Camaraderie is Sorcery

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 4:16.1 - Neighbors

Chapter 4:16.1 – Neighbors

Magus

An orb of fire hovered in the air before the unicorn, writhing and swirling, but the flames ever found their way upwards. Shazira directed all her will toward it, wrapping it in layers of sorcery, feeding and drawing energy at different points, but the orb stubbornly remained more or less unchanged. It compressed into a ball of bright light and heat momentarily, before flaring back out and igniting a nearby curtain.

“Chanêk!” Shazira swore in Draenglic before extinguishing the spell and summoning water to quell the blaze.

Skilled sorceresses were able to keep themselves warm in frigid climes, but that did nothing for the ponies around them. The magus was attempting to create a portable heat source that she could levitate around, much as some sorceresses conjured up portable light sources. So far, she hadn’t discovered a way to do so that didn’t risk igniting anything flammable nearby. It didn’t help matters that her makeshift laboratory was made from and filled with highly flammable things. Back in Saddle Arabia, where her laboratory had been built from stone and housed many sorcerous and alchemical tools, she could have experimented with fire to her heart’s content. Here, however, she had to make do with a small chamber constructed of wood and clay construction, along with more wooden furniture. Her tools were gone, her laboratory was gone; but at least she still had her life and freedom. She was in the service of the exiled Sultana Rashida of Saddle Arabia, but voluntarily so. Had she remained in her home country, she’d have been forced to serve the Zebrikaanian padishah, or else be imprisoned or executed.

She looked at the hourglasses on one table and saw that they had all been exhausted; how long ago, it was impossible to tell. In Saddle Arabia, the hours of sunlight were nearly constant throughout the year, but here in Equestria they varied, growing or shrinking as the seasons turned. It was difficult to determine the time instinctively, so Shazira had tried to come up with alternate means of timekeeping. She was surely late now for her audience with the sultana, and she quickly pulled on coverings to protect herself from the chill outside before leaving her chambers.

Supported by the sultana as she was, Shazira had been afforded slightly better accommodations than many of the other refugees. She had a few more rooms than normal, despite living on her own, and her chambers were near to those of the royal family. The homes of the Saddle Arabians had been built in a connected style with a mazelike network of alleys and courtyards running through them—much like Maer-Dina, but far more compacted together. It often felt like they were living atop each other, but it was the best way to have some semblance of their former lives without also freezing to death or needing to chop down the entire Everfree Forest to keep warm. Because of the interconnectedness of the buildings and her proximity to Sultana Rashida’s court, she only had to step outside twice, and when she did, she hurried to the next door as fast as her legs would carry her. Winter was coming to Equestria, and the Saddle Arabians had no love for it.

Shazira stopped at the entrance to the sultana’s audience chamber and passed her winter clothing to an attendant before stepping through the curtain to the interior. The chamber was larger than any other in the Saddle Arabian settlement, and it was heated with hearths set into either wall as well as a long narrow one down the center whose smoke filtered up to a hole in the roof. Even so, it paled in comparison to the throne room in which the sultana had once held court. Sultana Rashida was at the far end of the hall, lounging upon cushions with heavy blankets draped over her back. She seemed not to have noticed Shazira enter, her eyes on the tome propped open before her on a reading stand.

“Your majesty, please forgive my lateness,” Shazira said in Draenglic with a bow.

Though the sultana had encouraged the Saddle Arabians to learn and conduct their business in High or Low Equestrian, given their predicament, courtly matters were still conducted in the language that had been most prevalent in Saddle Arabia. Here, alone but for the scant couple of guards at the corners of the room, sultana and magus could speak freely in their native tongue.

“Oh, I had not realized the time had passed for you to arrive,” the sultana replied as she looked up in surprise.

Shazira could easily believe that, and not just because of the strange inconsistency of the sun this far north. She was familiar with the book that sat before the sultana, a beautifully written and illustrated tome that chronicled the lives and deeds of every ruler of Saddle Arabia. As the days grew shorter and the weather colder, Rashida had drawn inward and spent more and more time paging through the book, reading about the great feats of her predecessors. Though there was still plenty of room in the volume for her reign and the reigns of her descendants, Shazira knew the sultana feared the story of the Sultanas of Saddle Arabia had come to an end with their exile.

“What business do you have for me today, your majesty?” Shazira asked.

“More of the same,” Rashida sighed, and she gestured toward a low table nearby where a rolled-up scroll had been left. “There is much need for food, firewood, and warm clothing. More homes, too, if my subjects continue to join me in my exile. My royal physician tells me that the change in our diet and in the weather is having deleterious effects on the population that must be redressed. It’s all written down there.”

