//------------------------------//
// Ever Free 
// Story: Imperial Pony 
// by Dragonrose Lovesong 
//------------------------------//

After she was finished cleaning the kitchen, Winona decided to take her leave.
Living in an orchard for as long as it's been around never once made it feel any less surreal. The green trees drifting in the  early morning breeze, the beautiful rays of sunlight which perked up the seedlings and made them stand tall. The ever present twitch in the trees to let her now her niece has stopped by for a visit.
"I'm going to the Everfree coming with?" Winona calls out in her half pony, half dog state.
"How'd you know I was here?" The little half kitten pokes her head out of the tree with a pout on her lips.
Winona flies up to her and plucks the small rainbow-maned imperial from the tree.
"Who's the queen of hide and seek?"
Dash's pout deepens as she replies, "You are."
Winona places Dash on her back and begins to trot towards the forest. 
"Gonna go get Honey and Sugar?" Rainbow Dash asks making herself comfortable.
"Yep!"
"Jack and Mac freak out this morning?" 
"Naturally."
"Bloom care?" 
"At first, got bored when I didn't do anything weird."
"Sounds 'bout right. How've you been?"
"Be doing mighty fine these past few, nothing much new. Fall right on into tha' pace a' things when it gets right too it."
"Told anyone other than Granny about your foals yet?"
"Nah, maybe later."
"Think they'd be surprised?" She says this while hopping off of her back.
Winona howls, after a while it gets lost in the distance. "Naturally." She answers Rainbow's question.
After a while they are surrounded by a pack of timberwolves. They clear a path and the alpha male walks towards them. He looks down at Winona who smiles up at him. They nuzzle each other in a show of affection and Winona plans a kiss on his muzzle. 
After he backs away he gives a grunt and the pack all pounce on Winona.
"Aww, they missed you." Dash coos as if watching a baby reuniting with its mother after an hour apart.
"Oh my babies gave grown so big, yes you have, mama's so proud." Winona coos as talking to a five year old.
"Ugh, so mushy and gross." Rainbow blanched. "Hey Alan, Are Lemon Honey and Sugar Stalk home?" She asks the menacing timberwolf.
He growls and two pegasus mares emerge from the forest. Their ears and teeth like wolves and leaves and branches sticking out of them randomly. The purple one with a dark green and navy mane being cover by leaves had a few twigs sticking out from painful looking angles and the yellow one with vivid green eyes and a white and blue mane sported some very wood-like hooves. 
They both stared at Rainbow Dash for a moment before the pounced.
"Oooh, Ray Ray you're so cute, I could just eat you up." Says the yellow one, Honey.
"Aren't you just the cutest kitty ever?" Says the purple one, Sugar, who currently threatened to squeeze the living daylights out of Rainbow Dash.
"A-a-air?" She splutters out.
"Oooh, sorry." The two say as the released her from the suffocation, but still refused to put her down.
"How's your roommate?" Asks Sugar.
"Tank's doing fine, since I'll be out of town for a while I left a note with 'Shy to check on him."
"Oooohh, a trip where you going?" Lemon asks getting interested.
"Mystic Mountains, you're all going." Winona says giving them her full attention. "Silver Dream should meet up with you on the way, but Sugar, my dear, since you are the eldest you have my full permission to drag her there yourself iff'n ya'll don't see her at the station."
"Yes mama." Sugar Stalk's tail wags like crazy at the prospect.
"Why we goin' ta the mountains mama?" Lemon asks.
"Well you must have realized that you woke up in your half forms this morning."
"Sugar no sleep. 5 minute rest, 5 minute rest the moon was high when we change." Sugar had gotten as hyper as any pony with lollipops and leaves for a cutie mark could get. (Let's just say she's had a bit too much sweets)
Winona growled and Sugar regained her composure.
"Sorry, mama." She looks down.
"It's okay sweetie, happens to the best of us. Anyway last night was an event that arrives once every five hundred years."
"The silver fort calling." Lemon says.
"That a girl." 
"Give it up for the egghead folks." Dash jokes
"The calling is said to drain all imperial magic, but I can barely even feel the wolf magic I always depend on." Lemon says looking at her hooves.
"I can feel it, I can feel it." Sugar says.
'Ahem' Winona clears her throat. "Honey that means you might have a stronger connection to one of your ancestral magic forms."
"Hmm?" She tilts her head.
"Well my strongest is Cuddlemuffin." Dash says with a shrug.
"Dash, nothing is confirmed until you reach of age."
"Whatever."
"Says the pony who gets drunk on deadly nightshade." Sugar states, causing Dash to cross her for limbs and pout.
"She's just soo cute." Her cousins coo and some of the timberwolves nearby seem to join in.
Rainbow Dash felt a tinge of pity for her male cousins. She had always known that Imperial ponies would always be female but she couldn't help how sad she was knowing that the males would think and feel as much as anypony but were forced to spend their lives as animals, usually only a fraction of the lifespan of their sisters.
Snapping out of it and back into the conversation Rainbow Dash asks, "So what's so important that we need to go back to the mountains?"
"I was getting to that. Many many pony species live for indefinite amounts of time and our kind is no different. Be that as it may many of these ponies fail to see Imperials as anything but animals." She huffs, " but during the calling it is mandatory for Imperials to return to the mountains as ponies who life for eons at a time will be heading their to meet us. The only thing is they are looking to adopt us, most of them. Some actually a want some form of relationship, but most are there to adopt and no matter how absurd this may be the Counsel believes this is necessary."
"Ponies who are married or already adopted are excluded but for everyone else. If you do not go fever illness will come. I don't need to explain fever illness do I?"
Everyone including the alpha male shakes their head.
"Good. Well ya'll better git iff'n ya wanna catch that train." Winona says handing her daughters their tickets.
"How long has it been since you two went to town again?" Rainbow Dash asks.
"Oh about fifteen years, why?" Lemon says nonchalantly.
Rainbow Dash face paws. "Oh boy." Her fluffy paw not hurting as much as she would like.(knocking her out would have been better)