Supply Run
I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of this. The bright blue void ahead of us, the icy plains thousands of feet below. I’d always envied the pegasi back in school. It was incredibly unfair that they had kept a view like this all to themselves. Then again, maybe being an earth pony, I was the selfish one for wanting to steal it for myself…
The cockpit jolted, and we listed a few degrees to the right. In a fit of quick panic, I gripped the control wheel tightly and pulled the Seaddler back into a level flight. My eyes wandered over the gauges, running down them until they fell upon the engine oil pressure control system. Careful not to move the flight stick, I reached over and gave it a tap. In response, the needle on the system wavered, dropping down to about ninety percent.
“Falling asleep up there, buddy?” Dusty’s voice crackled through my headset.
Hoofing at the two way button on my headset, I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Too busy enjoying the view to fly.” As the latch to the cockpit door opened with a squeak, I let the talk button go and focused on my job. Had too look good in front of my boss, who also happened to be the mare I’d been crushing on for years.
“Right rear engine two losing pressure again?” Marigold sighed as she walked in and latched the small metal door behind her. “Quite the troublemaker, that one is.” With a whine, she carefully stepped over her seat and hoofed her headset on. “I thought you said that the mechanics at Fort Macaroni took a look at it.” She shot an annoyed glance over at me.
“I told them what was wrong, and they couldn’t find any reason it should be doing that. I doubt they’d ever even heard of a ‘floatplane’ before, let alone seen this sexy beast. Too busy working on those Vertibuck eyesores to even care, I guess.” I shrugged and leaned back, loosening my hold on the controls. She took ahold of the flight wheel on her side and fidgeted the wings tightly folded on her back. Once she had control of the aircraft, she gave me a glance that showed how much she disapproved of my explanation. “Hey, she’s your dad’s design.” I continued with a mock pouty face. “I just fly her.”
“Oh, is that what you do?” She spoke through a light laugh. “See, I thought that I, the captain, flew her. While you…” She paused, placing her hoof on her chin as she looked up at the sky. “you know, I can’t recall what you even do here again?”
“Okay you two, that’s enough. This level of banter is way above my paygrade.” Dusty groaned through the radio. “With as much as you two have fun with this ‘back and forth’ of yours, you ever thought about dating?” Fuck, why would he say that? He knew I liked her, why would he even bring that up! I told him to keep his big, gabbing muzzle shut!
“Wait, hold on, Dusty. I didn’t quite get that through the interference.” I said as I pressed the mic up against my muzzle and rubbed it around. “Yep, that’s a lotta bullshit coming through, try again when the asshattery storm blows through.” Besides the giant blush on my face, I totally nailed that.
“Yeah, yeah. Really mature of you.” Dusty groaned. “Try to bluff all you want, Jack. Just like when we were colts, you still can’t even spell poker face.”
“I’m all in favor of making fun of our adorably inept copilot,” Marigold cut in, “but was there a reason you called up here, Dusty?”
“Yeah, just looking at the charts here.” He sighed as his voice slightly crackled through our headsets. “What’s your bearing, airspeed, and altitude?”
Marigold leaned forward to read the instrument panel. “Fifty five north northeast, at one hundred and sixty five knots.” She cast her glance over at me. I looked down to the panel front of my control stick.
“We’re cruising at approximately ten and a half thousand feet above sea level.” I nodded, watching as the needle on the altimeter wavered between the four and five marks. “That all good for you?”
“Hold on.” Dusty spoke quickly. “making the adjustments, accounting for variables, and….” He drug out his word for almost ten seconds. “And you were supposed to be at eight thousand feet two minutes ago.”
“Shit.” Marigold hissed under her breath. With a smooth arc of her forelegs, she pushed the control wheel forward and tipped us down. The pitch angle was a bit more extreme than I’d expected. So much so that I felt myself go weightless for a half second before she leveled us out.
“Okay, a little warning next time.” Dusty whined through our ears. When he did, I noticed that I was holding onto the control wheel extra tightly.
“Same to you.” Marigold grumbled. “Is that all, Dusty?”
“Other than Violet back here reminding you that the instrumentation we’re bringing along has extremely sensitive parts in it? No, nothing else really to say.” At the very least we didn’t give her a headset. She was perfectly at home teleporting around the airfield, but flying made her sick. Ugh. Unicorns.
