//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Cadenza (Pt. 1) // Story: Our Lives, Our World // by maddox078 //------------------------------// The same dull, undulating rhythm of the train that put me to sleep earlier that morning had now woken me up to sight unlike any I had ever seen. Looking out the frosted window upon which I'd laid my head I was greeted by the sight of immense black rock walls mere meters from the side of the car, whipping by in an onyx blur. Despite being trapped in this narrow stone canal, a fervent flurry of snow found its way into my sight, and accumulated on the windows of the train. I’d seen snow before in my days, in fact, I wasn’t much more longitudinally north than Hayfield itself right now. But being in the Cadenza mountain range we were subjected to the chilling effects of climbing altitude. This in-turn produced heavy snowfall that stacked a pony’s height deep on flat ground, and formed occasional sheets of glistening azure ice winding up the steep slopes. With the speed of the train and our proximity to the outcropping I felt the inherent need to hold my breath for fear that the slightest movement would send the car grinding up against the earthen wall. However, in a matter of a few minutes we were free of the jagged ravine and out onto powdery, rolling hills. In the distance I could see my destination, the twin peaks that housed the beautiful village of Cadenza itself. I’d done a lot of research of that place in my younger years and more recently when I decided I wanted it to be the first destination of my expedition. Its history is as fascinating as its daring infrastructure. It all started when a still adolescent Cadance had been tasked by Celestia to check up on a small mining town nestled in a harsh and unforgiving mountain range to the west. Communications had gone dead for a couple months, and in as hostile an environment as that area was, that was a dangerous amount of time to be out of touch with the outside world. Obeying her aunt’s wishes she immediately packed for a cold and bitter trip. The pegasus-drawn carriage that was flying her to her destination had a hard time finding the destination itself due to a massive storm that had nearly buried the small community. Once the people there saw the airborne carriage, they began digging out a small runway for it to land. Once safely on the ground she stepped out into the powdered ice and greeted the seventy or so ponies living there as warmly as could be done in such a place. The villagers soon rushed her inside the town hall that housed three long tables where all the ponies would gather together for both diplomacy and camaraderie. A large feast was soon prepared for the princess and her guards in the vast wooden lodge. Children ran around playing with each other amongst the tables while the adults began to fill the princess in on the current situation. “As you can see princess,” one burly stallion explained, “a storm like no other has ravaged our village. It is almost impossible to even step outside our doors, let alone get to our mining sites.” Cadance listened to multiple pleas from other individuals all requesting her aid in the situation. When no one else had anything to say, she finally spoke up. “My friends, let me just begin by saying that I am honored to be sharing a wonderful meal with such hard-working and dedicated frontier-ponies,” rounds of earnest smiles thanked her in response. “It is with much excitement that I can present a solution to you.” She stood up from her seat and began pacing up and down the length of the tables, excitedly explaining her planned solution to their predicament. “My aunt and I back in Canterlot anticipated that this is what the current situation would be, so together we theorized and designed a device we can construct that will protect the town in a heated bubble of light pyro-magic. There is a special type of crystal being mined here that, when combined with a charge from a simple pyrokinesis spell, will produce an evenly distributed heat field across a spherical area from the origin crystal” The other ponies in the room began mulling the idea over and eventually agreed that such a device was both possible and practical. They cheered for her brilliant solution and immediately began discussing the intricacies of the device. After three days the device was completed, and while not putting the village in a temperate climate, it still managed to make it warm enough to where ponies’ doors would no longer be iced shut for weeks on end. By the end of her stay the town looked upon the royal as more than a leader, but also as a friend and member of their community. Her send-off was a bittersweet ordeal as the whole town watched her carriage return to the capital. Though they never forgot what she did and as the town eventually grew into a wildly popular tourist destination, renowned for its skiing and hot springs, the town was at last given an official name in honor of its savior: Cadenza. The train lurched to a halt on the cold steel rails, and I took my first steps into the powdery snow under the frigid gray skies. Ponies all around me poured out of the cars as well and crowded the relatively small wooden platform, some greeting family and others continuing on towards the main thoroughfare alone. I needed to find a place to stay for my visit first and foremost, so I too took to the powder-dusted cobblestone street that ran on either side of a long row of neatly-trimmed holly bushes and wrought-iron gas lamps. Lining the street on both sides of the floral median were beautiful wooden lodges housing warmly-lit shops of all varieties, some with café patios and others with residential lofts built into the second floor. This line of shops stretched on down the road until both came to a halt at a large rock face roughly twenty