Barleycorn bit his lip as he walked down the main road of Two Mills, looking this way and that. Well, even calling it a road was generous. More of a cart track. Two Mills wasn’t big enough for roads—just a little farming community, a dot on the map between the Empire and the former Alliance, home to fifty or so ponies just trying to keep their heads down and eke a living from the dirt.
Or, it hadn’t been, at least.
Two months ago, they had seen the first of them—war refugees from the North, pretty crystal ponies, lean and haggard—many of them ill, many of them injured. Two Mills had tried to help, and then sent them on their way.
But they never stopped—more, and more, and more of them came, fleeing the smoke and fire. They told stories of the Army—of the horde of screaming fanatics, slaughtering stallions, mares and foals without hesitation. Of the burning fields, forests, and villages they left in their wake. Of the roads torn up, and temples pulled down, and the blood--so much blood. And, at their head, the great, gray alicorn, one that no one had seen before, who led the destruction with the meticulous precision of an true artist.
And so, the trickle of ponies had become a river—and the river had burst its banks. Two Mills had once been a quiet, farming community (in fact, its two mills was about the only interesting thing about it)—but now it had turned into a sort of migrant camp. Barleycorn and his wife had managed to fence their garden, but otherwise, nearly every square inch of the town was filled with ponies—hungry, injured ponies, wanting rest, wanting safety, fleeing south, towards the demons they knew, and away from the devil they didn’t. And those devils, he suspected, were rising to meet the challenge; he waited, any day, for armies of steel and gold to come marching up from the south, armies that would crush little Two Mills under their weight.
Barleycorn walked down the main road, looking to his left and right, at the huddled sleepers, shivering from cold, or hunger, or a dozen other things. Mothers trying to hush their frightened children. Fathers glaring warily at other fathers, each waiting for the other to make a move. Fear and exhaustion and worry on every face. He stepped around the abandoned luggage in the middle of the path, around the broken wagon that lay, shattered, where it had fallen, around the sleeping ponies that would never rise again, and shivered.
Barleycorn was an old stallion, he knew that. He and his wife had spent almost their entire sixty years here, save for a trip or two to Canterlot to see the Princesses, back when it still stood. He wanted to flee—but he knew, just as surely, that he couldn’t. He had roots here. He and his wife had birthed and buried children here. He couldn’t just leave. Not when it was all that he had ever known.
And he wanted to help the ponies, too, but that was an equal impossibility. He and his wife had given out their only blankets to the first group of refugees, thinking that they would be the only ones. And they had fed the first few groups, with hot stew and warm bread—but, as more and more and more came, both the stews and the slices of bread became thinner and thinner, as more and more ponies fought, sometimes to literal blows, for less and less.
And now, there was nothing. He and his wife had to survive on a few small sacks of grain, and all they could scrape from their tiny, fenced-in garden, at least until harvest. Or, what was left of it, anyways; much of their fields had been trampled by the fleeing ponies, and much more of it eaten, still green, by the desperate. Barleycorn had sworn to himself that he would not leave Two Mills until he died—and, every day, that mysterious time seemed to creep a little closer.
Barleycorn sighed and hung his head—and then he heard it.
Somewhere, close by, a foal was crying. No, not a foal—an infant, screaming in that desperate way that only the newborn can.
He frowned, then turned to follow the sound. Who in their right mind, he found himself thinking, would want to bring a foal into this world of misery?
He rounded the corner of one of the barns--and froze.
In the middle of the mass of huddled ponies sat two mares, both very pretty. They both looked up at him. The first, a young, green-and-pink mare had a hollowness to her stare, despite the dusky rose on her flank. She looked ill--but, whether from the journey, from some illness picked up on the road, or from the swelling bump in her belly, he couldn’t tell.
But the other—the other looked at him with an expression full of exhaustion, fatigue, and a sort of quiet triumph. Her blue mane and pink coat were matted with sweat, and tear tracks were beginning to dry on her cheeks.
And, in her arms, she held a little colt, still wet and bloody from the birthing. He screamed, stopping only to hiccup, frightened, as he nuzzled against his mother. Even though he had yet to be cleaned, Barleycorn could see he had a brilliant white coat, and the barest nub of a horn poking through his rainbow-striped mane. And, as Barleycorn watched—
—his eyes went wide, and he began to tremble—
—the little colt spread his wings.
Barleycorn stood, unmoving, for a long moment—and then, slowly, fell to his knees.