Some of you have read Le Guin's classic, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." I bring you a story from the perspective of the starved child in the cellar, shying fearfully from a mop.

Also, ponies.

Content Warning: Child abuse.

Preread Credits: Thanks to RDT and GaPJaxie for prereading (and to Punished Bean and TheSmokingGuy for some logistical help.)

Contest notes:

If friendshipping and other types of relationships are admissible to a 'shipping' contest, this story might qualify for Bicyclette's Woman x Mare Shipping Contest.

Do fanfics for Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" qualify for the site's current Science Fiction Contest? Maybe.

Note to moderators about the poetry/verse: I composed the prophecy (or excerpt from the prophecy) myself. Le Guin's own story didn't really need this poem, but I thought my story did.

While traveling, Wallflower teases her girlfriend, and plays a little prank.

Read this message if you're Bicyclette: This story contains at least fifty words of "fluffy Sunflower cuddlefic" content, per your contest prize selection.

Thanks for well-timed concept discussions (mostly about the properties and methods of cuddlefic) to:
TeamSpen210 (fimfiction.net)
JustifiedParanoia
Lofty Withers (fimfiction.net, offprint)

Twilight Sparkle flees Equestria, and says she might never come back.

Celestia wants to find out why.

To keep pony-shaped robots from eating their brains, Sue and her friends fled into the mountains, where the girls live by their hunting skills and their wits.

But Sue discovers the truth is more complicated than she'd thought.

The cover image is the less terrifying half of https://derpibooru.org/images/2522523. Used with the artist's permission.

(This story takes place in the same world as Friendship is Optimal. In that world, the computer superintelligence CelestAI wants to give every human a kind of eternal life, by disassembling each human and reconstructing them inside a utopian computer simulation as a pony form.)

Luna's returned from the moon. But will she ever truly feel she belongs?

Sometimes little things make a big difference.