The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Unexpected Interlude

"...Okay, I think that's enough. I'm going to stop you, right there."

Starlight blinked, eyes heavy with bags and mane limp and dangling. With a voice that sounded like the breaks on the Canterlot Express, she croaked, "What? Why?"

"That's why," Twilight Sparkle giggled, pointing a hoof. "Also, it's four a.m., which is actually pretty early for me to turn in but I'm never going to get to sleep without a few hours to process everything you just told me."

"But we're..." Starlight stopped and massaged her throat with a hoof. "Barely halfway done with Ironridge..."

"Even better." Twilight stretched, preparing to get up from her comfortable couch. "If that's your idea of halfway, we'd be at this until noon, and you still haven't said just how much is left after that crazy city. Besides, a part where you go to bed in the story seems like a great place to go to bed in the present to me." She raised an eyebrow. "Especially given how long that second day was."

Staring forlornly at the long-empty refreshment table, Starlight swallowed noisily. "I guess. I'm just... into telling this so much right now. It feels like I should keep talking straight through to the end. I don't want to stop, even for the tiniest break..."

"Starlight." Twilight stood up, pacing around the table towards the other sofa. "I'm enjoying it too, and I'd be the biggest liar in Equestria if I said I didn't need to know more about that science you were talking about at the end." Her wings rustled in emphasis, and she grinned cheekily. "Or is it the Plains of Harmony now? Heehee... But anyway. As your friend and mentor, you look like a dump, and I'm ordering you to get some sleep before you wreck your voice, pass out and get ordered by Nurse Redheart to refrain from talking for the next week. Go to bed, Starlight."

Starlight gulped again, shrugging and struggling to her hooves. "You win, then. But we're starting again first thing in the morning, right?"

"After breakfast," Twilight corrected.

Starlight grinned, nodding at a clock. "Or lunch, at this rate."

"Heeheehee..."

Leaving the upper balcony of the library where they had been sitting, Twilight and Starlight trotted through a second-story corridor, crystals drowsily reflected around them in the castle's magical illumination. Starlight turned off first, her room slightly nearer than the princess's... and then Twilight did too, pushing open a bedchamber door and letting it swing shut behind her.

---

Morning in Ponyville brought sunlight, but by the time Twilight and Starlight were up to see it the sky was half-covered in clouds, an industrious host of pegasi flitting back and forth and doing pegasusy things to bring about their desired weather. The castle's dining room - which, thoughtfully, was not a repurposed throne room but its own location on the second floor - had windows opening to the east, letting in the sun at an angle where it brightened the table but didn't hurt any eyes. It would have been perfect for reading a newspaper, if Twilight had had any interest in that. Instead, her attention was fixed on Starlight.

The mare's mane was fixed, and her eyes were lighter... still weary, but with a much-renewed spark dancing behind. Her voice was scratchy, but at least didn't sound painful to use. And her mouth was full of Prench toast, a giant platter nearby ready for refills.

Finishing her bite, Starlight said, "I think we're going to cap it at eight hours of talking for today. I'm... still feeling a little sore from last night."

Twilight blinked. "Well, technically it was this morning."

"You know what I mean..." Starlight rolled her eyes. "Before we get started again, though, is there anything else you'd like to know? I think I said this last time, but even with the benefit of hindsight, I'm pretty much making this up as I go. I'm bound to forget something important, right?"

"You mean, aside from the obvious?" Twilight grinned back, twirling a fork in her magic. "Starlight, that technology they were working on in Ironridge is crazy! ...And more than a little spooky. I don't know if I should have put this together before, but..." Her voice trailed off, growing quiet. "I've... been assuming all the cutie mark stuff that you did was using your own mark. That you had a mark for removing marks. But is that actually true? Or did you do it with...?"

"With technology?" Starlight set her plate down. "Using the things Shinespark and Arambai were researching? Well..." Her eyes wandered. "The first thing you need to know is that what they discovered was hardly the whole story. Shinespark wasn't lying about their research only scratching the surface of a new field, and I know a lot more now about how everything works than I learned that night in the warehouse. There's also so much that even I don't know."

"Shinespark mentioned removing her own cutie mark, though." Twilight lifted a hoof halfway above the table. "Up until now, I thought that was completely incomprehensible and had to be a product of magic I didn't understand, but..."

"But it's possible entirely through technology," Starlight finished. "And other ways. And flying, too." She tilted her head. "You're going to ask how that ties into everything, too, aren't you?"

Twilight nodded. "Pretty much."

