Chapter I - Awakening

Chapter I. Awakening

Sunny Starscout trotted down Syrup Avenue, enjoying the salty breeze on her mane.

Everypony looked at her as she passed, and she felt her heart skip a beat at every smile and every cheer. Even if the glowing horn and wings had eventually vanished, ponies easily recognized her. The earth ponies she understood, as she had known all of them all her life, and they had known her back, whether they had wanted to or not. But the unicorns and pegasi? She hadn’t spent that long in their cities, and yet they all knew who she was.

The pony that had brought everypony together.

Sure, there still were many a pony who were distrustful of the other races, but for the most part, everypony was glad that they didn’t have to live in fear any longer. The unicorns were the most accepting, since, according to Izzy, they had been living all their lives missing a sense they didn’t know existed. They had known about magic, but they hadn’t really understood what having it meant until it returned. Most pegasi, on their part, were so thrilled by being able to fly that they didn’t seem to remember their prejudices.

“But mommy!” Said a little pegasus filly as Sunny reached the central plaza. “Why do they write numbers on their products? I thought they were dumb!”

Some earth ponies scowled at the mom, who chuckled nervously as she took her daughter and took flight.

Well, most prejudices had been forgotten. They all still had a lot of work to do.

Sunny nodded and waved at the ponies that greeted her, then continued her walk to her smoothies’ stand. As she rounded it to open the blinders, she heard laughter coming from down below, and she could imagine foals of all three races playing around in the sand and the sea, and Sunny felt a rush of pride run down her body. She looked up at the sky and smiled, wishing her dad would be here to see his dream come true.

“Heya Sunny!” Izzy’s voice distracted her from her thoughts, and she turned to see her friend trotting up to her. “Whatcha doing?”

Sunny pressed a button to release the lock and began pulling on the crank to raise the blinders. “I’m opening my stand. Phyllis was kind enough to provide me with temporary housing while they rebuild my house, but I still have to work, you know?”

“Makes sense!” Izzy replied. “Want some help?”

“Sure!” Sunny said, and she actually felt a warmth in her chest. The only other pony that had ever offered to help her had been Hitch. She felt a tingling sensation in her forehead, and looked up, only to find nothing. Then, she turned to Izzy, realizing the unicorn’s horn was glowing.

Izzy craned her neck, and a huge umbrella floated towards them, then dropped on top of the cart.

“Uhm, thanks, Izzy,” Sunny said. “But it’s not even midday, yet. I don’t think we really need the shadow yet.”

“Oh, it’s not because of the sun, Sunny Sun-Sun!” Izzy replied, then nodded upwards.

Sunny looked up and saw that the sky was covered in thick gray clouds. When had they formed? She was sure the day was clear just a minute ago. Well, it wasn’t like she had never worked with rain before. Her dad’s smoothie recipes were so good that many ponies would still face the rain just to get them.

After checking that all the ingredients were fresh and cold, and all the utensils were clean and in order, Sunny rounded back the cart to the front and waved Izzy to accompany her to the bench that was on the side. They should have about ten or so minutes to chat before clients started coming.

“So, how are things in Bridlewood? I hear they still think magic is bad luck?”

Izzy giggled with that pretty raspy voice of hers. “Well, some of the more old ones still do. Alphabittle would be one of them if he hadn’t seen firsthoof the return of magic with us.”

“So they’re still not using it?”

“Oh, no, they use it alright,” Izzy said. “They just don’t want to say the word. They keep calling it ‘power’. But, well, I can’t really blame ‘em.”

Sunny nodded. “Yeah, I guess old habits die hard.” Izzy then leaned on her, and she tensed up. “Uh… W-What are you doing?”

“Leaning on you!”

“Ok… Why?”

“Because you’re warm!”

Sunny blinked a few times, feeling some fluttering in her stomach. “Thanks?”

“You’re welcome!” Izzy replied. “You earth ponies are a lot warmer than unicorns. I tried snuggling Pipp and Zipp back when we were travelling because I thought their feathers would be awesome pillows, but you and Hitch were the warmer ones. And since it’s getting a bit chilly, I thought I could snuggle you a bit.”

“Uh… Sure,” Sunny said, unable to stop the smile from forming on her face. “Glad I can help.”

They sat there in silence for a while, and Sunny was content to just enjoy the moment and the touch of her friend. It was confusing, really, to have these feelings for another mare. At first she had thought it had been the adrenaline of the adventure, but two weeks had passed since the end of it, and she still felt bubbles in her stomach every time she so much as thought of Izzy. Every time they talked, she got lost in her beautiful dark pink eyes. Every time they hugged, she relished on her woody, floral scent. And every moment they spent together, Sunny only ever wanted time to slow down just so the moment wouldn’t end.

Hitch had told her she had a crush, but she had refused to believe it at first. How could a mare have a crush on another mare? But as days passed, she had begun to realize that that was exactly what was happening. The problem was that she didn’t know what to do with that information.

Telling Izzy was the most logical conclusion, but then what? How would Izzy even react? Could Sunny play it off as an earth pony thing in case Izzy felt weirded out? She supposed there was only one way to find out.

“Iz-” but was interrupted by a drop of rain falling right on her snout. She closed her eyes reflexively and brushed it off with a hood. “Izzy.” Another drop fell on her left ear. “It’s raining, we should go under the umbrella.”

Izzy groaned, but eventually straightened up, and Sunny lamented the lack of contact. “Yeah we- Oop!” She said as a drop fell on her snout. She licked it off. “We should… Wait…” She smacked her lips, then stuck out her tongue, trying to catch another raindrop.

“What are you doing?”

“Eeth thatheth…” She said, then caught a raindrop with her tongue. “Hmm! Why didn’t you tell me it rained chocolate here?”

“What?”

Izzy lifted her head to the sky and opened her mouth, catching two more raindrops. “Your rain is chocolate! This is the best city ever!”

“Chocolate? That’s not…” She then looked at her hoof, the one she had wiped her face with, and saw a small brown smudge on it. Then, against her better judgement, she copied Izzy’s motions until she caught a few raindrops with her mouth. It really was chocolate! “Whoa, this is… This is not normal.”

