The Last Dreams of Pony Island

by horizon

Spotlight

Spotlight

"Chance smiles once upon the lucky,"
they say,
"and the second time upon the fool."
I have thrown away my mahua bottles.
Now is no time to be foolish.

I was convinced that the Mooken
were wild foals' tales,
told to scare open the purse-strings
of the fat and lazy.

"Without the walls," they said,
"without the garrison," they said,
"the first Myinnkyun was found
silent and gutted,
absent even of corpses."
From this,
and fables of minotaurs in the tawtwin,
came the new Myinnkyun,
huddled on the tip
of the island's south peninsula,
a hundred acres of surrounding brush
fired and plowed into bare sand,
keeping the shadows of the jungle
far away from our little lights.

Why wouldn't I enlist for the watch?
Paid to drink and gamble
as the stretch of sand lay silent
and birds trilled from the jungle beyond.

But two weeks after the night without a moon,
as I lay in my cot opening a bottle
instead of pacing the wall,
came a great shout from the rampart.

When I dashed out, hastily buckling my armor,
a minotaur was sprinting away across the sands,
carrying a watch-spear stolen from my empty post,
and dozens of ponies were staring up at the wall,
drawn by the commotion,
whispering about what might be outside.

Sunspot galloped up to demand an accounting,
so I told him
I threw my spear at an attacking Mooken.
Dawn Patrol said
he came outside just in time
to see the Mooken run away,
and so I escaped discharge
for spinning tales with drink on my breath,
taking only a turn under the lash.

And now Peridot.

I have thrown away my mahua bottles.
To be foolish now is death.

Yet my heart whispers
that we cannot out-gallop folly.
How can a garrison save us
when earth and sea conspire
to bring a second end
to the colony of Myinnkyun?

We have built walls against the land,
but we cannot hold back the ocean!