Back and Forth

by adcoon

Newsletter

The entrance to the outside world was but a small circle of pale white light behind them. Cadance stopped and turned her head to look at the light and open air they were leaving behind. As they ventured in, she had to bend down low to not hit her head against the roof of the cave. The two fillies by her side had no trouble moving around, but Cadance had to make herself as small as possible, and their mother on her back didn’t make that easy.

“How far does this cave go?” she asked.

“We don’t know,” Silica said ahead of Cadance. “It gets really narrow. Me and Silene can squeeze through some of the way, but you and mom can’t get that far.”

“At least that means it’s too narrow for wolves too, if it’s too narrow for me and your mother,” Cadance said and studied the walls and floor around her. It was indeed a tight fit, and it looked like Silica was right, she wouldn’t be able to get much further in than this, especially with the mare on her back. “If the wolves find us, I want you to squeeze as far into the cave as you can and stay there, no matter what happens, okay?”

“W-what about you?” Silene’s voice was just above a whisper. The faint light from the entrance shone in her large brown eyes.

“Don’t think of me. If I haven’t called for you after an hour, you have to try to make your way south on your own. Do you know which way is south?” The two fillies nodded. Cadance lay down on the cold rocks. “Good. Here, help me get your mother off. Is there any wood nearby that we can use to make a fire?”

Silica shook her head as she and her sister helped their mom off Cadance’s back. “There’s a forest at the end of the gorge, near the mines, but the wolves watch it all the time. They make sure no pony gets more of anything than what the wolves say we need.”

Cadance scooched up close to the sick mare and held a wing over her, extending the other for the two fillies to crawl under. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you warm,” she said and glanced back at the entrance of the cave. Silica and her sister peeked up at her from under her wing. Cadance could feel them shivering against her body. She tugged them a little closer and summoned a bit of light from her horn, putting more warmth than light into the spell.

The two fillies gazed at the colorful light with the largest eyes Cadance had ever seen, their mouths open and speechless. She smiled and nuzzled their heads. “It’s going to be alright,” she said. “I’m not going to leave until you and your mom and everypony else are safe from these wolves.”

Silene rested her head against Cadance’s neck and gazed with half-lidded eyes at the dancing lights on the wall. “Is Princess Skylark going to come too?” the young filly asked as her eyes grew heavier still.

Cadance stroked her mane silently for a while, wondering what to respond. “I don’t know,” she said eventually. Silene let out a tiny yawn and closed her eyes. It didn’t take long before she was fully asleep and breathing softly. Cadance smiled sadly at the filly.

“I need to hear the whole story,” she said and turned her head to look at Silica. “Can you tell me about the wolves and this Fenris who leads them?”

Silica looked down at her hooves. “Mom usually tells all the stories,” she said.

Cadance smiled and reached down to nuzzle her mane. “Your mother needs to rest and become strong again. I am certain you will tell it just as well as she does. Maybe you should begin by telling me where and when this Fenris first showed up, if you know it.”

“Um,” Silica shuffled a little closer to her sister and Cadance. She looked uncertainly at Cadance. “Don’t you already know about that, princess?”

“What I know right now is a little strange and unbelievable,” Cadance said and smiled, touching Silica’s cheek with a hoof. “I would love to hear what you know instead.”

“Well, um, okay.” Silica furrowed her brow as she thought. “Mom says the big wolf first came from the really far north, when our great granny and her mom and dad moved here. That was when great granny was still young, and ponies had only lived here for a few years.”

“You mean here in the gorge?” Cadance asked as she listened to the filly.

“Mhmm,” Silica nodded. “Mom says Fenris was angry because of all the pretty lights in the sky that had started coming from the Empire after Sombra’s curse was broken. The lights were hurting his eyes in his cave far to the north. Fenris doesn’t like colors or bright lights, so he came south to swallow all of them up forever. Mom says he was so angry, he nearly swallowed everything else up too.

“But Princess Skylark came up with the idea of using the power of the Crystal Heart to forge a magical crystal chain of pure color to hold the wolf. You and her used it to bind the wolf and drag him back to his deep, dark cave in the north where he couldn’t swallow anypony.”

