Twinkle and Battle Brew trotted back into the village, the duo stared around in confusion as the ponies galloped around, playing in the streets as they hung up decorations, the clear blue sky was quickly being filled with large clouds and already the villages trio of fillies were running around the large statue at the center of the village, trying to be the first one to catch a snowflake on their tongue.
“Isn't it a bit early for snow?” Battle brew said as she looked up at the sky.”
“I, um… I need to get home Minty- I mean brew. Oh… or should I call you Battle?” Twinkle asked.
“BB is fine, twinkie. I’ll see you tomorrow. I want to go home too.” With that the duo separated. Twinkle began to walk back to her Library. It had been a while since they had Christmas, at least four or five months now. It would snow for a few days, just a little bit, then the sun would come back, and her bright blue skies would return. She liked those better than the dark clouds overhead, and she didn't care much for the snow. That was always more of the foal's thing they enjoyed. Twinkle always preferred the hot teas and singing carols at dinner. That made her feel nice and helped her get over the sudden chill when she went outside.
“Where… where are you...”
Twinkle's ears shot up, she turned her head to see a mare crying on a bench, she seemed to be holding something in her hooves. She quickly trotted over to try and comfort her. “Is… is that you Lime?”
The dark gray earth pony was trying to cover her face behind her long light gray mane. “Where are they… Where are they…” She kept repeating to herself.
Twinkle sat beside and put a hoof around her, she looked down at what Lime was holding in her hooves, it was a small piece of pink cotton, Twinkle felt something echo in her head as she looked at it, like laughter or a old joke she had just recalled but found sad instead of funny.
“Where are they… what about the ponies in Stalliongrad… New Mareland… where are they…” She repeated to herself.
Twinkle felt sick, her mind seemed to be spinning, no she was spinning. The ground of the bench seemed to be twirling and her stomach was too. She quickly got up and tried to get up off the bench and run but she could hardly focus. The world around her seemed to be changing colors, the white snow was turning black and she- Vomited. She turned her head and vomited on the empty seat beside her on the bench, then she vomited again. Lime didn't seem to mind, she continued crying. The snow kept falling. The only one who seemed to stop to look was Pumpkin, the oldest of the trio of foals.
“Miss Twinkle, are you okay? Should I get you a potion?” She asked, keeping a fair distance away in case the librarian had anything left in her guts.
“No… no I... I just need to lay down for a little while. Um… please excuse me.” Twinkle said, she slowly got up. The world was still a little spiny and she could hardly hear the filly over her ears ringing, but she was able to stumble that last 40 meters back into her library where she collapsed onto the wooden floor.
The floor was cold, she hated that. She rolled over onto her back and just wanted to vomit again, maybe she would get whatever was in her out if she did. She looked up at the library's blank ceiling when she felt… strange. Like someone had tampered with it. It wasn't blank, it was supposed to have a sun on it, a large sun… and the table in the center, where was the sculpture on the table? And of course, who could forget…
“Spike…”
Twinkle cradled herself in the fetal position as she began to cry, tears already forming a small puddle on the wooden floor as she bawled her eyes out. She didn't even know why. Who was Spike, was he an old friend? An object? A book? She was in the library after all. But her mind kept screaming it at her. “Where is Spike” over and over again. She wanted it to stop. She just wanted to… not remember she had lost whatever this ‘Spike’ was. But she couldn't, not now. It was too late and she had already remembered it. Regardless, the tears wouldn't stop. And she felt colder now which made the problem even worse. She began to try and think of happy memories, times when she wasn't crying, or… remembering. When she and Minty hugged each other, when she got that book about levitation for Christmas. It wasn't like the other books in her library that made her sad. It didn't have any missing pages and it was very well formatted. Slowly the tears started to stop, not completely, but she slowly let go of her hind legs and stretched out onto the floor. She remembered something now, something that wasn't sad. Books. She looked around the library, despite being a librarian no pony ever seemed to come in to check out a book, and she never seemed to want to open them or read them. She had tried before but it didn't seem very… good. The books seemed to be quite thick to have so few pages in them, and they didn't seem very interesting.
