“Hey, kid,” said a voice from nearby. It didn’t belong to the Emberwolf. “Wanna know something strange about the phrase, ‘Live with the sky inside of your heart?’”
Scootaloo opened her eyes. Something was wrong: her instincts warned her that she wasn’t truly awake. Yet, at the same time, neither was this a dream – for she was well familiar with the feel of dreams, and so she knew at once that this was something else, somewhere halfway between sleeping and waking. It was dark – gloom of a kind she had rarely encountered in real life. The cold darkness froze her skin and wormed its way into her muscles.
However, it wasn’t until she raised a paw to her eyes that she realised what was off about things: the fires in her coat had extinguished. She couldn’t flex her claws. She couldn’t, because she didn’t have them anymore.
She had hooves.
With a gasp, Scootaloo pressed a hoof to her cheek. Her face was soft and squishy, and her nose twitched, and her eyes were wet. When she sat up straight and spoke out loud, it was with a pony’s vocal cords, and with a pony’s lips.
“Wh-who’s there?” she said.
“Oh, y’know, a friend of a friend,” said the someone-in-the-dark from somewhere in front of her. For a spirit-jolting moment, Scootaloo thought it was Rainbow Dash. The voice possessed the same toughness as the cherished foalsitter’s, a voice made for adventures, and which had lived through a thousand perils. Yet the voice sounded too old for Rainbow Dash. It was too low, and much too deep. Did it even belong to another pony, Scootaloo wondered?
“Anyway, as I was saying,” continued the someone-in-the-dark. (Scootaloo’s ears perked up. They were pony ears, light and fuzzy, and they were glorious.) “To live with the sky inside of your heart is actually an old blizzardwolf idea. Ancient, in fact. Though, strictly speaking, ‘heart’ isn’t the right word. The proper saying is ‘Live with the sky inside of your soul’. Much more poetic, don’t’cha think?”
Scootaloo decided that, despite the darkness and the mysterious voice, she wasn’t in the least bit scared. The voice wasn’t unfriendly, but something about it was fireside-welcoming – a voice for telling spooky ghost stories on a cosy Hearth’s Warming Eve.
All the same, she wished that the someone-in-the-dark would shine a light over their face. She couldn’t see them at all.
“Um, I guess so?” Scootaloo said, answering the question.
(She stroked her leg with a hoof, she savoured it, treasured the warmth of her hair and the softness of her skin, the blood-red life that pumped through her veins. She was a filly again! Tears formed in her eyes, but she couldn’t understand why. She couldn’t wrap her head around those tears. Why in Equestria was she crying, when this was the most wondrous she had ever felt in her life?)
The someone-in-the-dark continued as though Scootaloo hadn’t spoken. “How Rainbow Dash could’ve heard it,” they said, “I’ve got nooo idea. We’re all familiar with good ol’ Rainbow, y’know. Oh, she’s never seen us, of course – but we live in the sky, and we’ve sure as thunderclaps seen her. She’s not… how should I put this? She’s not the most eloquent pony. Maybe she heard the saying from somepony else, and liked the shape of the words? Maybe she got ‘soul’ mixed up with ‘heart?’ Who knows, eh?”
Gradually, Scootaloo became aware of the sensation of movement. It was subtle, no more than the slightest tilting of the floor, the gentlest bobbing up and down of the ground. Whatever she was sitting on (and she realised that it wasn’t rock, but wood), she sensed that it was moving through the inky blackness...
The someone-in-the-dark cleared their throat. “Scootaloo,” they said. “Listen carefully for a moment. To live with the sky inside of your soul: this is a difficult task. The sky is open, and so you too must be open, much like the wide blue wilds I and my kind call home. You’ve gotta be boundless, ceaseless, endless, limitless. And, in the same way the sky is never afraid to bare its soul with the world – whether it’s happy with sunshine or angry with rainstorms – you too must be willing to bare your soul to others. Above all, you must be honest to yourself about your feelings. Only then can you know what it is to soar.”
Scootaloo stood up on shaking hooves. The floor rocked, but she held herself steady and faced where she thought the voice’s owner stood. “I don’t understand,” she said.
The someone-in-the-dark laughed. It was a Rainbow Dash laugh, and Scootaloo’s soul flooded with yearning.
“Give it time, Scootaloo,” they said to her. “Even with the guidance of the Elder Wolf, it was years before I understood any of this. Years! The lifespan of a pony! Yet, I am still learning. I’m very young, for what I am.”
Scootaloo pondered this. “You’re not an emberwolf, or I’d be able to see you,” she said, stroking her chin. “Your body would be on fire, and your eyes would be all lit up and stuff. But I don’t think you’re a regular wolf either.” A chilling thought struck her. “Wait a second. You’re not a timberwolf, are you?”
