> After the Storm
>  by Jay911
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Expanding the Flock
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEPTEMBER 19, 2015

"Hey, Stormy."
I put a hoof to my ear to shield the earbud from the wind noise. "Go ahead," I answered.
"Where are you?" Swift asked.
"Over the lake," I said. I adopted a Western twang. "Clouuud-russlin'."
"Oh god, I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."
"What?"
"First of all, it was a horrible accent, and second of all, I still don't think you should be interfering with nature like that."
"Says the unicorn! I'm in total control," I insisted. "Just lining things up for a nice shower this afternoon."
"You're insane, you know that?"
"Thanks for noticing!" I answered with a grin.
"I swear, you're becoming impossible to deal with. Anyway, there's a message for you on the tablet when you finish defying physics."
"Thank youuuu!" I sang out, and flew back to grab another wayward puff of vapor, gathering it up with its brethren and parking it over the middle of Lake Ontario.

Twenty minutes later, I dropped down onto the roof of Ponytown, stumbling only a few dozen steps before I came to a stop. At least I wasn't doing somersaults in the gravel any more, but it still needed work.
Once I got downstairs, I found most of the place quiet and still. Our gardening couple were tending to their field, and Swift and Rich were out doing whatever they were doing. I heard noises from the auto bay, and presumed Serge was working on one of the generators, or preventative maintenance on the cars, or whatever he was up to these days to keep himself busy.
Over to my platform I went, climbing the stairs and glancing at the clock. Eleven sixteen - I had a radio broadcast to do in under 45 minutes. I needed to come up with something to say, but that would wait until I saw what the HPI wanted.
We were communicating with them via satphone on occasion, but tablet mostly - email and/or instant message was easier, when who you were calling wasn't always guaranteed to be lugging a phone around with them. So we've come full circle, I mused, thinking of the time before cell phones were so ubiquitous that some people carried two or three.
I stepped on the tablet's surface while I was picking up the stylus, and indeed, it winked on with the little red "1" beside the bell icon indicating I had a pending message. With the stylus in my teeth, I tapped on the icon and waited for the message to load.
My eyebrows lifted as I saw the document, consisting of only a short silent video, looping over and over. Somepony sent me a repost from the GIFs subreddit? I wondered.
It was far clearer than your average imageboard fare, though. The fifteen-second-long video was an aerial shot taken at a significantly long distance, and finally I realized it was from one of the HPI's aircraft, or maybe a drone. Probably an aircraft based on how far away from the subjects of the video it was staying.
The video seemed to be of Highway 401 west of the Rouge River valley, closer to Toronto (actually inside the city, truth be told). In the center of the frame, appearing quite small despite how far the camera was zoomed in, were two ponies pulling a large cart. It was hard to tell from that distance, but it looked like one was an Earth pony Serge's size, and the other was a smaller one whose race I couldn't discern. The cart was piled ridiculously high with goods, which explained why the bigger pony wasn't handling it on their own.
And they were walking towards us.
After a few more moments of studying the image, I flipped open my laptop and hooked a mic up to it. Setting up the recording feature, I spoke:
"Hi folks, it's Stormy here again, and it's noon on September 19. Well, it is when you're hearing this, but I'm recording it a little early because I have to go out and meet some guests, so it seems. So today's news for lunch is going to be light on detail, but I promise to make up for it at six. See you then!"
I played back the recording to make sure it was suitable for broadcast, then hooked a patch cord up to the radio stack and a timer to release the audio at the right time. The jerry-rigged setup would work, but one of these days I wanted to put something together which would allow for a lot more flexibility. Basically, I wanted a full broadcast studio. While I was dreaming, I might as well ask for an endless supply of chocolate milk and fresh carrots. I'd be more likely to have the latter.
Evidently the magical duo were just coming in at that moment and heard me speaking. They showed up at the foot of the stairs (should that be 'hoof of the stairs' now?) as I finished up.
"Did you say guests?" Swift perked up.
"Here," I answered, lobbing the tablet at her. She deftly caught it in her magic, feigning surprise at the maneuver - even though I knew she was skilled enough to do it virtually in her sleep. The tablet righted itself in mid-air and hovered there before the two of them, while I came down the stairs.
"Whoa!" Rich said. "Is this real time?"
"I didn't see a timestamp on it, but the sunlight and cloud cover seem to match today," I said. "I'm going out for a fly. You two care to follow in a car?"
"Just give us a couple seconds," Swift said, hurriedly putting the tablet down and turning to dash for her bedroom.
"I'll wait with her," Rich said, smiling at me. "See you out there. Be careful."
"I'll be fine," I said, smiling back. "I can get plenty of range on 'em if I need to. Failing that, I have a few tricks up my non-existent sleeves."

As soon as I got up off the roof and got even just a few meters high, I could tell the picture had been as close to realtime as possible. In the eastbound express lanes of the highway, just east of White's Road, I could see the two ponies and their cart.
Okay, how do I do this? I wondered. Fly right at them and shout 'hello' from 25 meters away? Orbit them a few times at high altitude to get their attention and then drop in? No, scratch that - dropping in is still a bad idea for me. Fly to close the distance and then land and approach on hoof?
In the end I decided that the first idea was usually the best, though I didn't zip right up on top of them all of a sudden. I flew at streetlight level, facing off with them about halfway between the train bridge and White's Road.
"Hello," I called out, pushing my goggles up and hovering in place.
The big grey earth pony - a little lighter grey than me - was female. Her pulling partner was a unicorn, male, and had a black coat and greyish-silver mane and tail. They almost seemed to be polar opposites, what with her jet-black hair.
The cart was like the Clampett's car turned up to 11. No, 21. Everything they could possibly carry was lashed into a rust-red truck box - I'm sure you've seen that kind of makeshift trailer before, where somebody cuts a pickup in half and welds a trailer tongue to it. The tongue of this trailer had a complicated-looking rope and cargo-strap affair which led to harnesses that each pony was attached to.
"Hello!" the male called back to me. "Are you... are we close to Ponytown by chance?"
I nodded and gestured with my hoof. "It's a couple of miles that way," I said. "Hold on just a second." I clicked my radio on, fumbling for the earpiece. "Hey, you guys there?"
"We're about a minute out," I heard Rich say.
I could tell from the background noise, or lack thereof, that they were in one of the electric cars. "Is the pickup working? If so, bring it. With the trailer hitch on."
"Okay," came the answer after a pause. I looked over my shoulder to see the Prius, halfway down the next ramp to the east, make a three-point turn and go back the way it came.
"Sorry about that," I said, slowly reducing my hover level and approaching cautiously (so as to not run into the cart ponies). "Getting my friends to switch vehicles. Give you a bit of a rest for the last bit."
"Vehicles?" they stereoed, in surprise.
"We have a few creature comforts left," I smiled. It dawned on me that if I kept gradually lowering my hover, I could eventually touch down without looking like I was attempting to make a crater. Trying to do that without it being obvious, I said, "Have you come far?"
"Near Petrolia," the male said. "I don't know if you know where that is, but-"
"I do," I said, the little pony in my head cheering and waving celebratory flags as my hooves met pavement. Outwardly, it was my turn to be surprised. "Damn. That's out by Sarnia."
"Sarnia's home... or was," the female chimed in. "We were on our way there when this craziness happened. We managed to get back there, but..." She shook her head.
"There's nothing left there," the male finished for her. "We haven't seen another soul, at all. But we've heard plenty."
"Oh, that'd be me," I said with a smile and a blush and a hoof behind the head in the typical abashed expression pose. "I-"
"Mrrm? Jenn? Greg? Why'd we stop?" their cart asked. I blinked and stared, and the load shifted until a tiny yellow colt poked his head out from under a bundle. "Are we ther..." His eyes got genuinely huge, even bigger than our gigantic eyes were normally. "Is that her??"
"She was about to tell us, kiddo," 'Jenn' said, smiling back and down at the child in her cart.
"Uhhh..." I said, wide-eyed myself.
"Are you Sudden Storm??" the colt blurted out, popping free of the pile of belongings and hopping down - first onto a bunch of stuff lashed to the trailer tongue, which I noticed included an FM radio strapped to the top of two large water jugs - and then to the tongue itself, and then down to the ground. He scampered over and stood two feet in front of me, looking straight up. "Is it really you??"
"Uhm... hi?" I said with a sheepish grin.
"Randy's a huge fan," Jenn laughed. "Randy, take it easy, give her room to breathe."
He's not a huge anything, I resisted blurting out. He barely comes up to my chin, and I barely come up to my old chin. "Hi, buddy," I finally managed to get out. "Yes, I'm Sudden Storm."
"I listen to you every day!" Randy enthused, running around in a circle, as if chasing his orange-and-white tail. "I want you to teach me!"
"Teach..." I said, not understanding, until I noticed the small feathered appendages at his sides. Oh, great.
Luckily, the howl of the pickup approaching saved me from further conversation. "It's my friends," I said, as the truck drove down the off-ramp to approach us going the wrong direction in the eastbound lanes. "It's a noisy thing, but it'll pull that trailer easy and you guys can ride."
"Thank you," the male - Greg perhaps? - said. "Thank you very much."
"Can we fly back??" Randy begged me, bouncing up and down on all four hooves.
"I'm still learning," I said, thinking quick on my hooves. "I don't wanna risk dropping you. Let's all ride in the truck."
"Awww," he began to sulk, but looked up in awe at the truck, with Serge, Rich, and Swift aboard.
That's right - Serge is better at stick than anypony else, I recalled. "Hi guys," I said, waving with a wing. "This is Jenn and Greg and Randy. And this is Serge and Rich and Swift."
"Can you fly?" Randy looked up at the mountain of pegasus before him.
"I'm more of a driver," Serge said with a low rumbling voice, playing the big tough guy.
"Sorry," Greg said, shrugging out of his harness and coming forward to offer a hoof. "Greg Somerset. This is my wife Jennifer."
"Family?" Swift said, eyebrows rising.
"Some of us," Jenn said quietly, eyeing Randy. He was preoccupied sizing up Serge, and nothing more needed to be said for the moment.
"Well," I said, "If you'd like to step aside, Serge will back up the truck to your cart, and once we're hooked up, we'll all get in the back for the ride back to Ponytown."
"We get to ride in the back?" Randy said, suddenly picking up on the conversation.
"Yup, just like you've been doing, little guy," Greg smiled. He reached down with his mouth and tried to pile the tow strap harness onto the tongue of the trailer.
"Let me help," Swift said. She stepped up and took the straps in her magic, folding them and tucking them away.
Greg blinked and looked impressed. "I'm nowhere near that adept yet," he said, "but I can tie my booties." He lifted up a hoof, and like Jeff when he'd first arrived, both adults were wearing makeshift hoof protection.
"We'll teach ya'," Swift said with a smirk. "I should be letting my protégé show off." The chocolate brown unicorn behind her blushed.
Serge was backing the truck up, so I hopped up into the sky to guide him into position. After the hitch was latched, I swooped down and decided to be a good sport for a moment, and snatched up Randy, wrapping my forelegs around his barrel as tight as I dared. He screeched in delight as I quickly flitted over to the truck bed and set him down.
"More! More!"
"Let me get my courage up," I advised him. As I turned to look, Jenn crouched down to let Greg climb on her back and then up into the box of the truck. Then she stepped up easily on her own. I blinked, watching them make use of their size differences to their advantage.
Swift and Rich climbed into the cab with Serge, and we were off - slowly, so as to not throw anything loose out of their cart.
"How is this thing still running?" Greg wanted to know, shouting over the din of the motor.
"We have a very good repairman," I said, nodding towards Serge. "And a bunch of us are mechanically inclined or have engineering backgrounds. Wait 'til you see our electrical solutions."
"I'm very interested," Greg nodded. "We've been scrounging batteries for our radio and that's about all the power we've had."
"You're in for a treat," I smiled back.

I had an idea I'd wanted to suggest to Serge, but forgot to mention it before we got in the truck, and the sunroof was replaced by a chunk of plywood so it was incredibly difficult to talk through it. Hopefully we'd eventually find a compatible piece of glass or plastic to replace what was lost in the hail storm.
Luckily, it seemed he had the same idea as me. The auto bays were at the near end of the mall, and the farming field was at the far end. I wanted him to drive around the mall's perimeter road so that we were showing off all our stuff. (It was a little too far to take them up past the cows, though.)
As I expected, the field and chicken coop were met with incredulous reactions. It was all Greg and Jenn could do to keep Randy from leaping right out of the truck. That made me wonder what exactly they'd found to eat on their long hike. Were they well-nourished? Would they become ill from taking in lots of water and fresh foods?
Serge pulled the truck and trailer into the main driveway of the mall, and Randy laughed at the Ponytown sign. I was beginning to like this kid - he represented the positive attitude that the world was in danger of losing.
Jeff and Karin had seen us drive around and noticed the extra folks, so they galloped out of the fields to meet us, even though they were both filthy almost up to their barrels.
"How did you build that?" Jennifer wanted to know, indicating the field.
"Got a little help breaking through the asphalt, but the actual field is the work of our excellent earth ponies, Jeff and Karin. Here they are now. Jeff, Karin, meet Jennifer, Greg, and young Randy."
"Hello!" Jeff said brightly. "Sorry for the mess, perhaps we can forego the hoofbump for now."
"'Hoofbump'?" Greg and Jenn stereoed.
Several of us smirked, giggled, and/or laughed politely. "You'll find new terminology popping up in our speech," I said. "Even I was giving them the hairy eyeball at first, but it grows on you."
"Of course," Greg said with realization, nodding. By now, Serge and the others had dismounted from the truck.
"Are you hungry?" Swift asked. "It's kind of lunchtime anyway, so we can make something up."
"Does it have a plastic wrapper? No? Then we'll take it," Jennifer smirked. "We've subsisted on snack-foods and other heavy-preservative things for weeks."
Serge stepped forward. "Then I think you need a break," he smiled. "Somebody will take you inside and show you around while we get lunch ready."

As usual, I was 'voluntold' to be the tour guide while lunch was being prepared. The trio were suitably impressed with what we'd done with our resources, explaining that they'd spent their time crossing the province sleeping and sheltering in stores and the occasional broken-open motel - reluctant to venture into abandoned houses, saying it didn't 'feel right' to intrude on someone else's property.
"I can understand that," I nodded. "I remember the scene from the end of The Day After."
"Exactly," Greg said, pointing a hoof at me. "You... well, forgive me, but you must be older than you look."
I smiled slightly. "Let's just say Ponification did a lot more to some of us than it did others," I told him.
"'Ponification'?" Jenn echoed. "Does that mean you know what happened, since you have a name for it?"
"Not really," I said, shaking my head. "We have some information, but not a lot. We have an idea of what happened, but not why. Obviously, we all got turned into ponies. The people that vanished, we don't know what happened to them. We also know that some people lost time in between the day of Ponification and when they 'woke up'. One of our group was driving home at night one moment and losing control of her car in broad daylight the next."
"That's... weird," Greg contributed.
"I know," I agreed. "Anyway, we can discuss all that later on, with the whole group." We were walking along through the back room, having shown off our storage of supplies, and were going towards the auto bays, with Randy darting ahead. I continued talking as we walked. "In here is our-"
"Aaahh!! It's a dog!!!" the young colt ahead of us screamed, rushing back and cowering underneath Jenn, peeking out from behind her forelegs.
"It's okay, little guy," Greg tried to calm the hysterical youngster, as I stared on in surprise.
"We had some issues with feral dog packs," Jenn explained, reaching down to try to comfort Randy with a hoof stroking his head.
"Ohh," I said softly. "Hey, Randy? Buddy's a good guy. He's my friend." I raised my voice. "Buddy, you in there?"
The Dalmatian came out of the auto bays slowly and carefully, ears pinned back at the young pegasus' whimpering. I held out a hoof and let Buddy walk to it, letting me pet him. "See?" I said to Randy. "He's friendly."
Buddy crept forward a few steps low to the ground, then flopped onto his side and rolled over, exposing his belly.
Greg and Jenn chuckled, and I smirked. "See?" Jenn said. "He wants a rub."
"You big suck," I said accusingly, and Buddy thumped his tail a few times on the floor.
Randy tentatively edged out from under his protection and crept closer to the dog. Buddy stayed rock-still, his left legs up in the air, exposing his belly to the young pony. Finally, Randy reached out a hoof and touched Buddy's ribcage, then stroked it, letting out a giggle as Buddy wagged his tail into the tile floor again.
"That's a good boy," I complimented Buddy. To the adults, I said, "He's sca... I mean, really smart. One of the family, so to speak. He's been a big help to us in so many ways."
"Randy's had a rough time," Jenn said quietly while the boy was distracted greeting Buddy. "He's... not our child."
"I kind of gathered that from what you said earlier," I said.
Greg took up the conversation. "We were in our car and experienced something a lot like what you mentioned earlier - we were driving home and suddenly all the traffic disappeared, and we seemed to lose some time, based on a clock we found at the rest stop we made it to. Where we found Randy. He said he'd been out of his parents' car using the bathroom in the rest stop, and he changed - and when he got out of the bathroom, everybody was gone. His parents and sister, the staff at the rest stop, other customers... everybody. And he says he was there alone for a week... even though we'd only been a kilometer or two up the road when we changed."
"Good god," I whispered, looking over at the little colt now playing with a friendly Dalmatian.
"Yeah," Jenn said. "He's recovered well, but it took some time. And to be honest, miss Storm?" She fixed me with a stare and a smile. "Your little radio show has really picked up his spirits. Your tales of life in Ponytown? It's given him something to shoot for. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I honestly believe you saved this child."
I blinked and watched Randy give chase to Buddy, apparently launching into a game of tag. I'd been responsible for this kid's survival? That was a kind of a big deal to be saddled with, if you'll excuse the pun.

Lunch was fresh salad today with fresh milk. Naturally, our guests were thrilled by the fare.
"How are you managing to grow such healthy crops?" Greg asked.
Swift gave a nod. "Our gardening wizards over there," she said, indicating Karin and Jeff on the other end of the table.
"It's not like that," Jeff began, but Swift cut him off.
"It is like that, and you know it," she said. "You two act so humble and bashful about it, but everypony knows you can do things that shouldn't be possible when it comes to stuff that grows out of the ground."
"Actually," Karin said with a smile, looking at Jenn, "that's probably true of you, too. Come with us after lunch if you like."
"Oh, no," she said with a dismissive but polite laugh. "I'm just a homemaker. I have no skills like that."
"You'd be surprised," I said, smiling as well. "You think Swifty and Rich got where they are from spending their human lives dabbling in magic? Or I was flapping around in the sky before I became a pony?"
"You were?" Randy gaped.
Serge just about choked on his broccoli. Swift laughed. "You walked into that one," she said.
"No, I wasn't," I smiled at the colt. "I was trying to say that Jenn is probably going to be good at farming."
"I wanna be good at flying, like you."
"Has he seen you 'land' yet?" Swift fake-asided to me at a normal volume.
"Hush," I shot back.
"So, um, what did you do before the Event?" Jeff asked Greg.
"Oh," Greg said, smiling. "Something that I think is going to be very irrelevant for a long time to come. Land titles lawyer. Useful, huh?"
Several of us smiled. Greg looked confused until Swift raised a hoof. "O&G lab tech," she said.
"Database admin," I supplied.
"Video game designer," Rich chimed in. "We find other things to occupy ourselves with."
"Actually," Karin said, "your cutie mark kind of indicates your top proficiency, it seems. I'm betting Stormy didn't mention that."
"...No," Greg said, looking over to me.
I blushed, looking away, ears folded back. "I hate that term," I muttered.
Jenn looked over her shoulder towards her rump. "Are you saying I'm supposed to be good at something to do with houses?" she asked, eyeing the cartoony image of a one-story dwelling on her side.
"It's probably more like you'll be good at keeping this place together, like a proper home," Jeff suggested. "Maybe you'll be our housemother."
Greg was looking at his own backside. "That doesn't much explain me," he said. On his hindquarters was a trio of opened books - one with squiggles that probably indicated 'writing', one with complex-looking diagrams, and one with splashes of color probably representing art.
"What did you do for hobbies?" Swift asked.
"I was in a paintball league," he shrugged. "Spent almost every weekend either having a campaign with my team, or golfing."
"Hmm."
"Any side jobs?" Serge questioned. As an afterthought, he added, "Librarian?"
"No," Greg said, "but I did teach the occasional class at the community college, on law as it pertained to oil and gas and mineral leases."
"I think you might be expanding your curriculum soon, teach," Karin quipped.
"I don't got one," Randy pouted, turning around in circles as he tried to see his rear end.
"Don't sweat it, kiddo," I said. "I didn't get mine until about a month ago."
He instantly rushed over to me. "For real? How did you know what to get?"
I backed up a little to regain some personal space. "Ehem, well, I didn't, really. I just did something I had to do, and had to do right - and there it was."
"What she's saying is your mark will come when the time is right, little guy," Greg explained. "It might not be something you're consciously working at being good at. It could be that something just happens one day."
"I don't wanna have to wait," he grumped, flopping down on his belly on the floor.
"You seem to have done just fine without one so far," I told him. "I did too." However, I didn't admit, now that the weather was my plaything, it was often what I wanted to do the most each and every day.
"I guess," he sulked.
Serge was done his lunch, and cleared his throat. "I hate to change the subject, but there's something I need to ask, so I can prepare to take care of it, depending on what the answer is. And forgive me for being blunt, but it's the way I work." He fixed his gaze on Greg and Jenn. "Are you staying with us or just stopping over?"
Both ponies' eyes widened. Randy, behind them, got to his hooves, sensing something important was going on.
"We... can stay?" Jenn asked. "There's a choice?"
"I think we considered this a way station," Greg explained in a quiet voice, eyes wide with surprise. "We thought of it more as a place to rest and trade and resupply."
"Where were you heading?" Jeff asked.
"Someplace that would take us in," Greg admitted. "A place with room for us to try to rebuild our lives."
"You're sitting in it," Swift said softly, smiling at them.

I slipped the headphones over my ears, hoping the sounds of construction and demolition on the far side of the store - actually outside the store in the mall, truth be told - wouldn't interfere with the broadcast.
At the appropriate time, I punched all the transmit buttons and began to speak.
"Evening, folks. I should put some music on here as an opening theme one of these days, so it's not just me talking all of a sudden. Anyway, it's Stormy here with your six PM broadcast for September 19. Well, I know at least the eighty-eight-point-nine broadcast is working, 'cause I've just spent a half a day with a group of ponies who have been listening to it for the past two weeks or more. They're all new settlers to Ponytown, which means our message is getting out to you. We will survive this better as a group, people. You don't have to rummage around in abandoned buildings for food scraps or places to sleep. We've got all of that and more. And if you're worried about freeloading, don't. We'll find something for you to do, too, and I'm not talking about putting you into hard labor or something like that. Folks, we have a civilization to rebuild, and so far nine of us to do it with. Nine isn't enough. I know some of you may have questions before you commit to traveling here, especially if you'd be coming from a long way away. That's why I say after every broadcast to answer back if you care to. Just hit that transmit button and say your piece. I listen for at least a half an hour after each 'cast to make sure I don't miss any replies. I'm here, Ponytown's here, and we're waiting for you."

