Tread in Peace
Fokienia settled into one of the seats beside Cold. Ahead of them, the window of the Waste Peddler’s bridge peered out and across the blue green orb. The planet of Equestria had been a wonderful place. And now, she had to leave.
“You sounded happy on the comm-link. You’re even happier right now. Must’ve been some night with the princess.”
“I made a friend.”
Cold smiled at that. “That’s always a good thing to hear. You’re becoming a real friendmaker, you know that?”
“A friendmaker? What’s that?”
He tossed a hoof. “It’s just some word salad, Fokienia.”
She laughed lightly. “Oh, okay.”
Cold’s smile increased. He raised a hoof to his ear, then stopped short. “I’m about to call in our take-off. Princess Luna’s contract stipulates that I bring you back before she ends the Cypress System lockdown, and we’re running a night behind...”
“Princess Luna knows a bit about late nights. She’ll understand the delay.”
Now, Cold laughed—a wonderful sound, enhanced by its rarity. “Don’t get too used to keeping princesses waiting.” He glanced at his console, then back to Fokienia. “You didn’t forget anything down there, did you? I can guarantee you this, it’s a long trip both ways.”
As Fokienia took one last look at Equestria, she tried to imagine she could see right into Canterlot. Her augmented eyes strained for her: the sprawling cities and the great green plains around that area were visible, and of course, so was the Canterhorn, but buried deep in the center of that all, she was sure she could feel Celestia looking up at her. Would she ever see her again? There was a lot of work that needed to be done back home. Back at Cypress.
The longer she looked, the more Fokienia’s heart panged. “I just want to look for a little longer.”
“I don’t blame you.” Cold sighed, setting his foreleg back to rest.
As she stared out across the planet housing her Equestria, Fokienia was nigh breathless. The air around her swirled with the exotic hum of the ship, and a muffled tune played cheerfully from Cold’s ear. The white clouds tread slowly across the globe in the crawling sunrise, adding a near-shine to the not-so pale marble of pastel green and blue.
This was an experience to take back to Cypress. And just one of the many sequestered away in the fathomless depths of the galaxy. All beautiful. All real. All out there.
And she had a whole life ahead to find and share it all.
“You see that big dark green spot to the right, there?”
“Yeah... I do.”
“Well, believe it or not, but that’s where the mountain home used to be.”
Fokienia’s heart skipped a beat. She stared harder, but no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see the same degree of beauty reflected in the cloud-covered sky of Equestria. “It looks... covered in trees.”
“It’s a deep sickness in the soil. A blight you wouldn’t see until it was too late. Even with how close we are, we could never have anything like it again.”
Fokienia looked at Cold. Her lip trembled at the deep sorrow in his lament. But she was strong enough to help them both.
“But Cold,” she began softly. “We can try, can’t we?”
“We?”
“I want to meet some of your explorers.”
“They’re not mine. I just help fund them.”
“You said you were their lucky charm.”
“They said that, Fokienia.”
“But I want to bring some good news back to Cypress.”
“You coming back will be good news enough.”
The return of her friend’s precious smile meant ‘mission accomplished’.
Fokienia brimmed with warmth as Cold brought his hoof to his earpiece. A part of her wanted to pay attention to the conversation he was having with the pony on the other side, but she knew she’d be hearing more of it in the future.
As the starship ascended, Fokienia waved at the face of Equestria. It was a silly motion in hindsight, but she didn’t feel that way when Cold waved with her.
She liked to think that Equestria waved back.
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Thank you so much for this world, and all the characters in it. This story will occupy a special place in my bookshelves and my thoughts for a long time.
And that's a magnificent closer.
Some fics use "slow burn" as an excuse for nothing happening, promising good things if I just wait another fifty thousand words that don't feel different from the fifty thousand words before. This fic is simmering from the get-go, with a pitch-perfect tone and engaging characters, and while the boil does take some time to arrive, I can at least feel like each chapter ends in a different place from where it started. And once the boil hits, it hits hard. But at the same time, the intensity a sort of defanged pony intensity. It's like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which can have elaborately-choreographed martial arts fights and people hurling fireballs at each other, yet ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it just so happens that the worst thing that happens to someone is that they get thrown into a wall and roll on the ground moaning for the rest of the fight.
Because if that wasn't the case, the tone would be destroyed, and the tone is what makes this. Some fics try to feel pony-ish by slapping on superficial mentions of singing and friendship; not so here. From the very beginning, friendship drives a random courier to help a stranger who assaulted him because she needs help. Trusting in people ultimately leads to good results. Forgiveness isn't given for nothing, but it doesn't take much to earn it. When characters do bad things (including Cold, in his past!), it's generally for good reasons, which doesn't absolve them but makes empathy easier. Even the whole conflict ultimately boils down to "the right hooves don't know what the left ones are doing and the front hooves don't know what the rear ones are doing" as opposed to any sort of megalomania; basically, ponies not doing the pony things of talking to and trusting each other. This just feels Pony in a way a lot of other fics don't.
I guess the closest thing I have to a complaint is that, once the second half happens, the character roster suddenly triples in size over two chapters and the new characters aren't as well-developed as Cold and Fokienia. But I can't really see a way to fix that without making the story worse in some way, so whatever. Also, it would've been nice to see Fokienia react to the earth magic of Equestria, even if only passing, but that might've taken too long.
Truly excellent.
This fic got me hooked quick, and I can safely say that it's one of my favorites that I've read.
