Emberwolf

by Lucky Dreams

The Hope inside her Soul

Outside, the blizzardwolves still howled and ponies still talked, shooting instructions at one another, digging frantically, never-endingly. Scootaloo could hear the shovels. She heard the crunch of hooves upon snow.

“RAINBOW DASH!”

The skylight brightened. A shaft of brilliant light stabbed through the window. She saw the tip of a shovel strike at the glass.

“SCOOTALOO!” Rainbow Dash shouted, and Scootaloo watched as, with a hoof, the wondrous pony brushed away the remaining snow from the window. It was like a dream. Scootaloo’s vision was hazy. She couldn’t make out Rainbow’s face, for a blinding white light shone directly behind the mare and threw her into silhouette.

“I’m gonna bust you out!” Rainbow yelled. “Get back from the window!”

Scootaloo hurried from the skylight. From somewhere outside, she heard Twilight Sparkle say, “Rainbow, we talked about this. Safety first!” But Rainbow Dash took up her shovel and, with the strength of a professional stunt flyer, she struck at the glass. The window shattered. A blast of freezing air pummelled Scootaloo and she gasped out loud: she gasped, because the cold was wonderful, beautiful, blissful beyond belief. After the soul-igniting heat of the Buried Continent, she ached to wrap herself in winter.

The next moment, Rainbow Dash hopped into the attic and wrapped her forelegs around Scootaloo, nuzzled the filly’s wings and said, “I’m here, kiddo. It’s gonna be all right.”

Her coat was soft, her hold was tight. Scootaloo pressed her face into Rainbow’s chest and felt the heart of the pony she loved most in the world; then Scootaloo’s eyes watered, her nose ran, and desperate tears gushed down her face. She tried to say Rainbow’s name, but her mouth quivered. She couldn’t say a single word. Now she was safe – now that the world was whole again – she finally felt the full weight of her exhaustion, and it was tiredness like she had never known. She could have passed out there and then on her hooves.

Rainbow Dash let go and knelt in front of her. Then Twilight Sparkle was in the attic as well, along with Applejack.

“Scoots,” Rainbow said. Her voice was loving but firm. It was the greatest voice in existence. “You’re not allowed to fall asleep yet, ya hear me? Where are your aunts?”

“D-downstairs. In their room. Rainbow, they’ve been turned into candles.”

If Rainbow Dash was shocked, Scootaloo couldn’t tell. The filly’s vision blurred from tears; she battled to keep her eyelids open. But she heard Applejack gasp, and Twilight Sparkle said, “Ooo, that sounds like a case of Temper Tantrum’s Third Law of Transfiguration. How exciting! Don’t worry, Scootaloo. I’ll fix this.” And then Twilight was gone, vanished down the stairs into the charcoal-rich darkness. Scootaloo wanted to stop her, warn her that she wasn’t alone down there. Yet, in her heart, she sensed that Canis Major was gone: that the mighty wolf wasn’t in the cottage anymore…

There was a clatter as, from the skylight, somepony hurled a rope ladder into the attic. But Rainbow Dash shook her head at it. “I’m gonna carry you outta here myself, Scoots,” she said. And the next Scootaloo knew, Rainbow had tossed her on her back, and Scootaloo held her hooves tight around the pegasus’ neck.

They flew from the skylight, through a long sloping snow-tunnel towards a bright white light.

They zoomed out of the tunnel entrance. Instantly, Scootaloo was beaten with heavy snowflakes that swirled viciously in the glare of four spotlights set up on towering steel poles, arranged in a giant square. The sky was a heart-quaking shade of black; clouds circled around a point high, high above them. Although the clouds reached for as far as Scootaloo could see, the snowfall itself covered a space of merely a few hundred hoof-lengths: to her shock, she saw that the rest of Ponyville was completely unaffected. Other than for a field or two around her aunt’s cottage, not so much as a single flake of snow had settled on the ground…

The storm flashed from within with lightning. Whenever it did, Scootaloo spied immense creatures silhouetted behind the clouds.

Blizzardwolves, she thought.

Her teeth chattered; ice formed on her wings: blizzardwolves were bringers of winter and of arctic-born coldness. They ran in circles inside of the clouds, their howls filling the air for a hundred miles around. Now that Scootaloo was in the open – now that she could properly hear them – she realised how beautiful they sounded. Their howls were deep and mournful: a primal strain of music. Perhaps they sensed that Canis Major had escaped from the cottage and back to the Buried Continent, never to be seen again.

