Fluttershy trudged over the next frozen hill, grunting in annoyance as she crested what she felt to be the same place for the umpteenth time.
“I-It all looks the same out here in the storm!” she muttered exasperatedly to herself, teeth chattering. “H-How am I going to g-get back to the cottage?”
Her heart was racing as she looked about desperately, the onslaught of white blocking her vision from more than a few yards. Clinging to her parka desperately, she squinted in an attempt to better see where she was.
“C-Come on...” Fluttershy slowly moved forward, inching through the snow. “Th-There’s got to be s-some way I can—”
She never was able to finish her thought, for a large gust of wind tore at her from behind, forcing her wings open. With a shriek that was surely lost to the howling gales, Fluttershy was thrown forward, digging long trenches in the snow with her hooves. The biting cold air lifted her up off the ground, and Fluttershy’s racing heart stopped as though it had hit a brick wall.
Gravity proved to be too great for the winds, however, and the pegasus was slammed into the snowy ground as soon as she had become airborne. She lay there for a moment, the deep indent she made in the thick snow giving her sufficient shielding from the winds. In fact, she would have been content to stay there until the storm passed, but it began to pile on her faster than she could dare blink.
Shaking the snow from her parka and coat as she stumbled to her hooves, Fluttershy’s breaking became hard and shallow as a mounting wave of panic began to crest over her. She stumbled in the strong winds, breaking out into a frenzied gallop as she clamped her wings to her side with all of her might.
As she cut through the snowdrift without much thought, as quickly as she could, Fluttershy felt her hoof connect with a heavy object hidden under the snow. If she made any noise, it was certainly swept away by the frozen winds as she flipped head-over-hooves, right off the side of the hill, and tumbled down the snowy slide, flipping and floundering her whole way down.
Fluttershy cringed and cried as she slammed into the snow with each bounce, trying her best to go limp and just let herself ragdoll to prevent herself from getting hurt too badly. Unfortunately, the slightly-heavy hood on her parka seemed intent on making sure she would collide with the ground head first more often than usual.
The wind pushed her up once more, just as she reached the bottom, the added momentum sending her splaying sideways. As it had done before, the wind pushed down on her back with extreme force, slamming her into the snowy ground before she could even do so much as gasp, catapulting her into unconsciousness.
It was a lovely warmth that enveloped her, and when she finally opened her eyes, it was a great mix of white light and green that filtered down into her eyes.
She sat up, silk blankets flowing off of her body like gentle, silent waves of water. She blinked, the warmth befuddling her for the briefest of moments.
“A-Am I home?” she wondered aloud, squinting against the light of the windows.
“Of course you are, dear,” came a soft voice. She gasped, her wings fluttering gently excitement.
“And you’re here too?” she asked. A smile met this.
“I’m right in front of you, aren’t I?”
Fluttershy matched her smile. “O-Oh my.”
There was laughter in the room. “I always found you at your cutest when you spoke like that, my Fluttershy...”
Fluttershy giggled, feeling a heat in her face that had nothing to do with the sunlight pouring down into her.
She walked closer, the bright light obscuring her features. “And since you’ve been gone for so long...”
Her head dipped down, her mouth parting slightly, the light dimming just enough for Fluttershy to almost see her face again—
Fluttershy’s eyes shot open. The first thing she noticed was that it was dark. Not blizzard dark—there was no hint of white. This was a different sort of dark, one that could not be from the storm.
The second thing that she noticed, and the second thing to confirm that she was no longer in the storm, was the blanket wrapped around her. It was heavy, and coarse, but it was not fully uncomfortable. Fluttershy shifted in her wrapping, her breathing ragged, her eyes darting around. She was no longer exposed to the blistering cold of the blizzard—that was certain—but this was hardly a tradeoff. Her eyes darted around the room, adrenaline coursing through her as she did her best to find her bearings in this new place.
She heard faint thumping... was that the sound of the storm against the walls of wherever she was, or just the blood pounding in her ears? She shrunk down in her bedding, letting out a small squeak before she could contain herself.
Instinctually, Fluttershy attempting to raise her hooves to her mouth to ensure that no more sounds escaped. It was in this moment that she discovered that she was bound too tightly in her blanket to fully move.
