• Published 27th Apr 2013
  • 3,669 Views, 102 Comments

The Frozen North - GjallarFox



The Frozen North. A beautiful yet unforgiving place. The perfect place to share warmth.

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Aurora

Aurora

It was such a pure place. White snow blanketed everything in sight, bleaching the colors away with extreme prejudice. The bitter cold seized anything and everything that was unprotected by either thick layers of thermal clothing, or naturally armored from it like the wolves and sparsely scattered great pines. The Frozen North was truly something to behold. As hostile and unforgiving as it was, it was undeniably beautiful. That was what attracted hundreds of ponies each year. That was why we went there.

I was sitting upon a ledge on Topaz Mountain, overlooking the Tourmaline Tundra below. It was a sight to be treasured like the crystals that grew like plants in this harsh mountain range. There were just a few holes in the thick quilt of snow on the open tundra about eight hundred meters below, revealing small patches of flowers that hadn’t been devoured by the frigid powder quite yet. There were mostly purple ones, with a few reds and yellows, and a significant number of whites. But purple remained dominant by a long shot, as they were most resistant to the cruel nips of Windigoes.

I felt something warm place itself upon my back. As I turned to see what it was, a warm, soft mass settled down next to me on the exposed rock. I smiled, my partner having joined me to see this amazing landscape that had unraveled itself before us.

Her lips pressed themselves to my cheek, which had collected a layer of frost in the hours that we'd been out in this frozen wilderness. My face heated up at the touch, my smile broadening.

"Hey," the adorably soft voice greeted. My heart skipped a beat as I felt her wing pull me closer to her warm body. I could do nothing but smile and blush at her straightforwardness.

"Hey," I echoed, shifting my hoof to hold hers. We'd been dating for a few months, and I'll admit it was rather slow by comparison to other relationships I'd observed. We'd barely gotten comfortable kissing each other on the cheeks, having ventured forward that extra step just a week ago, before we came here. But I liked that our relationship moved as slow as it did. It often gave me times like these to revel in the warm feelings. It gave me time to savor every moment I spent with my beautiful marefriend. And after two months of feeling something much warmer than my original feelings, it gave me enough time to finally identify the single greatest feeling I've ever been fortuitous enough to experience: love.

I turned to return the simple yet overpowering gesture of affection, planting my own lips upon her warm cheek. I smiled as I saw her blush intensify from the contact. She hid behind her long pink mane, a timid smile curling her extraordinarily soft lips upwards. I wanted to move forward and feel what they felt like against my own, but I restrained myself. I didn't want to rush. I was barely comfortable kissing cheeks. I could only imagine that she was terrified of actually kissing. The thought almost petrified me like the stare of a cockatrice.

I placed my hoof over hers, making her take a peek from behind her beautiful mane. Her teal eyes froze me quicker than the frigid wind of the Frozen North could ever hope to. They were stunningly beautiful, like the blue-ice walls of deep crevasses in the mountain glaciers and the ice bluffs. They stared into, nay, they stared through me as though I were made of glass. I dared not look away.

I blinked.

In that fifth of a second while my eyes were closed, her face lunged in like a bolt of lightning, targeting mine. Her lips contacted my nose, which was partially numb from the cold, spreading warmth into me. I felt it like liquid fire, washing over me as though I were standing in a warm shower at home in my library. Were my mane any shorter, it would have been standing on end like the rest of my fur. As my eyes opened, I saw her hovering there, her lips just a snowflake's breadth away. I felt the steam of her warm breath crystalize on my muzzle, intoxicating my thoughts as though the vapor was a poison that made me yearn for contact. I felt an electric charge build in my muscles and nerves, every part of myself screaming at me to close the gap. I felt gravity pulling me towards her... Slowly...

Slowly...

Her eyes flitted open like a butterfly's wings, settling half-open to stare through me again. I felt her eyes watching my soul. I was paralyzed. I couldn't have moved if I wanted to. I could have sworn I heard her giggle like a schoolfilly, but it could have been the wind that gusted past us in that moment.

"We should get moving," I whispered as the wind dulled for a moment. "The sun will be setting soon, and I want to get to Diamond Ridge before nightfall."