> Game Changer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I was soaring.
The temperature was just right, the cloud cover was decent, and the sky conditions perfect. Humidity was at a great balance. You couldn't ask for anything better in order to fly.
I dodged a couple of small puffs of cloud and rushed up to perch on a ledge made of vapor. It overlooked a small development in the sky - a cloud street, and two or three cloud buildings on each side. Somebody had been hard at work here already! The detail on the columns was impressive, and the craftsmanship was to be envied in every structure.
Then, below me on the street, I saw her, and blinked.
Luna? I wondered to myself. But didn't you say the last time I saw you that we'd never meet again?
I was confused, but pleased. I sat up straight and prepared to greet the pony, when whoa! she was there right in front of me, face-to-face. It was so quick I didn't even see how she did it.
She held a bright but inquisitive look on her face, mere centimeters from my own snout. I was about to ask her if everything was okay when she spoke, in a high-pitched voice that was not her own.
"Miss Storm? Are you up yet?"
...Huh?

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015
07:42AM

I opened my eyes to see a yellow face with huge expressive blue eyes and an orange-and-white mane, uncomfortably close to my own muzzle, studying me intensely.
"Gaah," I blurted out, flinching a little.
"Did you know your wings flutter when you snore?" Randy said innocently.
"Guh... Can't say've ever noticed," I mumbled, shrinking back from the colt and trying to get to my feet.
"Randy!" Jenn called out from somewhere else in the store. "Are you pestering Ms Storm again?"
"I just asked if she was awake!" he hollered back.
"It's okay," I called out, trying to hide the tired sound from my voice. "I'm good! It's all good."
"I'm so sorry, Ms Storm," Jenn said, coming to the doorway of my room. "I guess he got away from me when I got busy making breakfast."
"It's fine," I insisted. "And my friends call me Stormy, okay?"
"Do I count??" Randy said, hopping back up to his hooves from the sitting position he'd adopted when I woke up.
"Of course you do, little guy," I said with a smile, scratching the back of my neck with a hoof. "But whatever you wanted will have to wait until I'm up and ready to take on the day. All right?"
"I just wanna hang out with you," he said.
I shook my head a little and couldn't help but smile. "Fair enough," I told him.
"Are you sure that's all right?" Jenn asked from the doorway.
"Leave him with me, it's fine," I nodded. "Go do whatever you were doing."
"Do you want something to eat, then?" she asked.
"Sure. Whatever you're whipping up is fine," I smiled. "Thanks."
"And thank you," Jenn said, nodding to the bundle of energy bouncing from hoof to hoof before me. She smiled, turned, and walked away.
I looked down to Randy, who was grinning and hopping about. "What are we doing first?" he asked.

After breakfast, my number one fan continued to chase me around.
"Where're we going?" he wanted to know.
"Checking out your house," I said. I walked out of the Wal-Mart part of Ponytown into the mall itself, where we'd taken the first store - a shoe place - and cleaned it out for Greg, Jenn, and Randy. So far, a couple of mattresses and a few shelves as dividers were in place, and Serge, Greg, and Rich and Swift were working at making it more of a livable space.
"How's it going?" I asked.
Swift looked up and smiled. "Hi," she said, coming over to us. "Not bad. Still trying to figure out the layout. Obviously we have the bedrooms started. Once we put the common room in, Serge is suggesting we get power and communication lines working."
"That's something I hadn't thought of," I nodded. "I mean, yes, power, that's a no-brainer, but they're outside the main store, so they could benefit from... a... phone..."
I was trailing off because the fidgeting, pacing colt at my feet was being lifted off the ground in a cloud of magic. He giggled as he soared over my head, and Swift smirked as I felt four small hooves touch down on my back, right between my wing joints.
"Really?" I said to her.
"You were saying?" she grinned innocently.
I shook my head. "It's a good idea," I repeated. "But you know who the right person to talk to about that is."
"Yup. And if you find him, mention it to him. He wasn't out in the field when I checked ten minutes ago."
"'Kay," I said and waved to the others, who greeted us in various ways. I began to slowly turn around, mindful of my cargo. "You holding on back there?"
"Let's go!" he urged, digging in and gripping tightly.
I shook my head again at Swift. "Look what you started," I said and went into the hall.

"Let's go flying!"
"Maybe later," I said. "I like to check out everything that's going on in the morning, so I have something to say on the radio at noon. Be patient."
"Okay, but I want to go flying later."
"We should make sure it's okay first. Remind me to ask your m-"
I winced and fell silent, the only sound being my hooves clopping on the tile floor.
"It's okay," Randy said softly, with much less energy than before. "Sometimes I feel like they're my mom and dad."
"I just said it by reflex," I apologized. "I didn't mean to make you sad."
"I'm okay," he shrugged. "My real mom and dad wouldn't leave me. I know they'll be back. We left notes saying where we went. They know to look for me here."
I almost felt the need to wipe away tears. "How old are you, kiddo?"
"Nine," he said. "Almost ten. In December."
"You're a pretty grown-up nine almost ten," I said. "I know lots of people who wouldn't handle this that well."
"Greg said he heard you say something one night on the radio which made a lot of sense, and he told me I should follow your advice. He said you said that we can't change the past, and we should 'live to the moment' or something like that."
"Live for the moment," I smiled, blinking a few times to keep my eyes from clouding up. "That's right." I remembered the night I'd spoken about that - I'd been particularly missing my sister and her boys that day. I offered the actual statement I'd said: "Don't worry about what's in the past, because you can't do anything about it. And don't worry about what might happen in the future, because you can change that, and there's no point in worrying about what you can change. So just live for the moment, and make your own destiny."
"Yeah," Randy said. "That."
We went into the back room of the store and found Jeff there, rooting through boxes and moving things this way and that.
"You-know-who's got a system of organization for all this stuff," I called out to him. "If she sees this you might sleep on a rafter tonight."
He swung his head around and looked at me. "I'm looking for candles, and cake mix."
"Oh, those kind of candles," I said. I'd almost directed him to the decorative ones we were using for illumination during cloudy, windless nights when we didn't want to drain the power banks.
"Whose birthday is it?!" Randy blurted out, and it finally clicked with me too. My eyes widened as I said "oooh" and looked at Jeff.
"You can't tell anypony," he instructed Randy, who I could feel nod vigorously in return.
"It's Karin's eighteenth tomorrow," he told us.
"Ooooh," I repeated, grinning. "Okay, now this is something I can get behind." I went over to the shelving to help him look. "I'm not sure if cake mix spoils or not, though."
"Sure it does," Jeff said. "You've never seen that chain email? Geez. But it's supposed to be decent for about 5 months past the 'best before' date, so we should be just about good. I'll use several and if one or two don't rise, we know they're bad."
"You could try to make it from scratch," I said. "I'm sure we have flour and stuff left over from the HPI stash..."
"The only one who's any good at making cakes and muffins from scratch is the one this is for," Jeff pointed out, moving another box.
"Oh, right," I said. I looked at several boxes on the shelf nearest me, trying to see if I could find anything useful. The pressure on my back grew and then disappeared, and I panicked briefly, until I turned around and saw that Randy had leapt off onto one of the shelves to help in the search.
"So how are you two doing?" I asked Jeff conversationally, not sure how far he was willing to take the talk with a youngster present.
"Good," he nodded. "Pretty good. We have the farming and animal husbandry down to a science now. We know what each other's done and what needs to be done still."
"Finishing each other's sentences yet?" I smirked.
He chuckled. "You think that's funny, but..."
"Candles!" Randy blurted out, nudging a box forward with his head.
Jeff and I looked up and peered into the box, finding not only birthday candles, but all sorts of birthday and party decorations piled in as well.
"Huh," Jeff said.
"Kinda looks like somepony figured we'd need all this stuff at the same time soon enough," I smiled.
"I'm gonna jump down," Randy cautioned me.
"Okay. Be gentle, I only have one spine," I shot back, and he obediently took it easy on me.
"What's with this, by the way?" Jeff asked, nodding to the colt on my back.
"Swifty put him up there, when he was almost underhoof," I said. "I guess I kinda owe him a quick flight-"
"REALLY?!"
"Hush, kiddo. We'll get to it soon enough!" I said, and Jeff found himself smirking. I said to the earth pony, "Do you want our help finding the cake mixes?"
"Nah, I'm through more than half of what I needed to search," he said. "I might need to break off and put in an appearance out at the chicken coop so she sees me doing work."
"And sneak a few eggs away for the mixes," I winked.
Jeff smirked again. "I've got a plan," he said. "Thanks, little guy, for the help!"
"No problem!" I heard from over my shoulder, and Jeff laughed.
We turned away, and I walked towards another set of boxes at the far end of the warehouse. "Hang on tight," I said, hopping into the pallet-sized crate and rooting around.
"Whatcha lookin' for?" Randy asked.
"Just never you mind," I said, crouching down and kicking at things with my forelegs. "I'll know it when I see it."
"But I could probably help-"
"You probably could, but it's more fun this way," I told him. "You'll see in a minute."
True enough, in about five minutes, I'd found what I was looking for, in a box with a stylized O on it, much like I'd received from Serge some months before.
"Snow goggles?" Randy said quizzically, like I'd not noticed that there wasn't a flake on the ground.
I busied myself removing the box and packaging from the size small goggles. "Nope. Not any more." I held up the device as I finally got it free of its plastic prison. "Flying goggles."
Randy gasped and nearly fell off my back, thanking me profusely and clutching the goggles with his forehooves. I sat down, letting him fall off my back gently, and turned so I was facing him, so I could help him fit the goggles to his head.
"There ya go," I said. "Let's go get mine, then."
"Okay!" he nodded, the eyewear a little too big for him, but still staying on his face even with the vigorous nod he'd given. He climbed back up on me, and I stood, then hopped back out of the crate, and trotted to my room.
"Oho!" Jenn said as we passed through the common room, where she was tidying up our perpetual mess. "Looks like somebody's ready to take to the skies."
"Almost," I said, ducking into my room and grabbing the strap of my goggles in my teeth. I flipped them in the air and let them fall on my head, lifting a hoof to tug the strap down over the back of my mane. "There we go."
"Come watch, Jenn!"
"Maybe next time," Jenn said with a smile. "I've found quite the job of my own here."
"Sorry," I said apologetically. "We'll learn to keep it tidy if we have somepony guilt-tripping us when she has to clean up after us, I promise."
Jenn laughed and waved at me dismissively. "Go have fun," she said.

A few moments later, we were on the roof.
"Okay. Ground rules," I said.
"Ground rules? For flying?" Randy balked.
"You know what I mean," I said. "Hang on as tight as possible at all times. Don't worry about hurting me. I'll be able to handle it. Just stay in between my wings and don't get in their way."
"Gotcha."
"If you start to lose your grip, tell me. Don't be afraid to cut our flight short for your safety. We'll have plenty of time to fly in the future, but not if you fall."
"I'm not gonna fall."
"And if anything gets to be too much for you-"
"Pfft. No chance! Let's go!" he hollered, giving a kick with a hind leg.

I maybe should've brought ear protection, I told myself a few moments later. The happy shrieks from just behind my head were deafening, even over the wind noise.
We were just taking a leisurely flap around the periphery of Ponytown at maybe 50 or 60 meters, but to believe Randy's enthusiasm, we were in a full acrobatic display rivalling that of the Snowbirds, Blue Angels, and Red Arrows all put together. He was hooting and crowing and cheering so hard I started to wonder if he'd have any breath left.
I snuck in a few gentle banks and turns here and there, and one or two sudden climbs or drops, but nothing overly dramatic - not for a first flight, especially when I wasn't convinced he could maintain his grip. Maybe we'd cook up some kind of tandem harness like skydivers used, and that would let us get serious.
I didn't have the heart to tell him I could feel that it was going to rain shortly, which would be good for the field. Karin waved at us - undoubtedly she could hear us - and I waved back. Not sure if Randy did, or if he kept his promise to keep all four hooves in tight contact with my hide.
For a finale, just to give the kid one more thrill, I actually dove in through the open door of the auto bays, crossed them into the main part of the store, and landed semi-clumsily (but getting better, as always!) near the common area.
"That was awesome!" Randy gushed, hopping down and running around me in circles. Jenn came over and giggled and grinned at the show.
"Did you have fun?" Jenn needlessly asked.
"Did you see us?" Randy said incredulously in return. "We were like a thousand feet in the air!"
Maybe two hundred, I mouthed to her, and she winked.
"You'd better remember to thank Stormy," Jenn told him.
He whipped around so fast the goggles shifted sideways a little, blocking his vision. "Thanks, Stormy!" he blurted out.
I laughed and gave the goggles a tug so that they hung around his neck, like I wore mine sometimes. "I need to do some work now, but maybe you can come watch me do the radio broadcast at noon if you like."
"You bet!" he said enthusiastically.
"Put those in your room somewhere safe so they don't get scratched," Jenn told him, indicating the goggles. "You can explore, so long as you don't go anywhere that's closed off, and if somebody asks you to stay away, follow their instructions."
"Okay," he nodded.
"Be over at the radio shack at 11:50," I called after him as he departed. He indicated he'd heard me with a wave.
"Thanks for that," Jenn told me. "He's been on about meeting you for so long - I think you just made his life."
"Oh, I hope he has a lot more fun than that in his life," I smiled. "But I'm happy to be a part of it. Did you need any help around here?"
"No, thanks. I'm almost done. But I had an idea I wanted to run past one of you."
"I'm one of us," I quipped. "Go ahead."
"The little guy - and the rest of us, eventually - are going to want more distractions in our lives. All those TVs and stuff pushed over in the corner-" she indicated the remnants of the electronics section, shoved into a disused space "-do you mind if I see if I can't find something that works and set it up with a DVD player and game machine and such?"
"Oh! By all means," I smiled. "One of the big ones is probably still hooked up that way. Might need to charge the controllers and dust everything off. If you can find a place in the common room to put it, go ahead - even if you wanted to move one of the walls, I wouldn't mind. Just ask for some help-"
She grinned and flexed a massive foreleg. "I think I can manage," she told me.
"Oh. Right. Earth pony." I smirked. "Well, then, go right ahead."
"Thanks," she said, and went back to her work.

I went back to the shoe-store-turned-Somerset-house and saw that much progress had been made. Only now, it was Swift and Greg alone.
"Rich went to help with the chickens, and Serge is on a milk run," Swift explained when I inquired.
"Gotcha," I said. "Need any help here?"
"We've got some power sockets identified we want to activate," Greg said. "Can you help with that?"
"I can tie this store into one of the inverters and then everything in here will be hot," I nodded. "Nothing's plugged in or switched on right now, right? Don't want anyone zapped when I throw the switch."
"We're all good," Greg nodded.
I threw a salute and moved through the back of the store to the service corridor. I'll spare you the details of how I figured out what conduit needed to be opened up and where the cable had to be routed to, but suffice it to say the dust in the false ceiling is aggravating on pony fur and feathers. Up on the roof a half an hour later, I finally had the cable tied in to our jerry-rigged power system, and spun up a couple of windmills to compensate for the extra load I'd be putting online. Then, I flipped the breaker on, and went back downstairs.
"Should be good now," I said as I returned to the store. "Got anything to test it with?"
Swift was levitating a desk lamp with its light shining brightly. "Ta-da," she grinned.
"Excellent," I said, hoof-bumping her. "What's next?"
"Well," Greg said, "the other thing we were talking about is communications, but I'm not sure how to go about that just yet."
I smirked. "Despite what my butt says, communications is my forté," I told him. "What's the plan?"
"That's just it. There really isn't one."
"Okay, then. If you're wanting to talk just from here to the main part-" I tossed a wing to indicate the ex-Wal-Mart "-a phone might work, but it'll take a bit for us to rewire the system to work between the two places. Right now it's dependent on a telephone company switching station that no longer exists."
"Right. And if nobody was in the store, it would be pointless."
"Exactly," I nodded. "We communicate by radio when we're outside or off-site. So I wonder if a base station isn't more appropriate here."
"Can you hook it to the antenna array?" Swift asked.
"Need another cable run," I said, thinking of the dusty ceilings again. "But I can manage it."
"Okay then," Greg said. "If you think that's right, let's do it. Um, is there a 'base station' we can use, or do we have to go scavenge one? Will it cost me anything?"
I made a dismissive 'pfft' sound and waved a hoof. "We have plenty of radios, and nothing inside Ponytown is going to cost you, ever, as far as I'm concerned. Internally we have no reason to trade or accrue wealth, the way I see it. What am I going to do with coins or hunks of paper or plastic, or bottle caps? We're all in this together. Maybe someday you can do something to pay me back, like take a shift of egg-harvesting from me, or something like that."
"Well, thank you, then," Greg said humbly.
I smiled and nodded. "I'll go grab a radio."

Later, after my work in the Somerset house had been addressed, I was back to my own schedule. By eleven-forty-five, I'd been in the radio shack for fifteen minutes already, poking out an outline of what I was going to say into the word processor on my laptop. As I'd expected, Randy came trundling up the steps, earlier than requested.
"Hi, Stormy!" he said enthusiastically. "Are you getting ready?"
"Yuth," I said around the stylus in my mouth. I nudged the laptop sideways so he could see the screen. "Voin'... ham on..." I spat the pen out. "Going through my notes."
"Is that how you type now?" he said, looking at the device I'd been using to poke at keys.
"A lot easier than bashing away with these," I said, holding up my hooves. "Did you have a computer before the Event?"
"Yeah, and a PlayStation," he nodded. "Maybe you can teach me how to type with my teeth and a pen. I want to play Minecraft again."
"I'm not sure if we have that set up," I said, "but we'll see what we can do. And for sure I'll teach you, and everypony else, how to use human equipment when we don't have hands any more."
"Okay," he nodded, then sat down beside me. "That's a lot of radios."
I looked up at the cluster of communications devices he was observing, and smiled. I went through the explanation, as I had before with others, of what each radio did and how I used it. Unlike most others, he remained enraptured through the whole 'tour'.
"And now it's almost time," I said, looking at the clock on the computer. "While I'm transmitting, I need you to keep quiet. These mics are really sensitive and can pick up even a whisper. Okay?"
He nodded silently.
I smiled and started throwing switches. It was a practiced procedure that allowed me to be pushing the last button right at the stroke of 12.
"Afternoon, everypony," I said into the mic. "It's high noon in Ponytown and this is Sudden Storm as usual interrupting your lunch. It's Friday, September 25, and even if TGIF doesn't apply any more, we can at least pretend it does."
I went on for a moment or three about the weather - what it was doing, what I was predicting it would be doing in the future, and what I intended to do with it at some stage as necessary. That was something that differed from the human world - weather broadcasts that described planned activities. I smiled at the changes we'd undergone in such a few short months.
"Excuse any background noise you've heard over the past few days on the channel," I said. "Ponytown has been expanding to accommodate our newest arrivals. As I've said before, we have plenty of space, so feel free to come by and do a meet'n'greet."
"Actually," I said as I got an idea, deviating off-script, "I have one of our new residents right here. Say hello, Randy."
He blinked and his ears flattened. His eyes darted between me and the mic. I winked and nodded, smiling at him. "Uh... h-hi," he said shyly.
"We've had a fun couple of days so far, right Randy? What did we do earlier today?"
"We flew," he said.
"Did you like it?"
"Yes," he grinned, blushing, slowly getting into the groove.
"What do you think of Ponytown?"
"I love it," he said, nodding emphatically.
"Good," I said, nodding and putting a free hoof through his mane. "I'm happy that you're happy. Wait 'til we milk some cows tomorrow. Anyway, folks, that's about all that we've got to report today. We've been busy settling Randy's group in, so there's not much dramatic to speak of. As always, if you think of something, call in. If you have the ability and haven't yet, call in. If you have never heard me before - you guessed it - call in. See you at six."
"That was fun," Randy said when he recognized that the transmission was over.
"Sorry for putting you on the spot like that," I said. "The idea hit me right then, and I couldn't resist."
"It's OK," he said. "It was cool!"
"Good," I repeated, then started to speak again, but stopped.
"When you do it again at six o'clock, can I-"
"Ssh!" I hushed him urgently. My ears swiveled back and forth, until I spotted the red LED lit up on one radio out of the corner of my eye. It was the 'receive' LED.
I shot over to that device and mashed the volume knob with a hoof, turning it up. Through some mild static, I could make out a voice.
"-ytown, Ponytown, it's good to finally catch you when conditions are good," came the voice. "How do you read us?"

