Dawn Among the Ruins
“Who’s next?”
“The twins, Keytone Printer the filly and Brisk Printer the colt.”
“Hmm, I don’t want to cause a fuss, but they seem a bit . . . bipedal for foals.”
“Call them whatever suits your tastes in grammar best, but it’s not like the Manehattan School District has the choice to be picky anymore.”
Ardent bristled as she listened in to the conversation between the principal and his secretary, but for what reason, she couldn’t be sure. Was it because of possible tribalism that her precious darlings could face, or because the conversation was yet another unpleasant reminder of how far the city had fallen. Whatever the case, she knew the secretary was right: none of them had the choice to be picky anymore.
The door to the office opened, and out stepped the secretary, a stallion whose diligence in grooming himself had somehow missed the small stain on his tie. “Congratulations are in order, Mrs. Printer; your foals have been accepted into Stately Manners’ School for Gifted Foals. Here’s the onboarding pamphlet; it will include everything they need for when school starts. See to it that everything required of your family is ready by the end of August.”
“Oh, thank you so much, kind sir,” Ardent said outwardly, getting up from her bench to shake his hoof. Oh, sure, put everything on us. What’s a few more cutbacks as long as it keeps you from becoming a public school? she thought inwardly.
“Thank you, Mister!” her six-year-old son chimed in.
“Yeah, thank you!” her daughter parroted in kind.
“You’re all welcome. Here, let me escort you to the door,” the secretary replied politely.
“Thank you. You’re a true gentlestallion,” Ardent said just as politely. “Come along, you two.”
“Coming, Mother,” the twins replied in unison, hopping off the bench to follow the two ponies.
Within minutes of relative silence, the quartet had reached the door, and the secretary was seeing them off. Before they left, Ardent took the opportunity to thank him again. With that final expression of gratitude, the quartet turned into a trio and exited into the warm Sexis air.
June. It’s called June now, Ardent lamented. Because the Princesses just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Suppressing a scowl, Ardent turned to her two foals, or children. Really, the word choice wasn't important; all that mattered was that they were hers, they were Printers. Getting worked up over the small stuff would just lead to tribalism, and they, above all, needed it the least.
Two young black-haired humans looked back at her with dark brown eyes. Keytone had her hair long, secured into a docktail by a blue bow, while Brisk had his mane cut shorter to the neck. Both wore grey woolen formal-wear with hobnailed canvas shoes that, while obviously cheap, still looked quite good on them, if Ardent’s mother senses weren’t being biased.
“You both were great in there,” Ardent told them with the most genuine smile she had had in hours. “Very polite and respectable.”
Her foals matched her smile and loosened up considerably.
“Does that mean we can go get some ice cream now?” Brisk asked excitedly.
“I want to go see Daddy,” Keytone demanded hopefully.
Ardent’s face grew contemplative, and she hmmed audibly. “You know, I think we’ll have time to do both.”
The twins cheered, and Ardent pivoted around to let her foals hop onto her back. They did so, and with a leap, they were off. Off into the bleak skies.
Bleak though they might have been, Ardent wouldn’t trade them for any viable alternative. There were fewer and fewer ponies living in the city with every passing year, and as a result, there were more and more patches of abandoned buildings dotting the landscape, each one hastening the spiral down. Manehattan was becoming a city without hope.
After the riots, some ponies and other species that had been targeted decided to leave, having literally nothing left for them in the city. Others had tried to stay on and rebuild what had been lost, but they too were left with nothing in the end and left, and more people joined them every day. The only people who seemed in no danger of leaving were the poor, the stubborn, and the politicians.
The Printers definitely qualified for the second category, but there were still times when even Fit was doubtful on if they should stick it out or not. After all, there was a reason Ardent carried her foals on her back in the air, instead of walking along the streets like a normal pony. But every time she saw somepony knocked out on salt on some distant street, her mind flashed back to that small village where she first met her foals and where they had no chance of a future, just because they were from Hercegovina instead of Serbia.
“There!” Keytone cheered, pointing to a familiar ice cream shop.
“Good eyes, sweetie!” Ardent replied happily before banking towards the shop.
Half an hour later, the Printer trio was flying up to the offices of the Manehattan Beugel, easily recognizable by the mural that Ardent herself had painted over its front face depicting a mosaic portrait of a many different pictures to form somepony swinging a sledgehammer, the triumph of the working pony of Manehattan over adversity, and as her eyes passed over the street out front, Ardent let out a shocked ‘huh.’