Looking around, ponies started discovering the more than unusual event. The foals, of course, were trying to catch as much of the strange rain as they could while their parents couldn’t decide how to react to it. But Sunny saw it in their faces. Not everypony would simply stay still and let it happen. The first rain since the return of magic, and it was chocolate? This was a serious issue, and Sunny knew she would have to close her smoothies stand for the day.

~~~~~~~~

Canterlogic was nothing like it used to be. First a factory-slash-trade center, then armory, and now the first official Pony Congress Center. The runway had been removed to allow more space for the unicorns, and some balconies had been raised for the pegasi. It still was a far cry from Phyllis’ blueprints, but they were working on it. On what used to be the heavy presentation stage stood a large table in the form of a semi-circle facing the audience with enough seats for ten ponies.

Sunny sat at the center of the table. Despite the shape, indicating that all ponies sitting were in the same level, everypony had agreed to make Sunny’s seat in the middle, since she had been the one to kickstart the change in all pony tribes and thus came to be known as the Representative of Friendship. She still didn’t feel comfortable with it, but she thought it was easier to simply accept for now. The moment they grew bored of it, she was ready to move to another seat.

Izzy sat next to her. With Alphabittle back in Bridlewood, she was the Representative of Unicorns in Maretime Bay.

Zipp arrived from one of the windows and gently lowered herself next to Izzy. As princess of Zephyr Heights and heiress to the throne, she was the obvious choice as Representative of Pegasi. She had tried to weisel her way out of it, but despite her arguments of not being cut for this sort of thing, she was, without a doubt, the most diplomatic of Sunny’s small circle of friends. It was a relief that everypony had forgiven the royal family.

Pipp, on the other hoof, had insisted on being the Congress Moderator, taking care of maintaining neutrality and keeping conflict to a minimum. She also kept repositioning the cameracolts around, trying to find the perfect angles. So far, only pegasi knew how to operate those electronic gadgets, but Sunny was expecting other races to start learning from them.

Finally, Hitch arrived at the center, accompanying Phyllis. She was the official Representative of earth ponies, but Hitch was one of the Bringers, as ponies had begun to call them, so he had as much right to sit at the table, right next to Sunny. Plus, he was the sheriff of Maretime Bay. The added authority gave earth ponies a lot of ease of mind.

Once they were all seated, with Phyllis taking the place next to Hitch, they were ready to begin. Pipp walked over the podium at the far right of the scenario, tapped on the microphone, then waved to the audience, waiting patiently for them to settle down. Once there was silence, she cleared her throat and nodded. Sunny then saw green lights appear on the cameras.

“Good morning, ponies from all around Equestria!” Pipp said. “I’m Pipp Petals, live from Maretime Bay’s Pony Congress Center. Today, at around ten fifty-two in the morning, a strange phenomenon befell the earth pony city, confusing all its residents and visitors. Why, no pony ever expected that today’s forecast would include literal chocolate rain.”

“She’s really good!” Izzy said happily, making Pipp slightly turn her head and glare at her.

Sunny put a hoof on her microphone and whispered to Izzy. “Remember to cover your mic like this, Izzy.”

Izzy grinned sheepishly, and Sunny couldn’t really be angry at her.

Pipp recovered easily with a small cough. “As this is an unheard of event, the representatives of all three pony races have gathered to discuss and propose action plans. Afterwards, we will hold a Q&A session regarding the items of the congress. Please do refrain from inquiring about personal information.” She turned to look at Sunny. “Sunny, Representative of Friendship, you have the word now.”

Sunny felt herself blush at the mention of her title. “Uh, ta-thank you, Pipp.” She then looked at the camera right in front of her. “Well, uh, so, it started raining chocolate?” Pipp smacked her face with a hoof. “It’s, uhm, it’s a very strange thing. I had a taste earlier, and I can confirm it was, indeed, chocolate.”

“Why do you think this is happening?” Zipp pitched in.

“I don’t know,” Sunny replied. “I’ve never heard of something like this. Even in my dad’s research there’s no mention of something as… crazy as this…” She pressed her lips together. Even with her dad’s research, she had been completely blind trying to unite the races. In all honesty, it had been dumb luck that anything had worked at all. And now this? How was she supposed to deal with this?

“Well, I think it’s terrific!” Izzy said. “It’s pretty tasty chocorain!”

“I don’t think it matters how good it tastes,” Phyllis countered. “We have to find a way to stop it, or at the very least come up with countermeasures. Just cleaning the streets will be a headache.”

“Not to mention the sea,” Hitch said. “How much chocolate can it take before it starts becoming a problem?”

“We also have to consider the sewage system,” Phyllis continued. “It is designed for heavy rain, but we don’t know how it’ll react to something that is more dense than simple water.”

Zipp shifted in her seat. “The chocolate is also bad for pegasi. It sticks to our feathers. We’re still learning how to fly, so it can be really dangerous if we aren’t careful.”

Once again, all eyes turned to Sunny, who gulped loudly. “Uhm… Well, so, basically, we have to think of a way to stop the rain, somehow. Or at the very least make it so it causes as little damage as possible. After that, we’ll have to figure out what’s causing it, then work from there.” When everypony nodded, Sunny felt a weight being released from her back. She turned to look at Izzy. “Izzy, in my dad’s research, there are mentions of unicorns teaming up to affect the weather of an entire city, to the point where they could force seasons to come and pass. Do you think you can do something about the chocolate rain?”

Izzy tilted her head. “Well… I don’t know. When we got our magic back, we sort of, kind of remembered how to levitate stuff.” Somepony in the audience yelled ‘bing bong’. “But not much more than that.”

“Wait a minute,” Phyllis said. “What if this event was caused by some unicorn that remembered how to make chocolate rain?”

“Uhm…”

I assure you, this is no unicorn doing.

Sunny felt every single hair in her body stand straight. That voice had sounded like it had come from all directions.

Oh my, you are so easily frightened. I suppose ponies will always be ponies.

“W-Who are you?” Sunny said. “Where are you?”

The voice laughed with the sort of evilness that Sprout always projected onto unicorns.

I am he who represents the true state of existence. I am the beginning of everything, and I am the start of the end of all things. I am both luck and chance. I am the known and the unknown. I am everywhere and nowhere. There is no need to fear me, little ponies, for I am not evil nor am I good. I simply am. In ancient times, I was called the Lord of Chaos. You can call me Discord.

When the voice stopped talking, Sunny realized she had been holding her breath. Discord. That name rang quite a few bells. Where had she read that word? But before she could begin to remember, another sound distracted her from her thoughts. Somepony was clapping, and Sunny turned to see who it was.

She felt her heart actually stop for a second when she saw the source of the clapping.

There, in the central space in front of the semi-circular table, was a yellow pegasus mare, gently clapping her front hooves. Sunny felt her four legs shake, and if she hadn’t been sitting, she would’ve fallen on her haunches already. She recognized this mare like she recognized her own face. She had gone to sleep every night wishing her sweet dreams.

The soft yellow fur, the long silk-like pink mane, the emerald green eyes, the three pink butterfly cutie mark…

“Fluttershy…” She whispered.

The yellow pegasus mare stopped clapping and gently placed both hooves down. “That was very good, Dissy,” she said. “I told you you could do it.”

Of course I could! And it was all thanks to you!

Sunny stood up and smacked her hooves on the table. “Whe-Wha…” She mouthed a few more syllables until Fluttershy looked at her with a warm smile on her face. That’s when she felt her heart rate slow to a comfortable pace and her breathing return to normal. “How?” She ended up asking.

Fluttershy’s smile was calm and motherly, but there was something else in her, something that Sunny couldn’t quite place. Something that was making her whole body tingle. And the sensation only intensified when Sunny looked into the pegasus’ eyes. They reminded her of when she and her dad had gone stargazing at night, staring in wonder at the infinite magnitude of the universe.

“It’s not a matter of ‘how’,” Fluttershy said, breaking Sunny’s stupor, “but a matter of ‘why’. You and your friends helped restore the natural flow of magic in Equestria. Thanks to that, Discord could wake up. The chocolate rain is his way of saying hi.”

You’re welcome!

“Unfortunately, restoring the flow is not enough to return Equestria to its former self,” Fluttershy continued. “Discord, for one, is barely strong enough to talk to you and to add cocoa to the rain water. That’s why I’m here. I will help you finish what you started.”

Sunny mouthed silently for a while, unable to come up with a coherent thought. Fluttershy only looked at her, patiently waiting, as if she’d known Sunny would react this way. But how could she not? This mare… She couldn’t be here! The stories her dad told her were of ancient Equestria!

“Say, uh, Sunny?” Hitch said, and Sunny flinched before looking at him. “Doesn’t she look familiar to you?”

“She’s…” Sunny began, then slowly turned to look back at the smiling mare. “Fluttershy… One of the ponies my dad’s research mentions as being one of the Guardians of Harmony.”

Hitch breathed in through his teeth. “Isn’t that kind of impossible? Because, I mean, wouldn’t that make her, what? A thousand years old?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said. “I think I should explain, shouldn’t I?” She giggled sheepishly. “I’m not… quite the Fluttershy you know. About ten years after she passed away, Discord created me in her image, infusing me with her personality plus knowledge. I don’t have her memories, however.”

Sunny leaned back, feeling an odd feeling of emptiness in her stomach. “So, you’re… an avatar of some kind?”

“You could say that,” Fluttershy said.

“Oh, this is so exciting!” Izzy said, practically hopping up and down her seat. “This smells like adventure!”

“Hold on your reins, Izzy,” Zipp said, then turned to look at Fluttershy with lidded eyes. “Who is this Discord pony, and why can’t he show up and why can he make it rain chocolate? Why are you the one bringing this ‘help’ as you call it? And why didn’t you appear before to help us unite the tribes?”

Fluttershy looked at Zipp with incredible patience. “Discord is not a pony,” she said. “He’s a draconequus, a spirit that embodies an aspect of nature itself. As such, he cannot completely exist in the absence of magic. When it started disappearing, he had to put himself into a hibernating sleep of sorts. And since I was made with magic, I had to sleep as well, or I would disappear.

“It was only when you restored the flow of magic that we could recover enough power to come as we have.”

Magic is the foundation of this world, said Discord’s voice, and Sunny still felt shivers upon hearing it coming from every direction. I am a spirit, and Fluttershy here is a magical construct, and thus we need magic to live. So do most of the creatures that exist and existed in Equestria.

“Technically speaking,” Fluttershy continued, “magic was never completely gone. It is a fact, however, that it kept making itself scarce, little by little. If another century had passed without its restoration, even you ponies wouldn’t have survived.”

A wave of gasps came from the audience, and Sunny realized even she was holding her breath.

“What do you mean we wouldn’t have survived?” Phyllis demanded.

Fluttershy looked at her with pressed lips and a frown. It was incredible how she had all the small gestures of a real pony. Sunny had so many questions!

Unicorns were going to be the first ones to perish.

Another wave of gasps sounded as Fluttershy nodded slowly. “Unicorns were the most affected by the disappearance of magic. Two weeks ago, their whole city was full of depressed souls, struggling to even find the strength to go on.” She then turned to look at Izzy. “Only very few of them were still strong enough to find any motivations at all.”

Izzy smiled back at Fluttershy.

Pegasi would have been next.

Fluttershy looked at Zipp, whose wings were pressed tight against her body, as if trying to protect them. “You aren’t as magic bound as unicorns, but you are free souls that belong to the open skies. The only reason you were in a much better mood than unicorns was that you managed to develop many other different means of entertainment. Regardless, even that wouldn’t have been enough on the long run.”

Earth ponies would not survive the other races for too long, either.

Finally, Fluttershy focused her attention on Sunny again. “Even though your magic dependence is considerably lower, you are still magical creatures. According to Twilight’s calculations, you’d probably only last a century after the pegasi to follow them into extinction.”

Silence reigned the congress again as everypony considered the words that had been pronounced. Sunny still was having a hard time looking at what essentially was the ghost of one of her heroes, and now she also had to come to terms with the fact that ponykind had literally been at the brink of dying off. That was a lot to take in! And… What was it she had said?

“Wait, did you say Twilight’s calculations?” She asked.

Fluttershy nodded. “She had a tendency to plan for the worst. That was fortunate, of course, since the worst did end up happening.”

Fortunately, you and your friends managed to avoid the end of the world. Clap clap.

“Did you just say ‘clap’?” Zipp said.

I cannot physically clap.

“Yet,” Fluttershy said.

“Wait, wait, back up,” Sunny said, feeling a throbbing headache starting to form. “Do you mean The Twilight Sparkle? The Princess of Equestria?”

The last Princess of Equestria, yes. In all her sparkly buttness.

“Discord, be nice,” Fluttershy warned.

Sunny ignored the comment. “So, not only was she very real, but she predicted that magic would disappear? How?”

“Yeah,” Hitch chimed in. “Mr. Argyle said she was the most intelligent and powerful pony in Equestria. If that’s true, then how is it that she couldn’t do anything? And that taking into consideration that, apparently, the three pony tribes were living together back then!”

Fluttershy looked down and sighed. “Twilight was indeed very smart and very powerful, but she was also too forgiving and trusting. And despite her many spells and measures, she did not expect things to get so out of control. After all, who really expects an act of kindness to end so horribly wrong?”

Sunny’s ears pressed down her head. “What… What happened?”

When you’re encased in stone, you have quite a lot of free time. When you’re alone, you can do nothing but wait for the magic to wear off. But when you’re with friends? Well, turns out that friendship can be used for evil.

“A thousand years ago,” Fluttershy explained, “three creatures attempted to divide Equestria and govern everything. They almost did it, but Twilight and her friends’ efforts to truly unite every creature bore fruit and these evildoers were defeated and punished with stone imprisonment.”

“You… turned them into statues?” Zipp asked.

Fluttershy nodded. “Two of them had already been imprisoned in Tartarus itself, while the other had her kingdom issue a warrant for her arrest. Even then, those three just wouldn’t give up, so we had to take a different approach.”

Which, in the end, didn’t work either.

“They escaped?” Izzy asked, and Sunny thought she was maybe a little too excited with this.

Worse.

Fluttershy shook her head. “They tricked Twilight into releasing them.”

“What?” Sunny asked. “If they were so dangerous, what could they possibly have said to make her even consider letting them out?”

“And how did they speak if they were statues?” Hitch said.

“They made a deal with Twilight,” Fluttershy replied. “If they were released, they would leave Equestria and go even beyond the neighboring countries in separate directions, so that they wouldn’t even be together.”

Of course, Sparklebutt was not that dumb to just blindly accept.

Fluttershy nodded and cocked her head. “She placed several spells on them. One of those would prevent them from seeking each other. Another one would force them to always tell the truth. And the last one forbade them from ever stepping hoof on Equestrian soil again.”

She also gave them magical artifacts to seal their inherent magic.

“Tirek, the centaur, had an unbreakable collar. The more magic he absorbed, the closer he’d be to ending his own life,” Fluttershy explained. “Chrysallis, the changeling, was given a special horn ring that always messed up her mental image when transforming. Whenever she changed her appearance, it would always be what she’d consider the worst possible disguise.”

“What’s a changeling?” Izzy whispered to Sunny, who only shrugged.

“Finally,” Fluttershy continued. “Cozy Glow, the pony, was given wing bracers that would prevent her from flying for one day every time she did a selfish deed.”

“That all sounds pretty impressive,” Phyllis admitted. “But, if they had all these… burdens, what happened?”

The problem is that they had too much time to think when imprisoned in stone.

Fluttershy closed her eyes. “They had already thought of all the spells Twilight would cast on them, so they had already thought of countermeasures.”

“Wait,” Sunny said. “How can they think of countermeasures against magic they don’t know?”

You seem to forget, this was when magic was at its peak in Equestria.

“They had a good grasp on how to work around spells.” Fluttershy opened her eyes and nodded. “The spell that prevented them from seeking each other was completely useless, as they had already decided of a place to meet up beforehoof. And they all were very smart, so they could use the truth to sow chaos anyway. As for stepping into Equestrian soil… Well, that was also something Twilight overlooked.

“You see, they were the ones to offer they left Equestria. That means they had it planned from the beginning. Their plan was to plunge Equestria into such chaos that it would break apart in a way that no creature called it Equestria any longer.”

“That’s pretty clever,” Izzy said.

“Fortunately, ponies never stopped calling these lands Equestria, so they could never return. Unfortunately, their influence slithered deep into the hearts of ponies, and by the time Twilight realized what was going on, magic had already started to disperse.”

Sparklebutt tried her best to bring ponies together again, but there was another thing she, like her mentor before her, had overlooked.

Fluttershy finally stood up and opened her wings and spoke loud enough that her voice echoed in the room. “Ponies had become too complacent in the absence of adversity. They had taken their safety for granted after centuries of peace and prosperity. They had become so engrossed in their own personal lives that they ignored the bigger picture.”

In the end, only a small bunch of ponies took her lessons to heart. These were, of course, Sparklebutt’s closest friends and students.

“With such a low number of ponies willing to listen and so little time to fix things, Twilight took two decisions. One was an active action plan to try to bring friendship back to the hearts of ponies, the other was a backup plan in case the first one failed.”

As you can guess, the action plan did fail.

“Because she was the princess, most ponies obeyed her,” Fluttershy said. “But you can’t force friendship, so instead of ordering them to be friends, she tried to lecture them. Her many schools of friendship doubled their efforts, but ponies were simply not interested. They hadn’t experienced what unity could do to protect them, even though they knew their history.”

“So, they ignored their ruler?” Zipp asked. “Even though she’d saved them in the past?”

“As I said, these were the great-grandfoals of the ponies that had lived when friendship saved Equestria. They knew, but they didn’t really understand. Unity was just another word to them.” Fluttershy sighed. “They didn’t even care when the more magical creatures started dying because of the lack of magic.”

Sunny gasped. “Dying?”

Figuratively, of course.

Fluttershy closed her wings and looked away. “Weakened and depressed, creatures like Kirins and Changelings stopped having offspring. Dragons stopped growing and laying eggs… Even dangerous creatures like timberwolves and ursas began to disappear.”

“But, the dangers disappearing is good, right?” Hitch asked. “I mean, I don’t know what those things you said are, but…”

“With no dangers to be worried about,” Fluttershy said, “ponies became even more complacent. Why would they worry about friendship if things were sorting out on their own? Only those with magical knowledge knew what was going on, but it was too late…”

Magic could not even sustain ponykind’s greatest threat: The Windigos.

“Windigos?” Sunny asked. “I… I think my dad told me about them once.”

Fluttershy looked up at her. “Everypony you asked would tell you that the absence of Windigos was a blessing, and in normal circumstances, even Twilight would’ve agreed. But now there was no reason for ponies to even consider working together. There were no threats any more, why would they worry about old foal tales?”

And then… Twilight Sparkle fell ill.

Sunny felt cold at that statement, and one look at her friends’ faces told her they felt the same.

Fluttershy pressed her lips for a moment, trying to keep her stoic expression. “As an alicorn, Twilight embodied the traits of all three races, and was the most powerful pony alive.”

She could even go toe to toe with me!

“So she, with the other alicorns, was the first pony to be affected by the lack of magic,” Fluttershy said. “By the time the Crystal Empire fell, Twilight and her niece Flurry Heart were the only alicorns alive. Discord was so weak that he could barely even turn oranges into tennis balls.”

Not my best moment, I admit.

“So, the back up plan needed to be set in motion.” Fluttershy sat on her haunches and looked at the ponies sitting at the table. “Twilight used her own essence to create the Crystals of Unity. Their purpose was to slow down the disappearance of magic long enough for ponies to come to reason. Her students took one crystal each and set to convince the rest of ponykind of the importance of unity and friendship.”

“But it didn’t work, did it?” Zipp asked.

Fluttershy shook her head. “The most they did was to keep ponies together, but as soon as they passed away, the races quickly began drifting apart. The Crystals became forgotten and used as simple jewelry or even tossed away in the forest. Only the earth pony crystal was kept as a research object, but its purpose was soon forgotten as well, and it ended up as a filly’s toy.”

Sunny felt a stab to the chest. Her dad hadn’t known about it… It wasn’t his fault!

“But, then…” Izzy said. “If the crystals were there to stop the disappearance of magic, why did they do the rainbow thingy that got back the magic?”

Fluttershy smiled at her. “Because Friendship is Magic. When you finally realized that the only way to bring magic back was to work together, the crystals reacted as a sort of gateway for the flow to come back to the world.”

“And why did they give me the weird, glowy horn and wings?” Sunny asked.

Fluttershy’s smile only grew at that. “You will know the answer to that as soon as all magic is restored. Discord and I are here to guide you, to tell you what must be done. All sorts of magical creatures will start to pop up again, so you will want to be prepared.”

“Magical creatures like this Discord pony that makes it rain chocolate?” Phyllis asked.

Touché.

Zipp stood up and leaned over with her wings spread. “And how do we know you’re not one of those evildoers that tried to destroy Equestria? How do we know you’re not just deceiving us?”

I could have made it rain fire.

“Discord!” Fluttershy said. “That’s really mean!”

Well, we can’t prove we’re the good guys, so, you have two options. Either you trust us and return magic to the world, or you don’t, and magic will eventually start disappearing again.

“He has a point,” Izzy said. “I vote to go on an adventure!”

“We don’t even know what we’re supposed to do,” Hitch said. “But sure, let’s at least listen, then we’ll decide.”

Zipp sat down and buffed. “Alright, what do we have to do?”

Fluttershy nodded. “North of Zephyr Heights, in the middle of the desert, there’s an oasis…”

“Yeah, the Heart of the Brave,” Zipp said. “That’s where we host the coronation for the new queen.”

“You cross the desert for that?” Sunny asked.

Zipp raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, the pilgrimage is part of the ritual.”

“Bring the three crystals to the Heart of the Brave,” Fluttershy said. “You will know what to do then.”

“Wait, that’s it?” Hitch said. “Can’t you tell us what we can expect or something? Is there a time limit?”

“There’s no time limit,” Fluttershy said. “Not one that you can fathom, anyway. But, if you want to see Equestria back to its former glory, then you should make haste. Discord and I need to go back to sleep. If we stay up for another ten minutes, we will run out of magic.”

That said, Fluttershy’s body started emitting a golden glow, and her whole body soon became translucid.

“Wait!” Sunny said a little too loudly, as the feedback from the mic produced a horrible screech. “I… I know you’re not the real Fluttershy, but… I just want you to know how much you mean to me. You and your friends…” Her voice began shaking, tears formed in the corner of her eyes. “When my dad passed away… It… It was you, or the memory of you, that kept me going… So… Thank you. Thank you so much…”

Fluttershy gave her a small smile and nodded before she disappeared.

Sunny leaned back, using her foreleg to brush off the tears. She felt Izzy place a hoof on her shoulder, and she appreciated the contact.

“Well…” Pipp said, getting everypony’s attention. “That, uh… That was the reason of the chocolate rain.” She placed a hoof against her ear and nodded. “They tell me it just stopped. With this in mind, we’re going to take a small recess of fifteen minutes.”

The cameracolts signaled that they had cut the feed, and she rushed towards the table.

“Sunny, are you ok?”

Sunny nodded. “Yes, I… I’m sorry for crying. I just…”

“It’s ok, Sun-Sun,” Izzy said. “We understand.”

“So,” Hitch said. “Are we going to go to that Heart of the Brave place?”

Zipp hummed. “I think it’s worth a shot. The place’s been used by pegasi for generations, so there shouldn’t be anything dangerous there.”

“Alright,” Sunny said with a sniff. “Let’s have a break and then talk about it.” She glanced at Izzy for a moment and smiled. “But I’m in for the adventure.”

Chapter II - New Horizons

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Chapter II. New Horizons

Zephyr Heights would never stop amazing Sunny. The pegasus city was unlike anything she had ever seen or even dreamed of. Tall white towers with golden corners raised to scrape the skies, built around and above an enormous canyon whose bottom was obscured by thick mist. Everything was connected by wide stone bridges, and Sunny just couldn’t help but wonder how they had been made.

She couldn’t stop looking up at the immensity of the city, at the huge screens that showed live news or the many smaller ones that called for her attention on a new product or two. Music and voices and jingles of all kinds sounded from speakers on every corner, competing with each other to see who could attract more ponies. And yet, everything was placed in wide areas, so it never got overwhelming and never felt cramped. Pegasi, Sunny had come to know, really valued being able to freely move. As if they had never stopped yearning for the open skies.

The bridges that connected each plateau were all at different heights, and their brass railings provided unobstructed views of the chasms below. The first time Sunny crossed the higher ones, she had felt such vertigo she had almost fainted, so now she contented herself with walking right in the middle of them. She still felt small heart attacks every time a pegasus jumped off one of the bridges. Even without magic they had been able to glide, so it was a very common occurrence that they’d simply skip what would be an hour-long walk to the lower plateaus and simply jump off a bridge and glide straight down.

Of course, Zipp and Pipp didn’t think anything of it, and even Izzy found it amazing, saying that she’d totally do that if she had wings. At least Hitch was on her side.

“I swear, one of these days they’re gonna miss their target and end up at the bottom of the chasms,” he said right after a group of fillies jumped off the bridge they were currently crossing.

“That’s why we have chasm patrols,” Zipp said with a wave of her hoof. “Most adults already know how to read the signs to get back to Base Plat, but foals can easily get lost in ‘em.”

Pipp pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of herself with the castle in the background. Sunny needed to ask her how those devices worked. “Speak in past tense, Zipp. Now that everypony can fly, there won’t be a need for the chasm patrols.”

“I think you’re underestimating things, Pipp,” Zipp said. “Flight is still new to us. After that first explosion of magic, we’ve been having more difficulties with flying. There’s still a lot of ponies that end up in the bottom and can’t get back up. In fact, I think there are even more now than before.”

“Can we speak about falling to our dooms after we cross this very high-up bridge?” Sunny asked.

Zipp smiled at her and spread her wings. “Don’t worry, Sunny. If you fall I’ll make sure to catch you before you hit the ground.”

“I’d rather not fall at all, thank you very much.”

The Royal Palace of Zephyr Heights was at the northernmost part of the city, built on and against the highest plateau, rising well above the rest of the buildings as if looking over them. This plateau was connected to another three, two on its left and one on its right, with the thickest and widest bridges, where they had dripped gold in the cracks between cobblestones. A bit garish, in Sunny's opinion.

The palace’s plateau itself was a small mountain on its own right, with tall cliffs otherwise inaccessible were it not for the elevator, which had the best views of Zephyr Heights as it reached the top.

“Alright,” Zipp said as they exited the elevator. “We say ‘hi’ to Mom, restock on supplies, then we march to The Heart of the Brave.”

“Why the rush?” Pipp asked. “We can rest for the night here, then leave first thing in the morning.”

Izzy gasped. “We can have a sleepover! I’ve never had a sleepover before!”

“I’m just saying we should try to complete this quest as soon as possible,” Zipp replied, waving a wing. “I, for one, want all magic to fully return.”

Pipp snorted. “Are you sure there’s not another reason?”

“Another reason?” Hitch asked.

Zipp rolled her eyes. “No, there’s not another reason. Come on, we all saw what bringing magic back did. Don’t you want to know what will happen if we bring it all back?”

“I mean, yeah,” Pipp admitted. “But there’s no rush. That Flutterbee—”

“Fluttershy,” Sunny corrected.

“She said nothing will happen if we take it slowly. It’s not like we’re still fugitives for being ‘full of baloney’ or anything.”

“You’re not going to stop being mad about that, are you?”

Pipp only frowned.

Zipp snorted. “Come on, Pipp. We talked about this.”

“Did we?” Pipp snapped, eyes narrowing. “All you did was ask if I thought this was all wor—”

“Girls, please stop,” Sunny said. “I do think we should complete this quest as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” Zipp said.

“However, I agree with Pipp,” Sunny continued. “There’s no need to push ourselves too much. We can stay the night and then leave for The Heart of the Brave first thing in the morning.”

Zipp rolled her neck back and gave out an exasperated sigh. “Come on, let’s vote. I say we go right now.” She lifted a leg, then waited. When nopony joined her, she frowned at Hitch. “Come on, I thought at least you’d support me on this!”

Hitch shrugged. “I mean, there’s really no need to rush things. Besides, it’s better if we’re well fed and rested. Two weeks ago, we almost killed each other for that apple before reaching Bridlewood.”

“I won it fair and square,” Pipp muttered.

“What I’m trying to say is that we don’t have the need to gallop when we can simply walk.”

Zipp stared at him for a moment, then huffed and turned back to walk to the palace. “Fine, you win. Let’s go.”

As Zipp entered the palace, Sunny walked next to Pipp. “What’s gotten into her?”

Pipp hummed for a moment. “She’s just never really liked being the Crown Princess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Zipp is very responsible, don’t get me wrong,” Pipp said. “But she’s never been the kind to stay in one place. I think she just wants to live as many adventures as she can before Mom abdicates the throne to her.”

“Good thing this is gonna be the biggest adventure ever!” Izzy said.

“Well, The Heart of the Brave is only a few hours away,” Pipp said. “I don’t think it’ll take that long.”

“We’ll see when we get there,” Sunny replied. “But for now, let’s head in.”

Izzy giggled. “If your room is anything like the dungeon, then this is gonna be a blast!”

~~~~~~~~

It turned out that Pipp’s royal chambers were nothing like the dungeon. Yes, every corner had some gold in it, but there were no whites. The carpet was a dark purple, the walls a soft pink. Pipp’s bed sheets were magenta with soft, translucent lavender draperies hanging down. There was a wide desk of dark mahogany sitting by the far corner, next to a large arc that gave way to a small space where Sunny could see different clothes hanging.

“It is bigger than the dungeon cell!” Sunny said. “And more cozy, somehow.”

“Thanks!” Pipp replied. “I decorated it myself!”

Izzy trotted towards a large plant in a corner and inspected the pot. “Ooh! How’d you make the swirly lines?”

“Oh, I didn’t… I had that one commissioned,” Pipp said.

Izzy then looked up at the silk curtains with embroidered gold flowers. “And these? These look so cool!”

Pipp cleared her throat. “Yes, that, uh, everything in here’s bought, Izzy. I didn’t make anything.”

“Oh,” Izzy blinked, not missing her smile. “Well, I still think your room is really pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“So,” Hitch said as he left his backpack by the entrance. “What’s the plan now?”

Pipp turned her head at him so fast Sunny heard some pops coming from it. “Woah, there! You can’t sleep here!”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Pipp said with a roll of her eyes. “You are a stallion, and I am a princess. Do you have any idea of how my Pippsqueaks will react if I have a stallion sleep in my room with me?”

Hitch blinked. “But we’ve camped together already. Wouldn’t it be the same?”

“No!”

Zipp giggled and tapped Hitch’s head with the tip of her wing. “You’d think there’d be more going on in that head of yours.”

“What?” Hitch asked.

“It’s not a good idea that rumors start appearing about a stallion sleeping in the same room as a princess,” Zipp explained. “But since I’m sleeping here, you can use my chambers. Come on, dude, I’ll tell the guards to let you in.”

Hitch made a face, but grabbed his backpack and followed Zipp to the hallway. When the door closed behind them, Sunny stepped next to Pipp. “Is it really that bad that he sleeps here even after what we’ve been through as a group?”

Pipp’s frown quickly turned into a grin. “Oh, my guards are so loyal to me, I could steal my mom’s crown in front of them and they wouldn’t say a thing.”

“Ok… That’s disturbing.”

“I’m not worried about rumors,” Pipp continued. “Not really, anyway. It was just an excuse for those two to have some alone time.”

Sunny cocked her head. “Alone time? For what?”

Pipp deadpanned at her. “Come on. You know why.”

While Sunny tried to think of a reason, Izzy hopped next to her and raised a hoof. “Oh! I know! They want to come up with a secret hoofshake!”

Pipp looked at Izzy with the same glare before she huffed. “Come on, girls, I can’t be the only one to notice the tension between those two?” Sunny gave Izzy a glance, and received a confused one in return, making Pipp let out an exasperated sigh. “Honestly, what did I expect from a pair of airheads?”

“Hey!” Sunny protested.

“It’s not an earth pony slur!” Pipp said with a little stomp. “But seriously, how come you haven’t seen it? I’ve barely been in the same city as Zipp and I noticed!”

“Noticed what?” Sunny insisted. Why was Pipp so angry?

Pipp looked up at the ceiling and took a long, deep breath. She then chuckled and looked at Sunny with a smile. “You know what? I’ll let you figure it out on your own.” And with that, she hopped onto her bed and took her phone from under her wing.

Sunny frowned, and she couldn't help but feel like Pipp was insulting her somehow. She didn't like feeling like this, because Pipp was a good pony and a good friend, but all those slights were starting to get under her skin. Maybe it was better if she simply let it go.

"By the way, Pipp, I've been meaning to ask," Sunny said. "How exactly does that phone of yours work?"

Pipp looked up from her phone. "Hm? Oh, it's quite easy, really. Here." She hoofed the device to Sunny. "Put your hoof on the tracker."

Sunny accepted the phone and looked at the large oval-shaped space on the back. Like many things in Zephyr Heights, it had the shape of a hoof. Sunny placed her hoof on it and felt a soft click. She lifted her leg and the phone came with it, securely attached to her toe and heel.

"Ok." Pipp said, nudging the phone so Sunny would look at the screen. "Now, what you want to do is press your sole a bit on the upper side." Sunny did so, and a heart drawing moved upward from the middle of the screen. "Good, now press with the bottom of your sole." Once more, the little heart moved downward.

"Ohh, this is so cool!" Izzy said, having moved to Sunny's side to look.

"Yeah," Sunny agreed. She moved her sole around, pressing in circles, and watched the heart follow her movements on the screen. "I thought the hoof sensors were incredible, but this is on a whole different level!"

Pipp puffed out her chest, practically shoving her fluff on Sunny's face. "Yeah, it's totes better than before. Anyway, you seem to be getting the hang of it. Now move the cursor to the camera icon."

"Move the what now?"

Pipp rolled her eyes. "The heart."

"Oh, ok." Doing her best not to stare at Pipp's admittedly puffy fluff, Sunny made the little heart drawing get on the drawing of a camera.

"Good, now double tap on it," Pipp said. "That is, quickly press your sole two times on the upper side."

Sunny did so, and instead of having the heart move upward, the camera drawing wobbled a little before the whole screen went black. A second later, she was looking at herself on the screen, and… Was that how she looked from below? She didn’t think her snout looked that wide?

