//------------------------------// // XV: Flying Blind // Story: ...And It's Freaking Cold Up Here // by TailsIsNotAlone //------------------------------// “Just give me something. Anything, damn it.” Get lost, Lost Havens. We’re out of there at last, thanks to the tunnel Luna and the others opened in Froggy Bottom Bog. The air outside is bitterly cold and clogged with a nearly suffocating blizzard. The snow is shoulder-high in Ponyville and rising. Only Luna’s warmth spell, and the sleigh Celestia just sent us from Canterlot, are allowing us to reach the castle ruins. Luna says four of her strongest pegasus guards are pulling it through the air. Another damn thing I wish I could see, but I haven't got time to mope. We have to get this weather under control before all of Equestria is frozen, buried, or both. Luna and I have been up talking for a while. That freaky vision in the Havens makes me pretty certain I’m still alive in my world, and now what I want from her is…reassurance, I guess. Some guarantee, some promise that I’ll be with Beth and my dad and my players again when this is all over. She doesn’t bullshit me. I kind of wish she would, though. “I’m afraid this is beyond my knowledge, Jay. Starswirl apparently found a way to extend Snowdrop’s magic beyond dimensional barriers. Not even my sister and I possess that ability.” She’s staying quiet, trying not to wake up Twilight and all the other exhausted ponies, but I can hear the pity in her voice. I don’t want it. “Fair enough. I guess if you were all-powerful, you would have fixed Snowdrop’s eyes nine centuries ago, huh?” No answer. “Hey, did you hear me?” “Yes, Jay. I am…thinking,” she replies. “Now that you ask me, I do not know if I would have restored her vision or not. Would it have been an act of kindness? Certainly. But would it have been the right thing? That, I cannot answer. Such questions make me grateful that my power does have limits.” Hmm. I guess that makes sense. “But this much I do know,” The hard edge of certainty returns to her voice. “While no power in Equestria could have helped my friend see with her eyes, it is also true that no power could stop her from seeing with her heart. She saw me, and my night, in a way nopony else could.” I try to conceal a sigh. Yeah, yeah. Best pony friends forever and all that jazz. “…Except for you, perhaps.” That came out of left field. I sit up, startled. “Me?!” “The matter of your individual consciousness aside…you are Snowdrop. Everything she was, you can be. Everything she did, you can do. If you are willing to accept her.” Everything? That’s bizarre. Making snowflakes with hooves? Flying through the sky completely blind? Necromancy? Do I even want to do that stuff? “It’s not just Snowdrop,” I say, frustrated. “It’s Beth. Beth and those damn flowers.” She sounds confused. “I beg your pardon?” “I was married to a woman named Beth,” I try to keep my voice steady. “Snowdrops were her favorite flowers. She was always planting them in our garden, and you showed them to me a few nights ago in my dream. What’s the connection?” “I did not create those flowers, Jay.” “So who the hell did?” “The realm of dreams is not mine alone. I have always believed it could transcend many barriers, perhaps even those between worlds. If neither you nor I imagined those snowdrops in the grass…then perhaps the one you call Beth is trying to tell you something. Perhaps there is something else you must accept.” She goes quiet and waits for her old palace to come into view. I burrow in between Silver and Applejack to get some rest. Something tells me I’m going to need it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As I found out during that endless, messed-up tutoring session which shall never be spoken of again, the hoofreading system was invented by a blind unicorn named Light Bringer. It uses special characters that are embossed onto soft paper with little stamping machines so you can feel them easily with the flat of your hoof, and--luckily for folks like me who need to learn fast--they represent words, not sounds. Starting at the top left of the page, I feel around for more. And more and more and more and more and… “Did you say this is the short version of Snowdrop’s autobiography? It’s a freakin’ cinderblock.” I look in Twilight’s direction with dismay. We’re almost to the castle now. I was hopeful when she gave me this book at the last minute (of course she would only think of it at the last minute), because I thought it might tell me how to, I don’t know, MAKE SNOWFLAKES? No luck so far. “Yes, Jay. The shortest one I could find at Golden Acres, at least…I hear an even briefer text was published in the years after her death, but it went out of print centuries ago.” “Either my hoofreading sucks or Snowdrop’s writing does. I mean, this thing is all over the place. Half of it is weird stories that aren’t even about snowflakes and the other half is jargon she just made up! Listen to this: ‘Crafting a flake in a multi-striated arch pattern is a process of the most delicate. Perfection requires to deny my natural urge toward an angular sculpting motion. Discovery path to this technique occurred at time of my twenty-third year and eleventh visit to Saddle Arabia where I occasioned to meet Hayssan VI, then of Saddle Arabia the most venerable ruler and owner of a voice ringing so masculine and sensual as to melt the coldest winter ice and conjure vivid fantasies in the most sightless of mares...’” I blush and slam the book shut. “Okay, I’m not reading the rest of this.” Different reactions from the girls, I notice: Twi goes into a coughing fit, Rarity clears her throat, Dash guffaws, and Pinkie just asks what everypony’s problem is. I think even Luna chuckles under her breath. “I did warn you that Snowdrop’s book would be of little use to us, Twilight Sparkle. Like any fine art form, snowflakes must be felt and not merely studied.” “Thanks anyway,” I shiver, despite the warming spell and my cloak, and gesture straight ahead at what they tell me is the ruined Castle of the Two Sisters. “I’ll just play it by ear. Or by hoof, I guess.” The sleigh touches solid ground and rattles to a halt. We’ve arrived. Sometimes you walk into a place and you just get a feeling. A happy feeling, a sad feeling, a creepy