A little short from the Holiday season past, to tide you all over...

Through the Mall, fires burned.

They burned without and within. For every barrel and tin bearing a roaring flame there strode a slave with passionate intent lighting up their eyes. Where wood cracked and splintered from heat, the ponies of the Mall hammered and crafted theirs into the means to see this through, drawing ever closer together in the process.

Standing on the main indoor balcony of the Mall, overlooking where once we had been held captive, where once had been the centre of a firefight, where once there was order and queues for slop and stale bread; I now watched as ponies below rushed to help three weary slaves. Those who could still trot carried two mares and an elderly stallion who had somehow made it to the Mall this early. I could see their wasted limbs, skeletal and drawn, dangling off the sides of the younger slaves who helped them over to a thin mattress. Imagining how they felt was needless, being like that was not unknown to me.

I watched them for longer, leaning forward over the edge to see the ageing stallion's look of disbelief after having been carried here and told he was safe; that he could rest now. His face lit up with perhaps the first tired smile he had offered in months as his hooves clasped around one of the mares' cheeks and cried his thanks from glazed eyes.

“The face of one who's been told to have a little hope again, Murky. It's a rare sight in this city.”

I heard trotting, before turning to find Protégé shuffling up beside me. He wore a thick black cloak that covered most of his body, having been standing at the windswept entrance to the Mall to welcome any slaves in, and ready to engage anypony who tried to stop them. One pony who had galloped in twenty minutes back, our first one, had been fleeing his masters. Protégé had led a small team with Sunny to go across the street and put some rounds toward the slavers, giving the pony a space to sprint over and reach us. Every time I'd heard a gunshot since then I'd had to fight the worry that somepony had tried and failed.

There was no doubt a few for whom that was true.

“Protégé, do you know what we're going to do next? We're telling them they're safer but...well, what...” I had to stop, as I felt my face contort and lean back from a wide and silent yawn that forced its way through aching muscles. Groaning, I slumped a little, feeling a pat on my shoulder.

“Don't worry about that, Murky. It's clear we've got a brief period to ourselves while what just happened filters through. Stern has bigger problems than one rebellious den. We'll talk about what's next soon enough once we've got this place secure. Any plan won't matter if we can't defend ourselves here, if they decide to come after us,” he grinned, watching me rub my eyes, “and we can't defend ourselves at all if we're dead on our hooves. How long has it been since you've slept?”

I blinked a couple of times. That was a very good question. There was that time I was unconscious for half a minute in the Alpha-Omega Hotel and I'd been in a memory orb with Glimmer, did that count? Had I slept before or after that?

It occurred to me the last real sleep I'd had was in a frozen cave on a mountain. That was days ago, with nothing more than stints of forced unconsciousness or brief rests against a slimy sewer wall to make up for it since. Even under the adrenaline rush of the Mall becoming something beautiful, I could feel it creeping on me like an ever growing wave. About an hour ago, my head had started feeling a bit cloudy after the rush of taking this place over wore off. Now, my shoulders felt slumped. I fought to stop myself from swaying.

“I...don't know?” I tried to smile it off. “I...maybe I just need something to do, take my mind off it. I could help board up the windows? Or I could help stitch up the blankets?”

Protégé chuckled. It was a welcome relief from the stony concentration that had permeated him for the last few hours. “Find somewhere to put your head down, Murky. You've earned it. I couldn't have done a lot of this without you pulling me out of the hole I'd fallen into and caring for my pains, so please listen to me now. Take the chance while you have it.”

“But-”

“Murky.”

His voice cut me off with a smile. Gradually, he dropped the weather cloak off and hoofed it over to me, hanging it over my back.

“Find something soft away from windows, lie down, cover up with that and get yourself sharp again.”

“That's an order?”

“Do you want me to get Coral so she can make it one?”

That made me laugh, but my eyes caught what he'd revealed by taking it off. I could see his scholar's shirt now, not quite hiding the stained bandages I'd helped put on his back that covered all the way to the hips. He was still moving stiffly.

“Are you doing all right?” I pointed to them with a wingtip. (It felt like less effort with my rapidly degenerating energy reserves) “You were pretty bad off.”