“Alright. Call back ahead of time for the next adjustment. Cockpit out.” Marigold sighed and hoofed forward at the radio controls. With a simple flick of her hoof, she cut off the cabin from everything but outside transmissions and my two way feed to Dusty. Sitting back, she cast a glance out her window. Doing so, made her sit right back up again. “Oh, hello…”
“What is it?” I stiffened myself up, trying to look over her head and out the window.
“We have a pair of ships down in the ice.” She muttered, still blocking the view. “An icebreaker and a container ship, nothing special.” She groaned. “But, they do have a friend...”
“What is it?” Now this I had to see. Getting up out of my seat, I jammed myself in behind her. True enough, there were two ships down below us, the line of shimmering blue they’d cut through the ice behind them reflected the almost never ending sunlight of this latitude. The white contrail that zipped around the two changed course, turning and heading straight for us.
“Get back in your seat.” Marigold leaned back and squished me out from behind her. “Let’s just hope that this one can speak better equestrian than the last scout.”
“You mean any Equestrian?” I laughed. In the last year, we’d been intercepted on our supply run on at least six other occasions. I knew that because we were a civilian aircraft, the zebras weren’t allowed to fire at us due to international charter. However, it still didn’t mean that one of them couldn’t shoot us down and claim it as an ‘accident’. I really hated this war between us and the stripes, but I wouldn't be the first to lay down and surrender after what they’ve done to us.
Sitting down, I put my headset on just in time for the high pitched whine of the zebra’s jetpack to beat out the four piston engines that the Seaddler had. The tan parka that the zebra wore was so tightly buttoned that it didn’t even flap in the wind at this speed. On top of that, his black flight goggles and oxygen mask obscured his expression from us. With a crackle, the radio picked up his voice.
“Silver skybox. State the business.” He ordered in what was probably the second worst butchering of our language ever. I’d never seen one of the zebra flying machines up this close. A couple of glass canisters full of alchemical ingredients on his back bubbled and fed through a bunch of pipes into a box. From there, two tubes jutted out of the back of the pack, expelling green fire and an irritating high pitched whine.
“Civil cargo transport to the international arctic outpost.” Marigold spoke up, pressing her smiling muzzle against the window. “Are you alright up this high?”
“Supply for outpost?” He called out, canting his head. After a moment of silence, he nodded. “You make month run?”
“That’s us! You must be a new transfer.” I don’t know how Marigold could be so civil with the enemy. From what the news reels said, they were absolute monsters. Still, she probably was fascinated in him for the same reason as she was with me. We were both normally resigned to live on the ground, yet, beyond all measures we can be found right up here in the sky. “Don’t you get cold up here?”
“No cold. Fuel jet keep is warm!” Along with completely breaking Equestrian tongue, he waved his hoof and rolled away. “Have nice day!” The whining sound of his jetpack drained away, leaving only the droaning of the Seaddler’s own four engines. You know, at least we had a nice heater here in the cockpit, kept the air nice and warm for us.
“What a nice young stallion.” She sighed, slowly putting us into a shallow dive. “Lowering down to six thousand feet.” We both gave a look over the instrumentation as we descended down.
“Speaking of nice stallions,” I cleared my throat. “how’s your dad doing?” As we leveled out, I looked over at her. I’d only heard about the rocket plane crash in downtown Seaddle a month ago. He was one hell of a lucky stallion to have crash landed the thing only a block from the hospital.
“Oh, he’s in a lot of pain, but recovering slowly. The bow-wing executives moved him to another care facility over in Vanhoover. The company is shelling out bits left and right for treatment, but...” She kept her eyes ahead, but I watched as she started to look a little sad. “Honestly, I don’t think he’ll ever fly again after the accident. You should have seen how worked up he got in the hospital when I said I was doing the run this week. He…”
Marigold's words died in her throat, lost to a voiceless scream. The color bled from her faster than anything, and her pinprick pupils scanned across the horizon. Curious as to what had her so spooked, I looked out ahead to the horizon. White contrails fanned out in small groups, slowly arching upward into the blue.
"What are those, dragons?" I asked squinting. "More Zebra scouts maybe?"
"No..." The words struggled to escape her muzzle. She looked at me for only a moment before she turned hard to port. The plane shuddered as we rolled to the side. Out of the corner of the cockpit glass, I watched as more contrails bloomed. Their trajectories were all… wrong.
"What the hell is going on up there, Jackscrew?" Dusty's voice came over my headset. “Why are we headed off course?"
