The genesis of this story goes back to 2016, long before I'd ever watched the first episode of FiM (early 2020). At that time, I saw a piece of artwork showing a wizard walking. That's it. Just walking with his staff and a cape billowing out behind him. Something about that image inspired me to figure out who he was and why he was in a rush to get somewhere. So I started writing. I stopped the story at just over 4k words with notes about where I wanted to go next. I never got back to it,