My Littlest Pet Shop: Escape from Equestria

by Drizzle Quill

Chapter Twenty-Two: Broken Snowglobes

In the depths of the Everfree Forest, the long-dreaded realm of mystery, adventure, and danger, where the trees grew a dark, sickly green and the swamps bubbled with rancid smelling scents, there was a lone song laced among all the horror and despair. It was the voice of a young female, clearly very talented but very exhausted, and the song she sang was thick with a melancholy fog. Though the lyrics of the song spoke of joy and wonder, excitement and happiness, the tone of the singer made it sound dreary and dark, tired and grim. But she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t risk stopping. Because the show had to go on. So Zoe Trent continued to sing.

The back of her throat burned, and her eyes watered with tears not yet shed, but she had to keep singing. She had to keep singing. Just don’t stop. Just don’t stop. They won’t hurt me if I keep singing.

It was a terrible mindset, one she hated living by, despised with every bit of her body, even, but couldn’t abandon. Slowly that was what her friends had learned. Just don’t stop, and the whip will slow down. Just sound good, and there’ll be no more bruises, no more pain.

She had many scars already, though the most noticeable was the one across her shoulder, pink and rising like a tiny mountain ridge. Her gorgeous beret had been sliced clean in two, causing her to go without for the time being, and her legs shook, knees knocking together, as she tried to support her suddenly far-too-heavy body.

This was no way for her to live. She was Zoe Trent, for goodness sake! She didn’t deserve this!

But Zelda seemed to think she did, and Zelda was the boss around here. Zelda, Zelda, Zelda. Disobey Zelda and you were as good as dead.

“So welcome to this circus, this fabulous, funny show! You’ll laugh and cry and soon know why you ever wanted to go.”

Short pause. Deep breath in. Short cough, to try and clear her scratchy throat.

“Come buckle up and enjoy the ride, it’ll be going fast. Zip, zip, zip, but quick, quick, quick, your memories of this here circus will forever last!”

Zoe stopped, leaned over, and began to hack. Finally she allowed the tears to fall; her voice hurt so bad…so bad…but she had to stay strong. Avoid the whip and obey Zelda, and she might have a chance of escaping. Escaping with her voice still intact, however, was a different story. The tears flew even faster. Oh, her voice! Her beautiful voice which she treasured so!

“Great job, Zoe.”

She turned her head to see Biff smiling at her, those friendly beady black eyes seeming to carry warmth of their own. Turning up her snout, she turned away, fur matted with moisture. Biff was Zelda’s second-in-command; she had no reason to be interacting with him. “No, it wasn’t,” she snapped. “The second phrase was too sharp and the last note’s vibrato wasn’t long enough.” Not to mention the whole thing is squeaky and scratchy.

“It still sounded great,” he attempted for the second time.

Zoe sniffled, coughing and hacking, wincing at the pain that emanated from her horribly sore throat. “You don’t have to say that. I know it sounded bad.”

“It didn’t,” Biff protested.

She didn’t reply, and eventually he left with a sigh and a little mountain-goat bleat of defeat. Relieved, Zoe got to her paws, wobbling slightly, and headed off to go see if she could find the others. Apparently Biff leaving meant she had free time for a little while, which was a relief.

“A-and what’s a ghost’s favorite breakfast? Scream of wheat!”

Pepper’s voice, coming from an area just a little bit ahead of her, sounded on the borderline of pure panic. “N-now watch as I juggle these bowling pins, while riding on this u-unicycle!”

Thunk, thunk, thunk!

Zoe quickened her pace as she heard the three sharp clatters against the ground, ignoring how the pressure on her delicate paws stung like little bees. When Zelda saw that performance, she could only imagine what horrors the whip could do to Pepper’s poor back. She had seen the bloodied gashes already. She didn’t want to see more.

“Heh…that was supposed to happen, I promise! P-promise!” Another loud thunk, presumably from Pepper tumbling off of the ball, and then sudden, loud sobs. Zoe sprinted around the corner, prepared to fight for her friend, but only to see the skunk performing in front of…nobody. Her audience was simply a bunch of rocks and leaves and grass, and Pepper was curled up in the middle of them, tail wrapped around her nose, rocking back and forth rapidly.