Down below, there was a pained squeal. Both of us looked over sharply to see Unity and Sunny with a mare lying on the ground. Cleaner bindings for wounds were laid out, as Sunny had taken an infected and sticky mess of dirty fabric off a wound caked with dry blood. Unity held the mare's head in her lap, stroking the poor thing's forehead as Sunny carried out the harsh but necessary survival treatment to keep the infection from worsening.

Briefly, Unity looked up and saw me. I could see the sadness in her eyes at the condition of some of the slaves. A memory of seeing her ribs cracked by Shackles so long ago and leaving her in such a state herself felt very fresh. I didn't know what she'd endured in our time apart to heal that, just as I'd never tell her some of the things that had happened to me.

Wildcard's laughter still rung in my ears sometimes, distant and echoing. His wasn't the only scars I'd bear for the rest of my life.

“We have all suffered, Murky. We have all, at some point, been the pony on the ground; undignified and needing the mercy of others. Fillydelphia is not a place for pride.” Protégé took his eyes from the poor mare back to mine. “It's why I was relieved that you were the one to find me when I was that pony who needed aid and comfort.”

His smile held little mirth now, only a brief sense of thankfulness. One of his front hooves raised up and, for a moment, I thought he was about to put it around my shoulders before it faltered and stood down again.

“I shall endure. I have to be seen. If you really want to work, then that old home store over there needs its back staff windows boarded up, but don't push yourself just to make a point. You've nothing to prove to any of us. Myself least of all.”

He nodded across the upper level of the Mall's shop floor to a shop front of wooden furniture. Outside it was a waiting pile of boards scavenged from a floor somewhere along with a hammer and nails.

“I'll try.”

“Thank you. I'll be in the area if you need me.”

Protégé nodded politely, before turning to trot away. I stood still for a moment, before taking a sharp breath.

“Yes, I do!”

Protégé stopped and turned at my high pitched shout. Damn my tendency to squeak when I tried to speak up!

“Already? I haven't gone ten feet, Murky.” Protégé smirked. “I know the cloak will cover two ponies but you don't have to share like on the mountain this time, you know?”

Rolling my eyes at the quip, I stepped forward. “Not that, I mean I do have something to prove.”

“And what would that be?”

I held my head high.

“That I'm going to escape Fillydelphia. I'm going to escape slavery. So many ponies told me it can't be done, even you, once. I'm going to, at last, get out of slavery.”

For a moment, Protégé said nothing. Amongst the clamour of ponies rushing to meet another new arrival, he simply stared at me, then smiled.

“If it is indeed possible, then I cannot think of a pony with more determination to want it than the one in front of me. If only I'd seen it sooner...”

He looked away, almost regretful, before turning.

“Good night, Murky.”

“Good...night?” I muttered as he left. Was it night? It was impossible to tell.

For a moment I watched him go, seeing that limping gait as his back flared and hurt every time he moved it. I even heard the pained grunts as he made his way downstairs, out of my sight. I would have thought more, pitied more, maybe even ran behind to insist I change his bandages, one born slave to the next, but the brutal truth was that I felt too tired. My hooves were lead and building up the motion to turn and trot toward the furniture store and pick up those wooden boards felt like running all the way back to the distant FunFarm.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I really did need to get my head down before it fell down. Already, the voices in the distance were muffled and nothing but background noise. My ears were flopped, feeling like they were full of wool and I was losing the will to really do any work with each movement I made. I doubted I could even swing the hammer or even lift the wood into the store.

Gripping it in my hooves, I lifted it easily. Like I had the strength of two...ponies?

The second pair of cream coloured hooves on the other side of the wood made me realise I'd missed the sound of somepony trotting right up beside me.

“Let me give you a hoof with that,” said Unity.

It quickly became clear to me how Protégé had gotten his fancy oak desk and chair along with those lush bookshelves that covered his office in the Mall. They must have all come from here. Surrounding us in the dark furniture shop was the dusty remnants of art in post-tree form. (As opposed to post-modern art, which to me meant anything made yesterday.)

Tiny desks, huge tables, padded chairs, cabinets and cupboards with broken glass fronts were crammed into every corner. Some were piled atop one another in a real lack of respect for the work that had gone into them, their stacking chipping and fraying the smooth wooden legs and surfaces. Outside, a group of ponies clattered past shouting for somepony who knew how to reset a leg. Another cried that he was wondering where to find Blunderbuck. The noises drifted away into the enormous building. We were at the centre of furious activity and yet once that heavy door was closed, there was quiet.

