It wasn’t often silence was allowed to reign on a battlefield, especially when the hours leading up to it were filled with such loud amounts of noise that the most commonly treated ailment in the field is hearing loss. To hear it prevail over the moonlit camp was as eerie as it was beautiful. The sporadic gunfire had slowly died out as did the artillery bombardments of the enemy positions as the night progressed and I found myself not able to sleep. Even after the veritable workout Huckleberry had given me trying to get her off, I was still strangely wide awake. While I lay on my cot, staring at the dull silvery glow of the tent roof above me, she was passed out on the bunk beneath me with a stupid post-orgasm grin on her face happily sleeping the night away.

A quick look around the small tent was enough to tell you I was the only one for whom sleep seemed a distant goal. Everypony was either snoring or otherwise dead to the world save for me. The muted moonlight glinted softly on the pair of small silver oak leaves laying in my hooves, a constant reminder of the added responsibility and fame being placed upon my shoulders at the whim of a force that seemed so aloof from the true costs of War. What had gone so wrong with the world I had grown up in that my life had led up to this moment? I could still remember the day mom came home from work with news of what I soon learned was the massacre of Little Bighorn...

She came home early that day, much earlier than usual since her shift at the dentist’s clinic where she worked in PonyVille didn’t end until at least five. Even then, she didn’t usually get home until around six because of clean up and paperwork plus the rather short trot home. Even at six years old I knew mom was in an off mood as she always greeted me with that big sparkling white grin of hers as soon as she walked in the door. She always hugged me tight, smelling as always of minty toothpaste which at that age was the best smell in the world to me. Instead of doing what she always did, she entered the house house slowly, almost dragging her hooves with no hint as to her usual springy hoofsteps and her eyes staring blankly at the ground ahead of her.

It took me several tries to get even her attention to focus on me and when she finally did, she gave a fragile smile...one that haunted me my whole life. She never tried to fake smile, not even to try and convince me everything was okay when it wasn’t. Mom was many things...anal about dental hygiene (something I still kept up with as an adult), a damn good cook, good at science and chemistry, super pretty with her royal blue coat and her white/blue mane and tail...but one thing she was not was a liar. Nor did she ever try to be.

After several simple questions attempting to find out why she was acting so weird, she finally told me she sent everyone home early because of something that had come on the news. Something really terrible had happened at a school much like my elementary school and ponies were going crazy everywhere. They were even out on the streets near our house carrying signs and yelling, all headed for the big government building downtown. When mom saw them she had me hide in the attic with her and locked all the doors and shut the blinds. I will admit I was too young to understand what was going on and I cried a lot that night as loud noises and angry voices rang out across the suburbs yelling at ponies to go back home. All that long night that felt like an eternity, my mom held me against her chest in the darkness of the attic in the little nest of pillows and blankets she had made for us while the world outside descended into a frenzied madness. The whole night before I fell asleep in her hooves, I never heard her heart beating so fast in my whole life but I was too young to think mom was capable of being scared. To me she was my superhero who feared nothing and destroyed evil black things in ponies’ teeth.

The next morning I was laying peacefully on my bed downstairs wrapped snuggly with blankets and holding my little stuffed animal, a snake I had named Mr. Hissy, against my chest like mom had the night before. It took me awhile to remember what had happened that night since all I remembered at that young age was lots of noise and being terrified evil monsters were coming to get us. I remembered hearing mom talking to somepony on the phone in the living room where she usually did her little sewing projects (of which Mr. Hissy was one) and my curiosity drove me into the hallway just out of sight but close enough to hear what she was saying. Even as a filly, I was nosy as fuck.

She seemed scared, talking in a hushed tone to who I later assumed to be our next door neighbor Mrs. Potts, a bigger lady who sold fine china in a cute little store in Canterlot who always snuck me pieces of cake whenever she made some. I didn’t remember everything mom said on the phone but one thing in particular stood out in my young mind, a word I had learned in one of my ‘big-girl’ books and knew meant something very, very bad.

