Ugly freedom and the pair from stallion-grad

by waste

three

They cross the street towards the second citizen district. Jagged flakes of dirt pepper the streets. The occasional refugee or immigrant they pass all appear fused to the pavements and buildings, faces fixed in a numbness. The comforting smell of unwashed bodies is accompanied with the sound of foreign words tucked underneath it. A stench.

Immigrants, prisoners of war, refugees. Most often completely displaced creatures from a country or a city that took stage right and exited as soon as the air-force rolled in. All of them pulled in by the first regulated free market, the hunger for cheap labor and a starving lack of country (as well as families).

They all stand or sit with teeth and fists clenched, a constant and reassuring tide of frustration oozes from the cracks in the street. The dignity and strength of the immigrant spirit tested.

Eventually they reach a familiar sight, a marker that shows where the new citizen district truly begins. The marker consists of three things. A trio of quiet, well-trimmed and polite changelings. All three of them well matured with good color on their scales. All three the remains of a hanging.

Tight cords of rope that bind their legs together ends in a chocked noose around their necks. Hung upon the entry gates well above the ground, they are dead set on appearing dead. Unsurprisingly the corpses drift around in lifeless friendly circles. A set of plaques is pinned to their hardened skin.

In rounded heavy letters they say this:
“I was part of a poisonous, corrupting and repulsive race of abominations. Fear of me is only matched by disgust of me. No god or creature will miss me or my races’ passing.”
A severe and worrying set of words. Everyone’s got used to it. A couple of fillies have laid flowers under them. It was consoling to see that the unity party hasn’t got rid of everyone’s bad habits.

"Wow. They posted the same words three times. Trying too hard"

He waved a smudge of smoke away from himself. She threw it. She killed it. The cigarette was burning low and her eyes were fixed on something.

“Woah”
“What is it now Alice?”
“Sir, look at this”
“Never knew you liked flowers so much Alice”
“No underneath the third plaque!”

Right there a series of strikes and circles were smeared to the chest underneath the plaque. Coloured in copper based paint. Still sticky. The significance of these markings for the changeling sacred dead they would never understand. The two ESA officers did understand something else. The marks were done intricately and with time, from someone that cared for this changeling corpse. They also understand what a trail of green paint meant.

It meant an Idiot. Or a trap.

They didn’t see it at first because the hanging trio blocked the view of the tracks left behind. Spaced out at about twenty feet between each splash of green, it was easy to follow.

Tracks this easy and this early meant they were the first to find it.
“We’re going to have to follow this sir. What are we waiting for?”

Another aching morning lost. Already the laborers and the bakers cut their way through the city. Piles of them moving and the voices rising. A crime in the color of green hoof-prints. What are we waiting for?

“I don’t know”
“Someone’s in trouble?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go Alice”

They followed the trail for another half hour. Deeper into the second citizen district and its collection of halfway houses and parole offices. The trail coiled around the grayed remains of a small box-like building. As one of the houses on Amendment Street it had both a flat roof and barley enough space to suffocate with your roommates. Whenever the air force flew over, both the tiles and the pipe rattled to each other.

But both were silent now. Belated sunlight struggled to filter itself through the shabby street. The loudest thing in this still, semi dark landscape was the loud taste of salt. Of metal. The taste and stench spread itself in the static air. It meant that something had been crying or bleeding.

Within the space of two breaths they were on either side of the ramshackle door that marked the entrance to the house. They stare at each other across the splintered wood.

Another moment.

The door was kicked down.

A dripping stain of green was in the middle of the room, to the side of it a colossal idiot stood with its back to them. The idiot didn’t move. It stayed there. The idiot rooted to the ground. Paint and light smeared around it.

“Why did you touch the body?” Watch coarsely gifted these words to the idiot.
“Are you a sympathiser?” Alice shot these words at the idiot.

The idiot remained Silent. But then the idiot moved. Although more accurately the idiot dragged itself as if attached to something unseen.

Which of those words got her moving?

