We were in the city when it happened, my father with my sister, and me by his side.
Even to this distant day, I cannot forget the sight of the buildings; they soared above us, far higher than anything I have seen since then. Their spires reached above the clouds into the heavens, and their size was greater than mountains.
I don't remember what it was, in particular, we had set out to do in that early twilight, the red sun slowly receding beyond the horizon. Carefree — that is the only word I can describe that first memory — my sister on my father's back, and me loyally by his side. The endless city around us so full of life, it assaulted the senses. And the ponies — like us.
Time: a strange force, it clouds my recollections. My father's face is a blur, his features buried beneath the weight of so many years that have passed. Only his spirit remains, as does the feeling of being close to somepony you love.
Love is a bond stronger than any memory; it does not fade with age or muddle with time. That is the only way I can remember my mother or father, no faces, just a sense of love. I wish I could remember their names.
Which is why, I expect, my father did what he did when we experienced the first blast.
It came from nowhere, a monsoon of hot air and thunderous noise that instantly tore through everything in its path. It struck us where we stood, myself knocked to the pavement, my father holding onto my sister before she could fall from his back. There is no way to describe the force that hit us, just this wall of air that arrived and left in the blink of an eye.
When I finally found my hooves beneath me once more, my ears were ringing terribly, and my chest was burning for air. The blast had knocked the breath clear out of me.
My sister's cries, the filly hardly older than a foal, was the first thing I could make out as the ringing slowly subsided. Father was calming her and pulling me close at the same time. All around us, the other alicorns were as stunned as we were and were getting shakily to their hooves.
Father — there was something in his eyes. Fear, realization, terror; looking back, he had to have known. I was about to ask him what was wrong when the sirens started.
In the distance, over the horizon, a dark cloud was rising into the atmosphere. It burned red and spewed orange firestorms from within it, it's light so bright as to turn away. It roiled and bubbled through the clouds, the whisps of white erased by searing heat that could be felt for miles.
Then we were running; everypony was running absolutely mad.
Luna, my sister, was screaming and crying terribly, and Father was dragging me along. My hooves had been as heavy as stone, for I could barely move out of shock. My whole life, I had never seen so many ponies so afraid.
Enmass, the population clogged the streets and filled the sky with their wings. Except it didn't appear if anypony knew where they were running to. It was madness, ponies crashing into each other and trampling their own beneath their runaway hooves.
Father was saying something as he herded us. It was hard to hear, what with the chaos, the sirens, and the screaming. But I think it was "No." Those same words over and over, a chant he kept repeating.
Now, at this time, I can accurately say it was the most frightened I had ever been. The pony that was my pillar, my rock, Father, was terrified. I had never seen him like this before, which is why I was so scared. What could be so horrible as to shake this invincible pony?
It was only by a matter of luck that we weren't trampled in the stampede. Father had pulled us into a small alley at the base of one the skyscrapers. The cloud of smoke and fire had extended into the sky, spreading its fingers of ash far and wide.
Father was poking his head out of our little hiding spot, looking for something. "Higher," he kept saying. "We need to get higher. It's only starting."
On his back, Luna's cries had softened into little whimpers, and her tears had run out. I can remember my mother's words from time to time, if not her face. 'Take care of you're little sister. You're the alicorn she is going to be looking toward as she gets older. It's up to you to watch over her.'
"It's ok," I tried to tell my sister, drying her face. "It was just a loud noise." But even for my young age, I knew by the way Father was acting, everything was far from ok.
By this point, Father had found what he had been looking for. "There," he told me and pointed.
It was a skyscraper, much higher than any of the others, with a spire of beautiful metal that glowed under the twilight sky. "Hold onto your sister," he instructed me, lowering Luna off his back. He then pulled both of us close to him, beneath his forelegs. "Hold onto me girls, and don't let go," he told us.
I had Luna grip his foreleg tight with me. Her eyes were wide, and she made little hiccups, but she didn't cry.
Father was focusing his magic, the glow of his great big horn encircling us and snapping shut around us with a clap.
Before I could even blink, we were up high, higher than I had ever been, and a cold wind was howling fiercely. Father wobbled on his hooves in the strong gusts, shielding Luna and I from the worst.
We were on the towering building he had pointed at moments before, teleported to a small platform beneath its highest spire. All around us, wires snaked from conduits and lights blinked atop dish-like objects pointed skyward.
