Alex walked slowly as they neared the edge of Estel, repressing a shiver as she felt the chill wind that always marked the border. The variation in temperature between the settlement and the surrounding city had become so extreme over the last few months that a constant vortex blew through the city, swirling around the territory. It was not snowing inside their bubble, yet a mere twenty meters away Alex could see a maelstrom of snow and ice, whirling around them fast enough to tear an inexperienced pegasus from the air. It wasn't fast enough to hurt a pony on the ground, unless you were unlucky enough to take something in the eye.
They walked along a field of vegetables—a field where once cars had driven—marked by a low stone wall. Now carrots, lettuce, and potatoes grew inside, blissfully unaware of the frost roaring up against them from so close. There were no farm workers here now—the entire city had the day off to spend with their friends. Not families, except where new ones had formed since the Event.
"We could've talked in my office, Stride. Nopony would've bothered us. It's Christmas Eve—they're enjoying the festivities. Like I'd like to be doing."
The deer had changed in only one way since the seasons had turned over (or almost had). Stride had grown a thick coat, so thick she could bound through the snow without difficulty. She was clearly straining to be in the barrier even now, sweating in the mid-sixty degree weather. "I did not want them to overhear."
"We can't talk out there." Alex gestured with a hoof. "I don't want to spend my Christmas Eve wet and freezing."
"That was not the reason, All-Crafted!" The nickname was a new one—one Stride had coined by accident and many others had adopted. The title "President" just didn't seem to do justice to someone who could craft a new season in the middle of winter. "The others are possessive of you of late. I fear even if we spoke in my language, someone would overhear. This is better."
Alex sat down on a bare patch of ground, spreading out her wings as she relaxed. "If you say so. Tell me what's bothering you, Stride."
"Your city is still trying to kill me," she began. "But that isn't why I wanted to talk."
"Buildings collapsing don't mean the city wants to kill you. You're heavier than most ponies—it just couldn't take the strain."
The deer narrowed her eyes. "All-Crafted, I respect your wisdom… we can speak of that matter another time. I did not ask you to come with me for that."
"Why, then?"
Stride seemed to struggle for a long time before answering. She turned back towards the center of Estel, where even now she could hear the sound of conversation carrying over the not-too-distant wind.
Something strange happened then: Stride appeared to her magical senses—a brief flash of comprehension, for only a few moments. "You have done… things I could not imagine. I knew from the first, when I saw you fight the skycat and win, that the Mother walked with you. I saw a favored daughter, and I knew you could do great things. Still…"
Alex remained silent, letting Stride finish.
"When we found ourselves in this hell, I thought I might die here. It was worse than a slave pen, and I knew you would fail. But you didn't." She lifted a hoof, gesturing at the field and the walls and the barrier of wind beyond. "This is incredible, All-Crafted. We walked in with nothing, and we have already built something wonderful. More mageblood live here than any Kin in any of our cities."
"I… I don't understand what you're getting at," Archive said. "Not that I don't appreciate the compliment. Your assessment is a little generous… and perhaps premature. We don't know if anypony here will still be alive in a year. There is an army waiting to kill all of us. They may succeed."
Stride laughed. "Kill the mageblood who can stop the seasons and feed five thousand with salvage and prayer? I don't think so." She briefly touched Alex on the shoulder with one foreleg. "I called you here to… remind you of something. A promise you made, long ago."
"I remember all my promises," Alex said, quietly. "Which one do you mean?"
"I didn't believe you at the time—magebloods always make big promises, but always lie. But now… I see you were telling the truth. You said you knew the way to make a people great. You said that one day, when your people were safe, you would go with me to the North to the forests of my Kin and teach us your ways."
Stride started pacing back and forth only a few feet away, carefully avoiding the vegetables. "I didn't laugh at you back then, but I would've told you we didn't need your way. The magebloods I knew were always backwards and cruel. Sometimes they were stupid. But this…" She gestured again at the farm. "If you could take these secrets to the Kin, your promise would come true. Magebloods would not be able to steal us away. So I want to ask—to remind. I know you lead here for the next four years—when those pass, I will be old—but not too old to go with you north to the Kin. So… so I ask, All-Crafted… can you bring what you have brought to these magebloods to my people as well?"
