I don't know how long I was stuck in that ditch for, several hours at least. All I could do was look up and watch as everypony died right before me. If somepony were to look down into this crater, they would immediately see me in plain sight. I was terrified. Memories of what these ponies did to each other filled my imagination with terrible images and sounds. My heart beat faster with every wing flap and hoof clop that passed over me. Was it from a friend or foe? Most pegasi simply flew right over and didn't bother to glance down, and I was very grateful for that. Some unicorns stalled on the edge, but then proceeded to move around it. I did see some friends, but when I cried out to them they would gallop away. Did they hear me? Or did they choose to save their own lives? I closed my eyes, hoping that I could drown out the screaming. But, at the same time I couldn't bring myself to do that. I was afraid, more of the things in my head than reality.

Time passed slowly and I remember counting every single minute that night. It was the only thing that kept me from going insane, counting the minutes. "One more minute of life" is what I would constantly tell myself. After counting sixty seconds I would start over, then repeat until I lost track of the numbers in my head. But, I would still keep counting even when the numbers would make no more sense. I just kept counting and counting until the last sounds of the battle died out.

It was quiet afterwards. There was no moon that night, and the world around me was dark. I closed my eyes and listened to the silence of the after war battlefield. Not even the crickets dared to make a sound.

A voice surprised me. "Oh, Celestia, please don't be dead."
I knew who it was; Ms. Jubilee. I could see the outline of her small body quickly roll down the side of the crater and stop in front of me.

I was so glad that somepony was alive. "I'm fine, Ms. Jubilee."

I heard her grunting as she pushed the corpse on top of me to the side. I stood up properly on all fours, and was relieved when I saw that she was fine, other than a few scratches. She was a tough pony, she wouldn't die so easily.

She wrapped her hooves around me tightly. "Thank goodness you're alive, Berry. I thought I was the only one..."

The only one? I looked around the broken village. The only sources of light came from the burning bodies off in the distance covered in napalm. This battle was over and neither side had won. Corpses from both sides littered the once peaceful village. Every villager lay dead. Their bodies were crudely mutilated, with racist symbols etched into their faces with magic. It was eerie, how the happy village I've grown to know, once so full of life, now only inhabited the dancing flames.

Ms. Jubilee and I walked slowly through the village, looking for any survivors. We looked to the river, which was now tinted red with blood and brown with dirt. I knew that there had been an execution earlier upstream when handcuffed ponies with burlap sacks over their heads floated down by the dozens. I didn't need to see their faces to recognize them. I knew the cutie marks of my friends by heart. It was a sickening sight for both Ms. Jubilee and me. There were no survivors here.

We turned into the cherry orchards. The things we saw here were even worse than the river. Ms. Jubilee fell to the ground once she saw what they had done to the foals. "My little ponies, what have they done to you?"

Little foals hung from the cherry trees on long ropes. Their necks were twisted in unnatural angles and snapped by their own weight. Their eyes were wide open and their tongues fell out of their gaping mouths.
We walked further in and saw even more dead ponies. It was a terrifying forest of the hanged. Some ponies were tied by their hooves and brutally slashed on the sides by sharp objects. I didn't want to imagine what tools they used.
The trees were splattered in blood. The petals of the tree were no longer innocent pink, but blood red. On the branches of ever other tree, we would find a fragment of a pony: sometimes a leg, sometimes an eye, and sometimes a heart. Of course, the delicate cherries themselves were forced onto the ground and crushed in the midst of the chaos. They were smashed into the dirt and turned into a sloppy mess. The smell of sweet cherries and fresh blood made me nauseated, and Ms. Jubilee fell over sick. It must have been worse for her, because this small village has been the only life she had ever known.

We made our way out the forest and into the clearing. I saw my little hut, or what remained of it. Surprisingly, my little garden was left untouched. My hut had burned down to char and the trees surrounding it were ripped to mulch. Yet, none of the berries were touched. How, I had no idea. Did it matter? No. I walked around back to where the presses for the wine were. They were covered, like usual, but when I turned the tap blood rushed out in a torrent from them. I stalled for a moment, and took a deep breath. It wasn't blood. It was wine. It's strange, how I began to confuse wine for blood.