Cadance was idly brushing at some old glitter still stuck in the fur of her leg. The stubborn stuff refused to disappear. Every time she thought she had got it all out, some little speck would appear as if out of nowhere. “But the chain didn’t hold?”

“Um,” Silica watched her. “Mom says no one knows what happened. It was four years before she was born when he broke free, I think. He called all the other wolves of the north and tried to swallow the sun and the moon in the sky. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna moved them far away so he couldn’t reach them, but then there was so little light that there was no summer, even in the south. Celestia had to keep the sun up all day and all night just to keep everypony from freezing and the crops from dying, and even then it was kinda cold all year.”

“If Fenris is still around,” Cadance began and paused as the unpleasant thought took root. Her gaze turned to the pale light outside once more. “Is the sun still up all the time?”

“Most of the time, but sometimes it goes dark for a while. Mom says she thinks Discord controls the sun and moon now, but he’s not doing it like it used to be when Celestia and Luna did it. I think he’s playing cat and mouse with Fenris, who is still trying to swallow them. Mom says he’s just crazy.”

“Discord?” Cadance scowled at the name of the draconequus. “Tell me, please, what happened to the royal sisters? What happened to Equestria? What happened to me and my family?”

Silica looked a little frightened by Cadance’s voice, but a gentle tug of a wing made her relax and speak again. “Fenris and his wolves invaded the Empire. He …” She looked down, her ears drooping. “That is, everypony says he swallowed you whole when you tried to protect everypony so they could escape. They say you’re dead,” she said and looked up at Cadance with tears in her eyes, “but I always thought that maybe it wasn’t true.”

Cadance leaned down and pulled the filly closer, kissing the top of her head. “I’m here, and I’m not dead. That’s all that matters,” she said. “Tell me more.”

“I-I don’t really know.” Silica sniffed and wiped her nose with a hoof. “The wolves have ruled the Empire and all of Equestria since then. Some say that some of the princesses, or maybe Prince Shining Armor escaped and are hiding far to the south or somewhere. I thought maybe that’s what really happened to you, that one day you’d come back.”

“And what do others think?”

“Um, most say that Fenris froze all the princesses and your prince in ice, and that he still keeps them all in his throne room to gloat at. Others s-say he ate them too. Or m-maybe he did both, no one really knows, ‘cause the wolves never tell the same story. Maybe they don’t even know either. But everypony always says he swallowed you first, and that maybe that’s how some escaped.”

Cadance stared at her hoof for a long time. “At least that would be a comfort, to know that my sacrifice saved others,” she said.

“But that didn’t really happen, did it?” Silica said and reached out a hoof to touch Cadance’s cheek. “Because you’re here, so you couldn’t really have died.”

Cadance hadn’t realized that she had been crying. She looked down at the filly smiling up at her and returned the smile as she nuzzled her. “As long as we keep our hopes up, anything is possible yet. But right now, the past doesn’t matter. It’s the future we need to think of first.”

Silica smiled and nodded as she rested her head on her sister’s back.

“Hah!” Cadance grinned under her breath as she finally got the piece of glitter out of her fur, holding it up in front of her in triumph. The small speck of crystal gleamed at the tip of her hoof in the warm light of her horn. “Gotcha,” she said and opened her mouth to blow it away.

A small hoof was pressed against her lips before she could blow it away. “What is that?” Silica gaped as she beheld the fleck of glittering crystal on Cadance’s hoof.

“You’ve never seen glitter dust?” Cadance wasn’t sure whether to feel envious or sorry for the filly. She tipped her hoof carefully, letting the tiny mote fall into Silica’s waiting hooves. “It’s just a tiny piece of crystal. If you have lots and lots of them, you can use them to make everything sparkle. You can even paint or write with it if you mix it with ink.” It occurred to Cadance that the two probably didn’t have ink. “Or charcoal and water, perhaps,” she ventured without knowing how well that would work.

Silica stared at the speck of glitter with huge, sparkling eyes. “Wait here,” she said suddenly and slipped out from under Cadance’s wing.

