Emberwolf

by Lucky Dreams


Curtains

With all the Rainbow-Dash-determination she could muster, Scootaloo tunnelled through the snow. She dug with her hooves. She screamed, “C’mon! C’mon!” but her hooves turned numb from coldness, and a minute later, her tunnel collapsed from the weight of snow. Scootaloo yelped! She shot back into the house before she was buried – and she was in the foyer again, and the tunnel was gone. The floor was covered in piles of loose snow.

Her breath emerged as clouds. She was cold all over. She was made from cold.

Scootaloo shiver-sighed, then shook the snow from her hooves, turned to her right and, out of options, finally pushed open the door to living room.

Her aunts weren’t there, of course, but the fireplace spotted her at once.

“Filly! What’s this ruckus you’re causing? Say what’s wrong.”

Scootaloo’s eyes watered. She wanted her aunts, she wanted Rainbow Dash, she wanted anything other than to be trapped inside this ceaseless nightmare. But she ignored the fireplace, and instead threw open the curtains to reveal yet more snow pressed against the glass, gleaming red and awful in the glow of the flames.

She drew in a deep breath. “AUNT HOLIDAY! AUNT LOFTY!”

The fireplace tutted. “Honestly, there’s no reason to shout.”

Scootaloo glared at the grate. “Fires don’t talk,” she warned. “If you’re not gonna say something to help, don’t say anything at all.” With a buzz of her wings, she galloped upstairs to her room. But when she opened her bedroom curtains, all she saw was the soul-entombing wall of snow.

Her wings drooped.

How deep was it?

“That’s impossible,” she whispered. But, from an undusted corner of her mind, she heard a cruel voice speak to her. The imaginary voice told her that, yes, it was impossible that the snow could be piled so monstrously deep – yet it was ‘impossible’ in the same way that ponies couldn’t disappear from photographs, or that fires couldn’t form invisible vocal cords and speak to frightened fillies in the week before Hearth’s Warming.

From above – from the attic – the rafters creaked. Scootaloo cringed. Was the snow piled so high that the whole cottage was buried? Could the old house support such an astonishment of snow?

There was a pounding in her ears. She realised it was the drum of her own heart.

Hardly daring to breath, Scootaloo crept from her room, then down, down the landing, and slowly, slowly, she descended the staircase. She breathed in. Her lungs filled with snow-fresh air.

She opened the living room door again and was drowned in warmth.

“Ah-hah!” the fireplace said. “So, you’re ready to talk, hmm?”

Scootaloo shut the door behind her. “What are you? What’s going on?”

Although the fireplace lacked shoulders, Scootaloo caught the hint of a shrug in its voice as it said, “Is that any way to talk to a guest, filly? One question at a time. What do you wish to know?”

Scootaloo was in half a mind to fetch the mop bucket and hurl it over the flames. “First,” she said, “my name’s not ‘filly’, it’s Scootaloo. Second, what’s with all the weird junk that’s going on?”

“I’m intrigued. What ‘junk’ are you referring to?”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “I mean, what happened to the ponies in the photos? What’s up with the snow? Why are you talking to me all of a sudden?”

The fireplace sighed. “On my honour as a bringer of heat and light in the gloom, I haven’t the faintest idea what photographs you are referring to. The snow, too, is not my doing: I suspect windigos – or perhaps it is blizzardwolves, oh curse their devilry. As for the final question, I would have thought the answer obvious, filly.”

Scootaloo huffed. “It’s Scootaloo. And what d’you mean, obvious?”

“I mean, is it not obvious I am no common little fire? I am offended. Humpf! I ought to leave right this instant.”

“Yeah, right,” said Scootaloo. “If you’re not a fire, what are you?”

The fire blazed brilliant bright, and it grew until it licked the ceiling with red shining tongues. Scootaloo leapt back in alarm.

The fire’s voice deepened. It was a voice with infernos in it.

“I am no simple fire,” it growled, “no puny blaze nor smouldering log pile. I am an Emberwolf, girl, and you would do well to treat me with the respect I deserve.”