//------------------------------// // A Horse With No Name // Story: Babel // by BaeroRemedy //------------------------------// The forests of northern Equestria were dense. To anypony unfamiliar with them, they were an inscrutable maze of fragrant pines. The Event had not been as harsh on them as it had been on other forests of the country. Most of the trees still stood, their needles still intact and their underbrush just as lush. It was a haven for a pony who wanted to get lost, or perhaps one who wanted to stay hidden. Deep in the forests, shrouded by the wall of thick trunked trees, was a small single room cabin. The home had been crafted from the trees surrounding it, hewn from the trunks of the massive pines and paced where they fell. It had a singular window on the backside and a simple stone chimney that poked up from the pointed roof. The interior was as simple as the exterior: it held just a single bed, a chest, a cooking pot over the stove, and a bookshelf packed to the gills with dusty tomes. Inside, a mare went about her simple routine. She deposited a now empty bowl beside the fireplace. After a cursory glance at the food supplies piled near the chest in the corner of the room, the mare decided it was time to head back into town to get more of it. She rationed it well and didn’t eat much, but she was still running low. The mare retrieved a saddlebag; it wasn’t hers either but without its original owner it was now. Her eyes scanned the cabin as she made her way to the door. Part of her brain told her to stop and enjoy the view as it might be the last time she would see it. It was the same impulse that tickled her brain every time she left this place. It was the curse of knowing that nothing was permanent, that everything you loved would leave or be taken from you. The mare sneered at the cozy cabin’s interior. An all too familiar anger rose up in her chest and she lobbed a silent curse at everything inside. She needed to hate it. She could live here, but she could not form an attachment. This was a place she slept and ate, it was just a place. There was nothing special about it. The walls held no feelings, and this place harbored no memories. She did not build this place. It was nothing to her. It couldn’t be something to her. She wouldn’t allow it. It had to be nothing. The door was closed firmly as she left. There was no lock, not that the mare thought one was needed. The little cabin was out of the way and to find it would require luck or intimate knowledge of the area. If she came back to find somepony else in the house, then she would just let them have it. After all, it was just a place. It meant nothing. It had to mean nothing. The mare closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The fresh air filled her lungs, as did the heavy scent of the trees. Unlike most places in Equestria, there was still wildlife here. Not a lot, but the forest had preserved little patches. Birds chirped and something nearby skittered through the brush. It made the mare want to smile, but something stopped her from doing so. Some deep mental block prevented her lips from curling up and stopped her heart from fluttering. Not even the sun filtering through the mass of trees could crack the seal on the cap placed over her joy. There was a patch of ground near the front of the cabin that had been cleared and prepared for gardening. The mare had spent a lot of time tilling the soil with tools she had made herself and she had planted some seeds the local townsponies had given her. That had been months ago and they hadn’t sprouted even a little. It was a big hit to her ability to sustain herself and it meant she would have to keep relying on the ponies in the nearby town to keep her fed and alive. The mare used a relatively well worn path to make her way through the forest. There were small landmarks she knew well to find her way out, ones that when she had first made camp she had needed a map to keep track of. Now she knew the path well and she could make her way through the dense wood in under an hour. Outside of the dense forest were the usual rolling plains of the Equestrian landscape. To the north, past the nondescript skyline of the small town, were the mountains that dominated the far northern reaches of the continent. It provided an awe inspiring backdrop to the landscape. The mare ignored it, as she had done for her entire stay. The trek across the stretch of nothing between the forest and the little town was more arduous than that out of the woods. The flat terrain of the forest was easy to maneuver, even through all of the twists and turns. The gentle rolling hills provided more of a challenge, one that aggravated the old wounds of the mare. Her hips ached with every step upwards, deep bite marks radiated pain out from her flanks and all throughout her back half. It made every step up the incline hurt and tested the mare’s resolve. There were moments where the pain got the better of her. Sometimes when she woke up she couldn’t move for what felt like hours and it took immense willpower to get up and start her day. It took a singular thought each time to drag herself out of bed, and it was the same thought that she often found herself going back to when she faced a challenge or a setback. The only way out is through. She had to keep going. She had to persevere. There was no other choice. She couldn’t make her way through this world by waiting, by wallowing in the misery that seemed so omnipresent in her existence. The turned unicorns had not killed her, nor had the interminable heat or even… Many things had tried to kill her over her life. None had succeeded. She was not going to allow her own inaction to do her in. If the world wanted this mare dead, then it would have to stop being a coward and finish the job. She wasn’t going to do it herself, no matter how tempting the thought of finally having peace was. The town, a small walled village that went by the name of ‘Sire’s Hollow’, was a fully unicorn settlement. She was thankful for that. From the news the mare had heard while she was in the town, unicorns weren’t exactly a well liked tribe. It seemed like they were mostly on their own in the world and were shunned from towns that had a majority earth pony or pegasus population. On the outskirts of the