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Chapter I1,337 words
Chapter II2,775 words
Chapter III1,659 words
Chapter IV1,479 words
Chapter V1,967 words
Chapter VI2,519 words
Chapter VII1,813 words
Chapter VIII2,755 words
Chapter IX1,938 words
Chapter X1,392 words
Chapter XI1,962 words
Chapter XII1,495 words
Chapter XIII1,659 words

Chapter XII

Cuz’ it’s a bittersweet symphony this life
Tryin’ to make ends meet
Tryin’ to find some money then you die
I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
Where all the veins meet, yeah

I didn’t see anypony in front of me. I didn’t see them. I didn’t watch anypony stagger along the lot of us, their snooty nature and slits for eyes perusing and silently judging us. I didn’t watch them lift the chins of some of the others, or hear them huff a breath of disappointment after a long, cold stare, choosing to pass on by to further browse what stood before them. I didn’t watch or hear or speak or move as they shuffled up the line, smartly dressed and carrying themselves as if they were a highly important figure, their eyes shooting daggers in various directions, no remorse as to whoever was on the other end of such looks. I didn’t know how they were dressed nor how they looked at others. I didn’t see them. All I saw, and this is the gosh darn truth, was grey. I saw an obscene amount of depressing and slightly irritating grey, which made my stomach churn and left me battling a severe and relentless migraine.

“It’s the big day,” some stallion had said to us earlier. “This is the day that you’ve got to hold your chin up high, smile bright, and win them over with your personality!”

Hmph, was all I could really think about. Seriously, all I really thought about at that time was “hmph”, ‘cuz here this guy was, all bright and cheery, and I immediately knew that all that was about to come was entirely frivolous and unbelievably trivial. The foals around me looked as if they hadn’t smiled for a decade (and they had more than likely only lived a decade). They didn’t have personalities, either. I had been here for two days and all they had done was shuffle about like zombies lost in an enormous tin can.

“If you’re one of the lucky ones to go, then we bid you farewell! It has been a pleasure helping you.”

Hmph.

Here we were anyway, lined up in a long row of suffering souls while somepony whom none of us even knew nor wanted to know prodded at us and stated derogatory remarks which seemed to hurt the cheery stallion more than it hurt the pony directed toward. I held my ground, ‘cuz I wasn’t actually hearing or seeing these things; no, I could only think of one thing.

Grey.

The walls were thick, pale, ghastly; the outside world we were currently kept apart from was much of the same. Still, no more I wish I had my friend’s eyes, I wanted out. I wanted to be free, to feel the grass again, to visit more Star Lakes, to go to unexplored and magnificent places that I could not fathom inside this wretched place. I wanted out, and, as Fluttershy so astutely noticed, the only thing standing in our way of it was a set of jangling keys loosely hanging from the hip of my dear, cheery, captor over there. Two days. Two days had passed, and those keys had not come into contact with me... until this morning at line up. But the moment had been inopportune, and I had not snatched them.

But they were there. And the door was right behind him. Right at this very moment. But I didn’t see either.

Grey.

Suddenly, my vision was blurred with the sight of a solid, grey object, one that had come to an abrupt stop in front of my hooves. Though it was not the wall I had been staring at for twelve minutes straight, it was still hideously the same color. I didn’t see anything but the color.

o----o

“What’s this one’s story?” said a mare in pinstripe business attire, her make-up grimly the same shade as her coat.

“That one?” said a grey stallion cowering in a corner. He tried to stand more upright, but only appeared to slouch. Ironically, he went by the moniker Mister Blue. “That one’s fresh off the street, ma’am,” he said feebly. “Found her wandering around an old restaurant. She’s a feisty one, she is, tried to beat my staff to a pulp.”

Immediately Mister Blue regretted saying this. Talking others into taking these foals into their homes was (again, ironically) a weak spot of his. He shook his head and opened his mouth to correct himself, but was cut off by the mare.

“Interesting.”

Blue sighed.

The mare circled Daisy, eyeing her curiously, and with more intrigue than any of the previous foals she had passed by. “She seems fit. Could do a lot around the house. I could stand to use another helping hoof, ya know.”

An overwhelming and certainly odd sensation shocked Daisy’s body at that precise moment. It was as if her Mum had suddenly bounded right through the front door, looking for her. She trembled. The mare in business attire didn’t seem to notice.

“Are there any others after this one?”

Daisy looked to her left.

“I’m afraid not,” Mister Blue inclined, trying to appear stern and in control but utterly failing in his attempt. “We currently have searchers out now, so at any time we could be bringing in-”

“Unnecessary,” the mare cut in. Blue slunk back into a corner. “Don’t waste it. I want this one,” she toned in absolution. “Just keep her out of sight for a while, would you? I cannot pick her up now, there are things to be done.”

Blue was shocked at the sudden conclusion of what had just happened. Not once had somepony wanted one of his foals. That had all changed in the blink of an eye, and Blue was caught reeling, mouth opening and closing in fascination and bewilderment. He almost collapsed, but kept his cool (so to speak) by leaning on one of his employees in an attempt to stay upright. Daisy was now his most prized possession, his most wondrous of possessions.

She was also now on total lockdown.

The business mare was trotting back toward the front door, seemingly on her merry way. “Thanks for understanding, kind sir. Here.” She threw a couple of bits at Blue’s hooves, which the stallion payed absolutely no attention to. “Some bits for your troubles.”

The door slammed behind the mare. She was gone almost as soon as she had come, yet she had left one stallion in near hysterics, and one young foal with an uncertain future, not that it hadn’t been uncertain in the first place.

Daisy hadn’t the slightest idea what just occurred. Fluttershy, on the other hoof, had, and for once in her “life”, she was bent on doing something about it for this Daisy character, this talented young foal just brimming with possibilities.

She was going to do something for her friend.

o----o

Grey.

That’s all that I saw as she waddled back from whence she came. Grey. She was like an apparition come and gone for no apparent reason. She was like that creepy cousin that came over on Hearthswarming Eve every year when Dad was alive and ate all the food and abruptly left. I didn’t know what else to make of it.

Grey.

There was a commotion going on in the room. I decided to snap out of my episode to find that we were being funnelled back to our dreary dwelling; the examination or whatever it was was obviously over. I fumbled around with something in my hoof. It was the pin I had been given. I have decided that it would give me good luck, ‘cuz honestly, what else was it supposed to do? Without a suitable function, other than to pin it to the clothes I don’t have, I suppose I had to give it a suitable function. Good luck charm it is.

As we trotted back to the room, I noticed two peculiar things that had come out of the situation we had just encountered.

1) That cheery stallion was even cheerier now. In fact, he seemed outright giddy, and not for any reason I very much care about. His keys seemed giddy as well.

2) Fluttershy was staring at me something fierce. I didn’t know why, but for the first time, she seemed very assertive with her look. I’m not willing to say it was a welcome sight, but it wasn’t exactly one that I would have taken offense to, either. I decided I would ask what was up.

Put very succinctly, I asked her this-

“What?”

o----o

Song: Bittersweet Symphony

By: The Verve

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