//------------------------------// // The Pastel Desert // Story: The First Light of Dawn // by Cold in Gardez //------------------------------// The longest day of the year passed over the scrub and sage of the Pastel Desert in much the same way every other day that year had: quietly. Millions of years before, when the desert was actually an inland sea, an unusual variety of zooplankton had thrived in its shallow waters, absorbing the light of a younger sun and the rich mineral salts leeched from nearby mountains by rain. The high alkali concentration stunted or killed most life, but the tiny plankton adapted and exploded, untroubled by predators or competition. In time the exotic mineral soup changed the simple creatures, painting them in a riot of colors: iron red, cobalt blue, sulfur yellow, copper green and calcium white, to name just a few. As they died the plankton sank to the bottom of the shallow sea. Countless trillions of plankton lived and died beneath the waters, until the slow tectonic shift of continental plates thrust the land under the sea upwards thousands of feet. Spurned by the rain and loved overmuch by the sun, the sea eventually evaporated, leaving only the stratified skeletons of the plankton to remind anypony that water had ever existed there at all. Time blended and faded the sharp colors and sharper rocks, leaving a gently rolling landscape of lavender and peach, umber and rose, charcoal and ivory. Short, hardy bushes dotted the rocks, the only visible sign of life for dozens of miles in any direction. For centuries the desert remained unchanged, except for a thin ribbon of train tracks laid by industrious earth ponies building networks between their towns as they moved west. Neither the sage bushes nor the desert seemed to mind the railroad, though the rattle of passing trains sometimes sent lizards and rodents scurrying for cover. Which is exactly what they did when the train came roaring down the tracks. It was fast – the rails had barely started to shake when the iron monster was upon them, and just as quickly it was gone. The train was short, consisting only of an engine and a single passenger car, all pulled at breakneck speed by a team of conductor ponies. They galloped down the tracks lathered in sweat and panting for breath. They ran as though the dawning night behind them was in pursuit. The roof of the passenger car had been converted to a makeshift balcony and was in use by a pair of ponies. One, an orange filly with a yellow mane and a cowboy hat that somehow stayed attached despite the whipping winds, was leaning on a rickety looking railing at the front of the car, her forelegs draped over the rail as she watched the landscape ahead. The other, a lavender unicorn filly, stood next to a telescope and tripod that had been crudely nailed to the car’s roof, to keep it from bouncing off the train. Her head was buried in a large book floating in the air without any visible means of support, aside from a faint purple glow just now becoming visible as sun began to fall beneath the mountains to the west. “We’re comin’ round a corner, Sugar!” the orange pony called over her shoulder. “We should be able to see her again in a sec!” Ahead of them the tracks bent around a massive hill that had once been a true mountain, until time and wind reduced it to its current state. The unicorn pony turned a page, then another, and then flipped through the rest of the book before slamming it shut with a growl. The strain of the day’s events was clear on her face – circled, tired eyes and a frazzled mane above tightly drawn lips. She levitated the book over to a trapdoor in the roof and let it drop into the car below. The train took the turn without slowing down. The car rocked and began leaning dangerously, but before it could roll off the tracks they rounded the curve and were back on a straightaway. Ahead of them the sun had almost set – only a tiny piece of the orb remained above the mountains. The world around them darkened as twilight took hold. But then the train passed all the way around the hill, and sunlight found them again. To the south, miles away and high above the desert floor, something like a shooting star traced its way across the sky, paralleling the tracks as it headed west. It was nearly as bright as the setting sun, its flickering light illuminating the landscape below like noon. Even from the train it was impossible to look at directly for more than an instant. Twilight Sparkle dared a glance, then quickly turned away, blinking her watering eyes to clear the dazzling afterimage. “Now that’s powerful bright,” Applejack said. She tipped her hat down to shade her eyes like a sensible filly. “Find anything in them thar’ books?” “No,” Twilight said glumly. “I don’t even know where to start. I have half my library in this car but it would take a week to read through it all, and even then we could miss something important because we didn’t know it was important!” The lavender pony rested her forehead on the railing. Over the roar of the train she could barely make out a faint rumble, like an unending thunder, coming from the south. Applejack sighed. “The conductors are gonna need to stop soon,” she said. “You look like you could use a rest yerself.” Twilight’s head came up with a jerk. “But we just caught up to