Last Human Bonus Scene and fanart! Also, news. · 2:20am Jan 5th, 2015
Hello, dearest readers!
It's been a while, hadn't it? I hope your holidays and winter breaks went well.
I came across a lovely holiday present while googling myself traversing the wilds of the interwebs: Last Human fanart! 
I kind of like the hubcap int he background, since it's what brought them to that abandoned city in the first place.
Meanwhile I'm still working on the projects mentioned in my last entry, but real life shenanigans got in the way and they had to be postponed for a while. Only a few days ago I got back to work on them. I'm afraid you'll all have a bit more to wait before I have some new horsewords for you.
I'm also seriously considering entering EQD's More Most Dangerous Game Contest. I'm usually not one for contests, but I figure I ought to enter at least one in my time. I've got a decent idea for one of those prompts, so we'll see where it goes.
In the meantime, let me make it up to you with a late Christmas present! Deleted Scene Super Special Extra Last Human Epilogue, goooooo!
(spoilers after page break, obviously)
Snow & Feathers
Clover looked up from the book. She tilted her head, ears twitching against her pine-green mane.
Princess Platinum was screaming again. There was no mistaking that voice: a needle-point screech that echoed through the castle halls and penetrated the thick library doors. Thankfully, Clover’s name was not involved this time. It sounded close, though. If her name wasn’t involved now, it might be later.
The unicorn nudged the doors open and peeked out. Best be ready just in case. It was perfectly reasonable action that had naught to do with nosiness at all.
Clouds of white feathers spilled over the carpets and twirled in the air. A train of stewards and guards surrounded the princess, so that she could not be seen…but certainly heard.
“Oh, and t’was in my hair! Its filthy, filthy feet were in my hair! Horrid wretch tore my poor mane to tatters, look! Look! I can still feel the terrible little claws scraping my scalp. Am I bleeding?”
“Lady, I—“
“It is bleeding isn’t it?! I knew it!”
“Pray, fear not, Lady. I see no blood or injury.” The steward’s voice was tired and dragging. “Lady, the creature is in hoof and shall trouble you no longer. See? The Archmage holds it as we speak. Pray, my princess. Be at rest.”
“Execute it!”
The Archmage sighed. “You’ll want a miniature rope and gallows too, I suppose. Honestly, Platinum. ‘Tis but a harmless little bird. Six and twenty swans swim in thine gazing pools as we speak, birds thrice the size of this one and ne’er have I heard you complain of it.”
“But those are swans. They are beautiful and graceful, not the same at all.” Princess Platinum clicked her tongue. Clover could practically see the princess tip her nose in the air. “Why, to compare this… bedraggled wretch of a bird to my beloved swans is like…like… comparing a unicorn to an earth pony!”
“I am not executing the bird.” The circle of guards and servants and stewards parted to let the grumbling Archmage through. “Sun and stars, mare. Anypony would think we were sieged by hydras.”
Clover ducked back into the library and into the archive shelves. She took a sudden interest in the arrangement of scrolls and paperweights. When the door creaked open, the unicorn innocently smiled over her shoulder.
“G’morrow, sir!”
Star Swirl the Bearded entered in a rustle of bells. A small, white pigeon perched upon his hoof. “That,” he said, “is to be debated.” In a smooth motion, he tossed his hat on the peg and kicked the door shut. It slammed so hard the beakers shook and the bells on the ceiling chimed like a wedding day.
Clover glanced at them twinkling in the sunlight, dozens upon dozens of little bells of all makes and materials. A bell for every spell. Once upon a time, the Archmage hung them from his cloak, then his hat. When Clover started her apprenticeship, fifty and ten hung from the awnings. She wondered what he planned to do when he ran out of ceiling space. Over a hundred up there now.
“Stars’ sake. All this fuss and ‘tis barely past breakfast.” Star Swirl cracked his neck and squinted at the bird in his hooves, gently turning it to its side. It bobbed its head, blinking at the room with little pink eyes. A scroll was tied fast to its foot. “Clover, do me a favor and undo this knot.”
The apprentice lit her horn and set to work undoing the string. The work was surprisingly difficult. The string slipped from the green aura of magic as if coated with oil, holding it (to say nothing less of moving it) felt like tethering an Ursa. Clover was sweating by the time she finished. She wondered if it were enchanted; one of the Archmage’s surprise tests, perhaps.
If it was a test, Star Swirl made no show of it. He caught the scroll before it hit the ground and pocketed it in his cape. “There we are.” A bag of seed materialized near the fireplace. The pigeon cooed and pecked at it hungrily. Star Swirl watched it for a little while. His expression was hard to place. “You’ve traveled a long way, little fellow. Have all you like.”
Star Swirl glanced at Clover, who stared holes into his shoulder blades.
Star Swirl stared back at her.
Clover smiled at him.
Star Swirl frowned. “What?”
Clover stretched her neck to peek at the paper poking out from the cloak. “Who’s it from, sir?”
“I am not a clairvoyant, Clover. I’ve not yet read it, thus I do not know.”
“But you’ve a guess.” The mare watched as the pink-eyed pigeon cracked seed in its beak. It was fatigued and ragged feathered, and the coloring and body shape nothing like the local birds. Star Swirl was right. It had come a very long way. How strange. Outside of work, her mentor only ever spoke to his sisters, His Highness, and Clover herself. And even that socialization wasn’t frequent. Perhaps it was research related? A request for aid or visitations?