The wolf-in-the-darkness laughed. “A timberwolf? Hardly, Scootaloo. I’m a blizzardwolf, of course.”
Scootaloo didn’t need to see the Blizzardwolf to know that it was telling the truth – for the truth was all around. It was in the taste of snow upon the air, in the scent of conifers coming from its wolfish body, and in the marrow-freezing coldness of the breeze. A Blizzardwolf. It was a word she had heard only once before, very briefly, and earlier that same night from the mouth of the Emberwolf.
“Tell me, Scootaloo,” said the Blizzardwolf. “Do you trust your friends?”
Scootaloo’s mind raced. What a strange question from a strange, strange beast – she had assumed that if the Blizzardwolf had asked her anything at all, then it would ask about the Emberwolf. Were they mortal enemies? Had the Blizzardwolf come to save her from the Emberwolf’s burning clutches?
“Duh. Course I trust them,” Scootaloo said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
The breeze picked up until it was colder than the breath of windigos. Scootaloo shuddered.
“Well shoot, can you blame me for asking?” the Blizzardwolf replied. “It’s the li’l things, y’know. They make me wonder. I’m talking about things like, say, running away with a giant wolf made from coal and fire, just ’cause it told you that you were dead right to shout at your friends yesterday. Things like becoming an emberwolf pup yourself, then delving halfway towards the Heart of the Earth and abandoning everything you’ve ever known. Stuff like that. It makes me question if you’re actually friends with your so-called friends.”
Scootaloo stamped a hoof on the wood. The floor lurched; she gasped, but she caught herself before she fell. (It almost felt like they were on a boat.)
“Hey!” she said once she had steadied herself. “That’s not fair. All that doesn’t count.”
“Oh? And why not?”
“ ’Cause it doesn’t, OK? So what if me and my friends had an argument? They love me. I saw ’em in the Land of my Heart – or, I dunno, magical versions of ’em or something. So there.”
“Ah,” said the Blizzardwolf. Scootaloo sensed it move in the shadows in front of her. “You’re talking about the missing ponies from your photographs, right? Big deal. That was just a side-effect of the Emberwolf being in your house – it’s one of the most stupendously magical creatures in existence, y’know. All sorts of weird stuff happens in its presence. Photos come to life; your aunts get turned into candle flames. By the whiskers of the Elder Wolf, it’s impossible to say what might happen next!”
Scootaloo frowned. “You don’t get it. When I spoke to ’em, it was like they were real.”
“Well, maybe they did feel real,” the Blizzardwolf said, its syllables pointy and sharp. “But, so what? A photograph of a thing isn’t the same as the thing itself. How d’you know your friends love you in real life? What if your parents hate you? What if Rainbow Dash never comes back to visit ever again?”
Scootaloo shook her head. “Rainbow’s coming back.”
“How do you know?”
Something burned inside of Scootaloo; her blood RAGED. “Because she PROMISED!” she yelled. “Rainbow loves me. She loves me more than life itself and she’s coming back! My friends love me too, and – and—”
Her wings flared, her tail bristled, and if only she knew where the Blizzardwolf stood in the darkness before her, she would have kicked it square in its stupid snout. Instead, she breathed in, then released the pent-up words in one big torrent. “They LOVE me! They do, they do! They love me even though I was dumb, and I hurt them. But I’m never gonna do that again, never never never never never. I love ’em. I love ’em so much. Don’t you DARE say they don’t love me back. Don’t you DARE!”
Tears streamed furiously down her face and her nose was snotty. Her wings felt electric.
But then the Blizzardwolf did something that Scootaloo didn’t expect. It moved across the wooden floor, rocking the boat from side to side, and it threw its front legs around her in a hug. It was far smaller than Scootaloo had expected – no bigger than Mom. Its fur was soft. And, in spite of how shockingly chilly the Blizzardwolf’s body was, its embrace felt so much like one of Rainbow Dash’s that Scootaloo’s anger melted in an instant, and she felt that she was back home again reading books in front of the fireplace with her beloved foalsitter. She imagined that Mom and Dad were there too, and Aunt Holiday and Aunt Lofty, and Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.
“And that,” said the Blizzardwolf, releasing Scootaloo from its hold, “is what it means to live with the sky inside of your soul. That’s what it’s like to be completely honest with yourself, and to recognise the fires of anger for what they truly are: fierce, yet purposeful. In your heart, you understand that the mere suggestion that your family and friends don’t love you is insulting. You understand that it’s worth getting angry about. Here is a secret, Scootaloo. There will always be those who’ll tell you to stifle your anger, to keep quiet, act mannered and polite – but whilst it’s true that raw anger is not always the best solution, at the same time, wielded properly, anger can be a force for tremendous good. It can be one of the greatest forces of all, in fact.”