While Sultana Rashina spoke wearily, Shazira examined the list.

“We must also have an answer to our legal status,” Rashida said as Shazira reached that point of the list. “We must be able to live according to our own laws, not the laws of the Kingdom of Cant’r Laht.”

“That may be difficult,” Shazira told her liege. “Mayor Mare won’t like it.” Nor will Twilight Sparkle.

“What has my sultanate come to?” Rashida bemoaned her fallen station. “A mayor holds sway over me.”

“We will return to Saddle Arabia one day, your majesty,” Shazira tried to assure her monarch.

“Not in my lifetime,” Rashida said forlornly as she looked to the magus with a hopeless gaze, and she was probably correct. “Go. Bring our needs to Twilight Sparkle.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Shazira said as she gave Rashida a bow and backed out of the room.

Shazira paused for a moment in the antechamber off from Rashida’s diminished court before taking her winter clothing back from the attendant. The sultana could see no hope for her future, but at least she still trusted that a future for the Saddle Arabians existed separate from Zebrikaanian rule. Shazira took extra care to bundle up this time, making sure no part of her was unnecessarily exposed. The slit around her eyes that she had to peer through was unavoidable, but she made it as narrow as possible before setting out.

She would not just be walking among the clustered buildings of the Saddle Arabian settlement now, though she did keep to them as much as possible before reaching their western edge. The buildings at least blocked some of the wind, assuaging the harshness of the winter chill around and within them. There was no protection for the magus as she now departed the settlement and made her way to Ponieville. When the Saddle Arabians had pitched their tents here, they’d done so inside the perimeter Mayor Mare had marked off for her new wall, but not near any existing buildings on this bank of the Equestry River. When the settlement had gone up, it had been in much the same place the tents had been, so the Saddle Arabians remained separated from the village. Shazira trotted as quickly as she could across the expanse of trodden-down, mostly dead grasses toward the nearest bridge across the river. There was a path, carved out by hoof-traffic rather than the mayor’s design, and she met up with it shortly before the palisade that enclosed the Equestrian buildings on this side of the river.

The guards at the gate let her pass without comment, either because they somehow recognized her as a friend of Twilight Sparkle even under all her winterwear or because they didn’t feel like questioning any Saddle Arabians today. Once she was through the palisade and across the river, Shazira was able to enjoy some protection from the wind again and slowed her pace to a more reasonable tempo. There were times when she bemoaned her new role just as the sultana bemoaned her fallen station. She had been a promising young magus in Saddle Arabia, a favorite of Rashida and her court. Now, it seemed, her most important task was as a messenger to Twilight Sparkle. She still counted the Cant’r Laht sorceress as a friend (even if she knew she would never be in Twilight’s inner circle like the Brave Companions), so it was not an unbearable role, just not one she’d imagined for herself. Twilight Sparkle was taking her oath to provide for the Saddle Arabians seriously after having failed in her previous vow to them; she seemed to truly care for their plight beyond just mending her wounded pride, a rare thing among Cant’r Laht sorceresses. Shazira knocked upon the door of Golden Oak’s laboratory as she arrived, and Spike answered the door.

“Hello?” the dragonling asked as he examined the bundled-up magus. “Shazira?”

“Yes, it is I. Is Tfilight Sparrrkle afailable to speak?” Shazira asked.

“Come on in,” Spike said as he pulled the door open wider to admit Shazira, and she quickly stepped out of the cold.

It had become difficult to get around in Golden Oak’s laboratory as of late, filled as it was with piles and towers of books and scrolls all recovered from the tower of Yliiena the First. Though they really ought to have gone to Cant’r Laht to reside in the archives or within Cant’r Laht Castle, Twilight Sparkle so far had insisted on keeping them here. They belonged to her, and she wasn’t willing to part with them until she managed to glean all she could from them (even though most were written in an archaic language she was still trying to learn). Paths had been made through the stacks, and Spike helped Shazira navigate through them after taking her winter coverings.

Twilight Sparkle was seated in her study, in a space cleared of Yliiena’s books then refilled with books from elsewhere. A fair few were scattered around her, but at the moment, her attention was upon the object she sought to use the books to better understand. Shazira had seen the mysterious box from the Tree of Harmony before, but it was still odd. It was crystalline and hard-edged, but also appeared to have veins running through it as if it had been carved from some living thing. The base and top were hexagonal, with twelve trapezoids bowing out from the center to form the other sides. Upon the six upper faces were indentations that looked like keyholes, though Twilight’s inspection had revealed no locking mechanisms or tumblers evident within. Nor in the past months since the box appeared had anything resembling a key for it been found.

