Chapter 1- An Unexpected Visitor
Rainy Spirit darted through the trees, her wings flapping at full speed as she weaved her way through the gnarled undergrowth. As soon as she saw the sky, she broke through the leaves above, biting back the pain from the twigs that scratched against her sides. The tree branches seemed to lift their arms towards the filly as she sped out of the forest's grasp, reaching to hold her captive once again. But she had escaped, her mane rustling back as she pushed forward against the frigid breeze. A shiver ran down her back as she scanned the stars with shimmering eyes. She spotted a shooting star among the lot, and her heart began to twist and turn inside her chest. She spun upwards in pursuit of the soaring ball of light, extending her black hooves upward.
Rainy pulled her front hooves back in, close to her chest, and pumped her wings to their very brink. The memory sung through her mind, the voice that was once calming now eery.
"Twinkle, twinkle," the warm voice began.
"No," the young alicorn whispered to the wind, her heart pounding like an angry beast.
Drenched in sweat despite the wintry air, she swallowed her tears and licked her wet lips.
"Little star," the sound of the stallion's song echoed through Rainy's mind.
"No, stop," the filly choked out, beating her wings even harder. She could feel her body weakening under the strain of her speed and the burden of her feelings, but she ignored it.
"How I wonder-"
"Go away!" Rainy Spirit screamed, losing control from her outburst and tumbling through the air. She landed upon a soft white cloud, laying her head weakly against the fluffy surface.
That magic the young princess-in-training had always felt inside her took hold, and the cloud released a low grumble and trembled slightly, the pale bundle gradually darkening to match the filly's mood. She could hear the stream of rain coming out of the cloud gradually getting stronger as her muffled cries broke into sobs. Soon, she heard more rolls of thunder and felt the presence of more and more clouds joining the first.
"It's not fair," she wailed. Her stomach lurched with each cry of desperation, and her black despair rolled around inside her.
The storm grew angrier as she belted out her sorrows into the clouds. She didn't care. She just didn't care anymore. She lifted her head, red-eyed, and silently investigated her changed surroundings. The clouds were packed around her, some a dark blue, others an off-grey. Many looked like dishevelled messes of cotton, torn on the edges, their fury practically pulling them apart. Lighting flashed within the mass of storm clouds, and she sighed as she quietly lifted herself to her hooves. She weakly pulled the magic from the clouds in with her horn, restoring them to the gentle shade they wore each night above the skies of Canterlot.
"The weather team isn't going to be too happy," she murmured, though they probably wouldn't notice. She had more control of her magic than she did when she was a baby and in early fillyhood. The downpour hadn't been very widespread, and she had only done it over the quiet forest only a few miles from the castle.
She really wanted to make an Equestria-wide storm like she had countless times as a young filly when she was upset. But she knew that wasn't fair to other ponies, especially poor Earth ponies who had worked endlessly to produce a profitable crop. She couldn't just ruin the livelihood of thousands of families just because of her sadness.
Even though she wanted everypony to be upset, to be honest, she knew very few ponies would grieve her late father. Her mother and him had been divorced ever since Rainy could remember, and Equestria had learned to regard him as a repulsive being, with right reason.
In fact, many often wondered if Rainy herself was fit to be royalty, with a father like him. Nopony liked a changeling, whether they had truly tried to be kind or not.
Yes, Princess Luna had married a changeling. One who went by the name of Star, to be exact, and disguised himself as a light blue pegasus with a white star cutie mark. At first, she did not know that he was anything but a regular pony. Everypony loved him, and no one would have ever guessed that he was more than just their beloved new prince.
It all started when the prince began to feed off Luna's love subconsciously, causing her to fall ill while she was pregnant with Rainy. He soon realised that, every time he came to see her, she was in worse condition by the time he left. When he was gone, she was always better.
It didn't take too long for him to figure out that he was doing it. The stallion felt awful, even if he wasn't intentially hurting his love. He learned to stop himself from reading through an ancient magic book from a time even before Celestia and Luna when ponies and changelings lived in harmony and neither wanted to hurt the other. It detailed how to help a changeling that was feeding off a pony's love to learn how to stop. He worked to teach himself. It saddened him that, in order to save Luna's life, he could not openly love her anymore. He had to pull away from the princess so that she and their child would not suffer.
One night, though, before Rainy was born, Luna had a fight with her husband, asking why he acted like he didn't care about her anymore. He didn't know what to say to explain himself and ended up sleeping in one of the guest parlours for the night.