Clover looked back at Star Swirl. “Might I ask a question, sir?”
“Always.”
“Why send a messenger bird and not a courier? Or teleport it?”
The Archmage shrugged. “Not all have the means for such things.” He took her shoulders and gently moved her away from the fireplace and towards the desks. “Now, then. I believe we last left on the alchemical makeup of efreet flames and the effects thereof? Have you the notes?”
Clover look a last look at the bird before responding, “Aye, Archmage. I’ll fetch them.”
“Hm. Good.” The elder unicorn idly stroked his beard as he paced the library. He slowed as he passed one of the desks and frowned at an open notebook with a tattered cover. “…Don’t recall leaving this out.” His gaze flicked to Clover, nosedeep in efreet notes that conveniently drew her eye from her mentor’s.
“Clover the Clever?” Star Swirl’s eyebrow arched.
“Sir?”
“What hast thou been up to?”
“Why, reading and research, sir. Just as always.” Clover’s green eyes peeked over the scrolls, at the stallion’s scowling mouth. “Before we begin, I’ve another question sir.” She licked her lips. “If you don’t mind.”
The Archmage nosed the journal shut, taking time to note the mouth-drawn illustrations of tall two-legged figures and messy mouthwriting. He also noted the creamy fur from a coat that was certainly not his own. Star Swirl lowered his reading glasses and regarded Clover the Clever.
As the cream unicorn broke the stare and began to fidget, the stallion tilted an ear and nodded. “Go ahead.”“’Tis been a long curiosity of mine. Where did the scars upon thy muzzle come from?”
Star Swirl’s eyebrow arched higher. If Clover didn’t know better, she could have sworn she saw a hint of a smirk. “I’d an incident concerning roses in my youth,” he said. He struck a match with his teeth and lit a long, curved pipe. The unicorn snapped the pipe in his teeth, spitting the match out the side of his mouth. He leaned against the table and took a puff. White smoke trailed from Star Swirl’s nose, into the pink and white curls of his beard. “Sharp things, thorns.”
The pigeon had finished the seed and now waddled about the library, bobbing its head to and fro, cooing softly to itself. It hopped near Clover’s hoof, scratched its head with its foot, then fluttered to the window. It spread its wings and was gone to the sky a moment after.
Clover shivered as she watched it go. The sky was a cloudless blue, but it was unseasonably cold for this time of year. The breeze cut straight through skin and made her teeth chatter. She might have to fetch her cloak from the closet. Some distance away, commotion stirred in the city square. Two pegasus merchants argued with a knot of grocers. Clover heard callousness in their voices, even from this distance.
Behind her, Star Swirl the Bearded sighed to himself. It was an old sound. But Star Swirl never sounded old. Tired or annoyed or wizened, perhaps, but never old. She looked back to him, worried.
“’T’was a friend, Clover.” His voice was very soft. “A message concerning a friend. I may…” Star Swirl removed his glasses and took a seat. He ran his hooves through his mane and sighed again. The Archmage glanced at the unfurled scroll on the table. A long black ribbon draped across it. “I may need to make a trip, soon.”
Clover frowned. “Star Swirl, I—” The young unicorn paused.
Her shoulder felt wet. Clover looked down to discover little dots of white. Ashes, most likely. But silly as the idea was, she could have sworn… The unicorn held her hoof out the window. Her eyes widened.
“Snow! Star Swirl, ‘tis snowing!” Clover stuck her head farther out. Snowflakes landed upon her nose. The rooftops were lined with frost. “But it’s hardly even autumn! September started but yesterday.”
The Archmage slid the scroll back into his cloak and joined Clover at the window. He seemed unsurprised at the snow, but very little surprised Star Swirl the Bearded these days. “Aye. The snows have come earlier and earlier the past few years.” He blew smoke into the frigid air. “But yes, this is earlier than expected.”
“But why? The Earth Nation’s not yet begun harvest, won’t the crops freeze? Why would the Empire send snow so early?”
Star Swirl chewed the end of his pipe and blinked at the commotion in the street. The knot of grocers and onlookers had swelled into a crowd. The merchants hovered over them, locked in a shouting match.
“I cannot say I know, Clover. Shut the window, the cold is getting in.”
It... it all makes sense now.
That's how Equestria was made.
Excellent stuff, though I fear the message was the announcement to a funeral given Starswirl's age. I hope whatever home the humans managed to find was capable of weathering the storm of the Windegos.
2701267 I have my doubts that Windigos (windegoes?) could control human territory's weather any better than pegasi...
This passage seems to imply that the three tribes' Hearth's Warming emmigration to proto-Equestria marks the final separation from the human group that Star Swirl got the message from.
I'm rather sad this was cut, though the story's ending definitely works as is. Thank you for the supplement.
Also, that is some awesome fanart.
Thank you.
Bring about the Ice Age.
That's really beautiful fan art. Looks like your 2015 is off to a good start. :)
Hope you have fun with the contest! I've entered two writing contests (both held by the RariPie group over on deviantArt), and they were a lot of fun and enjoyably challenging. I'm still really pleased with one of those stories, too. (The other ended up kinda meh.)
2701686 That's a good point, man.
It's great, because this could (almost) stand alone as its own story, another in the litany of historical documents about Star Swirl and Clover, yet knowing the significance of the bells, who the letter is from, etc., enriches it so much. :D