"Well..." Starlight sighed. "There's so much to explain, even if I tried to talk about how it worked now, I'd never be able to keep all the details straight, so let's leave that to the story, okay? If I talk about it the way I found it out, it'll make a lot more sense. Trust me." She winked. "Though I can say that everything that happened, with Sosa and moon glass and cutie marks and harmony extractors and flight machines and all that... is at least related to why I can do the things I can do now."

"And why your horn works, too," Twilight added, sawing off a bite with her fork and nibbling on it. "As opposed to burning out every time you tried to use it. Right? Oh!" She blinked rapidly. "I actually did have a question about that. Was it always that bad, or did you really injure it in the mountains? I never could tell."

"It's... complicated." Starlight grinned, emptying a bottle of syrup onto her plate. "I'll explain it more later, because we did end up studying it. The best answer for now is that there always was something wrong with it, but going over the mountains made it worse."

"...Huh." Twilight folded her hooves, chewing.

Rattattattattat!

Both mares jumped, staring down a staircase in the direction of the castle's front door. "I only know two ponies who knock like that," Twilight said, rolling her eyes. Then, leaning over and filling her lungs with air, she bellowed, "COME IN!"

Flash!

In a streak of prismatic light, Rainbow Dash was next to the table, moving so fast she might as well have teleported. "Hey, girls," she greeted, brushing aside her bangs, not in the least winded by her charge. "Breakfast for lunch, huh?"

Starlight grinned awkwardly. Twilight waved, beaming. "Hi, Rainbow. We've got extra, so you can have some if you want."

"Really?" Rainbow Dash's eyes lit up, and she seized the serving platter with a wing, tipping its contents into her mouth. "Mrmmph... Rommmff... urp... Thanks. This stuff's good!" She wiped her muzzle, setting the platter back down.

Twilight's ears folded, and she rolled her eyes. "I didn't mean that much..."

"It's fine!" Starlight pushed her plate away, patting her stomach. "I've had plenty. No need to make more."

"Well... okay, then." Twilight blinked at her. "If you're sure."

"Eh heh... whoops..." Rainbow giggled, taking a step back. "Yeah, maybe that was overdoing it. Sorry, Twilight. And Starlight." She perked up, showing off her prismatic mane. "Anyhow, I just thought I'd come let you know that the weather corps ordered a huge snowstorm for this afternoon, so if you've got any errands, get 'em done now. Or wait, if you like being out in the snow! I know I sure do. Me and Pinkie Pie were gonna go sledding once it stops coming down, if you want to come too. That's everything, though. See ya!"

She made for a window, carefully stopping to unlatch it before climbing out and cannoning away.

Twilight shook her head as the pegasus left, chilly air from the window drafting in around her. "Isn't it a little late in winter for a fresh storm? Huh." Lighting her horn, she closed the exit in Rainbow's wake, shaking her head. "It feels like I've lived here forever, but every once in a while I realize it's been less than two years, and there are still things I have so little experience with... like how they do winter in Ponyville." She wiped her plate with the last of the toast, savoring it and eventually swallowing. "I bet you know how that feels."

"Tell me about it." Starlight stretched, getting up and walking in a circle. "I've been living with you for just a few weeks, and at the rate things happen in my life, that's practically an eternity. Next thing I know, we'll get called off on some giant adventure the moment I'm done telling my story."

"Well, it can happen. The map table does things like that." Twilight shrugged. "But honestly, I'm still adjusting to the idea that I have a student, and sharing this place with someone other than Spike. I'd be fine if things just went slow for a while."

She stood up too, taking the dishes in her aura and carrying them to the dish elevator to the kitchen below. "Or at least until the story's done. Can we continue? I really need to know more about that Sosan technology!"

"Right now?" Starlight stretched again, pacing to the open archway that led to the rest of the castle. "Sure, I guess. Unless you have to get anything done before that snow hits? Snowstorms can be messy."

"We could wait, I guess." Twilight shrugged unhappily, following Starlight to the door. "Snow has such a nice atmosphere, though. I'd love to listen while it was falling. You can make a story so much better just by hearing it in the right place."

"Heh... atmosphere..." Starlight chuckled. "Well, why not? Snow and I have a bit of a complicated relationship, but sure. Let's go continue."

---

Starlight sat by the library balcony window, staring out the window at the increasing mass of clouds gathering in the sky. The library was vertically built, with the second story nearly twice as wide as the ground floor: part of the space below was taken up by the reading room, and the balcony was built over that area's roof. Behind her, Twilight's horn shimmered, carrying a fresh tray of drinks and refreshments into the room so they wouldn't have to leave until the story called for it.

