An Unexpected Winter Journey
Prologue
Admiral Biscuit
For Comma Typer, Jinglemas 2022
Last winter, Summer Chills had returned to the Kirin village for winter holidays and had told them all the tale of Hearth’s Warming and what traditions ponies had to celebrate it. She didn’t get every detail correct—her learning had consisted of playing a bit part in the student version of the pageant, and what her Friendship School classmates had told her.
Nevertheless, she did her very best to pass her knowledge on to the village at large, and Rain Shine decreed that for the solstice this year, in addition to the traditional feasts there would be a decorated tree and gift-giving. Something from the heart.
A few weeks later, Summer Chills made her way to the train station and left for school. Winter dragged on, as it often does, and Rain Shine spent much of it reflecting on the past. How the formerly silent village was now vibrant, even in the chilly, dreary winter gloom. Kirin were talking, Kirin were singing, Kirin were playing.
She’d thought she’d done what was right for them, but she’d been hasty and foolish and had almost destroyed them. Once they had their voices and emotions back, she asked Autumn Blaze to take her place. Autumn Blaze refused—she didn’t want to be queen. She should have been. She would have made a better queen.
Spring came, then summer. Summer Chills arrived in the village with more tales of Ponyville and Equestria and the lands beyond, of her classmates and her friends and her teachers. She returned home with a case of zap apple jam that Applejack herself had made and all the Kirin shared it during their summer solstice celebration.
Summer Chills returned to school as the summer wound down. The leaves on the deciduous trees in their village turned a riot of colors and then they fell off, covering the green in a crunchy carpet. Snow capped the mountains around their valley, a promise of what was to come. Rain Shine lay awake at night wondering what kind of gift she could give the ponies who had asked for nothing in return for everything.
I didn’t know how empty our village was until it was filled with life again.
Hearth’s Warming was about more than just gifts. It was about togetherness and unity and as such, Rain Shine stood alone on the train platform. This year, the Kirin would celebrate the solstice without her, and they’d do it without burning down the village.
Hopefully.
Summer Chills had explained how trains worked and a few Kirin had tried them; after that experience they’d volunteered to staff the station instead of the weird creepy pony who used to work there.
The wind off the mountains wasn’t exactly pleasant, but she put her rump into the wind and endured it. When they got done renovating the existing station, they could expand it into something bigger with an indoor waiting area.
She was contemplating the question of why there was even a train station here at all when she spotted a distant headlight. In no time at all, it resolved itself into a locomotive.
A shrill screech of metal-on-metal announced its arrival before the obligatory mournful whistle, and the train slid to a stop in line with the perfunctory platform. The brakemare disembarked from the locomotive, tipped her hat to Rain Shine, and trotted to the last car.
Rain Shine stepped up into the coach and studied the interior. She’d never ridden in a train before. Benches flanked either side of a central aisle, and there were doors at the end of each coach for passage to the next.
A pony dressed in a blue vest with a brass-trimmed cap asked to see her ticket, punched a hole shaped like his cutie mark in it, and then walked to the next coach, leaving Rain Shine alone. She wasn’t sure where he was going; no other ponies had boarded the train.
Rain Shine considered her options—the back of the train seemed like where everything was happening, but she was also curious about the locomotive. She’d never seen one before, and it was making all sorts of interesting noises and smells.
She shifted her weight as the train set out in reverse—the Peaks of Peril was the end of the line, and the train had to back all the way to Mustangia before there was a wye where it could turn around.