An hour later, everypony was in the common area for lunch. This was unusual in itself; normally, people just ate as necessary throughout the day, and a formal midday meal didn't take place. Today, however, I had important things to bring to everypony's attention.
"What's the occa- whoa," Serge said, coming into the room. Besides the cleanup and changes Jenn had been making, there was a large map of North America taped to one of the walls. "What's with the map?"
"And where'd you get it?" Karin wanted to know.
Randy thrust a hoof in the air. "Her lackey brought it over from the book store!"
I facehoofed. Swift leaned over and not-whispered to me, "I told you calling him that in earshot was a bad idea."
"It's important in a minute," I said to the collected group. "And I thank... my helper, Randy... for finding it in the Chapters. Okay. Guys, I had a reply to my noontime broadcast today."
"What?" "Whoa." "Excellent!" and some other gasps or exultations arose from the group.
"So now comes the dramatic reveal of where from?" Rich asked.
"Exactly," I nodded, and fiddled with a thumbtack, trying to take it up in my hooves and put it in the map. "Um."
Swift sighed and the tack levitated away from me. "Show me where," she said.
I pointed with a hoof. "Right here," I said.
"Indianapolis?" Jeff asked, peering in at the map.
I looked at where Swift had stuck the pin, and then shifted my hoof a little. "Slightly further west," I said. "Paris, Illinois."
"What the heck is in Paris?" Serge asked.
"A big community," I said. "Bigger than us. A little bigger. With a lot more information than we have. You're going to want to hear this."
And so I dove into the story, explaining to my friends how the radio call had been the first part - requesting me to find a satellite phone and give its number. When I protested that ours didn't work, the pony on the other end asked (more like snapped at) me to humor her. So I did, and to my amazement, the damned thing rang. With a caller-ID value of zero. It'd never occurred to me to call the operator to get ours working again.
The pony from Paris told me all about their situation, and what they'd been through. And the more interesting thing (forgive me, Paris pony) was that they knew what had happened to us. I explained all the gory details - at least, what I'd been told in the short, 45-minute conversation - to my friends. How 'magic' had suddenly filled our universe in May 2015. How it stood to wipe out humanity, but didn't, because we were saved.
That's exactly what I said, saved. As it turns out, the people that disappeared? They'd be coming back. Not right away, and some not for a very long time, but they'd be back. They would be ponies, or similar creatures - it turns out that the transformation is what allowed us to survive in a universe suddenly infused with magic. I couldn't understand why some of us showed up immediately (or reasonably soon after 'immediately') and others would take time. The cryptic answer 'because you were ready' from Paris didn't help me figure it out. Ready for what? Does that mean when Sue and her boys are 'ready' to be ponies, they'll show up in their beds? When Randy's parents and sibling can handle equinity, they'll appear at the rest stop, wondering where he is?
To say that the answers raised more questions is an understatement, of course. Supposedly, though, Paris had more answers. And eventually we'd be sharing in them. For now, they were happy to hear of our self-sustainability, and urged us to keep that up, and keep doing what we were doing - gathering survivors, people, ponies, and caring for them, and working with them to make Ponytown strong and reliable.
That was the other thing - I was told to expect a phone call from the HPI in the evening. Apparently Dr Baker and his group was only an element of the 'humans in black'; Paris knew of them and worked with them regularly. And as good as the relationship between us and Baker was, apparently Paris' relationship was even better, and that was being explained as the reason I should expect a call. That gave me pause, but no sense fretting over it until it happened.
Everypony was speechless by the time I finished explaining what I'd been told. We thought we'd be pleased enough to learn of other colonies/camps/settlements out there, and we were, but to learn what caused all this? And that it wasn't as bleak as it seemed? There were a lot of interesting expressions around that room that afternoon. Relief. Bewilderment. Determination. Hope.
Despite it all, though, Saturday, September 26 - the next day - would be just another day. (Well, except for one particular pony who would be pampered and treated.) We'd continue our work to make Ponytown 'the' place to be for survivors in the local (and semi-distant) area.
Survivors.
We can't use that word any more. It doesn't fit. We're all survivors now. Even the ones who aren't here.
I'll figure something else out later, I told myself.
The rest of the afternoon was a write-off as far as work was concerned. We'd finish off the Somerset house, and wrap up what had been interrupted by lunch, but the bombshell dropped on us was too big to just shrug off and keep going on like nothing was different. We'd need to talk it over and sort out our priorities.
But sort it out we would, because in the end, the answers we got from Paris were just more pieces to the puzzle, not ultimate miracle-working catch-alls. There was still work to do, and a winter to prepare for.
But at least now we knew what to look forward to down the road.
> Slice of Life
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015
09:35 AM

"I could have run up here, you know. I'm not even bringing back any milk - just checking on how full the tanks are."
"I know," I told Karin. "But I was bringing everypony else to come see the farm, and I figured I'd offer."
"Well, thank you," she smiled, relaxing in the passenger seat of the car, while Greg, Jenn, and Randy sat in the back seat. The youngster was enamored with the electric car, and his surrogate parents were divided between it and the desolate communities we were passing.
I'd also been advised, on the sly, that it would be entertaining to see Karin's reaction when she got to the farm. I had no idea what was planned, and managed a decent poker face (I'd like to think) on the way up.
"Nobody else is around here, hmm?" Greg asked.
"Just us," I confirmed. "There's a pack of dogs that actually claim the strip mall across from us, but that's all we've encountered so far."
"A pack of dogs?" Jenn said with a partly concerned expression, sliding her eyes towards Randy, who was obliviously looking out at the train tracks we were passing.
"Smart ones, like Buddy," Karin spoke up. "It's weird - a lot of the animals seem to have gotten a lot... I don't know if smarter is the right word. Social, maybe? Expressive? You'd think they were on the cusp of sapience."
"What's sapience?" came a young voice.
"Intelligence," Greg explained to Randy.
"You mean dogs might talk and stuff?"
"Maybe eventually," I said. "Though if Buddy's any indication, they've kind of plateaued... no offense meant to him, but the animals seem to have gone as far as they will in terms of intellect."
"Maybe," Karin shrugged. "He's a fantastic running partner." She turned in her seat to look at Jenn. "You might enjoy running, if you don't mind me saying. Earth ponies seem to have a need to stretch out and exercise. I know I felt better since I started doing it."
"I'll think about it," Jenn smiled.
I turned the car onto the side road, heading down towards the farm, listening to the banter going on between my friends. It was interesting thinking about this being the new normal. We now had a family among us, and we were spending a lot of our time growing food and tending to livestock. The time of scavenging was over, mostly, with only a few occasional trips to look for something of particular importance or uniqueness.
We had a meeting planned for all of us later that day, to discuss the bombshell - or plural - that the phone call from Alexandria (formerly Paris, Illinois) had dropped on us. Learning what had truly happened wasn't vital to our survival, but it was news enough that we should all share in it.
"What the heck is going on?" Karin was muttering, with a confused expression on her face, as we pulled up to the driveway that led to the field. As we turned off the side road, she snorted out a laugh, and I snerked as well.
"What?" Randy said, putting his forehooves on the back of my seat, to look past me.
What he and the rest of us saw were twenty-two cows milling around, doing what milk cows do, but all of them with party hats on their heads.
Karin turned to me as the back seat occupants made some polite laughter. "You did this!" she chortled, accusingly.
I held my hooves up. "I had nothing to do with this, honest," I said. "I have no idea where they came from." I looked back out the windshield. "They don't seem to mind them, do they?"
We got out of the car, and indeed, every cow was tolerating the multicolored paper cones quite passively, munching on grass, wandering around, chewing their cud, and doing everything else one might expect cows to do.
Pretty ingenious, Jeff, I thought to myself with a smile.

After showing off the field and its operation to the Somerset family and taking them back to 'town' (I was actually starting to think of it as 'home' or a 'town' now that there was more than six of us there), I went for a solo flight down towards the lake.
It wasn't that I didn't enjoy Randy's presence - his childhood enthusiasm was infectious and a delight to experience, especially in this world. I just had some thoughts of my own to work through.
I guess I had to concede that I was the de facto 'mayor' now - people were calling for me by name on the radio, though there was an obvious reason why that was, since the voice they heard was mine over 99% of the time. All the residents of Ponytown looked to me when there was a decision to be made, or an opinion to be gathered.
That wasn't why I was off to be alone with my thoughts, though. My excuse was that I actually had purpose to be down by the lake. Several weeks ago we'd contemplated some storage places for our harvest, and I was scouting out places we might dig out a root cellar. That concept had also put my brain on two separate tracks for similar concerns about our resources - one, how and where do we store our winter food without it spoiling or freezing, and two, what do we do for water when the bottles we'd scavenged from everywhere finally ran out?
Lake Ontario was a freshwater lake, but I wouldn't drink from it even if I was dying of thirst. Well, maybe... no, no, it wasn't potable in any sense. We would need to either boil everything we drew from the lake, or find a way to purify it. And those purification tablets and filter pitchers for your fridge would only go so far.
I wondered for a moment if there was anything in the nuclear plant that would help us. It was built where it was built, for among other reasons, the proximity to the lake to draw water for cooling, so obviously there were pumps in there. Could I convince ponies to drink water that had been in a nuclear power plant - even one that the HPI had withdrawn all the fuel rods from?
The HPI weren't going to be any help any longer, either - at least, not substantially. That was what the phone call that night was about. Now that we were in touch with Alexandria, apparently the HPI had decided that that was to be their sole source of contact with ponies. I could understand that - to hear the HPI tell it, their resources were stretched beyond thin, and only venturing out in one direction for supply runs and such made good sense. It meant that we'd have to work out a delivery plan to get stuff to Illinois instead of waiting for a robot or aircraft to drop in right here in Ponytown for a pickup.
Maybe the American ponies will have some advice on the water situation, I mused. I should give them a call before the snow flies.
Looking to the sky, I had to give that some thought as well. I was able to manipulate rain clouds, and make it rain in places I wanted, and make it stop as well. I could move storm clouds someplace else if I didn't feel like putting up with overcast skies and rain showers. Would the same apply to snow storms?
Logic implied that it would, but it was hard to make an argument about logic and physics when talking about manipulating the weather.

When I came back to Ponytown, I found Greg, Rich, Swift, and Serge sitting around chatting.
"He'd call the whole phenomenon rubbish," Greg said, causing Serge to laugh.
"Ambitious," Serge said, adopting an odd accent. "But rubbish indeed."
"What are you on about?" I said with a smile, getting a drink from the fridge and lying down beside Buddy, among the lot of them.
"Celebrities," Swift explained. "Wondering if any of them might be around. How they might react."
"Ohh," I nodded, getting the reference Greg and Serge had made. "I'd hope all three of them would be back if any of them."
"What do we do if somebody 'VIP' reappears?" Rich asked.
"How do they prove it?" Swift argued. "Somepony walks up and says they're the Prime Minister. What do we do, hand them the launch codes?"
"It's the American President that would have launch codes," I countered, "unless you mean to launch our flotilla of rabid Canada geese."
"You ever been face to face with a Canada goose?" Serge shot back. "'Rabid' is a redundant term."
Greg laughed at the exchange.
"Rich brings up something I wanted to talk about, though," Serge said. "'Reappearing'. Is that what happened to us? And Karin?"
"What do you mean?" Greg asked.
"It happened to you, too," I said. "You told me Randy was alone for a week, even though you were just a kilometer or so up the road? The truth is, you skipped forward a week in time. Rich lost a couple of weeks, if I recall?" I said, looking to him.
"Three," he nodded.
"I lost two days, and Karin eight days," Serge replied. "According to what Storm was told last night, the... 'aliens' that did this to us held our souls in ...some kind of storage, until 'they were ready' to be returned to Earth in pony form." I studied Serge, watching his expression for any internal struggle. "My question is, what was the criteria for 'being ready'? What did God - or, in the eyes of some of you, these 'alien princesses' - use as a yardstick to determine if I was ready? Was this Judgment Day? Were the sum total of my sins worth only two days in the 'penalty box'? What does that say of Rich, who took three weeks to come back? No offense, of course. Or better yet, what does it say about my family, who hasn't reappeared yet?"
"Is it too cliché to say that God works in mysterious ways?" I suggested. A couple of ponies flinched, but I knew how Serge would respond; we'd had talks on this tangent before, and he knew my position and I his, and neither took affront at the other.
"Maybe," he sighed with a shrug. "Maybe this is the next Great Question. Perhaps I'll not find its answer until the next time humanity needs to be saved."
"Regardless," Greg said, "I hope you find your answer, friend."
"Thanks," Serge responded eventually, and we sat in silence for a few moments.

Karin and Jeff and Jenn and Randy came back from the fields a short while later. Randy was giggling and clinging to Jenn's back, and she was panting from exertion like the farming couple.
"That was exhilarating," she smiled to them.
"It was fun!" Randy laughed, hopping down as he saw me.
"We do that all the time," Jeff said to Jenn. "You're welcome to join us if you like."
"I just might," Jenn said.
Randy ran up to me. "We just ran from the farm all the way here!" he said.
"'We' did, did 'we'?" I smirked. "Looks like you had a good time."
"Uh-huh," he said. "I like the cows. They're funny."
"If you say so," I said, looking over to Jeff, who grinned back at me. Karin was heading over to the chicken coop, and I wondered if she'd find them with party whistles in their beaks or something.
"That doesn't mean I don't wanna go flying later," Randy warned me.
"I know, pal," I said. "We will, but we have to be back in time for us grown-ups have their talk this afternoon, before supper."
"Okay!"
I went over to Jeff as Jenn took Randy inside for a snack before our jaunt. I said quietly to the earth stallion, "She really loved the thing with the cows, you know."
"I know," he grinned broadly. "She told me. They were really supportive, too."
I blinked and stared at him. "Supportive."
"You know what I mean," he said. "I explained it, they didn't try to kick me when I put the hats on."
"From my time with Buddy, I should learn not to doubt what you say about the cows," I said. "If they start talking, let me know."
"Of course," Jeff said, then added in jest, "You're our ambassador, after all."

Before I sought out Randy for the excursion, I dug through the baby supplies in the piles of junk in the unused part of the store. From that, I extracted... I have no idea what their real name is, but people used to strap them to their torsos and put their child in a specially-made cradle that held the kid to their body. Some creative manipulation resulted in the device being fit to attach another, smaller pony to my barrel.
Randy wriggled his way into the contraption, and we looked like a pair of skydivers doing a tandem jump, but with the logos on the harness indicating sponsorship by a stroller manufacturer. That, and I had no chute.
"Have fun," Jenn said. "And be careful!"
"I will!" Randy replied, wiggling a forehoof in a wave as I trotted up the stairs to the roof.

The one downside, it seemed, was that there was no way for Randy to get his wings out of the harness.
"Sorry, bud, I'll figure that out for next time," I apologized, shouting over the wind.
"That's okay! This is great!" he yelled back. I could tell he was instinctively straining against the straps, though, trying to spread wide and enjoy the currents along with me. He adopted a Superman pose and 'flew' along under me.
I found a thermal updraft and rode it a couple hundred feet into the sky. Randy hooted and cheered even more, so much I thought he might have a hard time breathing if he kept it up. Then again, I never felt the effects of the thinning air no matter how high I flew (though I hadn't truly tested tens of thousands of feet, yet).
We did some aerobatic stunts and maneuvers, fluttering and flitting all over the sky. I did all the moves I could think up from the stunt team shows I'd seen over the years - at least the ones that had no chance at causing us harm. Anything that threatened the integrity of the tandem-flight 'suit' was off the table, at least until I was more sure of its construction and design. Still, that left plenty of fun to be had, with corkscrew rolls, barrel rolls, sudden 'bat turns', wingovers, split-S'es and Immelman turns, a couple of outside loops, and even one or two fake 'stalls' just to make my young charge giggle at the gravitational changes.
After half an hour or so of that, I found myself actually tiring - a sensation I hadn't experienced yet, no matter how hard I worked at it - so I looked around and spotted something that would put the cherry on top of our little endeavor. One last great push took us up another few dozen feet to a football-field-sized cloud, where I turned over and landed on it on my back, wings and legs all spread wide.
Randy wouldn't stop laughing and giggling and having the time of his life, squirming around 'on top' of me now, still strapped into the harness. He yelped in shock only once, when I reached up and unsnapped the belts holding him in, causing him to tumble off my belly and land hooves-down on the cloud. Once he realized he wasn't falling thousands of feet, he danced, then romped on the cloud surface happily.
I watched him for a bit, lying upside-down, sinking into the cloud like it was a waterbed, or a plush comforter. For a moment I thought of the concept of sleeping on a cloud, just lying on its immeasurably soft surface and relaxing, and knew that the next time I had some free time, I had some 'research' to do. However, for now, I had to ensure my young protégé didn't fall off the edge.
I eventually sat back up and watched him playing like a kid seeing snow for the first time - 'digging' in the cloud, kicking at it, mashing its form this way and that, and burrowing within the vapor ball's structure. He laughed and commented on how what he was doing was impossible, yet he kept doing it just the same.
I finally got up to my hooves and trotted over to him, 'picking up' a strip of the cloud and wrapping it over him like a blanket, which caused another fit of giggles.
"Like it up here, huh?" I asked him.
"You bet!" his muffled voice came from within the 'blanket', which he wriggled free of a moment later. "How is this possible??"
"I got no idea, pal," I said. "Same reason Jeff and Karin make things grow crazy fast and Swift and Rich can pick each other up with just their minds."
Randy's eyes widened. "I have magic?" he said in a hushed tone.
"You bet," I nodded, smiling. "Everypony does now. That's part of why all this happened. Magic came to our world... our universe."
"Wow," he drew out for a long moment. He plopped his butt down on the cloud, sitting and staring at the view, collecting his thoughts, so I mimicked him, though I was watching him instead of the horizon.
"Whatcha thinkin' about?" I asked.
He was silent for a few moments, then said, "Is that why my mom and dad and sister aren't here? 'Cause they have no magic?"
I ran a hoof through his mane. "Not at all," I said. "That phone call I got last night? They explained it to me." I made some of it up, to fit a ten-year-old's frame of reference. "There's only so much magic to go around, and the universe has to collect more in order to bring more of us back. Everybody needs a different amount of magic, and a different kind too. The trickiest part is that your mom,  your dad, and your sister have to wait until there's enough magic to give to all three of them together. They all have to come back at the same time, because they were all in the car together - it'd be really dangerous if, for example, your sister came back without the car, right?"
He nodded.
"So it's harder for the world to bring together that much magic that's needed to bring back three people all at once. The way nature works, it does the easy stuff first, then the harder stuff, and then the hardest stuff it saves for last."
"So my mom and dad and sister won't be coming back for a really long time?" he asked.
"Oh heck no, not true at all," I said. "It might be a long time, but they're not going to be among the last, I'm sure. Think about it. There are planes out there with hundreds of people, and cruise ships with thousands. It's gonna be way harder to gather up enough magic for 350 people on a jumbo jet than it is for 3 people in a car. Right?"
"I guess," he said, the gears obviously turning in his mind.
"I have to admit I have no idea when they'll show up. It could be tomorrow or it could be years down the road." Or it could be hundreds or thousands of years after you and I are dead and buried, I didn't tell him. "But when they do, first of all, think of how awesome it'll be to see them again. Have you ever gone away to camp or on a vacation without some of your family? Remember how happy you were to see them when you got back?" He nodded. "That's what it's gonna feel like when they find your note and come join us here. And even better still? Imagine what they'll think when you fly right up to them and show off your skills."
He smiled. "That's right," he acknowledged, nodding.
"First things first, though, we have to get you better at this," I said, flapping my wings once in demonstration. "And unfortunately I have to get back down for the meeting. But I promise, next time we come up, I'll try to have the harness modified so's your wings can come out to join the party. Okay?"
"Okay!" he grinned, nodding more vigorously.
"For now, come climb into this and let's get you back down to Earth."
Randy did as instructed, and I cinched the straps tight, making sure there was no chance he would slip free. Then I burrowed through the cloud (instead of jumping off the side) and simply fell through the lower layer into the atmosphere. Needless to say, my passenger was enjoying every foot of the flight once more.
We got back down and buzzed the field a bit, playing with Jeff, Karin, and Jenn. Randy tried to high-five (high-one?) somepony, but we were too high and too fast - to be honest, we were too high because I lifted him up, because we were too fast - I didn't want him to crack his hoof from slapping it too hard against something, even another hoof.
I kept the harness after we landed, setting it down at my 'usual' place in the common area, so I would remember to ask someone if they could figure out a way to make wing-friendly holes in the sides. With luck, somebody would have some sewing experience and be able to poke some holes through and stitch them together.

And then it was time for our group chat about the revelations from Alexandria.
We didn't need to reiterate what I'd heard over the phone the night before; we'd exchanged that information at the time, and it was still fresh in our minds. Since several of us had discussed some things earlier in the day, we did have some things to go over again, and we did.
The big question was, what does this change in the grand scheme of things? Is there anything arising from this information that will change our way of life?
"One thing I can see that might become necessary is checking local homes and businesses for survivors reappearing," Jeff suggested.
"We can do some patrolling," Greg offered.
"Stormy's radio broadcasts should count for some of that," Swift said. "And I will work at making more posters like I did a while back, so we can make people aware of where we are and how to reach us."
"Does that mean we need to plan for more arrivals?" I wondered aloud.
Serge nodded. "Better to be prepared and not need it than the other way around," he said.
"We should go bigger than posters, with all due respect," Rich said to Swift. "We should paint over some advertising signs. The ones on the roadside," he added, struggling to come up with the English term.
"Billboards?" Karin suggested.
"Exactly. Cover up the current ad with our own. 'Come to Ponytown, we have donuts.'" He cracked a smirk.
"I'm okay with it if you guys are," I said, smiling at the joke as well.
"I'll come up with bigger versions of the posters, then. We'll have to scout them out and decide where's the ideal place to make our mark," said Swift.
"Sounds good," Jeff said.
"I know something I want to know more about," Rich added. "And I'm sure you do too, sensei: These rumored books and documents from the alien world."
"Yes!" Swift said, eyes lighting up. "If there's a way to obtain that information they said they have down in Illinois, please, please bring it here." She faced me and made an insanely heart-attack-inducing puppy-dog expression. "Pleeeeeeze?"
"Gaaah," I recoiled. "I'll see what I can do!"

We went on like that - in other words, our usual crazy selves - for a couple of hours, going over every bit of the data we'd been given from Alexandria. By the time anyone glanced at a clock, it was almost six PM.
"No wonder I'm hungry," Jenn said.
"You need to eat for your new size," Greg poked at her. "I'm the tiny one in our relationship now. And let me tell you, it's strange getting used to that."
"We all have lots to learn," Swift smiled. "I need to get on teaching you how to use that horn as well."
I got up from the meeting and made my way over to the radio shack. Settling down, I realized I wasn't alone. At first I thought it was Randy, but when I turned my head, I realized it was a much larger pony that had followed me.
"Hi," Serge said. "Do you have time to talk?"
"If you don't mind me working at the same time," I nodded, waking up the laptop and preparing it for use.
"Not a problem." His eyes drifted to the thin, worn-through-in-places AstroTurf beneath me. "Oh, by the way, I found a source for some decent carpet for up here. Sometime you have to come pick out a style."
"Oh? Thanks," I smiled. "Yeah, this is getting kinda beat."
"That's not what I was up here for, though."
"Okay," I said, with the intention of letting him continue. When he fell silent, I stopped typing, spat out the stylus, and looked up at him.
"I was watching when you were coming back with young Randy this afternoon," he said. "How much fun he was having... and to tell you the truth, how much fun you were having. And I've had plenty of time to think on this, especially with regards to the other things we've discussed lately, now that we know what happened, and that my loved ones will be back. And I've decided... if it's not too much to ask... if you would teach me to fly."
I blinked with surprise, eyebrows darting up into my hairline. "Really? I mean, yes, not a problem. I'd be happy to."
"There's a 'but' in there."
"No... no, not at all," I said. "Though to be honest, I always figured you weren't interested in... well, you know," I said, shrugging my shoulders and giving my wings a flap.
"I have to admit, I had my doubts at first. You know what I mean."
I nodded.
"The truth of the matter is, you were right. Part of me wondered if this entire situation was an affront to God's wishes, and a punishment for all we've done as humans."
I sat and listened to him.
"But listening to what Alexandria had to say, and talking about it amongst ourselves... I decided to bring it up with my Lord. And He answered me, and He said that I should embrace what I've become, and learn that a pegasus is no less one of His children than any other creature on this world."