I nodded to Ms. Jubilee, I'm done here. We moved along a path to the last possible place where we had hope of finding any survivor. Near the outskirts of Dodge was the church. But the churched served more than only a place for worship, but also as an orphanage and a school. We hoped that the battle hadn't reached this far. But once we stood on top of the hill overlooking the old building, these hopes were crushed. The ancient wood beams supporting the building were hacked down, and caused the high roof to collapse into the body of the church. The great stain glass window of the great sun goddess lay in shattered fragments all over the floor. Their brilliance and luster, too, were lost.
I heard a wheezing sound. Under one of the beams was a stallion, wearing a bloodied robe. I ran over to him as quick as I could, glad that somepony else was still alive. I leaned down and grabbed him, attempting to pull him out of the rubble. That's when I noticed the metal rod protruding from his side. A rusted pipe ran right through his center from the back. He was slowly bleeding to death, and running out of breath as one of his lungs had collapsed.
He cried and repeatedly begged, "Please, please help my daughter."

A small filly lay cradled in his arms. Her eyes were closed, but not in sleep. She too had been mortally injured and died long ago. The stallion was delirious in pain and refused to accept reality. Honestly, I didn't know what to do. The stallion died silently in front of me.
To my right was the building which housed the orphans. It wasn't destroyed, but an ominous feeling radiated from the creaking wooden door. I no longer wanted to see anymore death, but curiosity forced me to enter. What I saw in there reminded me of the experiences in the pit. Fillies and colts lay in rows facing the walls with their legs bound by rope. They were gagged and their necks were slit. I could see that whoever did this made sure that these little ponies suffered. Yes, the wound on their necks was the fatal cut, but hundreds of superficial wounds streaked across their bodies. There was no reason for me to stay here anymore.

I left the building and searched for Ms. Jubilee. She stood alone in our small cemetery, reading the names of Dodge's founders.
"Will this village ever be the same?" she asked herself.
We had searched the whole village, and so our worst fear was confirmed - there were no more survivors.

A few months passed. We spent this time cleaning the village, burying the bodies and what resembled bodies into pits. The small cemetery, which only three ponies rested in, quickly expanded to accommodate the whole village. We did, eventually, manage to bury everypony and clean the broken houses. We tried to move on, but we knew deep inside that it would be impossible. We cleaned the walls of blood, but the scars ran deep into our very souls. The water became clear and crystalline, but there was no more purity within our hearts. The war ended shortly after the attack on our village. They say peace and happiness returned for everypony. Life moved on for many ponies, but not for us.

The village became a wasteland. Sandstorms billowed everyday and coated everything in sand and dust. Everything died, and we lost hope of ever seeing our cherry trees ever again.

We cleaned and scrubbed the floors until they sparkled, but I still felt unclean. This is when my alcoholism began. I drank wine, literally drowning myself in the stuff. It was the only way I could get the voices in my head to stop talking. "Help! Help! Please stop!". These voices kept screaming, and refused to stop unless I drank. The wine began to look like blood, and so I drank more. I drank myself into a deep depression, and almost killed myself. Did I care? Of course not.

Why should I care about myself? I should have died by those ponies. Why did I, of all my friends, live? Their deaths floated like a dense fog around my heart, burdening me with guilt. I drank and drank, hoping that maybe I would no longer have to hear those voices.
Ms. Jubilee would no longer tolerate my drunkenness any longer. She slapped me on the face a couple of times and brought me to my senses.
"What are you doing? This isn't how you're supposed to live life!" She wanted me to move out of the village, and to see the world.

What else did I have to lose? The longer I stayed here, the louder the voices would scream. I knew I had to move away, otherwise the voices would tear me apart from the inside. I packed my things and became a wanderer. I didn't know where I was going, or if I would ever find another place like Dodge. Nothing could replace Dodge, ever. I promised Ms. Jubilee that I would come back once I was sober enough to look her in the eye and tell her of the things I've learned in my travels. I left behind the past and moved on to the mysterious future.

I took my things and set off right into the dust storm. I glanced back only once and saw Ms. Jubilee holding the last sapling with a single pink blossom.