little town, just outside the stone walls that enclosed the town itself, fields of varying types of crops filled the mostly flat land. Ponies tended the fields dutifully, all unicorns who were surely not farmers by trade or talent. It was pretty obvious to anypony who had seen farms tended by earth ponies that the unicorns weren’t cultivating prime crops. It seemed like every other field was stunted or littered with half-dead crops. Despite that, the little town was still thriving and it was still able to contribute to the national stockpile as well and help the mare. The mare received smiles and waves from the ponies working the fields. She gave them little nods in return, but nothing else. She made her way up to the gate, where she was let in by a pair of town guards in makeshift armor. It wasn’t even made of metal, but wood from the nearby forest overlaid with blue cloth that had a horn insignia on it. The town inside of the walls was laid out in concentric rings with a town square complete with a fountain at the center. Tents littered the free space in the town. Any available real estate was occupied save for small lanes that were kept clear for ponies to travel through the town. It seemed like every unicorn who had escaped the confines of a city had ended up here, whether or not they had the space to accommodate them. The mare made her way to the center of town, where she knew she would find the mayor and the food stockpile. There was a strange air about the town, one that the mare had come to respect. The unicorns who had congregated here were always in high spirits. It seemed like smiles were more prevalent than anywhere else in the country, broadly due to the fact that this was one of the fewest places where they weren’t controlled. Where they weren’t cooped up and told what they could and couldn’t do. Sire’s Hollow was a town of free unicorns. The mare stopped in the middle of the path as her eyes caught something she had not seen in an eternity. In front of one of the tents stood a full length mirror, fully uncovered and reflecting the packed street opposite it. The mare caught her own eyes in the glass and froze. The mare that looked back at her was not one she recognized at first. The mare’s mane had once been a sharp mohawk, now the pink hair filled the space between her ears and it was kept in a ponytail with a blue hair tie. A broken and jagged horn sprouted from that mane, one that had been functionally useless for as long as the mare could remember. A scar ran down her right eye, wider than it had once been. It was now joined by a scar on her left temple, an angry thing that looked like a star with jagged edges. A single point of that scar reached the corner of her left eye. She did not know who this mare was in more ways than one. She had a few names in her life, but none of them were right anymore. The ponies she had been had died horrible deaths, both of the same kind. Being somepony, being known, was a fate worse than death. She would not die another death, not until her final one. The mare glared at her own reflection. She wanted to hate the mare in the mirror, but something deep in her heart prevented the feeling from taking root. She couldn’t hate the pitiful pony she saw. The pony who had been dumb enough to fall for the same trick a second time. There could not be any hate in her heart for herself, for there was only the sting of disappointment. “Ah, our favorite visitor!” Another mare appeared in the mirror. This one had a burnt orange coat with cream colored hooves and a reddish brown mane. She had a bright smile that never seemed to reach her eyes and the tone of somepony trying to sell you something. Little fangs poked out from behind her lips and a slightly curved horn was visible beneath her perfectly coiffed mane. She was the mayor of Sire’s Hollow, or at least the one in charge of this glorified refugee camp. Stellar Flare was her name and she would let you know that the first time you met her and she would not let you forget it. “How are you today?” Stellar placed a hoof on the mare’s back, but quickly pulled the hoof away when the nameless mare moved away from the touch. “Ah yes, of course. My apologies.” The mare had a habit of not being personable, it was just who she was really. When she didn’t know someone, she wasn’t keen on talking unless she saw a way for it to benefit herself. There was another problem with responding, though. She couldn’t. Whether it was from the blow to the head she had suffered at the tail end of The Event or something else, she wasn’t sure. Even in her private moments she couldn’t bring herself to speak. She could make noise, she just could not talk. “Mmm, still nothing.” Stellar wrinkled her nose and studied the mare for a few seconds. Then she gave a small shrug and a little ‘hmmph’. “I suppose you need some more food, then? The mare nodded. “Well good thing I already planned for that!” Stellar responded with her fake smile and singsong voice. “You’re lucky I’m such a nice mare and worked this into our plans.” She levitated a clipboard in front of her face and wrote a few things down. “Always be prepared, you know!” The mare just nodded again. “You are a terrible conversation partner, you know that?” Stellar began to walk away and motioned for the mare to follow her. “I know you can’t, or won’t, speak but do you at least know your own name?” The mare thought about that for a moment. She could surely tell Stellar through some mechanism, probably writing, what her name used to be. The problem was that she didn’t feel like she was either of her old names anymore. Fizzlepop Berrytwist was her first name, and that pony had not survived fillyhood. She had died in a dark forest at the claws of an Ursa Minor. Tempest Shadow was her second name and she had died at the base of Canterlot Mountain at the hooves of somepony she had thought was her friend. She contained both of those ponies, but she was neither of them anymore. She was somepony new, somepony who was still trying to find her voice and place in this new world. All she knew about the pony that she was now is that she didn’t want or need friends. She couldn’t afford to be hurt again. She just wanted to be alone. The mare wanted her past to stay there and her future to be isolated. Was that too much to ask?