This is an adaptation of Ursula LeGuin's story "The ones who walk away from Omelas." It is "alternate universe" and "dark". If you don't want to read something sad about an Equestria not quite like the one you love, DON'T.

Somewhere far away from here, although no one who knows will say exactly where, lies the magical land of Equestria, where brightly-colored ponies tend rich valleys of fields and orchards, crowd each other hurrying to and fro through the cobblestone streets of their great cities, or bask in the sunlight on the soft cottony backs of clouds. The capital city of Canterlot gleams white, clinging improbably halfway up the side of a mountain, from which the loving eye of a powerful and benevolent princess watches over them all.

These gentle creatures are said to be the friendliest of all the races of the earth. The unicorns with their natural grace and powerful magic, the hot-blooded pegasi diving through the clouds, and the wise and dependable earth ponies all live in harmony, taking pride in their own abilities and talents even while admiring those of their fellow Equestrians. They live in such unnatural harmony that even the wind, rain, sun, and moon obey them, knowing that the time and place for their respective work will be planned and agreed on for the good of all.

A visitor to Equestria might brave a few dust clouds to take a seat on one of the plain but sturdy wooden benches lined around some fallow field and watch local earth pony stallions test each other in a friendly game of hoofball. He might visit a village marketplace and taste for himself that unnamed sixth flavor found only in food grown by those who love and are loved by the earth. Or he might stand in line outside the palace gates on a cold Canterlot morning, to be let into the yard with a hushed crowd of ponies at precisely five minutes before dawn and silently watch the silhouette of the sun princess emerge onto the balcony above, ready to summon the light for a new day. There is work, hard work, and there is money, and clothes and residences signifying higher or lower status, for those who care to play the games common to all civilizations. But if a pony tires of all that, there is always grass, and peace, and friends.

It is, as I said, a magical land, and besides ponies there are dragons, manticores, and other nightmare creatures, so that the visitor might wonder at the casual freedom of the inhabitants, who let their foals play near woods full of ravenous beasts. But it is part of the magic of that place, that no pony ever comes to harm from these things. There is an invisible line, inscribed with powerful magic, over which terrors may not cross.

And yet, every year, ponies can be seen leaving the fields and the cities and the clouds, walking or flying outward, always moving directly away from Canterlot and the watchful eyes within it. They do not say where they are going, and no one asks, nor watches them as they go. The ponies they pass on the way do not look at them, and they do not look at those ponies, and the travellers meet each others' eyes only reluctantly. When they have passed, the birds begin singing again, and the sky is again as blue and the grass as green as it was before.

But every thirty or fifty years, the blue drips from the sky, and the green fades from the grass, and the ponies of Equestria give each other extra-hearty greetings through tight lips and glance uneasily in the direction of the mountain and the white city which clings to it. At those times many ponies can be seen walking away, especially young mares big with foal. Some travel with silent, brooding stallions at their sides, their eyes cold and dark. Some travel alone. Those least-able, heavy and near term, walk most urgently, and their wide eyes flash white easily.

The ponies who stay, wait. When the sky has faded from the color of a robin's egg to that of slate and the grass has wilted and yellowed, a collection of dignified-looking noble ponies trots up to the palace and requests an audience with the princess. They are brought inside, and flashes like lightning are seen from the windows, and an angry shout heard that penetrates the thick glass, and soon the noble ponies flee from the palace and rush headlong across the manicured gardens in their haste to escape it.

When the slate sky has faded to the color of dust, and the grass has died and shrivelled into stiff brown claws, a herd of angry-looking farmers and townsponies bursts into the palace grounds and demands an audience with the princess. They are brought inside, and from within can be heard a great sobbing, and soon the farmers and townsponies walk slowly from the palace, dragging their hooves, their faces ashen.

When the dust sky has bleached to the color of bone, and the dead grass has blown away, a silent procession of parents approaches the palace with their heads down, and request only that their foals, who stumble behind them on thin legs and wait meekly with hollow eyes, may enter the palace grounds and eat what scraggly shrubs and withered grasses remain, for nothing else in the land remains to eat.