The following day, Luna came to find him. Over the night, Star's magic had run out. The changeling hadn't realised that he was starving himself by not feeding off her love and had not found an alternative source to keep his magic stores filled.
When he woke up, he discovered that he had transformed back into his changling self. He was horrified to see Luna leaning over him in shock. At first, she claimed he had done something with her husband, but she soon realised the truth when he showed her his act (once his magic had returned) and looked at her the way her Star always had. Rainy's mother was horrified. She was sure the only reason he had ever married her was to feed off her love, specifically because alicorn love was so much more powerful. She made him leave the castle, and that was it. Luna never forgave Star, and he died seven years later when somepony in Equestria, filled with hatred, killed him in his home in Cloudsdale.
It was a year ago, and Rainy still felt despair every Saturday he didn't come to see her and read her a book. She still heard his lullabies in her head as if he could somehow speak to her.
But he couldn't. She knew he was gone from Equestria. Forever.
Luna did cry when the news of Rainy's father's fate had arrived. She didn't like to be seen as weak, so she had waited until the droopy faced grey pegasus who delivered the letter of messy cursive had clumsily made her way out. Then, Rainy's mother had stoically made her way upstairs to her bedroom and shut the door and cried.
Rainy had never heard the strong princess of the night cry before, and she hadn't since. But she was still tormented by the sounds of her mother's ragged breaths and exasperated wails through her thick, silver-plated door.
Rainy released a shaky breath as she shook the memory from her mind and rose into the air to kick the puffy clouds away. She wiped the stray tears off her cheeks roughly and let herself buck out all her anger at her misfortunes.
"A princess musn't act so barbaric as to drench all the land! I heard there were even some stray rain clouds all the way up in Cloudsdale!" the voice of a disgusted Manehattenite interviewed on the nightly news after her last outburst rung through her mind as she continued to clear the skies. "Filly or not, she must learn!"
She held back her embarrassment as the wiped the last cloud from existence and looked over the city. She had went higher than usual, and the lights coming from homes looked like little candles lined up along a windowsill in an erratic pattern.
A crowd of ponies, pegasi, looking like gnats hovering just above the ground, earth ponies, and unicorns alike, just little specks of colour, gathered around a campfire in a village just outside of town. The wind howled in Rainy's ears as she watched the spectacle curiously. It seemed like some sort of Hearths Warming celebration, and was nothing short of a pleasing sight to ones eyes. Clusters of multicoloured lights clung to their modest homes below, away from the towering shadow of Canterlot castle. The light of the fire illuminated the quiet, snowy forest around them.
Despite her sadness, Rainy felt something like a smile creep onto her tired face as she watched the ponies get up and begin to dance, each with a partner. As she watched them sway, Rainy closed her eyes and imagined.
She pictured herself older, wearing an aged but elegant party dress fit for a typical mare headed to a family party. She was a pegasus, not an alicorn, and her mane was tied back into a loose braid. She stood near the warmth of the fire and looked into the face of Aspen, her best friend from Canterlot. His black mane was slicked back like a savvy business pony, a little out of place for the setting but certainly not out of character for a gentlecolt like him. His navy face lighted up at the sight of her. Ponies from their village came out with a few homemade instruments and played a slow song, a traditional Hearths Warming tune with a tad of small town charm sprinkled in. Aspen asked if she would like to dance, and she nodded politely. They held hooves and began to move to the music, making small talk.
He told her about he had grown up in your everyday family for ponies that lived in the village. He told stories about fun times he'd had with his little brother, who hadn't passed away at an early age. Instead, they had go on to run their own farm together, like they'd always dreamed of.
Rainy laughed at his stories and told him hers. She had a mother and a father, both kind commonfolk, and the little sister she had always dreamed of having.
Their lives were perfect there, under the dazzling rainbow Hearths Warming lights and the soft glow of the fire.
But in an instant, it was all shattered when somepony calling out to her broke her from her daydream. And she remembered.
She was a princess. With no father and a life of responsibilities to come. And the eyes of all Equestria would soon be on her.
She shuddered as the mare's voice called out again. She sighed, wondering why her mother couldn't come get her herself sometimes instead of sending a guard out to fetch her. But something was off this time. There wasn't a strict formality to the voice, and the pony seemed to be breathless from the long trek skyward. Neither were common traits for a guard to have.
In confusion, she turned to face the mare. To her shock, however, she found herself looking back at a rather exhausted looking lavender alicorn. Twilight Sparkle.
