//------------------------------// // Chapter Six // Story: A Winter's Tale // by Evilhumour //------------------------------// “What just happened?” Pansy asked as he stared at the map.  “...we did what it said,” Clover said, looking at the map with awe. “We all came from different places and ways of life, but we had a common purpose. So now it’s showing us where to find these Fires!”  “Because we felt the same way?” Cookie asked, looking at Snöflinga who seemed tight lipped again but was actually able to speak this time. “Yes,” he said clearly. “I've… I have felt strong connections, connections that would normally take years to develop. And it’s only been less than a day!” That caused the three ponies to take in what Snöflinga had just said. “He’s not wrong,” Clover said, looking at the others with a smile on her face. “I’ve known a lot of ponies in my life, but I never really… clicked, I guess, with any of them. Like Snöflinga said, I’ve only known you less than a day, but you guys have already come to mean more to me than anypony I’ve ever met up until now.”  “Same here,” Cookie said with a smirk on her face. “Because of who I am, I never really had any ponies that tried to befriend me, and I was mostly alone. But with you guys, things feel right.” Pansy drew in a breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ve… had friends,” he said. “But the fact is, I’ve never felt as close to them as I do to the three of you. And certainly not like this.”  They then turned to face Snöflinga with the windigo blinking before his face started to heat up. “I never felt this confident or comfortable with anyone before,” he said with his face towards the table before he lifted it slowly. “Since we’ve met, I’ve been able to speak longer periods without stuttering and I don’t want it to change at all.” “Who says it needs to change?” Cookie asked him before looking at the rest of them. “I don’t see any reason why we need to split up.” “But where would we even go?” Clover asked with a hoof still on the map. “There’s plenty of unsettled lands to the south,” Snöflinga said. “As long as we avoid Changeling territory, we could easily find a place for ourselves…”  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Changelings,” Pansy said. “What are they?”  Snöflinga sighed. “Another race of emotivores. Unlike my people, they feed on positive emotions - I think there are some who can also feed on negative ones, or maybe they just have a better tolerance for them, to help the rest of their kind who can’t handle them. They prefer warmer climates, and live underground most of the time, so my people don’t run into them too often. We have an unspoken rule for when we do though - we don’t bother them and they don’t bother us.”  Cookie looked surprised. “Just how many kinds of emotivores are there?”  “Just the three that I know of, counting my people,” Snöflinga said. “But getting back to what we were saying before…”  Cookie nodded. “Heading south is our best option if we do wish to stay all together,” she said. “Although…” She trailed off, looking down at the map.  “Look Cookie,” Clover said, placing a hoof on her shoulder. “It probably is a bad idea to leave this power alone but we’re the only ones with a map to it.”  “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find our way there,” Pansy said as he looked contemplative. “Maybe we can do both at once - scout out the other lands below while we’re going and see if we can find some place we might want to settle afterwards.”  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” Snöflinga said. “But it should come after we are all a bit better.” He gave a tentative look at Pansy’s wing. “And we will need to get a new ship too, of course.”    “It should take us at least a week for both,” Pansy mused, rubbing his chin with a hoof. “So maybe we should just finish our food and go back to our roo-” “Wait,” Clover said loudly, causing the three of them to turn to her. “There’s a magic spell that I want to try first,” she told them with her horn glowing. “Just extend a bit of your own magic first.” With curious looks on their faces, the pegasus, earth pony and windigo did as they were asked. After they had done so, Clover’s magic entangled theirs with bright light before it crystalized. When the glowing had faded, the four looked down to see they were now each wearing a necklace of some kind, each a chain of hard granite surrounding a crystal.  “What is this?” Pansy asked, holding his up and looking at it in fascination.  “Something to show how much we mean to each other by having part of ourselves in each other,” Clover said with a blsh.. “It was something that I thought of…. why are you three staring at me?” “Clover,” Cookie said with a hoof gently guiding her head downwards to her flanks and Clover let out a gasp. “My Cutie Mark! I finally got my Cutie Mark!” she exclaimed with joy and surprise. It was a starburst, the sign of a truly powerful unicorn whose talent lay in magic itself. “Congratulations,” Pansy said with a smile. The others all nodded in agreement, smiling happily at their friend. “We told you you just needed to let it happen naturally.” “That we did,” Cookie said, placing an arm around the smaller mare while Snöflinga just bobbed his head in agreement.  “Thanks,” Clover said with a blush, squirming on the spot before a cough snapped them back to the present.  “While we are all happy you have found your Cutie Mark miss, I will need to ask that you and your party either try to be a bit quieter or continue it somewhere else,” Clear Heart said as the others looked up in surprise, not having heard her approach. “We do have other guests here.”  “Sorry about that ma’am,” Clover said, looking red with embarrassment.  “I think we should go back to our room, in any case,” Pansy said with his own cheeks growing a bit redder, while Snöflinga’s ears twitched before the windigo started to cough to cover his own blush. Cookie saw their exchanges and whispered something into Clover’s ear that caused the unicorn to blush further while Pansy continued. “We have a lot of planning to do.”  Clear Heart nodded and turned to walk away, before looking back. “Oh, miss?”  “Yes?” Clover asked.  “Congratulations on your Mark.” With that, Clear Heart went off.  Quickly finishing their food, the four stood up and headed off to their room.  