“Is something wrong, Mom?” Brisk asked.
“Nothing’s wrong, honey,” Ardent said as they landed. The twins got off her back, and while she was eager to stretch out after having nearly 90lbs on her spine, she was mindful of the styrofoam container for both her and her husband’s ice cream was hanging on the same neck, and she didn’t want to lose that. “There’s just a Yugo here.”
“What’s a Hugo?” Keytone asked.
“Yugo, sweetie, and it’s a kind of car that precisely one pony in Equestria owns. Which means we have a celebrity on hoof,” Ardent explained as she walked towards the door.
“Is it DJ-P0N3?” Keytone inquired hopefully.
“No, it’s Macaroni; he’s a columnist for our paper and the only thing besides your father’s ingenuity and ambition keeping us afloat,” Ardent informed them as Brisk rushed ahead to open the door for her, something that took a great deal of effort on his part but was adorable.
“So be polite?” Brisk asked with a great deal of strain, not seeming to notice that his mother was propping the door open with her hoof as she jumped over him with her wings, landing on his opposite side and continuing to stop the door with her hoof.
Keytone walked through the door and thanked him. Ardent did the same and then turned to face the secretary watching them, letting go of the door as she did so. Brisk bolted out of the way of the door and into the lobby, stopping only for a moment before strutting along behind his mother and sister like he was the stallion of the house. The secretary who had witnessed this let her barely continued mirth and amusement show on her face after having witnessed the little show the family put on just getting through the front door.
“Wild Mane, where can I find my husband right now?” Ardent asked.
“He’s up in the main office,” Wild Mane -- so named because her hair looked like it had been flattened by a steamroller, and she herself had never been outside the city limits once in her entire life -- chirped happily. “Mister Macaroni is back in town for now, and he’s regaling the office with tales of the human world that didn’t make it into his column. Sigh. I wish I could be there with them.”
Ignoring the verbal sigh from the secretary, Ardent walked past her towards the stairs. “Thank you, Wild Mane.”
The Printer foals mimicked their mother’s words and direction of travel as they followed her up the stairs, amazingly still holding onto their ice cream cones and licking them occasionally. As the trio climbed the stairs, they were eventually able to hear the sounds of rowdy discussion coming from the office; no doubt Just News and Macaroni would be going at it again. Ardent was able to open the door to find herself unsurprised and only a little confused.
"Catalonia's independence has been a hot button issue in Spain, and France, for years now. Now it might cause the Third Spanish Civil War,” Macaroni explained from the chair at his old desk, said chair being surrounded by the rest of the news staff.
"That's--wait, Third Spanish Civil War?! When did they have a second civil war?" Just News asked, hovering in the air above the crowd and looking down on his friend.
"When Catalonia declared independence a little less than twenty years ago."
"Logical, but the Americans keep saying there's been peace in Western Europe since the breakup of the Warsaw Pact in the mid-eighties. Are they lying?"
"Oh, no, the west of Europe had been overflowing with peace, save for a few riots and collapsing governments."
"But you just said there was a Second Spanish Civil War. That's not exactly peace."
"It was less of a war and more of a drunken brawl that was over in a weekend. It's why they think there might need to be Third Spanish Civil War."
"Need? Since when does anyone need a war?"
"There are plenty of reasons you might need a war. Like, for instance, if you're Spanish."
This got an uproarious bout of laughter from the assembled crowd. And while she could have done without the needless tribalism, even Ardent was caught in the moment and chuckled a little at the joke. She tried to focus on picking out her husband in the crowd, but after finding herself unable to opted to just ask.
“Excuse me, but where is my husband?” Ardent asked innocently.
Surprisingly it was Mac that was able to hear her and respond. “He’s in his office, said he needed to finish something up.”
“Thank you, Mr. Macaroni,” Ardent said before trotting around the crowd and through the rows of desks, her son following close on her tail.
Keytone stayed put just a little while longer. “Hello, Mr. Muscle Macaroni! Okay, bye now!” and with that she was off after the rest of her family.
“That name’s just for taxes!” Mac shouted at the retreating form of the filly. He turned his focus to meet the stunned silence of the crowd. “What? I’ve always been jacked?” he said with a shrug.
“Your parents still named you Muscle, dude,” one of the older female reporters said, dumbfounded.