Thankfully, there was still one furniture display that was mostly untouched behind some canvas screens, where we now huddled; a mock up of somepony's house, complete with musty carpet, a fireplace and shelves on the wall in front of a couple of enormous chairs. They had thick pillows and enough stuffing that I felt my rump sink a good quarter of a foot into when I flopped on it with a deep and satisfied sigh. The chair dwarfed my size, with me not even coming halfway up its back rest.

Unity sat on the shaggy rug before the fireplace, her magic lifting a small rock flint she'd produced from somewhere and struck it against the fire prodder thing, making brief white sparks shower into the fireplace. The paper and torn stuffing we'd tossed in wasn't really working.

Her magic worked sharply, lighting spark after spark. A sharp metallic sound and the fizzle of the light was all I could focus on in the low light.

“They said that there's a big group of crater workers want to come if they find space. That fast galloper brought the news in. There's so many in here who’ve been wanting this. I met a mare who had gotten into the second year of Stable work. She even asked if she could come buy a book from me afterwards, when I've gotten home.” Unity chuckled, before picking up her flint again, “Hey, Murky?”

“Yeah?”

Unity sighed and turned, as though to say something, before she saw me sitting up on the chair, hind legs dangling and screwed up her face slightly.

“How can you even sit like that? Doesn't your back hurt?”

“It's comfy...” I defended rather meekly, pulling my hooves in and curling up on the seat.

“Maybe to slippery little bendy escape artists like you.” She briefly stuck her tongue out at me, and I returned the gesture, leading to a childish giggle between us as I settled down more normally. I could quite neatly fit into the entire thing like a bed. (It was too big, that was why. Nothing to do with my size. Nope.)

Unity just shook her head with a small smile. “Hey, listen, what I wanted to ask you...it's been kinda bugging me but I didn't want to say to the others. Only, kinda...you?”

She rubbed one front leg with her opposite hoof, looking away to the side.

“How, um, how long have we been in here? I don't really...”

Her voice fell away.

“...remember. What with all the memory things and...and just losing track and...and I found myself wondering what my parents would have for Hearthswarming dinner later this year and just...just realised.”

“You got to celebrate Hearthswarming?” I immediately regretted that being my first question, but the concept was alien to me. I never had. To me, Hearthswarming only meant the worst season for an outdoors slave while hearing a master in their rock farm cottage enjoying a brahmin steak.

“Yeah, we always did. We'd always spend a little and get some fresher fruit from Tenpony Tower with the store's proceeds, and my father would cook them into a warm stew. Then we’d wrap up with lots of blankets around us, all in out of the cold. I always loved those times so...well, it made me realise that I don't know how many Hearthswarmings I've missed, or even if there's been any.”

She toyed with the flint idly, looking down and away. I recognised that she was uncomfortable.

“So...um...” she paused, looking around again with an almost embarrassed look, “do you remember how long we've been in here?”

That question struck deep as, for the first time since I'd arrived in Fillydelphia, I really began to think about it.

And think.

...and think.

We stayed silent, and I heard her striking her flint again, like a timed rhythm. Again and again.

“Oh, come on...” Unity muttered, switching sides on the flint, “Murky?”

“I...sorry!” My mind was running so slowly. Even Unity at the fireplace was sort of a...a muddle, just a fused blend of warm colours. Her mane looked a bit like a fire like this actually.

“Murky? Hey, Murky?”

My eyes started open with a sobering clarity to see her turn to look at me, lifting her roughed up mane from her eyes.

“You all right?”

“I...yeah, just, you know...slavery?” I waved a hoof dismissively, before it flopped back down like a wet noodle.

“You mean I was putting you to sleep.” She smirked.

“No! No no I was just...tired.”

“That means the same thing.” Her magic whipped out, lightly batting one of my hooves dangling over the edge of the huge seat.

“Well, um...” I hesitated, I blushed and tried to look awake. The truth was that how long anything had been was such a blur to me that tracking the time passing was next to impossible in here.

“I don't really know, has it been...ah...three months? It's been a really long time.”

Unity sat with her back to the fireplace. “Murky...it's longer than that, for sure. I remember it was just coming out of winter when I arrived and from what you told me I don't think we were far apart. Six months?”

“But summer is still finishing and we didn't have snow this year so-”

We both sat in silence, the reality filtering in slowly. If last winter came just before we were here, and it was now time for the next winter...