Archive rose to her hooves. "I… I will go, and I will teach your 'Kin' as I have promised. The end of my term seems as good a time as any to go—by then, Estel will either be safe or gone, so…" She sighed. "I have to warn you, Stride… I won't be able to give them everything I gave to these ponies. Magebloods, as you say, are not like deer. They have… advantages you do not. I can't teach them to fly. I can't help them change the seasons, or grow huge bounties of crops like this from just a handful of seeds. I can't teach them to carve patterns into metal that light up like the sun when you touch them. This is all pony magic."
"I'm no fawn!" Stride insisted, her whole body tensing with sudden anger. "I didn't come because I thought you could change those things."
"There is one more thing: how long do your Kin live?"
Stride still seemed upset, though she answered anyway. "I once knew a dame who had seen thirty summers. It is true that most do not see twenty—but that's because our lives are so hard! If we didn't have to fear predators or starvation, I'm sure many more would live that long! Are you… are you saying we aren't worth teaching because we don't see as many years as you?"
"No!" Archive wilted. "Nothing like that, Stride. I just… want you to remember that, aside from Nancy, every mageblood you have ever met would be dead already from old age if they were a deer. Every warrior, every craftspony… they have much experience that your kin cannot afford to waste the time acquiring. Anything we build will have to account for that. Somehow."
"Fine, fine!" Stride stomped past her. "Forget I asked. Just go back on your promise, like every mageblood always does."
"Stride." Archive caught her with a wing, scratching along her back. She had no way of applying enough force to actually stop her that way, of course.
Stride stopped anyway, blinking back tears.
Archive embraced her. "We'll find a way. I don't know how much of a change we can make… but once my children are safe, I'll be prepared to take any risk to help your Kin. Who knows—with the advantages of modern agriculture, they might advance on their own from then on! That was really all it took for humans, so maybe it will be enough for deer too. And if it isn't… I'll stay as long as it takes to figure things out. I promise."
Stride didn't pull away. Instead she embraced Alex, though she was always delicate with her far greater size and strength. "Thank you, All-Crafted. If we could try together… that is all I ask. If I can look out at a Kin village one day, and see what I see here, now… I can return to the Mother and know I have done well."
“For now, you should return with me to the village and enjoy the holiday with us,” Alex said, smiling at her.
Stride shook her head, retreating several steps. “Apologies, All-Crafted. But I… I cannot possibly share in a religious celebration with your ponies. The Mother forbids that we worship other gods. Apologies, but… I will serve the community by keeping watch while you all enjoy yourselves.”
Alex stared, unable to form a response for several long seconds. Then she laughed. “You’re kidding me. All this time, you’ve…” She shrugged. “Christmas doesn’t have to be religious if you don’t want it to be, you know. There are plenty of people who are just using it as an excuse to spend time with the ponies they love and exchange gifts. That’s all it has to be.”
Stride turned away from her, facing the winter. “No need, All-Crafted. I hope you have an enjoyable celebration.” With that she was gone, bounding off towards the wind and through the barrier into the snowy wastes.
Alex sighed as she watched her go, before turning back to Estel. Alex let herself enjoy the walk, and didn’t rush. Even she had no work detail today, nothing to get to but enjoying the time with her family.
She met a pony she hadn’t expected to see waiting on the street near her building, with a basket resting on the ground beside him. Lockwood didn’t even have any of his goons beside him, though like more and more ponies these days, there was a weapon strapped to his barrel.
Alex made to cross behind him, but Lockwood noticed her, raising one hoof. “Madam President!” he called, pausing to scoop up the basket and hurry over.
She groaned quietly, but didn’t try to get away. He’d just fly after me if I did. Of course, there was a very short list of ponies who could keep up with her if she really wanted to fly away. Nancy was on that list, but Lockwood wasn’t.
“Yes?” She stopped near the door, turning to face him. “How can I help you?”
A few ponies had stopped to stare. Estel had no tabloids, but if it did Archive didn’t doubt this encounter would’ve made it in.
“I just wanted to apologize.” Lockwood looked down, away from her. “During the campaign, I… may’ve said some things that haven’t proven accurate.”