Rainbow Dash skimmed over the surface of the snow mountain. It was a monstrosity of winter, at least three times the size of town hall, Scootaloo guessed, and possibly bigger. But when she looked to the ground, her heart raced. It wasn’t just Rainbow Dash and her friends who had come to rescue her.

It was everypony.

Everypony in Ponyville was dressed warmly, and they galloped about this way and that at the base of the mountain, working to uncover the cottage that had been devoured alive by snow. Mares and stallions were hard at work constructing half a dozen tunnels directly into the mountain’s heart. The walls of the tunnels were propped up with magic; teams of exhausted unicorns emerged from the openings five at a time, replaced immediately with unicorns who had rested. And a village’s worth of tents was set up in a field by the mountains edge, a little past the boundary where the blizzard suddenly stopped and the snow didn’t settle. The tent village was a flurry of activity. In the middle of it all, by a table covered in papers, Scootaloo made out Mayor Mare barking instructions to teams of ponies.

Nopony was exactly sure where the house was buried, Scootaloo realised… Rainbow’s tunnel – the one tunnel ponies had dared to make halfway up the mountain rather than at its base – had simply been the first to find her…

The pair of them landed beside an astonished Mayor Mare; suddenly, around them, ponies froze in their tracks and stared wide-eyed at Scootaloo, at the filly they had been working so hard to rescue. Scootaloo shivered – not from cold, but from the feel of those eyes, their amazement, their relief.

Then the whispers started. The word spread through the tent village. “She’s alive,” she heard ponies say. “She’s alive. Thank Celestia, she’s alive.”

“Is there anypony else?” Mayor Mare asked the two of them.

Scootaloo nodded weakly from Rainbow’s back. She wanted to tell about her aunts, and of how Twilight Sparkle was returning them to normal. But it was as though her voice-box had frozen, so supremely cold it was at the base of the mountain.

Rainbow Dash spoke on her behalf. “Lofty and Holiday are still inside. It’s all cool, though. Twilight and Applejack are gonna get ’em out lickety-split.”

“You’re sure there’s nopony else?”

Both Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash nodded. Curtly, Mayor Mare nodded back, but added, “Be that as it may, I’m leaving nothing to chance.” Then she looked away and started shooting new instructions to the assembled rescue ponies, who in turn relayed the new commands to those around them, along with the news, the wondrous, incredible news that one of the tunnels had been successful, that it wasn’t just Scootaloo who had been found but Holiday and Lofty as well. They were alive. It was a Hearth’s Warming miracle. They were all alive.

The unfinished tunnels were to be evacuated, the mayor said, and a team of ponies was to venture down the cottage and join Twilight Sparkle and Applejack. They were to give every inch of the buried building a thorough sweep. Just to be sure; just to be safe.

“Is there anything you wish retrieved?” Mayor Mare asked Scootaloo. The filly still clung to Rainbow’s back; she refused to let go of her foal-sitter.

Scootaloo pictured mugs of enchanted hot cocoa and a secret tin beneath the floorboards of her bedroom, stuffed with photos that may or may not have been empty of ponies. She hadn’t thought to check if the ponies had returned to their pictures. That wasn’t so surprising, she mused to herself. Generally, ponies don’t stop to look at photographs when being pursued by monstrous wolves made from coal and fire and fury.

Were the shattered pieces of the Prime Snowflake still there? Had Canis Major taken them back to her forest in the Buried Continent?

Mayor Mare tapped her hoof, so Scootaloo said, “Um, there’s a photo on my bedside desk – I dunno what it’s of. It might be of nothing, or it might have Rainbow in it.” (The mayor raised an eyebrow at this curious description but didn’t comment.) “Oh! And don’t forget my scooter in the kitchen, and there’s a Daring Do book I wanna finish as well. It’s on the floor in the upstairs corridor. It’s burnt around the edges. And…”

Scootaloo bit her lip. She wanted to add something, but she wasn’t sure if it was right of her.

“Err… by the book, there’s this… thing. It’s like a giant glowing snowflake, but it’s all broken into li’l pieces. If it’s there, could you get that as well?” She gulped. “I wanna see if I can fix it. Or get Twilight to fix it. Or Luna or somepony.”

Again, she could tell that Mayor Mare was itching to ask questions. But the mare resisted the urge, then passed on the instructions to the rescue team.