My heart stung. A year? Had I really been in here a year? That threw off all concepts of scale. If there hadn't been snow, then it had to be, but, no...that couldn't be right. I remembered snow in here, albeit vaguely.

It had to have been late snow from last winter. I couldn't have survived that long. It couldn't have been two years, it couldn't be.

Could it?

“The...the snow came down, right? We’ve seen snow in Fillydelphia before all this...”

Unity thought, then looked momentarily shocked before nodding. “No...no it can't have been longer than that if we were here at the start of winter. M-maybe it was just a freak weather? Random snow? I...I just...it's only seemed like a short time-”

“But the next winter's soon and it's felt like-”

“Murky, we lost time too, when we wiped our memories, how do we know how long we removed? How long have we really been in Fillydelphia?”

We were both silent. The answer was clear.

We didn't know.

We could have been wasting away a huge portion of our young lives in this hell city and we just didn't know...

After a long pause, Unity sighed, putting her hooves to her temples and sat still for a full ten seconds. Without a word, she went back to trying to light a fire.

My mind drifted, the sound of her flint rhythmically sparking wafting into my head like an all too relaxing beat.

It couldn't have been...

My eyes closed, I was too tired to think over this, just too tired. It was exhausting to contemplate. Everything felt like huge anvils dragging my head down to even allow the thought.

“I miss the hearth, Murky...we'd all curl up around it to get by the winter...”

Unity's words felt distant, very distant. I wanted to nod but the effort felt impossible. My head simply rested, feeling itself sink into the soft arm of the chair.

“I always missed the fire...it...”

After that, there was nothing but a dull mumbling, a million miles away.

At the same time every day, we woke up.

The grey was absolute. As my eyes opened, they were reluctant to complete the motion. They always were. No matter how many years it had been, you never lost the will to want to lie back down and...and...

...and no slave would ever think that far ahead.

But the grey, there was always the grey. Granite, faded rugs and fog wafting through dull iron bars in a bare-walled cell.

My body was shivering, yet I couldn't feel the cold, only a pervasive numbness down to the bone. It sunk to the core, leaving me feeling heavy and slow. My eyes were open, ensuring that if the masters looked in they would know I hadn't slept in. I started trying to work life back into my body. The same routine, every morning. The legs were easy, they only had to wiggle and bend...but moving the big muscles in the torso was soul-destroying.

That's because moving your core was the last signal to your mind that your rest had ended and it was all starting again.

You never ever got used to that feeling either.

I took a breath, and the chilly air surged down my clammy throat. The cutting iciness of it brought a sharp pain into my lungs, as I felt my organs spasm and clench. Immobilised on the wire mesh of the cot, I spasmed and choked, each desperate inhale burning my windpipe on winter's hardest edge. My eyes watered, held open in fear. They couldn't see me with eyes closed, they'd think I was trying to sleep in! I held them open, feeling the dampness freeze onto my cheeks.

After ten harsh minutes, it finally began to subside, as I discovered another colour than the grey beside my head.

Red.

Whimpering, I willed my body to move. Limb by limb, it responded, before that single, gruelling and reluctant push to roll over and stand up. Like a magnet, the cot seemed to attract me, yet I had to stride away from it and instead fall against the metal bars of the cell door as though I had weights around my hooves.

Around me, everypony else was doing the same through the thin grey mist within the Ministry. Hooves pushed through cage doors or lightly batted at wooden ones that covered their cells entirely. A chorus of moaning picked up down the hallway. For a blanket...for food...for water...for the death cart to make a pick up...

I hung my front legs through the bars, resting on the thick middle one. The cold metal felt like it was burning my pale skin, but it kept me on my hooves. Yes...skin...I...I could see skin surrounding the radsores on my front leg. The one on my muzzle felt tight and hardened, the relief of the cold keeping them like toughened skin rather than burnt flesh, yet still twisting and seething beneath the surface.

Winter...Goddesses' damned winter...

I looked up, following the dark and foggy interior of the Ministry of Arcane Science as my eyes tracked up from the stage outside our cells, past floor after floor until the skylight at the top was visible. A brilliant pattern of brass and obsidian in the shape of a star, long bereft of any glass. Through it, came the snow and was the source of the stabbing wind. Blown off those tall mountains I had seen outside the Wall, down into Fillydelphia. Now it fell slowly, drifting through the skylight into the cold halls of the Ministry. It dampened the colour, turning it into nothing but a pale shade of the snow itself.

