//------------------------------//
// Chapter I: A Day in Ponyville 
// Story: Prism Star and the Nightmare Winter 
// by CherryRush 
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Prism Star


In the smallest dormitory of a crystal castle, a little white unicorn of 8 years sat up in her bed and looked out the window, wrapping her blanket around her against the cold. The very first rays of the dawn's light were starting to filter in through the window, painted a delicate pink by the massive dome of shield magic that covered the town every day and every night without stopping - the only thing protecting her home from the frozen wasteland that covered all of Equestria.
Of course, nopony else was awake this early in the morning - even the roosters on the farms were probably asleep. But Prism Star always woke up early to see the dawn that turned her white fur pink and her tousled blue hair a beautiful violet. And to practice her magic, of course. Prism had always struggled at magic, and everypony knew that she was only in the Starswirl Memorial Academy of Magic because her father was a powerful wizard, the master of the local Weather Guild.
Prism struggled to master levitation and telekinesis long after her classmates were lifting apple carts, stacks of heavy books, and each other with ease. She'd never quite managed to teleport without losing her tail - and one time more than that, as she often remembered in her nightmares. And transfiguration was out of the question, unless you wanted a bizarre hybrid of an orange and a cat. But there was one thing she'd always been able to do... one special trick that everypony else thought was useless. And she did it every morning.

The filly started by raising her hoof to the sun and closing her eyes, letting the familiar flow of magic surge through her horn. Her instructors said that accessing magic was like feeling a current of lightning run through your horn, but Prism never understood that. For her, it always felt like she was basking by a fire, the warmth lapping at her body even as the firelight shimmered golden-orange around her horn. She opened her eyes and moved her hoof through the air, sighing happily as a thin trail of red light shined behind it; she twisted her hoof a little as she traced and the color changed to a pale purple, as she drew out the shape of one of the motor carriages that carried supplies from Ponyville to all the other towns across the wasteland, and vice versa.

"I guess it is pretty, blank flank, but unless you want to fail your exam, you're going to need more than pretty lights." Prism turned to see a tall, teenage unicorn filly with a dark blue cloak over her smoke gray coat, with green eyes and a white mane cut into the severe upright brush she said was a Zebrican style. "Get dressed and we'll practice out in the yard."
For her part, Prism just sighed as she hopped off of the bed, revealing a white flank with no cutie mark and a long tail that brushed against the ground, at least before she concealed both with a cloak like the other unicorn's, and started to brush her hair- by hoof. "I really wish you wouldn't call me that, Shimmer."
"You want me to go back to calling you Pancake Face?" Shimmer laughed. "I may have a soft spot for you, but I've got a reputation to maintain. Hey, look at the bright side - nopony will make fun of you for being bad at magic if you're practicing with the mean girl."
Prism just sighed at this. "Fine. Let's go."

By the time they were done, Prism was completely exhausted, and Shimmer didn't seem to be breaking a sweat, her green magic shining around Prism as she lifted the younger pony up onto the statue of Starlight the Redeemed in the garden. "Hey. Prism... I wouldn't worry about it too much. I think you'll do fine tomorrow."
"I can barely do anything the others can do. I mean, yeah, at this point I can do the basic unicorn stuff... and I can play with light... but that doesn't seem like it'll help. I'm gonna get held back a grade for sure. Again." The young unicorn flopped back over the stone mare's plinth, between her front hooves. "My father is in charge of all of the weather, and my mom helped raise the sun. How am I supposed to go to her grave and tell her that her daughter is stuck in the second grade still?"
The filly closed her eyes and started to cry, and after a few moments felt a warm wind across her face. "We don't have to," said a male voice with the soft rumble of an oncoming storm, and Prism opened her eyes to see a yellow-bearded and maned unicorn stallion with a coat of the palest blue, sitting on a small gray cloud and watching her with a soft smile. "It wouldn't be the first secret I've kept from your mother."
"Father!" 
Prism Star quickly grinned and rolled onto her hooves, jumping onto the cloud and falling through with a startled yelp before her father lifted her with a nimbus of electric-blue magic and placed her firmly on the cloud next to him. "Remember, only pegasi can sit on a cloud without magic."
"Thunderbolt..." Shimmer bowed her head a little bit to him.
"Shimmer. Treating my daughter well?" He chuckled at her.
"Y-yes, sir. I was trying to help her with her magic." He gave her a quiet glare and she grinned nervously, shaking her head. "J-just that, sir. Nothing else, I promise." Thunderbolt stared at her a bit longer before lighting his horn and moving the whole cloud away with himself and Prism on it.