“O-Oh...” she groaned, her head thrashing back and forth, mane splaying about every which way as she did so. Her eyes were wide, darting, her vision still trying to cut through the darkness.
The thumping was louder now, and Fluttershy was sure that it was more than a pounding in her ears. Her legs kicked against the bottom of the blankets, and arched her back, but it was in vain. It did nothing to help her escape the improvised imprisonment.
There was the creak of wood on hinges, and a blast of chilly air swept through the room. With it, light was visible, if only for a moment. Fluttershy stopped moving, holding her breath as she watched for any signs of movement.
She sat in agonizing silence, the seconds crawling by, her lungs beginning to ache as she held her breath for what she felt was longer than she had ever done. She stared into the darkness, blotches in her vision left by the sudden light mutating the longer she stared.
It was not until she almost passed out from doing so that she finally afforded herself a breath.
The shadow was there, on top of her, before her, and it loomed over her in the dark.
Fluttershy let out a high pitched shriek, and her head fell back, slamming the floor with her head as everything went dark.
She was standing on the hill which she had fallen down. The snow was thick, the storm still present, yet... something was off. Something was very, very off, and it chilled Fluttershy to the bone in a way the snow could not.
The pegasus took a tentative step forward, and gasped at what she saw when she focused her eyes of what was before her: the snowflakes had frozen in midair. She raised her hoof to prod it, and the snowflake spun away through the air, spiraling.
A sound sent her coat standing up. This sound... it was a shrill, droning noise, barely audible. It had no place being here. Even though she had never heard it before, she knew, Fluttershy KNEW that it should not be here.
Slowly, shakily, she turned around, and she was face to face with it.
It was featureless, it was tall, and it was made up a writhing mass of wires contained under glass skin. The camera she had seen beside it before was held it its... claw? It was a grip that reminded her of Spike’s, and it had been dragged through the snow.
That was the shattering of glass, and the smell of ozone filled the air as Fluttershy fell backwards, no noise escaping from her open mouth.
Fluttershy lay on the floor, the blanket still wrapped around her when she woke up. Light filtered in through two frost-caked windows, and she could now see her surroundings.
The room was very simple; there were a few objects that looked like long, brass cylinders, and there were many strange charts covered in diagrams of star patterns and maps of places Fluttershy did not recognize. There was a small bed made from dried arctic grasses, and a tiny wooden table between her and it. Her parka was folded neatly on the table.
“Ah, good! You’re awake.”
Fluttershy’s heart skipped a beat, and she froze in her bundle of blankets. The loud thumping she heard from last night approached her, until it stopped, just inches from her as best as she could tell. With great effort, Fluttershy moved her head to the side so she could look at the source of the hoof falls.
A tall, yet thin, reindeer stood beside her. His antlers were short, still budding, and his face displayed an expression of concern. His smile was nervous, and he was trembling slightly.
“I-I...” Fluttershy stammered. “Hello...”
“I was afraid you’d been seriously injured last night,” the reindeer said. “You hit your head quite hard when I returned home.”
Fluttershy stared at him, last night slowly starting to come together. When she did not speak for a few awkward moments, the reindeer cleared his throat.
“W-Well... I’m Meridian. I found you half frozen in a snowdrift just a few hundred yards from the village.”
“Thank you,” Fluttershy said, somewhat awkwardly. She was still bound tightly in the rug, and she squirmed a bit, hoping it would catch Meridian’s attention.
“Well, I couldn’t just let you freeze,” Meridian said, shuffling on his hooves. “I mean, not after I had seen you come from the ship and look so happy in Arctica.”
He stopped, blushing heavily. Fluttershy felt something jump in the pit of her stomach. “E-Excuse me?”
“I-I was in the forest when your ship docked,” Meridian explained, his head hanging forward slightly. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to seem creepy...”
“N-No, I’m grateful that you took me from the snowdrift,” Fluttershy said. “I surely wouldn’t have made it through without your kindness.”
Meridian smiled again. “Oh, I’m so relieved to hear you say that. Not a lot of beings would respond well to being taken and placed in somewhere they didn’t recognize, especially by someone like me.”