Clutching my hooves together, I tried to will some feeling back into them...but there was none to be had. They felt like empty stumps, just as my head felt like a rock. Tiredness was overwhelming...I wanted to sleep. I wanted to let go...

Yet it was but another day. Another day to be sent out.

Moving my eyes, I saw the great arched windows above the stage of the Ministry's main hall. Through them I saw Fillydelphia's peaks. The entire city seemed...dead. Any shapes on the walkways between tall factories were still or moved sluggishly. Snow drifted lazily between them, resting on rooftops or softly sizzling on the chimneys. To be taken to those forges and mills...the warmth was only appealing until you passed in and out all day and occasionally all night too. The burning heat on numb skin was not a comfort...it was an outright torture. Not gentle, but harsh, searing and vengeful to all who sought its relief. Masked masters within them stared silently, quiet as the grave in winter, thinking only their own inscrutable thoughts within the uneasy silence of wintertime Fillydelphia.

Winter was the enemy of the slaves...it was the hated season, the time that life became devoid of anything but slow motion existence through a faded pastel painting.

Yet as I lay there, propped up by the bars holding me to my place in life, one small unfamiliarity began to spark little lights in my head.

There was no-pony here but us slaves.

The masters weren't coming...they weren't here. But...they were always here. Every morning they came to us, wrapped in furskins and masks to drag our sorry selves out until we re-learned to walk on legs that had scant millimetres between skin and bone.

Yet today...nothing. I gazed to the far side of the Ministry, to the door that would slam open. That would bring my first master of Fillydelphia in.

It was unmoving, frost coating its locks and heavy wood.

From above, a wind howled and blew a sheet of ice down upon us. I squealed and fell back from the bars, falling against the wall. Around me I heard the moans of the others grow louder. Work was movement and no matter how many times we were burned, the heat of the forge was at least a false dream rather than none at all...a mirage of relief.

They wanted out. They wanted to leave.

One dared call that he wanted to go home.

Home...

I clenched my eyes shut, holding my shivering body tightly, trying to keep the jerkin pressed down over my ruined and limp wings.

This was home...

Quietly, I did what I usually did. What a little broken slave had to in order to release emotion when he couldn't ever speak a word against being told not to.

I lay freezing in a corner of a chilly cell and cried.

The pleas from the other cells gradually drew quieter as the reality sank home. No-pony would come for us today. We had been abandoned to the chill. They knew some wouldn't make it to tomorrow, but it meant nothing to them. One by one, the hooves pressed through the doors began to pull back. I wasn't alone in my sniffling, as various others let their grief known. Some quietly, so low only I could hear, while others were vocal and beyond sense in their cries for mercy and release. Their voices all echoed toward the frozen wasteland, heard by no-pony that cared. We were a lifetime away from any who did.

Feeling my eyes freezing shut, I yanked them open and wiped a dirty hoof over my red and puffy eyelids.

Then I blinked.

Before me, I saw a warm colour. More than one, all mixed in together. Through the blurriness of teared up eyes, I cleared them and stared.

There was a mare in the cell across from me, lying quietly against the wall with her hooves wrapped around herself, just the same as I. Her coat was cream, her mane a deep red and orange mixture that would have been thick and wavy were it not limp, straight and thin from lack of care. Yet with a bright sparkle, she held something in her magic. A little shape of a pony...carving it with her telekinesis from a sliver of wood. Slim, but standing tall, bearing two wings. A pegasus!

Gently, I pressed my face to the bars and watched her. I watched her craft this wonder, this little splinter of interest in a voided world. Her cheeks were wet as she pulled sliver after sliver from it. I didn't know how much time passed as I watched her...but eventually, she looked across and saw my wide eyes peering across the hallway.

I jerked, ponies never looked at me without intent.

Yet she had soft eyes above little rounded cheeks, eyes that watched me curiously. For a whole minute, we sat and nervously stared at one another shivering in the cold. Did...did I know her? Had we seen one another before? I felt like I had. A brief memory of somepony in a factory made me wonder, but my first days had been a whirlwind of emotion and I remembered few who had helped or hounded me bar the Master.

After a few minutes...she sat down the figure near the door, before floating it over.