"If you double up—that means tap with the upper sole—you will take a picture. To get out of the camera app, you have to double down."

Sunny was about to take a photograph, but then an idea occurred to her. This could be Pipp's phone, but Sunny wanted her first picture to not be herself. So, she moved the phone until Izzy appeared on the screen. Izzy immediately smiled and brought a hoof around Sunny's neck, bringing her close and pressing their cheeks together with a soft squeak.

It was then, with a slight blush and a thundering heart, that Sunny's first ever photograph with a phone was of Izzy and herself.

"Good, you're a natural," Pipp said, eyes glittering. "To release the tracker, simply push down your heel until you feel a click. But be careful, because the phone can fall down pretty easily."

Sunny nodded and pushed her heel, feeling said click, and immediately felt the phone get loose on her hoof. She quickly gave it back to Pipp, fearing it'd fall and break.

Pipp hoofed it to Izzy and taught her how to operate it while Sunny simply sat on her haunches. She glanced at Izzy's face of concentration and couldn't help but smile when she stuck out her tongue and narrowed her eyes. Gosh, she was beautiful.

"Alright," said Zipp as she opened the door. "As long as Hitch doesn't open the windows, he should be fine. Can we—"

"Oh!" Izzy exclaimed, looking at Pipp. "You meant they wanted to make out!"

Everypony looked at her, and Sunny saw Pipp's cheeks redden a little as she side-glanced at a very confused Zipp.

"What are you talking about?" Zipp asked, glancing between them.

"Feather Fall!" Pipp blurted out as soon as Izzy opened her mouth, her fluff flattening as though to mask the sag in her shoulders. "She and Cloud Phase wanted to make out, even though they deny it. You know how celebrities are."

Her fake laugh afterwards made Zipp narrow her eyes, but she ended up rolling her eyes and closing the door behind her. "I thought Feather Fall was married?"

Pipp shook her head. "You need to pay more attention to celeb gossip, Zipp."

Zipp walked in and sat on the floor. "No, I don't. Ponies' personal lives aren't my business."

"If you say so," Pipp said, then recovered her phone from Izzy.

"I do say so," Zipp replied, and Pipp only rolled her eyes as Zipp continued. "We have a lot of more important things to do than care about who is partying with whom and which ponies stopped hanging out."

"Uh-huh," Pipp said and simply kept looking at her phone, her hoof a golden blur behind it.

"Speaking of which, did you read the report of the patrols after the wave?"

Pipp put her phone down. "Who do you take me for? I even made a video about it!"

Zipp snorted. "Of course you did."

"It was a safety video, Zipp!" Pipp delicately stomped a hoof on the plush. "I didn’t even use my branding or anything."

"What report?" Sunny burst, having lost against her curiosity.

Zipp looked at her. "After the magic wave, pegasi flying skills basically up and vanished, and many ponies ended up at the bottom of the chasms, most of them being foals and the elderly."

"Very sad," Pipp said, voice soft and eyes low.

"Wait, what do you mean it vanished?" Sunny asked, eyes wide. That was a very odd statement, considering the pegasi she had seen used any excuse to take to the skies. She thought she would've noticed if they couldn't fly. But if both her feathered friends were this shaken…

"Well, not completely," Zipp replied. "You know how two unicorns could lift that huge tram when magic returned?" Sunny nodded. "Now, Izzy, could you pull that off again?"

Izzy perked up. "Nope!" She then hopped onto the bed, making Pipp fly an inch and almost drop her phone. "Most I can levitate now is a parasol."

Zipp waved her hoof towards Izzy. "Something similar happened to us pegasi. Suddenly, no matter how hard we flapped our wings, flying just took so much more effort. That's why many ponies ended up in the chasms."

"Oh," Sunny said. "Sorry to hear that."

"It's ok," Zipp said. "We can still glide pretty easily. Nopony got seriously hurt, fortunately. But we did have to organize a massive search party."

Sunny raised a hoof. "So, that's the reason your mom had you come back for a week?"

Pipp perked up and shot her face to Zipp, who only glanced at her before letting out a chuckle. "Yep, that's it. Anyway, what do you girls say we get some sleep? The Heart of the Brave isn't very far, but the desert can be really tough."

"Yeah," Pipp said, and Sunny thought she sounded angry for some reason. "Let's."

They all climbed on Pipp's very large bed. Pipp and Izzy claimed the spaces by the headrest, while Zipp and Sunny got the ones by the bottom end. Fortunately, there were so many pillows in the room that no one was left lacking comfort.

As the lights were turned off and they lay down, Sunny couldn't help but notice some tension between Zipp and Pipp. But they shared some goodnight wishes, even smiling at each other, so maybe Sunny was overthinking it.

Sunny wasn't sure how much time she spent staring at the wall. Like Izzy, she had never been at a sleepover. Hitch and Sprout had never been allowed to stay at her place, nor had she ever been invited to their houses. Well, Hitch did ask if he could stay that one time, before his mother dragged him out the door ear-first. And after her dad passed away… Well, she just hadn't thought about it.

She didn't know how to feel about it. Perhaps she was thinking too much. Perhaps—

She felt something rest on her torso. She lifted her head and looked back, only to find Izzy's smile two inches away. Sunny's breath caught in her throat as she looked at Izzy's sleeping face. She really didn't have any reservations about snuggling with other ponies.

Sunny laid her head down and gulped, burying what might have been a giggle at Izzy’s twitching snout. If she had been restless before, now she was sure she was not going to get any sleep.

