A dusk voice filled the small hall outside the prison cell. A filly bound in chains looked up to the small barred window in the large wrought iron door. It held the familiar texture of wood that was the only bit of comfort she was afforded for a long time. Outside the door two ponies were arguing. She strained her ears to hear what they were saying and picked up many of the words but understood very few.
“It’s been three weeks now and we’re still waiting for answers.” The words came from a charcoal stallion with a smoky black mane and a steel capped horn. “Need I remind you that thing in there simply waltzed through the barrier and butchered two guards?”
“No sir,” a second voice began, “I have been treating her injuries for the three weeks since.” It was a tone of indignation from a milky white mare with soft and gentle features; who often donned a paper cap with a red cross.
“Don’t get smart with me. The Queen needs to know how she did it. We can’t have their war coming to the Crystal Empire,” the stallion said. His tone was filled with equal parts false sincerity and genuine frustration; though the mare outside seemed convinced both were real.
“We’re doing the best we can sir. I think she’s finally starting to understand our language so we should be able to pose the questions to her soon,” the mare calmly returned.
That part was true since the word “how” prompted the filly to scratch out an explanation into the wall with her horn. It was something she had “said” many times but the mare could not understand her. She hated her captors and would tell them anything to make the images stop.
Often the mare would come into her cell, as she did just then, to fill her mind with pictures and sounds that made no sense. The filly frantically finished scratching the image of a mighty oak enshrouded in a magical aura as the door opened. Though the branches and leaves differed, the five lines that made up its trunk were identical to those in her cutiemark, and the disconnected nature of those lines spoke well of her own nature.
The mare frowned with disapproval to see yet another tree being etched into the walls. “Stop that!” she shouted with authority.
The filly looked to her, then back to her engraving, before tapping her horn to the wall again to carve out the grooves that would symbolize the shutter of leaves.
“I said stop that,” the mare repeated, and she used her own horn to telekinetically drag filly away from the wall by her chains.
The filly whined and tried to resist by scraping her hooves against the cold stone floor. Every day it was the same thing, the mare touched her horn to the filly’s battered and scarred forehead to force images into her mind. “What do you see?” she frequently asked, as she did again today, and the filly would be presented with a slate and chalk to recreate the images.
Though sometime in the last week she stopped saying, “No, like this.” while taking the chalk away to levitate it with magic, and instead simply slipped it inside a piece of bamboo to keep the filly’s saliva off of it. The filly's lips pursed as she recreated the images. The first: one pony coming out of the rear of another. The next: a little pony and a big pony together. Over the sequence of images the little pony progressively became bigger until they were the same size.
“Good!” Praise was normal at this point but wouldn't last once the questions were asked. “That’s called a mommy. Do you know who your mommy is?” the mare asked sweetly. The filly drew another tree nearly identical to the one on the wall, but this one lacked the aura and instead had blood pouring out of the large hole in the center. Just like the blood in the first image of the set she was asked to draw.
The mare frowned while repeating the question, “No, I said mommy. Do you know who your mommy is?” To which the filly simply tapped the chalk on the picture of the tree as if to repeat herself as well.
“Let’s try something else.” the mare said in frustration. “Where did you come from?”
Her explanation came as an addition to the picture, where the filly drew patchwork scribbles around the tree to signify an island floating in the sky. She then tapped her chalk to the tree once more.
“What is your name?” she asked.
The filly drew another tree, this one much smaller than the first, into the existing scene.
“Sapling?” the mare questioned.
The filly shook her head and added several arrows back and forth to signify a connection between the giant oak and the sapling.
“Treeling…?” the mare asked as she cocked her head to better see the slate.
The filly nodded as the words evoked the correct images in her head. Treeling smiled and cleared the board with her cheek before she drew the mare’s portrait and tapped it questioningly.
The mare responded with first question then the answer. “My name? My name is Nurse Clarity.”
This statement confused Treeling. She drew a crystal with arrows passing through it next to the portrait of the nurse and linked them together with more arrows. The nurse laughed as she confirmed the question: “Yes, Crystal Clarity. Very good.”
The praise felt strange from this crystal pony as, for weeks in and weeks out, nothing Treeling told her was be accepted as correct. The moment was short-lived as Nurse Clarity raised another question, one asked many times before, and one for which the answer never changed.
“How did you get into the Crystal Empire?”
That was the answer never changed until today. The filly chomped down tightly on her chalk which caused it to break in her mouth, after which she spit the pieces into the nurse’s face. Treeling was tired of being asked the same five questions. This one more than the others because the tree she drew every single time conveyed nothing to the interrogator.
A sour expression crept into Nurse Clarity’s face as she wiped the spit from her eyelid. The expression came sooner than usual, but it always came when Nurse Clarity was tired of getting “wrong” answers. This time was different too though, because there was more anger in it than usual.
Nurse Clarity popped her chin up and to the right in a singular jerking motion. With it came the desk that was bolted to the floor, that she violently tore it up with magic, and sent flying into the wall. A display of force that clearly showed how badly she wanted to turn her magic on the filly. However, she had learned from that mistake in the first week, and so she was forced to resort to the more conventional earth pony style of discipline. As such her foreleg swung through a wide arc that ended squarely on the filly’s face. The slap left a bright-red imprint of her horseshoe smudged in the chalk dust.
The filly fell to the ground with the force of the impact. It didn't matter to the nurse that she was twice the filly’s size– she was tired of being jerked around. Every answer was always the same: a tree. She knew that the child was given more than enough context images to answer the question, but now was just being defiant. The filly had plenty of scars from her life outside the city walls so nopony would notice if she got a few more if things got out of hoof.
This time was different however. This time Treeling stifled back her tears. This time she stood back up on her own, and glared at nurse who had not been quite careful enough in restraining her outburst. A rustle in her fur created a simulated shimmer, as the gold gilt at the base of her autumn leaf-green coat could be seen, while she drew in the ambient energy of the psychic assault.
A resounding thud echoed in the halls outside as Nurse Clarity was thrust into the metal door. A gasping “Stop!” escaped her lips with the wind that was knocked out of her. As the filly drew her chain taunt, she reached out with her mind, and poured herself into the nurse’s head.
There was just enough magic here to make her understand.