Honour Bound

by Astral Star and Company

Chapter 1: Humble Beginnings

My earliest memories. Passing, blurred images and voices blended together like a bizarre piece of art. It was night, underneath the cold, dark starless night I was born. I knew my parents for a full 20 seconds at most. They were Changelings, insectoid creatures resembling horses, with blank, cyan compound eyes, holed hooves, crooked horns, insect wings and powers of deception. To me, they all looked the same, especially back then.

“Oh great, I knew this would happen,” my father had said

“You KNEW?” my mother screamed, obviously frustrated

She held me in her arms as she lay panting on a makeshift bed. Really, an old mattress in the living room floor, a hole in a sandstone wall. I felt her embrace, it felt warm, it felt right and yet, it felt hostile, cold, like I wasn’t wanted there. My mother’s embrace was anything but welcoming. I cried at this feeling, I wanted out.

“Where do we put it? I’m not keeping it,” my mother continued “I got a job to keep,”

“Put it in the trash,” another voice said, out of sight “No one’s gonna be any wiser,”

“Yeah, guard’s won’t question a newborn in the trash,” my father drawled with a roll of his eyes

“Yeah, but it won’t live 10 minutes without you two. Sure, the guards will question us about a newborn. What they won’t ask about is a corpse in the trash. Dead bodies gotta be the next commonest thing in the dump besides sewage,”

“You do have a point…”

When I was so young, I had no idea what they were discussing. All I did was cry my eyes out, over and over again. I wanted away from here so badly. These changelings were cold, they didn’t want me. I felt no love for me in any of the adults in the room. I was starving, thirsty and cold, not 5 minutes out of the womb.

Not even 5 minutes, and my father just voted me to be put in a trash can.

“Alright, hand it over, it’s going in the dumpster,”

And my mother let me go like I was nothing to her.

Out the window of a two-storey house I went, freefalling into a heap of waste and garbage. I didn’t even have a blanket on. I lay there, fragile body broken by rubbish. I was cold, hungry and so so young. No infant should start out the way I did. I should consider myself lucky, there were full grown changelings out there killed by less.

By sheer instinct, I scavenged food from my new dumpster home. My first meal, some kind of lumpy sludge, probably some rotten food that someone else tried out and hated. I ate it, it’ll probably the first bit of food I’ll come across in a long time. It made my stomach churn, my senses dull and my head hurt. But I held it down, because it’s all I had.

Crawling underneath the starless sky I knew I had to get away. From deep in my heart I knew that I couldn’t go back. They didn’t want me, didn’t love me. My own father tossed me out a window into the garbage for goodness’ sake. I just kept going, crawling under the light of the moon.

After what seemed like hours, I found the edge of the city. Abandoned, sprawling huts and a large river of waste was there to greet me. I crawled into a crack in the wall for shelter, and cried myself to sleep. My first bed was a pile of gravel, my first blanket the brisk night air, my first night alive…

Something I wish I would forget.

For the rest of my life as I close my eyes to sleep, I will forever be haunted by those memories. Of being abandoned, so small and weak. My own parents, who cast me out with the trash. My first night, sleeping at death’s door.

Comments

[Luna the Filly]

So sad...