Alex choked back a laugh. “I remember you called me a monster who couldn’t be predicted or controlled. That I was ‘enslaving the gullible to my mad whims.’”
Lockwood coughed. “Yes, well… I believed all that. Either you were a terrible liar, or you actually were a monster.” He shrugged, offering the woven basket towards her. Alex looked down, and saw it was filled with baked goods. Simple sweets, but a profound luxury in their world. A deceptively simple gift.
“I’m glad you won,” Lockwood said. “If I had to take over in a week… I’m not sure what I’d do. I still don’t know what you’re planning to do about the army waiting out there.” He smiled slightly. “Something dramatic, I guess.”
“Probably,” she agreed. “Or else they’ll send a big army after we beat the small one.” She looked down at the basket, sniffing. No poison, only the regular, wonderful smells of baked goods. “What’s your game, Lockwood?”
“No game.” He backed away from her, leaving the basket on the ground at her hooves. “Do you have more magic up your sleeves? Like the weather thing?”
“Yes.” She didn’t hesitate. “If we survive the invasion, then there’s no limit to how quickly we could recover. The technology too… some things are just done better with a machine than a spell, even if you do have the right unicorn for the job.”
He nodded. “That’s what I thought. I’m going to hold you to your promise, Alex. About not running for re-election.”
“I won’t,” she repeated. “If we’re still under military threat that far from now, I’ll stick around as an advisor until that’s dealt with. Otherwise, I think I’ll take a vacation.”
“Right.” He turned away. “Merry Christmas to you, Madam President.” He walked away, leaving her alone with the basket of sweets. She took it in her mouth, spreading her wings and lifting off from a standstill, flying straight towards her apartment on the top floor. She landed on the balcony, pushing the door open with one hoof.
Alex stepped into her bedroom only to feel a weight slammed into her, almost hard enough to make her stumble back out onto the balcony.
“Nancy, don’t scare me like that!” She pried the little pegasus free of her chest, only for the pony to hop into the air beside her, tossing something at her head. A hat, made from red and white fabric with a stupid ball of white fluff on the end. “W-where did you get that?”
“Merry Christmas!” The pegasus landed, bouncing into the bedroom ahead of her.
None of Estel’s citizens knew that their president, the mare who could fight whole armies and bend the seasons to her will, shared her room with an eleven-year-old. It hadn’t always been that way—at one time, Nancy had claimed one of the bedrooms of the top-floor flat, and Alex had taken the other, with the third for her office. She had given one to her mother, and one to Jackie and Ezri to share, which left her with Nancy.
She stopped a moment by the door, looking in at the absolute absurdity of it. There were two small beds, made from the same rough wood as all their new furniture. There were blankets too, rough and scratchy and not very warm. Alex’s personal desk was on one side of the room, empty except for her diary and a few half-written spells pinned up on the wall around it.
Everywhere else were drawings, chalked onto the walls in several different colors. Some were intricate and lifelike, her own work when she was stressed or frustrated and wanted something to do. More were cruder, awkward and lumpy. Nancy had decorated the plain cement bricks with scenes of herself spending time with her favorite ponies—mostly Ezri, Mary, or Alex herself.
“Thanks, squirt.” Alex settled the hat on her head, then reached down to muss the pegasus’s mane. “Christmas isn’t ‘til tomorrow, though.”
Nancy bounded past her, pausing to look into the basket, and beaming at what she saw there. “My family always had our big meals the night before! We were too busy playing with our toys and stuff on Christmas. Mom’s been cooking all day, so I think she sees it that way too.”
“Yeah, we were the same way.” Alex stopped, watching Nancy bound her way out the door into the apartment. For a fraction of a second, it was as though she were looking back in time, looking at a very different pony. Nancy’s coat was dirty and stained, her feathers all disheveled with several missing. Her eyes were hollow, hooves chipped.
Now she bounced, and youth practically glowed around her when she walked. She would talk to anypony now, not just Alex. Even stallions didn’t frighten her anymore, so long as she had company. “You though you broke us, Charybdis?” she whispered. “Even our weakest was too strong.” This, right in front of her. This was what it meant to be human.
“Do I hear right, Alex? You actually brought something?” Mary’s voice echoed from down the hallway, dark except for the flickering of a distant fire.
