//------------------------------//
// 01 - These Four Walls  
// Story: As the Wind Blows 
// by Jeevesie 
//------------------------------//



As the Wind Blows - These Four Walls


"E-excuse me... Miss?"

The royal guard eyed the body of the pegasus nervously. Her lithe sky blue form lying almost perfectly, worryingly still. Slumped upon her worn mattress, the rays of the warm summer sunlight shining through the bars of her cell's window did little to warm her spirits. She twitched the tip of one long, powerful wing, dismissively.

"Go away."

Clearing his throat, the guard stood firm.

"I have a message to deliver. From... from Princesses Celestia, Luna, Mi Amore Cadenza... C-Cadence, that is. And Twilight Sparkle. A personal message to you, Miss." 

A soft snort escaped the pegasus, and she raised her head; sharp, pale blue eyes shining out from under her tousled, unkempt white mane.

"Call me by my name. You might as well get used to saying it without laughing. You'll be saying it for some time. My name is Free. Free Bird."

The guard didn't laugh. He didn't smile. Indeed his face paled, and he hung his head in shame.

"Yes Mi-... I mean, Free Bird. I'm sorry."

Free let slip a dry, humourless chuckle.

"You're sorry. Everyone's sorry. I'll bet even the Princesses are sorry. Am I right?"

She raised one hoof, gesturing for the guard to give her the message with which he'd come. Obediently, without a word, the unicorn levitated the scroll through the wrought iron bars of the cell and into Free Bird's grasp. He stood still, waiting as the pegasus held the note still in her hoof. Until finally, with another snort of frustration, she glared at the guard once again.

"If you're waiting for me to read it, you'll be here a long time. As you may have noticed, my entertainment is somewhat limited. I have to ration any thrills I may find in my day, otherwise my heart might simply give out with delight."

The guard sighed. He nodded, turned, and trotted slowly away. Soon the sound of a heavy wooden door unlocking and swinging open reached the pegasus pony's ears, followed by the empty thud of it swinging closed and locking once more.

With a mournful whimper, Free Bird tossed the scroll to the ground, unopened and unread. She buried her face under her forelegs, and swept her wings around herself once more. Lying there in that ancient, solitary cell, alone and utterly incapable of escape, she wept in anguish. Knowing, to her horror, that this was only day six. 

Day six, of a four year sentence she did not deserve.


***************
 

Three meals later, what Free Bird assumed to be the following afternoon judging by what little of the sky she could see, the dungeon door creaked open once again. She heard hoofbeats and the jingling of armour, slightly heavier than the set which had belonged to the guard bringing her the note. The figure stopped just outside her cell door, and before they could speak the pegasus called out to them in a failed attempt at some form of light hearted humour which just came off sounding rather shrill and desperate.

"I still haven't read the note. Try again tomorrow."

A warm, painfully genuine chuckle escaped the lips of the visiting guard. Not the same pony as yesterday, that was certain. This voice was deeper, but softer too. 

"Cadence told me you probably wouldn't have read it. Twilight thought you would. My sister will be very disappointed to hear that you proved her wrong."

One of Free's ears twitched. She didn't turn around, but the significance of what her visitor had just said was not lost on her. Princess Twilight Sparkle only had one sibling. Her brother; husband of Princess Cadence and Captain of the Royal Canterlot Guard. 

Shining Armour said nothing for a short while, waiting to see if Free Bird would turn and talk to him, or make any kind of motion to show that she was acknowledging his presence. When she didn't, however, he shook his head in frustration. He didn't want to have to do what he had been sent to do, but if the pegasus wasn't going to co-operate, clearly he had no choice.

"Alright then. If you aren't going to read the scroll... I'll read it to you."

Free Bird heard the hum of magic as Shining Armour lifted the scroll off the cell floor with his horn, and saw the glow of its magical energy reflected against the rear wall she was facing. Her eyes widened, and she cried out in anguish, flinging herself upright on the bed and launching her body across the room; wings spread and practically brushing both corners of the cell with her abnormally broad wingspan.

"No!"

She snatched at the note with both hooves and her muzzle, but Shining Armour jinked it out of reach with a twitch of his horn. He pulled it through the bars a split second before Free Bird hit them, slamming hard into the door with a cry of pain, but still thrashing and flailing with both forelegs through the bars trying to get at the note.

"No... no." 

Tears streamed down her face as she stared at the armoured unicorn, his own expression one of stunned horror at seeing another pony so distraught.

"Please. Please, don't read it. Don't!"

Now holding the note in one hoof, Shining Armour paused, frowning deeply. 

"I don't understand. Are you worried it will say something about you that you don't want me or other ponies to hear? Because I assure you, as a Captain of the Guard I'm fully briefed on the details of all prisoners."

Free just stood at the cell door, slumping against the iron bars as she cried openly, hooves still reaching helplessly out towards the scroll. She shook her head, but said nothing.