One week later… The four of them walked down the stairs, keeping close as they usually did, as they made their way to their table. The inn had gotten progressively more crowded over the last few days with ponies from the three kingdoms heading south. Pansy peered out of the window before looking at his friends. “It is getting worse, isn’t it?” Snöflinga nodded. “I can feel the negativity coming from miles away. They all think they’re getting away from it, but really, everyone out there’s just as unhappy as they had been back in their old homes.”  “And what from I’ve been hearing, most of the kingdoms are being abandoned due to the weather,” Cookie added.  Snöflinga sighed. “I’m not surprised. My people do tend to congregate around sources of negativity, and where they go, the stronger winter storms go. And when that happens, people tend to get unhappier… it’s a vicious cycle.” He shook his head as he began to eat his meal. “Though never to this extent; something is definitely up. It’s almost like they’re going out of their way to make things worse, like those stupid fish do.”  “I think their alliance is really falling apart,” Clover said, tapping the table with her hoof. “I am not sure if things will get better or worse now but I can't see any of them allowing a real peace to form as long as they’re in charge.” “All the more reason for us to get moving,” Cookie muttered. “The sooner we find you-know-what, the sooner things will get better. I hope.” She stared at her plate, pushing the food around with her hoof.  “The ship I rented should be ready soon, and then we can go,” Pansy replied. “We’ve got everything else ready, all we can do now is wait.”  Cookie sighed. “Waiting is not one of my strong points,” she grumbled.  “Sounds like there’s a reason you’re a fighter and not a medic,” Snöflinga said.  “Oh?” Cookie asked him with a smirk.  “Yeah. You’ve got no patients!”  Cookie stared at him for a moment before she started chuckling at the pun. “Thanks, Snöflinga. I needed that.”  Snöflinga grinned back. “No problem.”  They continued this light banter as they ate, each occasionally touching their necklace tenderly before they continued to focus on finishing their meal so they could begin to leave. After pushing their empty plates towards the centre of the table and leaving some coin that they had managed to scrounge up, they moved to go gather their meager belongings; the three ponies throwing on thick jackets as they pushed their way through the door to the outside. As soon as all four of them were outside, Snöflinga made his way into the middle of them and  used his snow magic to reduce as much of the cold as he could.  Clover let out a low purr at the change of temperature, leaning into Snöflinga’s side. “I can almost feel my horn, thanks to you.” Snöflinga snorted and rolled his eyes but then gave her a careful look. “If you got that cold that fast, then maybe we shouldn’t go after this flame.” Pansy shook his head. “Like you said, it’s getting worse,” he told them as he led the way towards the ship, doing his best to fight the strong wind blowing against him. “If we don’t go now, we might never get another chance.” “Besides, the faster we can get this you-know-what, the faster we can get started with our new lives,” Cookie said which had them all smiling before gritting their teeth as they walked through the wind and snow towards the dock where a small schooner was waiting for them. “Ready captain Pansy?” Cookie asked as they walked onto the deck of the ship.  “Ready,” Pansy replied. “Man the braces! Hoist the sails! Weigh the anchor!”  “We did!” Snöflinga called. “Two and a half tonnes!”  Pansy grinned at his comment. “Then let’s go!”  They lifted off into the air with the wind pushing them off towards the open waters. Behind them, Clear Heart watched with a content smile on her face before her horn flared green and she teleported away. It was much later in the day, with the four of them struggling to control their ship. While the storm had initially died down, it had since come back up to full strength, if not even greater than before, and it was taking everything they had to keep from being blown off-course.  Pansy kept calling out instructions towards Cookie while Clover and Snöflinga continued their previous tethering act to guide them. Still, even the windigo was having a hard time staying in the air from the force of the winds, squinting through the snow and starting to shiver despite his own inherent resistance to the cold. “Come land Snöflinga,” Clover called out. “It’s getting too rough.” “Yeah… okay.” Flying down, he landed on the deck in front of her, and shook himself while his hooves scraped along the wooden floor. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Ymir was back,” he grumbled. “This storm’s about as bad as the legends say his last big storm was…”  “Who?” Cookie asked.  “The first windigo, supposedly,” Snöflinga said. “At least, that’s what the legends claim. He was also a complete monster to his people, worse than any of your leaders from what I’ve heard, so they overthrew him. We may feed on negativity, but there’s such a thing as going too far, and he crossed the line.”  “Is that where the name of that job your father said he had for you came from?” Clover asked curiously. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that…”  “That’s it exactly,” Snöflinga said, then looked up into the winds again and shuddered. “Storm’s still getting worse…”  “I’m almost afraid to ask how much worse it can get,” Pansy muttered. “And this is the pony who once flew his ship through a category five hurricane.”  Cookie stopped and stared at him for a moment. “Why in the world would you have done that?”  “It came out of nowhere and we couldn’t get out of the way!” Pansy replied. “It’s not like I planned on it!”  “Hurricanes aside, I think we’d better keep moving,” Snöflinga said. “We need to keep moving or else we’ll get blown out of the sky!”  “Right.” Pansy turned back to Cookie and started barking orders, while Snöflinga made sure his tether was good before lifting off again.  Unfortunately, at the same time he took off, a strong gust of wind struck the ship which made them all lose their focus for a moment. Before Snöflinga could react, he saw the upper spar of the mast snapping off, and fall towards him. He was able to raise his right leg in time before it fell on him completely, knocking him unconscious and towards the roaring ocean.  The last thing he heard before he hit the water was a harmonized and anguished cry of “Snöflinga!”