Alex took the basket in her mouth, then hurried towards the voice. The hall itself was empty, plain cement floors clean but its brick walls unadorned. She passed a bathroom door, filled with boxes and old books. Only one bathroom worked on each floor, for all the residents to share. This wasn’t the one. Of course, Alex could’ve claimed a large number of luxuries for herself on account of her rank. Her craftsponies seemed to expect it. Every time she refused, their respect seemed to grow.
The living room and kitchen of the flat had been greatly rearranged since they had taken the apartment for themselves. A genuine fireplace was now the center of the kitchen, with a simple metal cooking surface mounted above the wood. A few nearby counters and a basin with a bottle of water accounted for most of the kitchen. A large table sat prominently near the windows, which were open to let in as much light as possible.
She stopped in the kitchen and dropped the basket at her hooves, staring in wonder at the feast before her. A dozen different vegetables had been prepared, many of which were familiar to her. Asparagus casserole, candied yams, mashed potatoes, and numerous other holiday standards. Each one had been cooked with one of a handful of cast-iron pots and pans, though Mary had somehow managed to rotate them all through the fire to keep them warm, at least judging by the steam. “Damn, Mom. This is incredible.”
Mary was wearing an adorable little apron, splattered and stained with the vegetable viscera of a large meal. Even so she stepped out from behind the counter, embracing Alex with enthusiasm. “No, incredible was the effort it took to get real cider made in time.”
“You’re a gem.” Alex lifted the basket up onto the counter. “How many ponies are you cooking for? This is…”
“Seven.” Mary hurried back to the fire. “You, me, Nancy, that delightful lesbian couple, and Tom Rhodes.”
Alex followed, depositing Lockwood’s gift on the counter. “That’s only six.” She glanced once around the room—of all the ponies she had named, most were already here. Only Jackie and Tom were missing. Ezri had imitated the form of a young unicorn, and was playing a board game with Nancy. Apparently Alex’s arrival had also interrupted their game.
“You invited Tom?” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s…” Her eyes widened, and she retreated a few nervous steps. “Wait a minute! You couldn’t…” She winced. “Isn’t he a little old?”
Mary didn’t look away from her work, but she seemed to be listening. “That’s a good one, Alex! How old are you, again?”
Alex opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again. “I guess… Well, just be careful. You’re not too old to have more children anymore.”
“Yes, son. I may not know ponies the way you do, but I know biology. Do I need the president’s approval to make decisions?”
Alex didn’t know what to say to that, and so there was a painful silence between them.
Well, except for Ezri’s voice from the corner. “You’ve caught them by surprise!” said a younger version of Ezri, complete with a lisp. “The orcs look up at you from around their card table, stunned. You have surprise for one round.”
“I cast fireball!” Nancy shouted, energetically. “They have a keg, right? I blow it up!”
“Who’s the seventh, Mom?”
The earth pony shrugged. “Not sure. She claimed to be an old friend of yours, said she wanted to talk to you. I don’t think she wanted to stick around, but the ‘President’ isn’t taking visitors during the holidays. Only way she was getting any of my time with you was if she came to dinner.”
“Uh…” Alex searched the room again, looking for a pony she had missed, but there were no others. “Where is she?”
“In the roof garden.” Mary pointed straight up. “Since you weren’t around, she wanted to make herself useful. I sent her up to weed.”
“I’ll be right back.” Alex took the door at a run, pushing it aside and galloping towards the stairs.
“Dinner’s almost ready!” Mary called after her. “Ten minutes! Bring your friend back with you!”
Alex ran past other apartment doors, hearing loud and happy voices through several of them. Most belonged to people who had been rescued along with her first busload of ponies, months ago. She took the stairs three at a time, wings beating and aiding her flight, then passed through another open door onto the roof.
It was a flat, wide space, like many buildings in poor neighborhoods had been. A dozen square plots were planted here, overflowing with strawberries, blueberries, and other luxuries.
A pony bent over the plots on the other side of the roof, singing quietly to herself. Alex slowed a little to listen as she approached. The pony didn’t turn around, or stop her song until she had finished.
Yellow coat, bright red and yellow mane, with wings folded on her side and a prominent horn. She stood taller than anypony Alex had ever seen now—as tall as princess Luna had been in Equestria.