"Then, are you worried it's going to be a letter of condemnation? The princesses writing to tell you how appalled they are that for the first time in decades, we've had to use the Canterlot dungeons to imprison a pony? Because I assure you, that's not it."

Again Free Bird shook her head, this time whimpering in frustration.

"No. No! O-of course I know that's not it. That's the problem. I know exactly what the letter is going to say. It's the only reason I can think of that I'd get a letter from the Princesses. The only reason I'd still be locked up in here, and yet have everyone... e-every guard, you, even the Princesses taking their time to write to me, treat me so well."

She sniffed and inclined her head forward, resting it too against the bars of the cell.

"It's going to say that they're sorry. That they've tried everything to find a loophole, but they can't. It's going to say that they're so very sorry, and they know how much it hurts... but that I'm stuck here. And I'm going to be stuck here. Imprisoned by my own people because of a centuries old piece of paper, for every day of the sentence that was passed against me."

Closing her eyes in anguish, Free withdrew her hooves. She settled down onto all fours, retracting her wings and bowing her head mournfully.

"I know exactly what it's going to say... a-and when I know it for myself, when I read or hear those words and it's not just something I know in my heart, I don't know how I'm going to keep going. I don't know how I'm going to live."

Yet more tears fell to the dusty dungeon floor. 

"If there's anything that note says which I don't already know. Please, read it to be. Tell me I'm wrong. But if that's it? If all the Princesses have to say is that they're sorry, you can tell them I don't need a letter and I don't want a letter. I know they're sorry. I know they wish this didn't have to happen. But as good, and kind and sympathetic as they might be, no, they don't understand. B-because... because they don't have this." 

Free turned to the side, exposing one flank to Shining Armour, displaying her cutie mark. Two bluebirds flying over a fluffy patch of white cloud. 

"They all have their purpose and their unique talents, and they live up to those responsibilities every day. Even Princess Luna, when she was trapped as Nightmare Moon, was still at least a shadow of her former self; embracing the night wholeheartedly. Even Princess Cadence, when she was captured by the Changeling Queen before your wedding, was never stripped of her love for you. But me..."

She cast her wings down over her cutie mark, hiding it from view on both sides.

"...all my life, all I have ever wanted, ever sought, was Freedom. To go where I please. To soar through the skies and see new lands. New ponies and creatures of all shapes and sizes. New wonders every day. Freedom was my purpose. My life. It was everything to me." 

Glaring not at Shining Armour, but at the bars separating the two of them, Free Bird snorted angrily.

"But now, it's gone. I have to spend the majority of the next four years of my life in this single cell. Even my exercise yard is a hundred metre square patch of sky enclosed in a magical field, and that only for thirty minutes a day."

Her anger swiftly abated, the pegasus reduced to tearful sorrow once more.

"I don't think the princesses truly understand how I feel. I hope they don't. Because... no-one, certainly not them, deserves to feel like this. Their very reason for living visible outside a window..."

She gestured towards the barred cell window with one wing.

"...but so eternally far out of reach."

With that, Free returned to her mattress. She lay down, buried her head beneath her hooves once more, and closed her eyes. Wishing the day away. Willing time to pass faster, counting down the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months and the years until her freedom, her life, was to be restored to her. 

Outside her cell, Shining Armour stood and watched the utterly broken pegasus. His own eyes wide and full of tears threatening to fall at any moment. The scroll in his hoof still unopened, and now thoroughly unnecessary. 

Just as Free Bird had suspected, she knew precisely what the scroll said. The griffin settlement in which she had been arrested, half a world away from the rapidly changing and rebuilding land of griffinstone, was utterly unwilling to compromise. By their understanding of the situation they had captured a trespasser living on their property without papers nor the means to pay for her accommodation or the resources she had used while there. The punishment for such crimes was four years of hard labour, and it had only been through Princess Twilight's study of ancient law that she and her friends had been able to return Free Bird to Equestria. Not as a free pony, though, but as a prisoner under an order of extradition. Her sentence to be carried out in full and under the supervision of her griffin captors, but amongst her own people and in the manner of pony justice. Confinement, rather than labour. 

They had tried everything. Pleading. Bargaining. Outright bribery. But the griffins had taken their bits not as a reason to let Free Bird off, her debt now paid, but as a mere downpayment for the emotional trauma the griffins had suffered upon finding their lands invaded by what they claimed was almost certainly the vanguard of a secret, guerilla pony army. 

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. It sure as hell wasn't justice.

With a grim snort, Shining Armour threw the scroll the ground and stamped it under one hoof. He turned, and galloped from the dungeon in search of his sister and his wife. Before, it had been them who had come to him to ask for help. But now... seeing this pony's tragic plight, hearing her story and realising just how dire a state she was in, it was he would would ask for the Princesses aid. He who would take up the fight in Free Bird's name. He would would not stop until justice was served, and the pegasus was free to take flight once again. 

The dungeon door slammed shut behind the unicorn, and within her cell, alone once more, Free Bird began to sob anew.



By Jeeves