Day 1, Month 1
I was happy as a bell that day. The sun didn't beat down on the ponies of Montania with bad heat and the gentle breeze air kept us cool anyways. I carry my books I got from the Canterlot library in my saddle with the little strength I possess. No matter what, even in the happiest times, I was always aware of my surrounds. I trot down the dirt street until I see a crowd of ponies in the corner of my eye. I stop myself from moving and I turned myself to look at the massive group. On another street behind some houses, a crowd of ponies surrounded a site not worth saying with a happy face. I maneuvered through the little cracks in-between houses and blended in with the ponies.
I politely pushed away ponies to see what all the commotion was about. Dead center in the mass of ponies was a single pony. The pony never moved and I feared for the worse. But could the worse really happen at times like this? I stared at the unmoving pony for several seconds and then I stopped to ask the most obvious question.
I asked a couple ponies around me if the mare was dead or not. Some didn't answer back to me because they were too scared to even reply. Berry Tulip whispered in my ear that it was the sickness again. The mare had been sick for weeks with the ailment and she never told a single soul. She died bearing the secret of her dangerous and potentially contagious secret.
I looked down at the ground before I wanted to continue to look at further. Two paramedics separated the crowd and took the body of the mare away from preying eyes. I counted how many incidents have occurred since the infection came weeks ago. The sickness's first victim died a month ago and the death rate only increased from there. Soon two ponies were sick with the same pony-flu symptoms only a couple days later after the first. Two turned into five and five into twenty. Montania had over five hundred ponies living there but only two hundred remained to live.
I pulled myself from the crowd of scared ponies and continued on home. It was scary to see that there were five other deaths I witnessed that day and another joined the mass burial. I just wanted to go back home and not worry about it. My family was healthy and I intended it to keep like that. The past haunted me like timberwolf prowling for its next prey and it followed me home.
My home was nothing special from the rest of the houses in Montania. The house was built from the strongest oak trees around and built by my own grandfather's hooves. It has stood for over a generation and it has never been worse for wear. The wood may have chipped a couple times and my father had to replace a couple logs and walls here and there. Besides that, it was a magnificent piece of engineered creativity if I say so myself.
I stick the key in my house and step inside. My hooves were dirty because I traveled all the way from Canterlot for a few books. My dipped my hooves in a pail of water that I kept near my door just for cleaning and put my books on the kitchen table. The kitchen table wasn't set up for dinner which was strange. Mother always had the table set up for dinner before I came back home.
I go upstairs and check up on my brother. My brother and I live together in the same house but my mom stayed there as well. She had her own place to live but she always missed her own children. I was glad she still loved us. She still kept her sanity even though our father died to the sickness a couple weeks ago.
I took careful hoof steps on the stairs and tried to be as quiet as possible. The staircase was old and noisy. My brother or my mom could have slept upstairs without my knowledge. I reached the top of the staircase with the lightest hooves ever.
The upstairs was dark and still like the dark night. A crack of light was laid out across the floor and it signaled me to me to investigate on the source.
The crack of light belonged to an opening in my brother's bedroom door. A single lantern made the light and I peeped my eye through the crack. I could see my beautiful mother and my handsome stallion brother in the room.
My mother was a nice mare and she was one to appreciate everything. Whenever my father was working in the farms for money, my mom would do the extra work and raise the family on her own. It wasn't like I hated my father or anything but I always wanted him to stay at home a couple nights longer every week.
I walked to the bedroom door and I push it slightly. The door creeked as it slowly opened. I could see my brother lying in bed and talking to my mother about his day at school. Both my mother and I knew it was going to be the last time he went to school.
My mother turned her head to me and gave me a weak smile. She was sad about something but I did not know what she told me later. Her eyes had a small tinge of red in it and it was water filled. She was bound to cry anytime soon.
I stepped through the door and approached my mom. I was ambivalent to say anything to her but it felt awkward to be silent at all. I asked her that night what was wrong with my brother.
She said he got sick. It was the same sickness that the mare in town died too. I wanted to cry with my mother but I couldn't cry yet.
I laid a gentle hoof on my brother's light brown mane and it reminded me of hay in the farms my dad worked in. It was a cool color of yellow and his coat matched too. I checked his temperature and I became astonished. His temperature was well over one hundred degrees. I gave my brother his favorite kind of juice, apple juice, and then asked him about his day.
He had a fun day at school, he said to me. He won at his favorite card game which I still did not find any use for to this day. When he had the cough, he knew something was wrong and he was wise to go to the nurse. I smiled at him and I ran downstairs to get him something. I found a toy in Canterlot that he might be found of. The toy was a famous toy in the Dragon’s Empire and I saw little kids play with them all the time.
My brother took the top and spun it on the night stand next to him. He stared at the top while it spun in one spot for a very long time. I tapped my mother’s side and asked her to talk to her outside. I made up my mind of what I was going to do.
Outside of my brother’s room, I told her I was going to search all of Equestria for the panacea cure for this sickness. She did not believe me and as a loving mother she denied what I wanted. She thought I would get infected and she would not find me or my body. I did what I did best and used magic to make my mom go to sleep against her own will. I carried her to her bed and pulled the covers over her so she would not freeze. I wrote a note of apology to her and went back downstairs.
Before I ducked my head down the staircase, I looked back at my brother who was getting ready to go to sleep. I said to him goodbye, be good to mom, and to go to sleep. He did as an obedient little brother should and went to bed upon request. I migrated from upstairs to downstairs and packed things for my trip. I packed fruits, cheese, bread, and water in a large travel saddle with a book on horticulture flowers to know which flowers I can eat.
I loved eating flowers. Flowers reminded me of mother nature's beautiful and renewable source of life. This is how I felt towards ponies too. Those who have good hearts are remembered because they are special in their own way. Smart or dumb, ugly or beautiful, and selfish or generous, ponies need to have a good heart to thrive in the world.
I took my father's cloak from his coat rack and leave my friends and family in Montania to find the cure to the Mysterious Virus that plagued Equestria.