//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Frost Driven 
// by Spectra1 
//------------------------------//


Frost Bite


By Spectra1, edited by Final kick1408

We were the last seven ponies waiting around to get picked up from Morningside High School. It sounds like an everyday thing, but this wasn’t an ordinary day. It was one of those bull’s-eyes in history, one of those points where everything comes together, where, if you were at that place at that time, you were part of something big. It meant that we weren’t going to get picked up, not on that day and maybe not ever.
It was the day the blizzard started, and it didn’t stop for nearly a week. No pony had seen anything like it. It was a natural disaster in the way that earthquakes and tidal waves are natural disasters. It wasn’t a storm; it was whatever comes after that.
The power shut down, and the town hall closed. The snow was so strong that it seemed to hit the ground in drifts. The roads shut down completely. The plows ground to a halt and stranded themselves, overmatched up front and the snow behind already too deep for them to back up. Really, if you want one quick indicator of what kind of storm it was: Drivers froze in their snowplows.
Ponies hunkered down in their homes. They were used to doing that in this part of Equestria, but in the past it had always been for six hours, or twelve, or maybe a day at most. This was different, and it required a different kind of waiting. You can hear the details in a thousand doughnut shops, at the back table where the locals hang out.
I’ll just tell you, though. The nor’easter moved up the coast and stalled, but instead of weakening, it got stronger. From what I heard, it just kind of got wedged there, in between a huge cold front coming down and a massive warm front moving up, scooping up moisture over the Galapicoast sea and dropping it as snow back on land. They still show the picture in the newspaper sometimes: a giant white pinwheel spanning kingdoms.
Inside the homes and shelters, ponies waited and watched and counted and recounted their food. They all ask themselves the same question: How much longer can this last? But they asked it day after day, in lamplight and then candlelight and then in darkness and creeping cold. But that was later on. At the begging, it was just us, looking out the window and watching the snow fall.
Mr. Goldlash stayed with us. He was a gruff guy, a history teacher and assistant hoofball coach. Your school probably has one of those. He sort of carried himself like he was in the royal guard and, I don’t know, maybe he had been. He was the last teacher left, but when he pushed the door open and headed out to get help, well, that was the last we saw of him. We added his name to the list of people we were waiting for.
We imagined lantern light cutting though the snow, there to battle the roads and take us home. The driver of the carriage would throw open the passenger-side door. “Climb aboard,” he’d shout. “Hop in! We’ll get ya home!”
But we weren’t going anywhere. The headlights didn’t show. Mr. Goldlash, Summerluck’s dad, Finalkick’s mom, whoever it was we were waiting for, they had nothing to do with us anymore. No one did. It was just the seven of us, the seven of us and the endless snow.