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// Foalhood Tragedies 
// Story: Melodies of a Valorous Vagabond 
// by Smooth Tones 
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This is quite possibly my least favorite chapter to write. School was bad, but what happens here is far worse. Well I’ll get on with it then. It was a relatively normal day, coming home from a remotely good day at school. When you come to your house and see it surrounded with ponies in armor, keeping others away from the house you start to get concerned. I ran towards the house and was held back by one of the ponies.

“Whoa there. You can’t go in there,” he said to me.
Unbelievably confused I said to him, “But I live here. Why can’t I go home?”

Then it hit me, something had happened.

“Then you’re Smooth Tones...” the stallion let his voice trail.

“What’s going on!?” I half asked, half yelled at him. I was only twelve at the time, I didn’t know what to think or do. I’ll admit it, I was afraid.

After a couple hours of waiting one of the armored ponies came to speak with me. I had been going over in my head what could have possibly happened. I wanted my mom, heck I would have even settled for Dad at the time, but neither were around. Dad had left almost a week before to go visit family or something in Cloudsdale.

The armored stallion explained to me that there had been an accident, and my mother was dead. I was utterly speechless. I can’t even try to cover it up. After the words left his mouth I ran for it. I didn’t know what it would do but I ran. Later that evening, Color and Berries eventually found me curled up behind the school. I wished I could just close my eyes and wake up from this stupid bad dream. I still try it sometimes. Never once has it worked.

Anyway, me and Berries now needed a place to stay, and what’s more, somepony to take care of us. Our dad didn’t come back from his little visit to Cloudsdale, so we made the assumption that something happened to him as well. We weren’t going to chance an orphanage because there was no way I was going to be separated from my last bit of family. That’s where Color came in again.

Now I always knew Color had some weird quirks, still has a lot of them today as a matter of fact, but this one came as huge news to me at the time. One day Color came to Berries and I with a proposal. At first I was really confused.

“Hey, you guys need somepony to take care of you, right?” Color asked us.

“Of course we do. You know that,” I replied to him.

“Well I has a solution!” Color exclaimed, very excitedly.

I was confused. I cocked my head at him for a moment then asked, “What’s your idea?”

“I can take care of you two!” He yelled excitedly, flying up into the air.

I gave him the most confused and disapproving stare I ever could. I knew that our guardian had to be an adult. At the time, I thought Color was no older than I was. Never had I been so wrong, and I don’t think I’ve been so wrong since then.

“Color you know you can’t do that right? You’re our age,” I replied, trying to keep a level head.

“That’s the fun part! Time I let you two in on a little secret.” He said to us.

He took about an hour to explain it to us. He went through how he was actually a few hundred years old. Along with that he was also half changeling, so he could change his form. Details confused me and my eyes glassed over as I realized how little I had known about my best friend. After some time though, Color had brought both Berries and myself back down to Equestria and had us understanding. Before I knew it, the Color I had grown up with morphed into a much more adult version of himself. And even sooner afterward he became our guardian. We still acted like best friends though. Before long this whole “immortal” deal became a thing of the past. Er... more like something that was better understood. Bottom line it became normal. And for the first time in a LONG time, I was actually happy.