Around 45 minutes later, after my radio broadcast was done, I went back to the common area, ready for a late dinner. We'd partially planned it late; well, to tell the truth, we hadn't, but it was a happy coincidence, considering the meal that had been prepared.
Somehow, though I suspect she knew it was coming, Jeff had managed to co-opt a number of people to help with making a profoundly large buffet of food for Karin's birthday dinner. None of it would go to waste, of course - we were all hungry, and had no problem taking on a little bit more than our usual intake, considering we rationed most of our food these days.
What bewildered me was the inviting smell I'd almost forgotten, which emanated from a huge salad bowl at one end of the table. I blinked as I realized what it was full of.
"French fries!" I exclaimed.
"We cleaned out one of the fryers from the A&W over in the food court... you remember it, right?" Swift winked at me. "Found some fresh oil and fired it up."
"Oooh!" Karin squealed, taking a hooffull of the fried potatoes and chowing down on them happily.
There were plenty of other foods, too, some of which were regular staples now, and some which surely took a large amount of preparation and effort to make happen, especially in our situation. We ate to our hearts' - or at least our stomachs' - content.
"For those who haven't figured it out yet," Jeff said, standing up at the end of the meal, "today is Karin's eighteenth birthday." He had to pause as the assembled ponies stomped on the floor - our new way of applauding - and began to sing. Jeff halted that effort promptly. "A moment, please," he said. "Karin, I'm not sure if I would have made it to this point without you. I know we as a group owe you a lot, being our sole medic and my fellow farmerpony. I don't have a gift to give you, because these days, if there's something we need or want, we just go ahead and get it. I'm hoping this day is going to make up for that."
Swift and Rich had slipped out of the room while all eyes were on Jeff, and suddenly they returned, walking slowly and carefully into the room, with a blue glow supporting a tremendous chocolate frosted cake, several layers high, with multiple layers laid out side by side on the platter - there had to be at least fifteen individual cakes in the whole concoction.
I was wondering what Swift's purpose for being there was, if Rich was carrying the cake, when all of a sudden, the candles were surrounded by yellow sparks, which solidified into flame after a moment.
Now the assembled group sang, led by Jeff and a boisterous Randy, and a blushing but laughing earth pony seated at the end of the table grinned as the multi-tiered cake was set before her. "Thank you, everyone, and thank you Jeff," she said as the song finished.
"Here you go," Swift said, levitating a large cake knife into position between Karin and the confection.
She took it in her hooves and smirked. "I thought from the size of it, we were all just welcome to bash our faces into it and chow down," she said, causing everypony else to laugh.
I sat back and smiled, basking in every moment of our shared joy.
> Cool Down
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

OCTOBER 12, 2015

Canadian Thanksgiving was upon us. It was odd to think of it, because there would be no having of turkey, and we had to think long and hard about whether or not there was any Canada left in any case. We certainly had things to be thankful for, of course - ourselves, our resources, our friends and associates, and our luck. Besides that, it was business as usual - fieldwork, tending to the animals, some renovations and cleaning up, and planning for the future.
Swift now had two students under her tutelage; the increasingly-skilled Rich, and the raw rookie Greg. Rich was showing quite a lot of promise, with decent skill in levitation and similar techniques. Greg wasn't starting out from scratch - he had some limited self-developed skill in levitation, but that was the extent of his ability.
I hadn't bothered to start my own classes yet - teaching Randy and Serge how to use their wings. My official excuse was that I was still building my lesson plans, and though that was technically true, the way it echoed through my head was that even I didn't know how I got into the air myself. And I figured that was a pretty important point to nail down before I taught it to somepony else.
I was being spread pretty thin, too - despite Swift's misgivings early on, my proficiency in handling the weather patterns was in high demand by our farmers. Jeff and Karin, and now Jenn on occasion, called upon me at least four times a week to give sun, shade, or precipitation to either the fields or the cow pasture. The past Saturday, I set up a good strong deluge for the afternoon, to rinse all of Ponytown down.
On the south side of the mall, along the periphery road that surrounded it, closest to the lake, we'd piled all sorts of junk. We weren't trying to make a garbage dump, but rather a storm break. I (and the other pegasi, assuming they could do the same once they got to the skies) could only do so much in terms of the weather. Lake effect storms would prove to wreak havoc on us, based on previous years' winters. To combat that, we took every vehicle we could still move (that we weren't using) and lined them up four-wide on the road, all along the length of the mall. Then, with Swift, Rich, and Greg's help, we loaded everything else we weren't using or had no use for - that wouldn't rot, degrade, or otherwise turn bad - on top of the cars and trucks. Eventually, we hoped to find enough seacans (and have unicorns with enough skill to move them) to pile up against the wall as well, making a good, solid wall that would keep us safe from blustery weather that got past our pegasi.
I smiled when I thought of things this way - 'our pegasi' and 'our unicorns' - as if there would be legions of us in Ponytown eventually, with enough to allow for shifts of people to work on and off, and some of us could get some rest. Daydreams were nice to have, so long as it didn't distract us from our work.
There was a chill in the air while I flew around, and that was something I couldn't just magic away - or, if it was, I didn't know how to yet. I couldn't move the sun closer to us to warm us up (nor would I want to try even if I had that power), and I couldn't just make the air warmer out of nothing. Magic still needed to work on some kind of material, and my brain hadn't figured out how to do that for simple air.
Rather than freeze my hide off flying around when I didn't need to, I decided to touch down and go inside. That just made me realize that there was one more thing we'd need to figure out for the winter - how to heat our building. Natural gas wasn't flowing through pipes any more, and an oil-burning furnace was out of the question. A wood stove or something that could burn all the junk and refuse we had lying around was one attractive idea. I tucked it away in my head and continued inside.
"Howdy," Jeff greeted me once I entered the mall. We'd decided to light up the mall now that days were getting shorter, and he was busying himself with Serge, trying to make the most efficient use of the electrical service so that we weren't wasting our generated power on lighting areas we weren't using.
"Afternoon," I smiled. "How's it goin'?"
"Not bad," he said. "We're running some LED fixtures in place of the existing bulbs in the ceilings, for the hallways. The interior of each store, or 'house', will get the motion-sensor lamps we scavenged."
"Cool," I said, flapping my wings to rise up to the level of Serge, standing on a scissor-lift we'd resurrected for high work. "Looks good."
"Thanks," he said. "I'm tempted to start my training early and just jump down from here from time to time, though."
"Don't," I said, "unless Swift's ready to catch you, or Karin wants to learn to set broken bones. Trust me." I smirked and added, "I promise, I'll get started on training as soon as I can."
"I know," he nodded, smiling. "I'm just joking with you."
I smiled and nodded back, and fluttered down the corridor, past all the stores, their barricades and shutters long since jimmied or defeated, so that we could steal - or, rather, scavenge - what we wanted or needed, and make use of the space as necessary. We'd already taken over one store, as mentioned previously, for Greg and his family, and the unicorns were shuttling stuff around in the other spaces, partly for practice using their magic, partly to prepare in case another family - or even just a pony that preferred seclusion - came into our fold.
Turning on the power wasn't as simple as hooking things up and throwing the switch. There were some things we didn't want to get turned on again, at least not unattended. Electric appliances in the food court or the mechanical/industrial stores, for one example; refrigerators or freezers in grocery stores for another. One unique situation that almost became a problem was discovered when Randy noticed a funny smell coming from a department store we'd lit back up. Odd smells were not unusual in Ponytown, but this was obviously burning rubber or something like it. Turns out that one of the checkouts with those conveyor belts had malfunctioned and was running continuously, with the belt rubbing against something. The whole place could have burned down had we not found it out in time, so from then on, we turned every breaker off and only switched on something when we could identify what was powered off that circuit.
For temporary storage until we could figure out a root cellar location, and because most of the walk-in freezers were too rank to bear being in for more than a few seconds, we used another source that had been right under our noses: bank vaults. Three banks and one credit union had branches in the mall, and once we cleaned out all the useless money and 'valuables', there was more than enough room to store our produce and supplies.
Some of the other specialty shops in the mall gave up their unique properties or prizes around this time as well. The mobile phone shop had a small cache of satellite phones, which meant everypony finally ended up with one, once we got them registered on the network. A few ponies took some clothing from various stores, altering it to fit their needs, but most of us preferred to go 'au naturel' - well, with a couple of exceptions; I found a scarf that kept my chin and neck warm and didn't interfere with my flying, and probably looked cool streaming along behind me. Other than that I was usually pretty decently comfortable even in the cooler weather.
Besides that, we jerry-rigged the movie theatre - just for a weekend; the power to run it regularly would bankrupt us energy-wise - and watched all the films that were in stock, once we figured out how to be projectionists. It was a good distraction for a couple of days.
With little else to do, I went over to the radio shack to lounge around, fiddle with the computer, and plan the evening broadcast, even though it was hours away. Of course, I should have been focusing on planning the training for the pegasi, but procrastination could have been emblazoned on my butt some days. I just didn't feel like giving any time to it at the moment.
The radio shack had been renovated, as promised; a blue carpet had replaced the green astroturf, the radios had been moved around and better positioned, and a little table fashioned out of some scrap lumber - but expertly crafted to look like it belonged - for me to put the laptop on.
Powering it up, I fished a stylus out of the cup that held it and its brethren, chewing on its tip as I waited for the computer to launch.
I should really put a full size computer in here, I said to myself. Or several. Or at least one with multiple sound cards, so I could record all the radios, and play stuff into them at will. Recording would be ideal in case something was received while I was away.
Musing about that concept, I started tapping on the computer, gathering my thoughts and composing what I would talk about that night. I don't have any idea how long I'd been there when I was startled by a burst of static from one of the radios.
"-f -ny-ne c-n ---r me, pl--s- -esp-nd," I heard a female voice call out. I hurried to throw on a headset and jack in, putting a patch cord from the radio to the computer at the same time, so I could record the signal.
"Station calling, this is Ponytown, I read you," I called out, speaking slowly and deliberately, trying to make my voice easier to understand if they were receiving me as poorly as I was them. I put my hoof against the headset to press it firmly into my ear.
"- -m -n north --w y-rk -tate, o- the la--si-e sta-e p--k..."
I remained silent, waiting to be sure the caller was done talking, so I didn't 'walk over them'. I didn't want to override something important by cutting them off.
"Person calling on this frequency, if you can hear me, you're getting through, but barely," I all but shouted out. "Keep trying. I'm going to keep listening until your signal gets stronger."
"-o s-ve my b-t--ry. -f I'm l-ck-, I'll -e -n --ur d-or-t-p by th-s --me --morrow. W-sh -e l-ck. Out."
"I can hear you better now!" I hurried to say. "Stay where you are and reply!"
No answer.
I felt my ears droop as I pulled off the headset. Well, at least I have something interesting to talk about tonight, I decided.

"Where are you guys going?" I asked when I saw Greg and Serge walking by a while later.
"The library," Greg said.
"Greg wants me to take him over with the truck," Serge explained. "Why, did you need me?"
"No, not at all, not yet," I shook my head. "Why the truck? It's literally across the road from the produce field. Didn't you walk over there the other day?"
Greg nodded. "I want to bring some books back. In time, I want to make one of the bigger stores in here our own library and learning center."
"Oh, embracing the suggestion?" I smiled, remembering the talk a while back about Greg possibly becoming a teacher, if or when we got any more youngsters.
Greg nodded again. "Want to come with us?"
I thought back to the signal I'd received earlier. "I probably should hang around - I heard somepony on the radio earlier, and I should be here in case they call back."
"Bring a hand-held," Serge said. "Or get somebody to listen."
I mulled it over. She'd said she was turning off to save battery power. "Fair enough," I said, picking up a portable and a carry strap I could sling around my neck.

Serge backed the truck up impolitely across the grass of the library's yard, right up to the front doors.
The three of us disembarked and entered. "How'd you get in without breaking one of these?" Serge asked, sizing up a glass door.
"Swift showed me a trick," Greg smiled, and his horn flickered briefly; the "thumb switch" on the inside side of the door lock swung back and forth, throwing the latch open and closed.
"I remember her doing that one time I was with her," I grinned. "We'd better hope our unicorns are all as trustworthy as the ones so far, otherwise we need to invent a magic-proof lock."
The others chuckled and agreed. Again Greg's horn flared, and this time remained alight, throwing illumination through the foyer.
"Showed you more than one trick, I see," I pointed out.
"Yup. This is so much better than holding a flashlight. Especially since I'm not used to holding two or more things in my magic at once yet, so I'd have to set a light down to pick up some books, and so on."
"Lucky bunch, unicorns," Serge observed.
"Lead on," I said, smirking.

A couple of hours later, we backed into the garage with our load of books, finding a couple of ponies there.
"Where ya been?" Swift asked.
"Over at the library," Serge explained, tending to the 'post-trip' work on the truck - in order to keep it working as long as possible, we took meticulous care of it every time it was used.
"Ooh, right," Swift said, gesturing for Rich to stop what he was doing. She said to him, "They're probably gonna need our help with this."
"That's... a lotta books," he said, eyes widening as he turned to look at the truck. The bed was full of carts from the library, and all of them were packed with as many tomes as they could hold.
"We're moving the library here," Greg said. "I'm a little spent from putting all these in the truck. Do you two mind bringing them down? I can push them just fine once they're on the ground."
"We'll all push them," Swift said, even as she picked up a couple of the carts in her yellow glow. "Do you have a place in mind?"
"I was thinking of one of the bigger stores," Greg said, watching as Rich took one cart in his own blue aura. "Not the anchor stores like the Target or Walmart, mind you - just one of the ones that take up two or three... 'spaces'? Do you know what I mean?"
"Yup, gotcha," Swift nodded, smiling.
"I think I know the perfect place," I said. I described a store that was down the opposite end of the hall our main living area was on. It was a large one-story clothing retailer.
"The floor's carpet, which makes it ideal if you intend to use it as a classroom down the road," I explained. "It's far enough away from the entrance to be safe, and right down the hall from the main area. And it has power."
"I'll take it," Greg smiled.

The parade of library carts drew some attention from the others working inside the mall.
"Oh, you're going ahead with this," Jenn said, joining us as we rolled past her home.
"Yup," Greg beamed. "Figured they had a good point about my mark."
"Do you have any Harry Potter?" Randy asked, scurrying alongside and leaping to look at the carts every few feet.
"Not this time, pal," Greg said. "Just textbooks and such for now. I'll try to remember to bring you something worthwhile next trip."
Randy leapt up on my back. "It's a deal," he said firmly.
We got all the carts into the former clothing store and stood there. "Where do you want them?" Serge asked.
"I think we just put them in a row for now," Greg said, looking around as if he was considering his preferred layout. "I'll have to figure it out later."
"Are they sorted at all on the carts?" Jenn asked.
"Unfortunately, no," he admitted. "I just grabbed whatever caught my eye until the cart filled up, then grabbed another one."
Jenn smiled and looked over at me - then I realized she was eyeing Randy. "I think I know somebody who needs something to do," she said.
Jeff and Karin came inside from the garden just then, and noticed us down the hall, coming to see what was up.
"Oh, good idea," Jeff nodded, when told of the plan. He turned to Karin. "That reminds me, there's some stuff we should look up, hm?"
"What's that?" Greg asked. "I'll tell you if I brought it over on this trip or not."
Jeff and Karin both shared blank looks at us.
"Chickens!" Karin blurted out suddenly.
"Right!" Jeff said just as abruptly, looking to Karin and then us again. "We need to make sure their hutch is insulated properly for the winter."
Greg shook his head. "Sorry, didn't think to get anything on that kind of topic. But I'll look on the next trip."
"Thanks," Karin said.
I pondered for a second. "Didn't you guys bring books from the Co-Op, way back when we were setting up-"
"Nothing about cold weather operations in there," Jeff interrupted me.
"Nope," Karin shook her head.
I blinked a couple of times. "O-kay then," I said.

Swift was hanging out with me later on when I was preparing for my radio broadcast.
"Got any ideas for what you're going to teach the other featherbrains?" she smirked, leaning on a radio stack.
"Not yet," I said, teeth clenched around a stylus as I tapped on the computer. "Unless you can tell me how I came to learn to fly."
"I thought it was an emergency thing," she said. "Both of us, that's how we figured things out. You almost fell and I saved you, then Serge almost fell and you saved him."
I flicked my eyes over to her. "I'm not going to put somepony in a near-death situation so that Serge or Randy has to save them."
"I didn't mean that. Of course not. But maybe you have to wait for it to come naturally. Maybe they need to really need it."
"That'd be a disappointment for both of them," I said. "We can't manufacture that kind of thing."
"I know," Swift said. She nodded at the laptop. "So, what's on the agenda tonight?"
"Well, first and foremost, reaching out to the pony I heard earlier tod-"
"You heard someone today?" Swift interrupted me.
"Barely," I said, and recalled for her the one-sided conversation from earlier.
"Did you, um, think of maybe telling somepony about this?"
"Isn't that what I'm doing right now?" I responded. "And I mentioned it to Greg and Serge in passing. And in 14 minutes, everypony'll know."
"I mean sooner than now," she retorted. "This is a big deal. We have to get ready."
"Get ready? For what? I can't even guarantee she's coming here, and you want to prepare a welcoming party?"
"We need to get a handle on how we receive people," Swift insisted. "Karin needs to have her schedule cleared in case they need medical assistance. We need to set aside some extra food since they're probably malnourished."
"Okay, okay," I said, lifting a hoof. "You made your point. I'm sorry. I'll go back to the old way, and jump and scream and shout as soon as I hear a peep from the radio."
"Don't be like that," she said. "Just... don't keep it to yourself. Okay?"
"Right," I acknowledged.
Swift stood. "I'll leave you be, so you can psyche up for the broadcast. Supper'll be ready when you're done."
"Thanks," I smiled. As she left, I told myself, I guess you still have some to learn about this leader stuff.

At supper, I told the others - those who hadn't listened to my broadcast - about our anticipated guest. Most were excited. One or two agreed (quietly, and privately) with Swift about the need for me to bring this sort of thing up in a more urgent fashion. So, chastised sufficiently, I retreated to my 'brooding spot' to think about things.
I tinkered with the computer and radios while rolling thoughts around in my head, and whilst fiddling with the handheld I'd taken out earlier in the day, came across some settings I'd all but forgotten existed in ham radios. I would have smacked myself in the head, like a facepalm, if I didn't think I'd cut myself with my hoof.
I won't bore you with the gory technical details, but many ham radios around the time of the Event had a data mode that allowed you to communicate short messages via text on a side-channel separate from voice communications. They also offered GPS tracking capability over the same mode, which could be shared with anybody else on the frequency - including to a computer, to plot those points on a map.
Happy to have a project to work on, I gathered up as many APRS-capable handhelds as I could find and set them up, and then went to work linking the computer to a suitable base radio. It was an enjoyable distraction to wrap up the day.

Hours later, after my project was completed as far as I could do it myself for the day, I was lying there on the carpet, headphones on, eyes shut, when I felt hoofsteps coming up the stairs. I paused the recording I was listening to and just lay there.
Swift's voice softly penetrated past the headphones. "Did you fall asleep up here?"
I shook my head, then opened my eyes and looked up at her. Behind her, I could see that the lights in the main area had been turned down. It was late evening, and evidently those who weren't already in bed were well on their way.
"Trying to figure out what she's saying," I said, sliding the headphones off with a hoof. As I held them up, they levitated away from me. Once Swift had them pressed to her ears, I played the clip back from earlier in the day.
She listened to it twice, with concentration showing on her face. "Good luck with that. About all I could make out was 'tomorrow' and maybe 'wish me luck'."
I nodded, taking the headset back as offered. "I got that and a little bit more," I said. "She said she was turning her radio off to save battery. I'm hoping this isn't the last time I hear from her."
"You tried to reply, though, right?"
"Of course," I nodded.
"Then you did what you could. C'mon to bed, and start again tomorrow with a fresh mind. And hopefully she'll turn back on and call again."
"I'll be there in a bit," I said. "I just want to listen for a little bit longer."
Swift sighed, a faint smile on her muzzle. "Fine, then. G'night."
"Night," I smiled back, slipping the headphones on again.

Ultimately, I too retired to my bedroom only a quarter-hour later. One could listen to the same scratchy, garbled clip only so many times before it became pointless. I'm sure that's what Swift was trying to tell me earlier, but I wanted to make sure I'd exhausted all possibilities.
It repeated in my head as I lay there trying to drift off into dreamland. I tried to think of something else, to put it out of my mind and allow me to start the next day fresh, as Swift had suggested. But the only thing I could think about besides that was the fact that our dreams were devoid of alien princesses, likely forever due to the drifting apart of the two parallel worlds. It was a depressing thought, so I excised it as best I could.
But that brought me back to the radio again. I forced myself to think of something else, and found myself ruminating on the little radio project I'd taken on. I'd have to remember to show that off to people in the morning, and encourage everypony to carry around a radio so we could see one another on the map.
Sourcing a map had been hard, since the computer software expected to draw it down from the Internet dynamically. Without such a thing any more, I had to get creative, and was able to do so, but the map data was static. I had to choose what area to view and leave it fixed in place on-screen - there'd be no panning or zooming out to get a larger view of the world. Maybe some day I could fix that, but for now, I was stuck with what I had.
The stupid radio clip was still playing itself over and over in my head even as I visualized the map I'd chosen. At first I was frustrated, but then, suddenly, things started to click. A word - or fraction thereof - made sense as I looked over the map in my mind's eye. Slowly, the message became clear and obvious.
I had to make sure my afternoon was clear of duties tomorrow. With luck, I'd be plenty busy.