The light peeled away her anonymity. The idiot was a middle aged pony. She was tall, taller than both of them and suspicious enough to test if she was a changeling. Her mane is straight. It flows down her shoulders and ends in ragged bursts of red.

She has a short cut coat coloured a starving white to collide with her red hair. Two dark tracks cut down her face because she had been sobbing severely and quietly. Thin beautiful lines etched themselves together to make a weightless set of eyes, mouth and nose. Misery sits on her like a sickness.

They never asked her but her name was Trudy.

All around her the grief has settled on the room in ashy piles. Again she moves as if dragged. As if dead. She was mostly silent. But her crumpled muted face was too loud for the officers. Her eyes.

She spent a long time looking past the two before she nodded her head.

Disturbed by the softness of her grieving, it took several moments but they repeated each of their questions.

Fortunately she answered “Yes” this time round. Her answer was neither blunt nor soft. The word was said a long time ago, somewhere else. On top of that she also gave them a wet painful smile.

But it seemed like a pretence to something bigger. Something humming and massive and unseen. Something that could be felt in that room but not observed. Fortunately the officers pushed this thought down.

Unfortunately Watch fell into his old habit of thinking and Alice lit another one up. She was tapping her hooves.

The more he watched the idiot, the more a scratching thought managed to burn a hole in Watch’s head. It fell out his head and hit the floor at the same time the idiot managed to choke another mouthful of tears down. The thought is this.

“This grieving idiot is going north and there’s nothing I can do.”

What about Alice? What about that plain pony with the dripping artificial smile? For now she was safely wrapped in righteousness and anger at the sympathiser. Her loyalty and stubbornness is saving her from what the unity party calls a “conflicted state of mind”. She’s already made up her mind and whispers into Watch’s ear “Guilty”. She said it quickly like the word would burn her. All around, her personal smoke coiling. Heaving.

But the officers did what officers did and tried to ignore certain duties and certain feelings.

“Were you coerced ma'am?”
“No”
“As in forced to pursue an action?”
“No”
“Okay. Okay Alice don’t say anything”

Watch takes off his officers cap. His words were soft enough to crumple into the stone floor. Remarkably for a few seconds his playful malice was stowed away. Instead a deep and intense patience flowed out of him. Alice was reminded of how a doctor approaches a dying patient.

“Alright you’re clearly in trouble”

He was answered with vacant eyes.

“You’re meant to say yes to being coerced. So I can lift a lot of charges on you. Okay? You don’t need to make it hard on yourself. There’s a process, an unofficial one you see, and we will help you through it.”

She spoke with a choking shortness. This was expected though. The sobbing had a reasonable amount of time to coax some coarseness into her vocal cords.

“Okay sir.”
“Okay. Alice just, just calm down, just calm down.”

She was bouncing from hoof to hoof, nodding her head and agreeing with the world at how goddamn guilty this pony looks.

“Were you coerced?”
“No. I loved him”

A massive shapeless silence glides across the room.

Rage had started venting out of her. She was stabbing one hoof at the idiot and another hoof into Watch’s arm. Her face was in a halfway house of puerile glee and righteous fury. A kind of grinning face with widened eyes and flayed out brows.

Alice attempted to go for professional pride but tripped and landed on fanaticism.

“I told you sir! I told you, I told! You-why-the-goddam-fuck-do-you-not-listen-to-me!”
“Celestia’s sake Language you pyscho! Just because- no let me – just because – Celestia’s sake let me finish! – Just because you said that one word doesn’t mean you have to act like a brainless zealot!”
“A zealot! This is loyalty! This is what’s needed to clear out the wrong and build a future!”
“Do you want it? Do you want it? Do you want me to drag my heels and shout about absolutely nothing I know about?”

Luna above he wanted to wring Alice’s neck.

Alice was prancing around shouting at the ceiling. She was waving her cigarette around and making pictures with the smoke. He was struggling with the red engulfing his face. It was hard to breathe with the accusations and smoke that filled the room . “Luna above me” he thought. We look like idiots to the idiot.

