My father was an archaeologist, and if there's anything I ever learned from watching him dig through old bones and rocks, it's that for as long as ponies have been around, we've been fighting each other. We started with hooves and horns, moved on to rocks, and advanced all the way through bronze and iron until we'd managed to get so good at killing each other we decided to take a break.
More than a dozen centuries ago, the age of the alicorns came. Princess Celestia and her sister, Luna, brought Equestria into a golden age. Great cities were built on every coast. The land became a garden. Pony lifespan doubled. It was a time of miracles.
Until it wasn't.
War came to Equestria, and we faced extinction. The old instincts of blood and iron came out, and ponies innovated even better ways to kill in greater numbers than ever before. Megaspells and unnatural disasters rained down on our great cities and the light of friendship faded.
In some places, ponies found ways to survive.
I was born above the clouds, to where civilization had escaped in the wake of the bombs and the destruction of the war. It was the most peaceful place in Equestria, one of the few places to have maintained continuity and civilization, and I thought it was my destiny to stay there and never set hoof on the ground below like two centuries of ponies before me.
But I was wrong, because if there's one thing we can learn from the past it's that even above the clouds, we can't escape our nature, and that war? War never changes.
My name is Chamomile. I'm following in the great Equestrian tradition of recording my thoughts even though I know nopony is ever going to listen to them, and I can't blame anypony for that. I'm not a smart pony. A smart pony wouldn't have gotten into half the trouble I did. I'm not a hero, I'm not a pony who wanted to go solving mysteries buried in the past.
I'm making sure there's a record of everything that happened to me because I know from my father that it's important. We learn from the past, even from stupid mistakes. Especially from stupid mistakes.
This is the story of how I accidentally caused a small war, a plague, and might have gotten a lot of ponies killed, and it all starts with a headache...