//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Cheshire 
// by PoniesLoveMe 
//------------------------------//

	"All colts older than eight years of age will be shipped off to Canterlot".
A young, pale yellow colt gasped from his hiding spot. Earlier that evening, when he was getting into bed, he heard a knock on the door. Slowly and carefully, so as not to wake his snoring room mate, he had crept out of his room and into the hall, where he had heard voices just behind a door. And here he hid, frozen with fear. 'What do they want with us?' the colt wondered, horrified. He had just turned eight that passed Saturday, and it had been a happy time, but now he wished with all his heart that he hadn't. 'Is it because we haven't been adopted yet? Do they think nopony will want us?' the little colt's ears drooped and his heart twisted in sadness at the thought. It had been five years since the accident that had killed his parents, but he stilled lived in the same orphanage he had been taken to when a passerby had found him, but the large rooms and tall ceilings were very intimidating to the colt and instead of feeling happy and grateful that he had been taken to such a kind place, he felt even more lonely and unwanted than ever.
"B-but you can't!" The young colt was snatched from his thoughts by the pleading voice of the old mare who ran the orphanage. He shuddered. He liked the mare, she was always so kind to the orphans and never yelled. Her voice was always quiet and calm and good for telling stories on rainy nights, so to hear her so frightened and upset made the colt scared. Something bad must be happening for her to be so distraught. 
"You just can't!" the mare repeated, her plead turned into a wail, ringing through the entrance hall and into the room the little colt was hiding in. She sounded simply devastated and the loud pitch her voice had reached made the colt recoil a bit. "The colts, they still have a chance to find a family, grow up and be happy! Just give me a chance, I can find them all lovely homes! Don't take them away!"
"I have no doubt that you could find them nice homes" came a soothing new mare's voice, and the curious colt poke his muzzle back out of the door he was hiding behind to see who the newcomer was. She was a tall, white pony with a flowing pink, blue, and green mane. She wore fancy, golden boots and a regal necklace that was implanted with a shiny, purple gem. And on top of her head sat a pointy golden crown, another purple gem sitting snugly in the center of it. She had a unicorn horn, but also pegasus wings and, although she was thin, her body looked very strong.
The little colt's nose scrunched up as he struggled to understand this. 'How can that be?' He had heard of the two princess' who lived in Canterlot. He heard that those two mares had wings of a pegasus, a magical unicorn horn, and the strength of an earth pony like him: alicorns, said to be created to represent all the species of ponies in Equestria. Could this mare in his orphanage home be one of the princess'? 
"But, Princess Celestia," the orphanage owner squeaked, obviously as surprised to see the princess as the colt was, with a clumsy bow. "I-I don't understand. Why do you need these colts?"
The princess sighed a long, dejected sigh, as if it was too terrible to speak of. Then she lowered her head to whisper to the orphanage mare "I am so sorry, but we need your colts to be trained as guards to fight for Equestria." she straightened up and looked around as if half-expected to see all the colts of the orphanage staring wide-eyed at her in fear. "There is a war coming, and we need to be prepared." Celestia closed her eyes solemnly. "I'm sorry" she repeated "but these colts will never get adopted, they must fight for Equestria."
The colt didn't want to hear anymore. His eyes were full of tears. 'Why does everything bad have to happen to me!' he thought as he bounded back through the halls to his room. He climbed into bed and covered his head in his bed sheets, as if they would protect him from his fate, and cried himself to sleep.