Every day, dozens of ponies fall in the wasteland. For one pony, each death is the start of a new life.
Everyday, dozens of ponies fall in the wasteland. For one pony, each death is the start of a new life. This is the tale of Gardener and his efforts to rebuild the wasteland, one tree at a time.
Rain was supposed to purify the lands, cleanse the stains of our mortal failings and bring new life to the world we had so cruelly neglected and abused. Rain was supposed to wash away the sins of our land like a baptism. Instead these rains simply washed away the blood of the fallen, and ushered forth new contempt for our blasted wasteland.
I stood from behind the debris which had sheltered me from gunfire, and gazed out upon the heavens as they poured forth their torrents of rain. That which was supposed to bring life back to the wasteland instead brought with it a feeling of unease. Was this a gift? Or was this water full of radiation that would have us sick for daring to be among it? Would it grow the fields, or would it scorch the land? I hated the rain. I hated this place.
The wasteland was a hellscape of our own designs. A place of pain, suffering, and madness that destroyed the best of ponies and made us little more than animals fighting among the ruins of our once glorious empire. I prayed every night to a god I knew no longer existed that this was the last generation to have to suffer, even if it meant our total extinction. Oblivion was better than the hell we had created; anything was better than this.
I walked to my friend. Downed by a grenade, he drew breath in ragged, painful gasps. His inside were exposed, leaving him in a pool of his own blood. The rain fell on him, burning his insides, and washing away his life into the ruins. He looked at me, begging for help; anything I could do for him. He had been my friend, and now he would become one more corpse for the wasteland to consume. I held his head, cradling him like a lost child in the rain. I lied to him, told him that it was going to be okay as I reached for my gun. He didn’t see it; I don’t think he could see anything. The silencer turned the sharp crack to a quiet pop, and my friend suffered no more. I closed his eyes for the last time, and laid him among the ruins. Good friends were hard to find in the wasteland, and he had been the best.
I felt my skin itch, and cursed the rain again. This cloud had gotten into something nasty, and brought with it the stinging pain of corrosion. There was no time to mourn my friend. I grabbed up his pack, as well as the packs of my fallen enemies, and moved for shelter. There I sat in the overhang, listening as the rain formed puddles around the bodies of my friends and enemies. Soon the would rain stop, and the wasteland scavengers would consume them.
I searched through the filthy packs of those who had killed my friend, finding ammunition and foods stolen from those less fortunate than I. There was no pain in their loss, they would be mourned by none. I would tell the tale of my friend to those who would listen, and too listen to the tales of friends gone past. What a world we lived in where the tales of the dead so far outweighed the deeds of the living. Truly we deserved this; every pony here was a monster, and we all deserved to die.
Somewhere in this wasteland, there was an answer. We had set off to find it. My life, the life of my friend, was meaningless if I did nothing for it. But I felt myself losing faith. The dream of peace seemed further now than ever before. Was there nothing left fighting for here? Was the Equestrian dream truly gone? Had the lives of so many ponies been spent simply as the swan song of ponydom? I closed my eyes, and tried to imagine a better world. I had a hard time remembering what better even was.
The vicious rain ended after a few minutes, allowing me to leave my shelter and continue on my pointless journey. Where I was headed no longer mattered; the task my friend had been assigned to ended with him. Once again, I was a soul adrift in the wasteland with no purpose.
I searched through my friend's belongings for answers. I found only seeds. I gazed down at the tiny seeds. He had seen in them only limitless potential, a way to bring light to the darkness. I had seen only their value as food or trade. He told me one day I would understand.
I stared back at my friend, his red coat splotched with burns from the corrosive rain. He may be gone, but his body remained. He had wanted so badly for the fighting to end, to settle down and raise a farm from the blighted land. And when he died, he wanted to become part of Equestria. I looked back on his ruined body, and found my purpose.
It had taken me several hours to find a shovel, and even longer to find a usable sledge hammer. By the time I had found the tools of my self appointed mission, night had begun to fall on the wasteland. I entered the ruined building where I had taken shelter from the rain, and found my way through the ruined desks to the second floor. The tell tale signs of raiders were no where to be found. The building looked the same as it had two hundred years ago when it was frozen in time by the balefires and megaspells. I shoved a desk against the door, and laid on the floor to sleep.
Early the next morning, I awoke with a renewed sense of understanding as to my purpose in the wasteland. I gathered my tools, and headed back outside to the same spot where my friend had fallen. He was still there, miraculously untouched by the wasteland scavengers. I began my task.
Digging in the ruins was a difficult pursuit. I slammed the concrete with the sledgehammer, breaking through the stone crust of civilization. The weight of the hammer felt good in my mouth. It felt like progress; like the hoof of a long forgotten Deity guiding my actions. The concrete crumbled under my blows, the chunks becoming manageable stones. Within ten minutes, I began to dig under the concrete. My hole widened as the hours progressed. Before noon, I had a grave big enough for my friend.
He had told me the a secret of the wasteland. Radiation didn’t seep into the soil through the concrete. The pony made stone absorbed radiation, sure, but it also shielded the land below from the foul contamination. The best source of unirradiated soil was right underneath our hooves. We just had to be willing to work for it. I stood in the deep hole; sweaty and proud. It was perfect.
I grabbed my friend’s orange mane and dragged his body. His massive frame no longer seemed important; his spirit had moved on to greener pastures. What mattered was that he laid to rest in the ground that he so loved. I pushed the body into the grave, the soft earth underneath puffing around him as he struck bottom. I looked on my friend for the last time. Before I met him, I had no goals. He wanted to become part of a better world; I had nothing better to pursue. I followed him because he had a vision. Now I was going to continue that vision.
Dirt filled around my friend quicker than it had come out. Great waterfalls of clean soil swallowed him. Equestria had welcomed home another of its ponies. I finished my labors, and planted a seed in the grave. There, surrounded by the ruins of Manehatten, life would grow again. My friend would become a tree, and bear fruit for a new generation of life in the wasteland. The sun hung high in the sky again, filtered through the miserable clouds above. I looked back on the ruins where my friend’s life ended and saw the ponies who had killed him.
I found myself again pounding the concrete. Again, digging in the clean soil. Again dragging the bodies of the fallen. Again planting the seeds of new life. The sun began to fall as I finished with these bodies. Tired but joyed by my labors, I looked up to the heavens. It had started to rain again.
This rain was pure. It filled the freshly dug earth with its life giving power and cleansed the sweat from my coat. I stared up into the clouds, and enjoyed the rain for the first time in memory. There was purpose to my life now. I would bury the dead of this land, giving peace to them perhaps for the first time since the war. I would become Gardener now, bringing life from the remains of those passed on. My first stop was New Appleloosa. I would need more seeds.
I trotted away from the perfect circles in the concrete. The patches of clean earth would become dirty again, certainly. But beneath the surface, roots would take hold in clean soil, and grow to renew the wasteland once more. I would spread the word of my friend. I would spread his vision and gather recruits to my cause. Would they listen? Would they care? With enough ponies working together, this could be the last generation to suffer in the wasteland.
Perhaps the goddess had answered my prayers after all.
It had been years since I had found my purpose. My cutie mark had always been a sledgehammer, and thus I had known my lot in life was that of toil. But toil in pursuit of a greater good is the most one pony can ever ask to do with themselves. I found comfort in my work, even if the population of the wasteland disagreed. What I did was simple.
I buried the dead.
From a carriage lot in the center of Manehatten, I hauled my cart. Clad in a cloak and the remnants of armor, I scavenged the wasteland not in search of treasures, but in search of the dead. I never had to look long, for the dead always found me. But for nearly a half mile around that expanse of carriage lot, there were no bodies. No bones. No skeletons. No desecrated corpses flayed open by raiders. Each and every pony, whether they had died today or two hundred years ago, found a home in my cart, and eventually in the soil.
Some considered me a ghoul, and questioned my motives. Some took to arms as I collected the dead, fearful that I was one of the growing number of cannibals sucking the marrow from ponydom. All who understood my cause knew that wasn’t the case. Most were happy to see the bodies of loved ones given respect. Others were happy to see the dead of the past swept away to make room for new life. And every day, I swept further into the city seeking not new life, but instead the remnants of a life gone by. And every day, I found more ponies.
My cart grew full this day. I had stumbled upon a homemade shelter that had been sealed two hundred years ago, opened now only by the crumbling of the wasteland. Skeletons of families huddled together in prayer were my reward for diligence. Their skeletons filled my cart to near overflowing, as did the supplies they had hoped would keep them safe. While I had a divine mission, I was but a mortal earth pony. There was no theft from the dead. Their payment was an unspoken promise that I would give their remains the respect they deserved. In this task they paid me what they had, even if it was nothing.
Flush with goods and a full cart, I started back toward my home where new holes would be opened, and the families joined forever as new life in the wasteland. Seeing the remains of ponies gathered in prayer gave me hope that even if the mortal goddess were gone, their prayers, though cut short two centuries ago, were heard by someone who cared to listen.
There was a movement from the rubble, as there had been a hundred times before. I knew at once that raiders had made their way into the already cleared areas of my territory. They couldn’t begin to comprehend the importance of my task; they knew only destruction. One had a knife. He threatened me with unspeakable acts if I didn’t hand over my cart. Another tried to circle around the cart, ready to jump from the shadows and slit my throat. I heard the click of a pistol being cocked. One would think that a pony with a cart full of the remains of the dead would be the one pony you would stay away from. I stood still only a moment.
For the raider with the pistol, a hatchet sprung from beneath my cloak, catching him between the eyes, and splitting his head. In the same motion, I rolled away from the cart, grabbing my sledge. I danced to my feet, arcing the steel head through the ribcage of the knife pony. Years of breaking concrete had made my neck muscles like steel cables. Being on the receiving end of such a blow was a death sentence to ponies clad in anything short of power armor. This pony had only scraps of tires and leather. The sledge punched through is ribcage in a spray of crimson. He too fell, gurgling blood as he dropped to the concrete. The pony who had tried to sneak behind me was met with hooves to the muzzle. He flipped mane over hoof, dropping his crude weapon on the street below. The kick had shattered his jaw, filling the streets with blood. He scrambled backward as I approached, sledgehammer in mouth.
Now one of two things would happen. He would beg for life, then attack as soon as I granted mercy, or he would run away from my fearsome hammer, and die later in the ruins from infection. Either way, this pony would become part of Equestria again. It was up to him to decide when that was. He decided to flee; I would return to collect him within the week.
The raiders were added to my already overflowing cart. No need for ceremony, or prayers for the dead. These ponies, if you could call them that, had chosen the path of destruction, and had paid the price for their ways. That price was reclamation by the wastes, and it was I who was forced to collect the balance. I continued my way through Manehatten, the concrete roads rising to meet me every step of the way.
I had long found solace in my quiet walks home. Most who frequented this road knew both myself and my business, and nodded politely as they passed. Many had given me their own to bury, accepting my gospel as practical wisdom of the wastes. For those who donated their time or supplies, their families were given individual trees and gardens. The effort to bury a single pony was often worth more than their gifts would ever be, but it gave them peace to know that the ponies they had loved in life would live anew. Peace was all I had to offer some days, but I enjoyed giving it wherever I could.
The wagon wheel fence of the lot guided me along the only safe path into my domain. I passed through the gates, and unhitched the cart at the nearest patch of unopened concrete. I gazed out into what was once a used carriage lot. Sloped roofs made from pieces of broken glass, stitched together with buttons of metal or wood, glimmered in the sunlight. The roofs stood atop solid walls of sheet steel or plastic, windowed with fragments of discarded glass. Row upon row of these buildings sat on the lot, each one forming a long greenhouse, each one filled with trees of remembrance. Some pony had once questioned the logic of my greenhouses. I showed him inside one, and he understood.
I loved the rain, the way it felt in my cornflower coat, and how it ran through my black mane, but it’s quality had always been questionable. Perhaps not in the days before the great war, when pegasi cleared the sky, but as long as I had known. The rain was as frequently a detriment as it was a blessing. The greenhouses, aside from keeping the trees warm year round, also shielded the saplings from the harsh rains, and preserved the precious clean soil beneath the concrete. When the water was determined to be safe, it was released into the soil to hydrate the trees. The greenhouses kept the clean water from dispersing back into the wastes, and the trees alive for another harvest.
I had hoped my method of horticulture would take root in the waste land, no pun intended. Indeed some places took the wisdom to heart, and found that a greenhouse bore fruit more often than not. Yet ponies found that without the dead, life often did not grow anew.
