“If the youth are not initiated into the tribe, they will burn down the village, just to feel its warmth.” — African proverb
After three hundred years sulking in Tartaros, a pegasus who made a deal with Windigos for power has been released for good behavior. Her first stop? Her old hometown of Ponyville!
A Lunaverse story, and a Hearth's Warming one. Happy Holidays!
Also, disclaimer: except for the punny name ("rime" is an obscure word for frost or ice), this story has essentially nothing to do with "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
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"Here we come a-wassailing" is an old English carol. Being a carol, and being old, there are many variants on the lyrics; the first known published lyrics are fairly blunt about it being wassail and beer, but presumably the Equestrian version sung by Sweetie Belle and others above is a little bit more obtuse about it.
Hah! Love it, especially Ditzy's reaction in the end. (I'm also predicting Cheerilee, who was personally frozen by Ice Heart's dad, will have a similar reaction to learning they're in for more windigo shenanigans.)
Ah, it’s been ages since I read a Lunaverse story, but there’s a reason I always ease myself back into the ’verse with a story written by its founder: I can be assured that it’s good. You’ve yet to break that streak and from what I read here there’s no risk of it happening any time soon.
Oh, great. A holly jolly headache.
6715235
Wow - thanks for the vote of confidence! I'll try not to disappoint.
6715148
The first line of the next chapter probably won't surprise anyone.
"Why didn't you bring any of this up when we were fighting a Windigo not one month ago?!"
6715450
This looks like it will be most apolaustic.
What a great start to a new story, and what a wonderful way to lighten the dower mood I woke up in. Think I'll just preemptively add this to my favorites list.
Wish I had something more specific to say to express my jubilant appreciation, but if I tried to comment on everything I loved about this chapter, we'd be here all day.
Very festive, I loved the mail room rebellion with the mice!
I really like this whole legend/fable deal. You really nailed that kind of "German fairy tail" feel to it. Easily one of my favorite fic intros you've done yet!
Let me get this straight a Windigo a creature that gets harmed when in the presence of lots of love, is going to visit a pony settlement at holiday when love and tolerance are at its highest? Yeah that's going to leave a mark.
Very nice to see something new from you. Was getting worried you had stopped a bit. Looks like this should be interesting.
....why does Trixie know a Windigo? And I forget, has the Lunaverse main 6 faced Discord? I don't think so but I'm not sure...
If I'm wrong about that, could someone kindly link me the story where that takes place?
...I'm sorry, but I can't think of wassail without thinking of this.
A great start so far. Looking forward to more!
6715623
The idea of Ditzy having a "pet" mouse that's actually just a mouse that lives in the post office is one that's been floating around the Lunaverse for awhile; just making use of it here.
6715851
Thanks! I worked hard to try and get the feel of a Brother's Grimm or the like tale. In hindsight I should perhaps read a Brother's Grim tale before I try to ape the style. My copy of The Arabian Nights is probably close enough, though.
6716725
How often I write is directly related to my work schedule; at my new job, while the specific days I work vary, I am always due in at 6:00 PM and always leave somewhere between 11:30 PM and 1:30 AM, which makes organizing my day much, much easier.
When I worked at Papa Gino's, the time I was due in could be literally anywhere from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM and the time I left could be anywhere from 2:00 PM to 12:00 AM. Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh, I am not missing that.
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The L6 haven't faced Discord...yet. But there are hints that he's coming.
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Ah, MST3K, how I love thee...
What 6715851 said! Very well done!
6717424
I think you pretty much nailed it. Of course, it had the most important part of any true Brother Grimm fairytale and that's the horrible fate that befalls the central character to act as a warning to others!
6717270
Ahhh, one of my favorite MST3K skits!
"Severe financial penalties come onto you!"
Oh myyyyy.
'Look out below!', give or take anyway, presumably she isn't carrying out the, um, function the term came to represent, or if she is maybe someone should show her the modern wonder that is plumbing.
Just a bit of a cultural mix up.
6732830 Probably, but still funny.
Why Trixie, it seems she may see you as more than merely a friend!
Oh woh, ye olde french kiss. And of course on Trixie who else.
I think, really, that we should endevour to use the phrase, "And not in the cheek, either," in conversation whenever possible.
Whenever it's least applicable or appropriate, too. Observe:
"I just flew in from out of town, and not on the cheek, either!"