yards high. It was then that the street became a tunnel, burrowing through the stone face and up the mountain via a hoof-carved staircase that emerged some distance above. The path led up to the city’s most famous feature, the Blizzard Lane Boardwalk. This grand wooden walkway nestled itself in the cleavage of the two mountains, climbing up along it in wooden terraced sections. Each terrace was supported by vast columns entrenched deep into the mountains themselves, and stretched lengthways across until the buildings on the far sides of each section were a leg’s length away from the mountain itself. Each sectioned pavilion acted as a giant step up the gentler slope of the mountains’ face, until it ran into a sheer rock wall as the main road below it had done as well. This boardwalk was home to a similar array of buildings as the town’s main entry road. It had all kinds of shops imaginable as well as multiple bathhouses and hotels that granted the town such fame. I froze for a moment to take in the bustling hoof-traffic flurrying around me like the powder flakes falling from the slate sky above. A few ponies made eye contact and allotted a warm smile before going about their business, filling up the walkways with their hoof-steps and filling up the air with their warm voices. As nice as the sight was, I was beginning to feel a chill seeping through my fur and decided I should make finding my lodging my current priority. The sights and the ponies weren’t going anywhere, after all. The problem was, I had no idea which buildings were hotels or bathhouses or shops since most buildings shared very similar architecture. While looking around for any sign of a hotel, I noticed a small wooden stall housing a vendor who seemed to be peddling sweet rolls and hot chocolate. Seeing as I hadn’t eaten since before the train ride, it was only a brief internal deliberation before I was trotting up the stairs to the small kiosk on the terrace above me. The line was rather long, and I began to sincerely hope that it would be worth the wait in the now escalating winds. After ten or so minutes I arrived at the front of the line to be greeted by a grey-coated stallion with a friendly, but worn-out expression on his face. “What can I get for you today, sir?” My eyes scanned the menu above his head, searching for anything to stave off both my appetite and the biting cold wind. “I’d like a triple chocolate hot chocolate, please,” I said with a smile as I reached into my saddlebags to get my bits. “Oh, but what size, sir?” “Oh, um the biggest you’ve got,” I replied in a weary tone, just wishing to complete the transaction and be one step closer to finding a place to lay my head. He disappeared for a moment behind the small counter before procuring an enormous mug nearly the size of my own head. He began filling the behemoth up before I could interject about how no sane equine could ever drink all of that before it went cold, and furthermore ask him why such a size existed in the first place. Remembering the exhausted look on his face prevented me from correcting my order, however, and soon I was presented with roughly four pounds of steaming cocoa. Not wishing to betray my true horror at what I had just purchased, I hoofed him the money and grabbed the mug. My buyer’s remorse didn’t end there unfortunately. As I spun around hastily to get back to my original task, I bumped into the mare that had been standing right behind me. In an instant, the milk chocolate monster doused her white coat and long beige-blonde hair. A near eternal moment of mutual horror and disbelief connected us until I finally began my apology tirade. “Oh sweet merciful Luna I’m so sorry!” The blank expression on her face remained unchanged, save for a few blinks that briefly hid her pinprick pupils. “I, uh, well……” I couldn’t think of anything to lessen what I had just done and continued to ramble on in my newly founded language of guilty, unintelligible mutterings until she finally spoke up. “Could you….could you just get me a napkin? Or twelve,” she spoke in a voice as shaken as her expression. Without a word I turned back to the kiosk to ask the vendor for some, but he had already pulled them out by the time I was facing him, horror rooted in his eyes as well. I then transferred the thin napkins to my victim and watched, as everyone else was still doing, in complete silence as she attempted to dry off. After a few tense moments she levitated the soggy makeshift towels in her amber aura to the nearby trashcan. After hearing their unpleasant *plop* against the metal bottom, the unicorn mare sighed deeply then looked up at me with a pitiful expression. “Well, I guess I know what I’ll be doing with my break. I guess a hot shower on a day like today isn’t so bad,” she smiled feebly, not wholly losing the woe in her voice. “I am so unbelievably sorry for that, I didn’t see you there and now you have to walk all the way home just to clean up during your time off, and again I’m sorry. Sorry.” My hoof had been scratching the back of my neck far more than any itch could have warranted. “Heh, really it’s not that bad. I work in the Hoofprint Lodge a couple terraces up from here, so I can just use a shower in one of the rooms there.” A weary chuckle became the suffix for her revelation. “Ok again, I’m really sorry and I feel like I should…..wait, did you say you work in a hotel?” Perhaps my luck was about to change. Shame I couldn’t say the same for her. “Why yes, why do you ask?” “Well I’m not from around here; I’m from a warmer town south of here where my fur doesn’t become brittle from standing outside for ten minutes. And well, I’ve been trying to find a place to stay at while I'm visiting here. Any chance you have some vacancy there?” I hoped my piteous look might convince her to look past the premise of our introduction, so