Grass.
Grass everywhere. Nothing but ankle-high grass, as far as the eye could see. The sap green meadow she was trotting on waved in a slight breeze. The magnificent yellow sun in the cloudless blue sky warmed up her fur as she jogged forward, led by the feeling in her hooves.
After only a few moments of crossing the seemingly endless, lush pasture, she spotted them in the distance; a group of ponies. Two earth ponies, two pegasi, and a unicorn.
Words couldn’t express how happy she was to see them. Due to the strict schedule she had to abide by as a Princess, she had hardly time for her friends.
And so, seeing them here, knowing that there were no duties, no obligations to meet, that she could just be Twilight again and have fun with her friends like a normal pony, made her happier than she had ever been before.
“Girls!” she shouted, “Girls, I’m here!”
The mares’ heads turned towards her simultaneously; happy smiles formed on their faces as they recognized the lavender friend and waved at her.
She made two steps - in that brief two steps, Twilight learned how quickly progression can be interrupted by fate - and suddenly the sky went dark. The ground became a waste. Her friends disappeared. And it got really, really cold.
A deafening thunder ran through the clouds above her head and an avalanche of snowflakes loosened from the heavy cloud cover, raining over her fur, blocking her view and coating her body with an icecold shroud.
Twilight opened her mouth to shout for her friends, but instantly regretted her decision. The thick snow squall quickly filled her mouth, taking her breath away and muffling every kind of noise that tried to escape her throat.
Her eyes widened; the muscles in her chest spasmed in a desperate attempt to scream. Yet all she could bring out was a muffled growl, choking at the seemingly endless snow in her mouth.
Before she could take a step forward, her vision blurred and the world around her turned black. With a weak moan, her legs yielded and she fell to the snow-clad ground, landing on the covered grass with a muffled thud.
Her head shot upward.
Gasping for breath, she opened her eyes, just to let out a painful groan and instantly squinch them shut again as the broad sunlight blinded her.
For a few moments, she just sat there, struggling to catch her breath and keeping her eyes closed.
As her adrenaline rush slowly faded away and her breath slowed down, she carefully examined the ground she was sitting on, only vaguely remembering what had happened before she had fallen asleep.
To her very surprise, her hooves touched neither ice, nor grass. The ground was hard, pebbly; the little stones caused a light tickle at her flank.
Twilight carefully opened her eyes, paying attention to not get blinded again. As her vision slowly cleared, she could hardly believe what she saw.
Right in front of her was the bank of a small river. The water was crystal clear and –concluding from the wet stones she was sitting on- icecold.
With her neck aching for some reason, Twilight slowly turned her head to examine the area. Nothing worth mentioning could be found to her left; for miles and miles, nothing but the crystal river and an ill-kempt –almost withered- meadow at each riverside.
She turned her head the other way round. The same sight; a clear river, bounded by two withering plains. Though in the distance, she managed to spot something; the glary sunlight still made it hard for her eyes to focus, but after a few seconds of reflection, she knew what was in front of her.
She was looking at a glacier.
Twilight couldn’t explain why, but the mere sight of the ice made her skin creep. With a shiver running through her body, she turned away.
As her look wandered up to the cloudless sky, the inevitable question finally popped up in her head. “What happened?” she asked aloud. Her voice sounded strained, exhausted and croaky.
Turning her head once again and looking at the riverbed, she added, “And where in Equestria am I?”
With her abdomen beginning to freeze, she started an attempt to get to her hooves. Her lack of strength body made itself felt - only with a quick lunge, she could keep her shaky legs from yielding.
She remained still for insurmountable amount of time. If somepony had happened to been walking by, they would find a lavender pony looking like she had just gone through a mid-life crisis.
By the time she noticed that her standing position had solidified, she carefully took a step forward, doing her best to keep her balance.
She met minimal success. Her legs wobbled, but she was able to stand.
However, they were about to fail her as her brain snapped to attention. “Wait! Where am I? Where’s Ponyville!?” her head spun around, searching for the answers in her environment, “What the heck has happened!?”
Nopony was there to answer her; the dead silent surroundings only got broken by the inconsistent sounds of the river.
