//------------------------------//
// 8. Bridlewood 
// Story: Time to Shine 
// by Easysnuggler 
//------------------------------//

Once upon a time, many, many moons ago, in ancient Equestria, there lived a very special Unicorn.


—C. Star, S. Lunamoon “Commentaries on the Friendship Reports of T. Sparkle Vol. 1”




8.  Bridlewood




Bridlewood was in a musical mood.  Singing and celebrations were happening throughout the woodland home of the unicorns, and the normally dull and dour unicorns were smiling and dancing.  Children were having fun in the park despite the late hour.  The little brown colt Full Deck was happily playing on a sea saw by himself, levitating and lowering the seesaw, as Brilliant Reflection and her daughter Sunlit Reflection swung themselves by their horns laughing uproariously.  Fire Blossom and Cotton Blossom played catch with balls they could grab in magical auras and toss back and forth, dropping them as often as catching them.  Entire new realms of play had opened on the playground as fillies and colts dashed back and forth laughing and playing.  Glowing horns, crystals, fungus, and the sky above provided plenty of illumination.

Blue Blossom had amused herself by picking up the colts and flying them zipping around each other. She had even levitated herself briefly. She could manage about twelve seconds of her own weight before almost collapsing but found she could recover completely in just a few minutes.  She could keep the colts aloft for nearly thirty.

The unicorn mare Blue Blossom stared up into the evening sky.  Magical sheets of light wove back and forth over the sky, twisting and shimmering.  Her horn glowed softly, blue like her namesake and her eyes.  It was amazing.  She wasn’t doing anything, just sending undirected magic through her crystalline appendage.  It felt amazing.  It was as if she had been wearing a blindfold her whole life and simply removed it, or like she had been deaf and could suddenly hear, or touch or taste, or smell. It was a sixth sense, something she had never known she was missing and that now suddenly an inexplicably was part of who and what she was, and always had been.  Like noticing suddenly, you had a certain eye color or face shape.  Always there but now known.

She felt an itching on her right side.  Blue Blossom looked at her light blue rump.  Where her cutie mark of a blue eye surrounded by small stars had been ever since she was a filly.  It marked a special talent, an inherent skill she could excel at.  She remembered getting it.  It had appeared one evening when she was looking up at the night sky wondering what all the beautiful stars and constellations were and what they all meant.  That night had been a lot like this one.  Clear but full of magic and mystery.  It was the only magical thing that had ever happened in her life.  Even the word ‘magic’ had been forbidden.  Probably to banish a subject too painful for the unicorns to discuss.

But now ‘magic’ was back. Blue Blossom knew this would change her world in unexpected ways.   Her foal brothers Fire Blossom and Cotton Blossom were still throwing the ball racing back and forth and laughing, trouble free. She sighed and looked up into the heavens again.  The night was clear.  Fate and harmony were proceeding if not to a grand design, then to the strong currents of destiny.  The circles followed by the celestial objects were obvious.  The ellipses, orbits and epicycles of the heavens, the apparent retrograde motions of the planets and their interrelationships to everyone and everything were clear.  It was all interconnected.  There and here, in fundamental ways, ways, holistic ways Blue Blossom was suddenly and inexplicably aware of.

The moon was leaving Taurus and entering Immortales Alicornis.  It was time to leave her comfort zone and embrace change.  The position of the 6th planet indicated tomorrow would be a good day to try something new and experimental.  But the 2nd planet clearly indicated that while the need for fun and security could cause conflict she should hold out for a good outcome.  

The constellations showed that a hero had been chosen for Harmony.  Once already, soon to be twice and later thrice.  Thrice blessed, a knight to seek the sea and fly to Canterlot on griffon wings to confront Regina Glacies, an immortal queen with a heart of ice and wake her from nightmare renewed. So long as the agent of harmony arrived in time, victory was assured.  

Glancing down at her brothers and back up she could clearly see that Cotton Blossom should watch out for Thin Ice, they would get into a big fight.  And Fire Blossom…  Fire Blossom… Fire Blossom was smoke.  Hard to look at.  Sadness.  Pain. Tragedy.  Flames… and …Death.