From so high up, I can recall seeing the metropolis in all its glory, stretching from peak to peak of the mountains surrounding it. And in the distant, enormous fires where a neighboring city once stood burned.
Everything was happening so fast. Father had his head turned skyward, his horn glowing and his eyes searching among the stars that twinkled in the coming twilight.
Above, I could see streaks, like shooting stars, cutting across the sky. There must have been over a dozen. Father paid little attention to them when I pointed them out; he was more focused on the constellations making their nightly debut.
The 'shooting stars,' not all of them were falling, I soon saw; some were rising, bound for distant lands, leaving behind tails of white smoke and exhaust. I tried to ask Father what they were, but he only shushed me. His eyes were full of stars.
"We don't have long," he told me, in a panic. Many of the objects spewing fire across the sky were descending quickly around us. "There has to be someplace out there. Someplace safe."
The next thing I remember, I was watching as one of the shooting stars fell to earth at the edge of the city, and the world was filled with light — a blinding, consuming light. If my sister or I had been staring directly at it, we would have surely gone blind.
As I blinked away the spots, we were assaulted once more by a shockwave, a wave so powerful as to knock us to our knees. Luna was screaming, and I think Father may have been, too.
The ground was torn asunder by the explosion, a wall of fire racing toward us, vaporizing everything in his path.
Father was pulling us close. His eyes weren't fixed on the light that rushed toward, but another, one high in the heavens. It was a bright star, one among countless constellations in the sky.
"There," he breathed and pointed, his seeking spell falling. I remember him hugging us tightly, tears falling down his face. I had never seen my father cry before.
"Look after your sister," he whispered to me, his mane whipping in the blistering winds that barreled toward us. "It will be up to you to look after her where you are going. Mother and I won't be there to help you. I can only hope it is safe. I'm so sorry," he wept, holding us one last time. "I'm so, so, sorry, my sunshine."
I had no idea what my father meant by those words at the time. All that I knew was that I wasn't ready to leave his side. "Don't go!" I told him, hugging him even tighter before he pulled me away. Luna was petrified beside me. The wall of destruction was growing closer with each second, the skyscraper swaying like a cane stalk in a breeze.
More explosions had touched down around us, the world filled with poisonous fire and burning light that consumed everything.
My father's horn glowed brighter than ever before, and his eyes were pinpointed on the spot in the night sky. "I'm sorry," he kept repeating, shouting to be heard over the roar of the explosion that was pulling the ground up before it. "I'm so sorry, my children. I only wish I could be there with you. The spell — somepony has to stay behind."
The tears were flowing freely down his face. Annihilation was almost upon us, but he stood against it, his magic wrapping around Luna and I. "Always know that we love you — both of you — and that your mother and I will be with you always. Even if cannot see us, we'll always be there watching you."
I wanted to run to him, to stop him. But his magic had us in its grasp. The last image I have of him was the wave of fire rolling up the side of the skyscraper, his back to the mushrooming cloud of the lives of millions of alicorns extinguished, and a city gone. Then, blackness as we were pulled by into a void of emptiness, and the world disappeared.
I would eventually awake, to my suprise, surrounded by trees, the smell of putrid swampy air assaulting my senses. No fires, no falling stars, just trees and the glow of strange bugs that blinked with a dim light in the crisp night air.
Where we were, I hadn't the faintest clue at the time. Everything looked unfamiliar, — foreign and alien. Something croaked in the distance from some puddle of mire, and then more of the creatures joined in with a chorus of deep, bellowing ribbits.
Luna was right beside me, shivering and huddling against me. She wasn't looking at our new surroundings, but rather, at our new night's sky. "S-Stars," she managed to tell me with her limited vocabulary at her age. "Stars."
That was when I looked up and knew, when we both knew, that we were in a place very, very far away from home.
We sat huddled beneath the night, flinching at every peep and rustle in the brush, and gazed upon a sky of stars entirely new to us. No matter how hard I searched that night, I never found a familiar constellation.
Sometimes, when I'm alone and it is dark, I try to look up at the sky and wonder where they are — our parents, where we once called home. And sometimes I like to believe that my father's final image was of that bright star he had pointed to in his night sky, knowing that we were safe.
I watched over Luna all through that first night, alone, in a strange new place, with nopony to call our own. It was only when an orange light, much softer than the sun I knew, lifted above the trees in the morning, that we heard the sound of sompony approaching. They were whistling, and it sounded like they were pulling a creaking cart through the trees.
Whistling, and the tinkle of dozens of tiny, little bells.