Sunset Shimmer turned to face her, hooves covered with dirt and a small pile of weeds on the roof beside her.
“Simple Gifts?” Alex tilted her head slightly to one side. “Isn’t that a human song?” She approached slowly, as though afraid that Sunset might disappear if she moved too quickly.
“I suppose so.” The Alicorn didn’t disappear. “It’s good to see you, Lonely Day.” She pulled Alex into a hug, wrapping her up with her wings.
Again Alex felt it, the same brief surge of magic she had known when Mary had returned. “I knew… I mean, I thought you had to still be around, but…” She pulled away, looking out over the ledge. “It’s been so long since I saw you.”
“Too long,” Sunset agreed. She stared for a moment, eyes fixing on her back. “Nice wings.”
“I used to be a pegasus,” Alex muttered. “But I got murdered and stuck into an anti-magic field for a thousand years, and…” Her voice broke, and she felt hot tears streaming down her face. “Why didn’t you save me?”
“I tried.” Sunset looked away. “But I couldn’t force you back. The veil binds Alicorns too—you must have realized this by now.”
“Yes.” Alex walked to the edge of the roof, staring out across the city. The buildings were all the same—most of them crumbling and unsafe, yet much else had changed. The streets were full of healthy crops, and many of the buildings shone with light from their windows. “There was a plague… did you sit back and let it destroy our society?”
“No.” Now there was pain in Sunset’s voice too. “It infected my ponies as well. We tried to cure it, but we couldn’t. All the world suffered together.”
Sunset joined her on the edge of the roof, looking out at the ponies below. There were no farmers in the field today, no activity in the market. Ponies were already celebrating.
Even so, Alex could see past the city to the river, and faint against the edge of her vision, rows and rows of tents huddled against the snow. The army sent to slaughter them.
“Did you come to save my ponies?” Alex asked, her voice hesitant. “There’s an army, right there.” She pointed with a hoof. “They want to kill every pony in the city in the name of their nameless god.”
Sunset looked away. “No. I haven’t come to stop them.”
“But…” Alex gaped. “You could send them away with one spell! Blow up the camp, or… teleport all the ponies away! This could be over in a second with an Alicorn on our side!”
“Yes.” The Alicorn met her eyes. “It could.”
“I’ve been trying!” Alex practically shouted at her. “I don’t know where you’ve been, I don’t know why the fuckin’ HPI decided it was done helping people and that it was okay if the world started throwing humans into a hole to die, but somepony had to do something!”
She stomped one of her hooves, and the tile beneath it shattered without much resistance. “Dammit, Princess! Aren’t they your subjects or something? What’s the point of all that power if you don’t use it?”
If she expected anger from the Alicorn, she was disappointed. Sunset only embraced her again, squeezing her like Alex might do with Nancy. “Archive, you don’t need any gifts from me.” She let go, pointing across the way at the nearby buildings. “I once knew a pony who could search out gemstones hidden in rocks. You’ve done far better here—you took rocks and made them into gemstones. You know what I see?”
Archive remained silent.
“Eudaimonia,” Sunset said. “I see a pony who’s already seen the Supernal. You can hear it calling to you, but you’re afraid to answer.” Magic shimmered around her, forcing Archive to meet her eyes. “No more hiding, Archive. No more running away. There’s an army across that river. You can hear their saws and hammers as they build the boats they intend to use to cross and kill the ponies you love.
“Maybe you’re right, maybe I have the power to stop them. I won’t. Somepony else will have to do it. Somepony like you.”
“I still don’t know how!” Archive whimpered. “I don’t know how to stop so many ponies. I don’t know how to scare them away, so their king doesn’t just send more! I don’t know how to be an Alicorn!”
Sunset shrugged. “You know as well as anypony there’s no list of instructions to follow. But you’ll figure it out, I know you will.” Sunset turned, walking away past her, for the door. “I hope you don’t mind if I stay for dinner. I made a promise to your cook.”
“My mom,” Alex corrected. “Mary’s my mother. From before the Event.”
Sunset froze, eyes wide. “How is that possible?”
Archive shrugged. “Dunno. Hold out hoping long enough, and I guess something good is bound to happen.” She followed Sunset Shimmer back for the door, letting herself smile. “I figure, after all the shit I’ve been through, it was probably overdue.”