"It's so interesting," Starlight mused, "watching pegasi control the weather. It's part of their species magic, just like flight and temperature resistance. Every pegasus can do it. Yet so many parts of the world simply don't... Areas where the weather is more powerful than the pegasi are organized, or where there simply isn't anything to control. Ironridge, for instance."

Twilight walked closer, perked ears visible in the window's reflection. "I've always lived in pegasus-controlled areas. I've read books about places where the weather is wild, though. It always makes the world feel so much bigger, even when it's inconvenient or dangerous..."

"You spent a day or two in my village, right?" Starlight shrugged. "The weather was wild there. Partially because we didn't have enough pegasi to control it, but also because there was nothing to control. I don't even know if pegasi can control sandstorms. And the thunderstorms that occasionally came down from the mountains were far too powerful. Even the weather corps here would have trouble with them. We just got our water from mountain snow, and went underground if things looked frightening."

"It's funny," Twilight murmured, standing beside Starlight and looking out the window. "How weather and magic interact. Truly wild weather follows very observable rules, but only in areas that are free from large amounts of latent magic. Put something very powerful out there... like the Everfree forest, or a group of pegasi... and those rules break down, and the weather becomes controlled. From what I've read, a lot of the kinds of weather that get described as 'wild' in stories don't follow the real rules of weather and are actually controlled by something else... even if it's just the author's impressions of how wild weather works based on the local patterns of a magically-affected area where they grew up. It's fascinating."

Starlight raised an eyebrow.

"Take Ironridge, for instance." Twilight tapped a hoof against the ground, looking downward as if she was sketching a diagram. "You keep talking about storms moving down the mountains, as well as a wind barrier that separates the hot Earth District and the cold Sky District. Hot air meeting cold air does produce wind, but not usually in that specific or consistent of a pattern... and given how little sunlight per day a mountain valley with frequent cloud cover would receive, the Earth District shouldn't be that hot, anyway. It's obvious Ironridge's weather is magically influenced, even if not by ponies."

"...Wow." Starlight's eyes widened, and she turned to stare at Twilight. "That's... really observant, actually. Remember that you said that."

"Really?" Twilight's face lifted. "I guessed something important?"

"...Maybe." Starlight grinned, moving to take a sofa. "Anyway, is there anything else we should cover before I start again? I'd like to make it all the way to the end of Ironridge before we take another break, and this next bit is pretty long..."

Twilight took her own couch, comfortably folding her hooves beneath her. "Well, I am still trying to wrap my head around how Yakyakistan works. I know I asked last time, and you said the delegation that came to Ponyville was actually just the leadership of an outlying village and that 'prince' is just the title given to village chieftains, but there's obviously more to it than that! Like, first off, where are all the yaks?" Her brow furrowed. "There's all of one of them in the yak embassy, apparently, and this supposedly-important pony you just introduced called Fire keeps saying things like everypony when all the regular Ironridge citizens say everybody and it's just weird!" She blinked. "Fire is a crystal pony, right?"

Starlight waited... then took a long breath. "That is a lot of stuff to explain all at once, Twilight. But yes, Fire is a crystal pony, and yes, she did speak in predominantly pony terminology. I can't really explain everything, but... how much do you know about Yakyakistan? Or think you know, at least?"

"It's where the yaks live." Twilight shrugged. "Northwest of the Crystal Empire, over the mountains. There's lots of snow."

"It's a lot more extreme than that," Starlight corrected. "You know all the old Hearth's Warming stories and the unification myth about how ponies used to live in Dream Valley before migrating to flee the windigoes, and all that?"

Twilight nodded.

"Yakyakistan is built on top of the glacier that formed where Dream Valley once was," Starlight explained. "Almost all of it is an arctic wasteland. Yaks are ridiculously hardy, and their species magic somehow allows them to synthesize necessary nutrients by eating snow, so they can survive there, but travel is almost impossible and it's very isolated. You see a lot of small villages scattered around, especially on the fringes where there are mountains to provide shelter from the wind. Yaks who live there sometimes are only vaguely aware the rest of Yakyakistan exists."

"Really." Twilight pursed her lips.

"Yup." Starlight nodded. "Now, the capital of Yakyakistan is called Infinite Glacier, which sounds cool... but is also about as self-descriptive as you get."

"Seriously?" Twilight groaned. "It sounds 'cool?' Starlight..."

Starlight grinned unapologetically.

"You were saying, though." Twilight slapped the couch with her tail.