“I miss Hearthswarming...”

Her voice was tiny, like a small bell rung in an epic chamber. With a desperate smile I never had any time to respond to...she left my sight, shivering and pulling herself away from the wind.

Gently, fearfully, I reached out...snatching the figure in from the hallway. I stumbled and tripped further inside, moving on hooves I couldn't feel, before collapsing beside my cot. I could sense the pressure of my wings below my jerkin as I stroked a hoof over this figure's spread ones...the sight of her in my head refusing to leave. Her wiry body, gaunt and malnourished didn't appear so in my memory. I wondered what she must have looked like before becoming a slave.

I wondered what I'd have looked like if I'd not been born one...

Reigning my mind in, I realised there was something I had seen in her. A will to do something I hadn't done for a long time.

Something I'd been afraid of doing again.

Placing the figure down...I reached below my cot and pulled it out. Bound in string, made of varied colours of paper and covered in a thick leather...I pulled open my journal. Charcoal sticks fell out of their little leather holder, rolling against my hooves as I struggled to pick one up.

I hadn't done this in so long...

The charcoal paused, falling out of my chattering teeth to the floor and rolling away under the door. I took another, sucking in the cold air to steady myself.

What had I seen? What made me want to do this? What did I even want to do?

My eyes found the pegasus model.

She had created something...

That was what it was...

To create.

To think.

To imagine.

To dream...

Thus, I dared to put charcoal to paper...and I let my dreams take flight like a pegasus on the winds. The dreams I was afraid to ever tell. I could bring them to life on paper, have a real life only for me...

I was but a lonely slave...I couldn't think for myself properly. I was small, hurt and sick. Yet...what if...what if I found somepony who inspired me enough? Would that be enough to make me start?

The charcoal flew, carving out the shapes, the lines, the scraggly roughness that only my mind could see a meaning in. Something moving upwards, out of the dark! Something, a beacon of light...

I was weak so...so maybe I didn't do it the first time. Maybe I wanted to but just...couldn't? Would that stop me? I wouldn't have given up, in my mind I was determined, not like me now.

The shape turned, spreading into a bigger picture. Thick lines, a backdrop, something enormous blocking the way...a small thing before it...motionless...it had tried, but it was too big.

I needed help...yes. Others I could like, others I could trust. Were they like the mare? That mysterious mare? What would they be like? Maybe a big one who could protect me and...and a fiery spirited one who wanted to make me better as a person and show me how to be confident?

The shapes split, they reformed, I rubbed and drew and curved and formed. A thick shield, a big form, standing beside the little one that was near a smooth edge shape...bright, it stood out. It was a confident shape...so very loud and...and passionate about life.

Maybe...what if this became an adventure? What if those ponies wanted something...wanted out? Could I go with them? I felt a rushing dread, was I even allowed to think like that? Where would it take me? How hard would it be? Who would I meet?

My charcoal flew, taking a new page. Little drawings, little shapes...a dark hallway, a dangerous enemy in the shadows of it, behind a looming figure of terror. A slave nightmare in pony form that set my heart beating faster with fright, but also light...a stern but sad figure, not so different from me who I couldn't quite figure out yet if I wanted as a friend or foe in my little story...

Maybe it'd get really hard at times...maybe there'd be battles...

Lines like gunshots, knives like icicles...a table, with two ponies as captives around it, the sad figure from before...now not a foe. Somepony misunderstood, good at heart.

And maybe things would get worse...

A tall building...a collared figure atop it. It was near the edge...would it ever come to that? Then a world of dreams, there would be hurt along the way, as I might need my companions to save my life...the small shape surrounded by reassuring ones of beautiful shapes. Casting away that rough charcoal dirtiness I'd kept drawing on him the whole time to be smoother...brighter...better.

There would be the good...

They were celebrating...I drew a cake! Dancing! The other shapes glowed brighter, the big one casting off some darkness, the bright one becoming more at ease with itself. There was another one joined it, so very strong, but missing a piece and moving ever closer to it. None of us would be perfect, but we'd manage...

There would be bad...

One of the shapes was no longer there by this time...then another blinked out, one that had been close to that sad figure. A chain...a circle of chain, was growing bigger without my realising I was drawing it.

It was a journey. It went to all places...

I drew a huge upside down V, a mountain...but I also drew a thick black mass, filled with terror far below, unseen and filling me with dread...