> Arrival
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

OCTOBER 13, 2015
4:54 PM

I stood on the shore of the lake, watching the small shape on the horizon. My suspicions had been right, and I'd confirmed them with a flight an hour or so ago, but I didn't interfere with the results of my search, instead staying well clear and, as far as I knew, so far undetected.
She - if this was the pony I had heard on the radio - was in an off-yellow rubber raft, working oars with her forelegs. That was part of the reason I stayed back - she wouldn't have been able to move the boat if my weight was in it too, from all appearances, and I doubted I could pick up her and her big bag of whatever-it-was she was carrying, and take her to shore.
So I stood on the lakeshore, bracing against the cool wind coming across the lake, thankful for my new scarf, which was all I really needed to keep myself comfortable, even in this cooling weather.
Technically, I wasn't in Pickering, since I was on the other side of Duffins Creek. It was Ajax this far east.
Lucky she's this close at all, I mused. If my guess at where she started off from was correct, she could very well have ended up anywhere a couple dozen miles up the shoreline, far away from anybody.
Finally, as she got within about a hundred yards of shore, I hopped up into the sky and called out, "Hello the boat! Take a breather, I'll bring you in."
The teal-maned pony swung her head around to seek out the source of my voice. Seeing me, she let her sea-blue hooves settle to her 'lap', the oars hanging out of the water, and flopped back to lie against the bow.
I flew up and grabbed the rope on one end of the boat in my teeth, then flew backwards until I felt the boat grind against the rocks.
The pony lay there panting for a bit; once she sat up a few moments later, I helped her out of the dinghy. "You okay?" I asked.
"I think I'll be all right," she said, letting her bags drop to the sand. "Thanks." She eyed me. "You the voice from Ponytown?"
I nodded. "Sudden Storm," I said. "Welcome. Well, we've still got a couple miles or so to go, but we can take care of that, no problem."
"Give me a few minutes for my legs to feel up to it," she said, shaking them to get sensation in them, one at a time. On her flanks was a symbol that looked like a wrench working a bolt on a complex machine/gear combination. "Thanks for being here, by the way."
"No problem," I said with a smile, with a leading tone.
She picked up on it. "Morgan," she said, a faint smile on her muzzle.
"Hi, Morgan. You can call me Stormy," I said, offering a hoof.
She rolled her eyes. "Let's get this out of the way," she muttered, then spoke up. "My last name is Freeman."
"Freem... oh!" I blinked.
"Yeah," she said.
I paused for what felt like the longest time. "Are you the-"
"No," she answered abruptly.
"Okay," I said, holding my hoof up in a defensive posture. "Stranger things have happened." I let a period of time pass again. "Got a brother named Gord-"
"Ahh, nope, haven't heard that one before either," she said coolly, with a flat expression.
"Sorry," I said, then smiled again. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah," she nodded, finishing stretching. "Lead on."
"Are you up for the walk, or do you want me to call for a vehicle?"
"A vehicle?" she echoed, sounding surprised. "Nah, I'm fine if you are."
"Fair enough," I smiled. "This way."
We walked west through the little park that surrounded the creek at its junction with the lake. I'd flown over this on my way out here, of course, but in deference to my earth pony guest, I chose to stay on the ground for the return trip.
"So, where did you come from?" I asked after a moment.
"Ithaca, upstate," she responded. "New York," she clarified after a beat, in case I wasn't familiar with 'upstate'.
I knew where Ithaca was, though, and brightened. "Near Watkins Glen," I said, thinking of the legendary race track there. "Not a bad hike."
She nodded. "Took me a little over four... well, five and a half days if you count the lake."
"Did you row non-stop?" I asked, my turn to be surprised.
"Yup," she said. "Seem to have a lot more stamina in this form."
"Right, earth pony," I said aloud, nodding.
"'Earth pony'?" she queried, an eyebrow quirked upwards.
"I'll explain when we get you settled and with the others," I told her. "Mind if I ask, though, what sent you our way? Law of averages says you should have encountered ten times as many ponies on your side of the border."
Her expression darkened and her eyes darted away. "Yeah. That's the thing." She paused for a moment. "Well, I didn't so much 'encounter' them as hear them. On the radio. There's other places down there, in the cit- I mean, New York City, and Boston, and places like that. But what I heard didn't sound like they were places you'd wanna be."
"Why's that?" I asked as we continued along, going around a fence and getting back into Pickering proper, continuing on our way.
"Sickness, for one thing," Morgan said. "Supposedly there's some kind of illness burning through New York right now. Last I heard, they're stumped - and nobody knows if it's because... 'ponies'... don't respond to human-type treatments, or the sickness is something that 'ponies' aren't supposed to get. You know, a kind of War of the Worlds thing."
I nodded, understanding the parallel. "That's just one thing?"
She looked even more put off than before, if that was possible. "Rumors... and that's all they are as far as I know, but I figure it's better to be safe... rumors that there's some kind of bad mojo going on in some of the bigger encampments in cities. I don't even know how to describe it properly, but what I've heard makes it sound like the more people... or 'ponies'... that get together, the worse off it is. Bad apples spoilin' the bunch and all that. Probably an obvious result if you put a bunch of people all together in a lawless society. The anarchists and bad guys see places they can lord over, and you have Mad Max, pony style." She looked over at me. "When I heard you guys, the radio broadcasts I mean, they were full of hope and positive energy, if you'll excuse the borderline hippie-talk for a sec. And, don't take this the wrong way, but you're a smaller group. You don't have the problems that these encampments with two or three hundred people are seeing - at least, per the stories I've heard. And with winter on the way and having cleaned out just about all the food left in Tompkins County, I figured it was time to nope on out of there and make my way to a better place. And your place fit that bill."
I almost felt teary-eyed at the compliments paid to Ponytown, until she made me snicker with the 'nope on out of there' slang. "Well, we're happy to take you in," I smiled broadly. "And it sounds like we can learn as much from you about the state of the northeastern US as you can from us about how we got to be like this."
"Yeah, you kinda hinted at that," she said, as we continued to walk on. "I'm interested in hearing about it."
"I keep wanting to start this off saying 'you might find this hard to believe', but then I remember I'm a pegasus telling it to an earth pony or a unicorn when I say that," I began with a smirk.
"Unicorn?" she echoed, eyeing my wings as if for the first time.
"That's our three main... races, I guess," I said. "Let me explain. Are you familiar with the concept of parallel universes?"

I led Morgan into the common area when we got back to Ponytown. I'd radioed ahead, so everypony was present and a meal was almost ready.
"Hey, everypony," I called out, leading Morgan in. "This is Morgan, from Ithaca, New York. Morgan, this is everybody." I named people as I gestured to them, and greetings were exchanged.
"Morgan, if you have a seat, supper's about to be served. I have a quick radio broadcast to record, but I'll be back in about ten or fifteen minutes. Okay?"
"Thanks," she nodded with a smile, and flopped down beside the table. Swift waved me away to my radio shack and took over the hostess duties.
By the time I returned, the whole lot were chattering and sharing stories. Sitting down, I was pleased to see that Morgan was hitting it off well with the rest of the group.
"You didn't tell me we were hosting a celebrity," Swift smirked at me as I set into my meal. I glanced up at Morgan.
She held up a hoof. "If I had fingers, I'd be holding up four, for the number of cracks so far." Then she offered a smile, to indicate that there was no hard feelings.
"From experience, they take a little bit to get it out of their system, but it just means they love ya," I told her.
"It's okay," she shrugged. "Twenty-nine years on this Earth, I'm used to it by now."
"What did you do before the Event, if I may ask?" Serge spoke up.
"Aircraft mechanic," she said. "Not in high demand right now."
"We'll find something for you to do," Jeff said. "Though of course, you can take a few days if you're spent from your journey."
She looked as if she was about to shake her head, then changed her mind. "Maybe a day, but I'm not here to freeload," she said.
"Take whatever time you need," Jeff insisted. "Though you may be more helpful than you think. Between you, me, and Serge, we need to figure out some important mechanical bits before winter really comes calling."
"Like what?" she queried.
Serge spoke again. "Water pumping and filtration, but we might have to wait 'til spring if it starts to go below zero soon. I don't imagine we can lay pipe or hose from the lake and keep it from freezing. Not this year anyway."
"If that doesn't work, we'll organize ponies to go try to find more bottled supply," Karin said. "There must be some places we haven't picked clean yet."
"You've got power here," Morgan observed. "Couldn't you provide power to the pumping stations and treatment plant in town?"
"I'm not sure we can generate enough power to run the plant," Jeff countered. "We can look at it, though."
"Another thing we need to make happen pretty soon is heat, for in here," Serge pointed out. "The power is probably enough to allow us to use space heaters. We maybe could even install some infrared bars and forced-air stuff, but the whole building is not gonna be possible unless we figure something out."
Swift turned to me. "You lived in this area before Ponification. Know anything about what was used here?"
I shrugged. "We had an electric furnace and fireplaces in my house. I think some places have natural gas, but this mall was built in the seventies. It could use oil burners for all I know."
"Maybe we should try and find out after supper," Jeff suggested.
"I'm up for it." I looked to Morgan. "Like we said earlier, you're welcome to rest and relax."
"I'll be taking you up on that, for just tomorrow," she reiterated. "I don't intend to lounge around and do nothing."
"Trust me," Jenn spoke up. "First of all, there's plenty of work to go around. And they figured out jobs for me and my husband, a homemaker and a lawyer. You'll fit in just fine."

About an hour later, we - meaning Jeff, Serge, Rich, and me - were looking through the various mechanical rooms to try to find a central heating system.
"Do we know what we're looking for? I mean, will we know it when we find it?" Rich asked.
Serge turned to face him, his muzzle bathed in the blue glow of Rich's horn, lighting our way through the darkened industrial space. "Know what a furnace looks like?" he smirked.
"Just asking," Rich shrugged, with a faint smile.
"Could be a furnace, could be a boiler," Jeff said. "That might even be more likely given the building's age." He explained the size and shape of a boiler vessel.
"That's sounding like it needs a constant water supply," Rich said, his face forming a frown.
"Bringing us back to our other issue, yeah," I agreed. "If that's the case, we'll have to sort that out before winter, regardless of the conditions."
"There's nothing in here," Jeff said. "Let's move on to the next one."

About fifteen rooms later, without any substantial reward, we stood in the middle of the food court, at a loss.
"These places must have gas stoves and ovens," Rich said, indicating the dormant restaurants.
Jeff shook his head. "Gas service is out. It needs pumping stations just like water. Besides, you don't want to run gas-burning appliances without ventilation fans running - we'll all be dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a matter of days, if not hours."
"Unless there's a basement hidden behind a secret door," Serge said, "either we missed it, or they're doing something else."
Jeff tapped his forehead with a hoof. "Think, fool," he muttered to himself. "How do you heat a million-square-foot space with no central heating." He looked up through the open balcony over the food court, to the main floor of the mall, and repeated himself. "How do you get enough heat to keep a shopping mall full of people war..."
He blinked.
"Rich," he said after a second, with a tired voice. "Aim your light up."
"Hein?" the Francophone pony said, looking in the same direction.
The four of us ended up looking at a ceiling full of darkened skylights.
"They don't use central heating," Jeff said. "I should have realized this before. It's way too costly to pump hot air into a space this big. They use nature and the laws of physics to their advantage."
I resisted cracking about us inhabitants of the new reality making physics our bitch, and waited for Jeff to explain. Serge was less patient, and essentially demanded he spit it out.
"Sunlight warms the air through all the skylights in the building," Jeff said, indicating the rows of glass that nearly completely covered the main corridors' ceilings. "I'm betting they relied on body heat and maybe even electrical appliances and lights to make up the rest."
"That sounds like bad news for us," I said, "especially since we decided to switch to LED lighting to reduce power consumption, which also reduces heat output."
Jeff shrugged, then wiggled a hoof in a mimic of the hand-tilt motion he might have used pre-Ponification. "Not sure yet. It's true there's not thousands or even hundreds of people in the mall to give off heat, and our lights definitely run cooler. But we also haven't been running computers, televisions, and other stuff that'd warm spaces up. We may have to go the space heater route - that and turn on all the equipment we can, to generate some additional heat. That'll require some more solar and wind - we'll have to probably start using the south-facing wall of the mall, since the roof is pretty much covered with panels. And we'll have to make sure both the panels and the skylights stay clean and clear of snow and debris, so they get the most sun."
"Understood," I said.
"And make the building air-tight, or at least better than it is now," he added. "That broken door we use as our entrance has to go."
"Come to think of it, when you went into a mall pre-Event, there were always heaters or air conditioners running full-blast in the alcoves," Serge realized aloud.
Jeff nodded. "That's probably the only genuine heating actually done in the building, normally."
"Do we tell them the news when we get back?" Rich asked.
"No need to tell people there's no heat in the place," Jeff insisted. "I don't want to incite panic. We'll tell them we have ideas we have to work on."
"Works for me," I said.
"One more thing, semi-related," he said, looking at me. "And we'll need your help."
"What's that?"
He gestured skyward again, and all four of us looked up once more. Just below the skylight level, every dozen meters or so, was a sculpted plant pot built into the top/side of a support column, with dead plants hanging from them.
"It didn't occur to me until we looked up at the skylights," Jeff said, "but those plants are supposed to be keeping the air fresh in here. We let them go, primarily because I didn't even know they were there. Once we button the place up, with the auto garage and the loading dock and everything all not left open all the time, the plants will be essential to keeping the air from going stale. Karin, Jenn, and I will get some new plants to put up there, but we'll need you to get them up there."
"Gotcha," I nodded.
With that, we all returned back to the common area. Morgan was chatting with the ladies and Greg, and I wanted to get my thoughts on the tasks at hand written down, so I went over to the radio shack straight away.
Warm over here, I realized for probably the first time. All the radios and the laptop put out some decent warmth. I wondered if we'd all be huddled around when I did broadcasts in the dead of winter, ponies holding their hooves against the power supplies.
After I finished typing out my ideas, I sensed a presence beside me and turned to see Randy standing on the steps. "Oh! Hi," I said. "How's it goin'?"
"Fine," he said. "Whatcha doin'?"
"Making some plans for work we need to do before winter sets in," I said. "What're you still up for? Isn't it almost ten?"
"I have to admit I brought him over here," Serge said, coming up the stairs behind him. "Got a couple of minutes?" he asked.
"Sure," I said, thinking I knew where this was going.
"We're ready for lessons, whenever you are."
"Right," I winced. "About that. I'm honestly not trying to skip out on you guys, but I... well, I'm not sure where to begin."
"What do you mean?" Randy asked.
"I don't know... I don't know how to teach you," I said with an apologetic look. "I can't figure out how you're supposed to start flying. It's not as simple as flapping really hard. Trust me, I tried that, and it didn't work. I don't even really know how I went from not flying to flying. I just ... did."
Serge said, "I think you're being too hard on yourself."
"I'm sorry," I said, "I just can't hold up my end of the promi-"
He shook his head, interrupting me. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe that's not your problem to solve?"
"What do you mean?" I countered. "Of course it's my problem. How can I teach-"
He cut me off again. "I'm sorry, I thought I'd seen you flying before. I didn't know you couldn't fly." He looked at Randy. "Doesn't she fly?"
"I've seen her fly," Randy nodded, looking up at the pony towering over him, then back to me with a smile.
Serge looked back at me. "You don't need to understand it."
"How do I teach you without understanding it?" I finally got out.
"When you explained that thing you're doing with the computer and the radio, and handed out all these radios, you didn't need to teach us about electromagnetic theory or what happens when we press the talk button. You just handed out radios and that was that."
I stood there listening, getting an idea of what he was saying.
"We'll accomplish the basics the same way you did it. The part we want you to show us is how to use the skill once we get it figured out."
"Yeah!" Randy smiled.
After a moment, I had to allow myself a smile as well. "You're right, of course. I'm sorry, guys. I wasn't thinking it through all the way. We'll get started in the morning. Okay?"
"Okay!" Randy enthused, hopping up and down. Serge smiled and nodded.
"C'mon, little guy. Like Stormy said, you should be in bed by now."
Randy bid farewell and hopped up on Serge's back as the big pony turned around and descended the stairs. I waved to them both, and turned back to the computer.
It'll wait, I decided a moment later. Sleep is a good idea.
With that, I closed the laptop lid, then descended the stairs and headed for my room.

At ten o'clock the next morning, the chill was just coming out of the air as I stood up on the roof and surveyed the area. It was good enough to fly, at least for me; the others might not get any lift with the thin, cool air.
Looking out at the lake and its wind-driven rippling surface drew me back to a song from my youth, which once I thought of it, would stick in my head all day. And farther below, Lake Ontario takes in what Lake Erie can send her.
"On three," I heard somepony whisper as they came up the stairs. "One, two..."
"Good morning, Miss Storm," two voices droned facetiously. I turned around to see Serge and Randy, both grinning and carrying goggles hung limply around their necks. The larger white pegasus offered me an apple, which I took with a laugh.
"Thanks," I said. "No special favors, though." I fiddled with my scarf, which had flapped around into my face when I turned. "I didn't think it was going to stay this cold this late or I'd've held ground school indoors. It's up to you two, though."
"Let's just get on with it," Serge said, and Randy nodded vigorously.
"Okay then," I said. "Spread wide and face one another."
When they did, I started pointing out primary feathers, secondaries, coverts, and all the other components and structures of the wing. I also explained the need for proper alignment and cleanliness. "Truth is, you've probably been preening subconsciously, or at least without deliberate intent to. Kinda like how you like your mane to part in one particular way. Having your feathers aligned properly just feels right."
Randy wiggled a hoof in the air, continuing to do so long after I shifted my gaze to him. "Yes, Randy?" I finally played along.
"How come we don't get tickled by our feathers?"
I actually had to come to a complete stop and re-kick-start my brain on that one. "Ever try to tickle yourself before Ponification happened?"
"Yeah..."
"Ever succeed?"
"No."
"That's why." And don't call me out on how that's not an answer, I silently pleaded.

After 'ground school' was done, we did indeed try getting them both off the ground. Or roof, technically speaking. Neither were successful, but surprisingly, Randy was the least unsuccessful of the two. I could tell that he was very close to breaking free the surly bonds; both had generated more than enough lift (at least, based on comparisons to my own efforts), but there was still something missing.
Undaunted, they both thanked me for the lesson, and I gave Randy a quick zip around the area in his harness. (Serge wouldn't fit it, and was plenty content to wait to fly solo.)
"Looks real dark over there," the colt called out over the rush of air while we were doing climbs and dives over the lake. I followed his gesturing hoof to a strong, dusky wall of cloud far west down the lakeshore, possibly on the other side of the city, but certainly coming our way.
"Yeah," I agreed. "We'd better check the weather station when we get inside."
That's where we went shortly thereafter. Randy was standing on my shoulder blades looking around my neck as I studied the screen.
"Wow," I murmured. "Aren't you an ugly one."
"Bad news?" Serge asked as he came up behind us.
"Got a good storm coming in," I said, pointing to the screen. "From the looks of it outside and what the screen here is saying, it could be a nasty afternoon."
"Nasty as in bring-the-crops-in nasty?"
"This might be the end of our crop-growing season," I said, "if I'm reading this right. I'm no weatherpony... well, I guess in a way I am... but I'm not schooled in reading every little bit of data on this screen. If I'm reading it right, though, we've got all kinds of snow headed our way."
"I'll go pass on the good news," Serge said, and headed towards the exit.
"That didn't sound like it was good news," Randy suggested from above my head.
"It's not, little guy," I said. "Serge was being sarcastic. I know winter's probably been fun for you in years past, but it's gonna be real serious this year. You know how in the past there were snow plows and guys driving little sidewalk sweepers and stuff like that?"
"Yeah," he said as I began to head to the back room. "We don't have any of that anymore, right?"
"Exactly," I said. "Same with groceries. Everything we eat and drink comes from right here. There's no more going to the store to get a cart full of stuff brought in from all over the world. If we want something to eat, we need to make it ourselves."
"Are we gonna be okay for the winter if we can't grow any more?" he asked.
I nodded while I was rooting around in one of the junk piles in the back room. "We've got enough food and water," I said, "stored inside, so it's not going to freeze or die on the vine or anything like that. And the chickens are in an insulated hutch, so they're OK."
"What about the cows?"
"Cows live outdoors year-round. I'm gonna bet somepony's gonna go check on them before the day's out, though, to make sure they have adequate shelter. They don't like to be snowed on just like anybody else."
I found what I was looking for - a snow shovel - and tossed it onto the floor. I continued to search for its partner, and Randy, picking up the idea, hopped down and helped me.
"So why does every...'pony'," Randy said, trying out the new vernacular, "seem so scared?"
"It's just that we've never had to do this on our own before," I said, trying to sound upbeat. "I don't know that I'd say we're scared. How did you feel when you were flapping your wings up there today, trying to take off? Just before I said to stop?"
Randy searched for the word just as hard as he searched for the snow shovel. "Idunno," he said.
"Do you know what 'anxious' means?"
"No," he admitted.
I found a pair of push brooms and set them aside. "Not as bad as scared, but more than, say, just 'aware' of something. Like when you were trying to fly. I bet you were really excited, but not sure what you'd do if you got it to work, right?"
"Uh-huh," he nodded.
"Anxious," I repeated.
"I got it!" he said, and I was surprised at his enthusiasm, until he bent down and hauled a snow shovel up from the pile, grinning around the handle clamped in his jaws.
"Awesome," I said, holding out a hoof for a bump.
He spat the shovel out in the small pile I'd made. "What are we doing with these?" he asked.
"The brooms stay here, over by the stairs," I said. "That's for cleaning off the solar cells and the skylights up on the roof. One shovel goes out to the front door, so we can scrape away a place there. The other shovel we need to take to the chicken hutch and leave it inside there, so we can clean off the area around it when we need to work there."
"Yes ma'am!" he saluted me, grabbing the brooms in his mouth and hurtling towards the stairs, as I laughed.

By 4:30 PM, the lot of us were clustered inside the common area, looking out through the windows as big, fat, wet flakes cascaded down around us from all directions.
"Cows are good?" Jeff asked Karin.
"Cows are good," she acknowledged. "That lean-to over the water troughs is just enough room."
"Were there any crops still in the garden?" Swift wanted to know.
"Nothing to worry about," Jeff said. "Nothing that won't weather a little chill. We were anticipating this."
"Morgan helped me get all the vehicles inside and buttoned up," Serge said. "Did you get everything you wanted from the library?" he said to Greg.
"I guess so," he shrugged. "If not, it'll have to wait until this lets up."
"The way it's comin' down, it may not let up til March," Swift said, glancing at me. Suddenly, every pair of eyes in the room was turned my direction.
"Gah," I said, flinching. "What? I can try, but sometimes it's wise to let nature take its course."
She rolled her eyes at me. "Now you want to take the sensible route?" She smirked afterward, letting me know it was in jest.
"That's a lotta cloud and precip to move," I said, pointing a hoof at the sky. "I'll take a look at it tomorrow. But right now I think we just let it run its course."
Jenn stood up suddenly. "I don't know about the rest of you," she said, "but I'm feeling like it's time for hot chocolate." She made a beeline for the kitchen, followed by at least a half-a-dozen other ponies.
I lingered at the windows for a few more moments, trying unsuccessfully to size up my 'opponent' through the glass. It didn't work; in order to know just what the storm cell over us had in store, I'd need to stare it right in the face, with nothing between it and me.
That would wait for tomorrow.
> Snow Day
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

OCTOBER 15, 2015
08:37 AM

"Stormy!" came a faint voice near me.
"Nngh," I said, and squirmed a little under my blankets. My brain, still connected to the dream world, took over my speech. "Not now. Swift's gonna teach me to play the guitar with hooves."
"Uh... wha?"
My dream self played a quick riff. I could feel myself holding a pose, as if I was cradling an "air guitar".
"What's she doing?" the voice came again.
"I should have brought a camera," I heard another voice say with mirth.
With that, I started to realize where and what I was, and pried an eye open. What I saw was the edge of a pillow and some blankets and cushions on my bedroom floor.
Momentarily, a white face dipped down to my level and smiled broadly. "Good morning, sleepyhead," Serge said.
"Gnaaah," I drew out, opening the other eye and rolling over. "What time is it?"
"Eight-thirty," he said, standing up to tower over me again.
"Can we still go out?" came the muffled noise. I turned over to seek it out and found two eyes peeking out from behind a knitted scarf, toque hat, and several other handmade items of protection, like... miniature leg warmers?
"What the hell?" I blurted out, sitting up and rubbing my eyes.
"Jenn made me put it on," the voice said, and I realized it was Randy underneath it all. "Said it was gonna be cold today."
I stood up and shook my head to gain some senses. "First of all, how are you gonna flap your wings amongst all that stuff? Second, if we go anywhere, it'll fly off you, most of it, if it's not tied on or wrapped up tight."
"It's makin' me really warm, too," he said plainly, without protest, but clearly not enjoying it much.
I peeled a layer or two off the colt. "We're hardier than the others when it comes to cold weather, far as I can tell," I told him. "Shouldn't need all this."
"Can you tell Jenn that?" he said, flapping his little wings once they were uncovered. "But later. I wanna go up on the roof right now!"
"Okay," I laughed, searching for my scarf and goggles. "Hang on a second, Maverick."