her! If we stop now she’ll get away!” “I know, Sug, but we can’t--” she stopped suddenly, her eyes on the sky to the south. Twilight followed her gaze and gasped. The shooting star was flickering badly. It nearly vanished several times before popping back to full brightness, but just as quickly it began to falter again. The constant rumble of thunder became a series of staccato booms felt in their chests. “What’s happening?” Applejack asked quietly, her words barely audible above the din. Twilight stared at the shooting star. “Of course… it’s the sunset,” she said. “The sunset!” To the west the last sliver of the sun dipped below the mountains, and the shooting star went out. *** “Stop the train!” “What?” Applejack stared at her in confusion. “Tell them to stop! I can’t use the scope if we’re bouncing around like this!” Twilight fumbled with the telescope and tripod, trying to orient it to the south. The shooting star was a barely visible spark descending from the evening sky. The train lurched as Applejack’s message reached the conductor ponies. When it finally settled she peered through the spyglass’s eyepiece, trying to find the glimmering dot against the emerging night. “I think she’s landing,” Applejack said. The orange pony stood by Twilight’s side, squinting as she tried to find their target. “Try looking lower.” “Got her,” Twilight said. Through the scope she found a thin black line that slowly resolved into a smoke trail, like the ones left by the Wonderbolts during their performances. As she followed the trail to its head the smoke slowly turned red, then orange, and finally a brilliant yellow surrounding a tiny, incandescent white nucleus streaking toward the earth. With a quick spin of one of the telescope rings the white spot jumped in magnification, filling the entire eyepiece. It was like staring at the sun again. As her eye slowly adjusted to the brightness she could barely make out a pair of huge, feathered wings, their tips a dull cherry red that seemed nearly black when they passed in front of the alicorn’s body. The air around it was literally on fire, a halo of flames that gave birth to the trail of smoke. “Oh no… no no no no no,” she mumbled. Applejack turned to her in concern. “What? What’s wrong, Twi?” “She’s not landing,” she said in shock. “She’s falling.” The alicorn tumbled through the air, wings useless, completely out of control. Twilight pulled her eye away from the telescope in time to see the falling star meet the horizon. “Princess…” she whispered. The falling alicorn streaked past a low mountain and slammed into a rock outcropping nearly the size of Canterlot Keep. From the train it looked like the world’s largest firework; a shower of brilliant sparks rose into the air like a blossoming flower, soaring high above the mountain itself, followed by a fountain of yellow lava that sprayed upward and out like a severed artery. The outcropping collapsed a moment later, sending boulders the size of houses rolling for miles down the mountainside. The explosion grew in silence for several seconds before a titanic *CLAP* shook the train and raised clouds of dust from the desert floor around them. Twilight fell back onto her haunches, her ears ringing from the blast. She watched numbly as a rockslide large enough to devour Ponyville slid down the mountain, accompanied by a river of lava that formed a small, burning lake at its foot. Applejack managed to stay on her hooves, but couldn’t keep from shaking so hard her teeth chattered. From overhead came the whistle of rocks zooming by, followed by faint thuds as they landed. Some of the falling stones were nearly the size of a wagon, Twilight noted absently. Neither of them moved. As the sun sank further below the horizon the world grew darker, illuminated only by the flickering orange of the burning mountain. Even as night took hold they could still see clearly by the flames. Finally Twilight stood. Without a word she hopped down the trap door into the car, and then jumped out the back door onto the tracks. Before Applejack could find her voice, the purple unicorn was already trotting toward the mountain. “Hey… Hey! Wait for me, Sug!” she yelled. “Gosh darned filly,” she added under her breath, then hopped clean over the railing to the desert floor and took off after her friend. *** “Slow down, girl! You’re gonna git yerself hurt!” “I’m fine!” Twilight yelled. She really wasn’t, though; galloping across the desert at night wasn’t the safest or smartest thing to do, and she’d already nearly snapped an ankle on an unseen crevasse. The purple light of her horn wasn’t much help, only lighting the ground a few feet in front of her. “Just take it easy, it doesn’t matter how fast we git there,” Applejack tried to reassure her. “She needs our help!” “You won’t be much help with a broken leg. If she survived that fall she’ll survive the extra minute it takes us to reach ‘er safely.” The unicorn stumbled and almost fell as Applejack’s words sank it. She spun around to face the other pony, pointing her horn like a weapon. “How can you say that?!” Tears left wet trails in the dust on her face. “Don’t you care about her?” Applejack stopped a few feet away. “Of course I do,” she said quietly. “You know I do. I’m just bein’ honest.” Calm, practical Applejack. Twilight lowered her horn, choking