All of Fillydelphia would try to stop us...

Ponies...so many ponies, of the ground, sky and below...the terrible figure within it, but a group amongst it, shaded lighter, a haven...a stance against the bloodiness around them. They stood up to the darkness, not afraid. They had a goal.

And I'd meet that mare again...

My charcoal struck the page hard, working with a mind of its own...a shape of great detail, a pony, a mare...that mare. She looked amazed, shocked...I felt so too and I didn't know why, she was reaching out...why...why...like she was in the sky and I could...maybe I'd learn how to...to...

The charcoal stopped...and I reached over to take up the figure she had made...placing it on the paper, hoof to hoof with her.

How to fly away...

A tear dripped onto the page...as the fantasy broke and I was left in my cold cell again, with my likely dying body quaking and hiccuping and coughing and crying and...

I clutched the journal close and lay down, shivering. Yet as I lay, the journal felt warm, as I held tightly to it. Warmth spread from it, a comfort of another life in its rough scrawling.

That would be my adventure...I...I'd do that if I could...but I never would. It was just a dream...just a dream I'd want if I could have anything...

I'd fly away with them all...and we'd never have to be cold and lonely again. We'd have a place to ourselves, all of us. It'd be cosy and warm with a fireplace and blankets far away from everypony who could hurt us. We could spend Hearthswarming by the fire and...and we'd all be together. She wouldn't have to miss it any more...

My heart ruptured with willing it to be true. Wishing any amount on the Goddesses and anypony listening that it could be. That I could be anything more than a lonely slave.

Just...a chance...

A chance...

The world was grey.

That warmth from my wishes only grew.

There was a crackling. A sound of splitting wood and hissing bark.

My body had feeling in it. I could feel my core, my limbs...

...my wings.

My eyes, heavy and slow, opened to see the glare of a fire.

Before me it leapt and sparked, burning brightly and casting a haze of joyful warmth across everything in front of it. My skin felt prickly; it felt good. I felt alive, sore and exhausted but somehow stronger. I wasn't a numb prisoner. I was comfortable. Relaxed. My muscles felt limp, a world of stress all gone.

There was no noise but the fire, and a soft breathing. Just enough to wake me, to set my ears twitching. I felt so buried in relief, made breathless by the atmosphere of gentle renewal. A great burden was gone from my mind, yet I couldn't quite remember what until I dared to close my eyes again. Drifting in the world between consciousness, I opened them again and let them focus.

Cosy wooden furniture surrounded me, as I felt the softness of a thick blanket around my body. I could feel my heartbeat. A dull thudding, excited and unbelieving of this soothing scene. This dream. Was it a dream?

No, I had woken, this was real. This was reality, I had just fallen asleep. My adventure, it was my life. My life ever since I'd taken one to live for myself.

What I had wished for, so far back, I had walked into having, without even knowing.

That surge, that trembling wonder at how long this journey had been, threatened to overwhelm me. From whence till now. Yet my mind gradually put together other feelings to draw my focus away. Around my torso, I began to feel a tight but soft pressure. Limbs wrapped around me. A warmth pressed on my back as I was lying down. A muzzle on my shoulder, with gentle breath wafting over my ear.

Then, in a moment of quiet realisation, I felt a second heartbeat. The unmistakable feeling of another pony huddled close beneath the warm and thick blanket, snuggling so close into my back that I could feel their chest moving from their smooth breathing. A lock of orange and red hair fell across my face and I didn't dare move to touch it.

The most I dared do was extend a wing to softly wrap around her, as I regained enough thought to realise where I was. To know who it was, and to thank every part of my world for this.

For now, the world was soft and tranquil.

For now, for both of us, it was safe.

It wouldn't last, I knew. It was going to get worse. It was going to be hard; this last struggle. Yet for her, and for all my friends, I would press on. I knew they would be doing the same for me. There was no one of us alone to carry the others.

I had said it to him. We weren't going to change the world, we just did what we could for each other. Yet right now was the time to rest, and I let myself slide back to the softness of a better sleep, wrapped in comforting, gentle warmth.

The last chance to truly rest together, before the journey started to end. Before we would be tasked to walk those last few arduous miles.

As I felt her grip tighten at the feeling of my wing around her body, I knew. I just knew. However long our journey had really been, however dark it had gotten and however it ended now...

...it would have been worth it.