An Unexpected Winter Journey
Chapter 1
Admiral Biscuit
For Comma Typer, Jinglemas 2022
As the train made its way towards Ponyville, it began to fill up with ponies. Some of them only had saddlebags, while others brought aboard suitcases and brightly-wrapped presents. The conductor punched each ticket in turn, and as the train progressed the coach got more and more vibrant—when it had left her station, it had been as silent and lifeless as her village once was; now it was filled with the quiet conversations of dozens of ponies, all of them eager to get to their destinations.
Outside, the weather began to change. Chill winds and gloomy skies gave way to blowing snow, piling drifts, and frigid gusts through the coach. Frost crept along the borders of the window and she watched it make its strange fractal patterns as the train continued on.
Like all the rest of the Kirin, Rain Shine had learned about train schedules and timetables from Summer Chills. She knew the order of stations, and she had memorized the name of the station before Ponyville: Haywards Heath.
She didn’t know about whistle-stop stations, because Summer Chills didn’t, either.
•••
The train screeched to a stop in Seven Top, where two ponies waited on the windswept platform. Rain Shine—thinking that this was Ponyville—pushed the door open and stepped past as one of them—a cheerful mare with floral-print luggage and a chicken as a cutie mark—boarded the train.
No sooner had she set her hooves on the platform did the train accelerate away, its rear marker lights fading into the blowing snow. She and her gift stood on the platform in the company of a stallion dressed in a stained shirt and a green bill cap.
From how Summer Chills had described it, Rain Shine had expected for the train station to be adjacent to the center of Ponyville, but as she looked around, there was nothing to be seen but snow-covered fields bordered with denuded trees.
She turned to the stallion who remained on the platform. He was kind of giving her a side-eyed look, as a few of the passengers on the train had.
As she turned to him, he took a step back and then squared his stance and looked her in the eyes. “Do you know the way to Ponyville?”
“Uh, sure do.” He raised a grubby hoof and pointed down the tracks. “It’s thataway. Woulda been fastest to take the train, but you missed it. Guess ya got off a stop too early, huh?”
“This isn’t Ponyville?”
He shook his head. “Seven Top, home of the finest turnips in all of Equestria. I was wonderin, when you got off the train, nopony much has business in Seven Top, specially not on Hearth’s Warming Eve..”
A brief flicker of balefire suffused Rain Shine and just as quickly faded away. The conductor had announced all the previous stops by name but not this one. She’d made an assumption and it was wrong. “When is the next train?”
“Shoot.” The station didn’t even have a ticket booth; it was naught but a platform alongside the tracks. “For Ponyville, once, sometimes twice a day, but tomorrow’s Hearth’s Warming and I don’t think they run any trains on Hearth’s Warming. Never paid it much mind.”
“I need to get to Ponyville,” Rain Shine said. “Is there no other way?”
“There’s the road, but in weather like this?” He gestured to the blowing snow. “Train can smash through drifts a lot easier than a pony can.” He eyed her up and down. “Guess you’ve got the legs for snow.”
The urge to scream and burst into flame had been steadily building in Rain Shine. She needed to get to Ponyville for Hearth’s Warming, and she was stymied. The frustration needed an outlet and she was just on the cusp of going Nirik when he mentioned her legs.
The incongruity and brilliant obvious obliviousness of that statement gave her pause. “So I could walk?”
He nodded. “Wouldn’t recommend it, not in this weather. You’re better off to stay at home and sleep late.”
Her gift wouldn’t diminish if it were delivered a day or more past when the ponies celebrated, but still, she’d been hoping to get there. She dredged up her limited knowledge of the world beyond her valley. “Are there hotels or lodging houses in Seven Tops?”
He snorted. “Nobbut what somepony offers. We don’t—” His eyes went wide as the implications sank in. “You wanna get out of the snow, my house isn’t far. Ain’t much, but it’s warm. Might be better to have walls around us and a roof over us, keeping off the snow, while you figure out what you’re gonna do next.”
“Thank you.”
He turned and walked off the platform; she followed.
•••
He hadn’t been lying; his house wasn’t much. If a Kirin were to pile a bunch of sticks into a vague house-shape, it would only be one step removed from his simple shack, and yet when she stepped through the rough-hewn door onto the simple earthen floor, she still felt the hominess of it. The walls kept the wind-blown snow out, a plain hearth still filled with glowing embers gave heat, and a single hurricane lantern provided light.
“Weren’t really expecting company,” he admitted. “Mighta cleaned up a bit.”
“Were you to be alone on Hearth’s Warming?”
“Well, no, not alone.” He motioned to a threadbare couch and she took a seat. “Fact is, a lotta us farmers have a get together in the town hall, we each make some fixins and sing as best we can. It ain’t no Canterlot Choir, but we all do our best. I’m sure you’d be more’n welcome if you wanted to join; beggin’ your pardon but I expect you got a good singing voice.”
“Too long silenced.” Rain Shine sighed and shifted on her rump. “I had been hoping to get to Ponyville, but if that isn’t in the cards, I could join you.”
“If you don’t mind me prying, you visiting family?”
She shook her head. “Friends—friends who I owe more to than a simple present could ever represent. They’ve given me more than I could ever repay, Fluttershy and Applejack and—”
His ears perked. “Applejack?”
“You know her?”
“She’s my cousin.”
Rain Shine snorted. “You’re pulling my tail.”
“Swear ta Celestia it’s true.” He tucked his sweat-stained hat to his breast. “She’s the most kindest, givingest pony in all of Equestria, strike me down if it ain’t so. Under that hat of hers is the most honest pony in all of Equestria. And her apples are pretty good, too.” He rummaged through the cupboards, finally producing a bottle with a mouth-printed label. “Apple brandy, she made it herself, gifted it a couplea years ago. Said it was for special occasions and I reckon this one’s special.”
“Is it?”
“Well, you know her. Who’d’ve expected you to show up in Seven Top Hearth’s Warming Eve? Almost like kinfolk I didn’t know I had.” He put his mouth to the cork then popped his head back up. “Shoot, we never did introduce ourselves. I’m Hayseed Turnip Truck, Hayseed to my family and friends.”
“Rain Shine.”
The pair bumped hooves, and Hayseed tucked his head back down to the bottle. “Us meetin’ is just like fate, I think.”