Suddenly, a noise sounded from the sky and made her head shoot upward. There was a white object protruding from the deep blue of the sky. She first thought it was a dragon, but quickly put that thought off since dragons needed to flap their wings to fly. No, the object was definitely soaring; it hovered through the air without making a move to flap its extraordinarily large, stiff wings.
Confused by that unexpected sight, Twilight gasped and recoiled as suddenly, several colorful lights blinked on its elongated, round, yet thin body.
The noise came to her ears again, undoubtedly coming from the odd machine in the sky. She couldn’t identify the sound though; it resembled a hairdryer, just a whole lot louder and…mechanical.
With her attention still on the white object, Twilight slowly turned her head, wondering where it may have come from.
“Maybe it escaped from the Everfree Forest…” Twilight said to herself, seeing the creature disappear in a cloud to her right. Her eyes suddenly widened, “But if it escaped from the Everfree Forest…” she turned her head, looking into the direction the object had disappeared into, “No…” she mumbled, “This can only mean trouble!”
With her legs still shaking, she turned around and trotted into the direction of the flying object, using all of her concentration to keep herself from stumbling and falling over.
After only a few moments of jogging, she noticed that her breath had gotten increasingly heavy. Despite the cold temperatures, beads of sweat had formed on her forehead.
Letting out breathless pants, Twilight slowed down and changed to a slow walking pace. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I run properly anymore?” she asked herself, “It feels like if I hadn’t run for years!”
In that second, something unexpected happened; with a muffled splat, something loosened from her horn and landed on the ground right in front of her hooves.
Twilight stopped dead in her tracks, lowered her head, and looked at the mysterious lump: it had about half the size of her hoof, had the shape of a flat cake, and was as white as snow.
Leaning her head forward to give the object a closer look, she mumbled: “Is that…?”
Another lump loosened from her horn, yet this time landed right on the tip of her nose. “Ice!” she squealed and instinctively recoiled, hastily shaking her head to get rid of the cold vexation on her face.
The young Princess froze in her movement as her look fell on the first lump again and she started to reflect, “There was ice on my horn…” a mental image started to form in her head, “Ice … Ice … Ice coming from…“ finally the fog in her mid seemed to clear; she saw it right in front of her mind’s eye, “a glacier!”
“The glacier! The crystal mountains! … Shining Armor!” Twilight yelled as the memory returned bit by bit. She span around, searching the riverbed for her brother, yet well-knowing that she wouldn’t find him.
“What … what happened?” she asked out aloud, “We … we were lost. And I …” she could feel how her face turned pale, “I ran off! I fell into a crevasse and…” Twilight stumbled, “froze to death?” she raised an eyebrow, asking herself, “Am I … am I dead? Is this my afterlife?”
After giving that idea a serious consideration, she quickly shook her head, unable to hold back an amused smirk. “Afterlife, of course!” she chuckled, “Even the most naïve ponies should know that something like a life after death isn’t scientifically possible.”
“Still…” she let her glance wander over her environment again, “What happened? Where’s Shining Armor?”
Her look got caught by the glacier to her left. “Could it be that …” the gears in her head began to turn one by one, “Hmmm … the river … the ice on my horn … it would all make sense.”
Her body stiffened. “But that would mean…” her face turned even paler, remembering the last seconds before she had passed out; her shoulders dropped, “It was all my fault that I got trapped in the ice.” She voiced her insight, “I … I imperiled Shining Armor. I imperiled our mission. I imperiled myself!” her head sank to the ground as she seemed to lose every kind of motivation, “I … I failed as a Princess.”
In the second the words left her mouth, she felt a tear running down her cheek and powerlessly sat down; the cold pebbles of the riverbank sent another shiver through her spine.
But she couldn’t feel the cold; she couldn’t feel anything at all. “I put other ponies at a risk. The last thing a Princess is allowed to do.” she whispered powerlessly, “I bet Celestia is mad at me! I bet all of Equestria is mad at me!” she sighed, resting her head on her foreleg, “And they have every reason to do so. I failed my own brother! I put my own emotions over our aim and screwed up everything!” she slowly closed her eyes, whispering, “Maybe they’ll just banish me right away. I deserve nothing better.”
For a moment, she rested like that, too downcast, too depressed to make a single move.
However, the return of the noise she had heard before made her look up. And indeed, there it was again: the same soaring, white creature with the same, stiff wings, flying into the same direction and emitting the same, hairdryer-like noise.
