the workhouse planning to adopt, every single pony mistook me for a teen—before a workmare would shoo too-curious-me away because nopony wanted a foal as gangly or as sullen as I.
Had the unicorn mare had that problem growing up? Being unwanted? Being unwantedly different?
Certainly she had, though as brilliantly white as she was, she probably also had an off-putting way-too-sunny disposition. It explained the clothes—to hide within!
The moon sank to the horizon as it always did. The opposite horizon brightened, tinged orange as I dumped the contents of my fourth-day tumbler. The smooth gems. Clean and bright, I dug out the tears of sorrow, which glowed a wane milky blue. Allowed to soak in a night of moonlight and wrapped in a dark rag, the gems would glow when revealed, providing light to read by for days. The tears of the moon's sorrow solidified to form the blue ones. The red-tinted tears of fear required soaking in a day of sun to glow.
Thinking of the sun made me look to the sky. The moon wobbled suddenly.
I fell to my knees and prayed to her to steady herself. Strength streamed up from my legs and into my heart where it formed a hidden glow. I prayed with all my heart that she should hold fast and not be pulled from the sky she feared to depart. I let my prayers stream toward her to strengthen her resolve and steadfastness. The world did not need another daytime, not yet. Autumn was young and warm. My moon need not fear the sun, or sorrow for having been thrust into the heavens, alone. I tried to hold the sun at bay, too, by praying that she wait, that she find impediments in her path. I rose and stomped my hooves, willing my strength forward. The bully shalt not revel this day, I thought. I told her, I told the sun, I am the moon's mighty friend and today thou shalt not rise!
And that day, the sun did not rise.