“Oh! Shazira,” Twilight said as she looked up from the mysterious box and noticed the magus had joined her. “What can I do for you? Are you here to talk, or on official business?”

“Official business,” Shazira replied. “Sultana Rrrashida ghas sent me.”

“Is everything okay?” Twilight asked with concern. “Is there anything the Saddle Arabians need?”

“Actually, I ghave a list gherrre,” Shazira said as she reached into her saddlebags.

“A list! Excellent! It always pays to be prepared,” Twilight Sparkle said excitedly, and Shazira smiled in spite of her situation. The Saddle Arabians were in a rough place, but they could trust the pony who intended to get them out of it.

***

Commoner

Houzef carefully poured lime from its barrel into the great wooden unhairing vats below. Damp cleaned pelts were stacked nearby, ready to be thrown in to continue the process that would convert them into writing materials. Just a few years earlier, the idea of building a parchment-works in Ponieville would have been madness. With the advent of Twilight Sparkle, however, and her incredible need for the writing material, the idea was no longer so laughable. Filthy Rich had also constructed the parchment-works at just the right time, when there’d been a sudden influx of ponies who needed jobs. Twilight Sparkle did what she could for the Saddle Arabians, but she could only do so much for the growing population, even with the resources of House Haltrotsun behind her. Most of her support ended up with the court she’d sworn to protect.

Those who had no claims to title nor affinity with Sultana Rashida besides their duty as her subjects had to find work for themselves in order to gain anything beyond the bare necessities of food and shelter. Some were content, or had convinced themselves in their broken spirits, that they wanted nothing else, but many could not abide the idleness and scraping-by life of the settlement. Houzef had once been a dockworker in Trasans, and when the sultana had fled the burning port, he’d managed to get him and his family aboard one of the ships going into exile. He hadn’t known what to do with himself at Settler’s Folly, unwanted by the land and unwanted by Shazira’s court, but after coming to Ponieville he’d found something he could do. It wasn’t ideal, but … it was something, and the small bit of extra coin would help his family, or so he hoped.

As he finished adding the lime, ponies below began to throw in the pelts, most of them, like him, also Saddle Arabians. His skills with Low Equestrian were much better than theirs, and so though his labors were all menial, the overseer of the parchment-works had seen fit to give him some measure of authority over the others. As they set to stirring the vats with their long poles, Houzef returned the lime to the rest of the supplies before preparing to leave for the day. After putting on all the coverings he possessed to protect against the cold, he departed with a set of saddlebags over his back filled with parchment that had already been dehaired, stretched, smoothed, and cut into manageable pieces.

The parchment was intended for Twilight Sparkle, part of a set of regular deliveries that Filthy Rich had convinced the sorceress to agree to (without much convincing needed) after he’d gotten his parchment-works up and running. Spike took the delivery at the door with little in the way of conversation, and Houzef was released from work for the day. He’d been wary around the dragonling at first, especially given as he’d seen his home torched by the dragon’s kin, but had grown used to him over time. He supposed it was much the same for the residents of Ponieville, who’d only lived near him a few short years longer than he had.

Houzef didn’t return immediately to the Saddle Arabian settlement. Instead, he wandered the streets of Ponieville. As he did, he attracted many looks and whispers from the ponies around him and tried to ignore them. Like Spike, it was something he’d grown accustomed to; but unlike Spike, it was something he hoped would go away. The stallion came to a halt in front of the Green Dragon Tavern, staring up at the sign bearing the tavern’s name with a wyrm coiled around it. The Saddle Arabian settlement was short on many things, but perhaps alcohol most of all. Houzef hadn’t had a proper drink in ages. He did have a small amount of coin on him, and so against his better judgement, he stepped into the tavern.

Conversation quieted as he trotted past the tables of the Equestrians to get to the bar. It was easy to tell that he was different; even for a Saddle Arabian, Houzef stood tall, at least a head more than any other pony in the tavern. The barmaid stared as if she’d never seen a Saddle Arabian before as he approached and pulled the scarf down from his muzzle to make an order.

“Hey! Longshanks!” a stallion from one of the tables called out before he could speak. “What do you think you’re doing in here?”

Houzef slowly turned to face his questioner, a smith or smith’s apprentice by the looks of him, heavy muscles bunched at his neck and shoulders.