At least Izzy's warmth felt nice. Maybe this was how she could sense sparkles…

~~~~~~~~

With exactly zero hours of proper sleep—Izzy was not only a snuggler, but a very shifty one. And the way her hooves twitched was too adorable—and her heart just short of giving up from exhaustion, Sunny followed Zipp and Pipp onto the hall, where they found Hitch waiting near a bored-looking guard, and to the dining hall so they could grab breakfast before heading out.

The large room was very similar to the halls, with white tall walls and golden corners and details. The table in the middle was also white and gold, and it was large enough to sit about twenty ponies. Big potted plants decorated the corners and some hung from the ceiling. Food had already been served, for what Sunny could smell. Two guards at each side of the double doors allowed them entrance and bowed at their princesses. One of them, Sunny recognized, was one of the two that had captured her and Izzy on her first visit.

As Sunny sat down where she could see the huge windows on the other side of the room, she took notice of the absolute feast that had been prepared. More surprising was that she barely recognized some things. Those shimmery lumps of gold were definitely baked potatoes with butter, her nose could tell her, and that to her right was definitely a watermelon sculpture of Pipp. Right in front of her was a huge bowl of salad of some kind.

With Izzy to her right, Hitch to her left, and Zipp and Pipp in front, Sunny started considering what to eat first.

“This all looks yummy!” Izzy said as she levitated what appeared to be a slice of pie onto her plate.

A strange sound came from behind, and everypony turned towards the green pegasus stallion that guarded the door. He had the most stoic expression Sunny had ever seen on a pony. However, his shifty legs gave away it had been him who had made that sound.

“Is something wrong, Acting Wingpony Thunder?” Zipp asked.

The stallion somehow squared up even more. “It was nothing, Your Highness! Just an impulse, your highness!”

“Uh-huh,” Zipp said, glaring at the guard with lidded eyes and the faintest frown. “In any case, I suggest you learn how to control your impulses if you ever want to make it to Flying Wingpony.”

“Understood, Your Highness!”

Sunny looked between the two for a moment, then leaned over the table towards Zipp. “What happened?”

However, it was Pipp who replied. “Oh, Izzy just broke this silly rule that royals always eat first.” She waved a hoof and put her phone under her wing. “It’s always bothered me, honestly. I can never use my phone while dining.”

“You really shouldn’t,” Zipp said with a glare.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Izzy said, then pushed her plate away from herself.

“No, no,” Zipp told Izzy with a smile. “Pipp is right in saying it’s a silly rule. Besides, you’re our friends. Ranks be damned. So, eat to your heart’s content, Izzy.”

Izzy smiled and pulled her plate closer again.

The rest of the breakfast was uneventful. Sunny tried the salad, which nearly burst her ears with pure sweetness—before fading to a delightful fizz in her cheeks by the end of the third serving she helped herself to. The grape juice was also fabulously flavored as well. It occurred to her that she could use some pegasi ideas to spice up her smoothies! She’d have to ask either Pipp or Zipp to let her have an audience with their chef.

An hour later, Sunny joined her friends to the western side of the palace, having donned the strange-looking saddles Zipp insisted they wore. The city disappeared behind her, and the brown sands of the desert expanded to the north, challenging her to even set hoof on them.

“So, I’ve got a question,” Hitch said as they got to the cliff, where a tall railing had thankfully been erected. “If you live so close to the desert, how do you grow your food?”

Zipp used a wing to point towards the city. “Crops are planted in the south and southeast. The land to the east is pretty fertile too, but it’s a bit too close to Bridlewood, so it was ignored for generations. Hopefully, we can sign a mutually beneficial agreement and start growing things there soon.”

“Huh,” Hitch said. “And doesn’t it get too hot in here?”

“You know, I’ve heard many earth ponies ask the same question,” Pipp said with a cocked head. “You don’t hang around mountains much, do you?”

“Our city is near the sea, so…”

Zipp giggled and patted Hitch’s back with her wing. “This canyon rises about seven thousand hooves above sea level. We get pretty dry summers, but not very hot ones.”

“Actually, I think Maretime Bay is way hotter,” Pipp said, tapping at her phone with an uninterested-looking face. “All that humidity can’t possibly be good for your furs.”

“I think it’s very nice,” Izzy chipped in. “Bridlewood can get pre-tty cold in the winter, and I bet spending it on the beach will be super awesome.”

Sunny felt her stomach heat up at the thought of spending Bountivale with Izzy. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, all things considered, but just having it been said out loud was enough to make her feel butterflies. She could almost taste the rich, hearty food they would share and feel the toasty warmth of the fire surely by their side. The heat reached her cheeks. And the soft, snuggly fur cuddled against her under downy blankets…

The sound of hooves approaching ended the conversation, and the group turned towards a small procession of guards, headed by Queen Haven, who looked a lot better from the last time Sunny had seen her. She had been a great help in setting up the Pony Congress, and the fact that she was Queen only sped up the process of creating the very first pact of non-aggression between earth ponies and pegasi, as well as drafting a very nifty free trade agreement that, according to Zipp, was very close to being approved.

The Queen stopped, and the guards stomped their hooves behind her. She looked behind her, then leaned over as if conspiratively. “Are you sure you don’t want a squadron to escort you?”

“This isn’t a pilgrimage, Mom,” Zipp replied with a roll of her eyes.

“At least take a section, or two squads,” Queen Haven insisted, then waved behind her. “Two squads would be—”

“Mother,” Zipp said forcefully, squaring her shoulders and sticking out her chest, making her fluff puff a bit, and, while smaller than Pipp’s, it had a very nice curve downward and Sunny shouldn’t probably be focusing on that. “We’ll be fine on our own. It’s just some recon.”

Queen Haven straighetened up and sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m just… No, I’ll let you handle it how you best see fit.” She cleared her throat, then spoke loudly. “Bringers of Magic, I, Queen Haven the Third, see you off to your journey to The Heart of the Brave on your quest to restore Equestria’s glory. May you succeed and bring forth a new era of prosperity for ponykind.”

Feeling everypony’s eyes on her, Sunny squared up and nodded. “We’ll do our best, Your Majesty.”

With a nod of approval, a guard stepped forward and to the cliff. Without taking her gaze off the horizon, she thrust a hoof into the railing with a deft twist and a pronounced click. Sunny could only blink as the railing swung out into the abyss, her jaw widening to match as it unveiled the tallest set of stairs she had ever seen in her life, going all the way down to the desert below.

“Ah, you— We’re not going down these, are we?” Hitch asked as he pointed a shaky hoof towards the stairs. Sunny shared his apprehension.

Zipp smiled at him and playfully swatted him over the head with a wing. “This is the fastest route. The only other way is to go south and around the city. It’ll take a good two extra days.”

“Don’t worry,” Pipp said, beaming as she took a photo of herself with the desert behind her. How did she keep pulling her phone out without Sunny noticing? “The stairs are very solid. We may be able to glide, but part of the pilgrimage’s ritual is to walk all the way to The Heart of the Brave, so we keep these old things in good shape!”

“But, if you’re too apprehensive,” Zipp said, walking to Hitch’s right, eyes heavily lidded. “Pipp and I can walk on the cliff side, and you three walk near the wall.”

Sunny found herself nodding fervently along with Hitch.

Izzy, who didn’t seem to mind heights at all, walked in front of Sunny, joined by Pipp. Sunny barely held her gasp as the unicorn pronked within the first dozen steps, but she landed safely. With a loud, but soft, springy noise that somehow soothed her nerves. Hitch walked behind her, and Zipp was to their right, positioned closer to Hitch, leaving Sunny an almost unobstructed sight of the endless desert—and seemingly endless fall—below. So the only other direction she could responsibly look at was right in front of her… straight at Izzy’s perkily swaying tail.

She… She didn’t realize when they had reached the bottom. Until Izzy turned to smile reassuringly at Hitch, who had apparently stopped the group twice to gather his bearings. Sunny fought the urge to bury her face into the sand, settling to tell herself that her cheeks weren’t obviously red. No. At least Izzy’s smile made everything seem okay…

“Well, I was planning to say the easy part was done for,” Zipp said with a small chuckle, as Hitch ran his hoof tenderly through the sand, chest heaving. “But I guess this would be the worst for you.”

Pipp flapped her wings a couple of times. “Don’t make fun of him.” She snorted, lip jutting. “Even we were scared the first time we climbed them down.”

“I think the view was amazing!” Izzy said chirpily, and her energy just put a smile on Sunny’s face. And a flush to her cheeks—she had certainly enjoyed the view.

Hitch huffed, his hooves finally still. “I’m beginning to think you’re the bravest of us all, Izzy.”

“Well,” Zipp said, taking out a large tube from a hidden compartment on the wall near the stairs. “Brave or not, the sun won’t care, so let’s suit up.” She pressed a button on the tube and it suddenly became a parasol. With expertise, Zipp placed it on her saddle. Everypony followed suit.

Pipp opened another compartment, and she took a large box from it. Inside, there were a few dozen canteens. “Take four, each of you,” she instructed as she attached the canteens to the straps of her saddle. “You really don’t want to underestimate the heat.”

Zipp snorted, smirking. “Yeah, don’t follow Pipp's hoofsteps.”

“Shut up,” Pipp muttered while her cheeks reddened.

“So, how far away is The Heart of the Brave?” Hitch asked as he swiftly attached the canteens to his saddle.

Zipp hummed. “About four hours away. Maybe five if we take it easy.”

“That’s… quite far,” Sunny said. “Shouldn’t we have brought food?” She shuddered at the memory of that near-death battle for the one apple. Hearing Izzy almost growl at her like that… It was dumb—Izzy was a unique and special and rounded and adult mare—but it still felt wrong to her.

Pipp giggled. “Don’t worry, Sunny. Oases are pretty large and there are many fruit trees there.”

Sunny didn’t know whether to be surprised or not. She had never left Maretime Bay until two weeks ago, so she supposed she could simply appreciate what the world had to offer.

The walk to The Heart of the Brave was different than anything Sunny had experienced before. While she was no stranger to sand, the desert had a way of being oppressive despite it basically being one open field. There barely was any wind, and when it breezed it was too hot and hard on Sunny’s throat. It stretched on into endless nothing, yet that nothing sat brutally on her back. Zipp and Pipp had warned them to cover their mouths with cloths, and only when she swallowed burning hot sand did Sunny heed their advice.

A few hours into their journey, they saw a couple of guards coming from the opposite direction. Instead of armor, they wore billowing fabric that covered their entire bodies, leaving only the eyes and hooves out. Sunny could only tell they were guards because of the insignias they wore and the large spears they carried. They briefly stopped to bow to Zipp and Pipp and continued on their way.

“I thought the oasis would be deserted,” Izzy said, then giggled at her own pun.

“Oh, it isn’t,” Zipp said. “We may use it every few decades for the coronation ritual, but that doesn’t mean we’ll simply leave it unattended. We grow food there, after all, and it always pays to have the paths clear and well maintained.”

Pipp, who had brought a small fan and was pointing it at her neck, hummed. “We also feared unicorns would discover it and try to take it, hence the guards.”

Zipp chuckled forcefully. “Yeah! Uh… No offense, Izzy.”

Izzy’s eyes twinkled, her smile warmer than the sand. “None taken!”

“So,” Hitch chimed in. “I’ve been wondering. Why do you do the coronation ritual so far from the city?” Hitch paused as two princesses raised their brows to his mockery of their traditions. “Uh… just that, wouldn’t it be easier to simply do it at the palace?”

Zipp snorted and smiled. “Well, yeah, it’d be easier. But it’s sort of a family tradition combined with a trial of sorts.”

“A family tradition?” Sunny asked. She then grabbed her notebook and a pen to write everything down.

Zipp rolled her eyes, still smiling. “Records have it that the first Queen of the Pegasi, Zephyrina the First, crossed the desert to find a new place to live after the unicorns had decimated the ancient, lost city of Cloudsdale,” she explained, before her mouth snapped closed. Her eyes flicked to Izzy, who was bouncing ahead of them to a tune of her own making. And never missed a beat. Allowing herself a smile, Zipp turned back to Sunny. “She had a broken wing, so she couldn’t fly, and so all her subjects accompanied her on the ground.”

“But why cross the desert?” Izzy asked.

Zipp shrugged. “What records we have say that the unicorns had erected some sort of magical wall, and pegasi didn’t really have many other options.” Zipp shook her head. “Anyway, they crossed the desert in complete silence, knowing that it could be their last march. They spent three days and two nights walking, not really knowing where they were going. Then they found a large, green area right in the middle of this sandy wasteland.”

“The oasis,” Sunny ventured.

Zipp nodded. “Yep! Right when they thought they wouldn’t make it, they found The Heart of the Brave. They restocked on water and food and continued their march until they found the canyon where they founded the new pegasus city.”

“That’s pretty impressive,” Hitch said, getting a chuckle out of Zipp.

“So, when Zephyrina passed away, her daughter, Queen Mistralia the First, walked all the way to the oasis to honor her memory and bravery. Because of that it became known as The Heart of the Brave, and it became tradition to walk there for the coronation.”

Sunny finished writing and put her notebook in her bag. “That’s a really cool story, Zipp.”

“Heh, yeah, I guess it is.”

“So,” Hitch said, smirking as a brow rose. “You were named after that queen?”

Zipp’s cheeks turned pink. “Well…”

“Wait, your name is Zephyrina?” Izzy asked. “That’s a really cool name!”

“It’s not that cool,” Zipp replied with an uneasy chuckle. “And not that uncommon, either. I’ll be the fifth, you know.”

Pipp cocked her head, her own smirk sharpening. “How come Izzy didn’t know, but you did, Hitch?”

Now it was Hitch’s turn to blush. “Well, I, uh…”

“Hey, look!” Zipp said suddenly, pointing a hoof forward. “We’ve arrived!”

Sunny followed the hoof’s direction, and there, in the distance, if she squeezed her eyes and maybe used a bit of her imagination, she could see a very tiny green spot in the horizon.

“That’s still an hour away, Zipp,” Pipp said with a smile. “It can hardly be said we arrived.”

“It means we didn’t get lost, though!” Zipp said and quickened her pace. “Come on, you bunch of snails! Adventure awaits!” And with that, Zipp broke into a sprint.

“You’re going to pass out!” Pipp called out, eyes wide, but Zipp didn’t listen.

Sunny felt her stomach beat faster at the notion of getting close to their objective, smiling despite the sheer heat. What were they going to find there, and where would it take them? It was like that night in the chasms all over again! And yet…

Sunny found her smile fading.

She doubted they’d simply show up and the crystals would instantly return all magic. After all, reuniting them had been useless without the key element of unity.

Chapter III - Expanding World

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Chapter 3: Expanding World

The Heart of the Brave covered the horizon with thick foliage of vibrant green trees. The transition from desert to oasis felt like going from one house to another. Even the air was humid instead of dry, which was good, because Zipp and Pipp had finished all their water, and Izzy had needed Sunny to lend her one of her two canteens left.

Two guards stood at either side of the large cobblestone path that started at a very off-looking sign that read ‘Welcome to The Heart of the Brave’. Sunny had honestly not expected to see a sign in the middle of the desert or a path that reminded her of Syrup Avenue back in Maretime Bay.

The guards bowed to their princesses, but otherwise didn’t move or say anything as the group entered the oasis. Sunny felt her hooves lightening with every step across the greenery. It was off.. Her hooves were still sore and her legs still definitely ached, but it was as though some… core was filling, replenishing to keep her upright through all of it. Izzy, on the other hoof, looked about to pass out.

“Do you need help, Izzy?” Sunny asked.

“I’m ok,” Izzy replied with a raspy voice. “Just… tired.”

Pipp gave Izzy a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Izzy. The crowning site isn’t much farther. Just fifteen more minutes.”

Izzy groaned pitifully, her head hanging low, her ears dropped.

Sunny looked towards the path, then back at Izzy, and took a deep breath. She placed herself in front of Izzy and stopped. Izzy, head drooping straight down, softly collided with her, then lifted her head to see what she had hit. Her eyes were barely open.

“Hop on in,” Sunny said, nodding to her back. “I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

Izzy’s eyes opened wide. “Oh, I’m ok! You don’t have to—”

But Sunny interrupted by quickly walking to Izzy’s side, ducking below the mare and hefting her on her back. Izzy let out the cutest surprised… something Sunny had ever heard. More of an ‘eyoop’ than anything with a real name. Uniquely, perfectly Izzy. “Take a nap, get some rest.” And with that, she resumed her walking among her friends, all casting her variously intrigued looks.

Hitch gave her the smuggiest of grins. “Smooth.”

“Shut up,” she whispered to him. Izzy finally let herself relax, and Sunny blushed at how comfortable the larger mare’s weight felt on her. And how the air became suddenly… minty in her mouth. Hitch’s smile only grew, and she decided to ignore him.

Even with the comfortable touch of grasses under her hooves, Sunny couldn’t shake a sense of… difference about the place. The foliage wasn’t nearly as thick as a forest like Bridlewood, maybe because of the strange collection of plants Zipp had called ‘cacti’ that lined the path, almost decorative in their straightness, while more familiar trees like palms and fruit trees extended beyond. The sun still hit hard, but the trees provided a fresher shadow than the parasol.

Very soon, on the horizon, Sunny could see a rather small mountain—more a hill, if with steep sides—that rose above the trees. It looked like it was made of sharp rocks, with small brown plants and the occasional patch of grass covering it. It somehow looked strange against the rest of the oasis, even if it was Sunny’s first time in one.

After a while, just like Pipp had said, they arrived at a wide clearing of pristine green grass where a large block of rock stood at the center like an atrium. Beautiful flowers in hues Sunny had never seen before grew in neat circles around it. All of it was surrounded by a narrow river that seemed to run underground from and around the base of the hill, which rose right behind the atrium, casting a large shadow that chilled the air.

“Well, we’re here,” Zipp announced as she crossed the tiny bridge between the clearing and the rest of the oasis. “What do you say we take a break?”

They all nodded, and Sunny carefully helped Izzy to the ground, where the mare stretched her four legs towards the air and grunted. Sunny heard pops coming from her limbs, wondering how she could sound both burdened and yet lighter than air on her ears. Pipp sat by the atrium-like rock and took a photo of herself with the hill behind her, although from this close, it looked more like a steep rock wall. Hitch, on his part, inspected one of the bright pink flowers near the river.

“Are you feeling better, Izzy?” Sunny asked as Izzy rolled this way and the other, limbs flopping over herself, smiling.

“Hmm yeah,” Izzy replied with a sigh, mane whisking out of her eyes. “Thanks for the ride. It was just what I needed.”

“No problem.”

Zipp walked up next to Sunny, smirking. “With how much you bounce everywhere, one would’ve thought you’d have more stamina than this, Izzy.”

Izzy kept smiling as she rolled over onto her stomach, legs stretched as far as she could. “This grass feels nice,” she chirped, smoothing it down a hoof and humming sweetly.

“So, what do we do now?” Pipp said as she placed her phone under her wing. “Do you want to eat first before taking out the crystals?”

Sunny nodded, feeling a low rumbling in her stomach. “We don’t know what will happen, so I vote for having lunch now.”

With a unanimous vote, they began setting up. Zipp and Pipp flew to the trees to gather fruit, while Hitch and Sunny laid down the blanket Hitch had been carrying. Izzy, breathing ever so slightly more easily, rolled onto her stomach and lit up her horn, helping the pegasi grab some fruit and levitate it towards the blanket.

They ate in relative silence. While Zipp and Pipp were used to the trek, the other three of the group were left exhausted and famished. Izzy, especially, had not moved from her spot on the grass and simply let her magic bring the juicy treats to her mouth to ever louder hums. Sunny delicately chewed her lip, wishing she too could simply lie down and let magic do things for her.

As they finished, Sunny felt a shift of sorts in the expressions of her friends. Tighter. More glances to their surroundings. There was an air of expectation and nervousness. She couldn’t blame them—her own heart had been thundering the whole day, beyond her efforts. With a silent agreement from everypony, Sunny placed her saddle on the blanket and gently took out the Unity Crystals, as they had begun to call them. Ever since Fluttershy and that Discord creature had appeared a few days ago, Sunny had found herself being more and more delicate with them. After all, they had mentioned Twilight Sparkle herself had created them. Her hero and role model had given her life to give ponykind a last chance. They were desperately important!

Sunny carefully placed them down on the blanket, assembling them in their unified form. The group watched them for a few seconds. Nothing happened.

“Maybe we should stop expecting them to magically activate just by putting them together,” Hitch said.

“Oh! Try giving a speech!” Izzy suggested with a raised hoof, smile at full beam. “That seemed to work last time!”

Zipp chuckled. “I don’t think they need speeches,” she said, gently tapping her hoof to her chin.

“Last time it worked after Sunny convinced the three races to work together,” Pipp said. “Maybe we should try replicating that?”

“But we’re already working together,” Sunny replied with a frown, hoof tapping on the ground. “We all want magic to return completely.” She glared at the inert crystals. Fluttershy had said they’d know what to do, but Sunny didn’t need to look at her friends to know that nopony had any ideas. She idly placed a hoof on the Earth Pony crystal, wishing she had more to go than cryptic clues.

“So why aren’t they working now?” Hitch asked.

Sunny shook her head. “I don’t know… But we didn’t even need to put them together last time, just… work together as ponies…” Sunny hummed, raising a hoof to her chin. “What if they just wanted us to be friends for longer?”

A dim glow passed through the three crystals in a circular wave from her hoof. Izzy gasped, having seen what had happened.

“What does that mean?” Zipp asked. “Do they really want us to just bond here? Right now?”

Pipp tapped an end of the Pegasus crystal. Nothing happened. “I don’t think that’s it. Friendship can’t be forced.” Sunny blinked and Pipp rounded on her so quickly it may have been audible. “What? I may not have been into all these old legends, but I know ponies, Sunny!” She grinned, and Sunny countered with a softer, more sheepish one of her own. “Besides,” Pipp continued, “it’s pretty obvious just how counterproductive it’d be to make anyone bond, let alone us.” At that, another glow flowed from her hoof to the rest of the crystals. She gasped.

“We’re on to something,” Hitch announded, lowering his head to inspect the Earth Pony crystal. “They do want us to do something or… Or to understand something.” He carefully placed his hoof next to Sunny’s, touching the Earth Pony crystal. “But it does have to do with our friendship.”

Zipp was next in touching the other end of the Pegasus crystal. “They glowed when Sunny mentioned the amount of time we’ve been friends, and again when Pipp said we shouldn’t force things.”

Hitch nodded. “Maybe they want us to think about the future? Just because we get along doesn’t mean we’ll be friends forever?” A third glow shot in a circular fashion from his hoof, and he grinned. Sunny… tried to. She did, but she couldn’t stop the sudden weight in her chest at just how easily that had come to him.

Hitch was a practical pony. That was all, she could remind herself.

“Maybe,” Izzy said with a smile, tapping the Unicorn crystal. “Maybe it has to do less with questioning our friendship, and more with searching for ways to improve it.” She looked at a wave of sparkling glow shooting from her hoof, igniting a peal of giggles from the unicorn.

Sunny felt herself stand taller as her cheeks bunched. That was far more like it!

“Yeah…” Zipp said, eyes scanning the ground. “Just…” Her lips tweaked. “Just because Pipp and I are sisters, it doesn’t mean we’re friends.” She looked at her sister, and got in return a wide, confused stare. “We don’t always get along, and we both say things to each other that we regret. But we’ve managed to overcome many hardships!" With a deep sigh, she shuffled closer to Pipp until they were nearly touching, hoof determinedly resting on the crystal. “You were right,” she squeaked, gently extending a wing to wrap it wholly around her sister’s barrel. “I didn’t apologize properly for abandoning you in the spotlight two weeks ago. But that ends now, and I’m truly, truly sorry. I love you, Pipp.” Blinking rapidly, she flicked her eyes away from her sister’s. “I don’t think I say that enough.”

Pipp was the only one to ignore the glow that shot from Zipp’s hoof. She looked away in the other direction, eyes hidden behind her mane. “I’m sorry for being so angry at you. I just… I felt so betrayed when I saw you leaving with strangers instead of helping me…” She pushed herself against Zipp, who tightened her wing around her fiercely but gently. “I mean, I even get why you did it, you didn’t really have any other way and you were right, but…” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I don’t think I can forgive you just yet, but…” She turned to look at Zipp and smiled. “Thank you.”

Hitch shook his head and closed his eyes. “I… I also have something to say.” He looked at Sunny, and she felt a chill run down her spine. No… Hitch had always been there for her! “I wasn’t the best friend to you, Sunny. All those years trying to convince ponies that unity was the way… Not only did I never quite believe you, but I didn’t exactly stop anyone else from going against you.” He sighed, eyes very deliberately pulling away from Sunny. “All those times Sprout disrupted playtime…” His shoulders rose again with another firm jet of air. “And it’s not like I was on-board when we were recovering the crystals. Even though I had heard everything you ever said about them, I still spent half the trip sniping at you.” Slowly, he glanced at the rest of the group in turn, lingering a heartbeat longer on Zipp. “All of you … I’m sorry.”

Sunny mouthed silently for a moment. She hadn’t even thought about it. Had Hitch been hiding that this whole time? She let her eyes fall closed, lips pursing. Even if he hadn’t fully believed her… he never stopped her. And he had never let her down. Not once. Besides… she had thought he was wrong, too. “I… It’s ok, Hitch. I don’t blame you.”

He smiled, and she smiled with him. She then looked at Izzy, only to find her looking down. Izzy was still smiling, but… something cold lay deep in those shimmering eyes. “What’s wrong, Izzy?”

Izzy looked up at her with wide eyes, as though she hadn’t just looked like a lost puppy. She then noticed everypony looking at her, and she sighed. “It’s just… I mean… I never had friends, growing up back in Bridlewood…” she paused, voice wobbly and eyes shimmering. “I don’t know how to deepen bonds, or even make them in the first place!” She sniffled and Sunny felt something shatter. “I feel like I’m not going to be of much use…”

Sunny felt a knot in her throat, and she leaned over, forcing herself not to scowl. “Don’t say that, Izzy!” She pressed her free hoof against Izzy’s, heart soaring at the jump in the unicorn’s brows. “You’re our friend! We’re all learning new things here!” She nodded firmly. “You’ll learn from us just as much as we’ll learn from you.”

As the others nodded and gave Izzy words of encouragement, Sunny repressed the urge to pounce at her unicorn friend and hug her. Izzy was a happy mare, and seeing her down was… well it just felt wrong. Yes, she was her own mare with her own troubles and worries and strife, but was it so wrong to want to shield her from all that? Or at least be there for her through it?. To want to scoop her aside and snuggle her and tell her how wonderful she was and— Not the time, she chastised herself.

Her internal musings were interrupted by the glow of the crystals, which seemed to have become continuous after Zipp had apologized to Pipp. Sunny had initially thought it had just been more waves, or maybe the reflection of the sun, but it now was too strong to ignore. And her friends seemed to think so too, as they all stopped talking and narrowed their eyes to just keep looking at the crystals.

They glowed, and as seconds passed, the light they emitted shone brighter and more colorful, so much that Sunny had to close her eyes. She almost retrieved her hoof to cover them as her eyes ached from the sheet intensity of the glare, but she refused to stop touching the crystals. Instead, she turned her face away, hoping her friends would do the same.

A huge tremor shook the earth beneath their hooves, forcing Sunny to the ground and away from the crystals. Yelps and cries filled her ears as everypony fell. The ground vibrated below and yet somehow below itself, and Sunny heard a sound that was only vaguely real, but she couldn’t bring herself to imagine what might cause it as the world itself shook.

Sunny felt her whole body tingle, much in the same way it had felt when Discord had made his presence known at the Pony Congress. She briefly wondered what it meant, but then the light subsided, and she dared open her eyes. Her first instinct was to look for the crystals… Only to see that they had disappeared.

“What happened?!” She cried, feeling her heart skip a beat and her stomach heat up. No... What would this mean for magic?

A loud rumbling sound reverberated around her, and it reminded her of the sound her father’s lighthouse had made when Sprout’s contraption had demolished it. Like a ram smashing through stone.

“What was that?” Pipp asked, phone back in her hoof and pointing around.

Zipp had made the sensible idea of taking flight, her wings fluttering her hooves a few inches from the ground. Hitch, for his part, had helped Izzy to her hooves, and was now looking around. Sunny walked up to Izzy.

“I-Is this what was supposed to happen?” Izzy asked, her voice trembling with nervous laughter.

“Watch out!” Zipp yelled, and Sunny turned her head in time to see a small rockslide falling from almost the closest end of the hill to them. Pipp took flight and helped Zipp drag the non-fliers away from the debris. The falling rocks didn’t do much more than raise some dust, but they still needed to be careful.

When the air finally cleared, Pipp returned to the ground settling next to Sunny with lips pursed and eyes rounder than wheels. “Well, that was terrifying,” she breathed out. She had her phone close to her chest, but didn’t seem to be doing anything with it.

Izzy stepped forward and pointed a hoof upwards. “Hey, isn’t that a gemstone?”

Sunny followed the hoof’s direction. There, where the rockslide had started, was a large emerald in the shape of a half circle. It was hard to tell from the distance, but it looked to be as big as the average Earth Pony mare.

“Well, at least something did happen,” Hitch muttered.

“Alright, so we got a crystal,” Zipp said, still hovering over the ground. “Now what?”

Before anypony could think to reply, a hiss of steam gouted from a section of the wall, shooting into the air like an array of horizontal geysers, as if fit to announce royalty itself. Sunny stepped back but the steam, despite bursting out at great speed, quickly raised to the air and dispersed without any further drama. All it managed was to make the environment a lot warmer.

Sunny looked up at the crystal again, and saw a dark spot in its center. A dark spot that centered on her. A dark spot that seemed to follow her eye-line. She felt her stomach fall and her blood freeze as she realized that it was no crystal. “Guys…” She spluttered. She stepped back again on jittery hooves.

“Sunny?” Izzy said, turning to look at her, meeting her hoof. “What’s wrong?”

As everypony looked at her, she simply pointed a hoof at the emerald orb. “That’s not a gemstone.”

Zipp frowned and looked at it. “What do you…” She went silent for a second, brows rocketing skyward. “Hoofness…”

“Is that…” Pipp breathed, dropping her phone and stepping back. “Is that an eye?”

The sound of hooves alerted them to the four guards that arrived galloping from the main path. “Your Highnesses, are you alright?” said one of them.

Another wave of steam shot out from the wall. Sunny stepped closer to Izzy and pressed their shoulders together. She told herself she wanted to reassure Izzy, but she needed the comfort herself. She felt Izzy press against her barrel, a tremor passing through the larger mare.

Then another sound. This time, Sunny thought it was like a hundred ponies galloping on cobblestones. It took her more than she’d be willing to admit to realize that among the thundering noise there were actual words.

“Little… ponies…” The… hill said.

“This can’t be happening…” Pipp squeaked. The guards positioned themselves next to her and Zipp, raising their spears towards the hill.

Another wave of steam. “What… year… is… it…”

Sunny looked at Hitch, who looked back with the same bewildered expression she knew she was sporting herself, jaws both flapping gormlessly. “Uhm… 2246,” she said.

“What?” Zipp asked. “Wasn’t Maretime Bay founded barely 300 years ago? Why does your calendar have more years than ours?”

“We… We still use the Celestial Calendar…” Sunny replied. “It’s one of the reasons my dad started his research on ancient Equestria…”

Izzy piped in with a smile but an uncharacteristically shaky voice. “It’s 567 in Unicorn years.”

The rumbling voice interrupted whatever Zipp was going to say next. “I… see…”

Sunny gulped, but it did nothing to moisten her throat. She took a deep breath and a step forward. “Uhm… Mister Hill? We… We were sent here by Fluttershy. She said we needed to bring the Unity Crystals here to help return Equestria’s glory.”

The very large eye closed for a few seconds, deep lines forming where it had once been, then opened up again with the sound of rock scraping itself, and the pupil focused on her. “The… Unity Crystals?” Another rumbling sound, as though the earth itself might split apart. “They… woke me up…” the voice seemed… harsher, more guttural even at its depth-plumbing pitch, “these crystals?”