The Blizzardwolf paused for a moment, then lowered its voice. “The flipside is that your anger must work hoof-in-hoof, paw-in-paw, and hand-in-hand with love. Your anger must be rooted in love, or else it will become untethered and dangerous. Like a fire raging out of control, it will consume you, and transform you into something you’re not, much like it did to the poor Emberwolf. You mustn’t allow your anger to turn you into a force of hatred instead of love…”
Scootaloo’s head throbbed as she tried to process what the Blizzardwolf was telling her. So, it had been testing her. It had been teaching her a lesson.
“That’s cool and all,” Scootaloo said, “but you could’ve just told me. You didn’t need to be such a jerk about it.”
The Blizzardwolf sounded uncomfortable. “I apologise. Deeply. Um… we blizzardwolves aren’t in the habit of talking with ponies so often… it can be difficult to remember where your boundaries lie…”
Scootaloo rolled her eyes. She was still annoyed – however, she decided not to press the matter any further. Because something dawned on her, and it perplexed her.
She squinted her eyes, trying to make out the Blizzardwolf’s body, but it was still too dark.
“Say, you’re a wolf, right?” Scootaloo asked.
“That I am.”
“Then how come when you hugged me, you had hooves instead of paws?”
But the Blizzardwolf said, “All will be revealed, Scootaloo. In the meantime, look up.”
Scootaloo looked up.
She saw a light.
It was a star, no more than a point of white in an endlessness of black. Suddenly, all of her questions tumbled away. Right then, that distant pinprick of light felt like the only thing in the world worth concerning herself with. She had never seen something so beautiful in her life...
Another star appeared in the corner of her vision, followed by another and another, until it seemed that castor sugar had been sprinkled over black velvet – and still more appeared, more and more! Some stars were blazing brilliant, others were small, and others still were red, pink, purple, or brightest blue. There were sapphire-stars and amethyst-stars. Only in her dreams had Scootaloo ever seen anything remotely approaching this many stars. Then, just as she had this thought, curtains of light shimmered into existence, and they were the hugest sight she had ever seen. It was as though they were woven from emeralds: vast sheets of pale-green light that danced amongst the stars. They stretched, softly shining, across the length of the night. Scootaloo didn’t have a name for them, and neither could she think of one. Words had been driven from her head.
“The aurora,” said the Blizzardwolf. Scootaloo had almost forgotten it was there. “The Northern Lights. It is the Soul of the Sky. Us blizzardwolves dance amongst them, and hunt herds of star deer upon its shining surface.”
In a daze, Scootaloo tore her eyes from the Northern Lights and saw two black sails. Just as she had guessed, they were on a tiny sailboat in the middle of the ocean. The water was choppy. The aurora turned the waves blue-green-white. And, sprouting like a plant from the front of the boat, she watched as a red lamp grew into existence by magic. The lamp cast its yellow glow over the sea, and over the sails and the blizzardwolf.
Except, it wasn’t a blizzardwolf after all.
It was Daring Do.
Daring Do grinned and nodded at a dumbfounded Scootaloo. “Well, the secret’s out, I guess,” Daring said. “No autographs, I’m afraid.”
Scootaloo gawked at her. It was Daring Do, hero of her favourite novels, Daring Do of the light brown coat and a mane and tail with all the greys and blacks of a night-time rainbow! Her clothes were battered from breathless adventures. She wore a Rainbow Dash grin. There was fierceness in her eyes, the look of a pony who was ready for anything.
... And they were the wrong colour.
In the novels, Daring Do’s eyes lay somewhere between red and purple. The imposter’s eyes, on the other hoof, were intense green, as though made from the aurora.
The Daring Do imposter shrugged under Scootaloo's glare.
“Hmm. OK, looks like you got me,” the imposter said. “This pony body of mine – it’s just a disguise. What gave it away? Oh gosh, it’s the eyes, isn’t it? They’re my normal colour, aren’t they?” She sighed, then shook her head, and her eyes changed from green to scarlet. “The pack decided it would be less alarming if I was in a more, um, pony-friendly form – and we knew that you liked these books. My true form, my blizzardwolf body, is quite terrifying for li’l fillies, y’know… I don’t even think I’d fit inside this boat if I was in my proper form.”
It was Scootaloo’s turn to sigh, but it was a good sigh. She appreciated that the Blizzardwolf wanted her to feel comfortable in its presence. Then again, she was a filly who had travelled deep into the Buried Continent, and who had done things that no pony or emberwolf had ever done before. She was the filly who lived with Rainbow Dash in her soul.