With growing discomfort, Twilight watched it fly over her head and disappear in the clouds again.
“Already two of them? Mother of Celestia, this can’t end well.” she muttered, unable to miss hearing the anxiety in her voice.
Before Twilight knew what was happening, she had gotten to her hooves and turned into the direction the creature had disappeared into; her lifesaver-instinct had gotten the better of her once again.
“Somepony has to do something about that! I’ve never seen one of those before, but a creature of that size can’t fly over Equestria without causing chaos!” she said to herself.
Twilight broke into a gallop, the murmur of the river steadily accompanying her steps. “And I’m sure that if I can do something about that thing, I can show those ponies that I didn’t fail! That I’m worthy to be called a Princess!”
Though the bitter disillusionment quickly overhauled her as her breath turned into a heavy panting and she was forced to slow down her pace. “How does it come that I’m that much off form!?” she wondered breathlessly, “I know that a lack of physical activity can make you get a little short-winded, but I would have never thought that being caught in ice for a couple of hours can throw you off the track that extremely!”
She froze in her movement as a nasty thought popped up in her mind. “I … I was in there for only a few hours … right!?” she asked into the deserted scenery in front of her.
Remembering that her brother wanted to call help, she turned her head and looked at the distant silhouette of the glacier. “Didn’t he find me?” she asked herself, “Did ... did he return at all?”
Her discomfort began to grow. “Maybe he left me in there deliberately! Maybe he was angry at me for ruining our trip!” a knot seemed to form in her chest as her mind kept on drawing conclusions, “Maybe he just said I had a tragic accident and left me to die there! What would keep him from doing so!?” Her legs seemed to turn to jelly, “After all, I was the one who aborted his only chance to have some time off due to my own stupidity! Maybe he wanted to take revenge for the ruined excursion!”
Before she could finish her line of thought, the noises of a third machine soaring over her head made her startle once again. She didn’t need to look up; just by following the origin of the noise, she knew that it had crossed the sky right above her head and headed into the same direction as its two predecessors.
“But forget about that for a second! As long as there’s an unknown, potentially dangerous object soaring over Equestria, my personal concerns can wait!” she decided, stamping her hoof in determination.
With that, she shoved the worries concerning her brother aside and got under way again, this time moving at an easier pace.
After a few moments of trotting along the riverbank, she found herself wondering where the creatures might have been heading, which inevitably led to the question of her own position.
Twilight looked over her shoulders and gave the barely visible glacier an appraising look. “If I lost Shining Armor there…” she thought aloud; her look wandered over to the sun which was at the zenith, right ahead of her, “And the sun is there…” her eyes widened, “Oh no! Those things are heading to Ponyville!”
Her pace quickened again; the pebbles poked into her hooves, “This won’t end well! This won’t end well!” she said, lifting her head and looking out for more of the creatures, “I just hope my friends can handle things until I arrive!”
She couldn’t exactly tell how long she had been walking already. In the constant change between the short sprints and the longer jogs, she had lost every sense of time, hearing nothing but her own heavy breathing and the constant murmur of the river at her side.
But the monotony seemed to make her walk easier: despite the burning pain in her lungs, she had managed to keep her pace surprisingly constant; her legs showed hardly any signs of fatigue.
However, she slowed down as she spotted something in the distance: shimmering silver in the light of the afternoon sun, they had instantly attracted her attention. Railroad tracks.
Knowing that they would lead her to the next city –most likely to Ponyville- Twilight left the riverside she had been walking on behind and trotted towards them.
Upon coming closer, she noticed something about them; something she had never seen on other rails before: right next to the metal tracks was something that reminded her to lampposts: small, metal constructions, about 20 feet tall, with one foot in diameter. The posts appeared to be connected to each other with a thick, black cable that ran from post to post, hanging with a little sag.
But Twilight had no eyes for such minor details: determined to reach Ponyville as soon as possible, she stopped next to the railroad embankment and continued on her way right next to the rail line, heading into the direction she suspected Ponyville to lay in.
Falling back into her monotonous trot, she quickly found her thoughts drifting off. With a frown, she thought of her friends: how would they react to her missing note? Would they be sad for losing one of their friends? Or would they just call her fate an at-fault accident and remember her as a willing, yet inept Princess? Would Shining Armor even tell other ponies the story of her alleged demise? Would ponies even want to hear it?