I drank deeply from my still, a refuge of clean water in the wastes. My trusted workman Gaucho had brought it with him across the wastes, and made use of our fruits to produce intoxicating liquors. His wife sold the spirits to ponies wishing to escape the pain of the world for a few hours. Gaucho had always spoken in a foreign tongue, the likes of which I had found difficult to comprehend. Other understood none of it, and assumed he was some simpleton whom I kept around for cheap labor.
Truthfully, Gaucho was a skilled to the point of magic with machines. He would have made an excellent traveling companion if he weren’t confined to a cart. Somewhere in the waste, he had lost both of his rear legs. Ever ready to turn a disadvantage around, he constructed a crystal powered chariot that could easily out pace near anything in the wastes. Sadly, the energy crystals he needed were expensive, and rarely did he get the opportunity to “run.”
Gaucho waved at me from the garage, beckoning me to marvel his latest invention. I happily trotted over, always eager to see what his fevered mind could come up with. His wife stood with him. Casa was a heart breakingly beautiful cinnamon mare with the cutie mark of a home. With her good looks and exact speech, she ached of refinement and class. How she and her incomprehensible husband met, let alone fell in love, was so far beyond me I hadn’t even bothered to ask. But love they did, constantly showering each other with affection. Their unquestioning love for each other lifted my spirits every time I thought of them. If those two had found such love in this hellscape, then perhaps the ponies of the world would also find love for each other. Their unbridled passion also made for some fantastically awkward moments around the lot. I had walked in on them in the throws of passion more times then I could count, and had learned some time ago that when the garage door was closed, it was better to simply stay outside.
Gaucho gestured to a box hanging from a brand new hole in the wall of my garage. When I questioned him about it, he said something about the hole being there for an excellent reason. Or possibly chicken tomato soup. In his excited state, he was particularly difficult to understand and eager to show me what miracles he had performed this time. The garage door slammed shut behind me. I asked if this was going to be like the time we nearly died. He asked for a clarification of which time. I sighed wearily as he switched on the device.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a gentle breeze floated through the room, carrying with it the chill of winter. The room slowly became cooler, a pleasant contrast to the heat of the wastelands. A drop of water formed on the device, dripping into a pail just below it. I hailed his creation as the greatest thing that had happened to the carriage lot since the first tree. He simply questioned whether it would collect enough water to be worth running. For not the first time, the side benefits of Gaucho's projects far outweighed his original intent.
I left the garage as Casa showered her husband with kisses, closing the door behind me as I walked back into the carriage lot. They would be out when they were done with each other. I returned to my cart, and separated the skeletons from the more recent bodies. The remains of the raiders and a few other unfortunate ponies were laid on the concrete, marking their final resting place. The skeletons, of which there were several dozen, were hauled to the grinder.
I had found some time ago that the bones of ponies, especially those from before the war, never provided as much life as the bodies of the more recently deceased. One of the wasteland’s doctors had told me that composition of bone didn’t support plants the way that flesh did, but that by mixing bone meal with the earth, I could replenish the soil. I had taken his advice to heart. I had later found out he was a cannibal, but his wisdom stuck with me. Bones were crushed, keeping families together, and from their pieces grew new life. The process was grim, to be sure, but like many things in this wasteland, it came as a fusion of belief and practicality. The bones would grow new life, just as every pony who came to this lot to rest.
The machine churned miserably, as it always did. Gaucho had once said that it had an angry spirit. The machine was originally designed for mulching branches, and to use it for the purpose that I had enraged the soul of the machine. I had good reason to believe him about the angered spirit; the damned thing sounded as if it were possessed. I placed the first family on the platform, and offering my prayers of respect and gratitude. I christened them with oil as I prayed. When the prayers were finished, they tumbled into the whirling blades, crunching and grinding with sickening snaps and pops. Long ago, the sounds of the grinder would have caused me to lose whatever meal I had just eaten. Now, it simply blocked it out with an endless mantra: May Celestia judge me for my actions, I do this to give to others. There was solitude in that mantra. So long as I remained focused on giving back to what remained of Equestria, therein lie peace. And peace was the greatest gift of all in these harsh times.
I found myself back at the bodies I had laid out, having collected the canvas bags of bone fragments. Each had a name that had been found near them. These sacks contained the final mortal remains of the Carmels, the Clovers, and Sugars. These ponies, had their lives not been cut cruelly short by the war, would have gone on to live happily ever after in the suns of Equestria. Perhaps they would be doctors, or bakers, or states-ponies. The endless spiderweb of decisions that made up their lives had been cauterized in the flames of Balefire. And now only a single option stood before their previously endless potential. They would keep Equestria crawling along in the aftermath.
I picked up my sledge hammer, enjoying the familiar heft. Some time ago, Gaucho had hollowed the head, and filled it with a flowing metal that he had scavenged from somewhere in the wastes. It weighed the same as it always had, but now struck with the force of a tidal wave, shattering through concrete faster than I could have ever managed on my own. I was always on the look out for more of that silver liquid; Celestia help me if this hammer ever broke. I brought the weight of the sledge down into the concrete carriage lot, shattering through it and into the dirt in a single blow. A few more swings gave me the manageable pieces I needed, and a few more would have reduced the rocks to powder.
A recent attack had left one of the compound walls thin. They would be repaired with the pieces I had broken from the pavement. Much like everything else in these wastes, the old was destroyed in order to build new. In the same way Gaucho broke down old machine to remake his wonders, I broke through the crust of civilization to rebuild life. Our lives meshed perfectly. He needed a place free to work, I needed an engineer to protect the new life that grew in the wastes. I picked up my shovel, and began tossing the chunks of concrete into my cart.
I worked quietly in the afternoon sun, pausing frequently to sip from the still. I could feel the strain of Equestria’s clean dirt splintering through the handle of my shovel, and I knew that soon it would snap under the strain, leaving me without a tool. Gaucho was supposed to fix my tools, but he had recently been distracted by both his new contraption, and his amorous wife. Not that I could blame him. Still, before the day was out, I was going to be left without a shovel, and that would mean a trip into city to acquire a new one.
Most of the ponies would be happy to see my cart roll into town. They knew me there not as a ghoul, but as an undertaker. Some may have feared my purpose, but many of them understood what I was trying to accomplish. Those who had lost found solace in the fresh life I brought back to them, often a branch from the first harvest of their kin’s tree. Word of my mission had spread, and I had found acceptance among the wastes as a Gardener of life.
The sun had toiled away it’s hours in the sky, hanging low over the wastes, and filling the greenhouses with light. A few of the trees were ready for harvest. I would get to them this evening, and bring the freshest stock to town. My eyes caught the sight of one tree at the far end of the lot, ready for its first harvest. A family named Pick had paid me in glass to bury their newborn foal. The child, a unicorn, had survived only a few days. The tree had been alive longer than their child ever had, and now bore fruit. I would bring them a branch from its boughs to commemorate the new life their son had helped to create, and hoped it would bring them peace.
A hole had formed around me, large enough for the bodies of the two raiders that had tried to kill me earlier in the day. I dragged the lifeless forms into the hole, and began raining dirt on them. I felt no more remorse in this burial than I did for the dozens of other raiders whom were buried on this lot. The choices they made were poor, and because of their dedication to destruction, they now lay beneath Gardener’s Lot. I made ready an apple tree sapling, and planted it with the raiders. The Sugar family found their way into the that tree as well. I made a note to order new headstones for my latest charges.
Ten Pony Tower was always an interesting place to visit. A self proclaimed bastion of civilization, they were more than eager to buy my fresh fruits and Casa’s fine liquors. Despite my generosity to the dead, I felt no remorse in charging these living ponies as much as possible for what I brought. They had snubbed me and my mission for so long that I had nearly given up. When one of the guards inquired about the apple whiskey I drank in frustration, it was then that I was given an in. I was nearly kicked out again when they found my primary profession distasteful, but someone up high had vouched for the idea, and I was permitted to continue my trade. As a thank you, I tracked down my mysterious benefactor, a one DJ-P0N3. I at least found his assistant. I gave the grey mare a bushel of fresh apples, a few bottles of whiskey, and my card.
When I had first started exploring the office buildings of Manehatten, I had found that many desks had small pieces of paper with the details of their former occupants. It was from these that I identified many of their remains, and I had taken the idea for myself. Gaucho designed a press for my cards: a square of steel with my name and trade punched into it. The edges were razor sharp, but covered in rubber for use later. It was a tiny gift to those who were willing to listen to my message.
With my trip to Ten Pony Tower complete, I headed back towards the lot. A few run ins with raiders had slowed progress home, and I found myself forced to stop in a small hamlet for the evening. I knew no ponies there, and found myself having to explain why I was hauling bodies of ponies after some overly curious young colt lifted the tarp on my cart. This conversation happened, as it frequently did, at gunpoint. I preached the virtues of burial, and the joys of the new life that it would bring. The towns ponies seemed to understand, and let me go about my business. My cart, however, would have to wait outside. A mustard coated stallion approached.
“Are your undertaking services for hire?” he inquired.
“I will happily bury your departed,” I replied.
I was led to a was a squat, concrete building half buried in the hillside, exceptional only in the fact that it was still whole despite two hundred years of neglect. I suspected that it had originally been completely buried, given the lack of windows and the mountain of dirt atop it. I was shown inside, and found that ponies had taken up residence among the ruins, making the windowless building their own. Some had set up shops there, others had taken offices as apartments to ply whatever trade they could. My inquires as to the deceased were met with some hostility until my host informed them that I was no ghoul, but an undertaker paying respects to those gone before. Their attitudes mellowed, and I was shown to the basement. I couldn’t have been more angry at the sight if it had been radioactive.
Hundreds of skeletons lie stacked in piles in the basement. Rather than burying the dead with the respect they deserved, they had simply shoved the corpses of the old world from their minds and into the basement of civilization. Or in this case, a literal basement. I named my price for the removal; inflated slightly due to their callous treatment of the dead. The mustard colored pony agreed, and asked me when I could clear them out. If a few ponies were willing to haul carts to Gardener’s lot, I could take them there the next day. The pony agreed, and we shook hooves.
The town lay quiet that evening, safe from raiders or bandits for at least the night. Guards stood watch over the carriage built walls of the city, staring out into the wastes, and looking for trouble. I found myself looking up at the stars through the sporadic clouds. There was no rain to be had, possibly for another month. The upcoming drought did little to concern me, as my greenhouses kept the orchard moist enough to weather near anything.
I dreamed that evening of the friend that I had lost all those years back. On my last visit to his grave, a great apple tree had grown from the wastes. Pushing aside the concrete that surrounded it, the tree bloomed with a beauty that had attracted a hamlet to settle under its boughs. The raider’s tree hadn’t fared as well, but still bore fruit. It proved that no matter what type of pony you were in life, in death, all ponies were equal.
When I awoke the next morning, the mustard colored pony brought with him four of the sickest and scrawniest ponies I had ever laid eyes on. I had my doubts to their hauling capacity, and feared they would become additions to my cart before the journey was out. I began moving the skeletons from the basement, covering the barrows with a shroud as I marched them through the mezzanine. The ponies of this place ignored me, pretending that I was instead a ghost haunting their lives with the sins of the past.
It took the entire morning to fill the carts of my pony assistants. One had simply refused to help as he saw the nature of my task, and bolted from the building. The others were apparently made of sterner stuff, and began to help me load the remains of the old world into the carts. I hitched the abandoned wagon to my own. The skeletons of the long dead weren’t nearly as heavy as the remains of the recently deceased, and I found that hauling a second cart was not nearly as difficult as I had imagined. The subtraction of one pony apparently meant very little. I made ready my exodus, when a drunken unicorn approached me, dragging a cornflower unicorn filly by her mane. She had a cutie mark of a a red and blue sphere with an orbiting yellow sphere. The young girl cried in pain as the unicorn approached me. His breath wreaked of rotgut and turpentine.
“You’se the one who’s buyin’ dead ponies?” he slurred.
“I don’t buy bodies,” I informed him. “I will return any of your deceased to the earth, if you’d like.”
“I gotta body fer yah,” he spit. “Gimme ten caps and its yurs.” He belched horrifically, filling the air with a stench of death.
“I don’t buy bodies,” I repeated. “They too were once ponies like yourself, and to treat them as commodities to be sold is to disrespect their lives.” The girl whimpered. He slapped her.
“Well then you can take thish body,” he said throwing the unicorn filly at me. She tumbled to the ground, near tears. “Bitch isn’t good fer anythin’.”
“My charges are those who have passed form this world,” I protested.
