FiO: Even the Strongest Heart

by Shaslan

Chapter 2: The Winds of Change

My Nana was gone, and at first nothing seemed to really change. Life went on as before, with school and my shy, abortive attempts to make a friend. Any friend. My parents were working harder than ever, and I retreated into my head to escape. I used to wander the halls of our building and the bare patch of grass around the playground, making up stories for myself. I was Lozen, hero of the Chihenne, fearless warrior. I defeated countless enemies, soldiers and ranchers alike that came to invade our lands, and freed my people from unjust laws a thousand times over. I told myself Nana’s stories over and over again, muttering them under my breath, imagining Lozen galloping on horseback, her rifle slung over one shoulder, a knife in her hand. Never mind that my knife was a butter-knife stolen from the sandwich shop, my rifle a bit of broken drainpipe. I was Lozen, and I was a fighter.

The days crept by, and summer rolled around again. But this summer I didn’t go back to the rez, like I had every year of my life. This year I was expected to continue my solitary wanderings through the hallways. School was out, and I had more time on my hands than ever, but my parents couldn’t take any time off to be with me. They had things to do, bills to pay. So I was left alone.

That was the first time it really hit me. Nana really wasn’t coming back. I’d never see her soft, saggy face again, nut-brown from all those afternoons in the garden. Never see her wrinkles realign themselves into that sweet, creased-up smile.

I cried myself to sleep most nights. My imaginary games with Lozen no longer held the attraction they once had — they felt bland and over-rehearsed now — but they were my only entertainment, so I stuck with them. It was that or sit slouched in front of the TV, staring at brightly-coloured characters shouting over each other, not one of them really saying anything.

In hindsight, I think that was the summer when things began to properly change. I wasn’t really aware of it at the time; I only noticed that my parents seemed busier and more stressed than ever. But when I think back, I do remember overhearing a few half-whispered conversations about rocketing food prices. Rent hikes. Money was tight. All I cared about at the time was that my already-meagre pocket money was reduced further; from $2 to just 50 cents. That wasn’t enough to buy even a candy bar anymore.

It was that summer that the ponypads first started showing up in my neighbourhood, too.

I’d seen them before, obviously. The richer kids at school had already been flashing theirs around for a couple of years, with a newer and shinier model every few months. They’d never been even remotely within the price range of the kids who lived in my tower block, but all of a sudden Luca Diaz was sauntering around with one under his arm. Luca was one of the kids who hung out on the dilapidated playground in the courtyard and refused to have anything to do with me — an asshole, sure, but my parents knew his parents. They were nowhere near flush enough to buy him a toy like that.

Was it stolen, I wondered at first. Luca’s uncle had been known to find things that had ‘fallen off of the back of a lorry’ before. But not long after Luca got his, Matteo and Carolina both showed up with one each. The three of them would sit back to back on the climbing frame, their fingers tapping frantically at the screens as the sound of their laughter drifted across to me. Before long near every kid I passed in the hall was clutching a pink or purple slab of plastic to their chest.

It didn’t seem weird at the time — I was confused as to how they were affording them. But not suspicious. And eventually, watching them all bond over their new game got to be too much. I couldn’t even pretend that my lacklustre stories about Lozen were still interesting._[3]

----------
_{[3] I had told them to myself a million times over the last few months and I was sick of the sound of my own voice, sick of trying to imagine things that just weren’t real. Sick of trying to remember how Nana had sounded when she spoke the words. I needed something else to do, and I needed it now.}
----------

So one day, I summoned up all my courage, marched out of the corner where I had been skulking, and over the concrete towards the playground. Luca, Matteo and Carolina were all there atop the climbing frame as they always were, ponypads beeping softly as they played. I was always studiously ignored — but surely they couldn’t blank me out if I asked them a direct question. _[4]

----------
_{[4] At this stage anything was worth a shot. Anything was better than another day staring at my own hands and walking up and down the same corridors.}
----------

I just had to be brave enough to say the words — brave like Lozen would be brave.

So I forced myself over to them, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t trip and faceplant on the way, and stopped a couple of foot away.

They didn’t look up from their game.

I coughed.

Still no response.

“Uh — hey, you guys,” I tried again.

Matteo’s mouth twisted in annoyance as he hammered frantically at his screen, but he still didn’t look away.

“Hey, guys,” I said once more, my voice beginning to sound a little desperate. If they didn’t acknowledge me soon I would have to retreat. It was just too humiliating.

