The air is cold against my face as I step out onto the balcony. A thin layer of snow crunches underhoof; even here, at the heart of our sanctuary, the ice persists.
Inhaling through my nose is almost painful, but the discomfort is cold and sharp and real. The heat inside is a flimsy shield, but it’s all to easy to let yourself slip into the fantasy. Believing that everything is normal. But coming out here is like diving into a midwinter lake. It wakes me up.
Canterlot spreads out below me, and I open my wings out wide. It still seems like I could almost take off from here and fly out over the frozen world, free as I was in those early days. Already, though, the edges of my feathers are growing crispy with the frost, so I settle for letting my eyes slip shut and smiling as I feel the bite of the wintery air. It is good to be outside. It is good to be alone, just for a moment; away from the crowds within. The city beneath me is a blasted white wasteland, but there is still beauty in those soaring white spires, each one bejewelled with a thousand glittering icicles.
I am lucky to be here. There are so many that are not. I take pride in doing my part for the palace, in pulling my own weight. Even so…it is still good to be away from it all, just for a moment. I want to enjoy it while I can.
But the frigid outer world is a cruel place now. I cannot linger out here for long. Already the soft barbs of my feathers are closer to white than their usual grey, each filament outlined in a freezing layer of ice. Two minutes. That’s all it takes, now. For a pony’s feathers to freeze right off their body. Seven minutes before the muscles go solid and you’re trapped. Nine before the blood freezes in the veins.
Funny, isn’t it, how life can be reduced to such little numbers? I don’t think I really understood that, before. I loved my life; my family, my friends, my town. I loved my work — Ponyville Postal was my creation, a backwater post office that I built up with my own hooves into a bustling regional hub and sorting centre. I loved my daughter, watching her grow and change before my eyes. I loved so many things; the sweet taste of a muffin, the sugar and chocolate chips melting on my tongue. The feeling of finishing a delivery and watching a pony’s eyes light up as they opened their mail. Blowing bubbles, and watching them dance on the wind.
If I were to blow any bubbles here, they would freeze within a few seconds and shatter on the ground at my feet. Such beautiful, ephemeral things were not made to survive in a world like this.
No more than I was. The ice is beginning to creep up over my hooves now, and I know it is time to retreat. One last glance out at the city, as empty and silent as a tomb. One last look across the vast tundra to where Ponyville must still lie, trapped forever beneath the ice. A lump rises in my throat at that. So many lost. So many left behind. My daughter’s half-sister, Sparkler. A foal as vivacious and promising as my own Dinky. And Time Turner, too. A wound even deeper than that left by the loss of Sparkler. Time Turner was my…he was…well, there is no use dwelling on the past. These five years in Canterlot have taught me that much at least.
Shrugging off those beautiful, futile memories of sunny summer days and bizarre clockwork contraptions dreamt up by a pony too brilliant for his own good, I turn to go back inside. The doors to the balcony stand open as I left them. Snow already piles in tiny drifts against the shimmering barrier within. Celestia’s heat shield washes over me like warm water as I pass through, and instantly the ice begins to slough away from my fur and feathers.
The silence and solitude of the balcony is lost, and the sound of foals laughing and the low murmur of conversation rushes to meet me.
As strange as it seems, life continues here inside the palace. Children are born, they grow and they earn their cutie marks. Adults squabble, make up, and work together to keep our sad little bastion of civilisation from crumbling into nonexistence. We all have our part to play. The unicorns are divided into shifts that work around the clock to power and repair the heat shield. The earth ponies scrounge a meagre supply of food for us all from the greenhouses within the palace walls. The pegasi…well, we are the most redundant of the races here. The weather left our control long ago. So we content ourselves with pitching in wherever we can. I have found a semblance of my old role in running messages from one wing of the castle to another. It is not vital work, not like what the unicorns do, but I enjoy it. It gives me a chance to meet ponies. And at least I am contributing. We must all play our part.
And deep in the heart of the palace, surrounded by unicorns who do their best to support her failing strength, is the Princess. She draws on the sun’s own power, though the sun is long lost to us now, beyond the veil of snow and ice and storm. She protects us, keeps the shield up, and heats the palace and just enough water for our needs. Unmoving, she sits for hour after hour. They say it has been four years since last she spoke.
I cannot blame her. If my daughter had been among those lost, I doubt I would have had the strength to continue for more than a day. That the Princess is the last survivor of her family and the alicorn species, yet still manages to care for all of us with her magic…it astounds me.