Marygold reached across the console and quickly hoofed over all the radio controls to manual cockpit control. "This is Captain Marigold Skies, Arctic Flight NC-23A calling Cloudsdale command!" She hoofed at the dial, centering it on the emergency frequency. "We have a Celestia tier emergency, please respond!"
"Marigold," I forced out as a nervous chuckle. "Are you sure this is necessary for a few scouts?" Looking out my window, I found that even from here, the objects weren't getting any closer. They'd also multiplied, from just a few to almost a hundred.
"This is Cloudsdale civil flight command," The radio crackled, "please state the nature of your emergency."
"You have inbound missiles from zebra airspace," She yelled into her headset as she pushed us into a slow dive. "I repeat, equestria is under zebra missile attack." Nothing but silence came through the radio. Looking back, I understood now that they weren't ‘blooms’, they were launch sites... "Command, please advise."
"Good copy." They finally called in. "Can you pinpoint the angle and trajectory of the launches, or how many there are."
"South, east, west, I can't give you fucking directions when they fucking launched all of them!" She screamed, looking over to me. "We're setting down. Now. Prep the skids."
"What the hell is going on!" Dusty called out again in my ear.
Hoofing my two way switch, I talked as I started to prep the Seaddler for landing. "Dusty, prep the cabin for emergency landing." Okay, okay, don't panic. I reached up and hoofed at the hydraulic control switches. The system flashed all ready, and I toggled the four switches to extend the landing flaps. When I did, Marigold's hoof pulled back on the throttle. All four engines whined as they slowed down. We bounced for a moment as the thicker air and expanded wing surface slowed us considerably faster.
We were about two thousand feet above the ice sheet when the needle that read our airspeed dropped into the green zone. As it did, I hoofed at the external skid controls and flipped the lever. I looked out of the window, glancing back to the wing as I watched the metal leg on my side fold down out of the wing. We started to drag even more against the air, pitching us forward. Marigold corrected it as she slowly pulled the throttle back to twenty five percent.
"Arctic Flight NC-23A, this is Cloudsdale command. We have corroborating reports of..." A horrendous squeal of interference shot through my ears. We pitched down sharply as both Marigold and I cried out and quickly hoofed back our headsets. Marigold leveled us out again as even from around our necks, the squeal continued.
"What the fuck is that noise?" I hissed, furiously trying to hoof the volume down.
Marigold slumped back in her seat as she started to cry. "That's the sound a radio receiver makes when it melts..." She adjusted her hoofhold on the control wheel, sniffling as she looked out ahead. "They fucking did it..." She whispered, pulling us up until we were no longer in a dive. After a few moments, the whine in the headphones gave out with a click. “Cloudsdale is… gone.”
"No, I refuse to believe that what we heard was anything more than just interference." I stammered, slowly pushing forward on my control wheel. Again, we slowly edged into a dive. "They might just be jamming us, you heard them! Cloudsdale knew thanks to us, they might be able to formulate a defence in time."
Marigold looked over at me with profound horror on her face. "Against what?" She pointed her hoof towards her window. "I know that wasn’t interference! My father’s coms made the same screech as he all but burned to death in his rocket.” Nearly screaming, she cried out at me, “You saw how many they are launching. That's a full out attack!"
The door to the cockpit banged as the heavy latch that held it shut slid back. "Okay, just what in Tartarus is going on up here?" Dusty grumbled as he pushed the door open and stepped in. "Sharp course changes and near radio silence from you two means I gotta come all the way in here. Violet getting airsick back there, and I know that she's paranoid about the cargo, but you can't just throw us around."
Both Marigold and I sat staring at each other. I didn’t want to say it, because I still had hope that this wasn’t true. As much as I didn’t want too, I saw the arcs of all those missiles. I might have loved learning all about flight growing up, but I hated how much I knew that this was happening.
"Geeze, what the fuck is wrong with you two? Are we landing or not?" He sighed and sat down in the doorway. Marigold shifted her gaze forward, staring silently at the controls. "I'm only asking because as the navigator..."
"The zebras launched against us." I spoke up, not because I wanted too, but because I had too.
"What?" Dusty hissed. "If this is some kind of..."
