//------------------------------//
// Good Enough Reason (Prompt #124) 
// Story: Thirty-ish Minute Pony Stories 
// by Abecedarian 
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TMP Prompt #124 - “The Dance that Broke My Jaw”

Prompt: 
-


Good Enough Reason



The thought occurred to her, as her friends leapt forth to engage the horde. 

Somewhere in Equestria, (probably everywhere in Equestria but there, in fact), somewhere, there were perfectly ordinary ponies going about perfectly ordinary lives right now.

Somewhere, nopony worried about what crazy threat would pop up next, what it might do to them (she recalled Discord and shivered), what they might have to do to it.

Somewhere, somepony would be going to bed without images of chitinous armor and compound eyes glimmering in the sun, without the sound of chattering mandibles and screeches of threat haunting them.

This battle would be merely a few lines they read in the newspapers, or heard about through word of mouth (assuming they won, of course.) (Well of course they’d win, they had strong ponies like Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, didn’t they?) (But what if they didn’t win after all? What would happen then?) (Stop it! It‘ll be fine. Surely.)

Somewhere, all they had to worry about was a job, or a family, or finding happiness, whatever it might be, and that would be all, forever! 

It was all she’d worried about when she was an ordinary pony. They were all ordinary ponies, bakers and farmers and scholars and…and now they were about the closest thing Equestria had to an elite military force, or perhaps a superweapon.

It wasn’t right, part of her said, It wasn’t fair!


***


Rarity leaned heavily against her, a hoof across her shoulders.

In the chaos of the changeling invasion, a family had had a house collapse upon them and been injured badly. The white unicorn, always willing to give of herself, had somehow figured out how to use her Element of Generosity to take their wounds upon her own body, and for a couple of horrified moments Fluttershy had thought her friend was done for.

But her Element had sustained her, and soon the cuts and bruises and broken bones were knitting before their eyes. Too slowly, in Fluttershy’s opinion.

As soon as she could get around, Rarity was back on her feet, demanding to be taken to anypony else who needed her, and Fluttershy had finally given in.

“Why do we have to keep doing this? Why us? Why did it have to be us?” she whispered to herself. “We never asked for any of this.”

Rarity turned to look at her, eyes still slightly unfocused from pain.

“So nopony else has to, of course,” she said. “So they can live.”