Twinkle picked herself up, letting her curiosity guided her now as it helped her fight off remembering. She walked over to one of the bookshelves that weren't barren, with the exception of a few that had four or five books on them. She picked up a large tome about numbers and basic math. No, that was boring. A picture book on how to make sweets? She tried that one before, her stove still doesn't work and not even Tool Belt could fix it. Then the last book seemed to catch her eye. It wasn't really a book but a brightly collared magazine. She must have not seen it before. She swiped it and sat back down onto the floor as she read the cover.
“Power Ponies and the wrath of the mane-iac” she said out loud, it looked like a fun little paper book thing. It had all these brightly colored mares wearing skintight suits fighting some tall pony who had tentacles coming out of her head. She opened it and began to read through it, one page. Then eight pages. Then it was over. It was good but it felt so short. She looked around the library quickly searching for something else to read. Ponies' guide to comedy? Maybe she could tell BB a few new jokes. Daring do- that cover. She grabbed the book and stared at it for a few moments, the pony holding the little gold idol swinging on a branch, she looked so… familiar. Yes, she would need to read this too. Twinkle began to make a stack of books she was going to read, even shuffling in the power ponies magazine into the stack to re-read. In a flash she was in her bed, laying on her back reading happily under her covers as the snow outside seemed to just keep falling. Not a care in the world outside her little books, how could she have not tried giving reading a shot before? She didn't feel foggy at all.
Cake was running as fast as she could through the tree line with Tide Turner as they galloped to the motorcycle. Yellow Diamond waved at them beside a tree, sitting next to her was a cow, badly bruised. The unicorn scoffed before running over to him and greeted the invader with a hard punch to his muzzle, leaving a red hoof mark on his cheek.
“Fuck you! You revisionist! You can't make me talk.” He shouted before spitting at her, making Cake swing again and connect with the other side of his face.
“Unless you haven't noticed you fucking hamburger, its snowing in the middle of June. Now I'm willing to let you run your tail back down south and never ever come back here again. But only if you don't waste my fucking time. One lie and I will kill you. And if you refuse, I will leave you here.” Cake growled through her gritted teeth, Tide was catching his breath as Yellow looked at him and shook her head. “I left sector charlie, my home of Appleoosa in the hooves of Red Wagon. I know his plan, and I signed off on it. So why is he sending you filthy fucking cows here. What are your orders?”
The cow looked around, it had indeed started snowing, he seemed to look nervous at that. “Fine... okay I suppose I can tell you that. We are explorers. We were sent here to scout the land for tech to bring back home…”
“Why the fuck would Red Wagon send cows out here, into my sector, to steal our tech?” Cake asked through gritted teeth as she pulled the tip of a spear head from her saddle bags using her magic and pointed it at the cow's throat.
“Red Wagon died a long time ago… I- he died in his sleep. I got my orders from general secretary Longhorns!” The cow whimpered, a small bead of sweat falling from his brow.
“Who is leading this expedition?” Cake asked, her rage simmering down a little
“Strongheart! Captain Strongheart is, she told me to stay here and be on the lookout, then she and the others took everything from the cabin and said she was going to liberate the ponies.” The cow pony explained.
“Where did she get the crown?” asked Yellow.
“I don't know anything about her, or a crown, she's a buffalo. I- I don't like them. They act like they’re better than us…” He said, seemingly to relax a little now that he had gotten used to Cake pointing the spear tip at him.
“Okay, we wasted enough time on this one.” Cake said, the spear tip shot forward into his throat and back out in a quick motion.
“We only have enough diesel to get us to Daffodilia and we may be able to cut off Strongheart before she makes it to site zero.” Cake said, walking past the dying bovine and over to the bike.
“How do we know she’s going there, She could be still around here. She did leave this cow behind.” Diamond said as she flapped her wings and began to follow behind Cake.