"Whoa," I blinked as Serge and I finished shoving the roof hatch open.
"Sure did pile up, didn't it?" Serge said.
There was at least two feet of snow on the roof. Randy slalomed between our legs and leapt forward, having to actually climb up on the snow pushed aside by the door.
I stepped up with him. "This is a lot! We need to think about getting it off the roof before we come inside, or it might be on our beds later."
"Good plan," Serge nodded, then joined us. We walked to the edge of the roof, where Randy came to a halt, staring wide-eyed at the deep snow on the ground below.
Somepony had been up before us, clearing a path to the chicken coop and cleaning it off. The garden was absolutely buried - luckily, we'd harvested what we figured we'd lose in the winter, and the hardier crops were left to their own devices. It'd be interesting to see if our farmers had what it took to make things work in such conditions.
"Woowwwww..." a little voice was saying from beside and beneath me.
"Pretty neat to see it all covered with no tracks, huh?" I said.
"Watch this!" he blurted out, and leapt off the side of the building.
I blinked and stared, for that split second before my brain caught up and demanded I do something. By then, it was far too late; Randy, wings buzzing fervently, hung in the airspace out away from the ledge, with nothing below him except 50 or so centimeters of snow covering hard pavement.
Serge gasped beside me as my legs tensed, then reacted, propelling me into the air. Beneath me, Randy was in free-fall, all four legs spread wide like a parachute jumper, scarf trailing behind him, the pom-pom on his toque flapping in the wind. Or maybe I imagined all that in the fraction of time it took me to react.
I actually heard Randy yelling for a moment before he disappeared with a chuff! into the snowdrift. It was exactly like a cartoon - there was a pony-shaped hole in the snow where he'd 'landed'.
I was afraid I'd just watched a kid die, but as I flew down to start searching for his broken body, I heard muffled giggling, which erupted into full-blown laughter as he broke through the surface of the drift, ruining his perfect silhouette, 'swimming' his way to the surface.
"That was fun!" he declared. "Even if I didn't hover."
Maybe for you, kid! I said, trying to get my heart back down into my torso. I tried to settle down on top of the snow, but evidently it didn't behave like clouds do; I sank right through it up to my barrel.
"C'mon!" Randy was shouting up to Serge, who was paler than normal, if that was possible. "It's perfect! We can try to fly and if we don't, just land in the snow! It didn't hurt or nothin'!"
"You're crazy, little guy!" Serge shot back, wide-eyed.
"Fine, be a chicken then!" Randy grinned.
In my peripheral vision, I noticed a figure approaching us from the ground, all bundled up and thrashing through the snow. Jenn, being an Earth pony, was not particularly winded by the effort of walking through the deep snow, so the heavy breathing had to be from fright or shock. "Randy! Where is the rest of your outfit?!" she gasped.
"I didn't need it," he said plainly, looking over his shoulder at me. "I left it in Stormy's room."
"We actually tolerate the cold a lot better than the rest of you, I think," I explained to her. "At least, I don't feel nearly as cold as you look."
"It's freezing out here!" she snapped. "You two are fools."
"We're okay," I said. "I take responsibility for him. Okay?"
She tch'ed and looked him over. "Are you sure you're not cold?"
"I'm perfectly fine!" he proclaimed. "Besides, Stormy's here. She wouldn't let something bad happen!"
As if on cue, I heard from above, "Geronimo!" I'd like to say that I looked up and my ears folded back, eyes shrinking to pinpricks, as a shadow loomed over me, but that kind of thing only happens in cartoons. Near as I can remember, though, I winced and got ready to step aside if need be, and to pull Jenn to safety.
A huge blur flashed past me, merging with the pristine white mass covering the ground, throwing up a giant spray of snow which washed over the three of us like a solid tidal wave. There was a grunt and an "Oof!" from the direction the mass of snow came from, and when the ice crystals finally settled back to earth, an impressive crater was drilled out of the snowpack, at the center of which a sheepish Serge stood, flexing his legs from the impact with the ground below.
Jenn just gave me a sidelong glance with half-lidded eyes, shook her head (and the rest of her, to shed some of the snow that'd been deposited upon her), and walked off.

"So what are we doing wrong?" Serge asked a short time later, while the three of us were up on the roof, shoveling snow over the side.
"If I knew, sir, I'd tell you," I shrugged, then shoved a shovel forward across the roof with my forelegs holding the handle as best they could. My response was grunted out as I exerted force against the snow. "Sometimes I feel like the answer lies somewhere close to the Hitchhiker's Guide's explanation."
Serge gave me a blank look as I dumped another load of snow over the parapet.
"Oh," I said, catching on that he hadn't read the legendary book. "The Guide says the knack to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
After a second, he blinked, then chuckled, shaking his head, as he cleaned another row off next to my last one. "Sounds legitimate," he said. "Maybe I should try that."
"Well, as you know, I picked it up myself when I found I had no other choice but to figure it out," I told him. "Though I don't recommend we jeopardize anypony just for-"
"I wouldn't think of it," he said.
Randy chose that instant to push all the snow off the rooftop machinery shack - right next to where we were standing. I don't know about Serge, but I barely avoided being driven into the roof with my legs all splayed out.
"Oops! Sorry," he laughed as I looked back over my shoulder at him. I shook myself free and stepped back with the shovel to clear the lane I'd already cleared once before.
"Sure you are," I smirked at him.
He creeped to the edge closest to the parapet and looked over at our mound of cleared and deposited snow. "When we're done, I'm gonna jump again."
"Wait until Jenn is looking some other direction so you don't give her a heart attack," I said.
"That's being the perfect role model," Serge said sarcastically.
"Come on! You know we're all gonna do it. That's the reason we're up here in the first place." I pushed another load of snow over the side.
"Yeek!" came a voice from below. I dropped my shovel and hurried to the edge, as did the others, and we all looked over. A blue earth pony looked back up at us from next to our pile of debris.
"Sorry!" I called down to Morgan. "Didn't know you were down there."
"It's okay," she shook her head. "I probably should've paid more attention. When I get working on a problem in my head, though, I tend to filter everything else out."
"Working on a problem?" Serge asked.

Five minutes later, we three were back on the ground again. Randy was on my back, having hopped down off the snow pile after jumping into it. Serge had indeed jumped down again to try flying once more, but he had only marginally better luck than last time (not making quite as big of a splashdown as before).
"We need some storage space for food," Morgan was explaining, "but we don't want it in our living spaces. We could probably get away with it since the mall is so big - normally you'd have to worry about the gases the ripening produce, um, produces, displacing all your oxygen - it's why root cellars are so dangerous - but it's probably better to come up with a better solution anyway. And at this point, the ground is covered too deep for us to dig a proper root cellar - and if this cold keeps up, we're gonna be up against frozen soil in short order."
"Okay," I said, getting it so far.
She looked over to the mound of snow she'd almost become part of. "Ever been inside a real igloo?" she asked.
"Oh!" I nodded, realizing where she was heading. "Do you think it'd work for us?"
"I wouldn't be suggesting it if I didn't," she smiled. "I wish I'd gotten to you before you started cleaning the roof off, though. That would've made building it easier. We could've erected some kind of interior framework out of wood or something like that, and dumped snow on top of it to form the shell, and then take out the framework."
"Nothin' to say you earth ponies couldn't shove it all out of the way and then bulldoze it back on top of the framework, either," Serge smirked.
Morgan's eyes narrowed, but with a friendly smile on her face. "Hey, I came up with the idea. Foremen don't do work."
"Ma'am, I spent 22 years in a union shop," he grinned. "Six of them as a foreman. Trust me, I know exactly what gets the job done."
"Does this mean no more jumping?" Randy piped up from behind my head.
The other two ponies looked at and/or past me and then chuckled.

"But that's the end of my time for this evening," I said into the radio mic. "For anyone interested, we'll try Round Table again at 11 tomorrow morning. Ponytown out."
I powered down the transmitter and shrugged off the headphones, standing up to find a pink unicorn climbing the stairs.
"Evening," I greeted Swift. "What's up?"
"Nothin' much," she said. "I hear the new pony threw her hat in right away."
"Yeah," I nodded. "We formed the igloo today and sprayed some water on it. We'll take a look at it again tomorrow."
"Will it really keep all of our food good for the whole winter?"
"She seems to think so," I said. "I mean, as long as it stays below zero now, I figure. If we have a warm spell in the middle of winter, we could have problems."
"I don't think chinooks exist this far east," she smirked.
"What's that?" I queried.
She waved a hoof. "Weather phenomenon from back home. Never mind. How are your students coming?"
I shrugged and followed her back down the stairs as we headed to the common area. "About as good as I was at this stage. Which means flapping like mad and not knowing why it's not working."
"Just make sure you figure it out without putting somepony in mortal peril," she quipped.
"Why does everypony insinuate that?" I shot back. "I specifically said that's not in the lesson plan."
She giggled a little and we walked on in silence for a moment.
"How'd you get your protégés to learn magic?" I asked. "Maybe I can take some pointers from that."
"Well, Greg already had some of it down pat when he got here," she said. "Rich, though... hmm. Maybe it'd be better to ask him directly. He just said he could 'feel' it when I started explaining it to him."
"That doesn't sound promising, no offense, but I guess I'll give anything a try," I said. "Thanks."
"Anytime, Stormy."

The next morning, I stole away to spend some alone time first thing, curled up on top of the rooftop equipment, watching the sun march its way up the eastern sky, and thinking of my mother and her too-soon departure - even before Ponification.
I wonder what you would've come back as, I mused silently. Would we be able to fly the same skies as pegasi? Would she have been an expert mage like Swift? Or would her love of flowers and gardening made her a perfect candidate for an earth pony?
Or would she not have returned for dozens or hundreds of years, like most of the rest of the world's population?
"There you are," came a voice, and I turned to see Serge coming out onto the roof, Randy on his back.
"Morning," I said with a smile, standing up.
"I thought maybe classes were cancelled today."
"Nope," I shook my head. "Just saying happy birthday to someone."
"Oh," he said, then repeated the exclamation when he noticed my deliberate use of the pre-pony pronoun. "Do you need some time?"
"Nah, I'm done," I said, stretching and opening my wings. "Let's do this. Are you two ready?"
"You bet!" Randy said. "Watch this." He jumped up as high as he could off Serge's back - almost to my eye level - and with furious hummingbird-like wings beating the air, made an only marginally slower than normal descent to the roof.
"Not bad, all things considered," I smiled. "I think I have an idea, though, after talking to Rich late last night."
"Really?" Serge said, raising an eyebrow. "How does he fit in?"
"Not so much him, as his experience learning magic from Swifty," I said. I had hopped into the air and began hovering - something I was subconsciously doing more and more of all the time, I realized, but right now it was deliberate. "First of all, do you accept that doing this is just as much magic as it is the physics of wings flapping?"
"I suppose it has to be," Serge said. Randy nodded, going along with the technical talk that was (literally) over his head.
"Because if it was purely physical, you should be able to do it just by flexing your wing muscles," I went on.
Serge nodded. "I've tried," he said, "You know that."
"I do," I agreed, "but I wasn't putting two and two together before." I zipped away briefly, tore off a chunk of the low-hanging overcast, and pulled it back close to the roof. "What do you see here?"
Serge blinked and stared at me. "Water vapor, condensed."
"A cloud?" Randy contributed.
I nodded. "Yes, but that's just the physical properties of it." I glanced over at the multi-purpose platform-slash-rain-dispenser-slash-lightning-generator-slash-cushion. "Look beyond what you can see."
"Do I need to be blindfolded and balancing on one leg on a post for this?" Serge joked, and Randy giggled.
"You're not far off," I nodded at him, kneading the cloud and causing it to stretch out. "Think about what this does. What I can do with it. Imagine that you can see those properties, visually."
Serge's eyes widened as he - I think - finally got my meaning. He fixed the cloud with a steady gaze, causing Randy to look confused.
"Think of the energy inside it, little guy," I coached him. "This could be a lightning cloud, or a raincloud, or a bed. Or a whole bunch of other stuff. Try to picture how this little fluffball has to change inside to make any of that happen."
Randy was nodding as well, now, kind of mesmerized by the cloud, making me feel a little foolish, as if I'd hypnotized the two of them. Serge, on the other hand, was now looking all around at the sky surrounding us.
"I think you're gettin' it," I smiled at him. "Am I right?"
"Amazing," he breathed, head on a swivel.
"What? What?" Randy demanded.
"You'll get it, little guy," Serge said. "Just... let me try something."
Slowly Serge's wings unfurled, and for a moment he froze there, spread wide and taking it all in. He looked over his shoulders at the appendages expanded against the breeze, eyes still as wide and receptive as they had been for several minutes now.
Without another word, he flapped his wings, once, twice, and again, and then bent his knees and lunged upward. The wings at his sides beat harder, and he hung there in the air, unsteadily, then opened his eyes and looked surprised at his surroundings, and his accomplishment.
"Yay!" I cheered, clopping my hooves together. "All right!"
"Hey!" Randy protested with a thrust-out lower lip, the only pony still in contact with the roof.
"You can do it, bud!" I urged him, dropping my hover and crouching so I still wasn't touching the surface. "You need to imagine the wind under your wings as real things supporting you. Pretend you're balancing on your wings on two big columns, but that they're made of air. Do you get me?"
"Whoa!" he laughed, lifting an inch or two off the ground. "I'm doing it!!"
"That you are," I grinned, resisting the urge to run a hoof through his mane in congratulations, lest it "ground" him and send him crashing back to earth. Turning my attention back to my other pupil, I saw him floating in air right beside me.
"All right!" I said, offering my hoof to Serge. "Congratulations!"
He bumped my hoof in a sort of a high-five, and then flinched as he dipped a little in the sky. As his concentration returned, he regained his altitude.
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!!" Randy was yelling, flapping madly and dipping up and down as he tried to maintain a constant position. He was trying to 'swim' through the air, but it was having no effect.
I laughed and floated out over the parking lot, holding up my hooves to keep them both from venturing out towards me. Looking down, I tried to grab the attention of anypony inside the building. Finally, Jeff and Morgan saw me, and came outside.
"You guys should see this!" I called down, then drifted back a little more so my charges could come forward - at their leisure, mind you.
"Take it easy," I told them, "and don't forget to 'extend' your support towards the ground after you clear the roof. Ready?"
Serge nodded and moved first. He carefully traversed the precipice, dipping only a foot or two as he crossed into open space.
"Yay!" Jeff called up, stomping his hooves on the ground in a form of applause. Morgan regarded this, then joined in, copying Jeff, as more ponies came out to see what was up.
"C'mon, little guy," Serge said, carefully turning around to face Randy while remaining mostly still otherwise. I turned my attention to the colt as well, as Jenn and Greg joined the rapidly growing crowd.
Randy still made efforts like he was swimming, but subconsciously I have to believe he was altering his wings' movements to command some forward motion. Millimeter by millimeter, he crept up on the parapet, until he could stare out over the edge.
"Just like you did yesterday, but don't hit the ground," I told him. "Do the same thing you're doing right now."
Slowly, he inched forward, and then, as if on a roller coaster, he plummeted downward and forward at the same time, gaining tremendous speed in just a fraction of a second. Jenn and Karin yelped in shock.
Randy didn't have time to be frightened. Instead, his wings - perhaps instinctively? - locked in place for gliding, and his body described a sweeping arc, skimming the edge of the snowpack as he soared back skyward again. Once more, possibly by instinct, he began flapping again, and the glide turned into a powered climb, ascending above us.
I gave chase, leaving Serge to hover where he was and the others to oooh and aaah down on the tarmac. Randy was going higher and higher, but at a rate that was nothing compared to my own speed. I caught up with him in seconds.
"You did it, little guy!" I cheered him. "But let's go down so they're not lonely down there."
Randy looked around, interrupting his hooting and laughing as he realized how high he'd climbed. "Whoa!" he exclaimed.
"Don't forget to hover!" I cautioned him, reaching out to support him as he began to drop. In a second or two more, he did regain his senses, and floated there beside me.
"This... is... awesome!" he gushed, grinning more broadly than I'd ever seen before.
"No doubt," I agreed. "Let's go down and celebrate with the others, 'kay?"
Have you ever taught someone to ride a bike, and then told them immediately to take a break? That was exactly the expression on Randy's face at that moment.
"Hey, don't be like that," I said. "Take the praise when it's offered. Let everyone celebrate with you, and I promise, all three of us'll continue our lessons right away. All right?"
That seemed to lift his spirits somewhat. "Okay," he nodded.
"I'm following your lead, then," I said, waiting for him to make the first move.
He nodded again. "Uh-huh!" he smiled, entering into a jerk-filled dive that sent me chasing after him to make sure he didn't land the way I did the first few (dozen) times.


> Warm Wishes
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

DECEMBER 19

"Stormy?" I heard faintly from far below.
I looked down and saw a tiny figure emerge onto the roof of Ponytown. Randy looked this way and that, but never up.
I gave him a few moments, then took pity on him. "What's up, little man?" I called down.
He finally angled his head upwards and saw me shoving clouds to and fro. "I gotta message for you!" he hollered.
"I'm working," I said. "If you want to deliver it, you know what you have to do."
He put on a determined look and nodded, then lunged forward and upward, launching into the sky. I smiled and returned to my work, scarf fluttering lazily behind me as I 'cleaned' the sky above the settlement. The colt spiraled upwards like he was on a long, curving ramp, not yet strong enough for a fully ballistic climb.
I hung in the air and waited for him once I'd moved the cloud I was working with. I even smoothed out the top edge of it for him, and he gladly accepted it, panting as he flopped onto it.
"You okay?" I asked after a moment.
He nodded, still gulping in air and lying on the puff of vapor.
"Didn't have to take a break on the way up," I observed positively. "That's an improvement."
"Thanks," he said, smiling, and then he sat up and delivered his message. "Swift says there's an email on the tablet from a listener. Says you should be playing Christmas music instead of Def Leppard."
"Oh? Duly noted," I smirked. We'd finally set up a true studio-style workstation for me in my little corner of Ponytown, with which I could program music and spoken broadcasts to run at scheduled times. And because I was the pony at the controls, the music I liked went out over the air. I had no program managers to answer to, no government agencies to mandate that I carried 30% Canadian content... but apparently, listeners who gave me feedback over what amounted to the new Internet.
"Do you want me to go change it?" Randy asked, spreading his wings.
"Nope," I shook my head. "I like Def Leppard."
"You're not even listening to it right now."
"Now you sound like Swift," I grinned. "Winter doesn't officially start until Monday. I'll switch to jingle bells then."
"What?" He looked over the side of the cloud at the white-coated ground below. "I think somepony forgot to tell winter not to come before Monday."
"Back in the day, somebody decided that winter officially started when the winter solstice occurred, on December 21 or thereabouts. And before you ask, winter solstice is when the days are shortest and nights longest."
"Aren't we making our own rules now?" he asked. "I mean, why don't we say winter starts when the first snow falls?"
"Good idea," I said, leaning over to ruffle a hoof thru his mane. "I'll let you call a council meeting to argue it."
"We have a council?"
"Nah," I said. "Just kiddin' with ya." I shoved off from the cloud and hovered beside it. "Wanna help me finish this and then we'll go down for hot chocolate?"
"Okay!" he smiled, leaping up and flitting into the sky as well.

About a half an hour later, we were inside, nursing warm drinks and letting ourselves return to room temperature. It was chilly outside, to a pegasus - which meant for everyone else, it was downright inhospitable.
Despite the cold that was emanating from us, Karin came over and sat down beside us at the table. "Hi," she said. "Warming up?"
"Yup," I nodded, smiling. "The sun's guaranteed to shine down on us for the rest of the day, too, so this place will come up a few degrees as well."
"Thanks," she said. "I don't know if it's just me or if everyone feels the chill."
"Even if it is just you, the rest of them can put up with a little warmer environment for the winter," I joked. Then I noticed Randy was trying not to get caught staring at Karin. I nodded his way, and Karin glanced over, then smirked.
"Got a question, little guy?" she asked.
He blinked and hid behind his mug of hot chocolate, taking a sip. Then, when he realized he wasn't going to get away with not answering, he said, "You look... different."
I snorted and almost choked hot chocolate through my snout. Karin giggled and leaned closer to him. "In what way?" she led him on.
His eyes darted to her midsection again, and he was clearly trying to figure out a way to say it without saying she looked like she had some extra mass.
"Be nice," I said. "He's a k... he's young."
Karin laughed again. "Yes, Randy, I am with child."
"Pregnant," I clarified. "Karin is pregnant."
Randy's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. "Wow!" he exclaimed, then corrected himself to add congratulations.
"Thank you," Karin smiled. "You are officially the third person... well, fourth person to notice."
"I am?" he said with mild confusion.
"Jeff and Karin, of course," I told him, "and me, and you."
"The rest probably just think I'm putting on winter weight or something," Karin laughed.
"How are you coming along?" I asked. "No complications?"
"Not as far as I can tell," she admitted. For Randy's sake, she added, "According to the books, this is going to be a long eleven months. Well, eight and a half, now."
"If you do start to feel off," I cautioned, being serious for a moment, "you need to let somepony know. It won't do for our medic to need help and be the only one who can tell."
"Trust me, I'll let you know," she said wryly.
"Who's letting who know what?" Jenn asked as she came into the dining area.
I shared a glance with Karin, letting her spill the proverbial beans if she so desired. "Whether or not I need assistance in the coming months," Karin said. "With dealing with morning sickness, spending less time on my hooves, and all that."
Jenn turned and obviously got the hint, based on the look on her face. I braced myself for the inevitable squeal-fest, looking over to a bewildered Randy and smiling.