“I fas going to buy a drrrink,” Houzef replied innocently.

“I don’t think we have anything to suit your tastes here, do we?” the smith said, directing his question at the barmaid who enthusiastically seized on the opportunity and shook her head vigorously. “Why don’t you go back to your settlement where they’ll have proper Saddle Arabian drinks for you?”

“Fe did not brrring anyding fith us,” Houzef said. It wasn’t strictly true, but any liquor that had made it onto the ships had been kept by the nobility and gone before they ever saw Ponieville.

“Well, there’s more of you lot showing up all the time. You should go check if anyone’s brought anything,” the smith said, his voice making it clear his suggestion wasn’t optional.

Houzef could’ve argued, could’ve fought back, but judging by the expressions of the ponies around the smith, he wouldn’t be fighting just one pony. Even if he somehow won, the town guards would just drag him off to the Mayoral Keep and lock him up for an unspecified amount of time for disturbing the peace, and he’d be guaranteed to lose his job at the parchment-works. A drink wasn’t worth it.

Houzef strode past the other ponies, towering over them, and back out of the tavern. Conversation resumed as he left and made his way in a foul mood through the streets of Ponieville, heading toward the nearest bridge over the river. The Saddle Arabian settlement stood depressingly in the distance, within the walls of Ponieville yet separate from the Equestrian dwellings. Would that ever change? Probably not, Houzef thought. There were undeniable differences between how the Saddle Arabians and the Equestrians lived. Even if he were to move into an Equestrian home and live exactly as they did, he doubted they wouldn’t still see him as “other”. They were not so different—certainly less so than between something like ponies and gryphons, and far less so than between ponies and satyrs—but that difference still seemed insurmountable.

As he neared the settlement, Houzef met another headed in the opposite direction, who was also bundled up.

“Good day to you,” she said as they drew near, and with a shock Houzef realized that it was a zebra standing before him.

Zebras had been the mortal enemy of Saddle Arabia for centuries—Houzef had been taught that his whole life. The dragons may have burned his home, but the Zebrikaanians had taken it from him. At first, he was sure she was a Zebrikaanian spy or assassin come to see the end of Sultana Rashida, but then he reminded himself that they were far beyond the reach of Padishah Ulm the Great Light here. Besides, he had heard rumors of this zebra.

“Gh-ghello,” Houzef struggled to get out. “Arrre you going into Ponieville?”

“Yes, there are some things I need,” the zebra said, her face wraps shifting as she spoke, revealing the burns on her face. “Why, is something happening that I should know about?”

“No, I am just surrrprrrised dey let you into deir town. As a non-Equestrrrian, I mean,” Houzef quickly softened the meaning of his statement.

“You have had some trouble?” the zebra asked, and Houzef reluctantly nodded. “For years, they all hid whenever I entered the town or tried to drive me off.”

“But now dey accept you?” Houzef asked hopefully.

“I still live in the Everfree Forest,” the zebra said bluntly. “But, there are many who no longer think me so strange. I am no longer feared or hated, apart from the very few. What is your name, pony of the sands, that I may know you better?”

“I am Houzef. What is your name?” he asked, even though he thought he already knew.

“You may know me as Zecor,” the zebra said.

“So, Zecorrr, it gets better den?” Houzef asked.

“It is better for me now than it was, but … I was once nearly burned at the stake, and I have lived among monsters and fiends for years. It gets better, but does it get any better than this? That I do not know,” Zecor said honestly.

***

Emira

Sparks flew up and fluttered in the air as another log was thrown onto the fire at the center of the room. Around the long hearth were seated the surviving members of Rashida’s court—the last of Saddle Arabia’s nobility, as far as they knew. They wouldn’t recognize any who had turned traitor and bent the knee to the Padishah and so doomed their houses to eternal servitude beneath the golden sun of Zebrikaanian. Not that there had been many of those, but the overwhelming defeat of the desert sultanate had convinced some to surrender and throw in their lot with the conqueror rather than face execution or exile. Barely a quarter of the titled ponies of Saddle Arabia remained, reduced to squatting in rickety wooden homes when they’d once lounged in luxuriously rich palaces.

Emira Fahir took her seat among the others, the last to arrive and her offering of wood causing the sparks. They were in nopony’s dwellings in particular, but in a common room they’d managed to have built. It was place that they could all meet if not comfortably, then at least more comfortably than if they’d tried to squeeze everypony into the cramped chambers they now had to live in. It was an indignity to have to bring their own wood for the fire, but servants were few these days and hard to afford, and the nobles had agreed on this method of tending the fire at these meetings. It was too much for one pony to bear all the weight of bringing servants with enough wood to light and feed the fire, and so they all pitched in with the wood allotted to them or that they were able to acquire.

