//------------------------------// // Chapter One: A New Home // Story: Noble and Free // by Kaffeina //------------------------------// Chapter One A New Home The sun, risen by Princess Celestia who ruled the land of Equestria with her now returned younger sister, Princess Luna, slowly reached it's zenith and ponies were already moving about in a small town that was all but a short train ride outside of the country's capital, Canterlot. The small town was not overly important, except for having hosted the Summer Sun Celebration only but a few weeks back. Such it was that one lavender mare, with her deep purple mane with it's lighter pink and purple stripes, was staring out the window of her house, which happened to be a tree. A young purple scaled dragon was downstairs cooking what Twilight was quite certain might be lunch. She had already skipped breakfast when she felt the strange thing that had happened earlier that morning. Not to say she physically felt it, no, she had felt it instinctually and with her magic. Something had changed, something quite important. She had already penned her letter to the diarch, her teacher, and had yet to receive a response. She assumed the princess was investigating it herself and Twilight was quite content with that. At least she said she was, which she almost was. Almost. Something brand new, something that made little sense, happening in what was basically her backyard was pulling her curiosity like crazy and Spike had already calmed her down once that morning. It was at his insistence that the mare had sent yet another letter, which had helped calm her down enough she was certain she could contain herself. Not that it wasn't concerning to the dragon cooking downstairs, in fact, to Spike it was one of the days he was practically constantly praying to the princess herself that the mare who had raised him did not go on another one of those explosive episodes she hadn't been know for, in school at least. Celestia sent a letter back, promising to tell her protégé of any developments. As the mare paced back in forth in her home, the aforementioned Celestia, an alabaster alicorn with an ethereal mane of the colors of dawn, dusk, midday, sunrise, and sunset, was sitting calmly in a flying carriage drawn by a small squad of pegasi. She would have just flown herself, but it was the insistence of her guards that she took the carriage. She was royalty, but she did not particularly like using all the so-called privileges of being one. Luna had always been the one for dramatics, of course. She eyed the forest below them, the Everfree. It was a fairly large forest but nowhere near the size it was now. If anything, the large forest that had seemingly grown overnight was a multitude of times larger. Sure the two were connected, but the line between them was clearly drawn by the change from dark almost depressing trees to something that had stole her breath away when she had first seen it. The light cascaded perfectly through the leaves and brightened the ground beneath the canopy when she could see it. The forest was, if she could believe it, possibly more beautiful than the one the deer were so well known to live in, and that was just from above. The carriage began to descend just outside the edge of the new forest, the wind the only sound aside from the slight creak of the wood. Celestia watched as the forest approached the carriage bumped on the ground a little before it finally stopped and the pegasi stood at attention. "At ease," she said, "There's is no need for such formalities in this situation." The ponies nodded and Celestia moved towards the forest as they followed. She stepped under the canopy of leaves and, for the first time in a very long time, the millennia old princess was struck quite literally, breathless. The pegasi stared. The forest itself was not something overly different, but it was the vast stillness, the silence, the feel of the air, and the feeling of a warm presence watching them that struck them with it's beauty. Celestia struggled for a few moments to recover her wits, and her guards struggled for a few moments longer. "It's..." one of the pegasi stared. "Beautiful," Celestia said, "I've never seen anything like it. It should be eerie and disturbing, but it's tranquil, peaceful, and almost... otherworldly." The guards nodded and Celestia took a few steps, the soft crunch her hooves made on the ground almost echoing in the nearly perfect silence. The forest, if she remembered correctly, now spread from almost one end of Equestria to the other, it was massive. Yet, surprisingly, no towns were involved, the rails were fine, the roads were still there, but so was this inexplicable brand new forest. They ventured further, the idea of danger an inconceivable notion in this tranquil forest. Were it not for the sun, the princess and her companions would have felt as if no time, or all of time, was passing. It already felt that way, for the forest had this timeless atmosphere to it. For as hard as they had tried, guards and princess alike had been stopping consistently to gaze at the sights. Had it not been for what they saw in the trees ahead of them, they would have been distracted for far longer. In the trees were the ruins of houses and possibly other buildings, some were even amongst the trees themselves. Celestia approached the broken sign just outside of the cluster of ruins and stared. The word was completely unfamiliar, alien, and unlike any language she had seen in her entire life. ΠρώταΛαγκάδα "What does it say, your highness?" one of the pegasi asked, frowning at the bizarre letters. They unintelligible and quite literally, unreadable with pony language. Celestia blinked and stared before speaking. "I honestly have no idea, but the dust and foliage tell me this place is