She simply smiled and pecked my nose again, my cheeks near rupturing from the copious quantities of blood flowing through them to sustain my cherry-red blush. She stood up, her wing folding back up against her side, allowing the brutal wind to stab me with icy tendrils of sheer cold. I stood up, my knees popping loudly like ice cracking under pressure. I turned around, heading back towards our small campsite, which was naught more than a two-pony tent, a fire pit, and a pair of incredibly bulky saddlebags. I made my way to the tent, folding it with the aid of my magic. I placed it back in its bag, harnessing it to my saddlebag after doing so. I doused the fire, putting it out of its misery as the cold had already beaten it within an inch of its life.

We picked up our saddlebags, the warmth of our body heat now unable to be sapped away by the frigid air. Within moments, I felt my natural warmth return. I smiled at the feeling. Though heavy, it kept me warm, and for that I was grateful.

We forged our way onwards, away from the east-facing cliffs of the Quartz Crags. Before us lay a deep ravine between Topaz Mountain, where we were, and the adjacent Sapphire Mountain. We turned to look at each other once more, before we turned back and trudged forward through the hoof-deep snow into the mighty crevasse that was infamously known by climbers as Tanzanite Ravine. It's negative slope intimidated even master climbers with the best gear available. The tear at the top was thin enough to allow twenty minutes of sunlight to hit the chasm floor. Very little snow ever reached the ground in the Ravine, making the floor as slippery as a banana peel. Before us was a split in the path, one sticking to the Ravine floor going straight through, the other veering off to the right. It passed beneath an arch of ice, ascending at a mildly steep incline towards the top of the glacier. I followed the path with my eyes, seeing it switch back a few times where the arches allowed the path to switch which wall it followed. I knew that the lower path would get us to our destination on time, but the echoes of howls and dull thuds of falling ice-boulders made me want to take the high road.

We started forward, side-by-side as we entered what seemed like the maw of an ancient colossus. I could feel my heart freezing in my chest as we heaved through the last few meters of snow-coated ground, but not from cold. Nay, the icy wind couldn't have that effect on me. I could only gulp audibly as my fears began to play like records in my mind. They cast cruel echoes of savage snarls and horrifying elongated screams of terror. Her screams of terror.

I stopped.

Before me was the ice-floor itself. The barrier between myself and the chasm I stood at the maw of, was naught but a line where the snow ended and the ice began.

She stopped too, looking at me, though I dared not turn away to meet her gaze. Before me was a pit that could swallow Canterlot whole if it opened its menacing jaws above wider. I felt the individual muscles in my eyes tense up, my pupils now mere pinpricks. I stood there for what my mind believed was two hours, my hooves frozen into the ice beneath the snow.

A familiar yellow wing draped itself across my back, releasing tension that I never felt until it slowly dissipated like steam. I didn't need to hear her say, "It's okay, Twi," to know that she had said it. Her actions always whispered thousands of pictures worth thousands of words, worth thousands of letters that I'd write and send to her in the Express Mail just to know that she would receive them immediately. They whispered gently, like a mother would to her sleeping foal, and made everyone hear an angel. And in that moment of being held by the angel next to me, my fear withered away like a plant dying of frostbite. My love for her grew just that much more as I noticed that she was being the confident one. I smiled, pecked her cheek, and took the step forward onto the bare ice.

As we approached the fork in the path about two hundred meters in, I moved closer towards the high-road. Though it would take us a mile out of our way, I could count on its safety. At first, Fluttershy walked right with me, her wing draped over me affectionately. As we neared it though, she started to pull left, her wing seeming to shepherd me with her.

"We'll be okay, Twilight," she whispered in response to my questioning look. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

A howl resounded down the narrow chasm, assaulting my ears and compromising my knees. They shook like the wingbeats of a hummingbird, quickly and powerfully, and fragilely as glass. I slipped on the ice because of it.

I didn't understand how she did it. As I fell towards the unforgiving ice, she lunged beneath me. She twisted around like a ferret, taking my fall into her chest. She never gave any indication of pain nor discomfort. Her face remained warm, smiling up at me. With her chest pressed against mine, I felt her heart beat slowly quicken to match mine. I felt her soul pushing at her flesh, as though it wished to break free and join mine, which I could feel attempting to do the same. I looked into her eyes for just a moment, time freezing solid for a moment. They matched the blue ice behind her face and mane almost perfectly, but the ice didn't have the same living quality that her eyes did. I felt her breath on my muzzle again, further intoxicating my thoughts. I glanced down at her lips. They beckoned me closer... They begged me...

