//------------------------------//
// Prologue 
// Story: How Love Works 
// by HypernovaBolts11 
//------------------------------//

	I'm going to tell you a story, one to which I don't require you listen, but request that you will hear. You won't lose anything by not reading this, and you might enjoy some other story more. Nothing will stop you from walking away. You can close this book whenever you like, and go do something else.

My parents built their city on top of the old hive in the badlands, from which Queen Chrysalis had been evicted by her subjects. My parents came to the old hive, shielded from the desert by their spells and fortune. After gathering the survivors from underground, they set about their grand project to build a city, by changelings, for changelings. The workers told me that the hive was once a vast network of tunnels that occupied nearly a hundred cubic kilometers of the world below the desert.

They commissioned all changelings fit for work —about two hundred— to build the city, constructing the castle first, where all had lived for the first few years. It wasn't much of a castle, as it was less than three meters tall. If built any higher, it would collapse under the raw, natural might of the constant sandstorm.

Small teams of changelings would leave the castle after its completion, carrying bags full of rocks on their backs, with a new plot of land to their name, and go out into the desert winds, determined to build their own homes. Those changelings usually came running back, unable to fly in the furious blizzard of sand and dust, unable to see for weeks until their eyes healed, having been victims of what some called, "Sand bite."

I had grown up in a flat castle, built barely a story tall, surrounded by changelings, crying, blinded by their own home. I lived in constant fear that the walls of my home would be whisked away on the wind, leaving all of my people exposed to the unrelenting power of the badlands. That did a number on my mind, and I still have not overcome such a fear.

Finally, for one week, the sands let up. No one knew why the sands had given way, but all jumped on the opportunity, constructing a great wall around the castle, towering above anything and everything, built to hold its own against the desert. It rose into the sky at an unimaginable pace, hurried on by the fear of the winds that could return at any moment.

As the winds returned, the wall still grew, more slowly than before, but we'd gotten on our feet, and we wouldn't fall back over, for fear of the winds consuming our hard work. Every evening a great spell would be cast by my parents, turning the center of the castle into a beacon of white light, a guide for any workers who'd lost their way in the sands. Every night, my parents would run around their sickly castle, counting heads until they slumped into their bed, relieved that not one of their subjects had been lost.

As the wall grew, the winds lost their grip on the land encircled by the barrier of magic stone, creating a sort of rain shadow effect, but with sand. The wall took the blunt of the desert's fury, and the castle slowly learned to relax, growing taller and taller with each passing day. As the castle grew, morale got better. All worked harder, spoke happier thoughts, and felt safer by the day.

One day, I watched in awe as those around me returned from the outside world, not a single scratch on them, talking about something bright in the sky. I'd scrambled to find my father, and asked him if I could go see. I'd dragged him outside upon his compliance, and looked up at the sky.

There was the great circle of light, of which my father and mother had spoken about in their bedtime stories, calling it the sun. I stood there for a while, looking up at the raging cloud of blistering sand, able to see through it to the great star behind it. I returned to see it every day at lunchtime, and every day it became brighter and brighter, clearer and clearer.

On what would be remembered as the last day, of the desert's tyrannical control of my people, of the genius of the land's final loss, the sky was unobstructed by sand. I looked up at the sun, in all of its greatness, feeling its warmth on my chitin for the first time I'd remember. I had smiled at it and heard my father say, "We've done it, kid. We've done it."

There had been hours of partying, dancing, and jokes passed around at dinner. My sisters were, at the time, few in number. Those older than me were cadets of the Canterlot Castle guard, and would later become the castle guard in New Hiveland. They had purple eyes, armor, wings, and auras. My older sisters had made sure to be included in some of the fun. They'd swiped a few dice from the adults, taken me outside, and gathered around a makeshift table. They'd rolled dice and bet on various things of little consequence.

One of the more friendly of the purples, named Glados, had smiled at me and said, "You forgot your own birthday, didn't you?" She'd laughed and sat down next to me, pointing her hoof at the sky as it turned black. She said, "Look at the sky, Toothless. What do you see?"

I had followed her gaze, and squinted at the sky. I saw a few dots of white appear, then more and more showed. Before long, the whole sky was full of white points of light. I'd clapped my hooves together excitedly and asked her what they were. I'd never seen stars, none that I could remember at least.

She'd smiled at my and pulled me closer to her. "They're stars, and each of them is a sun all of its own. Imagine that, a million different worlds could be spinning around them. Some might even have people like us, who could be looking at their sky, seeing our sun, wondering if we're here," she had said to me.