Finally, Luca shot me a dirty glare. “Ugh, what do you want? We’re right in the middle of trying to save Klugetown from the Storm King!”

The names he said meant nothing to me, but the sheer fact of their newness was enough to set my heart thudding a little harder. The prospect of having something to focus on that I didn’t have to make up myself was a thrilling one. I had to know more.

“I wondered — I wondered where you got those.”

“Mind your own business!” Carolina scowled. “They’re ours.”

“I know,” I said, my mouth dry and my throat tight. “I just…I wanted to know if maybe I could play with you sometime.”

Luca rolled his eyes, but he finally rested the ponypad on his knees and met my gaze. “You’d need your own ponypad to play, Maggie. We can’t share them.”

Her eyebrows raised, Carolina turned to stare at him. “Luca! You know my mom doesn’t like us playing with…” she shot me a sideways look, “Those people.”

He waved her off. “I know, but…things are different in Equestria, Cara. Princess Celestia says—”

“You’ve not been wasting your time with that pathetic pink princess again, have you?” Matteo asked, letting his ponypad slip as he gaped at his friend. “We’re meant to be fighting a war, not having makeovers!”

“I don’t talk to her about makeovers!” Luca flushed an ugly red.

Matteo scoffed. “You’re more of a girl than either of those two.”

“Shut up!” Luca threw his own ponypad down onto the dirt and scrambled across to shove at Matteo’s shoulders.

Carolina scowled at both of them and leaned back over her own pad while the boys scuffled, but I was no longer looking at any of them. I was staring into the discarded ponypad, my mouth hanging slightly open as I drank in the sight of it.

I had seen video games before. Played them, when people could be persuaded to lend me their consoles or phones for a couple of minutes at a time. I knew what the pixelated screens looked like, the cartoony characters, the stilted way they moved.

The scene on the ponypad was nothing like any of that.

It was like a window into another world.

A small red horse stood in the foreground, its purple mane billowing gently in the wind, legs moving with the rolling motion of the deck on which it stood. The ship was depicted in perfect, devastating detail, every grain of wood on the planks below the pony’s dirt-encrusted hooves visible, every fibre of the rope coil that lay beside him. And beyond the ship’s balustrade was the sea, flawlessly blue and sparkling like a diamond in the sunlight that played over the surface. In the distance I could make out an island, lush with vegetation, and in the sky overhead purple airships wheeled like vultures.

It was a thousand times more beautiful, more real, than the concrete courtyard in which we stood.

Suddenly, I wanted more than anything to go there. To explore it. I wanted to step out of my world of grey and into that world of colour. Anything to have a change — anything to take me out of my endless, Nana-less summer.

The boys were still struggling on the climbing frame, each one trying to push the other off, and Carolina was shouting at them to stop, but I hardly heard them anymore. I edged towards the ponypad, trying to drink in the details of it while I could. There were other creatures on the deck — unicorns and a strange bipedal cat — but they didn’t hold my attention. It was the open space behind them, the limitless horizon, those islands peppering the sea in the distance. I had never been to the beach. Oklahoma is a landlocked state, and my parents weren’t exactly flush with cash or vacation time.

“Eugh, you guys are so stupid when you fight.” Abruptly, Carolina stood to leave.

Matteo pushed Luca hard away from him, but he was smiling again. “I’ve gotta go too. Mom wants me back for lunch today. I’ll see you later, Luca.”

As the others retreated, Luca stooped to collect his ponypad, and I think I made a small noise in my throat, reaching out towards the screen, because he paused, and looked at me with pity. “Look, Princess Celestia says it’s important to be kind, and she’s usually right, so — My cousin’s half-brother, Jésus, he gave them to us. He can get them cheap. Dunno from where, but we only had to pay him a few bucks each.”

“Really?” I was thrilled. “Where does he live?”

Luca waved a vague hand at one of the neighbouring tower blocks. “Over there. Fifth floor, apartment 5A. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll probably hook you up.”

“Thank you, Luca.”

He coloured ever so slightly and turned away. “Whatever. Just don’t go blabbing to Matteo and Cara.”

He vanished inside, and I turned towards the tower he indicated, hope swelling in my chest. Luca had never been anything but abrasive towards me — at best, he had ignored me. And now for the first time ever, he had extended the hand of friendship. Had said he wanted to be kind. I had no idea who this princess that Matteo hated so much was, but if she was making Luca be nice to me, I didn’t care how many makeovers she wanted to talk about. A ponypad might finally be my way in.

I might finally have a shot at making some friends.