“Only dead?” he slurred. “I can fix that.” His offer to correct the oversight involved floated a revolver from his saddlebag. He pressed the barrel to the back of the unicorn’s head. I swatted the revolver away, and landed a hoof to the temple of the unicorn. He went down in a heap, partly from impact, partly from his own drunken stupor. I tossed the revolver in my cart, and ordered my team forward. The unicorn filly followed me out of town. About a hundred yards out, I stopped and turned around to question her.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” I asked her.
“Please just take me with you,” she begged. I sighed wearily, and looked back at the town. The drunken unicorn was standing back up. While I really didn’t have time for the living, leaving this filly here to die would be a sin that I couldn’t forgive myself of. The lot may not have been an ideal place for a teen-aged filly, but it was better than the wastes where her life and virtue would be forfeit. I told her to walk in middle of the train, and to run at the first sign of trouble.
Three hours into the walk and sure enough, two of the scrawny ponies had dropped dead on the concrete. Cursing my ill fortune, their carts became hooked to my own. Now hauling four carts down the concrete highway, I began to seriously worry about raiders. If hit, I’d have to ditch the carts to fight, and there was a real possibility I’d be too tired to do anything about a serious attack. The filly offered to haul one cart, but I found myself refusing her help.
“Do you have any place you can go?” I asked. “Where we’re going is safe, but it is in no way an easy life.”
“I have nowhere,” she said, staring down at the concrete. “Besides, he paid for you to take my body away.”
“You’re not dead,” I suggested. “And he didn’t pay me.”
“You took his gun, didn’t you?” I had to concede the point. I just hoped the filly didn’t feel like I owned her.
As we approached the final stretch of our journey, the wagon wheel fencing of the lot came into view. The paths to the entrance were very clearly marked, and to stray from them risked a barrage of bullets from Gaucho’s automated turrets. When he had installed them, I had questioned the wisdom of having robots capable of raining death without pony interaction. He noted that the paths were clearly marked, and that he had installed signage in Pony, Zebra, and whatever crazy language he spoke, as well as colorful pictures warning of the dangers. Once again, I was forced to agree to Gaucho’s insanity.
The fourth and final pony slumped the the dirt and died of exhaustion just as we came to the bottom of the valley. With no other option, I hooked the filly up the final cart, and tossed the emaciated pony into my own. I walked in silence as she grimaced and struggled under the weight of bones. Strength was obviously not her special talent. The wagon train ground to a halt as we passed through the steel doors and onto the lot. I unhooked my wagon, and stretched like a cat. Too much strain for one day. I could barely wait to get to the table, eat whatever Casa had cooked, then go to bed. I stumbled onto the showroom floor to find Casa cooking happily in our kitchen. He mane was tousled, and the smile on her face meant that she and Gaucho had made good use of my absence. I wanted to be angry at their brazen ways, but found myself cracking a smile instead. Their shameless love for each other always brought me happiness. I sidled up to the table and to a plate of fresh baked apples.
“In all the years we’ve known each other,” said Casa, “have all my lessons in manners and courtesy gone unheeded?” I had no idea what she was talking about. She smiled politely, and revised her question more directly. “Are you going to introduce me to this young lady?” she asked. I turned to find the unicorn filly had followed me inside and was standing next to me at the table. I should have been surprised, but I found myself too tired to care.
“Casa this is...” I found myself drawing a blank. Sure we had just walked eight hours together, but aside from our two brief conversations, we hadn’t spoken.
“My name is Charm,” said the unicorn. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Casa.”
“Missus,” corrected Casa with a smile. “My husband would also like to meet you, I’m sure. Please, let me prepare you a plate. It’s so rare we have visitors.”
“Begging your pardon, I am no visitor, Ma’am,” said Charm. “Sir has been paid to take me away.” Casa’s genteel demeanor shifted into unbridled rage as I attempted to both explain myself and not choke on her gourmet cooking.
“What the fuck, Gardener?” demanded Casa. “You of all people buying a slave? Has all your talk of freedom and generosity been lies?”
“That’s not what happened at all,” I coughed. “Charm is no slave. Technically, I was paid to bring her body here, but as you can tell, she’s not my typical charge.”
“Is this true?” she demanded of Charm. The unicorn filly shrank from Casa’s baleful gaze.
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied, biting her lip.
“And you’re free to leave at any time?” she asked, directing the question not at Charm, but at me.
“She followed me here,” I said. “She is free to stay or leave as she chooses. I am no more her master than I am yours or Gauchos.” Casa’s shoulders relaxed as she breathed a deep sigh of relief. She picked up a plate of baked apples, and placed in front of Charm.
“I am sorry you had to see that,” she said. “Excuse me, I need a moment to compose myself.” She walked away from the dining room and back toward her bedroom. Gaucho wandered in from the garage. He asked what I had said to his wife that made her raise her voice.
“She thought I bought this young lady,” I explained. Gaucho then proceeded to remind me where Casa had come from, and that slavery was an extraordinarily touchy subject for her. “Yes, Gaucho, we’ve had this conversation at least a dozen times,” I reminded him. “Charm, this is Guacho. Gaucho, Charm.” Charm reluctantly nodded to the half mechanical pony, trying desperately not to stare at his wheels. He wandered off toward his bedroom to find his wife.
I pushed my plate aside, and walked off to our living room. It wasn’t much: a few benches in the middle of what used to be a carriage showroom, some bookshelves with whatever books we could find, and some tables. The pièce de résistance, however, were the windows. What were once sleek glass walls had been replaced by stained glass renditions of Celestia calling home her ponies over a field of apple trees. I had offered to trade a harvest of apples for the work, but the unicorn who made these windows would accept nothing but my devotion to Equestria as payment. The Glassmaker, as the unicorn called himself, often found his way here, and was a welcomed guest in our home. Gaucho was always happy to see him, and Casa greeted him as a brother. I strongly suspected they were related in some way, but as with much of Casa’s past, I didn’t bother to pry. I sat exhausted on the bench, glad that I had brought home the bones of so many. It had been a good day’s labor, even if I had acquired some unneeded help along the way.
I turned to Charm as she finished her plate, then what I had left on mine. Apparently her father, or whoever that pony was, hadn’t fed her very well. On the other hand, she was a growing filly, probably just a teenager. She came in to the living room, and sat at my feet. I figured now was a good a time as any to lay down some ground rules.
“We are a family here,” I said. “We work together, we live together, we pray together. Those are the only rules. If you want to stay, you need to find something you can do.”
Charm looked sadly at the floor, as if what I said crushed her spirit. Or maybe she didn’t understand what I was asking. It was also possible that I had misinterpreted what she was thinking due to my own fatigue. I showed her to the spare room, and made for my own. I half hoped that she left in the middle of the night.
My room was sparsely furnished, consisting of a bed, a dressing dummy on which to hang my armor, and a mat on which I offered my evening prayers. I sped through my evening rituals with less than my normal pious devotion, attempting to outpace my creeping fatigue. With my barding shucked, the sweet foam embrace of my bed filled my tired bones with the joy of rest. I had barely fallen asleep when I felt my bed list to one side. I snapped awake to find Charm crawling into my bed, her eyes filled with tears.
“What are you doing young lady?” I asked.
“Sir said I had to find something to do to stay,” she wept. She presented her flank to me. “Please be gentle; I’ll try not to cry.” I rolled out of bed, nearly tripping backwards over myself trying to escape the girl.
“No, no, no,” I protested. “I may not have made myself clear about what I wanted from you, but what you’re offering is not it.” Her head dropped, and tears fell on my pillow.
“Isn’t that why Sir brought me here?” she wept. “Isn’t that why any pony takes in a young filly in this wasteland?”
“You must have me confused with some pony else,” I said. “You’re here because I was paid to take you away. You said that yourself.”
“Then what am I supposed to do here?” asked Charm. “If that’s not how I earn my keep, then what can I do for you?”
“You’re a unicorn, aren't you?” I asked. “Surely you know spells. Those can be handy. And if nothing else, I will teach you my ways. It’s hard work, but...” She looked up at me, tears still in her deep violet eyes. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. “You are never to offer yourself to me again, do you understand?” She nodded sadly. “If you wish to stay, then you accept our rules. Here, we are family, and families don’t fuck each other. Not in the bedroom, not in the wasteland.” Enthusiastic creaking and pleasured whinnies echoed down the hall. Casa and Gaucho sought to make me a liar. I pressed a hoof to my face, groaning miserably.
“If you come in my room again,” I sighed, “I will throw you off the lot. We will offer you all we have here, if you’re willing to work. Prostituting yourself to me is not work. Have I made myself abundantly clear?” She nodded again, biting her lip. “Go back to bed,” I ordered. “We rise early, and you have much to learn.” Charm rolled off my bed, and walked towards the door. She looked back at me.
“Good night, sir,” she said.
“My name is Gardener,” I corrected her.
“Goodnight, sir,” she repeated, and closed the door behind her.
For every other pony in the wastes, this was another day of struggle for life. Whatever concepts of weekends the old world may have held, they meant nothing in the post war society. Every day was laborious. There was no rest.
Here on the lot, Sundays meant work for me as well. Today there would be no digging, no breaking of the concrete lot. Bones would not be ground, and the earth would welcome home no new ponies. Sunday was a day of worship for our dear goddess Celestia. She had given us this day to rest when she still strode the world in mortal form, and it was up to me and the few devoted to make sure the world did not forget her.
Services were held at noon just as the sun streaked through our stained glass windows. Ponies came from the surrounding villages to hear me speak of our departed goddess, and of return to her embrace. They came, enduring the hardships of the waste to hear me speak, and to receive the gifts I gave them. Surely, some were not interested in my message, but all who attended received the bounty of the land, believers or not.
I had woken Charm early that morning to help me prepare. Her magic proved useful in filling bottle with clean water, and sorting the bad apples from the good. This week’s harvest had proven plentiful, and I was grateful for the opportunity to provide more apple jerky to my congregation. A familiar crowd began to filter into the show room, most bearing a small donation for the church. Their gifts would be given to those most in need, or used to increase our production here. Gaucho took their donations, thanking every pony in his own tongue.
Casa had washed the white linen robes that I used to preach Celestia’s word earlier in the week. Some generous pony had donated a bottle of unopened bleach. We had used most of it to sterilize medical supplies, but Casa had saved a cap full to use with laundry. I chided her for such an irresponsible use of a gift, but thanked her for thinking of me. The sun climbed to its apex, and I took to my pulpit.
The congregation that stood before me today was my normal crowd. There were new faces, as there always were, and faces of those who had been attending my masses for years. I noticed one or two absences, and sought out the families of the missing. Their eyes were heavy with tears, and I knew that I would be called to their homes after the service. I cleared my throat to begin.
“My brothers and sisters,” I began. “We gather here on this day of the sun to give worship and praise to our goddess, Celestia. To those of you who have not been here before, I am Gardener, and I welcome you to the lot. I have but one request of you, and that is to listen to my message. What I have to offer is not much, but you may at least find peace in my message.”
I cleared my throat and began to talk about the miracles of the sun, and of the miracles of life in the wastes. How foals were born everyday, and how their lives could work to end the wasteland that we had grown accustomed to. I reminded my congregation that we were no more than a generation away from salvation. If only every pony would give of themselves to heal our world, we could crawl up from the ruins of civilization and become a new light to the world. I urged them to give, not to me or the church, but to give of themselves, and to bring back Celestia’s message of love and peace.
The mass ended quietly, as it always did. Casa and Gaucho passed out the dried apples and clean water to the parishioners as they exited. The ponies I had seen earlier approached, and informed me they had brought their deceased to be returned to the lot. I nodded, and followed them to their carts.
I had more ponies to return to the earth today then I had in weeks. The raiders from two days before, combined the four who passed on from the journey, and the three so kindly brought to me today left a total of twelve to bury. Such is the life of those called to bring home ponies. I accepted their family, and promised them individual trees. I gave them additional water and food to help them through their troubled times.
High above, the sun marched across the sky, beating down on the lot, and baking the corpses of the less than freshly deceased. I normally avoided this work on Sundays, but it had been a busy week, and I didn’t want to attract disease by leaving my charges in the open. I summoned Charm, and passed her a sledgehammer.
The unicorn was initially disgusted by the corpses, and found it difficult not to heave at their stench. I reminded myself that the filly was new to this, and she had not had the time to become desensitized to the decay as I had. I dug in my bag for some salve, and applied it under her lip. The sweet apple scent would prevent the stench of decay from sickening the unicorn. At least until we were done.