Sunny nodded, the quivers dampening in her hooves. This… hill knew about the Crystals! “Y-Yes. We brought them here. Then they shone brightly and disappeared. That’s when you, uhm… woke up.”

Another wave of steam, this time larger and slower, as if it was being dragged out. Sunny could feel the air getting warmer by the second. It was uncomfortable, but not to the point of being painful. “I… Understand…” The hill said, and Sunny thought it sounded… gloomy?

“So…” Izzy leaned in, cheek pressing against Sunny’s. “In ancient Equestria, hills could talk?” she asked in a low voice, probably intended for only Sunny to hear.

The hill, however, heard that. And it rumbled deeply. “I am not… a hill…” Another wave of steam shot from the wall. “I am… a dragon…”

Sunny felt the hairs on her nape and back stand up. “Sorry, what?”

The four guards, doing their best to hide their wobbly knees, stepped in front of each princess. Zipp ignored them as she frowned at the eye. “A dragon? Really? Even if we believed that, how do you explain being here, not eating nor drinking water for, what? A thousand years?”

“Magical… hibernation…” grunted the hill… or dragon. “In order to… protect the Heart… Twilight cast this… spell on me…”

“Twilight Sparkle?” Hitch asked with a raised eyebrow. “Why would she put you to sleep like this?”

More steam came from the wall. It suddenly hit Sunny that this was actually the creature’s breath. Maybe… it truly was a dragon. “I asked her to…”

“What?” Zipp blurted, eyes and wings wide. “Why?”

The hill-slash-dragon took several seconds to reply, the ground rumbling in the near silence. “If only the Heart survived… no creature would know what to do with it… I had to be present… to guide you…”

“Guide us where?” Sunny asked. “How does this help recover Equestria’s magic?”

Another tremor, this time stronger than before. Sunny almost fell as the ground shook beneath her hooves. Where the atrium stood broke, rifts tearing the ground all the way to the circular river, where the water roiled with so much force it was foaming.

The four guards carried Izzy and Sunny to the air, while Zipp and Pipp took Hitch with them, their hooves barely clearing the atrium as it fell apart in a cloud of dust. Moments later, a huge rock broke through the hardened soil, rising like a tent above the clearing. Two more rocks, both of which followed the first one towards the dragon, burst from the ground, lifting the earth and raining dirt and pebbles below.

Only then did Sunny realize the rocks were actually claws. Her jaw nearly hit the churned ground from there. The dragon had caused a whole earthquake by simply lifting three of them. When the dust settled, the dragon’s eye moved to look at the flying ponies.

“You…” Zipp wheezed, blinking rapidly but her eyes never leaving the spot beneath them. “You destroyed the crowning site…”

“Zipp,” Pipp croaked.

But Zipp interrupted her, finally levelling her thunderous gaze on the lone eye. “Do you have any idea how much this place means to us pegasi?!” She yelled. Sunny felt a chill from every strained flap of her wings. “We exist today because of this oasis, and you just…” Her throat caught for a moment, chin trembling before she bared her teeth once more. “How dare you?!”

“Zipp?” Hitch called her, daring to brush a hoof against her barrel. “I understand you’re mad, but maybe take me down before you fight the ancient dragon?”

The dragon breathed out, shooting another wave of steam. “I can only apologize… I did not think I would cause this… commotion… But the Heart needed to be safe… so I buried it… You built upon it…”

Zipp stared at the dragon’s eye for a few seconds, chest heaving, then at his raised claws. With narrowed eyes, she helped Pipp flutter Hitch back to earth, and the guards followed suit, gently lowering Sunny and Izzy.

“Queen Mistralia had the atrium built in this clearing,” Pipp began softly, eyes roving across the destruction, “because it was the prettiest part of the oasis. The perfectly circular river, the beautiful flowers, the emerald grass… It’s…” She glanced at her sister, who could only stare at the ground, propped up by stiff shoulders. “It was very different from the rest of the oasis, there had to be something special about this place.”

The dragon grunted, and it sounded like a landslide. “That something is the Crystal Heart… Even a thousand years later, it still works… drawing the surrounding love and channeling that energy to protect its surroundings… This one place was never burdened by the weather…”

“And you destroyed it…” Zipp muttered, eyes boring into an ornate fragment.

“Crystal!” Izzy exclaimed, beaming. Sunny looked at her, then at the direction Izzy was looking.

There, between the three huge rock-like claws, something shone despite its coating of dirt. A heart-shaped crystal glimmered under the endless sun, yet it’s blue light somehow felt soft and soothing to her eyes. Upon seeing it, Sunny started feeling a tingling wash across her body, calming her, relaxing her. But, in spite of everything, the strangest thing was that the crystal was floating upright, unperturbed of where it was and what was happening, seeming to gleam brighter with every second. As though it were somehow unblemishing itself.

The dragon spread two of his claws, then lowered them carefully, only creating a small cloud of dust. The crystal seemed to rise of its own accord, free to view.

“Alright, so,” Hitch said, walking up to the crystal. “We got a replacement for the Unity Crystals.”

A loud, pained rumbling reverberated throughout the oasis, and Sunny turned to the dragon’s eye, which was completely open, its pupil a thin slit, staring at Hitch. “There is no replacement for Twilight!” The dragon yelled, his voice an explosion in her ears. Sunny started hearing a high pitched bleep, her eyes screwing shut, feeling her stomach lurch through a wave of actual vertigo.

“O-Of course not!” Hitch said, sitting on his haunches and dropping his ears. “I’m talking about the crystals, not about a pony!”

“Twilight is the crystals!” The dragon replied, dirt and pebbles falling from the sides of the hill. Only then did Sunny realize it was underlain by the dragon’s body. The entire, colossal hill. She shuddered.

“T-that can’t be right,” Pipp said, eyes down as she carefully stepped between sharp rocks. “Fluttershine—”

“Fluttershy!” Sunny corrected.

Pipp’s cheek twitched. “She said Twilight created the crystals. She can’t—”

“Can’t be the crystals?” The dragon finished the sentence with a loud hissing sound that resembled a sneer. “You really have been living a magic-free existence for a thousand years, haven’t you?”

“Whatever happened to them, anyway?” Izzy said with a crooked smile. “One moment they were shining and the other, poof!”

The dragon looked at Izzy, and its pupil became a circle as steam came out again, only softer this time. “Twilight’s crystals… They were made to house one of the most powerful spells ever crafted… which would reverse the unwanted effects of magic itself… The only thing they required was true friendship, a show of true unity…”

“So… that ‘unwanted effect’ was that magic was disappearing?” Sunny asked, tapping a hoof. That surely had to be it?

“It is much more complex than that…” The dragon replied. “I’m not familiar enough with the details to explain better, and Twilight herself could barely grasp them… In any case, you used them to reverse the flow of magic, bringing it back to the world. Then you used them again to reverse my hibernation spell…” His eye closed. “Unfortunately, it seems that this second action used up the last of their power. And they’ve become magical energy and dispersed in the air…”

Silence smothered the group as everypony considered the dragon’s words. Sunny felt her eyes sear, her mind chasing after itself to flash that familiar star at her, in all those places and ways its legacy had been carried despite all that had been lost. All that one brilliant pony—bright as the sun—had left for them…

After what might have been hours, Zipp spoke first. “So… If Twilight became the crystals, and the crystals are now gone…”

The dragon did not reply.

“I’m sorry,” Zipp said, daring to glance at the buried eye.

“Her last words to me… it’s like she’s still here…” The dragon said. “She said, ‘Don’t worry, Spike, everything’s going to be fine’...”

Sunny looked at Zipp, who had shrivelled behind her hooves, completely losing her will to argue about the destruction of the clearing. She glanced up at the bright green eye and she saw. She saw the realization of loss, the grief, the emptiness. Things she had felt, things she knew too well. Despite the strange shape of that eye, its size and its color and the sense of age it projected… There was a familiarity she related to, a sense of universality to that look. His silence spoke more than his words.

He was feeling it, that haunting pain, that void in his soul, that she had almost forgotten. That she had cried herself to sleep to, for too many nights to count.

She moved without thinking, doing what her heart said was the right thing. She walked up to the dragon, Spike, her eyes burning, until she was close enough to put a hoof on him. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

Spike opened his eye and looked down at Sunny, and she could feel the heavy emotions he was feeling. She understood. “She was my sister… almost like a mother… if that could ever make sense, between us…”

“I lost my dad, years ago,” Sunny whispered, feeling her throat close at the last memory of her father. “His last…” She hiccuped, barely able to open her eyes. She felt Hitch against her side, bracing her. “His last words were, ‘Don’t cry, Sunnybun, I won’t leave you alone’...” She pressed her head against the rock, hoping that Spike would feel… something, through it all. And she thought she could feel him in return. “There isn’t a day where I don’t miss him, but… I know he didn’t leave me alone. I feel him in the things he taught me, in the way he raised me… I’m sure you feel the same with Twilight.”

“Yes... “ Spike said. “Thank you, little pony.”

“Sunny,” she said with a small smile. “My name is Sunny Starscout.”

Pipp stepped closer and placed a hoof on Sunny’s right shoulder. Izzy came next to her left. Hitch and Zipp stood behind her, but she could feel their support nonetheless.

“So,” Zipp said, clearing her throat. “What is our mission, Spike the dragon?”

The rocks shifted, raining yet more dust on the ponies, and a massive crack curved upwards. With some imagination, Sunny thought she could see a smile.

“You must take the Crystal Heart to the Crystal Empire,” Spike said. “The Crystal Ponies will need it, now that magic is returning.”

“Crystal Ponies?” Hitch asked. “You mean there’s a fourth pony race?”

Sunny turned to look at the Crystal Heart. “Now that I think about it, there are drawings about it and some other kind of pony in my dad’s notebook, but he never figured out what they meant. They just looked… kind of like all of us.”

“Why do these Crystal Ponies need it?” Pipp asked, cocking her head.

“It protects their city state,” Spike replied. “It draws their love and creates a barrier around the Empire, shielding it from the merciless snowstorms of the Frozen North.”

Zipp gasped. “But… if it’s so important, what’s it doing here?”

Spike breathed out, shooting hot steam right above the ponies’ heads. “It was… a complicated plan Princess Flurry Heart devised. With magic disappearing and races… dying off, I took it to each kingdom to use a special spell she cast on the Crystal Heart to put a few hundreds of each into magical hibernation…” He trailed off and closed his eye, audibly screwing it firmly. “My last stop was Hippogriffia, but… I felt myself grow weaker by the second… I came to this oasis to rest and recover my energy… Except I only felt worse…”

Izzy nodded solemnly, her mouth pinched. “You felt your magic going poof.” Sunny looked at her with wide eyes.

“Yes…” Spike said slowly. “I had to make a choice. Force myself to Hippogriffia and risk dying in the attempt, losing the Heart and this opportunity to talk to you, or activate Twilight’s hibernation spell on myself.”

“So…” Zipp whispered. “Those ponies… never got a chance to…” Her voice faded under a hoof squeezing into her muzzle, eyes wet.

Spike sighed, and a huge amount of steam rose from the wall. “I’m not proud of it,” he murmured after a moment. “I’m sure Twilight would be disappointed, mad even… But I couldn’t risk it… By taking the Heart to the Frozen North, back to its intended place, you will have many creatures return to Equestria… If the Heart was lost, destroyed, or even heavily damaged, they’d never be able to come back…”

Sunny felt a knot in her throat. Making decisions within her group of friends was hard enough as it was, but having the lives of an entire race of ponies… She couldn’t even begin to comprehend what Spike had been forced to do. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, levelled her eyes at his own. “Maybe they survived,” she said finally, and felt Spike’s massive eye suddenly lock on her. She stared at it defiantly. “I don’t know what kind of ponies they are, but I’m sure they would find a way to survive. From what Discord, Fluttershy, and now you have said, I assume magic can do pretty much anything.” She chanced a hint of a smile. “So if magic was still around, even two weeks ago, then it stands to reason that they are still around, just like us.”

Spike stared at her for what felt like an eternity, years of guilt washing coolly over her, then closed his eye. “I… I can only hope…”

After a while, Hitch broke the silence. “So, we take the Crystal Heart to…” He blanched, glancing to the eye. “You said the Frozen North, right?”

“Yes,” Spike said. “On your way there, however, do step by Ponyville, and to Twilight’s castle. If you do, you should be able to activate the map. I don’t know how things have changed in these thousand-or-so years, but the map will be able to give you a route.”

Pipp raised a hoof, teeth flashing in an awkward smile. “All of this is good and all, but… I was wondering if you could come with us? I mean, dragons can fly, right?” she chirped, cheeks dimpling in a more winning grin. “We could skip weeks, possibly months of walking…”

Spike looked at her, his pupil… trembling. “I… I would, if I could…”

Izzy lofted a foreleg, beaming brightly. “You can’t because you’re a hill?”

“... Yes,” Spike said slowly. “I didn’t expect to be covered so extensively… I will need a few months to recover enough strength to fully move myself from this place, and a few more to be able to fly again.”

Sunny looked at her friends, and each looked back at her in turn, as if feeling her eyes on them. And they nodded back at her, ranging from Zipp’s determined, mane-jolting flick to Hitch’s quirky-lipped bob. They had their quest given and directions set. She turned to look at Spike’s eye. “Ponyville, then. How do we get there?”

Spike took a moment to reply under another rumbling sigh, time enough for Pipp to flick out her phone and point it to the dragon. “North-East from here, you will move out of the desert and into a large mountain range that stretches all the way East. Follow the slope downhill to a river wide as twenty ponies and deep as five. Don’t cross it. Instead, follow it North to meet a gorge. Carefully traverse its edge until you reach a dense forest. Do not go in. Go northward around the forest and you’ll eventually reach Ponyville… If it’s still there…” The eye flickered for a moment. “At least Twilight’s Castle should’ve survived. You won’t be able to miss it.”

“How far is it, exactly?” Zipp asked, her eyes still low. “And… are there any cities on the way there?”

“I can’t know for sure,” Spike replied. “I’m used to flying, and back then, train tracks connected most of Equestria in relatively straight lines… As for cities, I remember a small farm by the mountain range, but after a thousand years…”

Izzy raised a hoof, voice straining and mane aquiver. “Oh! Oh! Could be a massive metropolis!”

Spike looked at her in silence for a moment, venting once more. “Yes, it could be.”

“Well,” Sunny said, stepping back so that her friends could turn to look at her. Closing her eyes for a moment, she took a steadying breath. “I think it’s time for a vote.” Opening her eyes, she glanced between the other four. “Do we go right now, or do we return to Zephyr Heights first to talk to Queen Haven?”

“What do you say, Sunny?” Hitch asked.

Sunny looked down at her hooves for a moment. “I think…” She ran her tongue across her lip. “We should go now. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll help Equestria.”

Hitch nodded, barely considering hiding his smirk. “Thought you’d say that. But I vote for going now, too.”

“Me too,” Zipp said with a smile, considerably warmer. “We have more than enough supplies here in The Heart of the Brave to last months. We can take a cart.” She stood taller, beam brightening beyond the desert sun. “We could even trade if we meet other ponies.”

Pipp chuckled, slowly, prompting her sister to round on her. “Of course you’d want to start the adventure right away.” Zipp frowned, her wings rising, but Pipp only shrugged, her smile never wavering. “I’m with you, this time, though.” Her expression softened and her cheeks dimpled. “We’ve already come this far, so there’s no point in going back to Zephyr Heights.”

“Yay! Adventure!” Izzy exclaimed, bumping her flank against Sunny, who could barely hold back a gasp. Because it was a surprise! And Izzy was a tall pony, so there was a lot of mare to bump against her, but not in a heavy—

“Wing Commander Azure Eve,” Zipp called, nodding, which prompted one of the guards to step towards her as she turned to face them. Sunny gasped on her own, this time, having completely forgotten about the guards.

“Your Highness,” said the guard. She was a rather short mare of soft, yellow fur, yet her stare radiated power. Her mane and torso were covered with the same billowing fabrics that they all wore while in the desert. Sunny couldn’t help but notice the bulge over her chestplate. Was her fluff that big?

“Go back to Zephyr Heights and inform Queen Haven of what happened here. And of where we’re headed,” Zipp said with strangely characteristic seriousness, and an authoritatively strident tone Sunny had barely heard from her friend. “By no means must she send guards after us. If we do find other pony cities, we don’t want to have an overt military presence and accidentally start a war over a misunderstanding.”

Pipp’s wings fluttered, her lips matching as she smiled. “Oh, but do send a carrier with my special batteries.” Zipp turned to look at her with a raised brow. The shorter mare raised her own eyebrow as a response. “We need to document our journey, Zipp. We’re making history here.” She didn’t wait for her sister to reply and stepped closer to Azure Eve. “My supplementary phone batteries. Send Swift Feather if possible.”

“Uh… Yes, Your Highness,” Azure replied, then looked at Zipp. “Anything else?”

Zipp hummed, lips puckering. “Yes,” she said, then turned to the other three guards. They squared up as soon as Zipp laid eyes upon them. “Help us load a cart with enough water and food for a week.” She then turned to Izzy for a moment. The unicorn waved giddily, eyes sparkly as ever, as though her sparkle hadn’t come close to fading what felt—to Sunny—like moments ago. “Maybe two more days worth of water.”

“Don’t you think,” Hitch began. “Maybe... bringing money would be a good idea?” he finished, raising a hoof. “You know, in case we meet other ponies.”

“Hm, I don’t know,” Zipp replied, placing a hoof to her chin. “Business is already difficult enough between Zephyr Heights, Bridlewood, and Maretime Bay as it is… But…” Zipp paused, hoof tapping for a moment. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Sheriff.” She smirked. “Its face value might not be worth anything, but it’s almost certain the gold and silver our coins are minted in would be worth something.” She turned to the three guards, shoulder squaring as her voice re-hardened. “Five thousand clouds should be enough.”

The guards saluted and hurried off to complete their task. Pipp stepped up to Hitch and bumped him playfully with her flank. “Well played, Hitch. Way to earn points with our future Queen.” She winked, and Hitch only blushed. Sunny had to turn away so that he wouldn’t see her own smirk.

“Alright,” Sunny said as soon as she could be sure her voice wouldn’t crack, calling her friends’ attention. “As soon as we’re ready, we’ll be off to Ponyville.” She took another breath, willing herself to stand taller. “Then we’ll return the Crystal Heart to the Crystal Empire in the Frozen North. We’ll restore Equestria…” An idea occurred to her, and her smile broadened as she looked up at Spike’s eye, a certain… fizzy energy filling her right to the base of her hooves. She was sure she could see the same in his eye. “We’ll make Twilight proud.”

Chapter IV - Broadened Perspective

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Chapter IV. Broadened Perspective

Hot. Dry. Brown.

Sunny could think of few other words to describe the scenery. If she could think at all, with her mind slowly matching her own trudge through the heat. All around her she only saw hot, dry, brown sand. Dunes that towered all around her, more modest hills that shifted in the scarce breezes between the giants, broad flatlands ahead and back. All of them made of it. Hot. Dry. Brown. Sand.

She had thought the previous trek had been tough. Six hours of walking, topping themselves up with water, then walking again. Her hooves had whined and her legs wobbled, but it had been bearable. She had counted the time in her head, despite every tick upwards seeming to grow longer and longer. But it had helped. Each long second that had passed was a second less she had had left to reach her destiny, reminding her that the journey was closer and closer to being over.

But now?

She had no way of knowing. According to Zipp, no pegasus had ever ventured more than a day into the desert beyond the oasis. Not after they had founded Zephyr Heights, at least. Almost six hundred years in the past. All they had was a direction from a centuries-dormant dragon, a hope that their compass was true, and a reference of how long it should take for them to cross the desert. A reference in their history books; Queen Zephyrina the First had walked for three days from wherever she had started to The Heart of the Brave.

Three days.

Six hours had been tough on her. Doubly so for Izzy—no, Sunny did not need to check on her, again. And now they had to walk for three whole days in this place, surrounded by sand and hot, stagnant, dry air.

After the cart had been loaded with supplies and covered with white canvas, the guards had offered a set of billowing fabrics to Sunny and her friends, each set containing just two pieces of cloth. A large swath that covered the whole torso up to their necks, loose enough to billow out around their legs, and one more to cover the head. This on top of the third one to cover their muzzles from errant sand. Despite the counterintuitive nature of bundling up in clothing in a hot environment, it had taken Sunny only a few minutes to feel just how much protection these fabrics provided against the unforgiving sun. A short, but welcome chill against her middle reminded her of their ability to make a rare breeze of even such stale air seem fresh.

Even their hooves had been wrapped in cloth, making it so much more bearable to step on the burning sand. The trek to the oasis had been just about manageable for her poor frogs, but now… she could actually maintain her pressures! Even if every step felt somehow heavier, despite that odd core slowly fading from her hooves… Shouldn’t that have made them easier?.

No longer did they need their individual parasols, such was the wonder of their new gear. And with all their supplies in the cart, they didn’t have to endure the way the waxy canvas saddles chafed and ached and brought forth buckets of sweat. Always a positive. The only downside of having their cart carry their supplies was that they had to pull said cart.

Go figure.

A game of grass lengths decided the order for pulling the cart. Except for one—Izzy giggled it off, at first, but even she had to admit she couldn’t pull when she was still so ‘pooped’. Zipp and Hitch were first, then it would be Pipp and Sunny’s turn. Izzy would have to share with Zipp, then Hitch and Pipp, and then Sunny and Izzy. Then they would simply repeat this order all the way to the other end of the continent.

Sunny let out a faint wheeze, catching the sun in her periphery, still high and strong above them. She was starting to regret wanting to set off so soon.

After their first break, which ironically seemed to come and end too soon, Sunny felt the warm, padded saddle on her back and chest. She kept her muzzle even, but felt her skin ripple at the way—even in the desert—she could feel its grimy, briny clamminess nestle into her fur. Pipp stepped beside her, putting her phone inside the wraps of her fabrics, and looked at her with a resigned smile and a shrug. Sunny caught herself. Pipp—icon of glamour herself, that she was—would be along with her. They nodded and started pulling. There was no complaining, not aloud, as it would only lead to spending extra time in the desert.

Sunny raked her drying tongue around her mouth, sucking the remnants. She was not looking forward to doing the same route upon their return.

Minutes passed, and Sunny simply stared ahead. She tried counting the dunes they passed, or the few clouds she could spot, even the small strange critters that would scurry and hide the moment they were spotted. She tried to keep her mind occupied so she wouldn’t have to think of how her legs ached and her hooves throbbed, or how the saddle rubbed and jostled her chest in every wrong way, or how her flanks were so sweaty she could feel a torrent of drips running down her legs, somehow making everything more chafey and achy and worse.

She had been so focused on thinking that she barely heard Pipp’s voice, as though she were under the sands themselves. She blinked and turned her head to look at her friend. “Sorry, did you say something?”

Pipp smiled reassuringly. “I said, do you think there are other pony cities out there?”

Sunny looked forward, towards the horizon and the endless sand, as if she hoped one might just appear before them. “I don’t see why not.” She looked back at Pipp, finding the energy to smile. “Equestria is supposed to be huge!” she cried, the saddle holding her bounce. “Just because we didn’t see or hear of ponies from other cities it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

Humming, Pipp looked forward. Her eyes seemed to drift away from Sunny, though. “Do you think they live separated, like us?” Sunny raised an eyebrow. “I was thinking, then I got to reading historical records…” Pipp flicked her head back to face Sunny, eyes just a little brighter than before. “Pegasi and Unicorns hated each other because of wars, and we both looked down upon Earth Ponies because of their lack of magic…” She chuffed. “Prior to its disappearance, of course…” She cocked her head and pressed her lips. “But, what if that’s not the case in other cities?”

Sunny nodded. “We might find segregated cities, or we might find multi-tribal ones.” She paused. Obviously, it had crossed her mind. Other segregated cities and towns, other histories separate even from their closed neighbours, other prejudices beyond those even their own three towns had clung to. Tales of urbane unicorns lording their power over all? Or of bumpkin earth ponies too proud to wallow in their own toil to look beyond their muzzle? Old bedtime stories of hotshot pegasi drifting the world without a care for those below? Who knew what they would find. Who knew what they would find? “I guess we’ll have to be careful when approaching them.”

“I agree,” Pipp said, cheeks perking. She ruffled her wings, caught within her saddle, which only made her fabrics move in a wave-like fashion. “Even without the guards, if we simply march into a city, we could cause a commotion.”

“Yeah…” Sunny dipped her muzzle as she mulled. The only reason Maretime Bay, Zephyr Heights, and Bridlewood were open to peace talks and had established a free travel agreement was because they had seen what unity could do first hoof. But what about the rest of Equestria? Even if they had felt the effects of magic returning, they hadn’t seen it. They hadn't been there.

Who knew what they might attribute the return of magic to…

A sigh spilled from her. She cursed the loss of valuable moisture. She’d gone on this adventure precisely because she didn’t want to hide or don disguises anymore, but she supposed there was no other way. At least for now. Once their quest had been completed, then there would be time for uniting Equestria.

Hours passed, and the sun made its way across the horizon, taunting them with its seemingly ever-decreasing speed, before finally, reluctantly, hiding behind the dunes. With the last of its rays still illuminating the path but threatening to disappear soon, Zipp called a stop to their march, which Sunny was very happy to hear. Clearly not as much as Izzy, though, who let out the most exhausted whoop of mirth Sunny had ever heard.

“Let’s set up camp before night falls,” Zipp called over her shoulder as she popped open the trunk of the cart, pulling out a bunch of bundled blankets. “Pipp, can you get the fire started?”

“On it,” Pipp replied, screwing her heard in a nod, before untying one of the three large bags. Soon enough one of the three smaller ones plopped from its ropes on the left side of the cart onto the sand below. As Hitch helped Izzy stagger gingerly from under the pulling saddle, Sunny approached Pipp.

“What’s that?” She asked.

Pipp carried the bags about three hoofs from the cart. She opened the larger one to reveal a bunch of thin, noodle-like twigs, bedecked in harsh thorns. “It’s tumbleweed,” she replied as she tugged the smaller bag closer. “And stones,” she muttered around the string.

“Oh,” Sunny said, turning so that no one might notice her burning cheeks. For some reason, she had thought they’d gather wood for the fire like they had done all those… days ago. But of course, that had been a stupid thought. She had barely seen sporadic patches of grass browned to the husk since they had left The Heart of the Brave. Instead of admitting that out loud, though, she helped Pipp shepherd the stones into a circle.

Zipp came as one of the final stones nestled into place, blankets layered over her back. She laid one down, and Izzy immediately claimed ownership by letting herself fall on it, pitching with eyes softly closed and almost clattering Zipp’s hooves as she spread out across the fabric. The unicorn sighed heavily, rolling onto her back and stretching her legs upward, her muzzle unsure whether to beam or twist into a grimace. Zipp shook her head, rolled her eyes, and continued laying down the blankets around the campfire. All without losing her smile.

“Are you sure desert nights are that cold?” Hitch asked as he stepped next to Sunny. She could hear the strain in his voice, his eyes gently twitching. Whenever he thought no pony was looking, she had watched him let Izzy slow to her own pace during their turn, taking the full weight of the car by himself. He never spotted her–he was too busy making sure the unicorn stayed on her hooves. Sunny couldn’t help but smile. He had always liked helping others, but, for some strange reason, he liked it a lot more when few to no ponies knew it had been him to fix the broken knob, or paint the washed out fence, or emptied all the trash bins around the town. Maybe he thought it was more… noble, that way?

“Yes, I’m sure,” Zipp replied, setting down on the last blanket, eyes startlingly bright. “There’s no humidity in the air to retain warmth. No walls to stop the wind. No floor to isolate the sand, and that on its own is deceptively cold.” She cocked her head to the right, and Sunny heard a few pops coming from her neck. “Take an extra blanket if you need it.” She flicked her tail towards her sister. “Don’t be like Pipp and sleep with one just to be stubborn.”

“Stop it!” Pipp said with a stomp on the sand. “That was one time!” Zipp only smirked at her sister.

Sunny almost flicked one of the stones clear of the circle. “What?!” She rounded her wide eyes up at Pipp. “You slept in the desert?” The flames licking her from Pipp’s glare proved surprisingly chilling. She let out a sheepish smile. “Sorry, it’s just… you’re a princess. Why would you be out here?”

Pipp huffed and plopped heavily next to Sunny. She started pouring the tumbleweed in the middle of the circle. “Basic army training has a module of survival in the desert.” She split a larger strand, venom in her hooves despite the tongue between her teeth. ”Three days and two nights.”

Hitch raised an eyebrow at the stubby, fluffy pegasus. “You’re a guard?”

That got a chuckle out of Zipp. “Definitely not.” She sat next to Izzy and idly scratched her leg. “But by law, everypony of age is required to go through Basic Survival Training, including nobility and royals. Helps make sure we have a connection with the citizens, or at least look like it.” She flicked out a wing, eyeing it beadily in the fading light. “It’s one of the laws drafted by Queen Mistralia, so, in case of another defeat, we raised our chances of survival when crossing the desert again.” The other wing popped out. “Or at least make sure we weren’t completely relying on luck.”

Pipp snapped her hooves, creating sparks that shot into the tumbleweed, igniting it instantly. She flapped her wings once, and the flames grew, creating a nice, warm, roaring fire. She smirked at Hitch. “Where else do you think we learned how to do this?”

Hitch sat down, head tilting. “Huh.” He studied the winged pair for a few seconds. “And to think, we just have a basic policing force in Maretime Bay. If Sprout had really gone and attacked Zephyr Heights, I’m pretty sure we would’ve lost fairly easily.”

Sunny shuddered at that. She didn’t like thinking about what could have happened if, magic crystals or not, the three cities hadn’t decided to at least try to put their differences aside. If the lighthouse had wobbled that little further and one of them fell… If that wheel had been any further to her right…

Zipp hummed, lips pursing. “I don’t know. That giant robot, operated by a competent pony… Would’ve caused a lot of damage before we could take it down.”

“Especially if it was a surprise attack,” Pipp added. “Destroy the bridges, create some chaos, and you’ve got yourself an even fight.”

Hitch blinked. “I… How can you talk so easily about something like this? I mean… we are assuming he could find a way around those canyons, but there would have to be one if you founded the city straight from the desert!” He shook his head, snorting lightly. “We were lucky we managed to stop Sprout from even leaving Maretime Bay…”

“Oh, relax, dude,” Zipp said, smile prouder than ever. “We all saw what unity can do for everypony. Even if there are still some who don’t like it much, I doubt anypony will actively try to sabotage us.” Sunny found the words fading in her throat. Thankfully. Maybe she had been overthinking under the strain earlier… She found herself pulled back by the rush of Zipp’s wings. “At least, no pegasus would risk giving away their new found flight over petty prejudices.” She turned to look at Izzy, eyes bright. “How about the unicorns? Do you think they’d—”

But Izzy was already fast asleep, her chest gently rising and lowering, her tail wrapped around her legs. Hooves twitching merrily. Sunny giggled and stood up, walking up to the back of the cart and bringing the rest of the blankets. She first covered Izzy, then gave one to each of her friends. Two more blankets were left when she grabbed her own. She hoped the desert wouldn’t be so cold that they’d end up fighting over the blankets.

They agreed to follow Izzy’s example and grab some shut-eye. They still had who-knew how long until they stopped seeing sand, and being restless was not going to make it any easier. Besides… Zipp talked like she’d been studying magic as long as she had. She knew what she was talking about, and she had to have some understanding of how to lead. At least… her mother should have taught her something. Sunny pulled her eyes from white to soft purple as they fell closed. Surely things would be looking up in the morning.