“I suppose it was,” Sunset agreed, following along beside her down the stairs.
* * *
There was something comforting and familiar about being woken too early for Christmas morning by a child eager to open their gifts. She didn’t protest, even though she felt like she had only just layed down to sleep. Staying up to reminisce with Sunset and Jackie probably hadn’t been such a good idea.
“There isn’t gonna be…” Alex muttered, following Nancy groggily out of the bedroom and into the central living area. Their tree was unchanged from the day before, except for a handful of small packages. Without cardboard, without cheap paper, most had been “wrapped” in plain cloth that would probably be sewn into something else when the morning was over.
Alex recognized almost all of the gifts, as she placed them there herself. An enchanted winter jacket for the pegasus, with a removable section to let her wings free for flying. An intact copy of the Bible she had found scavenging for her mother, who longed almost daily for her old copy. Jackie and Ezri were harder—what was she supposed to give to ponies hundreds of years older than she was, who had apparently lived as wandering ascetics for at least a century?
Nancy was dragging something out from under the tree, something Alex hadn’t noticed the night before. She could guess who it would be addressed to, given her own cutie mark had been printed onto the paper. Who the hell? “Alex, you were wrong! There is one here for you!”
“Yeah, I guess I was.” She didn’t open it—not for at least an hour. Her daughter and Jackie didn’t show up, but Mary did. She made waffles—though without eggs or syrup, the familiar breakfast treat turned out somewhat flat and chalky.
“You can’t just sit there,” Mary said.
Alex sat in front of the strange box, wearing her silly hat. She had remained largely an observer through the festivities, happy enough to see her mother and Nancy were happy. “I’m just letting everyone else open theirs first,” Alex muttered.
“We’re all done.” Nancy was wearing her new jacket, which clearly fit perfectly and made her seem downright adorable. She also seemed to be sweating from the warmth. Enchanted clothing like that was easily equal to the bleakest northern wilderness, particularly when a pony already cold-resistant was wearing it. “Come on, Alex! Open it!”
She reached out, feeling the paper with the sensitive inside of her fetlocks. It was thin and waxy, exactly like any other wrapping paper she had ever seen. There was even some kind of transparent tape holding it down. “Where did you even get this?” she asked her mother, working carefully to remove the tape and unwrap the box inside. There was no card, no tag, nothing to identify who it had come from.
“Not me,” Mary insisted, raising one hoof in protest. “Would you like to wake your friends?”
“No.” She kept working. “An early morning is a terrible christmas gift to a bat. Jackie can stay asleep until a reasonable hour. It isn’t even noon yet.”
“You’re a bat, honey. You’re awake.”
“Don’t remind me,” Alex groaned, sliding a thin cardboard box out from within the wrapping paper. She pulled off the lid, staring down in shock at what was inside.
It looked like leather, though of course she knew it came from seaweed, or some other Equestrian substitute. A pair of lumpy saddlebags, covered in scuffs and scrapes and with some threadbare stitching. The sun and moon cutie marks were as bright and colorful as she remembered them.
A thin paper card was folded atop the old saddlebags, and she spread it with one hoof to read.
Enjoy your gift while you can. She wasn’t easy to find.
-D
PS: You dropped this. After all the work my friends put into making it for you, I couldn’t let it go to waste.
“Awww,” Nancy muttered, staring over her shoulder. “I thought it would be something cool, all wrapped up like that…”
Alex shut the card, lifting the saddlebags out of the box and shaking them out. Despite the intervening ages, they were as soft and flexible to the touch as she remembered. “It is.” She set them down over the plain wooden bench, with the Celestia side facing out.
“A bag.” Nancy rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe the pattern is pretty, but…”
“Not a bag,” Alex said. “An artifact from another universe.”
“What?” Nancy shrugged off her coat, perhaps a little reluctantly. “How?”
“Well, I told you about Equestria. I told you how, a long time ago, the princesses wanted to help us fix our world. They wanted to give us all kinds of things… thousands of books, enchanted items for us to study and copy… way too much for one pony to carry. So they made this.”