At worst, it will create a funny play on words, and at best, will leave your audience completely baffled, presenting your partner with a prime opportunity to pick their pockets in almost total safety.
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"I was frozen today!"
We will ever find out how Trixie melted that famous ice palace? I always wondered, it is not like evocation was ever her strong point.
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No, it's left entirely vague since I think whatever you personally think happened will always be funnier than whatever I could possibly write. I will say, though, that there's more than one way it could have happened...
Excuse me for a moment, but I absolutely must take a break to rant about something before I can move on and try to get back to actually enjoying this fic...
This idea again...?
I really, and I mean really hate it. I get the idea that it's supposedly meant to be symbolic, but even disregarding how grossly impractical it would be to have a miniature winter wrap-up in the middle of winter, the symbology is just all screwed up. Hearth Warming shouldn't really represent the end of winter, but rather the breaking point where the worst of winter is finally over. Spring might finally be on the horizon, but it's still a rather long way off.
Heck, even in the story of the Hearth Carol itself, the three assistants seem to spend a fairly long while after the defeat of the windogos just huddling together for warmth while stoking the "fire's of friendship" with their songs and merriment before the frozen leaders thaw out. Furthermore, as recently seen on the show Hearth Warming is implicitly meant to be a snowy holiday, seeing as none of AJ's attempts to force a "traditional" celebration on the Pies involved clearing even a little snow.
If there absolutely must be some sort of symbolic gesture of the winter giving way to spring as part of the celebration, clearing just a small patch in the town park would make so much more sense.
Actually, as a compromise, why not something more along this line instead? The symbolic gesture could be that in the days between longest knight and Hearth Warming the pegisi block out the sky with cloud cover, making each day increasingly dark and gloomy. Then overnight on Hearth's Warming eve clear those cloud so that the morning can be a symbolic start of a new dawn for the upcoming spring.
That might be an appropriate measurement in our real world. but we've seen pegasi packing clouds together for a storm on the show, and it's very visibly much thinner, not to mention fairly low to the ground. Rainbow Dash was able to both clear out a hole over Twilight with basically a single cloud, while also being close enough for the two to converse with each other.
Overall, Equestrian clouds are quite different from those in our real world. In addition to hanging much lower to the ground, they are also substantially more dense. Real world clouds are basically just high altitude fog. Whereas Equestrian clouds are more like floating cotton-balls with clearly defined edges.
Maybe you should focus more so one the width and breadth of the could formation rather than their height... or if you insist on keeping it maybe you should reduce the numbers by at least a factor of ten or so (actually a factor of a hundred would seem even more like the show, but ten would be my proposed compromise point). Otherwise not only is it inconsistent with the show, but I just feel like it'd entirely implausible for manual labor cloud control to manage it all.
So enough ranting for now, although a few minor grammatical correction and technical notes before we get to the good parts.
double "that" is poor grammar; one should really suffice to the same meaning.
triple "okay" is fine for dialogue, although each one should probably be offset by a comma.
Also, on a minor continuity point, while Lyra might be better, I was pretty sure we'd already established Trixie was a pretty good story teller as well... or is she just fanning the false modest to trying stall for time because she's nervous?
The entire section after Ditzy speaks should really be it's own separate paragraph. Also, it seems like a rather odd break in the narrative to explain this only to the reading audience. Maybe it should instead be worked into Trixie's or Cheerilee's subsequent dialogues for everypony in the room to hear as well. Especially since as it's currently written Ditzy's concerns seem to be brushed off with little more than an dismissive handwave.
held
Anyway, on to more favorable story notes and appreciation.
I really like the way how Snowy finds the windigos only after forgetting her original motivations and sinking into mere petty anger and rage. Bit of a chicken and egg scenario there perhaps. Was it proximity to the windgos that corrupted her emotional state, or was it those powerful emotions that attracted the windogos thus allowing her to find them in the first place... or maybe a little bit of both. Not looking for answers her, I just find it something interesting to think about.
In closing, I'd actually been wondering if the problem with the ice in the clouds was somehow Snowy's fault even if only accidentally by her proximity to them, or at least if maybe the other ponies would end up blaming the "windogo" regardless. Seems you have a slightly different direction in mind for this story though, so I'll be interested to see where things go in the next chapters.