~~~~~~~~

Sunny stared at the sky.

Not directly at the sun—that would be madness, and she hadn’t succumbed to madness, despite what had routinely been jeered at her—but at the clear, somehow cool openness that lay beyond the next dune. At the fluffy, granulated white clouds. Those were an oddity. Clouds in the desert, she had come to realize, were thin. Not thin like twigs or spirals, as they could cover the entirety of the observable sky, but they were thin. Like a summer fabric, as though designed to catch the lightest of breezes, and smooth, too. With how thin they were, they usually blended with the blue and could be hard to spot.

The clouds she could see at the moment were like wool. Puffy and thick and so white they seemed to shine with the sun. She almost had to squint, but, looking at those clouds, Sunny felt a strange sense of wellness. Despite her aching legs, her knobby knees, her incredibly clammy coat, and her blurry, unfocused vision, she felt… well. Not good, because even she could tell that stopping her march would mean collapsing into the sand, but well. Just… well. Almost like a sense of… home.

“I see something!” Zipp cried. She had been pulling the cart with Sunny, and her sudden outburst lurched the whole assembly around them, sending the canteens wobbling and some falling, though mercifully none out of the cart.

Sunny narrowed her eyes and scanned the horizon. Sore lids strained to quint, but found nothing rising from the sea of gold besides the usual rocky lumps. “Another pony shaped cactus?” That would be wild. The last three had certainly resembled something similar to an equine shape. Almost like something was messing with them.

Zipp stepped forward excitedly, and this time she managed to pull Sunny along. Sunny squeaked as the awful canvas chafed her middle. Zipp didn’t mean it. She didn’t mean it. “No, no… I think they’re houses.”

“Shut up!” Pipp said as she quickly stepped beside her sister. Hoof to her brow, she scanned the horizon, and a second later her eyes widened. “It’s true!” She laughed. “We made it! We crossed the desert!”

Sunny looked at the two pegasi, then back at the horizon. She narrowed her eyes again, frowned, focused, and even tried to use her imagination. But all she could see was dry rocks and dry plants and dry sand. “I don’t see anything,” she murmured.

“What?” Zipp asked, still beaming. “How can you not? They’re right there!” She pointed with her hoof, jittering slightly above the next dune. Despite everything, Sunny still could not see the end of the desert.

“Are you sure?” Hitch asked, suddenly besides Sunny. She suppressed the yelp well, she thought. He loomed blearily in the direction of the white hoof. “I don’t see anything either.”

Pipp cocked her head, then back, where Izzy was hidden from Sunny’s view by the cart. “What about you Izzy? Surely you see the buildings?”

Izzy’s voice came crooked and dry. “Nope.” She blinked out of synch. She probably couldn’t see beyond her own muzzle.

The pegasi sisters looked at each other with worried expressions. “Are you sure you don’t see anything. This isn’t just some joke?” Zipp asked, smile finally lowering. Sunny shook her head, and saw Hitch do the same. Zipp pursed her lips for a moment. “Guess Pegasi are built for recon.” She flicked her head towards the horizon, grin firmly back in place. “Let’s get close enough for you guys to see them, then we’ll celebrate.”

Sunny shrugged. Mentally, since her shoulders were busy keeping her legs moving and the cart attached to her. It wasn’t like looking at the supposed buildings would get them any closer. So she just kept walking and looking at the clouds slowly thickening ahead of them.

It was half an hour before Izzy, bouncing for the first time in hours, cheered the buildings coming into view, and sure enough, Sunny could see the shape of rooftops. Her heart leaped, and only then did she notice that the sand was slowly but surely becoming dirt and solid rock. The air was still dry, but no longer did it feel like such a weight on her, and ever greener and taller grasses grew all around. Small bushes also appeared here and there as they pressed on, decorating the otherwise desolated land.

Zipp directed the cart towards a tall rock that jutted out from the ground like a broken plank. The city or village or whatever it was could easily be seen, with a few roads spidering out from the main cluster, but it was still so far away that they couldn’t see anything moving. That was good, since that would also prevent whatever ponies lay over yonder from spotting Sunny’s friends. Sunny caught herself. Not that she didn’t want to meet those ponies, but she was flatly exhausted, and the last thing she needed at that moment was to be chased in case things turned awry. Not again.

Lifting the pulling saddle, Sunny stepped towards the rock and sat on her searing haunches. Her hooves were so sore they were throbbing within their keratin, even with the return of that strange, soothing feeling. Maybe she needed a little more of that feeling. Breath rattled out her nose. To think that they still had a whole unexplored continent to go… It was a little daunting.

Pipp and Hitch placed rocks around the wheels of the cart and joined Zipp, who had brought a pair of binoculars from the front compartment. She was peering at the buildings in the distance while hiding as much as she could behind the rock. Sunny smirked. After that comment on Pegasi recon earlier…

“Stone houses,” Zipp said, mane bobbing as she angled the binoculars this way and that. “Probably cobblestone roads… There aren’t that many individual buildings…” She lifted her lenses a bit. “There are some houses apart from the rest… I can see mountains on the other side of the village. They're most likely what Spike was referring to.”

Sunny saw Izzy out of the corner of her eyes and turned to look at her. The taller mare was walking on her toes, as if that would somehow make her hooves click less on the stone.

"You okay there, Izzy?" Sunny asked.

Izzy yelped and straightened up, then turned around so quickly that her mane slapped her on the snout. Izzy blew some strands away and used her hoof to clear the rest.

"Yeah!" she replied with a sheepish smile. "I need to use the little filly's… rock. I'll be over there!" She pointed towards a rock three hooves tall and four wide that rested a ways from the cart.

Sunny nodded, and Izzy galloped away.

To her right, Zipp lowered the binoculars, frowning. "I only see Earth Ponies wandering about." She hoofed the binoculars to Pipp, who immediately used them to scan the village while she reached into the cart. "We'll most likely have to disguise ourselves, at least until we can determine how safe we’d be out in the open."

"Sunny and I can go," Hitch said, stepping next to Pipp and narrowing his eyes in an attempt to look as far as the binoculars. "We can trade some of our fruit and talk with the locals. If the worst comes to worst, we'll have to have Izzy hide in the cart."

Sunny nodded. Pipp and Zipp could very easily hide their wings under normal clothing, as Zipp had already demonstrated with a shawl around her barrel, but Izzy's horn was a different issue. Its length and angle made it very difficult to hide without drawing even more attention to it. She sighed. She didn't really like that they had to take these measures, but she'd already been imprisoned once, and that was one too many times for her. She was sure Izzy would understand.

Pipp lowered the binoculars and sighed, taking a thick cloth from her sister. "Will we have to do this same thing in every town we visit?"

Zipp opened her mouth to reply.

"Well, what d’ we have here?" said a voice coming from the side. Sunny turned her head so fast she heard a pop in her neck. A few hooves from the cart was a mare of soft pink fur, looking at the group. Her purple mane was tightly tied into a braid, with one or two strands of gray hair waving through. Her green eyes slowly passed from one pony to the next, observing them, while her soft smile didn't let Sunny know what her opinion was.

While Sunny was still trying to stop feeling like she had been caught with her hoof in the cookie jar, Zipp immediately jumped to action, rising to her hooves and stepping to the stranger.

"Hello!" she said. "We're just passing through. We're explorers, you see. We just want to know what's beyond our cities."

Sunny looked at Zipp with wide eyes. That was rather convincing and very smart. With an excuse like that, it should be easier to cross Equestria. Or at least thing of others just as quickly!

The mare looked at the cart, then behind and to the desert that was now barely a golden band on the horizon. Her smile didn't falter as she looked back at Zipp. "You've come from the south? From the desert?" Her voice was a little raspy, and Sunny thought it made her sound older than she looked.

Zipp nodded slowly. "Right the way across it, as a matter of fact! We didn't think we'd find a city so soon after leaving the desert. On the other side, it’s a little while until you pass through settlements.” Zipp glanced at Sunny with a firm nod. “The last one we came through was for pegasi only, it seemed."

The mare hummed, though it seemed somewhat strained, her lips pursing strangely.

Sunny had been about to mentally congratulate Zipp for her attempt to test the waters—or would that be winds as she was referring to Zephyr Heights—but she could sense the uncertainty in those narrowing eyes. But… that didn’t seem like a hostile noise from the mare. Maybe… "Is something the matter, ma’am?"

The older mare shook her head, her mouth softening into a tender smile. “Nothing, dearie, s’just that ponies ‘round here don’ really take too kindly t’ speakin’ of…” She blinked, glancing away from them for a moment. “Other kinds o’ ponies.”

“Oh…” Sunny fought her shoulders to stay firm. Not harsh, but not… giving herself away. Maybe they had some work to do here.

The older mare chuckled. “Mighty lucky you ponies bumped int’ me, then!”

Sunny shared a glance with Zipp, spotting the glint in the white mare’s eyes. The hint of a smile. There was an edge to that chuckle that sounded almost… disappointed. Chest filling, she turned back to the older mare. “Why?” she flicked her ear, her smile daring to widen. “How do you feel about…” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Other ponies.”

Green eyes widened. “Well…”

Zipp chuckled, nudging Sunny with her shoulder. “Not that we’re trying to interrogate, ma’am!”

Fading emeralds glistened with a sudden sparkle, if only for a moment, as the mare tittered. “Let’s just say I know a li’l better ‘bout ’em than others ‘round ‘ere’!”

Sunny couldn’t hold back her beam. There were others. There were others! Maybe it was a hoofhold, or maybe there were many, but it didn’t matter. She wanted to thunder her hooves, but settled for a quiet gasp. There were other ponies who believed they could get along! Now if they could—

“Oh, Thank Hoofness!”

All three turned to Sunny’s left, eyes falling square on the reams of downy, pearly fluff fanning out from Pipp’s sides, rising above the pink mare’s panting chest.

"That's not something you see every day," the mare said, and Sunny could hear her smirk.

“What!” Zipp spluttered, picking her muzzle off the floor to march right in front of her sister and square it at the smaller mare. She craned her neck, staring down from her considerable height. “What are you thinking?!”

Pipp’s pearly beam contracted to a warm smile. “What?” She nosed towards the older mare. “My girls have been cooped up under that saddle for hours these past few days and needed some air!” She shimmied her barrel, mane and wings swaying in the breeze.

Jets—almost flames—burst from Zipp’s nose. “We were in disguise.”

Pipp raised a brow. “Zipp, please.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s nopony else around, and she clearly hasn’t got a problem with other breeds of pony.”

“All she said was that she knew them better,” grunted Zipp, eyes still trying to bore into the ground below her sister.

“And what else would that have meant?”

“I mean, she’s got a point there, Zipp,” said Hitch, eyes focussed on the older mare still smirking at them all. Not catching the stunned blink Zipp thrust at him. “Although there are other ways to interpret that,” he added, shrugging

“Well, she has listened to you two pegasi bickering without a peep, so I doubt she has any problem with you!” countered Sunny, smirking. For a moment. This mare was familiar with pegasi. Meaning her first experience with an actual pegasus might just have been that argument. Turning back to the mare, she flashed her teeth in an uneasy smile. “Unless I’ve totally misread that?”

The mare's smirk grew as she lifted a hoof towards Sunny. "Bella Moonshine.” In the corner of her eye, Sunny spotted Zipp turning stiffly to face the mare, cheeks suitably blooming pink. The smirk only grew. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Sunny took the hoof with hers and shook it. And let out a massive internal sigh. Crisis averted. "Sunny Starscout," she said. "These are my friends—"

"Phew! I really needed that!"