“What were we talking about?” Fahir asked in Draenglic, violating the sultana’s order.

“That Haakim and Amira failed to get across to us just how dreadfully cold this wretched place was,” said Emira Kalona, one of the few unicorns among their circle, a large jewel hanging from the tip of her horn.

“It was still summer when we were here,” Haakim objected, it seemed not for the first time today.

“If only we’d stayed in the Equestrian Divide,” moaned Emira Taani as she looked hungrily at the blaze.

“And starved to death?” objected Emir Shaarid. “That or murder by pirates would have been our fate had Twilight Sparkle not showed up.”

“Twilight Sparkle,” Fahir’s voice made the name a curse, and the others turned their rapt attention toward her. “Sultana Rashida either does not see it or refuses to, but we have been made subservient to this Cant’r Laht sorceress, this princess who will one day take the place of the hated Celestia.”

“If it weren’t for her provision—” Amira objected.

“Provision that must come with strings, even if we cannot see them yet,” Fahir cut her off. “Mark my words, someday Twilight Sparkle will come to us for repayment of her provision. If it is before she comes into her power, all the better, for then we can more easily disabuse her of her misconceptions. We Saddle Arabians must not become subjects of Cant’r Laht!”

“Of course not, but we are strangers in a strange land. Only Faust knows how long our exile will last,” Emir Korat said. “We cannot survive forever by pretending to be something we no longer are.”

“Perhaps your bloodline has failed the test,” Fahir said accusatorially, and she rose, half flinging off the blanket draped over her, “But mine has not. The blood of House Allaq flows in my veins, the blood of sultanas, blood spilled on the sand many times to protect our home! My rule and reign shall continue, and that of my house to the end of time!”

“Where are your armies?” Haakim asked, suddenly bold, drawn to anger by Fahir’s pontificating. “Where is your water?”

He paused as all the nobles in the room considered that last question. Water had been a major source of power in Saddle Arabia. Whoever controlled the oases controlled the desert, but here water was so abundant that it gushed along in a great river bisecting Ponieville’s walls. They truly were strangers in a very strange land, as Korat had said. Much that they had once known was now invalid, and not just because of the differences in geography.

“What does your title—or any of our titles—mean now?” Haakim continued after the assembled ponies had time to think. “We have no lands, we have few followers, our wealth is dwindling by the day. If we behave as if we were Saddle Arabian nobles living in Saddle Arabia yet, as if the Twelve Terrible Days had never happened, then we will become the very beggar-lords you fear. We must adapt. We must find a new way to live, and a new purpose in the sultana’s court.”

Fahir glared at Haakim. In Saddle Arabia, her control of the triangle of oases north of Maer-Dina and the trade routes out of Tandr had granted her considerable power and influence, and so far she’d managed to maintain it despite her impoverishment. If she hoped to sustain or even increase her authority, she needed to bring the others around to her point of view and see that she was the leader they needed. Haakim, however, was ruining everything by bringing their attention to the differences from Saddle Arabia, something Fahir couldn’t tolerate. Haakim was high in Sultana Rashida’s counsels, the reason he’d been chosen to accompany Amira to Equestria the year before, so moving against him would not be tolerated. Or … perhaps it would. The sultana seemed more and more distant from court business lately, and maybe it was time to heed some of what Haakim was saying. They were in a different land now. The old rules need not apply …

***

Foal

Stahir peered over the rim of his fortress at the troops arrayed against him. The zebras glared back, their baleful expressions fixed and terrible. Another guard stuck his head over the edge to look down, a long spear in his teeth ready to hurl at the zebras who had besieged them.

“Do you surrender?” Stahir cried in reply to their own challenge, but got no audible response. “Then death it is!”

A stone was hurled from within the fortress and struck the zebra line, sending them scattering. One of the zebras skittered across the floor and into the hearth. Giving a cry of distress, Stahir tried to mount his fortress wall, overturning the cushion it was made of in the process, and tripping on the ends of the blanket wrapped around him, sending him crashing down amidst the wooden zebras where they had fallen. Disentangling himself from the blanket so quickly that the wooden spear of his fellow guard snagged in it and tore through the fabric (something his father wouldn’t be pleased about), he broke free and made for the hearth. The zebra soldier had landed just at the edge of the hearth, not too close to the flames, and Stahir quickly reached his hoof in and pulled the toy soldier out before instinctively putting his hoof in his mouth to cool it down.

