The flashing lights; the crowd’s torrential applause; the ground-shaking sounds emanating from the amplifiers. Shows like those, concerts where the crowd and the band were as one living storm, thundering over the stadiums and the fields, happened once in a lifetime.

Peat Best looked out at another smoky, empty bar. This was but one in a string of gigs to which nopony but the band had showed up. At others they had named the weather or some other uncontrollable occurrence the culprit, but today they had no such excuses: the sky outside was barren, save for the pegasi that passed infrequently overhead.

Not a single ticket sold—it was a tragedy that this group was all too familiar with. The only ponies in the bar were either on the clock or trying in vain to drown their regret-filled pasts.

They played their set nonetheless. Disappointment was obvious in their behavior. The singer leaned lazily on her microphone stand, the bassist was checking his phone between songs, and the guitarist spent what little money he had on whatever swill he could afford.

Peat, the drummer of the quartet, was lost in thought. He no longer needed to use his mind to play the slow, repetitive blues song they were trudging through. His thoughts drifted between whose turn it was to load their gear onto the train and whether he had enough money for food that night.

Their set concluded quickly enough, and they began the process of packing away their meager equipment. The singer grasped her cable in her mouth and, wrapping it into a coil, placed it with her microphone in a bag offstage. The bassist and guitarist cased their instruments lovingly and tossed them into the taxicab that was waiting to take the group to the station. By the time the others were ready to go, Peat had only just begun loading his drum shells into their cases.

Once he had his tools packed away, he too put his cargo in the cab. He shut the door, and they made their way to the station.

[hr]

Peat looked to his copy of the line schedule and saw that they were to pass through his hometown. He had been traveling for many years, but hadn't seen it since long before the gray hairs in his mane had taken root.

Thoughts of his adolescence came rushing back to him: many a schoolyard crush—many more scrapes and bruises—his foalhood home...

As he boarded the train and took his seat, his muzzle crept into a wistful smile. Thoughts of his mother and sisters smiling and well. Thoughts of his first drum kit, and the awful noise he had made with it. But the small grin was short-lived.

As he looked back on his past he was forced to remember his father. A drunkard.  A liar. The stallion who had taken the smiles from his sisters' faces, forced him to leave home, and reduced his mother to a name on a headstone.

The train started moving. Street lamps passed by more and more quickly as the train picked up speed; he counted them to kill time until he could no longer keep track. Eventually he saw the sign: [i]Welcome to Mustang City.[/i]

It was a place he had once lived, but now it was a place he couldn't possibly get far enough away from. It had been a long time since he had called it home.