6734972
Well, I did say it was limited strictly to the town itself, for reasons of practicality. I personally like the idea.
In any event this story isn't canon (you'll note that it's in the miscellaneous fanfiction folder), so no worries.
Actually it's not even close. Even "short" clouds tend to be a thousand feet tall or more; nimbostrati tend to have an average height of 6,500 feet and an average elevation of up to nearly 10,000 feet My personal policy when describing clouds in MLP has already been to divide both their thickness and their elevation by 10, though - it's what I did in Tales of Ponyville and it's what I've done here, and I'm sticking to it for reasons of consistency with other stories where I've mentioned cloud height and elevation. The nimbostrati cloud cover would already be a bit on the diffuse side with a real-world thickness of only 5,000 feet.
Although, there is specifically a cloud cover being made. The individual nimbostrati above which are going into the cloud cover (a la individual bricks in a wall) probably have a thickness of 50 feet at most.
6735077
I suppose... still niggles on me something fierce though just in concept alone regardless of canonicity, if only because the story is otherwise something I think might be a good fit. Still, you're the grand-puba, so your call either way.
Well, shows what I know... or rather don't. Damn writers having no sense of scale trope on every front. I'll still stand by another factor of ten probably being in order, and that even 65 foot thick total cloud cover 100 feet off the ground seems more than what we typicaly see on the show (well, the altitude might be about right, but the thickness is still way off). If nothing, else I think it might be better to just use vague terms rather than such exact measurement.
Your numbers might be plausible in larger cities like Canterlot and Manehatten, but in tiny villages like Ponyville I just can't visualize them having enough pegasi to mange that much cloud mass, let alone facilities large enough to store those clouds. As above, however, you're the boss...
...although, I still reserve the right to gripe impotently about it whenever it comes up.
6735128
Well, if I do decide to otherwise canonize it it'll probably just go into movies & tie ins, in which case the specific details will be fairly loose anyway. Also it might just be a uniquely Ponyville or North Everfree tradition, not necessarily one carried out through all of Equestria.
Well, I did mention that the nimbostrati were themselves kept in a vast cloud container, itself made out of clouds; that's probably how they were shipped there. In any event, the rough thickness of the cloud cover as a whole (if not the individual clouds that make it up) would at least appear to match up with the thickness of the cloud cover seen at the end of "Winter Wrap Up" and during Rainbow Dash's song in "Tanks for the Memories".
6735440
Sorry, but I'm still not really buying it. The sheer volume of such a structure regardless of what it's made out of would just be too ludicrously massive for me to even contemplate it as being manageable by mere hoof-power alone.
Meh... at least to my eye, I still think both examples look more like they are only a few DOZEN feet thick rather than the few HUNDRED they are in your story, but I digress. We could bicker this back-and-forth all day and not get anywhere since it's difficult to extrapolate from 2D flash animation how much of what we see is height as opposed to depth.
I've spoken my piece on the matter and am quite willing to leave it at that for the time being.
I found this chapter to be both awesome and adorable.
There's just something about Snowy Night's boundless enthusiasm but general cluelessness about social stuff that is very endearing to watch.
6735643
It really is kind of insane just how big actual clouds are. I'm kind of inclined to go with what RDD is doing with them, though I do agree that the show shows them a lot smaller than even that. Then again, I have always viewed the Lunaverse as putting a little more crunch and detail into the things we've seen in the show, so I might be biased here.
Two questions.
1) how does he have coals hot enough to ignite timberwolves in his bag without them burning?
2) how and why does a child have a poisoned needle with a poison powerful enough to quickly/instantly fell a manticore?
Other that those obvious embellishments, I give this 5/5
6745353
Funnily enough, I did originally have him defeating the manticore and timberwolves in a more believable way, but then I reminded myself that this was supposed to be a fairy tale that could slot into the Brothers Grimm. Except, y'know, pony.
Luna: Trixie, we've been over this. If you want the unicorn Vicereine position, you have to compete against the current holder of that position in the traditional manner.
Trixie: ...begging?
Luna: Mixed martial arts.
*Trixie turns to see Twilight Velvet suplexing a boulder*
1. Snowy is awesome! And adorable!
Please please please continue writing this.
2.
Dinky, it's official. You're no longer "most lovable pony in the Lunaverse".
Hail Snowy Night, Queen of the Adorable!
