//------------------------------//
// Coreington Hay is... 
// Story: The Maresburg Frosting Flood Disaster 
// by Glen Gorewood 
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October 17, X57 2PM

Dear Diary, it's much worse than I could have imagined in my darkest nightmares.  What I saw this afternoon after waking to Midget crying and calming the poor colt down, it's impossible to imagine what it looks like unless you saw it yourself.  He woke me around noon with sobbing cries for his ma, sisters, and pa.  I wasn't sure what to tell him, Apples are not liars; it goes against our nature as truly honest folk.  But truth is at the time I didn't know where they were, or if the other Crabapples survived that horror that is still visible upon the streets.  So I did the only thing I could, and told him what I hoped was the truth with all my heart.

With my front hooves I pulled the little colt close to me, holding him against the crook of my neck as he sobbed and cried for ponies that we both hoped were still alive.  The last time I had seen Sweet, Toringo, and the twins Oregon and Pacific they had been trying to get out of that tenement room.  Dunbar was likely..

No I ain't going to think like that, little Yunnan "Midget" Crabapple's father might still be alive.  The chance was infinitely slim, but ah was going to take hold of it until the rescue crew found a body.  They hadn't walked up to us like they had others, many other ponies had been informed of their loved ones fates.  Some had run off in joyous tears to the medical relief tent.  However far more had broken down into sobs that broke my heart to witness.  Those aching wailing ponies far outnumbered the joyful ones.  I could only imagine what that felt like at the time.

Midget had stopped sobbing, his eyes still wet with tears, he only tried to nuzzle deeper into my neck.  Failing that the colt looks up into my eyes, and asks the question I had been dreading to ask myself; in the way only a little foal can.

"Ma Pa Where?  Where ma?"  He whimpers to me, formerly tear filled eyes beginning to well up again with liquid sorrow.

I sigh, and use my hoof to wipe off his eyes with the corner of that ratty old blanket that had saved his life.  Setting it down, or really giving it back to Midget; I told him the only truth I could at the time.  Back then it was a truth, oh how I wish it had stayed so.

With a warm hopeful smile on my dirty face, I pat his head ruffling his mane while saying words that still ring in my ears now.
"Well lil Midget, I bet your ma and pa are out looking for you and ah right now."  My country accent slipped out as I spoke, maybe if I'd noticed I would have known the truth of what I was saying.
"In fact Ah bet they have been searching through every emergency station in Maresburg looking for us."

I pause, glancing at the doors not too far away as an idea forms in my mind.  Oh diary, I wish I hadn't let that idea form and had snuffed it out like a candle flame then and there.  But I didn't, and as that colt continued to gaze at me with drying eyes filled with hope, I made my decision.

"Midget," I say in a voice filled with renewed hope, "would you like to go look for em?"

The little colt claps his oversized hooves together with glee.
"Find ma, find pa, Find sissy's, find Tori!"  He cheers and gurgles, a rather childish glee in his voice that in retrospect was very out of place.

I smiled diary, the smile of an ignorant fool unaware of the reality awaiting us outside those doors.  In my naïveté I picked up that ratty blanket and made a baby sling for Midget.  Putting him in the makeshift sling, I checked to ensure he was snug before looking at the doors once more.  Oblivious to the sorrow filled, frosting and dirt coated ponies around us; or perhaps I was trying to block out the horrible obvious truth of reality.  I got up from the spot where we had been resting, and looked at the paths I could take to my goal.

I stood there for a moment before glancing at the foal nestled in the cloth nest tied to my shoulders.  
"Let's find our family."  I said to him, and that lovely little brilliant colt clapped and cheered as I made my way through the crowd.

That crowd that smelt of blood and sweat, with a disturbing undertone of sweet sugar.  Those ponies who were a combination of exhausted, traumatized, and wounded yet still alive.  The former inhabitants of Coreington Hay who had made it out somehow, like Midget and I had.  Yet for those few minutes, they didn't exist.  The doctors would later tell me my reaction was shock, they would reassure me that it was alright.  But looking back on it only a few hours later, I know ah wasn't in my right mind then.

If only that brilliant red stallion had been there to stop me, as he had before when I was running at breakneck speed from that torrent of frosted destruction.  Or if only I had slept a bit longer.  So many possible alternatives to what I had done.  Yet I had already made my decision as I maneuvered through the, for the moment, faceless crowd.  

My target was at hoof in a few minutes, and as I reached a hoof to open the door with a smile on mah face a voice shouted from somewhere.  I don't right remember what specifically it said, but I believe it was along the lines of; "Don't open the door, please have mercy on yeself, don't open those doors!"

I ignored that nameless, faceless voice and with one powerful shove of my right hoof the door opened.