‘Tea...you don’t get it.’ My mom said in her hushed tone, looking like she hadn’t slept at all the night before. ‘They’re saying Princess Celestia and Luna have declared War on the Zebra Empire!’

Things had been tense for as long as I could remember between us and the Zebras. When I was first enrolled in Kindergarten there was a Zebra colt there I liked (as a friend mind you) named Zecuro who was super cool because he knew how to draw cool pictures using paints his mom made for him from roots and plants and such. The teacher though didn’t seem to like him very much and whenever something bad happened in the classroom like the goldfish dying or there was taunting on the playground, he was always the first to be blamed. He was almost never in class anyway because he was in the principal's office so much for supposedly doing things he never ever did. Mom always liked it when I played with him as a filly and would go out of her way to let us play together at each other’s houses. And as a filly, his house was suuuper cool.

He lived in a normal enough house like we did but the inside was decorated with strange things from his homeland that his grandparents had brought over with them when they had moved in. I remembered it being so weird and colorful inside his small house with lots of weird paintings of Zebras and other strange animals all painted in bright oranges, reds, blues and black. Zecuro talked a little funny (one of the reasons he was always picked on) but I loved it and wanted to hear him and especially his grandpa to talk whenever they could in their strange way. It was musical and mysterious making anything sound like a magical spell from a book and I would spend hours listening to his grandpa tell stories from his rocking chair about great spirits in the sky and of brave warriors who hunted big scary monsters with nothing but spears and bows. It was all so incredibly fascinating to me that my mom had caught on and had formed a friendship with Zecuro’s mom, even learning how to sew in their wonderful patterns and cook some of their simple but often spicy food.

And then all of a sudden he stopped coming to school a little of the way through the first grade and seemed to never be home whenever I went over to play with him at his house. His mom always looked sad whenever I went over and usually didn’t let me come inside the house to even hear grandpa tell his stories. Not soon after he disappeared the massacre at Little Bighorn happened where some Zebra refugees were gunned down in a case of panicked soldiers turned murderers. The area was home to some school Luna was building for special Unicorns and gifted Zebras as a joint project to smooth tensions between us through arcane cooperation. In response to the massacre, the Zebras retaliated by blowing the whole fucking school up, their own kids deemed an acceptable loss apparently. After that happened...we never saw Zecuro’s family again. They had fled during the riots of the night after the massacre and to this day I had no idea if they had escaped safely or even at all. The missing-persons reports from the time weren't all that bothered to get numbers let alone names right so there was never any point in digging through microfilms.

After their family left, things became really lonely for me and I was always so scared to go to school. All the teachers began telling us to hate Zebras and anything Zebra related as if even the very mention of their name would bring a curse on us. Everypony, including many adults, became so angry at any mention of the word ‘Zebra’ that I would sometimes come home from school with a black eye from a student or even a teacher for even thinking Zebras were capable of being friendly. Suffice to say...I was heartbroken and slowly learned to forget about Zecuro and his amazing family under the constant barrage of propaganda and school sponsored plays. They all shared a common theme: Equestria was the savior of the world while the Zebras were the evil demons set on world domination and the enslavement of all the free peoples of the world.

By the time I was eighteen, I had completely forgotten about how amazing Zecuro had been and was pumped to enroll in East Point to go and kick some major Zebra ass with my eyes set on joining the Desert Rangers. I had initially begun to idolize them mostly due to the awesome armor of the Veterans as well as their killer reputation as the ultimate badasses that any soldier in their right mind would want to become. I idolized them as much as all the other foals my age because they were the best of the best at the time. No one could look cooler, fight harder or kill more Zebras then the Desert Rangers and only the genuinely exceptional were even allowed to try out for the Corps. Of course then again, that was all before the Steel Rangers came barreling in with their thick heads, thick armor and thick egos.