A new rdd story... how did I miss this?
Well, got a rental comp for awhile, time to enjoy RDD.
<One reading later>
Huh. Not bad. Rime is... huh, socially awkward filly with ice powers and touched in the head... She isn't going to pull a Booker Dewitt in the course of this story is she?
One long ass time ago in the ass end of nowhere, a dumb ass sat in weather colder the well diggers ass and shouted into the woods
Rime: MECHA LECKA HI MECHA HIDEY HO! AWAKEN FIERCE WINDIGOES, HEED THY MISTRESS'S CALL AND DO HER BIDDING <Dramatic pause... which slides into awkward silenece... then into annoyed huffing> GET YOUR FROZEN BUTTS OUT HERE!
Voice: What!? What do you want?
Rime: Get out here!
Voice: You little bitch, I'm busy! I'm sudsing, I'm dishing the pots here! GET AWAY FROM THEIR COLT, THAT'S FOR THE GUESTS! AND DAMN IT ELISHA, DEAL WITH YOUR SON, AND FILL THE DAMN ICE TRAY YOU PUTZ! WE LITERALLY POOP ICE STORMS, AND YOUR SO LAZY YOU CAN'T FILL THE TRAY!
Male: All right! Genug already with it, I'll fill the damn tray! And I bet you want me to with the little shicksa to my jewel!
Mare voice: Oh heaven forbid your majesty! Not enough I slave and toil and be a good wife, I have to deal with some little hussy who want's to molest you?
<Poof, a very put upon looking windigo appears>
Stallion: Okay, what do you want?
Rime: Uh... if I've done this at a bad time...
Stallion: just spill it
Rime: I'd like Equestria to be put under an eternal snow fall please.
Mare: WELL, IS SHE GOING TO MOLEST YOU?
Stallion: NO, SHE WANTS TO PUT ALL THE LAND ON ICE!
Mare: What? WHY?
Stallion: I DON'T KNOW!
Mare: DID YOU ASK?
Rime: What in Luna's name...
Stallion: NO!
Mare: WELL ASK!
Stallion: Why do you want to do that?
Rime: <deadpan> To keep the tribes fresher longer.
Maybe it's not a windigo, but did anyone ever stop to think that it might be a windigo...
With an Uzi?!
Glad to see this story continue and merry Christmas to you too. ^^
Ok, we have repeated mentions of bizzarely cold winds coming out of the Everfree. We have Snowy Night emerging from her self-imposed prison, and being unwilling to explain fully why.
I have two guesses for what's going on:
1: Snowy Night set something into motion all those years ago, and now she's got to come back to disarm it.
2: The Windigoes have finally realized that Snowy Night has broken their bargain, so they're coming to take back what they gave.
2a: Taking back their power will kill Snowy Night, either simply or from all her delayed aging coming due. She wants to see her friends and the world one more time before she dies.
2b: Taking back their power won't kill Snowy, but she'll start aging at the normal speed again. Having decades instead of centuries means that she doesn't feel inclined to waste any more time in self-flagellation. She wants to start doing something good with what time she has left.
Very nice little tale, here. Great start.
I'm with Trixie when it comes to winter. Overall, depressing as all-hell for me. Anyway, cute beginning. A 'holy crap!' at the end, there.
No... you really aren't awesome, Rainbow Dash.
A belated Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to you as well, RDD. I hope this continues. I want to know what's up!
I wonder how this will end.
Oh, it just occurred to me that I never posted what Snowy Night looks like, I don't think. Here you go!
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/intermediary/f/9ec95e11-a7ac-47c1-af8d-a11c5e4d22d7/dcuum9p-cad797fa-f7f8-4b87-8fcc-52acc6bb6388.png
Rimewind looks a little different...I'm going to see if I can get art of her made.
Well, that was a quick update. Also things are certainly escalating quickly... like zero to full crazy in all in one chapter, though I'm imagine Trixie might be right that there's more than the obvious at play here.
Rewinding a bit, Snow certainly seems to have similar penchant for dramatic flair. Maybe a quick the mutually picked up from apprenticing to Luna, or perhaps more likely that the Princess has a habbit for selecting those types of personalities to train in the first place.
This surely must have been the flower trio... the horror, the horror.
9357104
I was going to say that, the flower ponies certainly seem to enjoy their melodrama.