Then Rainbow Dash carried Scootaloo to a tent on the edge of the makeshift village, away from the celebrating crowds. The air was so freezing that it could have been imported straight from Antlertarctica. Scootaloo’s very bones shuddered. She craned her head around and stared back at the mountain: it was uncanny how, despite the vindictive cold, the blizzard contained itself to that perplexing circle of a few hundred hoof-lengths. There was magic involved here, she thought, make no doubt about it... the snowfall resembled a mighty glistening column which descended from the sky to the ground…

“Twilight sent the word to me, with magic,” Rainbow whispered, answering a question Scootaloo hadn’t realised she had been half-wondering about. “I flew all the way from the Fillydelphia Flight Dome and back to Ponyville as fast as I could. Your parents are coming too. They won’t be here for a couple more hours. They’ve gotta take the train.”

So, her parents were on their way – Dad from Manehattan and Mom from Los Pegasus. They were coming home early and in time for Hearth’s Warming. They were coming to be with her, and shower her with love…

At long last, Scootaloo slipped from Rainbow’s back.

They entered the tent.

A lantern of fireflies hung from the ceiling, and in the corner was a small bed, beside which sat a doctor on a chair, who gestured for Scootaloo to trot over so that he could look at her, check her temperature, make sure she was OK. Scootaloo ignored him however – because Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were there too.

The three fillies stared at one another. Apple Bloom opened her mouth but closed it again.

What could they say to one another? What could any of them even possibly begin to say?

There was nothing, Scootaloo decided. There were no words in heaven or Equestria to get across what needed to be said. The language they required was of a silent variety, a language of heartbeats, and of flinging their hooves around each other as though the world was ending, and there was nothing else more important than clinging firmly to your best friends.

Scootaloo didn’t say a word, but stepped closer to them, like she couldn’t believe they were there – as though they might vanish like shadows in moonlight. Then she sniffled, trembled, and flung herself at them and held them tight to her, tight against her coat, and Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle returned the embrace with equal ferocity. Scootaloo’s tears burned. She wasn’t sure who she had buried her face against, whether it was Apple Bloom or Sweetie Belle – but whoever it was, her tears matted in their hair. All three of them were crying, in fact. The tent filled with their sobs, their laughter.

“G-guys,” Scootaloo whimpered. “I never thought I’d see you again. I love you guys.”

Apple Bloom clutched her tighter. “We know,” she said.

“We love you too,” said Sweetie Belle.

Then Scootaloo pressed her face even closer to whoever’s coat it was, and she couldn’t tell who was speaking. Perhaps nopony was speaking at all; perhaps the voices were simply in her heart. Either way, they said:

“We love you.”

“We love you.”

“We love you.”

---

Half an hour passed, during which the doctor grumbled about hugs, visitors and other assorted nuisances; yet Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were allowed to stay. Soon enough, Scootaloo was pronounced well – tired, perhaps, and her mane and tail were oddly singed, yet aside from that, she was in perfect health.

“She shouldn’t be alone tonight,” the doctor said sternly, looking at Rainbow Dash. “I recommend either she spends the night in hospital, or that somepony stays awake and watches over her.”

“I’ll take her back to mine,” Rainbow told him. “She’ll sleep waaay better there than at the hospital – and in any case, the hospital’s super close, too, so she’ll still be near you guys. But I ain’t taking her ’til she’s seen her aunts.”

At this, the doctor rolled his eyes, but he didn’t argue under the look that Rainbow gave him. It made Scootaloo want to hug her foalsitter all over again; and more than that, she realised Rainbow Dash was right. Exhausted though she was, she couldn’t fall asleep until she saw, with her own eyes, that Aunt Holiday and Aunt Lofty had been returned to normal, that they had hooves again instead of wicks and manes and tails instead of flames. They were still trapped in the cottage: everypony else had been evacuated from the mountain save for them and Twilight Sparkle, who had sent on the message that their transformation would be trickier to reverse than she had thought. The magic was… peculiar, Twilight’s message said. Its strength was remarkable, and yet the curse had been cast in such a way that, by dawn, it should have completely worn off!

The problem, however, was that the cottage could collapse at any moment: it was likely it didn’t have until dawn. But Twilight wouldn’t dare take them outside until they were ponies again, in case the wind blew them out…

Scootaloo frowned at the mountain and the storm clouds.

Why hadn’t the blizzardwolves left yet? Were they still hoping that Canis Major would return to them? But Canis had run back to the Buried Continent; according to the rescue team, she had taken the Prime Snowflake with her. There had been no traces of it, the team said…

Applejack joined them in the tent, along with Rainbow’s other friends – Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Sweetie Belle’s older sister, Rarity. All gazed in silence at the snow mountain.