They rode in silence for a time, watching down at the town of Ponyville. It had steadily grown over time - as one of the few farming communities with enough unicorns and pegasi to protect against the eternal winter, Ponyville had grown in importance as a source of food for many parts of Equestria that could no longer grow food of their own. Many hooves now worked the vast fruit orchards under the protective dome of magic that maintained summer underneath, and in the distance Prism could see the factory that churned out tinned and preserved fruits for transport to the other towns. A line of massive, armored motor carriages squatted like great bears on the road to the factory - they must be preparing for another shipment across the frozen wastes.

"Don't be sad, my little sunlight. It took your mother a long time to master her magic." Thunderbolt lifted Prism's chin with one hoof to look her in the eye. "You're so much like her. You even have the same green eyes."
"Can you tell me about her again?"
"I suppose so... she was the kindest and most beautiful mare I ever knew. I remember the time that I first saw her..." He curled on the cloud around his daughter. "I was in Canterlot convening with the College of Weather Wizards - back then I wasn't a guild master, I was just a messenger who brought the weather orders down from the College. Anyway... I got the chance to see the College of Celestial Wizards raise the sun... it was an amazing sight... so many ponies working as one... all of them willing to sacrifice everything they were for the good of all creatures."
"Is it true that you lose your powers if you try to raise the sun?"
Thunderbolt gave Prism an odd look, as though he were assessing her as they slowly drifted over the apple orchards towards the dome. "Sometimes... the weaker you are, the more unicorns you need, and the greater the chance that someone..." The stallion shuddered. "When unicorns join together, our magic is like a chain. Each horn is a link in the chain, and each pony pulls on the chain as strongly as they can... but a spell that powerful is all or nothing. You can't duck out if you aren't strong enough. Even the strongest pony will snap eventually... One hundred and eleven unicorns worked on the spell that day. Ten Celestial Wizards, each with ten conscripts under them." He went silent, and his face took a somber cast that made him look fifty years older than he was. "Twenty ponies lost their magic over the course of that day. Three of them..." He hesitated and looked at Prism again, trying to decide if she could handle the truth. "Three of them left this world forever. But in the middle of all of those unicorns was your mother. She was a prodigy."

"A... a prodigy? What does that mean?"

By now tears were welling up in Thunderbolt's eyes. "When it came to Celestial magic, there was no pony better than Guiding Star. The Celestial Wizards gave their power, but it was her hoof that raised the sun. She was beautiful, and effortless, and iridescent... When her platform rose above the shield, and the morning sun painted her in all the colors of the dawn, you would have sworn that she was Celestia come again." By now the sun was beginning to set as they drifted towards the dome. "I sought her favor relentlessly as a young wizard. She worked so hard in the day, and slept through the night, but in between we had the twilight. I showed her how to sneak into the Canterlot Guard's pegasus tower, and from there we climbed up the spires to get past the shield. I would clear the winter clouds and she showed me a gift very much like yours, the most beautiful filaments of sunlight and starlight that she used to trace the constellations as we talked the hours away." He laid back in the cloud, pulling Prism with him so that both ponies were laying on their backs, watching the deepening twilight as the stars began to wink into the sky, and Prism could see the moon rising even as the sun set.

"There was one constellation in particular that was special. It only appeared on nights when both the sun and the moon were in the sky... just like this one. And sometimes she would stall the sun, so that we could see it better, because it gave us both hope."
"What constellation is it, Dad?"
He took her foreleg with his hoof and pointed it at a large, bright star in the southern sky. "Start there. Use your imagination... and your mother's gift."

Prism looked at the stars for a moment before she summoned the trail of light and began tracing it with her hoof, from star to star. On a whim, she decided to use purple light this time, as her father began to tell her another story.
"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. She had the power to raise the sun and the moon-"
At this, Prism stopped tracing, letting the half-formed picture of a unicorn mare fade away in the air. "Dad. I know the story of Celestia and Luna. It makes up most of my history classes. It's not like it's a fairy tale."
"Oh really, sunlight? Then why don't you tell the story for me?"