I stepped out onto the raised steps of what looked like a very fancy and ornate building, great pillars supporting the arched overhang above me.  My hooves echo as I walked forward, that grin still on my face oblivious to the shouting from behind me.  Nothing matters but getting a better view of the city, so ah move over to the right more so that I might see something besides upper class infrastructure and markets.  My hooves make a distinct click clack noise across the high grade granite, lines of ancient creatures visible in the masterfully crafted stairway below me.  

Then, as I finally reached a spot without buildings blocking my view; I froze.

Before my eyes was something that initially I hoped was a nightmare, a dark dream from which I could awaken.  I slap myself with mah left hoof, and it was still there.  That scene of horrors made real.  Everything that had happened cemented itself into my reality.

I could not run from the truth anymore.

My body began to shake as my eyes took in everything before me.  What had been Coreington Hay, a massive district of poor and working class ponies trying to make a living.  Row after row of business both legitimate and illicit.  Tenement square apartments that were so rotten and rickety, yet filled with hundreds of thousands of lives both pony and otherwise.  That fools factory on the hill, where frosting was made and lives lost making it.  Where Dunbar had been last night, working a new better job and shift and hoping for a promotion.

Those streets so dangerous yet filled with life, that most precious of treasures.  The tenement where the Crabapples had lived, played, loved, and welcomed me into their humble home.  Everything that I had known and now never would know of Coreington Hay, and most likely Midget and my family.

They were gone.  It was gone.  The entire district was now a mangled mess of old wood sections and stone fragments, appliances and ladders alongside destroyed carriages.  At least, what Ah could see was a horrendously horrible nightmare made real.  From where I stood on that marble patio, I could see bright colored dots in shapes no pony or otherwise should ever be.  Those dots, those shapes and the entirety of the district that wasn't visible; were trapped under the morass that was slowly becoming more rigid.  The entirety of every one of the factory's frosting vat contents had coated the district in a disturbing multi colored sea of sugary goop.  

From my location I could see it was multiple levels thick, and looked more like the remains of a volcanic eruption than a pony made disaster.  It had completely inundated Coreington Hay after exploding outwards from the factory on the hill.  Said factory now had a gaping hole in it's side, hardened frosting making it look like a gaping wound gushing multicolored blood down to the streets below.  It stretched somewhat into other districts, but that sugary doom I had outrun early this morning had annihilated that part of the city entirely.

Dots raced across the edge of the mass of frosting, pulling objects from the edge.  Some others moved over the top in a coordinated manner, occasionally stopping to pull something out of that sweet death trap.  Other times they would pause for a few moments, a crunching sound making its way to mah ears, before they again pulled an object out.

Many of those objects, those multi colored lives that had been swept away in the wave; they left where they were.

My heart broke, and as if sensing the dire horror of the situation; Midget began to cry and wail.  My broken voice soon joined him as I fell onto my rump, the sight before my eyes quenching almost any hope I had that our family could have survived.  The street where the Crabapples had lived had no structures still standing.  No hint there had ever been lives living in an overpriced hovel of a tenement complex that was still a home.

All there was in that spot, was a massive hardened mound of red and green frosting.

Our wails merged together into a united chorus of sorrow.  We stayed there, crying and screaming our pain to the world for what felt like hours.  Finally as we both began to collapse, a pair of hooves grabbed my shoulders in a comforting hug.  That nameless faceless voice from earlier whispered in my ear.

"I'm so sorry.  I didn't want ye to see it.  I wanted to spare you this pain, the same pain I felt when I saw the horror earlier this morning.  At some level I knew ye didn't hear my shout earlier, but I'd hoped... I'm so sorry, so very sorry."

I leaned into the body of that soft feminine voice behind me, and cried into her dark blue fur until my tears were spent.  The mare then guided me back inside, and over to the area where she and her family had set up a sort of camp.  With soft feathers she guided me to a pile of salvaged linens and blankets, and motioned for me to lay down and rest.  With Midget still safe in his sling, I laid down and cried myself to the realm of dreams.

That was an hour ago or so.

I'm still tired diary, but I had to write this down.  Because somehow I feel that if I do, the nightmares haunting my sleep will weaken or stop.  The last one was what woke me from my most recent slumber.  

It was about me running from the deadly frosting wave, behind me I could hear Sweet and the youngins screaming.  And I looked back behind me to see them on the crest of the wave.  Their flesh being seared off by the heat from the scalding sweet flood.  Their eyes were terrified, and they were screaming for me to save them, but I couldn't.  I couldn't save them because if ah stopped, Midget and I would die.  So I kept running, their screams echoing in my ears till I ran into something and woke up.

I'm going to try to go to sleep again diary.  Midget is sleeping soundly, his chest moving healthily in and out as his eyelids flutter rapidly in his dreams.

Perhaps writing this down will help, I pray to Celestia and the great trees it does.  Because if I can't get rest in before they come, like ah know they will; I don't think my mind and heart will be able to handle that truth diary.

Rest well.
Granny "Grand" Smith Apple