“Wait,” Cadance called, but the filly was already bounding deeper into the darkness of the cave.

“What’s going on?” Silene murmured as she woke up and looked at Cadance blearily.

“I don’t know,” Cadance said and watched the narrow tunnel where Silica had disappeared. Her ears turned to pick up the sound of hooves in the dark. The clip-clop slowed down and stopped for a moment, then it was followed by a scraping noise of stone being pushed against stone.

“Oh,” Silene muttered as she waited with Cadance.

A moment later, Silica came out of the dark pushing a large box made of crudely hollowed stone with a lid of old wood. Cadance picked up the heavy object and levitated it over to have a look. “What’s this?” she asked as she set the box back down.

Silica sat down on her haunches and pushed the lid off the box. “It’s where we keep the stuff we’re not allowed to have,” she said and carefully rifled through the contents of the box. “We keep it where the wolves can’t find it or take it away.”

Cadance looked down at the collection of precious and rare treasures, most of them simple things that no filly back home would consider worthy of a thought. There was a small stack of paper, smudged and crude, along with charcoal to write or draw with. Some of them had drawings or things written on them. Every spot of the paper was used, as if not using even a single corner would be a waste.

“I help mom make the paper,” Silene said proudly as she sat up and picked up a drawing from the box. “Sometimes, when we have a bit of wood, mom takes a small piece to make into paper. I like making the paper. Mixing the stuff is fun.”

Cadance took the drawing and smiled as she watched the flowers and birds surrounded by attempts at writing. It wasn’t very good writing, even worse than the letter she had received, but it was written by somepony who clearly loved to write. She guessed that Silica had been the one to write the letter, and most of this was Silene’s work. “It’s very nice,” she said and tousled Silene’s mane. “You are both very creative.”

“Here,” Silica interrupted. She held up a small piece of crystal from the box. It was a dull rosy brown, the first hint of color Cadance had seen in this place which did not come from herself. Silica stopped and looked at the rock as if it was the most precious thing in the world. “The wolves take all the crystals to keep away from us, but we found a few pieces around here,” she said. “We kept them to look at, because they are so shiny and pretty.”

“What are you doing?” Silene asked and looked curiously at her sister.

Silica looked at the box in a moment of thought, then carefully emptied it of all its content. Dropping the single crystal into the empty box, she picked up a large stone from the ground and bit her lip. “I’m …” She stared at the precious crystal, then furrowed her brow in determination and brought the stone down upon it. The crystal shattered into pieces inside the box.

Silene gasped and grabbed her sister’s hooves, trying to pull them away from the crystal. “What are you doing? Stop it! You’re destroying it!”

Cadance wrapped her wing around Silene and nuzzled her, drawing her away from her sister. “It’s alright. I think your sister knows what she’s doing,” she whispered in the filly’s ears.

Silica was lost in the process of grinding the crystal to dust as Cadance and Silene watched. The dull crystal turned to glitter before their eyes, and a warm red light kindled within the motes as Silica continued her ardent work, the light reflecting in her wide eyes. Silene gasped and leaned forward even further to see.

A few minutes of intense grinding later, Silica dropped the stone and lifted a pair of glitter-covered hooves in the air. They glowed and sparkled like magic in the light of Cadance’s horn as Silica held them up for them all to see. Both she and Silene gazed at the sight in awe.

Cadance was the only one of the three who noticed the bright red crystal heart in a halo of glitter dust when it appeared on Silica’s flank.

Comments

[Shadow_Wolf]

I really am loving this story, the plot is getting thicker and the history is getting darker... can't wait to find out what happens!

[Mr Dan]

Time travelling. Time travelling everywhere. I love the story about Fenris. I wonder where are you going with this. :D

[Shumiry]

Two things: This needs more views. Moar I say! Forget "line and sinker", I'm pulling the whole boat under. Definitely interested in seeing more of this, can not wait!

Please keep writing, I'll keep reading!

[adcoon]

4090738
Glad to hear it Sadly, writing had been abysmally slow of late, but hopefully it'll pick up again soon