that she may actually help me. “Oh,” she smiled, “I thought you looked a bit out of your element here.” Her hoof brushed aside a lock of stray hair before she gestured for me to follow her. “But yes, we certainly do have plenty of room. Come, let's go get you settled in, shall we?” Relief flooded over me as I began to follow her up the steps towards a massive wood and cobblestone lodge a couple terraces up the mountain. I could already feel my sense of touch returning at the prospect of having a warm bed to lay down in. It was still quite early in the day but a nap never did anyone any harm. “So where is it you're from, exactly?” I was shaken from my musing by her (Eagleland?) accent softly permeating the white noise chatter surrounding us. “Oh, I'm from Hayfield in the Central Equestrian Province.” I smiled at her, excited someone was taking an interest in my travels. “Um, I uh, where is that exactly?” Her confusion dampened my elation as my ears flattened. “Uh, it's about 6 hours south of here. It's nothing special honestly, mostly just cows and.....cows. And there's like....a lake and a couple of trees...and um. Yeah.” She giggled in response and smiled over at me, “Well, I'm sure it has some quaint charm to it.” We approached the small set of marble steps that led just outside of the lobby of the hotel and hovered outside the door for a moment. “And what about you, are you from Eagleland perhaps? Or just a local?” A look of surprise swept across her face before a knowing smile surfaced. “Spot on, actually. Yes I'm from New Cloverfield on the east coast but moved here within the last two years simply because I could. Well that, and you can only take so many years of being surrounded by stuffy tea drinkers talking about going to watch 'the derby.'” The last two words of her statement were met with sarcastic air quotes and a matching expression. It was extremely humorous watching such a spectacle from a mare whom I'd perceived to be so well-mannered, and maybe a little 'stuffy' herself. We shared a quick laugh as she rolled her eyes at the recollections of her home. She then reached out to the glass double doors in front of us and held one open. "After you." “Liiiiiiillllly! Are you back yet?” My new companion had quite a set of lungs on her. Her voice did nothing more than attract the attention of lodgers sitting around the main lobby's fireplace. She scrunched her nose up and began looking around for 'Lily.' She walked on past the reception desk, precariously situated beneath a very large wooden staircase with ornate wrought-iron railing flanking the sides. Beyond that was the main lobby, a wide open public living area with a fireplace sporting a raging inferno. Grand hoof-woven tapestries of the royal sisters hung regally from every wall, stretching down to the polished oak floor populated by a plethora of plush sofas. All of the ponies sitting in there raised an eye from their books and periodicals to investigate the disturbance. Two dozen pairs of eyes followed our movement across the room as I followed the unabashed mare in front of me. She called out again to no response, with stark irritation beginning to spread across her face. Without a word she led me up the large staircase to the second-floor landing and continued on down towards the end of the hall. After passing rows of rental rooms she reached a hoof out and opened the sliding glass door at the end, where I saw her expression further stiffen. She addressed her attention towards one of the two hot tubs on the deck overlooking the front entrance outside, to a unicorn mare with a light maroon coat who was laughing amongst friends. My acquaintance raised one eyebrow and stared with a half-lidded expression at the unicorn, before one of her other friends noticed us. “Oh, hey Carat! We didn't see you there, want to join us?” The earth pony mare beamed as brightly as her voice. Before 'Carat,' as I now learned her name to be, could respond, her friend whom I'd figured must be 'Lily' spoke up. “Yeah goldilocks, the water's per-” Her tomboy-ish voice cut itself off as she spun around to us and took note of me. “Ooooooh, who's the stallion? You didn't tell me about him, when did that start? How'd you meet? Is he from around here? What does he do for a living? I always pictured you as a unicorn kind of gir-oof” Lily's mile-a-minute tirade was interrupted when Carat levitated a nearby foam water noodle and clocked her across the face. “I told you to stop doing that,” the half-lidded expression never departing her scowling face. “Do what??” Lily's faux innocence dripping with sarcasm like the water from her mane. “Every time I bring anything male with me anywhere and you see me, you immediately come up to me and ask the same recycled series of questions in a daft attempt to be humorous.” “Hey, that old unicorn I saw you with on Tuesday really looked like your type! Excuse me for being excited for you.” Lily crossed her forelegs in an almost convincing pout. “That was my grandpa!” “Well I thought you liked older stallions!” Carat facehoofed unceremoniously before beginning again in a deadpan tone. “Look our break is almost over, I need you to get back to the front desk so I can show Dusk here to his room.” “Alright, but just be sure you don't stay in there with him!” In the few minutes I had now known Lily I had never seen a serious or 'normal' face out of her. Carat huffed in frustration and motioned for me to follow her back down the hall. As we turned around to leave Lily piped up once more with a flirtatious “Byeeeee” before breaking down into a giggling fit with her fellow marefriends. As soon as the sliding door closed behind us I heard another loud *THWACK.* Her mood already greatly improved, Carat turned to me with a smile as the aura of her magic dissipated and said, “Well, shall we then?”