old, impossibly old for having just arrived," she answered. Looking back at her guards, "I believe we have quite the mystery ahead of us." With an eager sprint, Twilight Sparkle raced downstairs to the main part of her home. Books lined the wood walls from floor to ceiling, it was a library after all. She wasn't entirely sure who had run it before hand, but they certainly had not lived in the library itself considering the rooms she was using now had been full of storage, which she elected to move all into the now much larger basement. The young mare practically burst through the door and almost collided full speed with the princess, who looked quite amused at her antics. "What did you find?" the mare asked excitedly, positively bouncing in place. The guards smiled, they remembered Twilight's antics from the past and it was clear that, while she was growing up, she was still the young mare with a passion for learning. Celestia motioned her hoof inside, and Twilight made an o with her mouth before moving out of the way as the princess walked into the library. "Do you have a map, Twilight?" the princess asked. "I have a map of Equestria, Ponyville, Canterlot, the Badlands-" Celestia cut her off with a smile and shook her head. "Just of Equestria for now," she said and Twilight nodded rapidly as she lifted one of the large rolls of paper in the corner with her magic. The map unrolled on the table and Twilight placed paperweights on it's corners. Celestia hummed lightly. "Perhaps we should make a spell for that," she commented and Twilight's eyes widened. Without seconds, the young mare was already scribbling away on a notepad as the alabaster alicorn shook her head in amusement. With a small flash, Celestia brought a quill from the air and directed it to outline the shape of the forest she had just visited. Twilight, in the mean time, kept scribbling. "Twilight," the princess called out. The mare kept scribbling. "Twilight," the alicorn called out, yet again. After calling out a few more times, she finally wrested the small quill from her student's magic and gave her a look. The mare smiled sheepishly, "Sorry," and made her way over to the table. Before her, on the spread out map of Equestria, Celestia had outlined a very large portion. Twilight hummed as she looked at it. The forest encompassed the majority of northern Equestria, even going out beyond her borders. Compared to even the deer, caribou, and even some of the uninhabited forests, this forest was absolutely massive. Twilight blinked in shock as Celestia muttered over the map, "Um, princess? Is it really this big?" "I have estimated, going by how much I could see, but that may not be the limits to it's size," Celestia finally marked a location on the map. It was inside the forest itself, just a short map length inside the forest itself. Of course, the actual distance was somewhere near a thirty minute walk. Twilight blinked. "That's... That's massive," she muttered, looking at the circled location inside the borders of the forest. "What's there, princess?" "Ruins, they're impossibly old and I can't read what they say. I was hoping you might be able to, so I copied the words from the sign," Celestia removed a small scroll from the saddlebag on her side and hoofed it to the lavender mare. Excitedly, she unrolled and it froze. The young mare blinked. She blinked again. "What is this?" she asked. "I was hoping you would know," Celestia answered, frowning slightly, "I've never seen it before, and I thought you might have encountered it in your studies in the past." "I haven't, I haven't encountered anything remotely like this," the mare's eyes were wide, "the closest is the minotaur writing system, but even that is still in a similar style to ours. This one has letters and flourishes I've never seen, if it came from here, it came from nowhere we know of." Celestia sighed, "I was afraid of that," She pointed at the circle with her hoof. "I'd like you to see if you can't find more information out at the village we discovered." Twilight shook eagerly, a wide smile splitting her face, "I'd love to!" "Be careful, of course," Celestia said as she moved towards the door, "We never know what might be out there." The wind rustled the leaves as a fair figure looked around, she had been walking around for some time and there was nothing inherently new. The forest felt far more alive, the sun's warmth was stronger than it had been in so long, and the breeze practically breathed life into her surroundings. Despite these refreshing changes, which were so little, nothing new had made it's way into the forest as of yet. There were no animals nor people. Perhaps it was because of how far into the forest she was, but the elf's heart twinged. She had been alone for a very, very long time. Could a little longer hurt her? Certainly not, it was not as if she was going to die anytime soon, for what was there to there to hurt her so, except herself. Humming quietly to herself, the last of the elves began walking towards the village she had seen that young man so very long ago. He wouldn't be there, obviously he couldn't, but perhaps someone or something else would. The grass flattened beneath her bare feet as she silently drifted through the trees she had know for so very long, she no longer had to focus on where she was going for nothing had changed in since those days. Ethereal grace, had the people of this world seen her, they would've been surprised as how lightly she moved. She made no hurry, but she did not slow. The summer sun occasionally graced her face, now alight with the first smile it had seen for as long as she knew. How she knew there were people here, she could not say. Something about the way that voice had told her to live as she deserved told her, and her heart had soared. She was alone no more.