Zoe cautiously walked up to her side, and, painfully aware of how terrible her voice sounded, asked, “Pepper, dear…are you alright?”

“No!” A loud snort. “No, I’m not alright! My back hurts from being whipped and now my everywhere hurts from getting three freaking bowling pins slammed on my head! Three, Zoe! I never mess up that much; you know me!”

That was true. Zoe bit her lip and tried to press up against her, as Pepper continued to ramble, stuttering and borderline screaming. It wasn’t a pretty sound.

“This circus is d-doing things to me, Zo! It’s doing things to my h-head! How long have we been doing this? I d-don’t even know, but it f-feels like forever! Hundreds of performances I’ve screwed up! Millions of times I’ve failed! And every time, even if nobody’s watching, I just feel like I need to fix it, but it keeps getting worse and worse and worse and worse and –”

Pepper’s tears were contagious; Zoe hadn’t even noticed she was crying until she felt the wet sink into her fur. Sobbing, she clung to the shivering grey skunk and sobbed.

“I’m the strongest of us all, Zo,” Pepper muttered softly. “You know it’s true.”

Zoe admittedly didn’t disagree, so she said nothing.

“And if this place has broken us so fast, then…oh, Zo, what about Penny? Or Sunil? Even Russell could be reduced to a shivering, shaking mess! Just like…me!” Pepper blew her nose in her tail, and only when it came out red did Zoe notice her nose was bleeding.

“We’re just here to be pawns in their stupid game, Zo. They want us to be frozen in the perfect circus positions, so that we can stay that way forever. It’s like one of those snowglobes Blythe showed us that time…” Pepper’s rose colored irises shrunk. “Oh God, Zoe…Blythe…”

The realization sunk into Zoe like a bullet to the heart. Blythe would be so worried. Blythe, who was scared when they were missing from the daycamp and ended up being right next door, eating sweets until they all went insane. Blythe, who combed them and brushed them and fed them and loved them. Blythe…

“We’re nothing but broken snowglobes now,” Zoe murmured, in her scratchy, shattered voice. “And Zelda and Biff want to fix us.”

They both paused a moment, to let that fully sink in. The pause only lasted a few seconds, but for Zoe, it seemed to last a lifetime and a day. And then came the smallest of squeaks, the softest Pepper Clark had ever spoken in her life.

“I don’t want to be a snowglobe, Zo,” she whispered.

“I know,” the spaniel replied, trying desperately to swallow the lump in her throat. “Neither do I.”

xxx

Free time. Something that Russell relished more than anything else in the world. He finally had free time, and during that time he could continue to sketch out his ideas. The ideas he had to keep a secret, the ideas he couldn’t tell the others about, in fear of causing a riot. The ideas that could break them all out of here, if he just stayed sane and had enough free time to do it.

His friends weren’t faring well. To be honest, neither was he. But he hadn’t had to feel the lash of the whip yet; he didn’t know the pain of being sliced across the back by a brutal leather tentacle. His job didn’t involve technically failing. His job was to boss the others around, and organize everything so it was perfect. So the circus was perfect.

And oh, how he hated it.

Russell’s mind whirred with ideas, each one more brilliant than the next, yet too complicated, too difficult, too something-or-other to ever work. But it was okay, because he had free time to think about it. Soon he would come up with an idea that would work. Sooner or later.

Preferably sooner.

As he headed past Pepper’s designated work area, he heard her sobbing, heard her speak in a voice thick with panic and despair. He heard her talk of snowglobes. Broken snowglobes.

That’s all we are to them, he realized. And I’m the one in charge of making sure all the figurines are in the right places. The thought made his stomach drop like a stone.

Zoe, Pepper…Sunil, Vinnie…Penny, Minka…I promise I’ll do my best to help you. I promise I’ll try to get us out of here. I promise I won’t let us become forever trapped in a snowglobe. I promise, I promise, I promise.

So many promises. So many. He had to keep them all. He had to.

Sighing, Russell turned away from the sobbing skunk and dog, closed his eyes, and continued to think.

He would get them out of there, sooner or later.

Preferably sooner.