Scanning the room and counting the scattered toys to make sure no others had been lost, Stahir let himself sit down next to the fire when he was satisfied that he’d saved the only one in real peril. The Saddle Arabian guards and the menacing zebra soldiers had been carved by his father in between shifts serving as a guard to the sultana, stripes burned into the latter using the hearth’s poker. They were precious gifts and a reminder of where they’d come from.

Stahir surveyed the battlefield as he warmed up beside the fire. The Saddle Arabians were scattered and their fortress was missing a few walls, but the zebras were in total disarray. It was a victory, as it always was when he played. That was so different from what had happened in the real Saddle Arabia. His father didn’t speak of it much, but why else would they have left Maer-Dina so swiftly and fled here? The zebras had come, and rather than being swept away by a single stone, they’d taken the country for their own.

The foal had no more interest in playing with his toy soldiers today, so Stahir swept them away into the remains of his cushion-fort using his tail before looking for another source of amusement. If only he could go outside, but it was so very cold out there, so chill that it crept into the home. It wasn’t like in Saddle Arabia where one went inside to cool off. Still, maybe he could go out and see the river, that rushing ribbon of water like a wild version of an aqueduct, and still be back before his father got home.

Wrapping his blanket back around him, unmindful of the tear, Stahir trotted to the door of their dwelling, cracked it open, and gasped at what he saw. White flakes were falling from the sky, tiny soft ice crystals that were beginning to powder the ground. Stahir had heard of snow, certainly, but the foal had no way to visualize the concept. It was so strange, to see snow fall and settle as if it were a lighter, colder version of the sands of his homeland. He quickly shut the door and ran to get his cloak and boots.

Looking around through the doorway to make sure no grown-ups would try to stop him, he stepped out into the alley. The buildings of the Saddle Arabian settlement were packed close together, so only a narrow sliver of the sky was visible, but even this was filled with snow. Stahir trotted along in awe, the flakes swirling around him and every step making a crunching sound. As he wove his way through the twisting alleys of the settlement, he nearly went cross-eyed from watching the snow land on his muzzle, a prick of cold for a moment before melting and wetting his coat.

His wandering took him outside the settlement, where the land opened up between the dark Saddle Arabian buildings and the river. The air was filled with flying flakes and Stahir looked about with joy, never allowing his gaze to stay in any one place for more than a moment. The cold chilled him to the bones, but he didn’t care, to see this wondrous sight. Distant laughter eventually brought his attention to a group of Equestrian foals playing in the snow near the river, and Stahir cautiously approached. As he drew nearer, he saw some of them had stretched out their tongues to catch snowflakes, and he gave it a try as well. Others lay on the ground, swinging their forelegs back and forth to make snow-alicorns, adding the horn after getting up and shaking the snow from their backs. Some of the more experienced foals managed to give their imprints the appearance of four wings, turning them into snow-Destriers, as if anypony could mistake the imprint of a foal to mean one of Faust’s supernatural servants had lain there. Others were busily rolling up balls of snow and placing them together to mimic a pony’s body.

“Hey, help us with the head, will you?” one of the colts yelled out to Stahir as he and another tried to hoist another snowball atop the two larger ones pressed together.

“Okay,” Stahir said, remembering to speak Low Equestrian, and hurried over.

Though they were of a similar age, Stahir was naturally taller than the other colts and had no trouble assisting them in lifting the head into place. While one of the foals sculpted a tail, the others found sticks, stones, and leaves to give the snow-pony a face and ears. Stahir watched curiously and rooted around in the snow searching for accoutrements to add to the snow-pony. Nearby, another pony dug in the snow, but with the purpose of balling up snow rather than searching for rocks or twigs.

“Snowball fight!” she yelled as she was ready, and used a swipe of her tail to send the snowball flying past Stahir to strike one of the colts working on the snow-pony.

Chaos broke out as foals hurriedly balled up and swatted snow at each other. Stahir joined in, getting the hang of it, laughing as he pelted others with snow and was pelted himself, unmindful of the cold. For the moment, there were no unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies, no Saddle Arabians and Equestrians, just foals having fun in the snow. The only difference was that for one of them, it was the very first time.

Comments

[FireOfTheNorth]

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That is how it started, though it has diverged over time. Any of the main numbered chapters are still based on episodes, though I don't stick as close to the script now as I did then.