feeling. Sometimes the vibe of a house or a building settles deep inside of you ‘til you can almost feel its history. Well…psych! Not this place. It’s dead. Dead as a doornail. Any magic it once had must be long gone. All I feel is a mild ache in my legs from sitting in that damned chariot for hours. It’s like the time I went to Wrigley Field for a Cubs-Twins game while visiting an old buddy in Chicago. I expected this strange and mystical feeling, but got nothing. It was just a baseball stadium. I’m a diehard football fan though, so maybe I’m biased. Even if I did feel anything in this castle there wouldn’t be time to savor it. Luna sweeps me onto her back and we storm that place like gangbusters. Our hooves make such a racket in those halls I’m surprised the old place doesn’t cave in on top of us. “C-c-c-can’t y-y-y-you f-f-f-fly?” I try to ask Luna through the vibrations. “There is no substitute for the feeling of sacred ground beneath one’s hooves,” she answers. “Be patient, young friend, and we shall reach the observatory post-haste!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ “I guess your post office is a little less hasty than ours, huh?” I say when we stop for yet another break. “Silence, human,” Luna is breathing hard after 20 minutes of traipsing through seemingly random hallways. I can feel her sweating through her coat. “Twilight Sparkle, are you certain we are going the right way?” “According to the map, this is the most direct path to the castle observatory,” Twi answers, apologetic but with a note of stubbornness. Dash chimes in. “Then we should be there by now! Lemme see that thing, Twi.” “Are we there yet?” Silver Spoon yawns somewhere to my right. I think she’s on Fluttershy’s back. “Not yet, Silver,” Shy whispers. “But we will be soon…um, I think.” I should feel annoyed about this, but I’m not. Instead I feel…calm. Serene. We’ll get there when the time is right. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ “I don’t mean to be rude, Your Highness, but this map makes about as much sense to me as horseshoes on a pig,” Applejack remarks. She’s the last Elemental pony who’s tried to figure it out, without success. “Silence, earth pony,” Luna is breathing even harder after, according to Twi’s watch, 42 minutes of gallivanting through even more random hallways. “Twilight Sparkle, you and your friends seemed to navigate this castle easily enough when you deprived…I mean, saved Equestria from eternal night.” Even Twi sounds annoyed now. “Well, I guess we got lucky!” “Maybe it’s one of those places that gets bigger and crazier and loop-de-loopier every time we go back! You know, like the Everfree Forest?” Pinkie chimes in, fresh as a daisy. She may have a point, but the other ponies continue to bicker. Now I should really feel annoyed about this, but I’m still not. Something about the way their voices ring through this hall is so…familiar. “Luna,” I call her by her given name. That shouldn’t feel right, but it does. “You always had to do things the hard way.” “…Jay?” she says uncertainly. Everypony stops. “Yes and no,” I answer dreamily. My head is swimming. I do have that strange and mystical feeling now, but it’s not coming from the castle. It’s coming from me. I know this place. “Don’t you remember? The best way to reach the observatory…is to fly.” For once I don’t listen to their warnings. I unfold my wings and launch myself off Luna’s back. The only way to find Snowdrop’s spirit is to do what she did: follow my heart, no matter how corny it sounds. I am frightened and unsure, yet I am also dead certain. I sail leisurely to the left. I know there is no wall on that side, because the peculiar ring of voices on stone only sounded above me and to my right. I feel cold open air. “Jay! Jay!” My friends shout after me. “Hey, Jaydrop! Like, wait for us non-zombie ponies!” Silver Spoon. Jaydrop. Yes. I am Jay, but more keenly than ever I feel the part that is Snowdrop, and it’s calling me. Guiding me. “Kid, LOOK OUT!” That is Rainbow Dash. She shouldn’t worry. Snowdrop’s memories are telling me where to go. She will never steer me wrong. SMACK. “Damn it, Snowdrop,” I groan, peeling my face off the pillar I just crashed into. Yes. This palace had the largest and most impeccably sculpted pillars. She used to spend hours just feeling them with her hooves. Oh, well. Even her memory can’t be perfect after all these years. I know I am hovering in an atrium, around which winds many halls and staircases. The solution is to fly higher. Much higher. The distance and the uncertainty both fall away beneath me as I surge upwards, knowing exactly where I am bound… “Kid, LOOK OUT AGAIN!” SMACK. “Damn it, Snowdrop.” Judging from the pain in my head and back, and the wind and snow rushing past me, this is the ceiling. Yes. The palace had a whole ceiling once, when she was young, but parts of it must have caved in at some point. Time is a cruel thing. So is blunt force trauma. Still I push on. After more changes of direction, cries of “look out kid,” and crashes than I care to count, at last I collide with the only pillar that has stars and moons sculpted on its upper portion. Near that pillar is the entrance to the observatory. The feeling is even stronger in this room. The telescope that once rested on the pedestal is gone, either moved to the new castle or lost to the ages. Now there’s only the urn, radiating magic and deep, deep cold. I reach out with my front hooves to touch it, and in that instant everything changes. Well done, Jay, she whispers inside my head. I am her. Maybe, in a way, I’ve always been her. A cacophony of echoing hooves reaches my ears. Long moments later, eight worried and breathless ponies stumble in. “Jay!” Luna wheezes. “Are you…all right?” “Yes, old friend,” I whisper. “We are both all right.” I fly over and embrace the stunned princess. She returns the gesture, too emotional even to speak. I can’t explain to you what it’s like to cheat the laws of time and space, to stretch one’s tired spirit thin over centuries waiting for one fleeting moment, and realize it was all worthwhile. But Equestria’s moments are numbered, and I can linger here no more. I stand back and grope for something my human self would say. “Now let’s make some freaking snowflakes already.”