"I wish it were a joke, Dusty." I turned my gaze to him, watching as the realization washed over him. He’s been my best friend my whole life, and he knew I couldn’t bluff worth shit. "So, Captain? What do we do?" I asked as both Dusty and I looked over to her. She simply sat in silence. I wasn't anypony who could take charge in a situation like this, I always tended to make the wrong call. "Marigold?" I asked again. She stuttered and looked over to me. "What do we do now?"
Marigold looked down at the gauges across the cockpit. "Uh..." She stammered, "Dusty, how far are we out from the research station?"
“Err…” He scrunched up his muzzle and squeezed his head between his forehooves. "It should be another ten minutes assuming you didn't take us too far off course," He shrugged and got back to his hooves. "Twenty tops." He shook his head. "Why are we making the drop? Shouldn't we be headed back to Fort Macaroni?"
With another sniffle, Marigold shook her head. "Fort Mac is a strategic target. In all likelihood, it's already gone."
"Then where the hell are we supposed to land?" Dusty snorted. I didn't know what to do. As I’d said, I always chose wrong. Even with as sad as she was, I could tell that she had a plan in mind. Still, I was the only pony to see it, because Dusty continued to yell. "The fucking zebra lands are the only thing other than Fort Mac in our range!"
"We stay at the research station." She whimpered, reaching over to the instrument panel. She hoofed the lever for the skids back into its upright position. "With the supplies we brought, we can hold out with them. At least, long enough to see if anypony back home calls out on the radio..."
"You want to us to just sit and wait?" Dusty spit out, screaming loud enough that I flinched at it. "The whole damn world has supposedly gone to hell and you just want to wait?"
"You got a better idea?" I snapped back at him. I shouldn't have, this situation was getting under all of our skins. Nopony ever believed that this day would come. Quickly, I hoofed the flap toggles back into their off position and sat back.
The hum of the hydraulics pulling them back into the locked position was normally comforting to me. As I sat and listened, I felt nothing but hollow. The other’s silence told me that they too were lost in despair. Was this really it? Everything we’ve all done, gone with the rest of the world’s future?
“I..” Dusty stammered, “I gotta tell Violet.” Almost in a daze, he turned around and wandered from the cockpit. With a light squeal, he shut the door softly behind him. This all felt insane. How could the zebras do this? How could they knowingly kill so many?
“Bastard Ponies!” A soft voice shouted through my headset. Slowly, I hoofed it on and turned it up. “You kill home!” The zebra scout from before screamed at us. “Sasa mwisho kisasi!”
We had barely heard the whine of his jetpack before the entire plane shuttered. The left engine nacelle exploded into flames, and it’s forward engine coughed to a stop. The entirety of the Seaddler rolled and pitched down to the left. Marigold and I both whined as we pulled together on the flight sticks.
“Forward number one engine is on fire!” She shouted out, “Shut it down and throttle back the rear one before it catches as well!” I hesitated, helping her pull us back into level flight again before reaching over.
“Throttling back rear number one!” I called out, pulling the controls back. As I did, Marigold ran her hoof along the engine maintainance board. She flipped the induction vents and battery control boards off before returning to get us straight. With the risk of fire reduced, I pulled back on both the forward and rear right engine. “Alright, compensating… there.”
Marigold stuck her head against the window. “Where are you, you bastard?”
“So much for being a nice stallion.” I grumbled as I too looked around for him in the dangerously empty skies.
“Go to…!” The zebra crackled across the radio while the whine rose through the air. Again, the plane shuttered as a few holes opened up in the left wing before the rear engine exploded. The partial scream that came in through the radio made me hope that he’d killed himself in that attack, but I had other things to worry about. We were tossed to the side as the rear half of the left engine nacelle sounded like it fell off.
Again, we tilted down into a steep dive.
“Give me full left flaps!” She shouted as we pulled in futility. This time, I abandoned the control stick to work the toggles. I hoofed out the left flaps and simultaneously pushed the throttle on both right engines forward. The right engines whined as they sped up, pulling us toward the quickly approaching white ice sheet. As the flaps extended, the left of the aircraft struggled to climb up.
“Come on…!” I grunted, putting my hooves around the wheel and pulling with all my might. Together, both Marigold and I barely managed to get the Seaddler level again. The uneven ice sheet below us shimmered as we sped barely fifty feet over it.