A sledge proved wholly ineffective in her teeth. She couldn’t swing with any strength, and more than once she nearly hit me with a wild back swing. After a half an hour of pounding on concrete, she had made little more than a few chips. Her talent apparently wasn’t breaking rocks either. I slammed through the concrete with my specialized sledgehammer, and broke up the chunks small enough for her to telekineticly lift into the cart. Each time she picked up a chunk of the concrete, the pony made rock shimmered, and spat out a small black ball.
The spheres, each no larger than a marble, rolled around in the cart as she stacked the blocks of concrete. The exertion of magic was clearly getting to her, and she stopped after an hour to rest. I offered her some clean water, and questioned her about the spheres.
“I really don’t know,” said Charm. “Nearly every time I lift something, it always spits out those little black orbs. I’ve never found a use for them, so I just throw them away.” I told her to take them to Gaucho. If any pony could find a use for them, it would be him. When Charm returned, she assisted me in digging into the soft dirt we had exposed below the cement. Her magic was far more useful here, gathering up great scoops of the clean earth, and depositing it next to the hole. No black spheres fell from her loads this time, and she gave me a confused look.
“Every other time I’ve moved dirt and rocks, I got spheres,” she said. “I wonder what happened?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I suggested. “Less to clean up or to trip over.”
At once, I found myself wishing for a horn. I could triple my daily work with just that one spell, and fix everything around the lot. Perhaps Charm coming here had been a blessing from Celestia and not a test of my resolve as I had initially thought. Instead of being a temptation, and believe me, it was a temptation, Charm was a reward for my attempts to make the wasteland a better place. I had eased the burdens of life and death for the ponies of the wastes, and Celestia had rewarded my generosity with this filly who would make it easier for me to give even more. It was enough to fill my eyes with tears of joy.
“Are you all right?” she asked. She had been watching me think, and she had seen the tears in my eyes.
“My young filly,” I said, “You are a blessing far greater than you are aware. I feel as if Celestia herself has smiled upon me, and delivered you at my hooves. The work you can do with your horn so far surpasses what I could accomplish. I can only hope that you stay here forever, and take my place in the lot.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir,” she replied. “I’m happy that I can be of use somewhere.” She looked out on the tens of dozens of apple trees on the lot, and at the greenhouses that glittered like a city of gold. “Did you build these all yourself?” she asked.
“I did,” I replied. “The greenhouses protect the trees from the environment. The sloped roofs collect the rain. Once we know its safe, it waters the plants, and brings new life.”
“But why bury the ponies?” she asked. “Why so much effort for what most ponies would simply dump in the wastes?”
“Because life begets life,” I told her, leaning on my shovel. “Without a small sacrifice, life will not bloom in the wastes. It is the same with your body, should you have foals. You give of yourself to bring new life. In the same way, ponies give their lives to feed others. The bodies of those gone before us nourish the trees in their decay. Our own blood, sweat, and tears go into this soil to raise the trees as if we are their parents. The fruits of our labors go back to the ponies to feed the next generation, and bring us one step closer to peace in this wasteland.” I gestured out to the greenhouses, the lot, and the buildings. “It looks like I have so much here; that I am the richest stallion in Equestria. But none of this belongs to me; it is all Celestia’s. By her grace I am here, and I am successful. She has blessed me with her gifts, so that I may give to others.” I looked into her eyes. She had the most beautiful violet eyes I’d ever seen, and I found myself lost in them for a moment. I snapped back to myself, and remembered what I had wanted to tell her.
“I’ve given you my rules for living here,” I said at last. “There is one more rule that you should know. Here, we give. If a pony approaches you and asks for food, you give it to him. If he is thirsty, you let him drink from our well. You are here now because Celestia wants us to give more of ourselves. With your help, we shall provide.”
Charm nodded quietly at my words, and continued with our work. In the span of a few hours, the ponies were buried, and saplings planted in their graves. Tomorrow, Charm would work with Casa, Gaucho and I would stake down the greenhouses, and Celestia would shower the lot with her sun. We all had our part in this, and I hoped that we would all be able to fulfill our pieces in making Equestria the land it once was.
...
It had been nearly a week since Charm had arrived on the lot. An extraordinarily long, and frustrating week. Between the three of us, we had found that she had practically zero natural talent for anything. Casa’s attempts to teach her cooking were met with such spectacular failure that she forbade Charm from entering the kitchen again. Gaucho had similarly banned Charm from the garage after her attempts at rebuilding a cart were met with an explosion that took out his fancy new water collector. That left her with the single option of becoming my aide. I found myself glad for the company she provided, even if she talked little.
We walked to the perimeter wall, where piles of concrete slabs waited for Gaucho and I to lift them into place. Charm pointed her horn at the pile, and it began to glow with a soft green light. The pile glowed with the same light, as a cloud of dust lifted from the rocks. The cloud drifted over the pile and formed a perfect marble sized sphere. We had been gathering these marbles for a week now. Every time she picked up something new, another marble. Gaucho simply had no use for them. The balls were heavy, and rolled fine, but were too big to make decent bearings. We kept a basket of them outside the garage, as not to trip over them.
I questioned her as to the weight she could lift with her magic. As with everything else about the filly, it wasn’t much. She managed to levitate a cinder block worth of concrete into place, but could move no more. But something was more than nothing, and now Gaucho no longer had to break out his lift every time we wanted to build a wall. Which was just as well; that scissor lift scared me to death. I gave her some instructions, and left her with a bag of mortar.
I came to the wall to check on her progress after an hour. As it turned out, she was able to rebuild walls better than she had been able to cook. It wasn’t pretty, but, really, what in the wasteland was? The section of wall she had rebuilt was functional, and it would keep out the creatures of the waste, pony and non pony alike. As I admired and praised her work, I kicked the black marble into the lot. Perhaps we could find a use for them today.
Gaucho rolled toward me, his face heavy with concern. He chattered something at me about the marbles that Charm had been producing. Gaucho grabbed the handle of a yellow box, and began sweeping around the marble I had kicked in this direction. The yellow box clicked and hissed like a radroach on fire. Gaucho recoiled from the sphere as if they were radioactive. Which, apparently, they were. He demanded to know how she did that.
“I don’t know, Sir,” she replied. “It just happens. I didn’t know I could produce radioactive things like that.” Gaucho swept his Geiger counter over the area of the wall she had put into place earlier. The box remained silent. He chattered at me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking vigorously.
“What do you mean she can remove radiation?” I asked. “Do you really think that’s even possible?” Of course it was, he assured me. Magic can do nearly anything. We just needed an experiment to confirm. I led the two ponies to our well, and drew up a bucket of water. It was, of course, irradiated, as all groundwater was in the wastes.
“If you would please,” I asked Charm. “Lift the water from this bucket.” She concentrated, holding the water in a sphere above the bucket. Sure enough, a seed sized pellet fell from the water. Gaucho’s yellow box declared the water safe enough to drink as I fished the radioactive seed from the pail. I looked at the tiny, dangerous seed for a moment, then back to Charm. She too stared at the pellet, her violet eyes full of tears.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t mean to poison your water. I can’t control this magic; I never could.”
‘Poison?” I asked. “Charm, my dear young mare, this water is safe to drink now. You don’t produce radiation, you remove it.” My hooves were shaking in elation. “Your gift has the power to transform the waste. With what you can do, the entire wasteland becomes habitable. Sure there are these marbles to deal with but...” I stared out at the walls, and into the sky beyond our compound. “You may be the hope of an entire generation. Together, we can rebuild the wastes, and bring the message of giving to ponies everywhere.”
I wanted to throw my arms around her, and shower her with adoration. I wanted to bow at her feet and worship her as the gift she was. I wanted to raise this unicorn up on a platform and shout to the world that a savior had come to us, to free us from the radiation of the land and the waters. But I could do none of those things. Her gifts weren’t a blessing to her; they were a curse.
Outside these walls, she would be a target for raiders and slavers, or indeed any pony simply looking for respite from the radiation of our world. Otherwise decent ponies would kill to have access to the clean water and soil she could provide. Ponies I long considered friends and devotees of my message would gladly murder our family to keep Charm for themselves. I sat down in the dirt, as the weight of this filly's gifts finally came to me. Charm had gone from an unwanted unicorn to the biggest target in the wasteland in a single experiment. Gaucho seemed to read my thoughts, and asked me what we were going to do next.
“Do?” I asked. “Gaucho, we will do nothing. Charm is a pony, the same as your and I. She will decide her own fate.”
“You’re not going to send me away?” she asked, her eyes again filling with tears. “Oh goddess, no,” she pleaded. “Please let me stay. I’ll do anything.”
“Charm, you aren’t going anywhere you don’t want to,” I said. “I want you to understand what you can do, and I want you to understand just how amazing your power is. If you can teach this spell to others, then you will have single hoofedly transformed the wasteland. Your power is to take away that which kills us all. You can clean the soil, the water, the air. Nothing I could ever do can compare to that power, Charm.” I looked at her, my own eyes filling with worry. “At the same time, you are now a target. Ten Pony Tower alone would pay a million caps to any pony who could bring you there.”
“Please don’t make me go back there,” she begged. “When my mother died, my stepfather couldn’t afford rent. They threw us out, and warned us never to come back. My stepfather took to drinking and blaming me for her death.” She looked down at the ground, trying to make herself disappear into the cracks of the concrete.
“They would kill a thousand ponies to have you there now,” I told her. “Here? You’re safe. You can do more than any of us now, and we can provide for more ponies than ever.” I looked back at Gaucho. He nodded, and made for the garage to make preparations. “This calls for a celebration, Charm. An official welcome to our family.”
The seasons had changed from what passed as spring to the burning heat of late summer. I knew soon the rains of autumn would be upon us, and there was much to do to prepare for the great cleansing that awaited us. Summer thunderstorms had already given us directions for preparation, and we stood ready to face the greatest season of all: the season of giving.
Charm had become stronger in those months, her body adapting to the work of the fields and of the wastes. She was transforming before my eyes from scared teenager to a waste hardened survivor. She had seen death in those months, not only from the bodies we sought to bury, but from her own hooves in defense of our home. The experience had changed her, but it had not taken away her charming outlook or determination to work by my side. I found having the unicorn by my side was at once both comforting and nerve-wracking.
It brought me comfort to know that the lessons I had to teach were being passed to a generation that would not only understand my message, but appreciate the past that had been sacrificed to their future. It brought me joy to talk to someone who cared for me as a pony, rather than a source of apple whiskey. I had found elation in her magic that filled our lot with marbles, but taken away that which would poison our home. Already we felt healthier, more full of life than any of us had felt in years. Outside our walls was an irradiated hellscape, but inside the lot, everything was clean.
What disturbed me was how close she had grown in such a short time. Every moment we were awake, she was by my side, simply listening to the wisdom I had to dispense. After the first month, I had run out of wisdom to offer. I instead taught her the sermons, prayers, and rites of Celestia. She listened to my lessons as we worked side by side on the lot. With her help, our lot had grown from a few dozen greenhouses, to more than a hundred. We were forced to start planting in the no-man’s land between the walls and the fence.
Instead of trees, we had planted wheat there. The Glassmaker had come again, bearing gifts of grain which we would sow into the earth with bone meal to begin life anew. Some of my followers had questioned the wisdom of grain in the irradiated soil. I assure them Celestia would provide for the faithful, if only we stuck to our beliefs. They accepted my wisdom with reluctance. I was no faith healer, nor did I promise miracles, but the wisdom I shared with them gave them faith in my words, and I would proudly repay their faith with bread from the earth.
A larger problem was what to do with Charm’s marbles. Every ounce of dirt from the no-man's land had been combed over by the unicorn, and we were left with several cartloads of dangerously radioactive waste product. Gaucho told me that they could be used in a radiation engine, but such a thing was behind his comprehension of science. We dared not smelt them, as our experiments with that had poisoned one of the nearby ruined buildings. That failure cost us in pain: Charm’s powers were useful for the inanimate, but agonizing to the point of torture for the living.
The only use we ever found for them was making ammunition. A pegasus of all things had come by our lot, seeking shelter for the evening. We of course provided. When the pegaus found one of the marbles that Gaucho had been experimenting with, he suggested using it as a core for ammunition to tear through armor. Much as we preferred peace, Gaucho took the idea and made bullets that punched through steel plating with ease. He reloaded the turrets with his handiwork, and thanked the pegasus with a several bottles of apple whiskey.
After we had made all the ammunition we could use, I had decided to dump the marbles where others wouldn’t stumble upon them. Dressed in my radiation suit, I set off on a short jaunt to dispose of the cart full of marbles. Charm again begged me to come along, and again I refused, reminding her that she was in peril every time she stepped out of our walls. The wastes were no place for a mare like her.