She kissed my nose, teasingly close to my lips. I felt a shudder undulate down my spine. She leaned into my ear and whispered tauntingly, "You going to get up?"

"Against my will," I countered, giggling. I shifted my legs around for solid ground to stand upon. When I was sure I had found a hoofhold, I stood up, backing away a few steps so Fluttershy could stand again.

We continued on, walking through the hall of ice, the sky above us beginning to dim. Sunset was approaching quickly, and I could only estimate how much time we had left to reach our destination before the sun slipped out of the sky. As I saw a lazy stratus cloud float by above us, I began to wonder what it would be like to fly like she could... What it would feel like to be able to go anywhere at any time. I wondered what it would feel like to be like her... To have that gift, but choose to not use it like Dash did. I thought about it, and smiled as I came to the same conclusion as I did every time I thought about it. She was a gentle, noble spirit. With the talent and knowledge she had for flight, she could easily be faster and more agile than our prismatic friend. But she chose to stay close to the ground, where her friends, animal or otherwise, lived. She used her wings to help her friends, either to carry them, like she did with Angel when he was sick, or to comfort them, like she was doing with me. I felt a slight blush on my face, thinking about her in such an idealistic light. But at that point, she was ideal. She was perfect.

A low rumbling growl interrupted my thoughts. I shook my head and opened my eyes to a sight I had feared would come. Just ten meters from us, a small pack of wolves stood before us, fangs bared. The one I assumed to be the leader stood in an offensive stance, growling gravely at us for stepping into its territory. My eyes widened as I heard another growl behind us. We were sandwiched between two packs of wolves and two ice cliffs that could not be scaled. My heart was hammering away in my chest like a blacksmith in a forge. Every beat tightened Fear's grip on me.

Fluttershy took a timid step forward, making herself seem small. She looked at the wolves in front of us with a calm nervousness that I had seen but once in my life. She whispered something to them, causing the battle-ready leader to fall back on his haunches, looking at her with wide eyes. His ears perked up, his eyes affixed themselves to hers, and his tail wagged like a pup's. I felt my fear subside as she spoke softly to him with her angelic voice. I flinched slightly as an unseen wolf behind us slunk past me to join his leader, his fur brushing against my side. But I saw that it, too, wanted to hear her voice.

The group of six wolves that were now entirely in front of us turned towards the direction we were headed. The leader looked back over his shoulder, glancing at Fluttershy first and then myself. He looked as though he were smiling at us.

He and his pack moved forwards, guiding the way through the crevasse. The rest of the journey through the glacier passed by uneventfully. We saw a few other wolves take a look at us in curiosity as we passed by, trailing behind their leader. It took us about ten more minutes to traverse the chasm floor. As we saw the jagged jaws of the glacier begin to slope down towards us, I couldn't help but sigh in relief. We stepped out of the glacier's depths, savoring the soft golden sunlight that hit us. The wolves stopped, and howled loudly into the sunset, which I guessed was their way of saying good-bye. I smiled, and bowed low to the leader, who 'smiled' at me in return. Fluttershy stepped forward, hugging the wolf with her wings. As soon as she let go, he bowed to her as I had to him, and promptly turned and left. He disappeared into the Ravine without a trace of ever meeting us, save for the few paw-prints in the snow at the edge of the chasm.

I saw Diamond Ridge ahead, just a few teleports away. I could have easily burst forward in magic-based stop-motion, reaching our destination, and I say this with scorn for the phrase, in ten seconds flat. But why would I want to rush ahead of the reason I had come here? I was the one who had proposed this venture of ours, planning virtually everything down to the last fleeting seconds of firelight in each camp location. I had planned this event specifically first, so that a sort of domino-effect could, if I had any luck with it, take place and allow certain other events to become feasible options. But it all relied upon the next ninety minutes.

We had crept closer to the Ridge, now half-way between where I'd last checked and the two-kilometer drop-off that was Diamond Ridge. I smiled, seeing a few quartz crystals growing like shrubs out of the snow. I saw bare rocks poking out from the hoof-deep snow, their blackness contrasting heavily with the quilt of powder snow that was the finest in Equestria. Above us were a few scattered stratus clouds, which were sprawled out over a fairly large area. And before us was a glorious sunset, which cast beautiful golden light upon us and long shadows behind us. The light made the pony positively radiant. To any onlooker, the sun made her glow like a warm candle. But to me, it was she who made the sun glow. It was she who made it worth it to rise with the sun, and set long after the sun did. To me, she was the sun, and I would rise and set with her.