Eventually it ended in a verbal stalemate, with Alice threatening to report on his “conflicted state of mind” and Watch threatening a demotion. As before, they never mean it. (As before they drink and make up ). It was nothing new. Really just a repeat of an argument.

They cooled down and asked her again. But watch leaned down and his question was handled softly.

"Were you coerced?"

This time there was a statement wrapped in the question. You could guess it from the way he lent down and pleaded with his eyes. The way his desperation had stretched his sentence out slowly. Please don’t do this to yourself. That’s how the statement went. Please don’t do this to yourself idiot. Please don’t die.

"No"
"I don't think you understand. There is something that needs to be done"
"No"
"You have to think. Please think."
"You know I've thought about it. I've said the answer three times"
"You're saying the wrong answer. Celestia above I'll pay for you to move out."
"I could move out."
"You could"
"I could"

His words eased itself out in a whisper. Celestia above nothing could be done.

"You're going to die if you don't"
"I'm going to die"
"Please"
"I'm going to die"

Alice come in with the deal breaker.

"He gave you too many chances. You're under arrest"
"Yes. Yes I am."

It stabbed him like a heartbreak. Indifferent despite his efforts, she stood like a tall beautiful death-wish. Alice maneuvered around the prisoner with a hoof of shackles.

“You want to die? You want to go north? Fine. You only had to do one thing. One."

The idiot and the stallion took a while to glare at the other. He broke it off and howled out a laugh. The bitter laugh. Like the clunk of pebbles in an empty bucket.

"You wanted to get caught the moment you left that trail"
"Yes. Yes I did."
"You won't find him when you die. All changelings go to hell"
"I'm going to hell"
"Enjoy it"

He walked out like a corpse, frustration stabbed into him. Watch left first. Alice killed another cigarette. She followed it by a hoof to the idiot's face. The twisted kind of smash that digs out teeth. Alice put the shackles on the idiot and the pair of them followed Watch upstairs.

The idiot and Alice reached Watch staring at the street. Yet still the idiot stood tall. A tear of blood from the mouth. Shackles smothered around her hooves. Apparently some sort of justice was done but he couldn't see the proof. He watched Alice lead the prisoner a little while out. She came back and offered an understanding smile. A small respite of tolerance despite herself.

“I know sir. I know”
“You don’t. Are we clear?”
“Yes”

But nothing was clear. For a while they had stood there like puzzles that needed solving. Him endlessly bitter and her endlessly honorable.
“I wonder what its like”
“To go North?”
“Yeah”

But we both know don’t we? We both know.

“We’re going to coffee later”
“Yeah, we are”
“Goodbye grandpa”
"Goodbye Alice"

It wasn't the first time she suggested a coffee. Whenever she did she never argued, she always payed and she always listened. No matter how hard Watch tried to save ponies from the prisons and the camps in the north. She was always there and she always listened. You can love her for that if you like.

For now she lead the prisoner across the streets.

He watched the pair rise and fall across the road. Silently he stepped back into the tiny room. Undoubtedly there would be paper work. Reams of it. Before the work, he'd like to have another look at the room shaped like a heartbreak. Where the end of two lovers had probably began and ended.

Beneath the floor boards the eyes watched him.

Comments

[Perteks]

I'm little lost in this story

[Rathalos122]

I usually dont like it when authors use some kind of special writing style but this? I love it
(btw is there any connection with The Fall?)

[waste]

3163354
Oh crap! i put in the unedited version!

[waste]

3164656
Yes, but I'm kinda embarrassed to say it. I don't know why.

[Bread]

I have to say your writing style is absolutely amazing. Everything is extremely well worded. It reminds me of a more emotional Cormac McCarthy, and more descriptive. I also greatly enjoy the way that you convey your ideas, and those of the characters. They are very vivid, but in a completely new type of vividness. I love this story and am very interested to see where it goes. Gods luck with this and any further endeavors.