There was a place a quarter of a mile away from the lot that would be a perfect spot to dispose of the deadly spheres. They had been a series of pools in the days before the war, built underneath what I could only guess was an exercise hall. Treadmills, dumb-bells, and rotten athletic equipment littered the rooms above, while the pool areas below were still in pristine condition. I remembered finding a number of skeletons here when I had first started burying the dead.
There were two of these pools. One was round, and nearly twenty feet deep with a large platform above it for... something. I couldn’t imagine why you’d have a stairs leading up to a platform with nothing on it, unless one were to jump off. This would be a perfect place to store the marbles; it was deep, secluded, and lined with concrete. They would harm no pony here, nor would they seep into the ground water to harass future generations. I dumped the cart into the pool, and wandered back through the building.
The other pool was much more shallow, probably six feet at its deepest, and separated from the other pool by several thick walls. I longed to fill this one with water, and enjoy my own private oasis. But that much clean water would be a lavish extravagance far beyond the means of even the greatest barons of Equestria, to say nothing of the poor villages that littered the wastes around us. Perhaps someday after Equestria was whole again and the rivers ran clean, the children's children of Casa would have such luxuries. For such a thing to exist in the wastes, I would have needed a water talisman or...
“Charm...” I said to myself. Her gift could cleanse that much water, but to use such a gift in such a selfish pursuit was unfathomable. I felt endless guilt at having even thought such a thing, knowing that Celestia would have scorned me for such a foolish waste of resources. Penance was required for such an astound thought of greed, and...
“What about her?” asked Casa. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I spun about, hammer drawn and ready to fight. I saw only the cinnamon earth pony standing behind me. I dropped my hammer, and drew deep breathes. I was far too old for such surprises.
“Casa, what in the name of Celestia are you doing here?” I demanded. “You should be at the lot.”
“I followed you here,” she said. “The fact that you’re talking to yourself about her means I needed to speak with you alone.”
“What could you possibly have to ask me that requires such seclusion?” I said. She looked around a moment, then back to me.
“Are you happy?” she asked at last.
“I would prefer a restored Equestria,” I answered. “But such things are the dreams of all ponies. The difference is that I strive for that goal rather than huddling in the wastes, waiting to die.” I winced at my own spoken honesty; I would require further penance for my sin of hubris. “The point is, it doesn’t matter if I am happy or not.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I have been blessed,” I answered. “I have been given a task in life, and the tools to complete it. You, Charm, Gaucho, the lot. You are all gifts from Celestia that I may restore the wastes with. To use such gifts selfishly would be to squander what precious resources the waste provides. It doesn’t matter if I am happy or not. I give because it is the right thing to do.”
“Then how are you rewarded?” she asked. “Surely Celestia wouldn’t give you a task without promise of reward?”
“It’s not as if I believe the voice of our fallen goddess has actually spoken to me,” I said. “That would make me a mad-pony. Generosity is its own reward, Casa. You know that. I desire nothing else, save my mortal requirements.”
“Every pony wants something,” said Casa. “Repressing your desires invites greed, and for you, greed would be the most dangerous thing in the wastes.”
“And why is that?”
“You told me that all ponies want something they can never have,” she said. “That greed was the cardinal sin of the wastes, and that all sins stemmed from greed. To deny yourself of everything as you have means that your desire is greater than any can imagine. You are by far the most determined individual I ever known, and when you go after something, you don’t stop until you get it. You’d flatten half the wastes if some pony asked you too. So, I ask again, what do you want?”
“A restored Equestria,” I repeated. “That’s all I’ve ever desired.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “You want Charm.” I looked into her orange eyes, almost unable to believe she would even say such a thing.
“Why would you think that?” I asked. “Why would you say that?”
“I don’t see you denying it,” she said. “You may be a god amongst pony to the rest of the waste, but you are a mortal stallion. I’ve seen you watching her. You and she spend so much time together, I’m amazed that nothings come of it yet.”
“She’s a child!” I protested.
“She’s a mare,” retorted Casa. “A young mare, yes, but she worships you. We speak when you’re out gathering your charges in the waste. She wants to make you happy more than you can imagine.”
“So?” I asked. “I cannot have her. To ask anything of her would be to violate every principle I’ve held dear. What I want doesn’t matter, and it never has.”
“Have you told her this?”
“I told her the night she came here that families don’t fuck each other,” I said.
“Gaucho and I...”
“You’re married,” I interrupted. “What you have speaks volumes of the power of love. Speaking of which...”
“Yes,” smiled Casa. “Last month. This time next year, the pitter-patter of foal hooves will be gracing our lot.” I smiled. Nothing would make me happier than to see the child of my two best friends.
“Then what are we doing here?” I asked, gesturing to the empty pool. “Let us go to the lot and celebrate.”
“Because you haven’t answered my question,” she said. “What is it you desire?” I thought long and hard about the question. Did I have no mortal desires? I was happy to have so much to give, and it made me happy to see that my friends were continuing the cycle of life in the wastes. Perhaps their child would be the salvation of Equestria.
“I desire nothing that I can have,” I said at last. “If I were to wish for anything, it would be that our lands be cleansed, for your children to be healthy, and for the world to live in peace once more.” I looked back to the empty pool. “I want the rivers to run clean, and the shouting of laughter to fill halls like these once more. I want the world we used to have before the war.” I looked back at Casa. “That is all I’ve desired my entire life. Anything else I have ever desired is irrelevant. Pleasures of the flesh are for those who won’t share their blessings. I don’t need a pool to swim in. I don’t need a fine house on an endless lawn. I don’t need the love of a beautiful young mare. These things are all desires I cannot have, and to want them is only to invite greed into my heart.” She only shook her head.
“Not once in the time I’ve known you have you so much as looked at a mare, or a stallion for that matter,” she said. “You’re only mortal, Gardener, and you will someday have to realize that.”
“I aim to be better than that,” I said. “How many ponies are in the lot because of their desire for wealth? Or sex? Or power? I will not be like them, even if it means that I die alone in the wastes.”
“What about the lessons you could give to the next generation?” I asked. “Surely your own child would follow it your footsteps?”
“That’s not what I want from Charm,” I said. “I want her to be the daughter I never had. The fact that I have even considered her in... that way disgusts me to my soul. That week I was gone? That was penance for that one sin. I am not the paragon of virtue I pretend to be, and I fear that my failings will bring down everything I have worked for like a house of cards.”
“Then you really don’t know what it is to give of yourself,” said Casa. “You may give away all your possessions, all of what you produce, but you never truly give if you’re not willing to give yourself to someone else.” She walked away from me. “I expected better of you, Gardener.”
Her words cut me. Casa had always been a beacon of light in the darkness, and to have failed her meant that I was headed down the wrong path. Was it so wrong to be mortal after all? To have what she and Gaucho had? I shook my head. She was mistaken. I was a better pony than that, and I would have to prove it.
I followed the mare back to the lot, trying not to stare at her flanks. Casa was a beauty, but she, like Charm, was off limits to me. I had never thought of her that way, but the conversation we shared made me think of all that I had been avoiding since I taken up the banner of generosity all those years ago.
I had avoided stealing, obviously. I avoided killing when I could. I avoided drunkenness and the drugs that polluted the wastes. I had avoided the temptations of the flesh but why? Did that make me a better pony? Did it make me stronger? Better able to survive the wastes? Or was it simply a way to lord a moral superiority over others? Then it hit me.
The reasons I had forsaken my own pleasures was to provide to others. There simply was no room to give if I filled my mind with my own concerns. To ask others to give without giving everything I had was hypocritical. That which I custodianed in Celestia’s name was for the ponies of the waste, and not my own greed. I had to remind myself of that sometimes when I harvested apples, or bottled water. All I had to give came from Celestia, and to horde it for myself was to bring about her wrath. Such thoughts brought me peace again, though I still owed penance for my thoughts of greed and hubris earlier in the day.
Penance was normally performed by finding a wandering pony in the wastes, and granting them any request they desired. So long as I could provide, and keep to my code, anything was possible. Many simply asked for what I had, while others asked me to follow them for a duration as a guard. One pony had asked me to read their foal a story because they could not read themselves. The week I had been gone, I had served as caravan guard to Phillydelphia and back.
Rather than wander, I knew to whom I should offer the boon. When I told Casa that she was owed penance for my sins, she only shook her head and said that she wished nothing of me. When I persisted, she brought Charm from the orchard and demanded that I offer penance to her instead. I shuffled uncomfortably, leery of what she might ask.
She asked to join me in the wastes as I hunted for charges. I wanted to refuse, to keep her behind these walls and out of the irradiated hellscape that awaited outside. But penance demands sacrifice, and this was to be mine. I agreed, and asked Gaucho to fabricate barding for the unicorn. He had already anticipated the need, and produced a suit of leather armor for the mare.
The next morning, Charm and I walked into the ruins of Manehatten to begin our search for the dead of Equestria. Her inexperience became apparent as she blindly followed my lead. She was quiet, certainly, but her footing was terrible, and she frequently caused slides of rock and debris by brushing against the wrong things at the wrong times. I was more worried about getting the mare home in one piece than I was about finding any ponies today. The dead could lie another day, but the wastes couldn’t afford to lose Charm. We moved toward an area I knew to be relatively safe.
I explained to her some of the dangers of the ruins that were specific to our task. The dead were often near the living, shoved far enough away as to forget their presence. Our mission was to remember those dead, and too bring them to a final resting place. The dead could not hurt us, and as she had learned, there was nothing to fear from even the most horribly desecrated corpse. The living were a far larger problem. In the ruins, there were only two types of ponies. Three if you counted the ghouls as ponies, which I did not. Their bodies were far too contaminated to bring new life to the soil, though I did try to burn their corpses when I could.
Scavengers were fantastic allies in the ruins of Manehatten. They were the sorts of ponies who could get anywhere and share the locations of the departed. Most were jovial about their profession, and would listen to my wisdom, even if they didn’t care for the message of renewal. They were explorers by nature, and the idea of farming never appealed to them. They did understand the wisdom behind it, and often took my advice with them to wherever they traveled. They also tended to be extraordinarily helpful. I had accompanied more than one scavenger into office buildings filled with skeletons to have them turn around and help me remove them. Scavengers were the better sorts of ponies.
Raiders, on the other hand, held no such place in my heart. I had been on too many a receiving end of hoof or knife to trust any pony wearing a tire over their shoulders. True, some raiders dressed like scavengers and preyed on those who sought to trade, but for the most part, ponies with gory cutie marks made poor business associates. I was never sorry to hear of raider camps being decimated by the wastes, nor was I sorry to put one in the ground. Raiders were the diametric opposite of everything I believed in. They took without giving. They desecrated the dead instead of burying them. They raped and plundered their way though the wastes as if extinction was inevitable and they were the last generation. Ponies deserved better.
I led Charm into an abandoned office building that showed no signs of activity for the past few years. Dust and decay had settled along the edges of the building, followed by the cracks of erosion that signaled time’s march to bring all things low. I had visited here many years before but was driven off by creatures deep within the bowels of these ruins. I had been fearful of the bugs back then, and never did feel comfortable around them. Still, these bloat-sprites would make excellent tests for Charm, as I could handle swarms of the beasts if necessary.
Despite sharing coat and mane colors, Charm did not share my natural talent for melee weapons. She was, however, unusually skilled with the pistol her stepfather had paid me with. It was a revolver of small caliber and low power, but it was reliable and accurate. She instinctively knew how and where to aim for maximum effect, and soon she was dropping bloat-sprites as quickly as they appeared. I felt sorry for any pony who underestimated the unicorn. She was a natural marks-pony, and her abilities with a firearm were a pleasant surprise in a week otherwise filled with disappointment.
After an hour of target practice with bloat-sprites, I began to teach Charm where to look for bodies. Most of which she had already known simply from hearing me talk in the fields. I told her again how closets were popular place to hide out the end of the world, as were desks and windowless rooms of all sorts. She found several locked doors along the way. I kicked them open for her to reveal more of the dead. I reminded her that the dead were once living, and to find them, she would sometimes have to think like a pony in panic.
In total, we had found a dozen skeletons in this office. When the end of Equestria had occurred, this place had only token staff, leaving the office building a quiet tomb to few ponies. It was not the haul I had been expecting. We did locate a few valuable pieces of technology in the upper portions of the building, including some energy crystals that powered Gaucho’s cart. He would be pleased to say the least.