The young Princess quickly shook her head, cutting her line of thought. “Come on, snap out of it!” she commanded herself, “Nopony has lost faith in you! Why should your friends - why should your own brother just give up on you!? Just because you’ve made a mistake and let your anger get the better of you?”
In order to prove herself, she shook her head, “No, that’s just ridiculous! Stop worrying about twisted theories and focus on the important things!” she said to herself and looked at the tracks which carried on to the horizon where they finally disappeared behind a little hill, “Save Ponyville, then you can think about other things!”
With that she sped up a little - her breathing quickened again; beads of sweat rolled down her face. But her determination made her forget about her exhaustion: Ponyville was in danger, and it was her duty to save it from the unknown objects.
Still, she couldn’t keep some bitter questions out of her mind. “But why didn’t Shining Armor rescue me then? Didn’t he find me anymore? Didn’t he remember my position?” she remembered that her head was covered in snow as she fainted, “Maybe I was buried under the snow? … Then still, why didn’t he dig for me? How hard can it be to scoop some snow aside?”
Once again, Twilight’s thoughts got interrupted by a noise. Instinctively, she moved her head upward, searching the sky for another one of the flying objects. However, this time the noise didn’t come from the sky, and it wasn’t the -meanwhile familiar- roar of the flying machines.
No, that noise definitely wasn’t a roar: it was a muffled swoosh, reminding Twilight to the sound of escaping gas.
Her glance checked her environment for the origin of the noise and finally got stuck to the tracks next to her: not only that they appeared to be slightly trembling, Twilight could have sworn that the noise was coming from them.
It took her a few seconds to put one and one together and spin around. What she saw froze the blood in her veins.
She had seen trains before – of course, she had gotten to the Crystal Empire by train after all. However, the thing that dashed towards her with a felt speed of at least 1000 miles per hour definitely wasn’t a train.
Its body was light blue, comparable to that of the machine she had seen in the sky before: elongated, round, streamlined. A large windshield and two white headlights suggested that whoever operated the thing could see her; could see that there was a mare standing directly next to the tracks and staring at the approximating vehicle with disbelief.
Twilight remained in her tensed position for a second, feeling paralyzed from shock. She had already seen a lot of things in the comparatively few years of her life, and had actually thought there was nothing that could surprise her any more. However, the encounters she had made in the past hours –first the flying objects, now the weird rail vehicle- slowly but surely managed to eat away at her poise.
An unmistakable, ear-shattering honk coming from the approximating vehicle interrupted her thoughts and enabled her flight instinct. Without thinking, Twilight gave a sudden jerk to the side and landed hard on the withered grass next to the railroad. Just split seconds later, the vehicle thundered past her with a deafeningly loud roar.
Hastily raising her head and gazing after the disappearing vehicle, Twilight asked herself the only reasonable question. “What in Equestria was that thing!?”
Even though it had been over within split seconds, she had managed to catch a glimpse at its side: it was at least 100 feet long, appeared to be divided into multiple partitions, and had a nearly continuous line of mirrored windows integrated in it; an antenna-like device connected it to the cables above the rails.
What Twilight had noticed at a second glance was that it had in fact wheels; that it was rolling on the tracks just like any normal train.
“Was that … a train?” Twilight asked aloud, though she knew that this couldn’t be: trains weren’t that streamlined; trains needed a steam locomotive to move, and above all, trains weren’t that silent: that thing had literally crept up on her; every normal train would have been audile from at least a mile distance.
Her look went up to the cable-construction again: reconstructing her journey from Canterlot to the Crystal Empire, she concluded that it hadn’t been there when she had entered the train the previous day.
But she quickly shook her head and got to her hooves again: the previous day, the still existing stress from her training, the anticipation to meet her brother again, and the thrill of an imminent excursion had kept her mind busy; the last thing she had been aware of was if there had been some kind of new gimmick above the rail.
“Probably just another part of that modernization-program Princess Luna commended all the time.” Twilight thought to herself and got under way again, this time keeping a lot more distance to the tracks.
Though she couldn’t help but wonder what the cables were good for: she suspected that they had some connection to the odd rail vehicle, but not with all the will in the world could she imagine how two or three black cables could replace a full-value steam engine.