“Wait, we are just going to kill this poor thing?” Tide asked, making the two turn to face him in annoyance. “He gave us what we wanted…”
Cake rolled her eyes. “Winter is starting, Tide. I'm not leaving anything up to chance. Now he got a quick death which is more than what we are going to get if he were to have let him loose to fuck things up more than they already had.” Cake threw the tarp off the bike and sat on it, waiting for Tide to get on the back. He sighed, gave the cow one last look, and then seated himself behind Cake. “We never got to look over the southern territories thoroughly before setting up site charlie, if I know the buffalo then they still have a full working memory of who we are. They would have to know where site zero is if they got ahold of Red Wagon. He always wrote down everything!” Cake levitated and the kickstand and turned the key, the bike roared to life and the trio began their race against the invaders.
The bike was not good for snow, but Cake didn't Care much about road rash when the alternative is starvation out in the cold. The bike was making good time, in her mind, at least. “TIDE, HOW LONG AGO WERE YOU CAPTURED?” Cake yelled over the roaring engine wind.
“SIX HOURS! INKWELL WOULDNT STOP STARRING AT THAT FUCKING CROWN!” He yelled back.
Yellow was flying behind them a few meters back struggling to keep up with them, it didn't help the snow just kept falling, it started out as a few flakes, now it was getting hard to see the road ahead of them.
Inkwell was sitting on the bed; she had ripped the white wedding dress to pieces and was looking out the window. The villagers were outside, a few were playing in the snow, a few just looked back at her sadly through the window. She had failed them. She had failed all of them, even the ones who were just pretending to be happy now. She knew what she had to do. She had a duty to them, orders from high up and… no. no if she sat here any longer, she would remember, and she didn't want that. She made her way out of her sanctum, walking out of the room her guard on watch saluted her.
“Good evening, Empress.” He said with a forced smile and salute.
She turned to face him, then levitated off his helmet. “Go home, Blue.”
He frowned and nodded. He slowly trotted away as she looked at the crappy cardboard helmet. When she told Solid Oak to make her a set of armor using papier mâché and tin cans, a part of her knew it wasn't right. Why did she believe she could be a princess… she had waited a full year to be chosen, but every month it was another mare or stallion who got to be princess, and then finally when it was her time… she had it all, she had her subjects smiling happily as they lit the candles as she donned her crown and told them she would make them all princesses as their new empress. That she would… no. It was all a lie. She dropped the helmet and walked away from it, down the stairs and out the door. The few ponies outside stopped to look at her, waiting for her to say something. She walked over the big fountain in the center of town, it wasn't cold enough out yet for the water it flowed to freeze quite yet. She stopped in front of it and cleared her throat.
“Unicorns, please. I just… I need to apologize to all of you.” She said, keeping her head down and staring at the concrete. One by one the ponies gathered around, even Blue Beak had waited to hear her words before returning to his home. “When we came here, to found Unicornia, we knew we all had left something behind. Something none of us wanted to remember. But we all knew that no matter what weather we would face, we must stick together. And I have failed that goal, as I have failed you.” Hearing the commotion more unicorns came out to gather around the fountain. “When we chose to have our system of rotating Princesshood, I was envious. Like so many of you, I waited patiently. I wanted to do great things like Sparkling Water did when she fixed this fountain and made it flow again. I wanted to leave my mark on Unicornia like Solid Oak when she showed us how to make concrete and made these tall walls that protected our little castle from the pain of our past. Instead, I betrayed our only friend, Santa Claus, who gave us gifts in exchange for the simple ask, that we be kind to one another. To always help our friends!” More unicorns had gathered now, everypony had once again come out to hear her speak. “But I did not help any of you. I was selfish. I was greeted by outsiders, who offered me my friend in bounds and a crown made of lies and gold. And I accepted that offer. I lied to you and myself.” She raised her head up now to look at them, she had to at least give them the decency of looking into their eyes, even if she couldn't make out their faces through her tears. “I’m so sorry. I failed you. I failed Unicornia…” She lowered her head again as small tears fell into the snow.
One small unicorn stepped forward. She didn't say anything, she simply walked over to her crying friend and did the only thing she knew how to do. She pulled her into a tight hug. Then another unicorn stepped forward and hugged both of them. Then another. Until the whole princessdom was standing outside the mall, embracing one another as equals and friends. No matter how hard the snow fell, not one unicorn felt cold.