I was in the radio room when I saw Rich and Swift pull a cart through the snow towards the garages, so I jumped down and went over there to let them in.
"Thanks," Swift panted as she shook off the snow and cold, layering herself in a magical field of warmth to dry herself off. "Boy, it's cold."
Rich was unhitching them both from the cart - the old pickup truck box that Greg, Jenn, and Randy had arrived in - which was filled to the brim with bottles and jugs of water. I peered at their cargo and remarked, "Where'd you find this?"
"We went all the way in to Etobicoke," Rich said, pausing for breath to let his lungs warm up. "Hit every little place we could find there and back."
"That's one hell of a hike," I commented. "You guys okay?"
"Nothing a couple weeks in front of a fireplace couldn't cure," Swift quipped. "We'll be all right."
"Well, the little guy and I cleared the skies and the skylights, so this place'll pick up a bit by afternoon. We can make you some hot drinks too."
"Thanks," Swift said. She and Rich both levitated several of the partly-frozen bottles and jugs to bring them to the dining area.
"Let me help," I said, turning my back to them and flaring out my wings a little. I was getting good at balancing things on my spine as I walked - partly from carrying Randy around.
When we got back to the dining area, Jeff, Karin, and Serge were there, chatting and enjoying a warm sunbeam filtering in from above.
"Oh hey," Serge said brightly, greeting the unicorns as they came in, and recognizing their payload. "You didn't have to do that; I was going to go out myself later."
"It's okay," Rich said. "It was a little cold, but we didn't mind."
"Still," Serge said through clenched teeth as he took from my back a large jug by the plastic handle, "it probably would've bothered me less."
"It's no bother," Swift said, setting her cargo down beside the one Serge deposited on the floor. "We all pull our weight."
"How much did you get?" Jeff wanted to know.
"Sixty-eight four-liter bottles and twenty-some-odd cases of smaller ones," Rich said. "Some of the cases are partial ones because a few bottles were frozen and ruptured where we found 'em."
Jeff did some math in his head. "That'll still last us a couple weeks," he said eventually, nodding. "Good job. Thanks."
"After Christmas, us gearheads should lay out plans for a water line," Serge said, taking another bottle from me, "so we can get to work as soon as the ground's thawed."
"I was thinking about that," I said, putting down a couple of bottles myself. "I'm not sure we need to wait for the natural thaw cycle."
"Well, digging in this kind of cold is going to be brutal-" Serge countered, but I held up a hoof and nodded silently towards the unicorns, who were halfway back to the garages, going for another load from the cart.
"Oh," Karin spoke up, nodding. "Have you asked them yet?"
"No," I admitted. "But their skills are improving all the time. Swifty did some kind of warmth spell on herself when she came in. I bet they could dig a trench like the ground was butter."
"You might be right," Jeff mused.
"Still, it's pretty cold out there for any of you guys except us," I said, indicating Serge and myself. "I don't mind waiting until the chill ebbs a bit."
"It'll take a bit to draw the plans up, anyway," Serge said. "Hopefully either it naturally warms up or you can wizard up something to trap some heat near the surface." He smirked at me.
"I'll get right on that," I shot back.

Later in the afternoon, I was up by the cow pasture, making sure that they had food and water, and that their shelter was intact and clean. I was rearranging some clouds to give them some sun, like I'd done for Ponytown, when I heard a motor in the distance.
Turning to watch, I saw the battered old diesel pickup truck churning its way along the snow-covered road, sending up four rooster-tails of white powder as the engine surged and roared in low gear. The machine slewed wildly turning into the paddock's driveway, the driver clearly having a good time.
It turned out to be Jeff, sporting a wide grin as he climbed out of the cab and trotted over to the gate. I flew down and said, "Enjoying yourself?"
"That was fun," he enthused. "Put it in a three-sixty on the curve by the fifth concession road, but obviously I made it."
"Good," I said. "What's up?"
"I was coming up to check on the herd and apparently to do what's already been done," he said, looking over the filled water trough and freshly cleaned shelter.
"I didn't check the milker," I offered. "Don't know if they're using it when it's this cold anyway."
"Oh, sure," he said, walking over to it. "'Bout the only issue is the temperature of the, um, apparatus..."
"Don't talk about it," I said with a shiver.
We spent a few minutes checking the tanks and equipment, making sure it was serviceable, and then stood there, looking around.
"Hey," Jeff asked out of the blue, "are we putting up a tree?"
I looked around, thinking he was talking about something local and immediate. "Huh?" Then I figured it out. "Oh! I don't know. Nopony brought it up with me. Have people been talking?"
He shrugged. "Not that I've heard. I'm just asking for myself. It'll be the first time in my life I haven't had a Christmas tree up, if we don't."
"Well, we can't ruin that kind of streak," I smiled. "I don't suppose you brought a saw with you?"

We got home around dinner time, with Jeff putting the truck away and bringing in our cargo while I went to greet the others.
"Where've you guys been?" Swift asked, putting together our evening meal.
"Up chatting with the cows," I quipped. "Oh, and doing a little foresting."
"A little what?" she laughed.
Jeff came in from the garage, drawing the attention of the others who were filtering in for dinner by dragging in a giant pine tree.
"Whoa," Randy gaped.
"What the...?!" came from Morgan.
Greg stood there for a moment and then said, "You know, I think we have some air fresheners in the automotive section. You didn't have to get a real one."
"Fool," Karin laughed, going over to join her mate. "It's a Christmas tree!"
"Yesh it ih," Jeff said, still tugging on its trunk with his jaw. "We eed to saw off ee boddom flad, dough."
"We didn't have a saw or an ax with us," I explained. Jeff released the tree and everyone could see that it was splintered and shattered on its stump, where he'd just bucked it down.
"I expect this place won't have any Christmas tree stands in storage, being that it was May when everything went down," Morgan commented.
"Who knows? They had ski goggles," Serge said, turning to head for the back room.
"I'm gonna help look!" Randy declared, leaping upon Serge's back.
"Supper's almost ready!" Jenn called out in protest.
Everypony came back to settle down for dinner, but continued to go on about the concept of Christmas. It was clear that some people had completely lost track of time and forgotten what day it was. Talk of each person's family's traditions and celebrations ruled for a short while, and eventually somebody brought up the topic of other customs.
"Will we exchange gifts?" Jenn had asked.
"Well, we sure have our pick of things we can get for one another," Rich quipped, nodding towards the former store's piles of product.
Randy waved a hoof in the air like he was trying to get the teacher's permission to speak. "Why would we give somebody something that they could just go over to the shelf and get for themselves?" he asked.
Greg leaned over to him. "It's not the 'what' you're giving or receiving, bud. Ever heard 'it's the thought that counts'?"

DECEMBER 23

I awoke to sounds of awe emanating from near the windows, mixed with rattling from the roof and walls.
I walked out of my bedroom and looked around for the source of the noise. I found it in the form of a half-dozen ponies clustered around the windows of the radio shack.
Great drifts of snow were piled against the lower floor windows, the edges shifting periodically from the wind blowing the snow around. Only the "second floor" windows - from the height of the radio shack - had sight lines out of the building, with great big flakes hurrying down onto the snowpack.
"So much for digging a trench for the pipeline," I quipped as I came up the stairs. Serge turned around and nodded, edging aside to give me some room.
"It must've started after bedtime," Greg observed from closer to the window. "Looks like it's been coming down all night."
"What's the temperature?" I asked, nudging somepony to move so I could get a better look at the weather screen (which we'd relocated to the radio room, so I could use it in conversation when talking online).
Rich whistled as he spied the current readings at the same time as me. "Minus twenty seven."
"With the wind chill, that makes it an indoor day," Swift declared. "I think it's too cold for even you featherbrains."
"I don't wanna be out there," Randy agreed.
"Let's focus on putting up the tree," Jeff suggested, "and decorating the place. K and I will make sure we have enough food indoors to last us a few days, and then we'll all bunk down for the holidays. Sound good?"
"Uh-huh," several people chimed in.
"I'll set up a morning broadcast and then help out with the decorating, if you all can give me some room," I smiled.

By mid-morning, when I was done my broadcast, the snow was creeping up to the metal frame between the lower and upper windows. That meant there was nearly six feet of snow on the ground. Ridiculous, I told myself. It was definitely the heaviest snowfall the place had seen in years, if not decades, and I had to wonder for a moment if the situation the world was in had anything to do with it - that is to say, did the disappearance of most of the population cause the big storm? To hear people tell it (before the Event), the opposite was more likely, that too many people would cause problems.
The reason was immaterial now, of course, and I tried to push the train of thought out of my head as I gazed at the blizzard still ongoing. With wind-chill, the temperature felt more like the minus forties, according to the weather computer. Does wind-chill apply the same now that we're not human? I found myself wondering. In any case, it was too cold for even us pegasi to go out and try to do something about the storm.
Departing the radio room, I fluttered lazily around the upper heights of the building for a bit, surveying what was going on in terms of decorating the place. The tree had been erected, with some twine near the top to tether it to support beams and keep it upright. Putting decorations on the tree itself would come later, when everyone was present and able to participate.
If we had any Christmas decorations, of course - as we'd discussed among ourselves earlier, the store was not exactly in the winter season mode when Ponification took place.
I decided to angle into the back room/warehouse and see if I could find anything in the junk piles and old boxes stored high on the shelves, outside our normal reach and out of the way. With luck, maybe there was a crate of garland or decorations for the store itself, if not products intended for selling that we could commandeer.
I rooted around in the high shelves without much luck for about half an hour, until I heard the creaking sound of the roof door opening and closing, and four hooves stomping on the upper landing. I turned around to see Serge, bundled in scarves, toque, and blankets (in place of coats and clothing which would fit), shaking off a small heap of snow.
"What were you doing out there?" I queried incredulously, floating over towards him.
"Phew! That's bitter," he commented, then answered me. "Keeping the roof clear. I don't want either the roof to come in on us or the only door above the snow line to get blocked."
"Oh," I said, nodding. "Good idea. But it's just not safe to be out there. Seriously."
"It's just a heavy winter storm," he scoffed. "It's no worse than going out bundled up like I would have a year ago."
"Except none of us are built like we were a year ago," I countered.
"Pfft," Serge scoffed again. "We'll manage."
"If you say so," I said, turning to go back to my search.
"I know so," he smirked, pointing a hoof skyward. That was all he needed to do for me to understand what he meant - the man (or pony) above would handle things.
I hope you're right, I didn't add as I went back to the search for decorations.

In the end, I was marginally successful - we did come across some light strings that could count as Christmas tree lights, but probably weren't meant for that in the first place, seeing as how they were in with the automotive stock. There were no ornaments to be found, but Jenn had a brainstorm and gathered together some craft supplies, and had an impromptu decorations-creating party. That took me back to my childhood when my parents and I did the same thing, though with much greater dexterity - at least, compared to those of us who don't have horns.
After making a half-dozen or so decorations, I excused myself for a midafternoon nap, which was becoming routine for me. For some reason it felt like the eight hours I got overnight wasn't enough and I needed a snooze before supper. Perhaps pony physiology was different from humans? Well, of course it was, but what I mean is we didn't know what to expect from our new lives. It would be nice if we could someday get details on what made us tick, so to speak.
Anyway, as I said, I went into the radio shack for a doze. It was one of my favored places to hang out, not just because I wanted to listen for any radio traffic, but - to admit the truth - all the radio gear emanated a ton of heat and made for a cozy little corner of the place. From the earlier remembrance of my youth, my dreams took the form of nostalgic memories, primarily of camping both in my childhood and in more recent years with my yearly 'racing vacations', like the one interrupted by Ponification last spring.
In my dream state, I was in the woods, near a lake, enjoying the wilderness and nature, and sleeping in a tent in the campground, with nothing but the natural world around me.
As I was lying in my sleeping bag in the tent, I was disturbed by a yelping and yipping sound right in front of my face. That puzzled me, as I hadn't brought a dog along on this dream trip. I worriedly wondered if it was a fox, wolf, or coyote in my campsite.
The nudge of a cold nose against my snout startled me awake. My eyes opened to see Buddy before me, hunched low to my level, whimpering and letting out little plaintive barking noises.
"Randy," I called out, "Come let Buddy out, I think he needs to go." And with that, I shut my eyes again.
I heard the young colt's hoofsteps come up to the stairs and his voice call to Buddy, then they both faded away and left me to my slumber once more.
I was almost back to REM sleep when I heard hoofsteps again. "Umm... Stormy?" Randy was saying hesitantly. "He won't go."
"What do you mean he won't go?" I moaned. "If he doesn't have to, then just bring him back in."
"Well, he won't come back in either. He's just standing outside the door upstairs and barking at me."
I sighed and threw off my blanket, flapping a couple of times and took to the air. Randy ran along below me into the back room where we each ascended to the roof door in our own way, and I shoved it open.
"What's your matter, Bud?" I asked the dog. Then, when I got a look at him, my fur pretty much stood on end. I recognized his pose not as needing to pee or wanting to play, but pointing to trouble. It was similar to the way he'd behaved ages ago when Ponytown was set upon by a pack of near-feral dogs. Something was wrong.
Before I could react, Buddy rushed to the roof's edge, hesitated for a moment as he judged the deep snowpack beneath him, then lunged off into the snow.
I turned to Randy. "Stay here," I told him, flapping my wings and taking to the sky.
He shook his head, buzzing his own feathers furiously, rising to meet me. "I want to help."
I sighed and shook my head again, then looked back to the parking lot where Buddy had leapt. Like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, all I could see was a lengthening disturbance in the snow, and occasionally the flicker of the tip of a black-and-white tail. He was making great time considering the insanely deep snow, wherever he was going.
Randy and I flew into the late afternoon sky, and the air bit into my hide almost like it was causing me physical pain.
Why do I live where the air hurts my face, I quipped to myself, referencing an old joke. I glanced back to make sure Randy was still with me - he was, and didn't seem to be faring too badly in the cold and wind. Or maybe he was just hiding it, like I probably was on the outside. Looking back, I pinpointed Buddy again and vectored to go after him.
After a few more moments' flight, I caught a glimpse of something surprising in the distance: artificial light. Two red bulbs burned from under a thin cover of precipitation, already covering up the vehicle that had disturbed a sizable portion of the snowpack behind it.
I dashed over to the car, circling around it, and all I could see was the rear end of the machine sticking out of the snow, like a sinking ship. The blowing snow was doing its best to cover up the stalled vehicle, which looked like it had plowed into the drifts - literally - from out of nowhere. It didn't take much thought to figure out what that meant.
The broken back window of the car was filling up with snow, but Buddy wasn't heading this way. Instead, he was powering through the snow towards a nearby apartment building. As I studied the distance between him and me, I realized there was a path being rapidly obscured, leading from the car and pointing toward Buddy's objective.
I hurried my way to the front of the apartment building, whose front was somewhat sheltered from the drifts - at least the entryway was accessible. And by accessible, I mean that the glass in the door was smashed in, snow lightly drifting through the gap onto the lobby floor.
I hovered by the door and peered into the dim foyer. It was hard to tell if anyone was in there. Momentarily, Buddy burst from the snow and shot through the doorway like a spotted rocket.
Turning around, I fixed Randy with a stern gaze as he alighted on the snow-covered front steps of the building. "Stay here," I urged him, and waited for his wide-eyed nod before I spun back around once more and followed the dog inside.
"Buddy, wait up!" I called out, taking back to the air after ducking under the panic bar on the door. I hurried down the hallway, eyes adjusting to the low light after a few moments, and saw the Dalmatian duck around a corner towards the mailboxes at the end of the hall.
The hallway was a short one and I had to pull up lest I smash into the building superintendent's office door. Buddy was sitting there, again whimpering, staring at a dark bundle on the floor. As my vision improved, I realized it was a midnight-blue pony, huddled in a ball of fur.
"Hey!" I called out to her. The unicorn wasn't shivering, which was a bad sign. People, at least, stopped shivering in the late stages of hypothermia. Ponies? Probably the same. If she didn't get help, she was done for.
"Randy!" I hollered, turning sideways to look towards the entrance. I recoiled in shock as I found him right beside me.
I cursed in my head and fixed him with another fierce glare. "Go get help," I demanded. "Now!"
He buzzed away and I turned my attention back to the fallen pony. I touched down on the ice-cold cement floor, reaching out for her, and found her to be nearly as cold as her surroundings. At least she was breathing; her chest was moving, though slowly and shallowly.
Then her body made a move that seemed unnatural, and I quirked an eyebrow, trying to figure out what was going on. Was that a death throe? I wondered. It was like her gut spasmed. I winced, not wanting to watch someone going through a messy and ugly death.
Then I heard a noise, and blinked in shock. Please, no, I begged whatever god or being might be listening. I crouched low and nudged the pony's legs, trying to uncurl her. "I'm here to help," I urged her. "Open up, let me see."
If she was conscious enough to respond, it wasn't obvious. I managed to wedge a hoof in between two of hers and pry them apart far enough to see what I'd been dreading.
Tight against her belly, taking the last dredges of her body warmth, was a teal-colored, blonde-haired foal of maybe about a year or two, huddled there, shivering and crying.
Fuck, I cursed, folding the unicorn mother's legs closed again and lying atop her to share what was left of my own warmth.
> Merry Melancholy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

DECEMBER 24

I awoke shivering.
Despite practically living in the radio room now, with all the machines' heat warming me, I was chilly. I'd given up my blankets for the effort to save the newcomers, who were being kept in a jerry-rigged warm room off the kitchen. The stove was going non-stop, with the oven door open to emanate into the area partitioned off by cubicle walls. Blankets were draped over the top of the room as a roof to trap in the warmth.
The cold was penetrating into the building - or maybe it seemed that way just because we'd all sacrificed our own comfort for the needy pair, and diverted our heat for their benefit as well. As I descended the stairs from the radio room, the morning sun was desperately trying to shine through the still-falling snow, which was still steadily climbing the side windows of the store - nearing the twelve-foot mark now. I wondered if the glass would take the strain of that much accumulation against it, and filed away a thought that we should at least shovel some of it away from the walls if the weather outside was tolerable.
Along the front wall, near our common area, the tall tree erected yesterday sat, its lights unlit, the decorations failing to glimmer. Christmas was all but set aside for the time being.
Almost everypony was gathered around the common area, at the edge of the 'warm room', looking in on our patients. People made a space when I arrived, and I found myself standing beside Karin.
"Any good news?" I asked.
Karin shrugged. "She lasted the night," she said with an optimistic tone.
I nodded. "That's good, I guess." I glanced around. "The little one?"
"Sleeping," she said, gesturing with her chin to a bundle in the corner of the room. "I think she's going to be all right."
"Good," I agreed, then turned my attention back to the mother. "What's her prognosis?"
"Like I said, she hasn't died yet. But she also hasn't woken up, or even moved at all."
"Want some coffee or something?" Greg asked, as he ventured into the room, to gingerly pass by the still unicorn into the kitchen.
A rumbling of approval noises came from the cluster of us. "Bring a hot chocolate for me," I asked.
"Will do."
"So, what do we do, doc?" I asked Karin, turning to face her.
The earth pony sighed. "I don't know," she admitted. "Her pulse is steady, but not exactly strong. She's breathing, but hasn't woken up. Her skin... well, hide, temperature seems to be getting back to normal. Pupils are sluggish," she said with a wince. Apparently that wasn't a good sign. "She might need more help than I can give her."
"I can try to make a call for help later on," I said, "providing the antennas haven't been damaged by the storm."
"Everything is good up there," Serge offered. "I've been checking on the roof."
I nodded at him, and told him of my suggestion for the areas around the outside of the building. He agreed, and he and Jenn went off to try to do something about it.
"Thanks," Karin said once that mild interruption was over. "I'm almost wondering if I shouldn't try to feed her something. I mean, you're not supposed to put anything down the throat of an unconscious person, but when the alternative is..." She trailed off, then stole a glance to the corner of the room. "And speaking of feeding, I don't know if that one is still nursing or not."
I blinked. "Don't look at me," I blurted out without thinking. Karin snerked and so did Swift on my other side.
"I didn't mean that," Karin said. "Just that we may need to come up with some nutrition for both of them in a hurry."
"Understood," I acknowledged, then took the hot chocolate Greg had delivered to me. "Thanks," I told him.
"I'll let you all know if there's a change," Karin said, waving a hoof at us. "No reason for everypony to hang around."
"K, you've been up all night," Jeff said with concern in his voice. "You need rest too."
"She needs somepony with medical training to be here if-"
"You just said you can't do much else for her in this state," he pointed out. "If I have to carry you to bed, I will. If she wakes, or anything changes, whoever's watching her will come get you."
Karin seemed to mull it over, not answering her mate.
"Right, then," he said, and crouched low, crawling under her and then standing up straight.
"Eeep!" she squealed, ending up draped over his back.
"I warned you!" he declared.
"Wake me if something happens!" she called out to Swift, Morgan, and I as she was carried away.
I glanced over at Swift, who was giggling, and saw Morgan's smile as she waved at Karin, and grinned myself, accepting that it was okay to show mirth.
"I'll watch her. Them," Morgan offered, nodding towards the tiny bundle in the corner. "You've got other things to do."
I shrugged. "I can go make that radio call," I agreed.
Swift blinked and realized they'd omitted telling me one thing that had transpired overnight.

"Hey, little man," I called out, approaching the tree.
Curled up underneath it, missed by my once-over earlier, was a yellow, orange, and white ball of fur, which momentarily stirred.
"What time is it?" he asked sleepily.
"Time to be up," I said. "Go get some hot chocolate from Greg and come over to my place."
"Okay," he replied, standing up and stretching.