We had also located a haul of medical supplies from the inexplicably well stocked pharmacy on the top floor. A world of painkillers, rad chems, and potions of all colors and varieties were our reward for this day. We gathered them up, and walked back through the building. Not being able to use terminals, the secrets of this place remained a mystery to Charm and I. Whatever the ponies of the past had to say would remain unheard. We gathered what we could for trade and salvage, and headed for the foyer to the cart.
The foyer wasn’t that impressive, though the two hundred years of decay may have had something to do with the lack luster appearance. A compass rose graced the floor, and from the business cards I had gathered, these ponies were part of the legal system that came before us. From outside I heard a the quiet steps of ponies. I stopped Charm as we entered the foyer, and ordered her to take cover. She ducked behind a doorway, revolver drawn.
Three ponies stepped into the building, each wearing the armor typical of raiders. One had a necklace of ears hanging between his spiked shoulder pads. They saw me and drew weapons. I responded in turn by drawing my hammer. I warned them not to approach, lest they become the newest additions to the lot. The fear that comes with recognition took one of the ponies, and he turned to flee. The others, blinded by chutzpah or chems, ignored my warning, and split to attack.
One approached from my left, swinging a tire iron in his teeth. I ducked under the weapon, and kicked his legs from underneath him. He tumbled to the ground, cracking his jaw on the compass rose mosaic. I brought the hammer upon his skull, and ended the torment of his life with a blow that showered the foyer with grey matter and blood. I spun from the coup de grace, and landed hooves in the chest of the other pony. He tumbled backward into a desk. I heard the familiar crack of bone as the raider fell to the ground. He cried out in pain, unable to move his rear legs. I walked to him, hammer still in teeth.
“Why?” I asked him. “Never in my life have I been able to get an answer from a raider as to why they live the life they do. Now you will die in the wastes like so many others before you. What can you tell me about your way of life? I want to know what makes you tick so that I can stop other young ponies from throwing away their lives as you have.”
Between swearing and threats, I gathered that he had once been a pony of standing in a village decimated by raiders. After he had given up hope of a brighter tomorrow, he donned the armor of a raider and took to the ruins to destroy the remainder of pony life. He believed that Equestria was forsaken by the goddesses, and that he should live life as if the world was beyond saving.
It had been such a simple slide into madness for this pony. I was saddened to find that this crippled stallion before me had once been a member of a community. He had neighbors, friends, a family. Now his family consisted of whatever chem addled freaks weren’t trying to kill or rape him. I felt nothing but pity for him. Raiders may have had a difficult life, but it was their choice to become the monsters they were. I asked him what he wanted, knowing that whatever I gave him would be the last gift he would receive. In a moment of clarity, he asked for a painless death. A cripple such as himself would be little more than a target for sadists, and his remaining life would be a horror beyond imagination. I granted his request with a overdose of painkillers we had found. He thanked me before he fell asleep, and wished that he had seen the folly of his ways before it had been too late. He lay his head on the cold tile, and stopped breathing.
Charm questioned why I hadn’t shot him, why I had wasted valuable supplies on some pony so low as a raider. I told her that mercy is greatest thing we can offer to another pony. To put a gun to his head would have been to force him die in terror. His life had been miserable enough, and that the painless death we had given him was probably the first generosity he had seen in years. Charm helped me drag the ponies into the cart. We walked outside into the wastes.
The raider who had fled before had returned with half a dozen more of his friends. Most were armed with guns, but there was one with a sword. He was a purple unicorn, and he dressed in metal armor not unlike my own. He demanded my cart, and, upon seeing Charm, her as well. I politely refused, and suggested they be about their business. Charm was not mine to give, and I would be damned by both goddesses if I were to see a hair on her black mane harmed. I ordered her back into the building as the ponies charged.
I spun the cart around as they fired upon me. The corpses of their former companions absorbed their bullets as I closed distance, and the thick steel of the cart reflected their attacks into the waste. I dove from rubble to rubble, drawing their fire. One nearby pony had lost track of me for a moment. I popped from behind the ruins, and grabbed the pony’s shoulders. As I pulled him off his feet, the other raiders turned to fire at me. Their friend served admirably as a shield. I flung the bleeding body of the pony at two who had clumped together. Their friend bowled them over. I bounded from my cover to the downed ponies, and cracked their heads together with enough force to shatter skulls.
A bullet struck me in the flank. The blow had been deadened by my armor, but stung as it instantly bruised. Another bullet, then another pelted my barding, leaving welts on my skin. I dropped beneath the rubble, and grabbed up one of their guns. It was an assault rifle of some sort. I found it uncomfortable in my teeth, but sufficient to bring down another pony, and cause the last pony firing at me to duck into the ruins. He popped up again to line a shot when the crack of Charm’s pistol rang out from the ruined building behind me. Both bullets caught the raider in the back of the head, sending him to the ground in a heap. I tossed aside the rifle, and grabbed up my sledge. The purple unicorn met my charge as we clashed sword and hammer.
He threw a hoof that caught my temple. My helmet rang as I ducked under the sword. I could hear the plinking of lead bouncing off his armor following the cracks of Charm’s pistol. His barding was as good as my own, and he was clearly as skilled combatant as I. We circled, feinting and probing each other's defenses.
“Why?” I asked him. I ducked under another sword blow and swung with my own hammer. He danced around the hammer as if we were waltzing. “Have you no goal in life beyond your next raid?”
“You have no idea what I’m after, Gardener,” he said. “Give me the girl, or you will live to regret it. You do not want to make an enemy of Ender.”
“What life awaits her with you?” I demanded. “A life of rape and torture? To be made into a savage of the wastes once you’ve broken her completely? To be discarded after you’re done with her? To lay dying like your followers?”
“Those ponies were but tools to an end,” said Ender. “They have proven as useless as expected. But you...” His yellow eyes locked with my own. “You are the sort of pony that Red-Eye would want as a general. I know of you, Gardener, and you have achieved great things.”
“And why would I want to join him?” I asked. “He uses slaves as a means to his end. His entire city is built upon the backs of ponies who could not defend themselves. We may share a vision of a restored Equestria, but his eyes are clouded to the truth.”
“The truth that ponies are selfish?” asked Ender. “That they are too stupid and greedy to work for the good of others? You and he are the only ones who understand giving in this wasteland. I’ve heard your sermons, Gardener. I’ve eaten your apples, and I’ve drank your water. How much longer do you think you can stand against the tides of the wastes?”
“As long as I must,” I said. Another shot rang out from the building, catching the unicorn on a sliver of exposed skin. He filched in pain, leaving an opening for my hammer. The impact shattered his front leg, sending him to the ground in a cursing heap. I stood above him, ready to deliver the killing blow.
“Mercy, Gardner,” he begged. “Grant me your gift of mercy.” I looked down on the unicorn. He was in no shape to attack if I let him go, but something about this pony told me not to leave him alive. He was no raider; he something far more dangerous. Yet Celestia demanded mercy for all ponies. I reluctantly put away my hammer.
“You have been given a gift of mercy,” I said to him. “If I see you again, I will give you the gift of burial. Get out of my sight.” The unicorn gathered his sword, and disappeared into the ruins. Charm came from the ruined building to look upon the scene of battle. She asked why I hadn’t killed him. I explained that he had asked for mercy, and that Celestia commands us to give mercy to all those who ask for it.
We loaded the bodies and supplies of the raiders into my cart and headed for home. I hoped in the coming week that infection would take the purple unicorn, and that I would return his body to the soil. But that hope was faint, and I worried that my sins of greed, lust, and hubris were going to destroy me sooner rather than later.
Charm’s powers had given us more clean water than we could distribute ourselves, and soon we were forced to recruit strong young ponies to haul water wherever it was needed. Raiders became a problem again, and I was obligated to hire guards for the shipments of water. Each expense took away from what I was able to give to others. Every cap I paid to guards was a cap that could have been used to put food into the mouth of a foal. I found myself going over numbers and figures, acting like a business pony to maximize every last cap. I found myself spending less time in the lot with the deceased, and more time acting like a tycoon.
I hated it.
How I longed for the simple days of burying the dead, and giving praise to our goddess. Every Sunday brought a new flock: more ponies to feed, and more bottles to fill. And every Sunday, I gave all I had, but it was never enough. Our lot had become a victim of its own success. Families had come to depend on the four of us. We were a charity, yes, but the returns on our donations to the ponies had gone unreciprocated. Every Sunday, ten new parishioners flocked to the gates of the lot, and not one brought anything to help others. I felt my messages falling on deaf ears, and for the first time since I buried my friend, I felt lost. Not only was my faith wavering, but I found myself falling for Charm.
We had been working side by side for nearly a year now. No longer the awkward young filly I had rescued from a drunken step father, she had blossomed into a beautiful mare. She had taken my message of generosity to heart, and gave as much of herself as I did. Together, our generosity had blanketed the wastes around our lot, and filled the ponies with hope. I had found myself trying to keep away from her, worried that I might succumb to the desires of the flesh, and ask of her that which she need not give.
Sunday had come around again, and again I donned my robes to lead another sermon on generosity. I looked through the gates at the gathered crowd of a hundred ponies. Each one carried their own skins, pails, and jugs. I looked out at the crowd as they clamored around the gates, just waiting for the opportunity to fill their containers with the clean water we provided. There was no respite from demand. I found myself selfishly wanting to send them all away, to slap away their pails and skins and demand of them “What have you done for your neighbor today?” But I was not here to pass judgment. I was here to provide and give of myself until Celestia was done with me. And follow this task I shall until my last breath.
My sermon that day was heavier than normal. It was a grim reminder to those who took without giving faced the hardest times of all when the horn of plenty ran dry. I announced at the end of my sermon that there would be no service the next week due to the coming of the storm season. I reminded every pony to filter their rain water, and that the dead still deserved their respect. I had found that my messages of generosity had been so frequent lately, I had been forgetting to remind people of their duties to the fallen. The crowd dispersed, lugging their pails and skins back to their homes.
I threw my robes into a corner after the mass. I was disgusted that my sermon had reached a hundred pairs of ears, yet not a single pony would take my message with them. The ponies left the gates of the lot, some grumbling and moaning about how little I had given. Their complete lack of gratitude made me want to tear out my mane in frustration. Where had I gone wrong? Before Charm, we had only what we could make and the faithful assisted us however they could. Now that we had plenty, strangers showed up from miles around to ignore me for forty five minutes so they could fill their jugs. Was there no better way to spread my message?
Charm had begged me to teach her how to preach, and spent countless hours by my side as I wrote my sermons. Despite her meek voice, she too found the gift of oration, and could preach to the crowd at length about the lessons we chose to expound upon here. She had become more than a meek pony, bowing and cringing at my every word. She had become a valued member of our family, and a contributing member of the message we were trying to bring to the wastes. It had made me fall for her even more. I found myself leaving the compound on a Sunday to seek the deceased in the ruins of Manehatten just to get away from her.
I had cantered in silence deep into the ruins of Manehatten. I knew for a fact that another fallout shelter was in the basement of a ruined post office. Hopefully, I would find more deceased there, as well as supplies to distribute to my parishioners. It would be a nice change from book keeping to find and bury those gone before. It reminded me of the simpler times when I had only to give that which the dead had donated, before Charm.
Damn that mare, I couldn’t stop thinking of her. She had become my successor in every way. She could preach and heal as well as I, and her power allowed her to give more than any pony in the wastes. She had become that which Celestia demanded: a true paragon of virtue in the wastes. She asked for nothing, and gave of herself freely. Perhaps it was time for me to give her my final gift. I would give her the lot, and move on to a new city to spread my message of generosity. That would solve all my problems in one fell swoop. The branching of the church would allow Charm to continue her giving as we expanded, and it would keep me away from temptation.
I heard the crunch of breaking glass behind me in the ruins. The swirling problems of success had lessened my awareness of the surroundings. I cursed myself for losing focus. Now some pony was going to die by my hammer because I had not been careful enough to avoid him. I wondered again how much good I was doing by slaughtering ponies from one end of the wastes to the other. A cornflower fetlock emerged from behind the rubble, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was only Charm.
“You do realize how dangerous the wastes are?” I asked her. “You know how much of a target you are.”
“No one but our family knows, sir,” she said.
“My name is Gardener.”
“You’re sir to me,” she insisted. “My mother always told me to treat your betters with respect.” It sometimes amazed me at the naivety of this young mare. For a year she had been my shadow: digging in the dirt as I had, burying the dead, ministering to the sick and down trodden. Yet for some reason, she still saw me as her master despite my instance that she was a free mare. I decided to get the bottom of it once and for all.