"I love you," I whispered, barely audible above the assertive breeze of the mountain summit. A few moments of silence passed awkwardly by, urging one of us to shoo it away. In those moments, I wondered if she had heard me, and what she was thinking if she had. I took her hoof in mine, and she wrapped a wing around me. I loved when she did that... It always sent a warm shiver down my back, making every inch of me yearn for her touch. It was almost as intoxicating to me as her warm breath. I felt the blacksmith in my chest begin working triple-time again. As it forged on, the warmth escaped its forge through my breath.

A minute had passed since I uttered those three words that only a few years ago I'd honestly believed I'd never find somepony to say them to. Now, when I'd finally said them, I was met by silence. I turned to face her.

Something soft assaulted my lips, pressing forward with a force I could not reciprocate. My eyes shot wide open to see Fluttershy kissing me, gently but firmly. A dark red blush painted her face, the stain reaching almost all the way up to her closed eyes. Even against the shock of feeling her lips to mine, my eyes fluttered shut in absolute bliss. I felt the world around us fade away as I found myself kissing back. I smiled through it, as did she.

Eventually she pulled away, reluctantly breaking contact. We hovered next to each other, barely a snowflake's breadth apart. We could feel each other's warm breath against each other's muzzles. The intoxication from her warm breath had more effect than ever as I felt my heart lose track of its rhythm. I could hardly think a straight line, let alone clear my mind from the intense emotions that were buzzing like angry wasps in my heart. What I heard next, just barely audible in the brief moment of silence between soft gusts of wind near stopped my heart altogether.

"I've been waiting, Love..."

As the sun finally slipped under the horizon, a small liquid band of color rippled just a few meters above us. The first one we saw was a soft pink, not unlike her mane. Slowly but surely, my planning fell into place, radiant auroras of greens and blues flowed through the air, changing from green to blue to yellow to red and every imaginable hue between. But there was a moment when the bands of color all aligned just right, a curl of pink here, a splash of yellow there, a dash of lavender nearby, a band of almost indigo next to it. For the briefest of moments, they coiled just perfectly into the shapes of our profiles. I almost missed it when the two bands of color touched for the most fleeting of moments, no doubt the sky's way of congratulating us. We sat there for an hour, simply watching the auroras pass by, lighting the sky with a spectrum of color that could compete with the sonic rainboom. My head tilted and rested on Fluttershy's shoulder, just enjoying the moment and the feelings that I'd forever associate with it.

In the aurora-lit sky, I could have sworn I saw somepony flying through the night. The only reason a bright red heart would take shape in the sky was magic, and I wasn't interfering with the natural processes that were taking place. Looking back on the occurrence, it would make sense that Cadence had created the phenomenon, but at the time, I only thought that Luna would do such a thing during her night. But logic didn't matter then. The only thing I cared about was the pony holding me with her strong but gentle wings, letting me rest my head on her shoulder. I felt unworthy of her, but at the same time I was proud that she had chosen me of all ponies. I vowed that day to live my life with the goal of eventually being worthy of her affections. But in the back of my mind, I knew I'd never see myself as deserving or worthy.

As soon as the heart faded from the sky, I picked my head up to look at her. For a few moments, I watched the reflection of the auroras in her alluring eyes. Before I even knew what I was doing, my free hoof had reached up to her face, pulling it gently towards my own. Though her face turned, her eyes did not. They remained affixed on the ribbons of color in the sky. I smiled slyly, leaning forward with one quick and deliberate motion...

I kissed Fluttershy beneath the auroras.

Author's Note:

Yes. All of the adorable TwiShy feels. I've recently been in an extended good mood, and have actually broken out into song at school. Mind you, I sang about my plans to eat peoples' souls, but close enough, right? Anyway, y'all can thank Laarsgaard for prereading this and helping me iron out a few wrinkles in the first few paragraphs (some awkward phrasing issues). He's a great writer, and has been featured for his amazing story, 'Trial of the Champion'.

This story is meant to be a one-shot, but my mind has been coming up with ways to make this a novel-length story. I dunno if I'll do it, but oh well. Thought it fair to let you guys know that.

Thank you all very much for reading this story. I love you guys.

<3 DarqFox