“Derpy,” a gruff voice cuts abruptly into my thoughts.
I turn to see a familiar face — well, all faces in the palace are familiar to me now. We, the sole survivors of ponykind, number less than six hundred. But this one is more familiar than most.
“Hey, Donut Joe.” I greet him brightly, and the ghost of a smile twitches at one corner of his mouth.
“Got a message for Moondancer,” he says shortly. “There’s what looks like the start of a leak over in Greenhouse Six. Needs a top-up.”
The problem is as common as it is terrifying. Our shield is all that shelters us from the terrors of the world outside, but the Princess is slowly weakening and so is her magic. Nonetheless, I summon a smile and salute sharply. “On it! I’ll have her with you in the next half-hour.”
He grunts and turns away, and I shake the last of the water droplets off my feathers to take wing. A quick flight down corridors that awed me on that first day five years ago is now routine. Every frost-rimed window is like an old friend.
I check first for Moondancer in the grand hall, and then the ballroom. I finally find her team down in the east wing, all of them spread out over Luna’s old rooms, checking the seal is holding firm to all the walls.
I pass on the message, and Moondancer’s face is tight with worry. “That’s the fourth one this week. I—I’ll get on it right away.” She gestures another unicorn over. “Lancer! You’re in charge till I’m back.”
“Oh — Moondancer!” I reach out a hoof to stop her. “Wasn’t Dinky scheduled to be with you today?”
Her lips pucker and her eyes half-shut as she tries to recall the owner of that name. It is clear that her attention is already with Greenhouse Six, and I know from long experience that this mare has more of a memory for books than for ponies anyway.
“Little grey foal, blonde hair. Bow and arrow for a cutie mark,” I say helpfully.
Moondancer’s brow clears. “Oh. Right. Over with Fleur, learning the recharge spell.” A brief wave of a hoof, and she is gone.
I follow the gesture with my good eye, and I relax a little once I see my daughter. She is growing so quickly now, and I know that she treasures her independence. Wants to work with the other unicorns and be useful. But it’s hard to stop worrying; it’s not something I can turn off at will.
Dinky peers up at the wall, her eyes narrowed, and her horn is bright with magic. A tall, willowy shape leans over her, long pink mane somehow still velvety soft despite the fact our last shampoo ran out a year ago.
Fleur de Lis; I know her well. Better than I knew the residents of Ponyville, my old home, but not half so deeply as I know some of the ponies in here, those I bunked with in the early days, when we slept bunched together for comfort and warmth. But it is hard to spend nearly two thousand days in the same building as a pony without getting to understand them a little.
I know Fleur’s story; I know that she lost her husband like I lost mine. I know that they had been trying for a foal in those last days before the ice came. Everyone here has their own little tragedies. Her room is down the hall from the one I share with Dinky, so I know too that Fleur cries out in the night sometimes, and her roommates have to soothe her back to sleep.
I know all these things, and have spoken to her more than once. Shared kitchen duties with her, run messages for her. But somehow, seeing her with my child is different. The clear tenderness in her eyes. The gentle murmur of her voice as she responds to Dinky’s many questions. The easy familiarity with which she places a soft hoof on the back of my daughter’s head as she describes how best to visualise the spell.
Somehow, this is different.
Though I had planned to interrupt them, to snatch a few moments of precious time with Dinky, I find myself lingering to watch. Fleur de Lis is endlessly patient, with real affection in her eyes as she looks at my foal. A pity that she and Fancy Pants were not blessed with their own children; she would have made a wonderful mother.
Part of me wants her to look up and recognise me, to show me that same gentle sunbeam of a smile, like the touch of a summer warmth that I haven’t felt in years. But I don’t go over to them. Somehow, I am happy just to observe, and bask in that unguarded moment from a distance.
And though it was just fluke that my daughter and I were here on that terrible day five years ago, taking a tour of the palace — though I have lost so many ponies I loved, just like everypony here has — something about Fleur’s kind eyes makes the pain in my stomach lessen, just a little.
Fleur smiles as she watches Dinky’s brow furrow in concentration, and that smile is almost like a bubble. Small, tremulous. Fragile, in a world too cruel for it to exist. But…it does. Despite everything. And I…a warm feeling rises in my chest. Not warmth like the pipes and the Princess provide. Nothing so crude as a mere biological need for heat. No — this warmth is rich and pure and spreads from my heart out across my body.
For the first time in a long time, I feel a little less frozen.