Then, and only then, the call goes out from the palace for a volunteer. To answer this call is the land's greatest honor, and the names of those who have done so are a closely-kept state secret, though it is certain they are richly rewarded. Some say that sometimes no volunteer can be found and one must be chosen, though I do not know if this is true.

I have said that Equestria is a magical land, but in truth, all lands are magical. There are laws, deep laws, some known by only a few, some as yet undiscovered, governing all the earth and beyond. The deepest magic of all is how these few simple laws combine to give birth to matter, energy, and life. Equestria is distinguished only by its inhabitants' ability, at times, to reach a hoof down into those cold, vast streams. They may not stop its flow, or divert it to another final destination. They may only redirect, sending it briefly here rather than there. The princess who watches over Equestria is most skilled in such diversions, and in the trading-off of many small things that will scarcely be missed for one precious thing—or of one precious thing for a great many smaller things. I have said Equestria is unnaturally harmonious, but beneath the surface it balances out. The deep laws must be observed.

Eventually, some sad-eyed mare creeps up to the back gate of the palace at Canterlot, and the guards admit her while keeping their eyes straight forward. She follows someone—some say it is the princess herself, some say only an old gray nag—into the palace, into the basement, through an unmarked door, and into dark tunnels reaching deep into the heart of the mountain. There she waits in a secret room, attended on foreleg and back by a host of hoofmaidens, in as great luxury as the wealth of Canterlot will allow, until it is her time. Then she is escorted through a plain door covered with decades of dust, into a vast, dark, foul-smelling stone cavern, where a vast pile of hay has been stacked in the meantime, and births her foal on its rocky floor.

She may not lick it, or touch it, or call out to it. She is allowed one look, by torchlight, which is immediately extinguished before the foal's eyes have opened, for it must never see light, hear another's voice, or feel another's touch. Then her hoofmaidens escort her out of the cavern, and as the foal gasps in its first breath and struggles to its shaky feet to take its first stumbling steps in the dark, the heavy door through which no sound can penetrate is sealed behind them, not to be opened again until the next time that the deep laws require balancing.

And as the grass springs back to its verdant green, and the sky regains a healthy blue flush, another wave of ponies can be seen walking away from Equestria. They will never be seen again in Equestria, nor will their names ever again be spoken. Some say that the magic demands this, too, but I myself think there may be a simpler answer.

.

Author's Notes:

Ursula LeGuin wrote a famous short story called The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas, which won a Nebula in 1974. I thought it would work powerfully set in Equestria. As a writing exercise, I tried to re-write it, without having read it in 20 years, and then compared what I'd written to the original story.

The most-obvious difference was that LeGuin's story is almost 3 times as long, with much more specific, descriptive detail. Setting it in a specific town (Omelas) rather than an entire kingdom was an advantage. Comparing the two versions is a good example of how even a pure and abstract idea story is stronger as a story when it's somehow expanded into specific, concrete images and sensory scenes. She also described the sufferings of the child in more detail, though I'm not sure that worked as well.

Setting the story in Equestria turned out to be a disadvantage; readers got upset about my fouling their vision of Equestria, instead of thinking about the story.

LeGuin cheated, though: She never made it clear that the scapegoat worked. You were left thinking that perhaps the people of Omelas did what they did needlessly, out of stupidity. This made you dislike them more, which made their side of the argument unfairly weak.

The argument is over average or total vs. max-min or least harm utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is crudely described as the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But it turns out that you get wildly different results depending on how you add up "good" across people. If you ask for the greatest total good, or the greatest average good, you can end up with scenarios like this one. Roughly, average utilitarianism goes together with capitalism, while max-min utilitarianism (measure the goodness of a society as the good enjoyed by the least-fortunate person in it) goes with socialism.

The honest question to ask about this story is, Supposing the trade-off were this simple, is it evil? Or does it merely highlight our inability to reason about the good of an entire society, because we can only feel anything about the good of one person at a time?

Years ago, any organization trying to distribute vaccine or mosquito nets in a poor country would emphasize how many lives they could save per dollar. They don't do that anymore, because they've found out that you get more donations when you say you save fewer people. A campaign to raise $100,000 to pay for organ transplants to save the lives of 100 children will reliably raise less money than a campaign to raise $100,000 to pay for an organ transplant to save a single child. So we're not wired to even be able to think about scenarios like this one.