“Why do you think I am your better?” I asked. “Because I have lived more? Because I have a following of devotees who listen to my sermons week after week? Because I am physically powerful? Do these things make me your better?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, avoiding my gaze.
“They do not,” I said. “Celestia asks me to be the Gardener but not because I am these things. They are what I have to be for her. I have lived long because there is work to be done. I preach because others must know. I am strong because I must open the concrete to bury the dead. The demands of generosity know no respite, and I must be the best I can to meet those demands. You are these things too, Charm. You have surpassed me in all ways with your honest generosity, and your giving spirit. It is I who should call you master.” She only hung her head in silence, daring not to speak. I looked at the unicorn with a weary sigh. “Charm, what is it that you want in life?”
“To see Equestria restored, and glory given to our Goddess,” she said. Her tone was that of a parrot, and I could tell that she didn’t care to reveal the truth.
“What are you not telling me?” I asked. “Charm, we are a family, and families don’t keep secrets from one another.”
“I don’t want to be your family,” she said. I was both stunned and heartbroken at her confession. Here, I thought that she would bring the world peace. Perhaps the days of labor in the sun had simply been too much for her, and she wished a much easier life in Ten Pony Tower. I could hardly blame her.
“You’re... free to go at any time,” I stammered, “and I will happily take you anywhere you want. I had hoped to give you the lot so that I could start anew...”
“I don’t want the lot,” she said quietly.
“I understand your life here hasn’t been easy, but...” She threw her arms around me, and pulled me to the ground in a passionate kiss. It surprised me so much I couldn’t resist. I didn’t want to. Yet I found myself pushing her away. Her violet eyes filled with tears as she stared at me.
“What is wrong with me?” she asked. “Am I not good enough for you? Have I not given enough of myself to earn your love?”
“I do love you, Charm.” My mind struggled for words to describe how I felt. “I love you as a daughter.”
“I don’t want to be your damned daughter!” she screamed. “ I want to be with you! Why won’t you have me?”
“Because I cannot ask that of you,” I said. “I cannot ask for your love while so many others suffer. I cannot take until I have given everything else away.” Her violet eyes glared. Pure anger flowed from her. I had never seen such passion in those beautiful eyes, and it frightened me.
“So you have to give everything away before you can take?” she demanded.
“You know my lessons of generosity,” I answered.
“If I asked for your lot?” she asked.
“It is yours if you wish it.”
“All your trees? Your cart? Your apples and greenhouses?”
“It would be yours in a heartbeat,” I replied.
“Everything you owned?” she asked. “The moon and sun? The stars above and the land below? Would you give it to me?”
“That which is mine to give, and that which I may earn belongs to others,” I said. “I would give it all to you, if you but asked for it.”
“I don’t want any of those things,” she said. “I want you. You’re not asking for anything, and I’m not offering myself to you. I’m asking you to give yourself to me.” I looked into her wonderful violet eyes, and saw a world of happiness reflected back at me. Was this a test of my dedication? Was this a temptation sent by the false goddess to corrupt the virtue I hung my life on? I could think of no way to refuse her request, yet to accept something that would bring me so much joy was beyond comprehension. Giving had made me happy, and giving myself to her would bring me elation beyond my wildest dreams. A voice in the back of my mind reminded me why I had stayed away from her, and why I had avoided the temptations of this mare.
“I cannot,” I said at last. “You are the daughter I never had. You came into my care a broken teenager, and here you stand, a mare ready to face the world. I have given you everything I have to offer. My home, my food, my wisdom is all yours. I want nothing more than to take you into my arms, but to do that means that others in the wastes would suffer. I cannot give you the love you want. To give myself to you would mean that there would be less of me to give to the rest of the wastes. I’m sorry Charm, but the needs of the many outweigh your own wants.”
“Then I can’t stay with you any longer,” she said. “I have to leave the lot.”
“I will take you to the ends of the Equestria if I have to,” I replied.
“Take me to Ten Pony Tower,” she said. “If I can’t have you, I can at least have everything else in this fucked up world.” I nodded, and escorted her in silence back to the lot. Casa was sleeping, her belly heavy with child. Gaucho was busy tending to his chores. It would be easier to tell them of her departure if there were no goodbyes.
Charm didn’t have much. A suit of barding, her revolver, a rifle, and a tattered copy of the Book of Celestia were all she had in this world. Where she was going, she’d be hailed as a queen and given every finery they could shower her with. She would live a life of luxury there, and I was happy for her. Perhaps there she would find someone her own age who would give themselves to her in heart and body.
I looked out on the endless rows of Greenhouses. The loss of her powers around the lot would mean a devastating blow for our church. Ponies would leave forever, and the congregation would wither like an unattended garden. Perhaps it was time now to give the lot to Gaucho and Casa. They would give what they could, but with a foal only days away, I expected they would provide for their family first.
I realized with some sadness that the pony whom I had intended to grant the lot to was in the middle of leaving it forever. I would have to find a new protégée, and teach them the value of generosity. Perhaps this new hero of the waste I had heard of on the radio would grace me with her presence, and I could teach her generosity instead. Maybe I was just kidding myself.
I had no need of the cart for this journey. I would take only the supplies I needed for the day’s walk there, and make note of those fallen along the road to retrieve later. Much as I was loathe to leave the dead lie, getting Charm into the safety of the tower was a much higher priority. The dead could wait another day to return home.
It was late in the afternoon when we passed a small group of ponies headed away from Ten Pony Tower. They had been unable to buy the Rad-away they had needed for their colt, and begged us for any we had. Charm looked to me for guidance. I only shook my head, and told her that she made her own choices now. Charm said that she could remove the colt’s radiation poisoning, but the procedure was long and painful. The father of the child asked if Charm would perform the spell on him so that he could tell exactly how much it would hurt the child.
Apparently, Charm had been working on her technique. The stallion only winced a few times as the green glow took the radiation away from him. It took longer this way, but it caused far less pain. I kicked the marbles into the wastes. I felt guilty at littering the waste with such harmful byproducts, but I had no way of transporting them safely. The father agreed to let the child be cleansed, and presented the colt to Charm. The child had been badly poisoned by dirty water, and was showing the signs of prolonged exposure. Charm pulled the particles from his body and expanded her cleansing envelope to the parent’s possessions as well. The child would still suffer some of the physical effects of poisoning, but he would no longer be subjected to the horrors of radiation trapped within his marrow. The ponies groveled at our feet and offered us everything they had in return for our help. Charm refused any payment, and instead asked them to remember the generosity she had shown them when it came time to help some pony else.
We gave the ponies what we could spare and left again for Ten Pony Tower. The road rose to meet us as we trotted in silence along the cracked highway. Signs of life were everywhere along the path, each one a village or settlement in the distance where we could have stopped to offer a lifetime of service. We passed again the village where Charm and I had met. They had taken my message of burial to heart. The graves of dozens littered the outside of their town, and from each one grew plants or a tree. I smiled, knowing my message had not gone completely unheard in the wastes.
Night fell as we arrived at Ten Pony Tower. We were permitted inside, and I rented a room for the evening. It was expensive, but it was a final gift to the mare who had enabled me to provide so much to the wastes. I gave her what caps I had saved, as well as some valuables I hadn’t traded yet. She asked me to stay the evening. I refused, knowing that if I stayed here with her, I would never return to the lot.
The long walk home passed like a nap on a dull winter’s day. I barely registered the signs of our lot, running instead on the memories of a thousand journeys through the doors. Rather than focus on what the lot had lost, I decided to concentrate on finalizing my plans to leave. I shuffled through my papers when a photograph fell from the stack.
I had once found a picture a of a mare long since past. She bore three diamonds on her flank, and hair as violet as the setting sky. I thought her beautiful not because of her stunning looks, but because she had giving eyes. In those blue eyes were reflected the spirit of generosity. In the picture, she was surrounded by friends who supped at her table. She sought to give more of herself by bringing plates of food to an already overflowing table. I would have like to met that mare, but like so many others, she was lost to the ravages of time. I had kept that picture safe to remind me of the virtue that I had pledged myself too, and to always give more no matter how much others had.
For years, I had assumed that generosity had made me happy. What it had done was assuage the guilt of my success. I had so much, and others so little that giving seemed the only thing to do. Standing here in the Orchard, I looked back on that picture. Leaving the lot to Casa and Gaucho seemed the only thing left to do with it. The ground was full of the departed, and the greenhouses filled the lot with trees.
Because I was blessed, I would prosper elsewhere in the wastes. I would start a new lot, and I would preach my message elsewhere. There were ponies still who needed me still, and I would give to them everything the goddess would bless me with.
Through the sporadic rainstorms, and the budding of new life, Spring had always brought me hope that Equestria could one day become restored. It was that early spring morning that I made my plans to leave the lot. Casa and Gaucho were thankful for the gift, and promised to carry on what work they could in Charm’s absence. They asked me to stay, and understood when I explained why I couldn’t.
Before I left, there was business to attend to. There were caravans to cancel and guards to pay. I had been lucky enough to schedule them for a Monday pick up. They were disappointed to hear the church was closing, and offered to spread the word for me. I thanked them, and gave them each some apples to carry back to their homes. The guards were also disappointed to end their contracts. It had been an easy job for them to guard the shipments, and I suspected some were siphoning profits for themselves.
None of that mattered anymore. The lot was Casa and Gaucho’s now. I could no longer give of its tree or fields of wheat, as they were no longer mine to give. Casa’s foal was due any time now, and I agreed to stay long enough to deliver. I was no midwife, but I was skilled enough to bring another life into the wastes. I walked to my room to start packing my things.
My bedroom seemed bleaker now that it had ever been in the past. I looked upon my possession to realize that aside from what I was wearing, I owned a single Book of Celestia, and a wool cloak. I threw on the cloak, and put the book in my saddlebags. There was nothing else to pack; I could leave at any time. I wandered away from my room and to the roof of the showroom where I could watch the wastes. I came up here on occasions to try to glimpse the heavens. Clouds rolled in today, obscuring the view of the sky and filling the wastes with a dull, foreboding light. Something appeared on the horizon. Something... no, some pony, cornflower blue, and galloping at full speed toward the lot. It was Charm.
I dashed down the stairs and to the front door to meet the unicorn. She shot past me and into the walled compound. She began screaming, begging me to take up defenses, to help her. I asked her what she was talking about.
“Him!” she cried. “He found me there! I don’t know how, I don’t know where he came from, but Ender found me at Ten Pony Tower. I managed to get past him and his thugs. Please take me back, Gardener. Please help me.”
“You are my daughter,” I said to Charm. “I will never forsake you, no matter how much trouble you find yourself in. Here, you are safe.”
“They are coming,” she said. Her violet eyes locked with my own. “They know. One of them saw me perform the cleansing. I know they followed.” She tore at her mane, and wept frightened tears. “Oh goddess, I’ve brought the end with me. My greed will be the end of us all. I'm so sorry Gardener. I should go; I should keep running. I can't ask you to protect me. Not here. not with Casa.”
“We are safe here,” I said again. “We are a family, and families protect each other.”
I made ready the compound’s defenses. Gaucho’s turrets whirred to life and swept the no-man's land for any sign of invaders. I took to the roof and looked out upon the horizon to see only a single purple unicorn trotting toward the compound. I made my way outside.
“You are not welcome here,” I told Ender as he approached. “Leave or be returned to the soils of Equestria.”
“Where is your hospitality now, Gardener?” asked the purple unicorn. “Does your message of giving only apply to those you deem worthy? What would Celestia say to that?”
“This is no longer my home,” I replied. “Nothing here is mine to give.”
“Even after you broke my leg, I respected you for your conviction,” said Ender. “Your gift of mercy kept me from leveling your lot; I’m glad to see it's no longer yours. Leave now and you’ll live. Give me the girl, and you’ll be generously rewarded.” He chuckled underneath his barding. “When is the last time your goddess offered you reward for anything?”
“With Celestia as my witness,” I swore, “if you cross that line, you will die here. I will leave your corpse to rot in the wastes so it does not to taint the life that grows within. Step over that line, Ender, and it will be your last mistake.”
“I will cross this line, Gardener,” replied Ender. “And I will take that girl in every way possible as you watch.” Ender trotted away from the line and disappeared into the afternoon. It was a small relief to see him leave. I wanted to chase him down and kill him on the spot, but I knew that others were coming, and I had to make ready our defenses. Thunder rumbled over head; a war was coming to our doorstep.