What if the blizzardwolves never left? What if the storm never cleared? What if the snowfall spread until it wasn’t just the cottage that was buried, but all Ponyville, forever and ever?

Between these thoughts and worrying for Aunt Holiday and Aunt Lofty, Scootaloo felt like she might be sick.

Then she felt something else as well.

At first, she thought it was her nerves, or the cold, or her tiredness: in the tips of her hooves, she felt a tingling sensation. It was faint – easy to ignore. But as the seconds passed, it grew more distinct, more vivid – and from the sudden stillness that descended over the crowded tent village, she knew she wasn’t the only one who felt it. She looked at Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and they looked right back, confused. Rarity and Fluttershy shuffled on their hooves and glanced at one another. Rainbow Dash drew close to Scootaloo and draped a comforting wing over her back. And through the open flap, ponies halted in their tracks and muttered nervously with one another.

The blizzardwolves stopped howling. The only howls, now, came from the wind and from the thunder.

Three ponies hurried through the crowds towards the tent. It was Twilight Sparkle, followed by—

“Aunt Holiday!” Scootaloo cried. “Aunt Lofty!”

Her aunts beamed at her, Holiday with her coat of pink and Lofty with her blue hair and purple mane. They were ponies again, living, breathing ponies with hearts and hooves and warm, warm bodies. They rushed into the tent and swept Scootaloo up in their forelegs.

“You made it!” Holiday said.

“We’re sorry, darling one,” Lofty added, “but the house is gone. It collapsed behind us just as Twilight escaped from the attic. But never mind. You’re safe. We’re all safe. Oh Celestia, we love you.”

“I love you guys too,” Scootaloo said. She knew that the news of the cottage should have been like a kick in the stomach, yet, to her surprise, she found that she didn’t care. It hurt, oh yes, it hurt: but Aunt Holiday and Aunt Lofty were ponies again, and there was so much she was desperate to tell them.

But the tingle in her hooves – in everyponies hooves – grew more intense. Scootaloo quaked in the entrance of the tent, and all eyes were fixed on the mountain.

“Have the tunnels been emptied?” Twilight whispered to her friends. “Is anypony still in there?”

The others shook their heads. “Not a soul, darling,” Rarity whispered back.

Now ponies pointed upwards, and a wave of gasps swept through the crowds: because, abruptly, the blizzard stopped. The last snowflakes settled on the mountain and then the snowfall was no more. Did this mean the blizzardwolves had left? Yet when Scootaloo looked to the sky, she could still see them running in silent circles inside the clouds, illuminated by lightning.

“I wonder what they are,” she heard Twilight whisper beside her. She too stared at the clouds; Scootaloo sensed she was talking more to herself than the others. “They’re not windigos, but what else could they be?”

Scootaloo opened her mouth to answer – but then she heard a familiar sound: a low rumble that became a steady roar. It was the sound of something too terrible even for the fury of the Buried Continent. It was a noise to shake her to her to the living centre of her soul, and small avalanches tumbled down the slopes of the snow mountain; the roar of a beast made from coal and fire, forcing its way through solid earth like a build-up of magma beneath a volcanic vent.

Canis Major had changed from her charcoal-form and had become the Emberwolf again.

She was coming for her.

Scootaloo’s eyes widened in horror. “Oh Celestia,” she said, quickly. “We’ve gotta get outta here. We’ve gotta go now.”

Before she could bolt, Applejack said, “Whoa, hold ya horses there, nelly. What’s going on?”

Everypony was looking at Scootaloo: not just those in the tent – Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, Rainbow Dash and the other grown-ups – but the crowds through the open flap as well.

Why were they staring? Why were they waiting?

“No time to explain,” Scootaloo said. “We have to move!”

“She’s right,” Aunt Holiday said. “Something terrible is coming. We should all leave at once.”

Too late.

For a moment, the roaring stopped, and the night held their breath.

Then…

Light.

It came from the top of the snow mountain: a flash of white, brighter than the Sun, brighter than anything Scootaloo had ever seen, dreamed or imagined; a light like the stars crashed from the sky and ploughed into the Earth. All of Equestria must have seen it, and the lands beyond the oceans, and the distant kingdoms even further than that.

As fast as it came, the light dulled hugely – still almost too bright to look at, but, if she squinted, Scootaloo could just about manage it. Then it dulled even more, and now it merely bathed all of Ponyville instead of the entire world.

The roar returned, louder than ever. It was the voice of hurricanes, tornadoes and firestorms.