Nancy flicked the bag open—not difficult to do, since it had no straps holding it down. It was empty of course, just a plain faux-leather interior. “Did the magic run out?”
“No.” Alex shut it, then opened it herself. The space within curved as strangely as she remembered, as though someone had cut a hole through the couch to a little entryway, sealed glass doors and modern architecture. The motion was enough to make the lights come on.
“Uh…” Nancy poked her hoof through the empty space, pulling it back after only a moment. As though she were afraid she might get burned. “Woah.”
Mary looked over from the bench, showing only mild interest. “Oh, Felix’s magic bag. Can you pull anything out you want?”
“Unfortunately not.” Alex hopped inside, gesturing for Nancy to follow.
Once she had shown it was safe, the filly eagerly climbed in after her. “This looks like people built it,” Nancy said. “I thought ponies were all… old-fashioned.”
“Oh, yeah.” Alex walked up to the door, then swung it open. She looked back, over her shoulder. “Hey, mom! There’s a real kitchen in here!”
“Is there a blender?” Suddenly Mary’s head was in the doorway, looking in after her. “I’d strangle someone if I could have a decent smoothie.”
Everything was exactly where Alex had left it. It all looked more than a little worn, from the months she had been living in Motherlode and used the saddlebags as a sort of second home. Despite a thousand years without being opened, there wasn’t even a layer of dust. The counter still shined from where she had cleaned it, an uneven stack of DVDs was still piled near the television from a movie night she’d had with Jackie and Ezri before the miners had killed her for trying to undo their scheme.
“This isn’t Felix’s bag, this is a Tardis,” Mary said, walking right into the kitchen and opening the fridge. It was empty—the survivors from the mine had eaten everything, as they had likely drained most of the water in the tank. Alex hadn’t bothered to refill anything, since she had gone to live in Paradise Crater and not brought the saddlebags with her.
“This is… big,” Nancy muttered, opening the door that led downstairs.
Alex followed her, past the open bedroom door, the modern bathroom as clean as the kitchen, to the equipment room. Her empty powered-armor stand was still there, a few cables dangling from when she had left in haste. The tape she had used to bind her wings was even still sitting on the desk.
Alex immediately regretted not restocking these, back in Paradise. She could’ve put a dozen sets of powered armor in here if she had wanted, and filled the storage chamber in the other bag with enough food to feed hundreds. Better yet, she could’ve filled it with modern weapons, perhaps gattling turrets or drones. That would’ve made quick work of the army waiting for them.
She had not even opened the other side since the wolves had killed her.
“Alex, Alex!” Nancy hadn’t remained in the workshop for long, but doubled back to the bedroom. Alex followed, and found the filly looking up into the closet.
Alex’s old clothes hung there, transfered here even though the nudity taboo had stopped bothering her. Skirts, shorts, tops, dresses, swimsuits… all cut for her smaller, younger self. Ezri’s full winter outfit was folded neatly on one shelf, though the changeling hadn’t worn anything else.
“Oh, yeah. My old stuff.”
“Can I?”
Alex grinned. “Sure. Plenty of it should fit you. Might be a little loose, but…” She glanced over at the filly, then back up. “You’ll grow into it. Just try not to hurt any of it. This stuff is old, so it’s special to me.”
“I won’t!” Nancy selected a dozen different articles of clothing, enough for several complete outfits. Alex left her in the bedroom, hurrying back to the living room.
Her mother was sitting on the couch, with an old leather bound book beside her. Real leather too, not an Equestrian fake.
It was one of Alex’s journals. Several identical volumes sat beside her—about one per decade. Mary looked up, noticing her, though she didn’t stop reading. As she often did, Mary read to herself out loud.
“I told Luna that I wanted the burden of protecting the human legacy. For now, I think that means protecting as many of the former humans as possible. Once there are enough others to focus on the needs of survival, I’ll start worrying about the lost knowledge.”
“That’s an old one,” Alex said, hopping up onto the couch beside her. It was just as comfortable as she remembered.
“I started with volume one.” Mary looked up, flipping back a few pages to the sliver of crystal taped to the page. It glowed faintly even now, undiminished by time. “I saw… saw things.”
“Yeah.” Alex looked away. “Memory crystal. I wanted to make sure I could show ponies what Luna showed me. Exactly what she showed me, in case they didn’t believe. It would be a… pretty crazy story, otherwise.”
