Stories of the Stars - Satra II

Satra woke up in the wagon dragging along a dirt road. At first she was surprised not to be in her bed, but then she recalled the events of yesterday.

That stallion came and adopted her, got her in the back of his wagon and left the Crystal Empire. She eventually fell asleep.

Now she could hear him talking into some sort of communication device. She knew not what that was, they didn’t have such things in the Crystal Empire. 

- And all the books said that the Crystal Empire had the most advanced technology in modern Equestria. Must’ve been a load of crap, after all the same books said that the south of the Crystal Empire has been unexplored for ages. It was obvious they didn’t know what they were talking about, and this stands to prove it.

“I got one. The rumors are true, they are all shimmery glimmery foals, nothing like I’ve seen before. If we could get our hooves on many, we could make a fortune. But they wouldn’t let me adopt more than one, so you guys are gonna have to get in on this. I am on my way with the one I got, so you can see with your own eyes. I have never seen something like it before. Who would’ve thought the old legends were true?”

So that’s what they wanted to do with her. She was just a sample. They wanted to go back and “adopt” everyone from the crystal orphanage only to sell them to who knows what in the south.

She was most probably the first one to get sold.

She had to escape.

But running away was no option, the tall stallion would catch up to her small feet in no time. She had to wait until he would sleep to run away.

They had been traveling for a full night already, but he hadn’t stopped at all. He had to stop eventually, right?

But the night came, and he kept on walking. Satra could barely keep her head up, but she couldn’t let herself fall asleep. She had to be ready to run away any moment.

In the middle of the night, they reached an old village. And he finally stopped. Satra looked outside, but there seemed to be nobody in that place. It was probably long abandoned. Still, an abandoned building was better to sleep in than the open sky, right? He had to go in to sleep, right?

But then another stallion approached the wagon, with a similar complexion to the one pulling it. They just switched places. The old stallion went to rest, while the new, well rested stallion picked up the wagon and continued the journey.

That was terrible news for Satra. If the wagon never stopped, she had no way of escaping.

They carried on like this for weeks. The stallions would stop in abandoned settlements and switch places, so that the wagon never stopped moving. 

Satra noticed something strange: in the Crystal Empire there were many kinds of ponies: pegasy, unicorns and earth ponies. But all the ponies that came to pick up the wagon were earth ponies.

She even overheard two of them talking when exchanging the wagon:

“It’s a shame they decided to pick up an earth pony. A unicorn or a pegasus would fetch us much more money, after all, they are so rare.”

“True, but think about it. What if it decided to fly or levitate away? What would we do then?”

In this rhythm, Satra was never gonna get a chance to escape. There was nothing she could do but hope for an opportunity to escape…