Taking a mental note to ask Princess Celestia about the usefulness of the construction, Twilight shook her head and focused her look on the horizon again.
As she trotted on, she found her thoughts drifting off again, and remembered the map of Equestria she had committed to memory years ago. She hesitated and slowed down, “If I started off in the Crystal Mountains…” she marked the place on the imaginary map in her head, “…and want to go to Ponyville…” with a quick calculation, she made a rough estimate of the distance she had to cover – her jaw dropped.
“Mother of Celestia, how could I ever forget about that!?” Twilight wondered aloud, “Ponyville is at least a day’s journey away from the Crystal Empire! Getting there by hoof will take even longer!”
However, she hesitated as an idea popped up in her head. Raising an eyebrow, she turned her head and gave her body a look. “Unless…” she stretched her wings and eyed them skeptically.
Since her departure from Canterlot, she had hardly ever made use of them. On the one hand because the already icy wind in the Crystal Empire, combined with the chilly airflow that came along with flying, would have probably turned her into a soaring ice cube in no time.
On the other hand because she simply didn’t trust herself to fly: of course, from watching Rainbow Dash for all the years, she had gotten a rough idea of how challenging it was to cut a fine figure in the sky, but she would have never thought that there were so many factors to take account of, so many muscles to move at once, and generally so many responsibilities coming along with flying – moving in the air wasn’t the same as moving on the ground after all.
But she knew that there was no other way: she could either start an attempt to fly, or walk all the way to Ponyville; a journey that would have taken an entire day – at least.
So she hesitantly flapped her wings and slowly took off, feeling her heartbeat speed up as her hooves lost contact to the ground.
Though as she had feared, she lost control over her flight path after a few moments and drifted to the left, coming uncomfortably close to the cable that hung above the railway.
Knowing that cables usually were live, Twilight’s eyes widened in horror and her wings -apparently overwhelmed by the sudden load of commands they received from their master- suddenly folded, making the alicorn fall and crash onto the railway.
“Ouf! Dang it!” Twilight hissed and jumped to her hooves, saving herself from the tracks with a hasty dive. She didn’t know if those weird trains ran at certain times, but she definitely didn’t want to find out either. After all, there could be one approximating right in that second; Twilight wouldn’t hear it until it was too late.
She quickly got to her hooves and gave the railway a cautious glance: no trains, far and wide. With a relieved sigh, she turned her head and looked at her wings: still slightly shivering from the adrenaline in her veins, they were spread apart and waiting for her commands.
“Alright…” she mumbled and took a deep breath, “Let’s try this again.”
Once again, she flapped her wings; her hooves slowly lost contact to the grassy ground.
“Just remember what Princess Celestia and Rainbow Dash have told you,” she said to herself, “Keep calm and flutter on!”
It seemed to work: slowly but surely, she arose from the ground and hovered above the rails.
“Now careful…” Biting her tongue in concentration, she turned her body by 90 degrees and faced the unkempt scenery in front of her.
“Hey, it’s not that difficult!” Twilight noticed with a smile on her face. Using all of her concentration to fly straightforward and not crash into the cable next to her, she slowly accelerated, flying along the rails and heading into the direction of Ponyville.
“Actually…” she noticed with increasing joy, “it’s quite easy once you get used to it!”
However, her short trip into the air wasn’t destined to last longer than a few moments – shortly after taking off, she felt the muscles in her wings beginning to ache and pants of exhaustion escaping her mouth.
“Easy … but … very exhausting.” she panted and inevitably slowed down. The ache in her wings seemed to grow stronger with every move she made and shortly had developed into a sharp pain that made her clench her teeth and tears show up in her eyes.
“Come on! I can’t…!” she tried to spur herself, “Ponyville … needs me!” Yet it was futile: after a few more seconds of desperately struggling against her exhaustion and still getting nowhere fast, she reluctantly lowered and finally landed on the arid meadow.
Turning her head and caressing her aching wings, she mumbled, “Well, so much for flying there.”
With a wistful sigh, she turned her head back and looked into the distance, knowing that the city she aimed for was still miles away – that she would have to spend the rest of the day and most of the following night with walking.
“Well…” she sighed powerlessly and took a step forward, “Here we go.”