A few minutes later, Randy trundled up the stairs, a mug of hot chocolate carried on his back.
"Good balance," I complimented him.
"It's nice and warm," he said, smiling a little, then reached back to take it by the lip of the mug, setting it down on the floor, then flopping down before it. "But pouring it all over myself would've been sticky and messy."
"You got that right," I chuckled, taking a sip of my own drink. "How you doin'?"
"Okay, I guess," he said with a shrug of his wings. Where did he learn that? I began to wonder, but then realized I'd adopted the same behavior myself some time ago subconsciously. "Are the ponies we found last night gonna be okay?"
"It's too early to tell," I admitted honestly. "The little one, probably yes. The mom, she survived the night, but... it's still touch-and-go."
"What's wrong with her? Did she freeze?"
"We're not sure, bud," I told him. "If we knew, we could help her."
Randy was silent for a moment, looking into his mug and finally taking a sip. Then he said, "Why didn't... whoever did this to us" - he pointed a hoof at himself and me - "make sure we couldn't get hurt?"
"That's a really good question," I said. "I wish I knew the answer. I wish I knew the answers for a lot of questions like those."
"I don't mean,... I don't mean like Superman," Randy went on. "I mean... I know people are coming back at different times. Those people we rescued last night... they didn't do anything wrong. They were in their car back in May and all of a sudden it was Christmastime and really cold and snowy, and they crashed. Right?"
"Mm-hmm," I nodded, impressed at his grasp on the situation.
"So why didn't whoever did this make sure they would've been okay when they came back?"
I looked over at him while I sipped on my drink, and almost stopped short. His wide, probing eyes finally clued me in. He was thinking of his own family, in their car in the rest area he'd been found in, but 'coming back' at who knows what point in time.
I reached over and gave him a one-forelegged hug. "Idunno, little guy," I said. "I guess it means we'll have to do a better job of watching out for people coming back, since we can do something about it when they do show up."
He didn't respond, taking another sip of his drink, so I went on. "And by the way, you did a great job last night, even if you didn't listen to me."
"Sorry," he mumbled.
"You're not listening," I said, pushing a smile up onto my muzzle. "You being there meant I didn't have to leave them alone to come back out and tell you to go for help. So I could stay with them and warm them up a little."
He smiled in response to my own expression. "Thanks," he said quietly.
"Don't make it a habit, though. If somebody tells you to do something, make sure you do it. And before you give me grief, I promise to think about what you're capable of and not keep you out of something just because of your size. Okay?"
"Deal," he smiled. After a moment, he changed the subject. "Are we still having Christmas?"
"Of course," I answered, without thinking of the situation. "You need to be in bed on time so Santa can come."
"You think Santa's already come back?" Randy asked wistfully.
"Oh, he's special," I backpedaled. "I think he was able to get around it all."

Thankfully, Randy let my imminent disaster of a conversation peter out, and he went off to prepare for the next day. I turned my attention to the radios and the plea I needed to put out.
"Hello," I said soberly, eschewing the cheery and sometimes boisterous introduction I was becoming known for. "Sudden Storm here with an important message."
"I know it's Christmas Eve and everypony should be in the holiday mood, but we have a situation in Ponytown that's kind of urgent. You've heard me talk about the brutal storm that's been kicking our flanks here for the past few days. Well, last night we found a couple of ponies who came back in the middle of that storm, and obviously unprepared. We brought a mom and child into Ponytown, and the child has revived, but the mom is in poor shape. Our medic has done everything they can for her, but she needs more help than we can offer. So, if you have, or are, a doctor, we need you. Please come to Ponytown at your best speed."
At the end of it, I was, for the first time, at a loss for words, so I just switched the microphone off.

"Phew," Serge said, as he and Jenn came in from the garage. "That was a lot of work."
"Looks like you did good," I said, gesturing to the now-cleared windows around two sides of the place.
"Yup," Jenn agreed. "Luckily it wasn't too wet and heavy."
"Got a path about six feet wide done around the whole building," Serge declared. "I think that should do. The sun's actually out too, so the cold isn't quite as biting."
"Good to hear," I nodded. "You two should probably go to the kitchen and soak up some warmth."
"Go ahead," Serge told Jenn. "I have something else I'm gonna do. Thanks for the help."
As Jenn smiled and nodded, heading off, I said to Serge, "What's up?"
"I've been inspired," he said with a broad smile. "You'll see." With that, he retreated to the warehouse side of the building.

I went to the kitchen to catch up with Jenn, and found Morgan curled up on the floor, literally watching over our young charge.
"Hi, you two," she said, lifting her head and looking over at us. "No change, unfortunately."
"That's okay," I nodded. "Stability is probably good at this point."
"True 'nuff."
Jenn let out a contented sigh as she settled into place near the open oven - but not close enough to deny our patient her much-needed warmth.
"You know of any medics, doctors, or healers back where you came from?" I asked Morgan.
She shook her head. "Nobody you want to trust anybody you care with."
"Gotcha, just thought I'd ask."
"I thought I heard somepony," said Jeff as he came into the room from the dorms area (the former shops and stores corridor). "I was hoping that meant good news."
"Well, like they say, no news is good news, right?" Jenn offered.
"I guess," he said, glancing at our patient. "But I think K would prefer something more substantial."
"We all would," I agreed, letting my own eyes linger on the still form. At least she was breathing, though slowly and somewhat unevenly. "I put out the call earlier, so if there's help to be had, it's coming."
"Optimist," Morgan shot at me with a smile, indicating she was just teasing.
"Gotta stay that way," Jeff said. "It's what got us all through this whole mess, and brought us here."
The sound of somepony walking on the roof, compressing the snow, made everypony look up.
"It's just Serge," I said, dashing anyone's hopes that somebody had already showed up to help us out. "Went up there about fifteen minutes ago, saying he was" - I did the pony version of finger quotes - "'inspired'. Whatever that means."
"Is he maybe stamping out a distress message?" Jeff wondered.
"Anypony... anybody," I corrected myself, thinking of our non-equine contacts from so long ago, "who would be able to see that has the tech to be able to listen to us too." Then a thought struck me.
Maybe he's getting closer to his god... asking for a favor.
"I'm gonna go check on K again," Jeff said. "She hit the hay pretty hard when I finally got her to lie down."
"Make sure she stays well," Jenn told him. "We can't afford to have her incapacitated."
"I will," he smiled, turning and departing.
Morgan sat there, staring at the still form on the cot by the kitchen, ruminating.
"What's on your mind?" I finally asked her.
She took a moment to collect her thoughts before responding. "Just wondering where the karma and justice in the world got to. I mean, we've been dealt a pretty colossally shitty hand here, all things considered."
"Mm-hmm," I agreed, helping myself to some more hot chocolate.
"We'll persevere," Jenn offered. "This isn't something we can't overcome."
"Maybe not all of us," Morgan said, still looking at the ailing mother. "Back home, they would've thrown her out into the street by now. Wouldn't have wasted the effort caring for her."
"No, they wouldn't have," Jenn scoffed. "That's too harsh-"
Morgan fixed her with a stare. "You haven't seen what they're like," she simply said.
I tried to head off the chance of an argument before it got rolling too much. "Did you encounter anypony - anybody," I corrected myself (it was getting habitual), "on your way here, Jenn?"
"Just Randy," she said, shaking her head. "Before we picked up your transmission, we almost assumed we were It, with a capital I."
"I know the feeling," I responded, but truth be told, other than the first few hours after waking up as a pony, I really didn't. I'd met Swift fairly early on compared to all the rest of these folks. I had it easy when put up against almost everyone else.
Trying again to change the subject, I said, "Has anypony thought more about a Christmas dinner?"
"Can't really use the oven while we're using it for her," Morgan murmured, gesturing to the mother with her chin.
"...Right," I said, feeling defeated.
"We can make up something that doesn't need cooking," Jenn suggested. "I mean, it's a safe bet none of us are feeling like a traditional Christmas turkey with all the trimmings."
"True," I smiled.
Jenn got to her hooves and stretched. "Right. Up, both of you."
"What?" Morgan said, her eyes finally leaving the still form on the cot, to follow Jenn.
"You've been conscripted as my helpers," Jenn smiled. "Operation Christmas Dinner is underway."

I have to admit I was impressed when all was said and done.
The six of us - Swift and Rich stumbled upon the Operation and were drafted promptly, and Randy too when he came to look for me - actually put together a pretty decent feast. Jenn played the part of master chef, with Morgan and Swift her assistants; Randy, Rich, and I were basically the hired help, or grunt work, fetching things from the food storage, hauling product back and forth, and counting off time while certain dishes were set out to wait for one reason or another.
By the time that we normally ate rolled around, the tables we normally used as serving stands - for ponies to take what they wanted and retreat to their usual eating places - were all pushed together and covered with some tablecloths, and in turn the tablecloths were held down by place settings, and bowls and platters full of delicious-looking fare.
The stovetop hadn't been off-limits, though it was awkward to work on with the oven door open to help warm the mother. Jenn made it work, though, and steamed vegetables of many kinds were prepared and waiting for us. All sorts of garden fare was on the table, presented in many traditional and non-traditional ways. It definitely looked like a huge, genuine Christmas dinner, minus the meat.
Swift, ever the optimist, had even set out two extra plates - one child-sized, one adult portion - just in case.
Everypony was summoned, and were clearly impressed. The unicorns had taken to hanging some decorations in the time after the food prep was done, and putting a few candles out on the table - it actually felt festive, finally.
"You guys should be commended," Greg declared, sitting down and eyeing the feast.
"Everypony played a part," Jenn said. "Even those of you who weren't here in the kitchen."
"We wouldn't have been able to be here like this tonight if we hadn't had someone tending a fantastic garden all year," I said, catching on. Karin and Jeff smiled sheepishly.
"We all contributed in our own way," Rich agreed.
Everyone took their places around the table and paused, noting my attention towards Serge. He had his head bowed and eyes closed, and was murmuring something silently. Others caught on quickly and dipped their own heads in kind.
After a moment, we all looked back up and began to dig in.

It was almost like normal life again.
The dinner brought everypony together and let them communicate with one another, sharing ideas, thoughts, and even emotions. Even still, it was helpful and hopeful, and provided the healing boost our own morale needed. Having everypony gathered around a table, sharing a meal and just talking to one another, was the medicine that most of us required.
If I had anything to say about it, our habit of taking food back to our own living spaces and eating in isolated groups was going to fade away pretty damn quick.
"We never had Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve back home," Randy piped up in between mouthfuls.
"Did you have it on Christmas Day instead?" I asked him, and he nodded.
"Me too," Jeff said. "Well, before I went away to university. Christmas dinner at the U was more likely than not a fast food burger or some pizza."
"Or some toaster waffles," Rich spoke up with a smirk, and a few people laughed.
"Well, this spread is amazing," Karin chimed in. "Thank you all."
"No problem," Jenn said. "I'd been thinking about it - for tomorrow, like some of the rest of you - but when we got talking about it this afternoon, I decided we needed the pick-me-up."
"You got that right," Swift agreed, and Morgan beside her nodded.
"I probably won't be able to move when this is all over," Greg declared. "I've stuffed myself so much compared to normal meals that I'll just lie down here and pass out."
"You're probably not the only one," Serge smirked. He turned to regard Randy beside him. "All the good little boys and girls need to head to bed early tonight."
"So Santa can come," Randy nodded, finishing the thought. "Stormy already told me."
"Oh?" Serge said, with a quirked eyebrow my way, but then he recovered. "That's right. How is he going to bring all his presents unseen, like normal, unless everypony's nestled all snug in their beds?"
Serge's line reminded me that in the days leading up to the holiday, I'd originally planned to 're-write' The Night Before Christmas to take into account our new pony states, and put it on the radio broadcast tonight, but with all the distractions, it'd slipped away. Maybe I could come up with something quick after dinner.
Swift was about to say something, but a noise from the far end of the room - away from the kitchen - distracted us all. First came a whimper, then sounds of struggling and flailing about. Then, a new, shrill voice, crying and sobbing: "Mama!!"
The mood in the room deflated instantly, falling like the ears of most of us as our heads swiveled towards the child bundled up in the corner. Tiny legs were thrashing about trying to get untangled from the blanket, and the post-toddler-aged child was wailing and hollering out of confusion for her new form and terror at being separated from her mother.
"I've got this," Karin said, backing away from the table and standing up.
"I'll help," Swift and Morgan stereoed, moving to join her.
Rich looked at his plate, and around at the rest of us who'd likewise finished our meals, and began to collect them, to clear the table.

The rest of the night went as you might expect. The three girls managed to calm the child down, although it took a long time. She turned out to be five, at least in human years, and her name was Tammy. We couldn't get a last name out of her due to her hysteria over her mother.
If there was any question over whether her mother was just sleeping and needed to be roused, the shrieking that went on in the kitchen when they were brought together sealed any doubt. Tammy was inconsolable as she snuggled up against her mother's still form, begging for the latter to wake up. As much as I wanted to be strong and supportive, I couldn't help but think of my own missing family, and had to take my leave.
Randy must have been affected too, because he joined me in my room shortly after.
"You okay, bud?" I asked him.
"Thinkin' of my mom," he muttered.
"I know, buddy. C'mere," I said, lifting a wing, which he gratefully snuggled under.
"She's not going to make it, is she?" he asked, with a hint of a sniffle penetrating his voice.
At first I thought he was talking about his mom, but then I realized he was referring to Tammy's mother. "I dunno," I told him the truth. "It doesn't look good right now."
"Can I sleep here with you?" he asked.
I nodded. "I don't wanna be alone tonight either, bud," I said, huddling close to the little guy.

I'd like to say I slept the whole night, but fragments of dreams and nightmares resulted in a fitful rest. I didn't get up and wander as I was normally wont to do, though, because of my young charge under wing (literally).
Finally, after a long, long restless sleep, I felt a nudge on my muzzle. "Stormy!" came a hissing whisper.
I cracked an eye open and found Randy standing before me, excitedly trembling. He reached out to plant a hoof on my nose a second time just as I opened my eye.
"Stormy!" he whispered again, hoarsely. "He's been here!"
Sunlight was streaming in the windows; it was early morning. Maybe eight o'clock, or a little earlier.
"Who has?" I said, playing dumb.
"Santa!" he shot back elatedly, and hurried down the stairs.
I got up and went after him at a more relaxed pace. His galloping clopping over the floor surely woke everypony else up, if they hadn't been awake already waiting for his reaction.
I probably gave them some amusement with my own response, too. I stood and stared slack-jawed at the tree, which yesterday had been partially-decorated with a meager one or two wrapped gifts beneath it. Now, garland and makeshift ornaments and lighting encircled the tree from all its boughs, and giftwrapped boxes and other shapes spilled out over the floor for nearly five feet in all directions.
"Wow!" Randy gushed, hopping back and forth looking at all the gifts. Slowly, others began arriving, some smiling, some reacting with surprise as I did. One who wasn't surprised was the white pegasus pony sitting there with a smile on his face.
Randy noticed the wet hoofprints leading from the back warehouse area (the door to the roof), circling around the tree a couple of times, and then tracking over to the kitchen, where a plate of milk and cookies had been left out for the jolly old elf (if he was even still an elf). He declared that Santa must have come down from the roof, set out all the presents, and then stopped to have a break before moving on to the next place with ponies.
I smirked and caught Serge's eye, bringing a hoof to my mouth and miming rubbing it. He froze, then lifted his own hoof to wipe, first one side, then the other, and finally brushed away the cookie crumbs from his chin. I laughed silently and nodded.
There were gifts for everypony, not just Randy - though he had the lion's share. There were even some with 'Tammy' and 'Tammy's mom' scrawled on the tags, which nearly made my heart break. The young filly was still keeping watch over her mother, and it seemed almost disrespectful for the rest of us to be celebrating with them in the other room, but I was assured that they were being watched over.
Everypony got a new set of boots, based off an improved version of Jeff's original pattern from way back when Swift and I first met him. The new ones were lined with a warm comfortable material salvaged from something else in the store - maybe stuffing from throw pillows or something like that. Randy also got a winter hat that fit over his head, with the human-styled 'ear flaps' removed since they were no longer necessary. There were toys and fun presents as well, but a lot of the stuff everypony got was functional and practical, a necessity in our new existence.
Eventually we all began to disperse, some of us to play with our haul and others to attend to tasks that didn't vanish just because it was Christmas. I caught up with Karin as she headed for the kitchen.
"How're things doing?" I asked her.
She sighed a ragged, sad sigh, and it was only then I realized her eyes were red - she, and others, had been putting on a brave show all morning long. "Not good," she admitted. "I really thought Tammy's presence would help her."
"It's not?" I asked.
Karin shook her head. "I think... I think she's shutting down. Pulse is weaker, resps are slowing slightly."
I frowned. "C'mon, kiddo, there's gotta be something-"
"I've tried," Karin all but wailed. "Everything I can think of. Everypony's tried everything. Stormy, we're going to lose her."
I shut my eyes and sighed, fighting off the despair that threatened to engulf me. "Is she comfortable?" I finally asked.
"That's what I'm doing," Karin nodded. "It's all I can do."
"Have you talked to Tammy?"
"She's asleep. Been there all night and all morning by her mama's side." She looked away. "Maybe she already knows."
I let it sink in to my head for a moment. "If there's anything you need-"
"A Christmas miracle would be nice," she shot back bitterly, then softened. "Sorry, I know you're trying to help. I just... don't wanna feel so helpless."
"None of us do," I agreed. We walked the few feet around the partition wall and took in the image of the dormant pony and her young daughter.
"I'm gonna keep an eye on her," Karin said. "Just in case."
"Okay," I nodded. "Do you want company?"
She shook her head. "If I need something, I'll call out." After a moment, she added, "Maybe get Serge to pray."
"All right," I said. "I hope things turn out."
She just walked into the room slowly, focused on her patient fully.

I'd retreated to my room, and set up the radio to play Christmas music on a loop. I didn't feel like making any of my own broadcasts, even though I'd intended to earlier. I just wasn't in the mood.
My disjointed sleep from the night before must have caught up with me, for I found myself dozing off in the midafternoon.
Some time later - how long, I have no idea, except that the sun was in the process of setting - Randy was whispering at me again, poking me once more. "Stormy. Wake up."
I looked at him and blinked - he was wide-eyed and almost trembling.
"What's the matter?" I asked, but he shushed me.
"There's... somepony... in the kitchen."
"Yeah, it's Karin," I said. "Watching over Tammy and her mom." I realized he wasn't aware of what the prognosis was, and began to steel myself to break the news.
He was shaking his head. "Karin's there asleep on the floor, and Tammy's asleep too. I don't know who the other one is."
"Other one?" I asked, rising to my hooves.

I used my new boots to keep my hooffalls silent on the floor. Randy was under direct orders to stay in the radio shack and wait for me to call out to him. He'd flown around the place before coming to get me, and everypony else was either out or otherwise occupied. Some had received items for Christmas that had outdoor applications, and were probably outside trying them out, now that the weather had finally broke and it was only chilly instead of downright freezing. At least one other pair - Jenn and Greg - were in their store-turned-dorm with the door shut, and shall we say occupied with one another.
The only two ponies that appeared to be awake and available to deal with the situation were me and Randy, and despite what I'd said about appreciating his help the other evening, I didn't want to expose him to what might be coming for Tammy's mother.
When I crept around the corner and saw a cloaked figure standing there, with its back to me, I at first thought it was a pony Grim Reaper. No sickle, though, I commented to myself, and realized the hood was not a hood, but a hat.
"I guess not everypony is out," the figure said, in English, but with a peculiar accent - not one I'd heard in any place in the world. She didn't turn to face me, still focusing on Tammy's mother - who, I now noticed, was enveloped in a lavender glow.
I noticed that Tammy wasn't there, and whipped my head around to seek her out.
"She's with the guardian," the cloaked pony said casually, gesturing with a hoof towards Karin. Both of them were sprawled out on the floor, motionless. "And relax. They're just sleeping. This spell takes concentration, and their interruption would have been troublesome."
I stepped forward. "Are you helping her?"
"More than your kind has," she shot back, still facing away from me. She made a tch'ing sound. "Do you not have any unicorns here at all? Or at least with any modicum of skill?"
"They tried everything they could," I said, then made a calculated risk based on the accent I was hearing. "But I'll bet they don't have access to the kind of spells you do."
The cloaked figure chuckled. "Very astute, native; yes, I'm not 'from here'." She continued channeling magic into Tammy's mother. "There are very few of us here, to watch over you and make sure your... transition... goes somewhat smoothly. We're supposed to stay in the shadows, but I heard your plaintive cry for help on one of those primitive, magickless boxes, and I knew my skills were required."
"Thank you," I said softly.
"Well, it's not like any of you could have accomplished this," she shot back.
I blinked. "Humble, too," I bit out.
"Hah," she said, her foreshoulders jerking with the laugh. "Bother me not, I'm almost done."
I stood there in silence, watching the flow of magic continue, and staring in surprise as the figure which had laid on the cot in our kitchen for days began to shudder. A few moments later, her barrel began rising and falling again, in a more consistent rhythm, and her limbs trembled, then were still - though she wriggled slightly, becoming restless for the first time since I'd first laid eyes on her.
"She's going to wake up?" I asked.
"In due time," the cloaked figure responded. "Rejuvenation takes a lot out of a pony. She was so close to the threshold, it took a lot to coax her back."
"You healed her?"
"Of course," the mare simply said, as if it was a pedestrian thing, barely worth her attention.
"...Thank you," I finally told her.
"Uh-huh," she said. "I don't need your thanks, but I do give you - her - this gift in exchange for something from you."
"What's that?" I asked, wondering if she was going to demand one of us go with her in return. Or maybe something mundane like give her food and water for when she returned to 'the shadows'.
"Others who may come - your kind, and Equestrians alike - when you tell them of this one's survival..." She turned her head, and fixed me with a smirk plastered across her powder-blue muzzle. "Tell them that somepony Great and Powerful was the one to come and help."

Karin and Tammy awoke not long after the cloaked unicorn disappeared in a puff of smoke - or, rather, caused some smoke to appear and then galloped away towards the main doors. I thought of giving chase, but the well-being of my friends and guests overrode my desire to know more about the strange pony.
In short order, people started showing up, some just because it was close to dinnertime and they wanted some leftovers from the night before, and some simply because they'd finished whatever they were doing and decided to come gather. It was almost clichéd how everypony came out of the woodwork after the mystery pony had left.
My story was met with doubt and skepticism, but given the impossible things we'd all been through in the past three-quarters of a year, nobody was willing to discount me entirely.
Swift and Rich, understandably, were miffed that they didn't get to see this supposedly 'great' and 'powerful' unicorn. I reminded them that I barely got to see her myself - all I knew was that she wore a long cloak concealing herself, a floppy but pointy hat, and had a powder-blue coat and silvery-white hair. She didn't even offer up her name.
Everyone was intrigued by the thought of 'Equestrians' being among us, even if they were in hiding. A conversation was struck up on what that meant and the questions it raised.
Finding an Equestrian and shaking them, demanding to know why my sister and her family, and Randy's family, and everybody else's friends and loved ones, had to vanish was a fleeting thought through my mind.
The conversation came to an abrupt halt when the pony on the cot began to stir.