All eyes turned to the fizzy voice and giddy beam of Izzy as she trotted back to the group, eyes softly closed. After a few bounces they opened and she stopped with a light twang, eyes wide and sparkling right at Bella. Somehow, she seemed to shine as her smile grew. "Hi, new friend!” she cried, her mane shimmering with every wide, wild wave of her hoof.

Sunny looked at Bella. The older mare had lost her smirk at the sight of Izzy. Instead, her head titled at a gentle angle, blinking owlishly as the unicorn resumed her bouncy gait. Zipp briefly looked between Izzy and Bella. Cheeks fading, she stepped closer. “Don’t mind her, ma’am,” Zipp muttered, chuckling softly. “She’s like that with everypony.” Bella’s head twitched for a moment, before turning slowly to face the pegasus, whose shoulders strained under the weight of that smirk, wider than ever. “Um… I’m sorry for how I acted back there, ma’am.”

Bella nodded, softly. “No ’ffense taken, dearie.” Her expression barely wavered. “Though I’d ’o thought ’n explorer’d be a li’l more clued in on meetin’ other ponies.”

Zipp stepped back as the pink mare moved away from the group. She stayed on her hooves—Hitch helping with his shoulder pressed to her own—but her muzzle sagged towards the ground, staring listlessly at the dirt. Sunny frowned, glancing to make sure Bella was facing away from them, as Pipp laid a wing on her back. Zipp had made a scene, but… it had been from a good place. She’d been looking out for them all.

“Hey,” she whispered, touching a hoof to the pegasus’. They locked eyes. “No harm done. We’ll do better next time.” Zipp sighed, but eventually let out a smile.

"I'm sorry, dearie,” said Bella as Izzy finally reached them, her grin having grown sparklier with every bound. “I shouldn’t‘ve stared at you.” She had the decency to blush. “You… just reminded me of a pony I knew." She smiled and looked back at Sunny. "If you’re not in a hurry, you an’ your friends c’n stay the’night a’ my place. The Elements know I could use the help 'round the old chicanery."

Sunny turned around to look at the group. "What do you guys say?"

Pipp huffed, but her smile was wide and eyes bright. "A real bed? A bath? Count me in."

In silent agreement, the group moved to follow Bella. Pipp and Hitch used their turn to pull the cart this time, while Izzy happily fell into step next to Zipp. Sunny smiled. It was almost like the unicorn knew when somepony needed perking up—and that she would always be best to do it!

"Are we sure this is a good idea?" Hitch asked in a hushed tone, confident that Bella, who walked a few hooves in front of them, wouldn't listen. "We don't know her. Zipp wasn’t exactly wrong when all she said was that she knew other ponies better.” He flicked his eyes briefly to the older mare. “That could mean she’s not had the best experience with them, if you see what I mean?"

"She didn't chase us away or raise any alarm," Pipp replied, lightly. "I think we can at least spend the night." She raised a brow at him. “And my sister’s not listening at the moment, Sheriff.”

Sunny nodded. "Besides, we can't just be super distrustful with every pony we meet. If we're going to show that unity is the way, we have to do our part."

"Hooves to hearts!" Izzy burst excitedly, even from in front of them

Hitch sighed, but smiled nonetheless. "You're right." He snorted, and it tweaked into a smirk. “We’ve been incredibly lucky that she was the first pony who trotted into us, but… yeah…” He nodded at Sunny. “You’re right.”

They followed Bella through the rocky ground. Sunny had thought they'd venture into the village proper, but Bella guided them around the outskirts. Trees grew copiously, but not close enough to make a forest. Although grass grew more thickly and prominently in patches, each of them welcome relief to her hooves, the ground was still mostly smooth stone, shaped by generations of ponies wearing it away.

About half an hour later, they reached a small stone house surrounded by rocks and trees. A wooden coop rested a few hooves away, and a very old, near-decrepit cart stooped over its wheels in the center of the terrain. Bindweeds hugged the walls and bloomed beautiful purple flowers. To the side of the house, a rather large wave of daisies stood at attention, shimmering their white petals under the sun.

Hitch and Pipp left the cart beside Bella's, careful not to brush it, and the group followed her inside the house.

Cozy was the first word to enter Sunny's mind as she stepped inside. The walls were painted soft beige, though much of it was hidden behind a swathe of landscape paintings hanging all around. Tables and shelves made of dark wood covered much of the remaining walls, clayered with colorful fabrics that all had something to show: little stone sculptures, pots bursting with flowers, and the occasional quartz.

"Make yourselves at home," said Bella as Hitch closed the door behind him. "I'm makin' tea."

"I'll help you," Hitch offered, trotting up to catch up to Bella.

The mare giggled. "Well, aren't you the gentlecolt!" She guided Hitch to what Sunny assumed to be the kitchen.

Izzy happily walked up to one of the two densely cushioned sofas and sat down, letting out a squeaky sigh of exhaustion. "This place is niiice!"

"Nice or not, we should still be careful," Zipp said, sitting down next to Izzy. She, too, let her body relax against the sofa, and Sunny spotted a faint smile on her face. Even if her eyes shot wide. “Not suspicious, but… even if Bella’s a nice pony, we don’t know anypony else out here.” Sunny hummed.

Pipp tapped uselessly at her phone. The battery had died at some point during their first morning in the desert. Ever since she would take it from under her wing, stare at it as if expecting it to magically function, then put it back, wings droopy all the same. She sighed and put her phone down. "I'll be careful and call dibs on the first turn with the bath, then!" She sat down next to Zipp and sighed again. "Oh, comfort, how I missed thee."

Sunny giggled and sat down at the other sofa.

After a couple of minutes, Hitch emerged from the kitchen with a tray of cups and a steaming teacup. Bella walked behind him, already holding a cup with a hoof. Hitch set down the tray on the dark coffee table, in about the only open space in the whole room, and started pouring the tea. Sunny didn't recognize the smell, but it was sweet and it tickled her nose. Vaguely… minty, if she had to guess.

"So, I know yer name," Bella said, looking at Sunny. She then turned to Hitch. "An’ you, handsome stallion, are Hitch." He nodded as he filled a second cup, eyes studiously away from hers. "So, c’n I know th’ rest o’ yer names?" She turned to Zipp, muzzle raised in an amused smirk. “I think I heard that you, young rabble-rouser, are Zipp.”

Zipp smiled broadly as she could. "Sure!” Gathering herself, she let out a chuckle. “I'm Zipp Storm."

"Izzy Moonbow," Izzy said, stretching the 'moon' part of her name. Sunny really liked how… dreamy it sounded.

"And I'm Pipp—" She was interrupted by the crash of a cup shattering on the floor. She, and everypony else too, turned to look at a stunned Bella. Their host could only look at the broken cup and spilled liquid with vacant eyes, lids fluttering. Like she couldn't understand why the cup had decided to fall in the first place. "... Petals."

Bella blinked a couple of times, then her face turned red, and she smiled nervously. "Oh, I'm so sorry. These ol’ hooves o' mine don' work like they used ’o. Lemme clean this… up…"

She watched with widened eyes and heaving chest how each piece of the cup was embraced by a beautiful pink aura and levitated to the tray. Sunny saw pure and raw wonder in Bella's sparkling eyes.

"Dearie, that is…" She looked at Izzy. "That's… The most amazin’ thing I've seen…"

Izzy grinned. Sunny was sure something squeaked again. “Thanks!. Um…” Izzy gently prodded the floor. ”I can only pick up solid things, though…"

"That's…" Bella frowned at the floor, where her tea was spreading. "That's ok. I'll go fer a mop."

"Allow me," Hitch said, jumping to his hooves and rushing to the kitchen. "It's the least we can do to repay your hospitality!"

Bella stuttered for a bit, giggling. "Well, then. I'll accept yer ‘elp." She trotted next to Sunny and sat down. Sunny offered her her cup, and Bella accepted it. "So, what’s a group s’ diverse s’ yers trav’llin' Equestria fer?"

Sunny looked at Zipp, trying to find some kind of advice in her eyes, but whatever was there was shrouded in doubt. Sunny thought about it for a moment. Zipp had not entirely lied when she had said they were explorers. Sunny knew they needed to be careful, but she also didn't really want to base their journey with lies. Especially not with the first pony who had been open to others before her group had met them.

So she took a deep breath and looked at Bella. "We… We're trying to restore Equestria's magic," she said, and through the corner of her eye saw Zipp vigorously, but silently, shake her head. Sunny frowned and continued, focussing back on Bella. "We already started it by uniting the three pony races of our cities.” She allowed herself a smile—soft, but wide. “We now want to bring this unity, and magic, to the rest of Equestria. Where it isn’t already, at least."

Bella looked at her with her mouth slightly ajar. She eyed Pipp, then Izzy, then back at Hitch, who had reappeared with a mop in his teeth. She focused again on Sunny, her brow trembling, unable to decide how it would settle.

"So…" she began, then licked her lips. "You're saying you united the three pony races, and that brought back magic?"

"Pretty much!" Izzy chirruped with a raised hoof. "The Unity Crystals glowed and created a beautiful rainbow that spread right the whole way across the sky!"

Bella's brows lifted, her mouth no less vacant. "You caused th’ Rainboom?"

Sunny felt her heart leap. The way she had asked the question seemed a little… skittish. Had it caused similar problems here as it had back in Zephyr Heights?

"Rainboom?" Pipp asked.

Bella blinked a couple of times. "Tha’… giant rainbow thing… It…" She looked behind her as Hitch intently dragged the mop through the spillage. “You’re such a sweetie, Hitch. Kindness be with you.” She chuckled, then looked at Sunny. "My flowers!" She laughed some more. "This year, th’ weather's been unforgivin’, y’see. Much too dry fer far too long.” Fading pink swayed as she shook her head. “I thought my daisies wouldn't bloom ’t‘all! I was worried, ‘cause that's half m’ yearly income!" She smiled, and that finally helped Sunny relax. "Then th’ Rainboom came, and all of 'em bloomed th’ next day!

"And Maester Blackhoof, our local blacksmith, he had broken ’is leg two month ago. Maestress Tender Coat, our medic, she did what sh’could, but Maester Blackhoof ain’t no spring chicken no more, not since twenty winters past.” Again, her head softly shook, her eyes shimmering. “We all knew he would afta’ retire and leave th’ smith’ry to young Ironheart, and th’ little colt’s ‘alf th’ weight o’ the ‘ammer. We were mighty worried, y’see. But then th’Rainboom came, and Maester Blackhoof started feelin' better tha’ day!” She beamed, rocking softly in her chair. “Maestress Tender Coat checked on 'im, an’ said he'd ‘ave a full ‘covery ‘n a month or two!"

Sunny blinked, mind churning. Bella had talked so excitedly, she had slurred some words and it was a bit difficult to understand her. But, from what Sunny had gathered, the rainbow of magic, the Rainboom, had done more help than harm in this village. Sunny felt she could breathe easier.

"Well," Zipp said after a moment. "We're, uh, glad, that we helped."

Hitch placed the mop against the wall and went to sit down next to Sunny.

Bella beamed, then looked at Izzy for a moment before setting her eyes back on Sunny. Her smile vanished. "Unfortunately, might not be wise t’ be repeatin' these words 'round Pieville proper.” She shook her head, but her eyes rested kindly on the smaller mare. “Some folk ‘ere won't take kindly on pegasi and unicorns takin' credit for the Element's blessing."

Pipp leaned over. "They won't believe us?"

Bella shook her head. "No."

Pipp sat up straighter, her voice staying light. "But you do?"

Bella smiled, but it was small and soft, and her eyes became a bit unfocused. "I'm inclined to believe, yes."

"Can I ask why?" Pipp continued.

With the eyes of a pony staring into the abyss, Bella leaned back on the couch and observed her fresh teacup, only able to breathe deeply for a good five seconds. "Many, many moons ago, there was a young filly who accomp’nied her da’ to the city, so’s to sell their mine's marble.” She rose her head, voice steadier and clearer than ever. “Finest stone ‘n all Pieville. In that big city, both Earth Ponies and Unicorns live together, claimin’ they had solved their differences. But Pieville folk don't rightly trust the lot of 'em. But this filly and her da’ always went there to sell their marble.

"There, she met a young colt by the name o’ Stone Will. He was this very tall, charmin’ Unicorn, so when the filly left the cart to court 'im, her da’ became furious.” Bella smirked. “‘E tried forbiddin' 'is daughter from seein' Stone Will, and when she disobeyed, he forbade 'er from coming with 'im to sell the marble! Yet she always found the way to go and see 'er lover.”

"Stone Will,” she continued, voice slipping as she fell further into what Sunny could tell was deep history to her, “like 'is namesake, spent every minute 'er da’ was in the city to convince 'im that he would make 'is daughter happy. He insisted for years. Then, one day, her da’ gave big Stone Will a task.” She tilted her head, eyes burning bright into Sunny. “If he could come back to Pieville and work the mine like any Earth Pony and earn 'is livin' for a year, then he would accept 'im as his daughter's groom. So Stone Will let 'is mane grow so much he could use it to hide his horn, even if he looked good an’ silly with a giant hive for a mane, and then came to Pieville. He worked the mine and was the best miner any pony had seen in a generation.” She sighed, settled deeper into the plush, allowing herself a sip. “The filly's da had no other choice but to accept 'im."

Izzy was staring at Bella with so much attention she was about to fall from the couch, such was the overhang of her radiant beam. "Is the filly in the story you?"

Bella smirked. "No, dearie. She's my ma’." She nodded to herself. "That's why I've always known the things they say 'bout Unicorns are nothing but lies."

Sunny nodded excitedly. "Yeah! We used to be separated, but we," she signaled to her friends with her hoof, "managed to convince everypony back home that unity was the way." She explained what had happened, feeling a weight lift from her shoulders with every word. Bella looked at her with rapt attention, nodding from time to time. It was the first time, she realized, that another Earth Pony was listening, truly listening, without itching to question or correct, to her and her dad’s beliefs.

It was… liberating, somehow.

“So,” she explained, “we need to get to the Frozen North. But first we were told to stop by Ponyville for a map of some kind.” She shimmied her head side to side. “We have very… general directions, and we’re not sure if they’re still useful, so we’d appreciate it if you could point us in the right direction.”

Bella hummed, tapping her chin with a hoof, as Sunny hoped the ‘still’ might not be questioned. Or did. Did these ponies need to know a dragon was still around? “I can’t say I’ve ever heard o’ this Ponyville place. But there’re many things none of us know. Why, ponies in ‘ere Pieville have rumors of a city in the forest past the desert full o’ Unicorns. But no-one ever thought of Pegasi and Earth Ponies livin’ ‘round there too.” She placed her hoof down and cocked her head. “There’s a city, north. ‘Bout a week’s walk at brisk pace, called New Canterlot.” She looked at Izzy with a smile. “It’s the city of the story, mind. Earth Ponies and Unicorns live together. It’s a pretty large place, ‘bout four times the size of this village. If you need maps, I’m sure you’ll find ‘em there.”

Sunny looked at her friends. Zipp shrugged with an uneasy grin. Sunny bit back her smirk—hers had been the right path! “It’s worth a shot, I say.”

“Yeah,” Sunny said. “It can’t hurt to visit as many cities as possible on our way north. Meet new ponies, get to know all of the Equestria we didn’t even know existed!”

“It is pretty nice to know that we weren’t the last ponies in Equestria,” Pipp said with a nod, before flourishing her wings. “Just imagine how viral my video about it will get!”

Hitch chuckled. “Well, I’m up for going to this New Canterlot city.”

“Adventure!” Izzy said, raising a hoof with a beaming smile. Then she stiffened and, still moving as she could, she gave herself a sniff. Her face scrunched up and Sunny’s did the same, though she was sure she could pick up notes of herself on the air. “And bath! We really need a bath.” Stale, awful notes at that.

Bella chuckled and stood up. “I’ll prepare the tub. It’s big enough for two ponies, if you don’t mind sharin’,” she drawled, eyes lingering on a certain dusty, yellow coat. “If you want to go individually, I’d appreciate you takin’ the time t’ chop some extra firewood.” With that, she walked away and out of the room.

Pipp looked around. “I already called dibs for the first turn…” Her wide, pleading eyes then fell on Zipp. “But I really don’t want to chop firewood…”

Zipp snickered, rolling her eyes. “I’ll share with you, sis.” She raised her head. “And you, guys?”

Sunny tried very hard not to look at Izzy.

Hitch let out a tired sigh, muzzle pooling in his hooves. “I don’t mind chopping firewood afterwards,” he mumbled, eyes falling closed “I could use a bath nap.”

“Sunny...” Izzy groaned, stretching the last syllable along with her popping forelegs. “I don’t wanna work anymore!”

Sunny smiled, maybe a bit too much, since Hitch sent her a knowing, smug smirk even through his hooves. It was all in the eyebrows. She pointedly ignored him and looked at Izzy. “We can share if you want.”

Izzy looked like she was on the verge of tears as she wrapped herself in a hug. “Thank you!”

Pipp and Zipped laughed, and soon all five were laughing, even through the fires in their ribs and the sores on their backs. They had spent three days in the desert, and they were exhausted. The only thing they could agree they wanted at the moment was to simply lie down and have a very long sleep. And yet, they laughed. They laughed because they had met a friendly pony so soon; because they had the promise of a warm bath and a soft bed; because, despite everything, they already had something to be proud of.

They laughed because they were together. And, Sunny hoped, because Equestria would soon be united too.

Author's Notes:

Next chapter will be out next year, although I can't say when. Since these are getting pretty long, so is editing process. Arbarano is making a stellar job, aiding with not only grammar, but also with expanding on storytelling in a way I alone cannot, and so the chapters take even longer to be finished.

So far, the chapters have been pretty tame. Going from one place to the next and stuff. But trust me, things will start escalating. You see, you will need to remember that this adventure won't take just a couple of days. The trek to the Frozen North will take months, time enough for dangers to awaken. Enjoy these happy-go-lucky half-romance-adventure part while it lasts.

I hope to read your thoughts on every chapter as our mane five face challenges and grow.

See you all next year!

Chapter V - Foundations

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Chapter V. Foundations

The bathtub was more of a sealed depression in the floor of a small room, occupying half the space. The other half consisted of some shelves, some carrying hygiene products, others towels and brushes, with maybe space for one pony to dry off. Two at a squeeze… Sunny noted with burning cheeks. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made of stone. Everything was warm underhoof, every surface laced with steam when she and Izzy had entered, thanks to Pipp and Zipp. Sunny had to thank them for that; though it smelt of nothing in particular, the sheer heat in the air relaxed her from deep within the moment the door opened.

But first, they trimmed their hooves and teased and scrubbed the sand from their coats, manes, and tails. Couldn’t really enjoy a soak with all that grit and grime swilling around. After studiously looking the other way while Izzy teased one last knot from her tail, the pair rinsed off, washing away the sweat and lingering filth into the drain, allowing them to refill the tub with clear, hot goodness.

Now they could relax..

Sunny’s groan evolved into a full, unashamed moan as she lowered herself into the steaming hot water, which hugged her body nicely, already working wonders on her stiff joints. She couldn’t stop the wide smile that formed on her face, not that she even wanted to. Izzy didn’t sit down on the little step inside the tub, but rather laid straight down, facing away from Sunny. Her body lay completely underwater, leaving only her head out, which she rested onto a small bundle of towels she had perched on the rim.

Izzy closed her eyes with a long, dragged-out sigh, and levitated a brush from the shelf. Without even bothering to open her eyes, she started brushing her coat, dipping the brush into the water with seemingly no effort, the teeth smoothly coursing the length of her barrel in smooth, precise sweeps. Sunny couldn’t tear her eyes away from the shimmering brush. Goodness, it looked so easy. So pleasant and relaxing and… simple. To just let your own magic take care of—no, pamper!—you, directed as though by the whims of your own subconscious while the rest of you took it easy… Who wouldn’t want that?

Sunny bit it back. Izzy had taken the desert harder than everypony and it had looked brutal; she couldn’t imagine how it felt. She deserved this moment and not to be groused at—internally—by some nag for it!. Besides… she could certainly enjoy watching Izzy as she idly brushed herself. Her prone form, submerged and almost hidden, and her relaxed expression stirred something inside Sunny. Not to mention the way she squeaked and giggled to herself, or the little hitches whenever the brush caught! Her stomach fluttered and her cheeks reddened, although that last one she blamed on the heat. Izzy was truly a gorgeous mare—nothing untoward in appreciating that, right?! Her silky curly mane, now flattened by the water and framing her lofty withers, her vibrant lavender fur that was soft and smooth to the touch, her button and heart mashup of a cutie mark that spoke of so many creations fizzing away in her, her dark pink eyes that were staring back at Sunny…

Sunny blinked in surprise, and she felt a lump in her throat, as if her whole stomach had decided to exit her body that way.