Excellent work c:
All I can say is wow. I benge read this story without stopping. Once I started I couldn't stop. I REALLY hope we get to see some sequels of this in the future for sure!
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Thank you all so very, very much for the support. I’m glad my work reached out to you.
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Your comments have hit every mark, and this one only differs in that it hits the hardest. I really can’t say anything in response, because you’ve said everything I wanted to hear, and would want to say about those goals. Thank you again for all of your support, and especially for writing your stories. I hope others find inspiration in those works just as much as I tried to share it here.
Tone is essential to pony. And ponies have an inherent silliness that can make them frustrating. It’s very much worth our time to try and translate that into the works we make.
A sense of urgency was a clear problem with this story, but I did my best to flesh them out in the ways befitting true friends. And while I could have spent a lot more time than I did in the ending with regard to building Fokienia’s character a bit more, I found it more prudent to use it as reflection. But I hope what elements of Fokienia’s interactions with earth magic meant as much in writing as it did with me connecting them.
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Elite dangerous
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Yup!
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Knew it the second the station entryway and automated landing came up lol. Everything else was great hints. Love your headcanons on how the station's parts work, by the way.
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My thinking is that Cold was involved to Fokienia and very much responsible of her immediately it was found she was victim of brutal crimes and lacked basic information of the world. Cold was trusting enough to let her to the bridge of his ship and fall asleep with her on the computer instead of leaving and or starting to get into contact with trusted people and or organization immediately. I could be wrong in my thinking of how this world works but there would have been much for him to do in the beginning.
The exact engineering details are up to author, but ship of that size should have gear to deal with minor hullbreaches immeaditely and they are in pressurized hangar now so slapping a quick fix on it and leaving would not have been impossible. The exact risk calculation between organization that is actively hunting you with specialist teams versus emergency repairs and jump again depends on the author but personally know which i would prefer to take.
This is why i think Cold is in the stupid pony department, like you said he has had previous encounters so there should be little reasons he does not have knowledge or even contact with ponies that deal with legal side of things.
Fokienia I do not mind as much, but she demonstrates in the story that she has had training in emotional manipulation and actively chooses not to use it with Cold. This to me would tell that she has had some or maybe a lot of training with intelligence but she still chooses to search her own name on the ships terminal. It could be i am reading too much into her training though or that it has been left with glaring flaws in the evasion department to make sure she is never able to flee.
The shopping is a minor matter compared in my mind, but they are being actively hunted by some organization what might or might not be the people who are providing security to the local area so it just seems really not something that they should be doing in such open manner.
As it comes to Concord forcing them back to the station, Cold in my mind does not know immediately if the group after them is official one with push and pull to prevent them from leaving or deploying ships after them. Personally small attempt to do so would have made a massive positive impact to the story since it would have shown "this path was tried but it is blocked".
These are just personal feelings so do not mind or care about them overtly. Was just reading it and the annoyance about them not making serious attempts of leaving just kept coming to me as they were confined to station and made me think how much easier they could act if they just had taken the distance they could have.
Excellent end to an excellent story.
I'm admittedly a slower reader these days than I'd ideally prefer. I'm also not big on sci-fi, either - mine is a taste for, I guess, grounded or magical realism at the most extreme, and the fantastical set pieces of sci-fi, while of admirable quality, do not much interest me as they do others.
So me really loving this story, despite unfortunately getting caught up with other things and thus being a little late to finishing reading it, certainly says something about the quality. It helps, too, that it inspired one of my own stories.
Thank you for this delightful take on a genre that hadn't before really gripped me.
It's so rare to find good sci-fi. This is certainly one of the good ones.
And lets make some comments.
Ponies sure like their non-lethal weaponry at infantry scale... it's so adorably pony. I bet they stressed a long time over not being able to figure out ship to ship non-lethal weapons.
I expected this fic to go a different direction, where Fokienia and Cold would get back to their ship and perhaps explore the stars. I'm not disappointed as the direction the fic went was great, it's just odd that I was still waiting for that 2/3'rds of the way through the fic.
I'm also hopeful for a prequel as Cold's life sounded really interesting amidst the boredom of space travel.
Fokienia's connection to the earth felt like it was going to end up being a bigger deal... Really lots of stuff in this fic is left to the imagination of the reader which I both love and hate.
Entire stories exist between the pages, which again sets the fic apart from so many others that get bogged down in exploring those stories.
A great fic and worthy of the highest honour I can bestow an upvote and being put on my e-reader for future re-reads.
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Thank you a lot! I’m really glad you enjoyed the fic.
I’m also happy to hear that this is what you came away from this with! In the event that I do write a sequel (which I have had in consideration since the project began), it would be much more of a focus on all of those little stories. Much more an anthology of the lives of the ponies and interactions you met in CZ. I really thought Fokienia’s connection to earth pony magic was underdeveloped, but it was intended to play a big enough role to leave you interested in where she might take it. Really, CZ was all about the little experiences you run into in a galaxy inhabited by magical little equines (and creatures), and about preserving the future for others to explore.
I’m pleased it all proved interesting, and I hope you enjoy any future rereads! There’s a lot to unravel in the little stories presented, here. Thank you again for reading, and commenting!
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I don't know, Luna's all about that forgiveness. I think he tried to be a good pony but he got a little greedy and carried away and
then things just spiraled out of control.
This was a great story and I enjoyed it a lot! There are not many stories of this quality on the site.
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Thank you kindly! I am ecstatic that you enjoyed it so much, and I appreciate the praise. Thank you for all the comments as well!