So, she said, “Thanks, honestly. But I’m the bravest foal in Ponyville. I reckon I could handle your true form.”
“Hah!” said the Blizzardwolf (though perhaps, thought Scootaloo, it was more accurate to call her ‘Daring Wolf’). “That’s what I said! I told ’em, ‘Scootaloo’s awesome, she can handle a big scary ice-wolf!’ But it was me against all the others, and… well, I s’pose that’s not important right now. We don’t have much time. Do me a favour, Scootaloo, and look up.”
Scootaloo looked up at the sails.
“No, silly, look away from the sails. Look to the stars!”
Scootaloo turned her head slightly and gazed at the millions of stars shimmering over the ocean. It was an ocean which existed in the place halfway between dreams and waking. It was somewhere that perhaps not even Princess Luna had ever visited.
“OK,” Daring Wolf said beside her. “Now tell me: what d’you see?”
“Um, stars?”
“Peer harder. Live with the sky inside of your soul. Let the sky speak to you, then answer again.”
Scootaloo stared and stared and stared, unsure of what she was searching for. Just when she wondered if she should give up and ask what she was meant to be looking at, suddenly, she saw it: there, in the glimmer of the stars and the shimmer of the aurora, she spied a flash of movement.
“I saw it!” she whispered back.
“Excellent, Scootaloo! But keep still. Keep looking.”
Scootaloo held her breath and continued to stare into the sky, eagerly this time. Then she yelped as – although her hooves remained firmly planted on the floor of the boat – she felt a sensation like being hoisted into the stars by invisible hooves, or like she was being sucked into the Northern Lights themselves. They filled all of her vision; then mighty images began to form in those green and shimmering curtains. The more she looked, the more vivid they became. She saw the cottage. She saw the living room, then the staircase, and then the door right at the end of the landing: the door which led to the attic. It wasn’t locked anymore, as it had been when she had searched for her aunts earlier that night. Instead, it opened to reveal the wooden staircase beyond, and a moment later, Scootaloo saw the attic itself. Built into the slanted roof was a window, a skylight, and it too was open. White light poured into the room. Peering in through the open window, standing on the rooftop, were Rainbow Dash, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. The three of them beamed at her and called her name.
“Scootaloo!” they said as one. “Come home, Scootaloo! Come back!”
Beside her, Daring Wolf cleared her throat. “Do you trust your friends, Scootaloo? Do you have faith in them? Then listen to what I say. Find a way back to your Aunts’ house and then make your way to the attic – for the attic is your only escape. Even as we speak, your friends are working hard to dig you out of the snow. We will unlock the door; we will unlock it with magic. In return, you must do something for us blizzardwolves.”
The pictures in the Northern Lights faded; Scootaloo looked back down to the sails, and then at Daring Wolf. She felt dizzy. And somehow, the blizzardwolf-in-disguise seemed so much older and wearier than she had done before.
“What have I gotta do?” Scootaloo asked. “If it means seeing my friends again, I’ll do anything.”
Daring Wolf closed her eyes. She breathed in and then replied in a whisper. “Bring our friend back,” she said. “She’s changed, Scootaloo, beyond almost all recognition. Our friend has changed into a monster.”
Scootaloo shuddered, thinking suddenly of how the Emberwolf had spoken to her after she had accidentally destroyed one of the fireflakes. She had feared for her safety. The Emberwolf had made her feel afraid...
Daring Wolf’s voice wavered. “Scootaloo,” she said. “I am so sorry that I ask this of you. It is almost unforgivable of me, the danger I’m placing you in: yet I fear that, from this moment on, terrible danger lies in wait no matter which choice you make. So, tell her…” Daring Wolf took a steadying breath. “Tell her that her pack forgives her, and that we don’t care about what she took. It doesn’t matter anymore. She can smash the heirloom to pieces for all we care, if only she would come back to us – if only she would remember her true self.”
Daring Wolf opened her eyes, and they were filled with tears. Her voice was ragged.
“Scootaloo... we miss our friend, and we are so, so sorry for the part we played in her transformation into an emberwolf. Oh gods. We messed up, Scootaloo. We messed up. We lost sight of what was important. Canis Major. We miss her.”
Scootaloo gaped at Daring Wolf. “Wait," she said. "Canis Major? Is that her name?”
Daring Wolf didn’t respond, but shut her eyes and stamped a hoof on the floor: and with that, in the blink of an eye, Scootaloo awoke for the second time. Yet this time, it was for real. She was in the Hidden Forest again, in the enormous cavern under the Buried Continent. She was under an oak tree on the edge of the glade, right where she had drifted asleep.