Fluttershy afforded him a smile. “Oh, don’t be so harsh on yourself. You’ve done a good thing here! You’ve saved me, surely... I think you’re very sweet and brave to have done such a thing. There are some who would have let me freeze to death!”
She could feel Meridian’s blush from where she lay, and despite herself, let out a soft giggle. Turning to look around the cottage, her eyes fell once again on the star charts and maps.
“What do you do when you’re not pulling strange pegasi from snowdrifts, Meridian?”
Meridian stepped over Fluttershy carefully, moving towards his bed. “I’m the village's cartographer. Everyone here has star maps, but I’m the only one with maps of areas beyond the forest and the bay.” He sighed, almost wistfully. “I’ve always dreamed of being able to map the whole world...”
“The whole world?” Fluttershy asked, astonishment creeping into her voice. “Well, that’s... quite the ambition.”
“The elders say that ambition is the enemy of greatness,” Meridian said. “I think that’s a load of horsefeathers.” He caught Fluttershy’s eye and turned away quickly. “Err... sorry.”
Fluttershy giggled again. “You don’t speak like the reindeer I’ve met before, Meridian. You even used a pony expression!”
“I try to be more worldly,” Meridian said, stepping from his bed towards the table where Fluttershy’s parka lay. “I dislike the cryptic way everyone speaks around here. More direct and casual is the way I prefer to go.”
Fluttershy struggled with the blanket. “U-Um... may I have some help?”
Meridian started, and nodded, dipping his head towards the middle of the blanket bundle. “I-I’m sorry...”
With a quick movement of his mouth, he untied what appeared to be a very thick rope from the underside of the blanket, and Fluttershy watched as the blankets split from her like a box being opened with expert skill. Sitting up, she stretched her legs, her cramping wings soon following.
Fluttershy slowly walked to the door on the far end of the cabin. “So... just where are we, Meridian?”
Meridian strode to her side in two easy movements of his long legs. Displaying what Fluttershy could only describe as a slightly proud smirk, he opened the door to the cottage.
“See for yourself.”
Fluttershy walked to the edge of the doorframe, her eyes going wide as she peered out.
“O-Oh my.”
Fluttershy’s jaw dropped as her eyes adjusted to the blinding white snow world before her. Poking from the drifts, she registered corners of homes sticking out from the sea of white, and with a few more blinks of her eyes, she saw hoofprints lining the pathways between drifts of snow.
Meridian smiled. “Nice, isn’t it? Now, it’s certainly something more to look at when it’s not drowned by snow...”
“So...” Fluttershy poked her hoof out the door, and watched in mild surprise as it sunk a full foot into it before hitting something cold and hard, which she assumed was either the ground or a doorstep. “This is your village?”
Meridian nodded. “Yes, yes indeed. This is the largest reindeer settlement in Arctica, Clairvoyance! Population, fifty-three.”
“Fifty-three?” Fluttershy looked up at Meridian. “And this is the largest?”
“Reindeer are generally spread few and far between,” Meridian said, ushering Fluttershy back into his home, closing the door behind them. “It’s hard enough to get two families to live with one another, forget a town like you must come from.”
“It’s a small place,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe three hundred ponies at the most.”
Meridian sighed. “I can’t imagine what three hundred reindeer together would be like... I guess it would be chaos, truth be told; the elders here have to send off someone now and then because they say that it messes with their ‘collective psyche’.”
“Do you think it does?”
Meridian snorted. “Hardly. I don’t even think they even have a collective psyche, and they just want some peace. The reindeer who leave are hardly torn up by it, either.”
Fluttershy sat down by her bundle of blankets. She looked around to the walls again, the star charts looking a bit different from the maps. The charts looked like they were in better condition, but a film of dust sat upon them. The maps were frayed around the edges, and the places they were pinned to the walls were torn slightly, as if they had been taken up and down fairly regularly.
“You’re not too into what the omens and the divination, are you?” Fluttershy asked. She froze, blushing slightly. “Oh, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude...”
