Of Fire and Ice

As I came back to the land of the living, I saw I was no longer in my little clearing. I sat up, and saw I was situated in front of a small wooden hut. I stood up, my legs still a bit shaky from my presumably long nap. I knocked on the door a few times, hoping that whatever forest hermit that lived inside didn’t feel like having human flesh at the moment. When the door opened, I saw the tiny horse thing from earlier.  I could see my look reflected in her obscenely large baby blues.

“Hello?” I said, unsure of how it would react.

“Y-you can talk?” The horse (that was pretty clearly a she) stammered out,

“I would hope so, or my many years of schooling would be for naught!” I said dryly, then immediately perked back up, realizing I was making what would essentially be first contact. “Anyway, I think I saw you earlier in that clearing, but I don’t quite remember. Was that you, or some other white and blue horse with a horn on its head?” I said, only realizing how rude that may have been after seeing her indignant expression.

“Pony. I am a pony. P-O-N-Y pony, and a unicorn at that, not some horse. As for your question, yes that was me. I heard some shouting and decided to investigate. Obviously, I made the wrong decision.” She said sarcastically, while simultaneously shutting the door without moving her hooves. I moved to block the door.

“Wait, no! I realize we may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” She looked at me, clearly confused at my figure of speech. I grimaced when I realized my mistake “Erm, hoof, but please, I have no idea where I am, and I was only rude because I’ve never seen something like you before. Could you at least explain where this is?” I begged, thoroughly killing all dignity the human race ever had. It was impressive really, in only a few sentences, I made humanity look as pathetic as group of lost kindergarteners. To my surprise, her glare lessened and her eyes narrowed, as if inspecting me in the way a starved man would a piece of moldy bread. Either she was desperate for contact, or starving. I sincerely hoped it was the former, as being eaten was not all that high on my list of things to do today.

“Are there more of you?” She asked, clearly still suspicious of me, but to a lesser extent.

“No, as far as I know I’m the only one. Of course, I just appeared in wherever this is today, so I’m no expert.” I said smiling at the fact she didn’t attempt to shut the door on my foot. “Anyways, my name’s Albert, but you can call me Al. I figure you have a name too, right?”

“Well of course I do, just what did you think I was, some crazy forest hermit or something?” She exclaimed, the indignant expression returning.

“Yes actually, I did.” I thought to myself smugly. What I said however, was much less in the way of incentive to eat me, “No, I figured you just wanted some privacy or something. Not my place to question your choices, ma’am.” I mentally jumped for joy when I saw her smile a bit at my well placed ma’am. “Hah, I guess chivalry isn’t dead after all! Score one for the inept human!”

“Well, I suppose you gave me your name, so it would be only fair to give you mine. My name is Cold Snap, welcome to my oh so humble abode.” She said, gesturing to her wooden shack. “As much as I will probably regret this, would you like to come in? It’s getting dark.”

I had noticed that during the last while it had been getting progressively darker. “I would love to. I assure you I won’t eat you or anything. To be entirely honest, I was afraid of you eating me for a bit there… Actually, are you going to eat me?” I asked, absolutely sure I was sweating nervously as I thought about the fact she could be a terrifying flesh eating pastel horse. I saw her look at my with a tilted head, as if confused. Then she began to giggle, as she stepped to the side to allow me in.

“If I were going to eat you, would I tell you?” She said mischievously.

“Would you give me a head start if I said yes? I replied in a similar tone. She continued to giggle.

“Come in, you strange creature from deep within the forest. I’m sure you would give me a bellyache anyways.” She said, and walked inside. I followed into what seemed to be the sitting room. I took a seat across from her. “So, what’s your story Al? How do you not know when you’re in the strongest country on the planet?” She asked, genuinely curious. I told her my admittedly short story, and of my fire shooting ability. She looked surprised at the magic thing.

“I noticed you looked surprised when I mentioned magic. Not to pry, but is there a reason?” I asked, eager to learn what I could about this place. She told me of the main inhabitants, unicorns like her, pegasi, and normal ponies. Personally, it seems a bit unfair because from what she told me, the pegasi control the weather, the normal ones grow the food, and the unicorns sit in the capitol and generally do nothing productive other than take up all positions of power. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like most of them already. As she talked about the earth ponies, I noticed that she would constantly look at the ground, but she wouldn’t do this for the other races. I figured something must have happened and it was probably still bothering her. I was weighing my options between staying quiet or helping her when I noticed she had been trying to get my attention.

“-lbert can you hear me? Al, I’ve been trying to get your attention for a bit now.” She said, casting a worried glance in my direction.

“Sorry about that,” I said “but I was a bit lost in thought. I noticed you looked a bit troubled when you talked about the earth ponies. Penny for your thoughts?” She looked a bit taken aback at my observation, so I decided to do some quick damage control. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I just wanna listen. Having someone who’ll listen helps.” I said, smiling genuinely. She sighed sadly.

“I don’t know. It hurts, and I haven’t even known you for more than twenty minutes. I want to tell you, but I don’t at the same time. It doesn’t make any sense!” She almost shouted, her voice cracking at the end of her outburst. I quickly moved to put my arm around her withers, praying to any god that would listen that this wasn’t some sort of sexual action.

“I think you just need to vent. I know it doesn’t make sense to open up to a complete stranger, but I assure you you’ll feel better for it. In my humble opinion, you’ve held whatever this is in far too long.” I said, in as calming a voice as was possible. I heard her sniffle a bit.

“F-fine. Better get comfortable though, as this won’t be a short story.” She said, and began her tale.