Scootaloo’s heart somersaulted.

From the summit of the mountain, the light became a jet of flames that stabbed into the night, halfway towards the clouds – as tall as the mountain upon which the city of Canterlot was built. The pillar of fire was three times wider than the trunk of an ancient redwood, and it contained all the colours of a rainbow. There were bands of lilac, and blue, and green; there was fabulous yellow and radiant red. Scootaloo’s eyes filled with joyous tears as she realised her mistake: Canis Major wasn’t coming for her after all. It was the opposite. Canis had listened to her. The wolf had dared to allow love and friendship into her heart again. She must have done, because, as Scootaloo had discovered earlier that night, love is the only force powerful enough to fuel the flames of a fully-blown firebow.

For miles around, the storm clouds were no longer black but dazzling. All Ponyville was illuminated by the firebow’s brilliance; the ground shimmered with red and green and blue; around Scootaloo, ponies were soaked in light and colour. They seemed to glow.

“Oh Celestia,” Rainbow Dash whispered beside her. “It’s beautiful.”

Ponies sniffed at the air and sighed in pleasure. Scootaloo did as well. Even from the tent village, she could smell the remarkable scents of the fire: the spiciness of the red, the sweetness of the yellow, the pine forest freshness of the green and blue and purple.

The pillar of rainbow-fire began to melt the snow mountain. Torrents of water sloshed down the sides and into the tent village and came up to ponies’ hooves. But nopony seemed to notice, nor care.

Then through the firebow shot a bolt of astoundingly blue light – in an instant, the roaring ceased. Scootaloo heard only running water and the cries of the wind, for the thunder and lightning had stopped as well, and the firebow made no sound at all.

It was frozen.

The flames were suddenly coated in a thick skin of ice, and the ice continued to glow with rainbows. Scootaloo’s soul soared from the sight of them.

Then the crowds screamed, and a unicorn shouted, “What’s that?” And ponies craned their necks and pointed to the top of the pillar. They cried, they shuddered, they wept.

Scootaloo peered up.

She gasped.

At the top of the frozen pillar sat Canis Major, her body so enormous that, even halfway towards the sky, her presence was formidable. Her fur was made from snow which glistened in the rainbow light of the flames. Her mighty tail, so much longer, thicker and grander than a normal wolf’s, wound around the top of the firebow, and the tail was formed from ice. The former-emberwolf looked down at the tent village. Her fangs were icicles in her mouth and her eyes shone with harsh blue light.

She stared directly at Scootaloo.

Scootaloo’s heartbeat slowed; time itself slowed. She didn’t blink. Around her, the rest of the world seemed to fall away into blackness, until nothing remained but herself on the ground and Canis Major sitting in the air... the blizzardwolf’s eyes shone with infinite sorrow… yet, Scootaloo caught the flicker of something else there as well…

Hope.

In her eyes, she saw that Canis Major hoped that the world could be made right again, that fires could be tamed, and that she was a better wolf than what she had become.

Scootaloo gulped.

And then she smiled.

“Good luck,” she mouthed.

Canis Major drew in a deep breath and nodded back at her. Scootaloo heard her voice in her head, as clearly as though the blizzardwolf stood right in front of her; it must have been magic. “To you as well, my friend,” Canis said in Scootaloo’s mind…

Time sped up again.

Scootaloo remembered that she was standing in the entrance of a tent, that the air was freezing, and that she was hoof deep in icy running water. Ponies were frozen in awe and terror at the tremendous wolf.

With a last smile at Scootaloo, Canis leapt from the pillar and ran into the night, as though on invisible steps in the air. She vanished behind the storm clouds. Then the clouds dissipated, vanished, and the stars returned, more stars than could be counted by a hundred ponies in a thousand years. The sky was boundless and brimmed with hope, and the possibility of change…

Everypony, everywhere, was quiet. The wind wailed. The water ran.

Rainbow Dash broke the silence.

“What in Tartarus was that?”

In spite of the cold, Scootaloo felt warm all over and tingly in her skin: an electric feeling. She didn’t know what to call it – yet the feeling was too huge to keep to herself. It was, perhaps, joy in its ripest form. It was the knowledge that the world was a bigger place than a lonely cavern with a fake sky lit by glow-worm stars, and where the only company was fire and crystal. Life could be fixed. This was a world where wolves and ponies could change.

Scootaloo beamed at Rainbow Dash. She didn’t hesitate.

“That was my friend,” she said, simply.