The little filly gave him an exaggerated sigh. "Fiiine... A long time ago, discord and disharmony ruled the world. Pony went to war with pony, and unicorns raised the sun and moon just as we do now. But one day, two young alicorns showed up and their names were Celestia and Luna. They had the ability to raise the sun and moon all on their own, and a lot of other powers too, and so Starswirl the Bearded declared them to be Princesses and became their tutor. Celestia and Luna guided the realm in a golden age of harmony and prosperity that we will never see again, before dying in YOH 1520 to a creature called the Nightmare that released the wendigos and plunged the realm into an eternal winter. But the great Queen Flurry Heart came down from the Crystal Empire and taught Equestrian ponies the magic to hold the winter at bay, and she defeated and sealed away the Nightmare."

Thunderbolt gave Prism a sly smile, watching her from the corner of his eye. "Is that what they taught you in school, now?"
"Um... yes?" She raised her eyebrow at him - didn't everypony learn this stuff?
"Why don't you go back to tracing that constellation before the sun is gone, and I'll tell you another story? A secret story passed down from parent to foal through the years, that you must never, ever tell to anypony else.

A long time ago, Celestia and Luna ruled the realm peacefully, as sisters. But sisters fight. Luna grew bitter that ponies loved the day and shunned the night, and so she let a dark force into her heart for the power to overthrow Celestia. That force was the Nightmare, and under its influence Luna became the wicked Nightmare Moon. But even that power was not enough, for Celestia had something greater - the Elements of Harmony, six great artifacts that together the two sisters had used to drive Discord from our land. The Elements banished Luna, and the Nightmare, to the moon, but they would not accept being used by a single pony, as tools of war and disharmony. So their power slipped from Celestia's grasp, and they never responded to her again.
Celestia knew that her seal would not last forever, but she had a plan. A plan to guide new bearers to the Elements of Harmony. She searched for centuries, but finally a tiny young student came to her - no older than you - and her name was Twilight Sparkle. Celestia trained Twilight Sparkle in magic personally, and on the thousandth year of Luna's imprisonment, she sent Twilight to this very town. And here she made friends, and together they became the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony even as Nightmare Moon escaped and pursued them. They used the Elements to defeat and heal Luna, stripping away the Nightmare and restoring Celestia's beloved sister.
In that time, Celestia had learned the secret of helping a pony to ascend, to become an alicorn- and she had a young adopted niece, a pegasus filly called Cadence, who she guided to become the Princess of Love. And not long after healing Luna with her friends, Twilight Sparkle ascended herself, and she became the Princess of Friendship."

At this, Prism Star gave her father a skeptical look as she interrupted, stopping in the middle of putting wings on the purple alicorn she'd been drawing from the stars. "Princess of Love? Princess of Friendship? What kind of power is that? Celestia had all the power of the sun, and Luna had all the power of the moon and night."

"Yet for all the sun's fire, and all the moon's beauty, it is love and friendship that drive ponies more than anything else. Now as I was saying...

Flurry Heart was Cadence's daughter. She was born an alicorn, rather than ascending like the others - and some say this led to her fall. She always wanted more responsibility and more power, and one day the Nightmare came to her. It seduced her with promises of power, promises to break the limits that her parents and Princess Twilight had put on her own magic. It promised her that she could break the Elements of Harmony and overthrow Celestia and Luna. And... I suppose it didn't lie."

Prism gawped at him in confusion, pausing in the middle of drawing a dark blue mane and tail. "Wait... Queen Flurry Heart WAS the Nightmare? That can't be right!"

"Yes... at least, that's the story my dad told me, and his mom told him. Supposedly down the line all the way from our ancestor Starlight Glimmer. See, it was thanks to Twilight turning her away from evil that we call Starlight 'the Redeemed' now. And so she was loyal to Twilight, so loyal that she was willing to die for her friend. And loyal enough to run when Princess Twilight told her to run. She told her children the real story of how Nightmare Winter defeated and killed Celestia and Luna and even her own father. There was enough of Flurry Heart left that she couldn't let the Nightmare kill her mother, or her aunt Twilight... but she banished them both. Forever." Thunderbolt took Prism's hoof in his, showing her the traced image of a lavender alicorn with outstretched wings and a long, strait mane and tail. "Make a wish, Prism Star."

The young filly with the pale blue hair sniffled back her tears and looked at the princess made of light. "I wish... I wish... I wish..." She closed her eyes. I wish I could see the sun without this shield in the way.