Tomorrow is Always a New Day

by Wheller

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

They spent less than a day in Manehattan, just enough to gather a few weeks worth of food, and once again, the trio of friends set out, walking along the Hoofson River towards the Equestrian border. Nopony lived in the Hoofson bay area, so there wasn’t exactly a road to follow. Worse still, the Hoofson River had frozen over and several centimetres of snow covered it. It didn’t exactly give them an easy trail to follow.

Rainbow had been relegated to the ground. Twilight didn’t want her flying at all for this leg of their journey; for fear that whatever happened to Ambassador Lightdew and the pegasi guard would happen to her. Twilight hadn’t realised this, but it had been equal to telling a unicorn that she wasn’t allowed to use magic, nevertheless, Rainbow understood that Twilight had done it because she wanted to keep Rainbow safe, and while the stubborn Pegasus was slightly annoyed, she didn’t make an argument about it.

As it turned out, Vinyl’s strange sense of direction proved incredibly useful. Twilight and Rainbow Dash had almost walked into the river several times, and while the top was iced over, a quick probing proved that it was only a couple millimetres thick. Not enough to hold their weight, and if they did fall in, the strong currents would have carried them off.

Two days of following the river later, they discovered, to Twilight’s major annoyance that the Hoofson River abruptly ended, and a quick check of a book later, that the Hoofson River and the Hoofson bay were not connected to each other in the slightest, rather they needed to follow another river, The St. Germain, in order to make their way into the Hoofson Bay Area.

Twilight’s book impressed upon the ponies that the Hoofson Bay Area was actually much larger than they anticipated. The actual bay itself was nearly 1500 kilometres long, but what was considered the bay area stretched a 4000 kilometre radius from the centre of the bay itself. Twilight had known that the Hoofson Bay Area was big, but not that big. Needless to say, upon learning this fact, Twilight and Rainbow Dash had become slightly discouraged by their task ahead, if they were going to find the Gryphons at all it would be nothing short of a miracle.

Vinyl was of course unworried, as she almost always was; both Rainbow and Twilight weren’t sure how she could remain so positive in the face of a nearly impossible task.

“You girls just need to chill; we’ll worry about it when we get there,” Vinyl said when asked about it.

They took Vinyl’s advice to heart.

...

It took them a week to reach the St. Germain River; they turned to the Northeast and followed it for as far as they could, where they eventually reached a crossing point built by parties unknown. The St. Germain was the northern most border of Equestria, why there was a bridge over it when the Hoofson Bay Area was designated uninhabited neutral territory between the Co-principality of Equestria and the Twin Gryphon Kingdoms, they could not say. It worried Twilight slightly, but Vinyl reassured her that she was worrying too much, and to quote, ‘needed to chill out.’

The bridge over the St. Germain turned out to be a Celestia-send, while there wasn’t a road leading to it from the Equestrian side, there was on the Hoofson Bay Area side, and once again, this worried Twilight.

Her mind drifted back to a time long ago, or at least, what seemed like a long time ago, but was actually in the order of two months, to her walkabout in the Mohoofie Desert, and her encounter with the kangaroo bounty hunter, Roy Melbourne.

“You know, I’ve got nothing against ponies... But ever since coming here, it seems like everybody doesn’t even know that there’s a world outside your borders.”

That’s what Roy Melbourne had said to her, and Twilight was beginning to see what he meant by it. She’d never known anypony who’d even been outside Equestria before, and she was starting to wonder why that was.

“Well, here we are,” Vinyl said. “We’re about to take our first steps out of Equestria for the first time... ever. Kind of exciting isn’t it?”

Twilight found herself more worried than anything else. She had no idea what to expect outside Equestria, but she stiffened her resolve, and the trio stepped across the bridge, out of Equestria and into the Hoofson Bay Area.

Twilight felt her bones chill. The moment they stepped of the bridge, they felt the temperature drop twenty degrees.

“What the...?” Twilight exclaimed as an icy wind chilled her, her teeth began to chatter and she instinctively recoiled back onto the bridge. The temperature rose twenty degrees and the wind died.

Twilight was more than confused at this point. She stood less than a metre from the Equestrian border, how could the weather possibly be that different a metre away? Vinyl and Rainbow Dash joined her, instantly noticing it too.

“We better put on warmer clothes,” Rainbow said.

...

The trio crossed again, noticing the change in the weather instantly, they were more prepared for it this time, and found themselves not as cold. Experimentation with the temperature would discover that the Equestrian side of the St. Germain held at 273 Kelvin. While the Hoofson Bay side was at 250 Kelvin.

If she’d had her say, Twilight would have stayed and tried to figure out why that was, but, oddly, Vinyl that reminded her they had more important things to deal with.

Twilight gave in and the trio marched onward along the road laid before them towards their goal.

Of course, they had no way of knowing for sure that this road would even lead them to wherever they needed to be, and despite Vinyl’s reassurances that she “had a good feeling about it,” Twilight had gone back to worrying. In truth, they had no idea where the Gryphons even were, and Vinyl’s assurances that either the ponies would find the Gryphons... or that the Gryphons would find them didn’t help.

They set up camp for the night, discovering that the temperature had dropped another 10 kelvin. It was unnaturally cold, even Rainbow Dash, who was more resistant to cold weather than the two unicorns, a pegasi trait that was needed for their line of work, found it to be mind numbingly cold. Worse still, they quickly discovered that Twilight’s warming spell wasn’t as effective as it used to be. Twilight had wondered if her magic had weakened since leaving Equestria, but eventually dismissed it, finding it preposterous and accounted it to the fact that it was nearly 35 Kelvin colder than the last time she’d used it. The trio realised that freezing to death had just become a real possibility, and resorted to sharing a single tent as to not need to spread out the effect of the spell.

One could tell it was serious when Vinyl didn’t make a joke about the three mares sharing a tent, like she had the first night they started travelling together.

Morning came, and the three mares awoke to discover that none of them had frozen to death in the cold of the previous night. They spent several minutes embracing each other, thanking Celestia that they had survived.

Twilight unzipped the tent and stepped outside, only to discover that an extremely sharp looking blade was pointed in her face.

“Um... Girls? Looks like we have visitors.”

Comments

And Roy Melbourne is right to say so; as you said on FF.Net, he was baffled by Twi's belief that Celestia and Luna raised the Sun and Moon. What's about to happen here is that these three are about to have their muzzles rubbed in the fact that Equestria has been deliberately closed off from the rest of the planet because Mother wants to protect her little ponies from harmful things like knowledge and hardship.

in truth that would actully harm them in many ways (also this is solarsoldier ive completly lost any want of that name now i have only 2 or 3 others lol )