Over the course of the afternoon, I had reloaded the turrets with the ammunition we had made from the marbles. Whatever army was headed our way was sure to be the best Ender could muster. I readied traps at the entrances, and fortified our windows. Gaucho donned his armor, and strapped into his battle saddle. He powered up his cart, and rolled ready to fight.
The stress of the imminent attack had forced Casa into labor. Charm took the mare into the basement of the showroom to assist with the birth. Gaucho and I had both wanted to be present when their foal was born, but if we failed at the task at hand, the foal wouldn’t be alive long enough to know the love of his parents. I took watch on the rooftop and awaited the onslaught. Gaucho waited in the trees, ready to rain mortars upon whatever came our way. I only hoped he survived to see his child grow up.
It was near evening by the time a cloud of dust began rolling over the horizon. It was far worse than I had expected. There was a herd of ponies headed for the lot, hooves thundering across the wastes. They had come as a plague of judgment, and I felt fear for the first time in many years. Fifty ponies galloped to war, ready to destroy the orchard and all that stood in their way. Two ponies stood ready to defend it against the onslaught of raiders and mercenaries. I pushed away the fear, and felt an amazing calm sweep over me. It was as if the voice of the goddess told me that it was all going to be all right. I was no longer worried about winning this battle.
I had heard the crying of a newborn foal from far below me. I thanked Celestia for her kindness, and made my way to the showroom. Charm came up to tell me that Gaucho had a son. I ordered her to stay with Casa and defend that foal to her dying breath. I was not opposed to the idea of mares fighting. Indeed, I had seen mares more ferocious than Diamond Dogs in my time defending their young, but this was no place for such heroics. This was a time for violence, and it was going to be a bloodbath.
The first missile struck where Charm had repaired the wall nearly a year ago. Great chunks of concrete flew over the lot, and shattered greenhouse windows. The walls otherwise held, and soon the turrets were chattering death upon the invaders. Another missile struck the walls, opening a hole large enough to fire from. Gaucho rolled to the hole and began picking off ponies with a rifle. Mortars rained from between greenhouses, and decimated the lands that once were fields of wheat. It was going to be a hassle picking bits of shrapnel out of the ground for fall’s harvest.
I made my way back to the roof. The compound was now in full siege now; we were surrounded by ponies who wanted us dead. They fired into the walls and lobbed grenades from behind the wagon wheel fence of safety. I cursed myself for not letting Gaucho install a free fire mode. For all my preparations, I had never expected a full scale assault to come to my Orchard.
My. Again with the me. Here I was defending the home of a friend and all I could think of was myself. I focused instead on the task, and began firing back at the ponies that besieged the compound. Bullets glanced from the parapets of the roof, throwing shards of concrete into my armor. One nicked my flank, cutting through the metal plates there. It appeared that Ender had gotten wiser, and spent the money to outfit his troops with better ammunition than our previous encounter. The turret nearest me spun and coughed a dozen more rounds, sending three ponies to the ground in a spray of blood. From what I could see, the army of fifty had been cut down by fifteen already. We were winning the fight, but there was still much more to go.
I saw Ender ordering his troops back from the walls as he stood atop a cart. The pony with the missile launcher took aim at the turret nearest me. The rocket streaked across the twilight sky. It may have been majestic sight to others, and if it hadn’t been our turret he was shooting at, I would have applauded him for a fantastic shot. I dove for the stairwell as the ammunition inside ignited, and blasted both the lot and the no-man’s land with hot shrapnel. I cursed the loss of the turret, but we were still in the fight. Every stretch of the outside wall had been covered by two turrets for just such an occasion. It wasn’t until I heard the second rocket strike that I began to worry.
Gaucho had heard the explosions, and rolled his way to the barricades we erected outside the front gate. With the two front turrets out, there was little place for them to attack but the main gate. I joined Gaucho behind the barricades and waited for the doors to breech. Three explosions popped outside our front door. They had found the land mines. A pit of spikes awaited the first ponies who breached the door. Past that, there was only Gaucho’s battle saddle and my steel hardened resolve.
The explosion at the gate took us both by surprise. When I saw the cart spiral into the air, I realized they had packed explosives into it to make a battering ram. They clearly hadn’t used enough, as it only bent the gate halfway open. Ponies poured into through the breach. The first few fell into the pit of spikes. Their companions used them as a bridge to get past. There was no cover from that direction, and they were sitting ducks for Gaucho’s chattering cannons. I fired back with my own rifle, staying low along the barricade. A half a dozen more ponies had fallen by this time, and the enemy looked to be losing their nerve.
The battle would have continued well if the wall had not exploded in a shower of concrete and steel. They had lured us into a false sense of superiority, and we paid for that mistake in pain. Concrete peppered our armor, and the ponies poured through the new hole in the wall. Twenty five ponies remained standing; there were two of us. Gaucho flipped down helmet, and thanked me for being his friend.
Gaucho’s spun on his cart, and began strafing the crowd of on rushing ponies. They couldn’t keep up with his erratic movements, and found themselves being cut down by a hail of bullets. Shell casings littered the ground as Gaucho whooped and hollered, his battle saddles unloading hot death in defense of his home. Seven more ponies fell underneath his wall of lead. I managed to score two more kills from my position behind the barricades. I popped up again to see the missile launcher pony peeking from behind the breech.
The missile struck the ground between us. The explosion threw Gaucho through the glass portrait of Celestia. I knew his armor would protect him from the glass, but as I tumbled through the air, I wondered how well it would have protected him from the concussion of the missile. I landed in the open, the impact of the ground cracking my armor and several of my ribs. Bullets rained on my position, some tearing through my armor and burying themselves deep in my sides. I rolled away and hid in the spread of greenhouses. I was bleeding from more bullet wounds than I could count, yet I felt no pain. In all my years of battle, I had never felt such elation. I was enjoying myself so much, I had to laugh. Here I was, bleeding to death with another dozen or so ponies to fight and I couldn’t stop smiling.
I saw a pony with a flame thrower emerge from the back of the herd, and I heard Ender ordering him to torch the showroom. I got to my feet, and charged from the safety of the greenhouses toward the remaining ponies. Flamer or no, I would not allow them into the showroom while I still drew breath. The missile pony reloaded. Others gathered between the heavy weapons ponies to maximize their killing power. Shots peppered the concrete around me as I weaved from cover to cover. The bullet wounds were slowing me down, and felt that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the flamer pony in time.
From above, I head the sharp crack of a rifle. All the ponies who had been standing near the flamer were engulfed in an earth shaking fireball. From atop the showroom, I saw Charm working a lever rifle. She had started picking off the biggest threats, and had gotten a perfect shot on the flamer’s tank. As the wailing pyre of ponies fell to the ground, Charm unloaded another shot at the missile launcher.
She hadn’t been aiming for the pony; she had been aiming for the warhead. Her rifle round punctured the head of the missile and blew to pieces any pony within ten yards. The remaining ten ponies concentrated their fire at the roof tops. I thanked Celestia again for that mare as I drew hammer upon the first of my last ten opponents.
The first pony was blindsided by the swinging hammer that took half his head away. Showered in gore, I stepped into the swing and brought the hammer through the ribs of the next pony. The world seemed to slow around me. My body warned that it was failing, but there was no stopping me now. Like the berserker ponies of ancient Equestria, I plowed through my enemies. Even as they turned their guns on me, I laughed. The third pony fell under a vicious buck that echoed with the familiar crunch of skull, and the fourth lost his hips to the triumphant crush of sledge.
Bullets clattered off my armor, through my armor, through me. I didn’t care. I was a hurricane of destruction, tearing through the ponies in my path. Five, six, and seven evaporated in showers of broken ponies as eight and nine were crushed together by my invincible hooves. Of the fifty ponies who had dared to take the lot, Ender stood alone.
He had been watching me mow through his army, a pony possessed by the righteous fury of Celestia. He had watched and waited, sword drawn. As I cut down the final ponies, he charged and buried his sword in my chest. An infinite world of pain came back to me in that moment. My righteous fury had failed me at the last second, and here I stood, unable to deliver the final blow. The hammer dropped from my teeth more in shock than pain.
I fell to the ground, and the world faded around me. I heard a voice calling my name in a whisper from miles away. I wanted to follow that voice home. I would follow it to the ends of the Equestria, as it was surely the gentle words of my goddess. I was ready to let go when I heard another whisper from much closer.
“I hope you’re alive long enough to hear her scream.”
The world came back to me. My teeth shot forward and grabbed Ender’s horn. In my last act of this world, I jerked my head to the side. The crunch of snapping vertebrae said it all. The look of shock in those malicious yellow eyes as I shattered that bastard’s neck made it all worth it.
I fell free of the unicorn and looked to the heavens as the rain fell into my eyes. My journey ended as it had began. That was the way of things in the wastes.
Rain.
Gardener had told me many times of the miracle of rain. About its ability to wash clean the sins of our failings, and bring the gifts of life from the heavens. He lie there in the rain, surrounded by the bodies of the raiders that sought to destroy our way of life and snuff the spark of generosity we had had tried to ignite. Outnumbered twenty to one, his defense of the lot signaled a clear victory of the way of generosity over the forces of chaos that ruled the wastes. He had given everything he had in our defense. I looked upon the pony’s body as the tears of anguish welled inside.
I had planned a life with him. I had hoped to one day walk through the restored lands of Equestria with him. I had hoped to bear his children and raise them with the miracle of generosity that he had taught me. But he hadn’t want those things; he only wanted to give me the love a father gives a child. In my jealously, I left his embrace for my own selfish aims. Now instead of starting a life anew, he lie on the concrete, defeated at last by the wastes which he had fought so hard to dispel. I closed his yellow eyes, and wept for Equestria’s loss.
Casa came to me, and put a hoof on my shoulder. She begged me to come out of the rain, and told me we would bury him later. I refused. When he could help it, Gardener had never let a pony lie. This lot, this orchard of life, was his legacy. As the rains extinguished the fires around me, I would see to it that he became part of it once more. I picked up his sledge, and pounded the cement with all the force I could muster.
Cracks formed in the concrete under the hammer’s blows. I could see why he wielded it in battle. It struck like a thunderbolt, and in his teeth it would crush all that stood in his way. The rain washed the sweat from my coat as I worked, and cleansed the blood from Gardener’s broken body. I floated away the concrete chunks I would need to repair the walls. Great scoops of soggy earth levitated from the circle and mud sloshed over the sides as I created a grave for the father I never had. I picked up his broken body in my hooves, and removed his helm. He looked serene, as if he were asleep in my arms. I had never gotten to thank him for his sacrifice.
Rain continued to fall on us; the storm showed no signs of abating. It was as if the clouds themselves knew of Gardener’s passing, and hoped that their prayers of tears would bring him back. I looked down at him for the last time, and whispered the rites of burial he had taught me. The mud fell upon him in a waterfall of earth, and Equestria welcomed home his mortal remains. I would return when the rains stopped, and plant our finest sapling on his grave. I knew his tree would grow strong; that it would give shelter and life to everything around it just as he had. I only hoped I had taken in enough of his lessons to continue his dream.
I walked back into the showroom, still dripping with the wet of rain. The radio played quietly, and the dulcet tones of singers long since past filled the home with peace. Gaucho lay unconscious in his cart. I had taken off his armor after he had come crashing through the window. His barding had protected him from the onslaught of the army and he would live to see another day. His wife sat beside him, coddling their newborn foal. She wept for her lost friend.
I picked Gardener’s cloak from the ground, and wrapped myself in the soft wool. It still smelled of him: of earth and sweat; of hope and generosity; of blood and life. I pulled the cloak in tight, and basked in his last warmth. Even death could not stop him from giving the slightest comforts to those who asked. I knew now that Celestia had called to me to save Equestria by giving of myself. I only wished that she would have left him as an example to us all. The loss of Gardener was a clear punishment. In my own selfish arrogance, I had brought about his demise. Tears streamed down my muzzle as I stood and stared back into the rain.
“Are you going to be okay?” asked Casa. I looked to the grave I had given Gardener, then back at Casa. I was no longer the Charm that had come here a lifetime ago, but the heir to a destiny of service that I hadn’t known existed until now.
“I can’t be Charm anymore,” I told her. The thunder rumbled behind me. “The waste needs some pony like him to preach the message of generosity and renewal. Some pony to bring the dead home, and to bury the past. Whatever I may have wanted in this life no longer matters now. I’m the reason he’s gone.” I looked down at my cloak, then back to Casa.
“I will still teach my spell of cleansing to any who can learn,” I told her. “But to the world, Charm is dead. As penance for robbing the world of his generosity, I will take up his mantle and hammer, and I will give of myself till my dying day.”