"Right." Swallowing, Starlight continued. "Infinite Glacier is built directly on top of the ruins of Unicornia, the old unicorn capital, and it's near enough both to the pass to Equestria, where the glacier ends, and the end of the glacier to the northwest, that the yaks were able to build these colossal stone bridges from there to real terrain, letting them come and go and bring in real materials, as well as letting ponies make it there. So while most of Yakyakistan is an inaccessible wasteland, the capital is a multicultural haven with lots of different species and impressive architecture. It's also a dead end, travel-wise, and doesn't have much of an economy... or didn't, before the airships came. But it's the center of the yak's religion, which a lot of northwestern ponies follow as well, and that keeps it thriving and able to support its size."

She nodded, focusing on the heavy gray snow clouds as she narrated. "That's about as much as I can say for now. The important parts are that Yakyakistan is large, complex, and very different depending on what part of the country you're in. I'll... talk about it a little more, later, in the story."

"I can't believe I didn't know this earlier," Twilight whispered in awe. "I should have pressed Celestia to let me study foreign policy while I was her student. She has to know about all this, right? That there's such a huge world to the north, beyond Equestria?"

Starlight hummed, nodding. "Oh, she definitely knows. She's thousands of years old, remember? Equestria only became isolated from the rest of the world a thousand years ago when Nightmare Moon was banished. That's what our dating system is based on, isn't it? Celestia would have been the one who made the decision to close everything off."

Twilight picked at the couch, choosing not to reply.

"Well..." Starlight shrugged, staring out at the weather pegasi and sensing a break in the conversation. "It's past noon, and we're just sitting around here. Should we get started?"

"We probably should," Twilight agreed, settling into an attentive position. "Ironridge, day three! Tell me!"

"All right, then." Starlight grinned. "I woke before Maple. Everything was dark, since we were in a warehouse and wouldn't be able to see the sunrise. It was peaceful, and exactly the kind of morning we thought we'd left behind in Riverfall..."

Comments

[ZanyZapper]

And here I was asking for an interlude just a couple days ago! And as I would expect, Twilight is chomping at the bit to get more info on all the tech! And she's probably also planning how to make an archeological dig for Dream Valley and Unicornia.

Thanks for this chapter - now back to Ironridge!

[Veo Skride]

I swear I will get around to reading this soon... maybe.

[Czar_Yoshi]

8668324 That's why I did it, actually. I wasn't intending to do another until the end of Ironridge, but this seemed like a decent enough place, and I had things I could let them talk about, so... shrug. Doing stuff like this on the fly is one of the benefits of posting daily chapters as you write them.

Thanks for asking!

[RoboRed]

Unexpected, indeed.

"You spend a day or two in my village, right?"

"spent"

[Sypher]

This was a delightful chapter. After this, I'm really looking forward to when we eventually get to see Yakyakistan in all its glory.

Equestria only became isolated from the rest of the world a thousand years ago when Nightmare Moon was banished. That's what our dating system is based on, isn't it?

I was going to comment on that--seemed a bit curious that Ironridge would also use After Banishment for their calendar!

[Quinch]

Finishing her bite, Starlight said, "I think we're going to cap it at eight hours of talking for today. I'm... still feeling a little sore from last night."

-pulls up the playlist and does some quick math-
-repeats the math because Youtube is stupid-

Actually... it's been almost a day. No wonder Starlight's voice is almost gone.

[Venlinelle]

It’s such a relief to get to these interludes, you have no idea. Not because the rest of the story is less good, but because it’s so much of an exhausting unfamiliar mystery that just being in Twilight’s castle in and seeing characters like Dash feels like going home.

It’s also really good to see the Starlight we know and love, and be reminded that she’ll eventually grow up from her miserable child self into a dysfunctional but delightful adult.

There’s a lot of fascinating stuff in here too! I really like the idea of Yakyakistan being on top of the old pony lands. Interestingly, since we know that land wasn’t always covered in perpetual winter before the disharmony brought the windigoes, the fact that it’s still frozen implies that the windigoes are still there. I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but given how conflicted yaks can be, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Demon Horses were at least around.

Finally, the fact Celestia and Luna know about all of this- and that it would’ve been Celestia who closed off the north, effectively isolating entire countries by herself- makes me really hope we get some Celestia in this fic at some point. I wonder why she made that choice after Luna’s imprisonment? Grief (which would be understandable), or some strategic reason?

Reread edit:

"Tell me about it." Starlight stretched, getting up and walking in a circle. "I've been living with you for just a few weeks, and at the rate things happen in my life, that's practically an eternity. Next thing I know, we'll get called off on some giant adventure the moment I'm done telling my story."

It took more time for me to get to that point in TID than it did for Starlight to meet Halcyon and Corsica and get immediately summoned back north, so she’s not wrong.