Izzy only looked at her with a content smile. At least… she hoped it was. “What are you thinking about?” she asked with a low tone, as if speaking any louder would be a massive effort on her part. Her lidded eyes and her head still nestling into her pile of towels only made her look all the more relaxed. Nevermind the brush that was still working on her own back, now so meticulously smoothed it shone even in the dim. It was… at ease, fur.

Sunny sucked in a breath and struggled to keep her eyes locked straight on Izzy’s. Nope. She might get lost in there again. She tried to focus on Izzy’s glowing horn. “Not much,” she replied, barely a whisper. “I just… I think I just feel different…” She closed her eyes, dizzying herself in a cluster of so many places and faces and ideas. “When we left Maretime Bay three weeks ago, I was acting on impulse and…” She sighed. “I only wanted everypony to see that we could work together, live together…”

“And? We can!” Izzy said, flicking between them with the brush. “We proved we can. Aren’t you glad?”

“Of course I’m glad!” Sunny replied quickly. “My dad’s dream became a reality. And I’m glad I met you,” she murmured, smiling, heat buil— “All of you,” she finished smartly.

“So?” Izzy finally rose from her towels, head tilting. “What’s wrong?”

Sunny shook her head, lowering herself in the water until it touched her chin. “Then we learned about the Unity Crystals, and suddenly everything got… bigger. The stakes got so much higher, but I still didn’t stop to think of it. Even now it still feels like a dream. Like I’m going to wake up any time and still be a silly mare with sillier ideas.” She blew some of the steam away, making it twist and twirl until it disappeared.

“But you were never silly, Sunny,” Izzy declared. Couldn’t she bathe in those eyes instead?

Another snort gouged the water. “Honestly, Izzy, you’d be surprised.” Placards on the Canterlogic stage. Like that worked the previous five times, Sunnybunny. “But the point is… now… now everything is real. It feels real. I’m not rushing and running and acting on gut feelings, but the opposite. We aren’t going completely blind, since we have directions and a clear objective…” She threw her head back and looked at the ceiling. “The stakes are higher than ever. I’m… I’m afraid I’ll screw it up… That last time was just stupid luck…”

A splash brought her eyes back to Izzy. “What’s wrong with stupid luck?”

“Huh?” Izzy could be… a little in her own head, and who wouldn’t want to be there, but… did she not appreciate all that had to go just right for them in the last few weeks?

“Think about it,” Izzy said as she levitated the sopping brush to start working on her mane. “When you were a little filly, you sent a friendly message via a flying lantern. What are the odds that it flew aaaall the way to Bridlewood and landed only a few hooves from my house?” Sunny had no words for that, and not just because of the lilt as Izzy said ‘all’ with four ‘a’s. Izzy’s smile warmed her almost as much as the water. “Sure, working hard and doing your best is important, but you shouldn’t dismiss luck just like that. I mean, I’m happy I was lucky enough to find your lantern, you know?”

Sunny felt her heart leap, and she hoped Izzy would think her blush was because of the heat. She let herself smile and nodded. “Thanks,” she said. She still wasn’t very convinced—at the very least, Hitch was right that they were lucky to run into somepony so hospitable first thing—but she appreciated Izzy’s comfort. And she could certainly take advantage of that fortune while she could. The rest of their bath went by in relative silence, with only a few words, barely more than grunts or mewls, about how tired they were, and how the desert had been a lot tougher than going from Maretime Bay to Zephyr Heights. Despite that aura still dazzling her, Sunny could see Izzy was struggling to keep her eyes open.

When they had finished drying off, they stepped into the living room. Pipp was lying on the couch on her back, looking at the ceiling with vacant eyes and an emptier expression. She found Zipp and Hitch on the floor playing Clop-Toc-Knock, and for a moment she was a little filly again, giggling her heart out as she and Hitch bashed their hooves together and on the floor. The old rhyme would never leave her head. Out one morning went two foals, the heroes of the story. The sun was warm and high and bright, to herald summer’s glory. Granted, it was never really her strong-suit—she always found herself getting lost around the time she would need to swish her tail for that one word. Well, she had been six, and that was already after the rhyme had them whistling and clicking their tongues—it was a lot for a little foal already dreaming of unicorns and reuniting the world, she had a lot on! But still… Hitch always looked so proud whenever he won—and told her how well she also did. She didn't think she'd seen him happier when she showed him that hoofshake she'd come up with!

“Underwater she had found, the treasure of the story,” they sang in that clipped rhythm, like a plow team in harmony. Fast—they must have been some verses in. Zipp’s face was straining fit to burst. “Dripping on the ground and on the rocks, the treasure of her country. Wet and salty for the waves, the chest was full of gold and jewels. Daring was the pony’s name, she was glad she broke the—”

“Thundering skies!” Zipp yelled as she clipped her hooves on the floor, glaring Hitch’s outstretched pair. “Why is it so darn difficult?!”

Hitch chuckled, puffing out his chest as Sunny had seen so often before. “Well, to be honest, this is your first time playing.” He looked to the side and spotted Sunny. His smile broadened. “But she did pretty good, didn’t she, Sunny?”

Sunny nodded. “Getting to that speed on your first try is pretty impressive.”

“It was the third,” Pipp croaked without glancing away from the ceiling. “The first time she didn’t even get to finish the verse once.”

Sunny shook her head, but couldn’t avoid smiling as she trotted to them. “Still, don’t feel bad for losing, Zipp. Hitch is the champion of Clop-Toc-Knock for five consecutive years.” She tapped his shoulder, and if it were possible he seemed to grow by her side. “And even before then, only a hoof-full of ponies have managed to get to the whistling part before losing.”

Hitch let out another chuckle, missing Zipp’s stare. “Mister Argyle did beat me that one time.”

Rolling her eyes, Sunny walked up to the other couch and sat down. “Yeah, a pony thirty moons your senior, while teaching you how to play.”

Zipp narrowed her eyes and stiffened her jaw as she glared at Hitch. “You tricked me.”

“I only suggested the game,” Hitch replied with a grin, shrugging a hoof at her. “You were the one that said we had to play it.”

“Because I thought it sounded easy enough!” Zipp yelled as she rose to her hooves, spreading her wings as wide as she could.

“Why are you so angry?” Sunny asked, fighting her voice level. This was the second time today…

“Yeah!” Izzy said chirpily, hopping onto the couch, next to Sunny. “Your sparkle’s getting all reddish! It’s kind of cool, actually.” Not helping.

Zipp opened her mouth, hackles high… but bit back her words and took a deep, loud breath. “Fine,” she grunted, looking at Hitch with a frown. “You win.” She sat down with crossed hooves.

Sunny looked between her friends with her head cocked. “What was that about?”

Pipp spoke up as she kept staring at the ceiling, twitching a hoof at the stallion. “Hitch said you and him should go alone to the village to look around.” A faint nudge at her sister. “Zipp said we should all go in disguise.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I passed on voting, hence their game.”

“I still don’t see what the problem is,” Hitch said, grin sensibly ditched, side glancing at Zipp.

“We should stick together,” Zipp replied, her wings ruffling. She tore her stare from the floor, landing widely on Sunny. “We’re in completely unknown territory.”

“And what would happen if you two and Izzy are discovered?” Hitch countered, brows firming into their Sheriff position. “You heard Bella. Ponies in this village are just like the ones back in Maretime Bay before the magic returned!”

“Speaking of which,” Sunny said. “Where is Bella?”

Zipp looked at her, frown wavering, feathers slowly leveling. Great… them going at it was probably going to be a running trend. Had something happened in her chambers before they left? “She, uh…” She blinked several times, jostling her head for a moment. “She just went to her room, saying she’ll bring us blankets for the night.”

Sunny looked out the window. The sun was still up, but it was starting to decline, staining the few clouds pink on its way. They had maybe one hour left of daylight. She raised her eyebrows. Sure, she hadn’t paid much attention to its position for three days, it mainly just being high and to be avoided, but she had thought they had arrived a lot earlier on the day. Maybe they had, and she and Izzy had just spent longer than expected in the bathroom.

She shook her head and turned to Hitch. “So, we’re going to the village tomorrow?” She hadn’t been aware they had decided to do that.

“Yes,” he replied. “Our supplies won’t last us all the way to the Frozen North and back, so we’ll accompany Bella to run some errands and see how much Zephyr Heights money is worth. If we can stock up before going to New Canterlot, that’ll be the best. If not, then… Well, we’ll have to figure it out.”

Sunny nodded slowly. That was another thing she hadn’t even given a thought to! Another mistake born from the experience of the last adventure. Just because leaving with no money or supplies last time had turned out fine, it didn’t mean it would work out again this time!

But before she could reply, she was interrupted by a loud knock on the door.

Everypony froze and looked at the door as if it could burst in flames at any moment. Another knock to the door, and Zipp immediately went to action, getting to the air in the cramped space and signaling Pipp to do the same. Pipp first looked out the window. When she saw nopony, she took flight and followed her sister to the kitchen. Izzy simply levitated the shade of a nearby lamp and used it to cover her horn and half her face.

With the unicorn hidden and the pegasi inconspicuously sticking their heads around the corner, Sunny nodded to Hitch, who, with a nod of his own, casually walked up to the door and opened it.

On the other side was a mare about the same height as Pipp. Her emerald green body was almost completely covered in bright white billowing fabrics, identical to the ones they had worn through the desert plus a pair of saddlebags. Her bright amber eyes looked up at Hitch, and she gave him the widest smile Sunny had seen.

“Hey there!” The mare said. Her voice was high pitched, but not uncomfortable to the ears. “I’m so glad you opened up! I wasn’t sure what I was gonna say if it had been another pony!”

A gasp distracted Sunny, and she turned her head just in time to see Pipp zip by and stop right next to Hitch. “Swifty!” She said as she hugged the newcomer. “You brought my batteries, right?”

Swifty, or Swift Feather, as Sunny remembered Pipp mentioning her name before, giggled and entered the house like it was her own. “‘Course I did, Pet! Any time I get hired by the royals is another bullet point to my curriculum!”

Pipp blushed profusely and whispered something to Swift’s ear as Hitch closed the door behind them.

“What?” Swift said. “Why wouldn’t I call you ‘Pet’? It’s a super cute pet name and, ohh,” she glanced at Hitch with a smirk. “You want to look cool in front of the gentlecolt, ey?” That made Pipp’s face turn bright red. “I getchu, girl. But you can’t deny me my only pleasure whenever we meet. I know all your deep, darkest secrets. Don’t tempt me.”

“Stop…” was the only thing Pipp said as she sat on her haunches.

Before Swift could say anything else, Zipp landed next to her. “Can you stop tormenting her for a second?”

Swift froze up and turned around, squaring up her entire body. Her fabrics ruffled, and when she noticed she couldn’t move her wings, she simply brought a hoof to her head. “Yes, your magnificence!”

Zipp slowly closed her eyes and let out a dragged sigh. “Did you come flying?”

“You bet I did!” Swift said, losing any trace of respect for Zipp’s authority. “I never thought crossing the desert could be fun! Just fly high, and it’s actually kinda fresh! And it’s very fast, too! It only took me two hours to go from the palace to The Heart of the Brave! This will save lots of water and time! Especially water.”

“Uh-huh,” Zipp said. “That’s all fine and all, but, did any pony see you?”

Swift huffed and rolled her eyes. “As soon as I saw your cart here I landed and walked the rest of the way.” She nudged to her fabrics. “That's why these are so clean, see? Barely a grain of sand.”

“My batteries,” Pipp said, poking at Swift’s side. Her face was still red, but she managed to keep a sort of calm expression. “I need them.”

“Oh!” Swift said, then opened her saddlebags. From them she took out two rather large boxes. “Here you go.”

Pipp took the boxes with renewed vigor and happily bounced to the couch. “Finally!” She opened one of the boxes and took out… another box. Sunny cocked her head as Pipp plugged a cable that stuck out of the new little box to her phone.

“Don’t ever let that mare without her addiction,” Swift commented with a smirk. She then proceeded to take off her fabrics and stretch her wings. Sunny couldn’t help but notice that her fluff was on the smaller side. It still made a nice curve on the mare’s chest, though. No stallion would be complaining about it, she was sure. Swift caught Sunny’s stare and her smile grew. Sunny felt herself heat up in the cheeks as the pegasus trotted up to her and sat down to her side. “So, what’s the plan, oh, mighty leader?”

Sunny started. “L-Leader?” she stuttered.

“Yeah,” Swift leaned on her. She was as short as Pipp, so she had to literally look up at Sunny. Her toothy grin was friendly, sure, but there was something else. Sunny couldn’t put her hoof on what exactly, though. “Aren’t you the leader of this party? It’s thanks to you us pegasi get to fly again and unicorns get to levitate stuff again…” She then lowered her voice, almost to a whisper, and her eyes lidded slightly. “If you’re not the leader, then these ponies are out of their minds.”

Sunny felt her heart skip a beat. Up close, Swift was quite a cute mare. Her muzzle was thin and rounded with a small bump on the nose. Her eyes were wide and shined against the sunlight that filtered through the window. Her mane, a green so light it almost looked white, was styled in a similar fashion to Zipp’s, but longer, dropping from a side to her shoulders, below which was her—

Don’t look at her fluff, don’t look at her fluff, she thought to herself. On the outside, she forced out a laugh. “I’m not a leader,” she said. “If anything, Zipp—”

Swift leaned in more, forcing Sunny to lean back. She had to place a hoof behind her to avoid falling on her back. “Zipp’s the next queen of pegasi,” she whispered. “But you united everypony. I’d say you’re cut to rule us all.”

Sunny gulped. Not because of what Swift was saying, but because she was just so close Sunny could smell her. Her fur had the scent of the sun, mainly, but also a bit of salty sweat, although not too much. There was a pinch of something sweet. A fruit of some kind that Suny didn’t recognize. And her fluff—

“Swift Feather,” Zipp said, imperiously. “Behave yourself. We’re guests in this house, and more importantly, we’re trying to bring unity back to Equestria. And you getting ponies uncomfortable is not helping.”

Still smiling, Swift huffed and climbed off the couch. “As you wish, your majesty,” she said with her eyes twinkling. Zipp only shook her head.

Feeling pressure in her chest, Sunny felt a sudden need to look at Izzy. The unicorn still had the lampshade over her head and was humming a tune. For some reason, Sunny felt a wave of relief wash over her body.

“By the way,” Swift said, her voice taking on a surprisingly serious cadence. “I thought you’d like to know the royal guard is not happy with you.”

“When are they not?” Pipp asked with an uninterested tone. She had connected her phone to a battery, but hadn’t turned it on.

Hitch raised an eyebrow at Pipp. “What do you mean?”

Zipp sighed, still shaking her head. “They don’t really like me sneaking out into the chasms or to my… ex-private hiding place. In their eyes, the Crown Princess should act all proper and stay in the castle.” She shuddered.

“This might be a tad different,” Swift said. “They’re saying you finally left the queendom for good, what with taking the very first chance you got to go as far away as possible with a small fortune.”

Sunny cocked her head. “Did we really take that much money?” She remembered Zipp asking for five thousand clouds. Although she hadn’t seen the coins yet.

“Sort of,” Zipp admitted, her wings ruffling. “One cloud is worth a hundred raindrops —which are minted in copper and brass—, and each raindrop is worth a hundred clips, which are made of aluminum.” Her eyes darted from side to side, and her restless hooves betrayed her attempt at looking composed. “The cheapest zone to live in Zephyr Heights is Mistral Basin, which is closest to the crops and farthest from the castle… The price of rent there is about fifty raindrops.”

Sunny blinked. That sounded like a lot, with how Zipp explained their money, but she just couldn’t wrap her head around it. She blamed it on being used to Maretime Bay money —Suns, each of which was worth a thousand rays.

“How much is an egg worth in Maretime Bay, Sunny?” Pipp asked.

Sunny looked at her friend and found a small smile on her face. “Uhm… One egg?” Pipp nodded. “Well, uhm, less than one ray. Maybe half? We always buy them in tens.”

“One egg is worth two clips,” Pipp explained, waving her hoof in the air. “That means that, with one raindrop, we could buy fifty eggs. With one cloud we could buy five thousand eggs.” She went silent and waved her hoof at Sunny.

Blinking, Sunny made the math in her head. “So, if we have five thousand clouds, that’d be… Uhm…”

“Twenty-five million eggs!” Izzy said happily, her voice muffled by the lampshade.

Sunny felt her jaw hang, and for a moment she thought it’d hit the ground. “That’s…” She couldn’t even begin to imagine how many eggs was that. It was a number that she just was unable to comprehend. Still, she knew that no pony could ever possibly pay for that many eggs. Heck, with her job at the smoothies stand, she could barely afford to buy a few tens every month. She turned her eyes at Zipp, whose cheeks had turned pink. “That’s a lot of money.”

But Zipp, cheeks flushing and all, stuck out her chest and stomped a hoof. “We don’t know how long it’ll take us to get to the Frozen North, and we also need to think of coming back. Besides, we can’t be sure that our coins will be worth much. With any luck, our small fortune will barely be enough to scrap by.”

Swift Feather smiled and threw a wings over Zipp’s back. “Hey, I getchu, girl. I’m just telling you what the guards are saying, so you know what to expect when you return.” She turned around on her heels and walked up to the door.

“You’re leaving already?” Hitch asked.

“Yeah!” Swift replied, stretching her wings.

Sunny looked at the window. It was already getting dark. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay the night? We could—”

“Nah, girl,” Swift replied, opening the door. “Gotta get back to The Heart of the Brave. Word of the dragon’s existence is spreading like wildfire and Stormlight and I want to make a profit out of it.” She turned her head around and brought a wing to her forehead. “Good luck on your quest!” And with that, she broke into a sprint towards the desert’s direction. If Sunny had to guess, Swift would start flying once she was completely out of sight.

“I like her!” Izzy said, taking the lampshade off her head. “She’s really friendly!”

Zipp sighed, but smiled nonetheless. “She can be overbearing, but she has her heart in the right place. At least I now know I’ll have to do some damage control when we get back to Zephyr Heights.”

Pipp hummed in agreement, tapping at her phone. “She’s always quick to deliver packages, so I tolerate her.”

Zipp rolled her eyes, not losing her smile. “Anyway, it is getting late. What do you guys say we go to sleep as soon as Bella brings the blankets?”

They agreed, and Sunny, as inconspicuous as she could, stayed close to Izzy so that, when Bella did arrive, they’d share the same couch as a makeshift bed. Izzy didn’t seem to mind and immediately fell asleep, resting her head on Sunny’s torso.

Sunny was, once again, glad that Izzy was a snuggler.

Author's Notes:

TL;DR. I needz me editor pretty plz with a cherry on top

So, uh, hi.

I'm in need for another charitable soul to help me with editing! Arbarano's help has been incredible so far, but real life has forced the publishing of this story to pause. With the 2D series airing soon, and the 3D main series coming up later this year, it's quite clear that this one fanfic will start being an "alternate universe" story.

Still, there are ideas I'd like to explore, characters I'd like to write, and stories I'd like to tell. So, if you wanna help me, I'll be greatful!

Like I said in the first chapter's footnotes, what I'm looking for is very simple:

- Grammar and spelling radar
- Snarky comment generator
- Ideas, suggestions, discusions and opinions brainstorm bud.

This chapter was edited halway through by Arbarano. Still, if you find anything unusual, do let me know!

In case you wanna help me:

- I write everything in Google Docs. I really like the editing system it has.
- I prefer communication through Discord, as I'm there practically all the time.
- I'd rather have a friendly, informal relationship with you. Ideas flow better when no one's afraid to pinch in!

Love y'all! I hope you like what I have in store for the future of this fic!

A New Generation

by Hakuno

Chapter I - Awakening

Chapter II - New Horizons

Chapter III - Expanding World

Chapter IV - Broadened Perspective

Chapter V - Foundations