back a sob. “I’m sure she’s fine,” Applejack said. She placed a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Now come on, let’s do this together.” Twilight sniffled, and then bobbed her head. Together they turned to the mountain and walked the rest of the way. *** The fallen alicorn was waiting in a pool of glowing rock perhaps twenty feet across. By approaching from the higher ground on the side of the mountain they could get within a pony length of reaching her before their hooves began to smoke. Applejack retreated with a startled yelp, and grabbed Twilight’s tail in her mouth to pull her back when she didn’t follow. “I think we’re gonna have to wait, Sug,” she said. Beside her Twilight ground her teeth in frustration. “But she needs us now!” Twilight hissed. “Look at her!” Applejack sighed. “Twi, if she can survive in that, she can survive anythin’. And nothin’ we can do will help her.” The rock around the alicorn simmered as they watched. Occasionally a large bubble would burst with enough force to spray flecks of lava over her wings and head, the only parts of her body not submerged in the liquid stone. The drops ran like water down her feathers and hide, leaving no mark to signify their passage. Twilight stomped her hoof in frustration. “Princess!” she called, “It’s your faithful student! Can you hear us?” The alicorn had no response. “Princess!” Near the edge of the lava a boulder cracked with a deafening report, half of it slipping into the pool while the rest tumbled down the hillside, starting small brush fires as it rolled. “Sug, it’s not—" “Princess! CELESTIA!” Applejack rested a hoof on the unicorn’s shoulder. “Twilight, enough. She’s either asleep or—" Twilight batted the hoof away, interrupting the filly. “Or what?!” she demanded. “Or unconscious,” Applejack finished calmly. “Either way, yellin’ at her ain’t gonna help.” The unicorn glowered at her for a moment, then seemed to wilt. She sat back on her haunches, head so low it nearly touched the hot earth, and started to sob. “I’m s-sorry, AJ,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what to do. Nothing like this has ever happened before.” Applejack drew her into a tight hug. “It’s okay, we’ll figure somethin’ out.” Twilight continued to sniffle for a while, until the tears finally ran out. She gave her head an angry shake and stood, stomping the ground again. “Applejack,” she said. Her voice was as clear and calm as if she were in her library. “Yeah Sug?” “How far is Appleloosa?” The orange filly stood and looked around at the nearest mountains, comparing them to memories of visits to her cousin’s town. “Hm, maybe 10 miles? Lookin’ for a place to stay?” She snorted. “No, we need more help. Can you head there with the train and tell them what happened?” “Sure can. What do ya need us to bring?” Twilight thought for a moment, then sighed. “I don’t know. Everything I guess.” “Alright, everything it is. You stayin’ here?” She nodded, her eyes fixed on the alicorn. She kicked a loose stone into the lava where it sank without a sound. “Well, alright then. I’ll be back just as soon as I can.” Applejack started to turn back to the train when she felt a warm nose nuzzle her shoulder. She smiled, and stopped long enough to give the unicorn a tight hug. “Thanks AJ,” Twilight said. “Sorry about all that.” “Aw, it’s nothin’ Sug. It’s been a long day.” After Applejack left it was a long and lonely night, as well. *** Three months earlier… Trixie was an unhappy pony. She never would have admitted that, least of all to herself, but her powers of self-delusion were starting to wear a bit thin after being chased from yet another town. Apparently this “Winter Wrap-Up” celebration was not a good time to advertise her magnificent magical skills by offering to use her power to melt the snow. Or teleport the animals out of their burrows. Or blast the clouds from the sky. In retrospect, she hadn’t really “offered” to do those things, in the technical sense of the word. She just did them. It was better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right? That’s how powerful magicians worked. And was she thanked for her efforts? Did they shower the Great and Powerful Trixie with praise (and bits) for her dazzling display of magical prowess? No! The ungrateful earth ponies actually booed her! They accused her of ruining the celebration! Granted, she probably shouldn’t have called them “dirt” ponies, not out loud at least. But that’s what they were – earth, dirt, mud: all the same. They spent their days grubbing in the soil, trying to eke out a living. It was actually very generous of certain talented unicorns – like herself – to stop and try to make their pitiful lives a little more bearable. They were lucky! Even if they didn’t realize it now, someday they would tell their foals of the time the Great and Powerful Trixie visited their town and blessed them with her magic. They would weep as they recalled how poorly they treated her. “Someday,” they would say to their young, “another magician may deign to visit our pitiful little hovel. Treat her with kindness! Do not repeat our mistakes! Woe! Repent!” Mud ponies. Dirt ponies. Anyway, on the open road again. This really was the best life for a pony like her: travelling the world, helping the less fortunate. If it happened to cement