“Take it up with them. So, anyways, ever since Catalonia declared her independence, the Basque Territories have been pushing for their own independence, and the Spanish government hasn’t liked this one bit. Which brings me back to where this story started, bumming a ride with this crazy girl from the French Front Nationale to this town hall so she could meet her boyfriend from Nouveau Centre in what I assumed was a star-crossed lovers story but which was about to get a whole lot weirder. . . .”
Ardent tuned the conversation out as she entered her husband’s office.
“Ardent!” Fit Printer shouted, looking up from the four computer monitors that dominated his desk now. “What are you doing here?”
“Daddy!” the twins shouted in kind, running around her and preempting any response from Ardent . . . for about half a second.
“Kids! Don’t spill the ice cream!” she exclaimed even as the two humans threw their arms around the father. The expected mess never came though, and she had enough presence of mind to shut the door with a kick. “Wait a second, did you two eat all your ice cream on the way here?”
“We’re six,” was Brisk’s succinct reply.
“It was so good! I couldn’t wait to finish it!” Keytone blurted out.
“Ardent, relax, it’s just spilled milk,” Fit said, bringing his foals up into a better position on the office chair.
“I didn’t spill anything,” Ardent said with a smile as she lifted off the ground on columns of beaten air to deposit the styrofoam case on the desk before rapidly ascending again and landing on the floor next to the chair.
“We got into the school!” Brisk exclaimed.
“You did? That’s amazing, you two!” Fit cheered.
“The test was so hard,” Keytone complained, snuggling up closer to her father.
“But you got through it,” Fit reassured her, patting her on the part of her back that was reinforced by the hardened ‘saddle’ of her dress. “All that studying paid off.”
“They got into the best school for foals their age in the city; I’d say that’s quite an achievement,” Ardent said happily before adding something else quietly. “The best school left, anyway.”
Fit grimaced for a split second as his radar-like ears picked up on the statement. One benefit to human children was that their ears weren’t designed to pick up on all those little moments of shame between parents, or maybe the black-haired twins were just too polite to mention anything. He hoped it wasn’t the second one; that was the sort of thing that would come back to bite them later with a therapy bill.
Just as quickly as it appeared, though, it was gone, and Fit’s face returned to a smile. “Well, I’ll just add to this good news fest. We’ll be able to expand the company again soon, which means I should be able to find some extra room in the budget to buy you two something nice as a reward for your achievement.”
“Yea!” Brisk cheered.
“New clothes please,” Keytone requested.
“New clothes?” Ardent asked, surprised.
“These clothes are wool, Mom, and it’s sooooo hot out. I’m dying in this,” Brisk corroborated, shaking his grey jacket for emphasis.
“Well, take your jacket off for now, then,” Ardent said cheekily.
“Or take these,” Fit said before using his back hoofs to open up two drawers on his desk that were filled with spare clothes for the twins. “I prepared for this moment after that incident with the ink.”
“I said I was sorry,” Keytone repeated in an exasperated tone as she and her brother sprung for the drawers to get the clothes.
As their children changed, Ardent offered her husband an ice cream cone from the case. “Well, Fit, here’s to our family’s future; it’s looking pretty bright.”
Fit took the offered cone. “Well then, I better start wearing shades.”
It’s been a decade since the First Contact Riots, and still little has changed. The buildings are still burnt, the shops are still closed, the people are still gone. This is a level of depressive madness I have only seen in the bleakest of Third World nations.
Homecoming is usually supposed to be a happy affair, but for many of us who travel back to Manehattan, it just simply isn’t so. We see the city that we love so much in such disrepair, and it hurts us so. We weep, and we wonder what can be done to change it.
It has become abundantly clear that in order to bring about change in the city, we must bring about change in the leadership. This is the case all over Equestria. I have been on Human-Earth for the majority of the last ten years, and as great as its been, I have longed for my homeland and the opportunity to change it.
I shall be arriving home for good soon, and when I do, I shall be starting something to finally put an end to this. The time for talk is over. We must take direct and forceful action.
We can be the change we want to see in the world; all we have to do is have hope and act.
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You've caught my eye... I am curious as to how this'll turn out.
I'm actually curious as to see how the Humans adopted by Equestriani will turn out.
It's kind of the reverse of DJ's situation. In particular, the two Human children have very Equestriani names. I wonder how this will affect them in the future.