And now here I was. A Lieutenant Colonel in the Equestrian Armed Forces and a Veteran Ranger in the elite Alpha Squad serving on the front lines of a War that had been raging for over twenty years. All those thoughts of home left a pit in my stomach that left me feeling strangely alone, apprehensive and...perhaps even traumatized. In the dark, truthful part of my brain where I hid the truths behind my fears, I wanted nothing more than to hug my mother and be told everything was going to be alright just one more time. It had been over ten years since I had been given enough leave to see her for longer than a day and usually she was up to her horn in patients with cavities from all the super sugary foods everypony had taken to eating. The War made civilians lazy in the kitchen these days it seemed, and the majority of the food on the market was so stuffed full of processed sugars and preservatives that I could eat a boxed cake from when I was a filly and it would still be in date. The most time I had gotten to spend with her was three hours at an expensive restaurant almost three years prior and we had mostly spent that time talking through mouths full of exquisite food about me and Huckleberry and our plans for the future. Three hours was hardly enough time to say anything...

The pit in my stomach lessened a bit at that happy thought. Mom from the beginning was insanely supportive of Huckleberry and I’s ‘forbidden love’ and actively asked how we were doing whenever she had the chance and the privacy. When I first came out to her that I was deeply attracted to other girls she simply laughed in her soft, adorable manner and told me she knew it from almost the day I was born that I was destined to be a lesbian. When I asked her what tipped that off (considering I never really got the chance to hang out with fillies my age much growing up) she simply giggled and whispered in my ear that she had caught me staring under some of the neighbor mares and fillies’ tails, including her own, much to my eternal shame. It took probably an hour for her to convince me to unlock the bathroom door where I had locked myself in, in shame and all she simply did was hug me till I had apologized my heart out. After that, she gave me a deep, meaningful kiss and told me to embrace my sexuality with everything I had because it obviously made me happy. I was a Ranger fighting for freedom after all wasn't I?

I still remembered that kiss...and I had to wonder...did mom...have those kinds of feelings for me…? I had never considered incest before, not even in general but...she was hot, even for a mare in her late forties. She always kept her coat immaculately clean and her mane and tail were always neatly combed before she went to work, a simple yet wonderful double layer of white and royal blue complemented nicely by her similarly royal blue eyes. She was right though...I had snuck more than a few peeks under her gorgeous tail when I thought she wasn’t looking in an attempt to have something sexy to hoof myself to. Puberty hammered my body with so much horniness and complex emotions I felt like I had to wear a sponge in the crotch of my panties while I was dressed in my uniform at school surrounded by so many girls I wanted to die. Did I consider those guilty peeks to be incestuous in any way? I guess...in retrospect they were, but at the time I only saw them as a quick present from mom to help me get off in the bathroom after lunch or something. Even now I still considered them presents because she was my mom and she always wanted me to be happy no matter the cost. Not enough fucks left in the tank to give to anyone who had concerned questions to ask me. I was not afraid to admit to myself that I was a bit of a pervert.

With familiar tingles blossoming down below I tried to remember her in all her wonderfulness and worked myself to a happy orgasm, feeling relieved of my earlier loneliness and fear of the unknown. Sleep finally came easy and quickly for me (amusingly almost as quickly as I had came myself) after I had licked my hoof clean and toweled up the rest of my peach-flavored mess. My last thought as it took a hold of my mind was to seek mom out as soon as I could and find out if my suspicions were correct. I didn’t know what to expect since incest was just as severely punished as homosexuality by the M.O.M so to mix both of those together was even more dangerous than Huckleberry and I’s relationship...but I was willing to try it out if mom was. Besides...if she was, she would probably be so proud of all the little tips and tricks I had picked up from all the time I spent between Huck’s thighs. I was more than willing to help pay her back for all the wonderful years she had spent raising me through such a difficult time. Heh...mom had probably been my special somepony all along and I hadn’t even noticed it.

Next Chapter: Chapter Eleven: A Change of Occupation Estimated time remaining: 27 Hours, 45 Minutes