her reputation as the greatest magician in all of Equestria, well, she could hardly be held responsible for the hysterical adoration she caused in everypony who met her. The Great and Powerful Trixie was happy, she decided. There was nothing she wanted to do more right now than walk down this very road, to whatever fortunate town awaited her arrival. She was a little hungry, maybe, on account of not eating for a few days. But she was happy. Her legs were a bit sore, from galloping to escape the angry herd in that town whose name she hadn’t bothered to learn. But she was happy. She was a tad cold, what with all the snow, and her lack of winter clothing. And her wagon. Mustn’t forget the wagon, lost those many months ago. Or her books, lost with the wagon, that she had spent so many nights pouring over. Or her beloved hat and cape, purchased with the first bits she earned from performing on street corners in Canterlot, now gone as well. She stopped and stomped her hoof. These were not happy thoughts. They were not helping. She was happy. Happy. The Great and Powerful Trixie had never been happier than she was on that snowy road, stung by a knifing winter wind, in the deepening gloom of twilight. “The Great and Powerful Trixie,” she announced to no one in particular, “is delighted to be here. Delighted!” She didn’t need a stage to perform – the world was her stage! She reared up on her back legs, hooves spread wide, imagining the next cheering crowd before her. “Come one, come all!” she called. “Come and witness the amazing magic of the Great and Powerful Trixie!” A wave of her hoof filled the sky with blue and silver fireworks, their thunderous claps shaking the snow from the branches around her and sending animals fleeing in terror for miles around. “Watch in awe as the Great and Powerful Trixie performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by pony eyes!” She pranced in a circle and the ground beneath her lurched into the air, lifting her up on an earthen pedestal as high as the treetops. A magical spotlight popped into existence, lighting her like a star. “Behold, as she commands the powers of the arcane!” She thrust a hoof toward a dark, snow-covered field, her horn glowing with a brilliant silver light. The snow roiled and shook, moving about as though being shaped by an invisible sculptor. It piled higher and higher, quickly taking the form of a massive, white dragon that shambled toward her, puffs of snow and frost falling from its joints with each creaking step. Icy claws grasped her pedestal as it towered over her, its wings blotting out the sky. And then it bent low, and laid its head at her feet. She twirled to face a stand of trees. “Gasp, as nature itself worships her!” Beads of sweat collected on her hide despite the freezing cold, and began to trickle in streams down her body. Clenching her teeth, she stared at the trees, her horn flaring like a torch. Silver sparks appeared around the trees and they began to lean, as though being pressed down by a great weight. Slowly at first, then with greater speed, they bent until their bare crowns touched the ground, bowing to her. “Quake before her majesty!” she shouted, her showpony’s voice quavering with strain. Wide, shaking eyes stared at the road as her magic filled it with illusions. Dozens, hundreds of ponies cheered for her, stomping their hooves, calling out her name. Flights of spectral pegasi soared in formation overhead, paying tribute to her greatness. Waves of fireworks lit the sky like day. “Love her! LOVE TRIXIE!” she screamed at the illusions, flecks of froth flying from her lips. The trees began to crack under the strain of her magic, their trunks snapping like twigs. The snow dragon lifted its head and rocked back as she fell to her knees. It flailed at the air, as though fighting an unseen enemy, then slowly disintegrated, forming piles of snow and ice that would take weeks to melt. The earthen pedestal began to lean slightly, then suddenly slumped, giving up the fight against gravity. It sank into an irregular mound, depositing the shivering, crying pony on the icy road. Around her the illusions flickered and went out. “Love me…” she whispered, and wondered, not for the first time, where it had all gone wrong. *** Eventually the cold and wind forced her to her feet. Unable to go back, she went forward. Hours later the road came to an intersection. Some helpful pony had put up a sign to guide travelers, which she glumly surveyed. Most of the names she didn’t recognize. One, she did. Canterlot. How long had it been since she started there? Years, at least. She could barely remember the rough streets, the early, clumsy performances. Going back there would be like admitting defeat. Admitting that the wide, open world was too much for her. On the other hand, all artists occasionally needed a break. She had done well enough at Canterlot as a filly; imagine what she could accomplish as a powerful magician! She could make a new name for herself there; she could recover from the past few months. New allies would bankroll her performances. She could be the newest star in Equestria’s greatest city. Yes, Canterlot. She practiced saying the word, and found she liked it. Head higher, a bounce in her step, she started down the road to Celestia’s city. She felt happier already.