The Wheel

by Midnight Shadow

an MLP:FiM Fanfic

300-word contest entry for Equestria Daily’s May 2011 event

Thanks to Velvet for the inspiration

without this header, it’s 300 words exactly! woo! go me! :)

***

Nopony could remember a time when it had rained so hard. Nopony could remember a time when the sun hadn’t come up for weeks either. The overwhelming darkness, now beset with rain, was somehow fitting. I had failed in my quest, I had failed my friends, I had failed Equestria, and Equestria had turned its back on me.

I had only one job now, come rain or...well, there would be no shine. I turned the wheel that moved the stone that ground the wheat into flour. Wheat that still grew, even in moonlight, cut by slave-ponies in dead silence.

I had been given a task, before; one task, a single solitary task - repair the bridge. I had failed it. I had turned my back on my friends for a lie. The shadowbolts didn’t need a captain. They didn’t exist.

Now I wished I didn’t either.

My dreams came and went with the rain in the unending darkness of Nightmare Moon’s triumph. At least the rain washed the spit, rotten fruit and vegetables off, though it left my broken body wracked with shivers and weak. They spared not the whip at every stumble, the stick at every pause, the jeers at every tear. I was not long for this world. Perhaps it was for the best.

I had once been known as Rainbow Dash...but now?

My wings savagely clipped, my mane shorn, eyes blinkered...I hoped nopony would remember soon, before I died, giving me a last few moments of peace as the memory of my past self faded with those of sun, laughter and happier times.

Tied to this contraption, no rest save snatches stolen between beatings. No food save forgotten leavings or waste hurled in my direction, no conversation save abuse.

Now I was just ‘traitor’.

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