“You looked cute in a dress,” Mary teased.
A younger Lonely Day might’ve blushed, avoiding any reminder of her old life. Alex was too old for that now—her human life was a strange, distant dream. “Oliver thought so. He always wanted me to wear it, whenever we went anywhere fancy. I’ve still got it, in a box on the other side. Wouldn’t fit anymore, I bet. The tailor practically sewed it onto my body. I’ve grown up too much since then.”
“Oliver,” Mary repeated, flipping back through the pages. “I think I saw that name in here. He’s the doctor?”
“The best I ever knew,” Alex said. She got up, walking across the room to a framed picture, and gently pulling it off the wall. It was an ancient artifact, almost as old as the journal. Like most of what she had that was that old, a little magic had gone into keeping it intact this long. A little magic, and an airtight frame.
She set it down flat on the couch in front of her mother. “That was taken four years after we were married. Cody…” She whimpered, shaking on her hooves as a lifetime of memories came flooding back. A calm foal, a precocious colt, a thoughtful teenager, and an ambitious, brilliant stallion. Her little Cody’s life passed in front of her eyes like a butterfly.
Lonely Day was not some ancient god, who had seen thousands of generations pass away. She had spent most of her years with her son still alive—less than a century in total had been missing her child.
She remembered Oliver too, the relationship she hadn’t been quite ready for, and had eventually destroyed. But where he had no doubt left feeling bitter and abandoned, she still remembered all their happiest moments. Their first date was still as fresh in her memory as Christmas Eve dinner the night before.
When Lonely Day came to her senses again, she realized she had been crying. She didn’t know how long she had been shaking, only that there was a pair of hooves around her, and a warm, familiar scent. “Shh…” Mary was saying. “It’s okay… it’s okay…”
Alex blinked, wiping away her tears with the back of one hoof, before sitting up suddenly. “I’m sorry… I lost my composure. I won’t…”
“No.” Mary silenced her with a glare. “This is all a little overwhelming to me. I don’t know… I don’t think I could know everything you’ve been through. I wish I could’ve gone to your wedding, or known my grandson, or… I wish I could understand what you even are…
“But none of that matters. No matter what changes, no matter what happens, I’m still your mom. Seems even… however long you’ve been around… families are still universal.”
Alex nodded. “I… yeah. I think they are.”
Mary let her go. “I hope you don’t mind if I read some of these. If James and Elizabeth aren’t back yet, I’d at least like to know what you’ve been up to.”
“That’s an awful lot of reading.” Alex got to her hooves, just in time to see Nancy emerging from up the stairs.
The filly was wearing a white sundress, complete with a wide straw hat and sandals. None of it seemed to quite fit, though it was all close. She could only hope Nancy hadn’t also tried to put on the rest of the outfit—it had been one Amy had picked for her, which meant it was fairly provocative. Please don’t make me teach you about lingerie.
“How do I look, Mom?” she asked, as proud and confident as ever Alex had seen her.
“Oh.” Mary looked up from the book, grinning. “Very grown up, dear.”
“It doesn’t have wing-slits,” Nancy grumbled, stopping a few feet away from Lonely Day. “How are you supposed to get your wings through, Alex?”
“You aren’t.” She winced “We’ll have to cut a few holes—very carefully. I didn’t have wings back then, so none of my clothes were made for it.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Nancy muttered. “How could you have wings now, but not then? I didn’t think we could change!”
“We can’t,” she admitted. “Not normally. It’s kind of a scary story. You should ask Ezri about it—I bet she remembers.”
“Oh, Ezri!” Nancy turned for the exit. “I’ve got to show her we have real clothes now! She’ll be so excited…”
She’ll be excited that you’re excited. Alex didn’t say that out loud, though. None of it really mattered.
The city was still in danger. She hadn’t been given any magic bullets to use against the invaders. Yet even so, she felt far more secure about the future than she had.
As she went about the rest of her Christmas day, visiting friends and important ponies in Estel, she found that attitude had spread to most of its citizens. While many were nervous about the future, every one of them was hopeful the city would find a way.
That was a far greater gift for a weary immortal than any old saddlebags could be.