The rear hatch to the cockpit opened, and through it stepped Violet. Her purple coat was stained with blood, but I didn’t see any wounds on her. From behind her, I could hear the whistling of wind rushing through the cabin from what was probably more than a few holes in it. “C...captain?” She stuttered. “Dusty is hurt pretty bad back here.” Her words made me grip the control wheel tighter and tighter. Please don’t die, Dusty. “His leg is broken, the bone is sticking through his skin.”
“Get it wrapped and prepare for a rough landing.” She called out, waiting to speak again until we heard the door close. “Give me a damage report.” Marigold snapped, her eyes focusing on the horizon. “What kind of flight time are we looking at?”
“Uhm…” I whined, looking over the various gauges and dials. Each one told me something new, and each one made my heart sink further. I hoofed at a few controls as the front right engine sputtered to a stop “We’ve lost hydraulics for both nacelles, right rear engine two is miraculously the only one with any pressure at all. Engine one is bleeding oil, we won’t be able to restart it.”
Looking around at the other gauges, the news was just as bleak. “Power output is down to ten percent, capacitors are…” I reached up and tapped at the gauge. “well, they are keeping their namesake, eating up what little juice we’ve got left in the undamaged sparkle batteries.”
“So, we can’t land on the skids without hydraulics. We’re almost out of spark energy…” She sighed and shook her head. “And you’re saying we’re relying on rear engine two for power?” Casting a glance at me, she feigned a smile. “Sure know how to really play up that hope card.” We both shared a forced laugh, turning and looking ahead. Just on the horizon, a flicker of light emanated.
“Hey, you see that?” I asked, squinting. Taking my hoof off the controls to point, the Seaddler started to list. “Shit!” I gasped, hoofing back at the controls and helping Marigold keep us level. “On the horizon… maybe one, two-o-clock?”
“We’re too far out to be at the outpost yet.” She grunted. “I really hope those aren’t more damn zebras.”
“Could be the motor sled.” I spoke up, pursing my lips in hope as she looked over to me. We both sat in silence for the next thirty seconds, watching as the glint on the horizon grew bigger. The bright, apple red paint of the motorsled came into view, and I looked over to Marigold with a smile. “Who’s got that hope card now?”
“Still, we can’t slow down enough to land her without the skids.” Marigold sighed. “If we land at this speed, she’ll roll and most likely kill us all.”
“We might be able to slow down enough…” I had only thought about a maneuver like before, but never even thought about trying it because it was downright insane. “What if we put ourselves into a wide, soft left bank, throttle rear two to zero, and then let our weight flare the Seaddler at forty five degrees?”
“Sure we’d bleed enough speed to stop, but there are a number of issues.” She rolled her head in thought. “We’d have to come in low, hope that what’s left of our left wing holds together under the forces in the turn, and even then we’ll still roll when we hit the ground.”
“Not if I throw number two in reverse once our speed is down.” I could feel my heart beating against my chest. “If we pull hard rudder left, the engine might just turn us back around straight in time.” I licked at my lips nervously, watching as we could now see the ponies of the expedition team roaming around the sled. Screw being scared of making the wrong choice. I knew we could do this. “I think this is our best chance.”
“Alright, it’s your show.” Marigold nodded. “But, if we screw this up and become popsicles?” She glanced at me with her annoyed smirk. “You better hope they unthaw me last.”
“Ready?” I called out, loosening my left hoof on the wheel. Carefully, we both let the left wing drag a bit, pulling us down ever so slowly. “One, two… three!” At that, I reached over and throttled back rear number two. Marigold groaned as she pulled back on the stick, flaring the gull winged aircraft hard as I threw the engine into reverse. Rear number two whined and the left wing let out a groan as the air caught us like a net.
For a moment, unlike the weightlessness of earlier, I felt heavier than normal as we skid sideways through the air. That feeling only lasted until rear number two bit down and pulled us back. We spun around as the ground raced up, slamming down hard. The cockpit glass shattered, and the arctic wind rushed in at us. I felt a snap, and a fairly painful feeling ran through my chest. We skid a few feet across the ice and rolled a few degrees to the right, stopping as the right wing dragged the rest of our momentum away.
“Oh hell, my head.” Marigold whined, leaning back and pressing her hoof against the side of her face. “Jackscrew, you still kicking?” She lowered her leg, I could see the wet crimson that coated her hoof.
I wheezed and whined from the pain. “Barely.” Pushing myself back against my seat, I looked down at my chest. There was a meaty lump in it where one of my ribs visibly pressed up under my coat. “Think I broke something.”
“Hey!” The panicked voices of ponies shouted distantly from outside. “Heeey!”
“I’m sorry we broke your dad’s plane.” I whined, slowly getting up from my seat. My chest felt like it was on fire, but I knew that the ponies at the station had medical supplies on hoof. As I stood there, I listened as Marigold whined and cried. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Yes.” She sniffled and reached her hoof up again. “And that’s what’s wrong. We lived, while everypony else...” Curling herself up in her seat, she threw her headset down. “Why couldn’t we have just gone with them all? Why did my dad have to fight for his life, just to...”
“Shhh.” I sighed, carefully walking over to her. “It’s alright. I’m sure that the ponies back home will make it through. We just… we have to live until we hear from them, alright?”
“A-alright.” She turned and looked up at me. The blood on her head was coming from just under her maneline. Part of her skin had been peeled and torn away to reveal her skull under it. However, her skull seemed intact, and for that I was thankful. With teary eyes, she nodded and held out her bloody hoof.
“Come on, let's go get patched up.” I smiled, taking her hoof in mine and pulling her up to her hooves. Turning, we both walked and opened the cockpit door.
“The... hell was that?” Dusty muttered, angrily glaring through his bruised and swelling face. The break in his leg was both a bit worse and a bit better than what Violet had said. The ‘bone’, was actually part of the propeller blade to right rear engine one. She’d bandaged it up well, and it didn’t seem to be bleeding too bad. “Fall asleep up there… again?” Still, I think he’ll live, albeit with a limp.
“Nah, just enjoying the view.” I replied, wheezing as I tried to laugh. That made my side hurt even worse. “Oh that hurt, think I punctured my lung…” Talking was becoming more and more painful, so I think I’ll keep anything else short.
I went to step forward, but found myself stopped by Marigold. She turned my muzzle to hers and planted a soft kiss on my lips. As she broke it, she whispered to me. “Nice flying, Captain.”
“You know, maybe Dusty is right.” With a smile, I painfully hooked my hoof around her. I could feel as my ribs creaked in my chest, and I whined from the pressure against it. “What would you say.... about trying out being Co-captains?” Talking so much was making my insides burn, but for her it was worth it.
“I’d say dream on, flyboy. I captain solo.” She pressed into me gently, sniffling and rubbing the tears from her muzzle. “A date on the other hoof…”
The hatch on the side of the plane creaked as the ponies outside worked at it. After a moment, it swung open, and the worried looks of the heavily clothed outpost scientists gazed in. Marigold gave a light laugh before looking over at me.
“I’m doctor Aurora, and I assume you were our supply team?” The blue coated unicorn at the door spoke up, pulling up his goggles over his bright yellow parka’s hood. “Let’s get you folks to the outpost before you freeze to death out here.”
So maybe my days of flying were over. Maybe the world itself was over, I didn’t know. What I did know, was the for the time being, we were safe. I’d not only landed this plane, but I’d also landed the girl of my dreams. While things would definitely change, there was hope for the four crew members of the Seaddler. Walking through the snow away from her wreckage, I couldn’t help but reflect on it as a metaphor for our society.
Both ponies and zebras have done great things, building our nations to the greatest height we’ve ever been. Now look at it, twisted and wrecked, stranded in a desolate inhospitable land. We hoof crafted this outcome out of our foalish desires, out of misplaced patriotism and blind hatred. Today marks the end of our foalish war, and the date of our two nation’s gravest mistake.
How do we move on from a mistake like this? How do we look at ourselves as a race and reconcile our sins? What do we say to the dead to justify our mistake? What do we tell our children about what we have done? Both races collaborated hoof in hoof in working towards a shared demise, do we teach our children to follow in our hoofsteps or do we guide them in another direction?
The future is on us to change our ways, to become better ponies so that this can never happen again. I don’t know how many will survive, or how long it will take to rebuild. All I know is that we cannot forget that the friendship and comradery that we ponies can offer is worth more than a hoof-ful of coal. If we can’t remember that, then we are all doomed to repeat our failings.
The thousand or so contrails that crisscrossed the open skies above us hung frozen at this moment as a reminder. Though they would dissipate over time, we would still remember them. Until the day that we died, it was on us to remember who we once were as a race. What great feats we had once achieved, and with a little help working together, who we might become again.
So long as I remembered these frozen contrails, I had hope that ponies could one day soar higher in bright blue skies than we ever had before.