Meridian’s face displayed a mixture of bemusement and concern. “No, it’s quite alright... you haven’t imposed anything on me that I wouldn’t have told you eventually, what with my big mouth.” He took a breath. “No, I’ve never been one to think that maps of the stars were more important than maps of the ground. In fact, I only see stars as good for the use of one thing; navigating out on the ocean. Still, the elders would rather check constellations and moon-to-planet alignments to see if there’ll be a wind that rips the wrong number of petals from an arctic rose instead of setting out to find new places...”
Meridian was now scowling, pawing the floor with his hoof. “They’re all mad, according to me, anyway...”
Fluttershy stood up, and walked towards a large star chart near the doorway. It was not as well used as the maps, yet it did seem to be devoid of dust, suggesting that it had been taken down occasionally. She carefully examined it; it appeared to be a map of known stars—no particular constellation, just a map of the sky.
“That’s the star map for ocean navigation,” Meridian explained. “Or, it would be, anyway, if I ever got the chance to go out on the ocean...”
“Are your days too busy to be able to head out?” Fluttershy asked.
“That and aside from the ship that you sailed in on, there isn’t any suitable boat of any kind out here.” Meridian trotted beside her. “I’m looking for any way out of here, whether it be by land or sea, and yet...”
Fluttershy turned to the reindeer, tilting her head slightly. His eyes were downcast, and his posture was somewhat sullen—it looked as though he were carrying a heavy load of bricks upon his back.
“If you want to go somewhere else, why don’t you just ask the elders to send you off? It sounds like they’re more than eager to reduce the amount of reindeer that live here...”
Meridian chuckled, and smiled slightly; yet it was a sad smile, one that sent a pang of sorrow into Fluttershy herself. “If it were that easy, I would have tried it already. Truth be told, err...” Meridian trailed off. “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think I ever asked for your name.”
Fluttershy went pink, her wings twitching nervously as she shrunk down. “O-Oh, I’m so sorry! I’m Fluttershy...”
Meridian too looked uncomfortably nervous, and it was fairly evident that neither of them were adept at social situations. Fluttershy would even hazard to guess that she was the first one in Meridian’s home in quite some time.
“A-Anyway,” Meridian said, voice wavering as he tried to break the awkward silence. “Truth be told, I’m not even the slightest bit prepared to live out there on my own. I may love maps, and have an amazing sense of direction, but I’d be savaged by some polar bear hunting party for sure. Not to mention the lack of grasses up to the north...” He paused, and then continued, “I can’t go south because that’s all ocean...”
“So do you just... pine for it?” Fluttershy asked. “I could never do that...”
“Then what would you do?” Meridian asked, shooting Fluttershy an apprehensive look.
“I’d bundle up, say goodbye to my friends, leave the warm comfort of my hometown and take the next ship out to Arctica,” Fluttershy said softly, smiling at Meridian. The reindeer returned her smile, his brown eyes twinkling.
“Oh, you are a clever mare...” he mused.
Fluttershy’s smile widened. “Why, I’ve never heard anypony say that to me... it’s usually my friend Twilight who gets those remarks.”
“Well, I’m not just anypony,” Meridian said shooting her a half-grin. “I’m not a pony at all, mind you.”
“Of course...”
The two sat in an awkward silence for a moment, before Meridian mustered the courage to break it. “So, you’re from down south...”
“Yes, I’m from a little town called Ponyville,” Fluttershy said, a question gnawing at her. “Oh, um, if you don’t mind me asking... do you go out and explore the places all out on your own to make maps?”
Meridian smiled, a bit more genuine than nervous now. “No, to tell you the truth... I have telescope upstairs that I use to look around. Like I said, going too far up north puts me right in polar bear territory, and I can’t exactly just head out to sea...”
“May I use it?” Fluttershy asked.
Meridian nodded kindly. “I don’t see why not...”
“I’d just like to find where my cottage is, if that’s alright,” Fluttershy said, moving from her sitting spot. “I was coming in from the shoreline when I got lost in the storm...”
“Of course...”
Meridian walked to the back of the cottage, and gestured behind a large crate. “It’s right up here...”
Fluttershy carefully trotted past Meridian, and scaled the stairs in moments, resting on the top landing as she looked around the second floor. It was clustered with boxes and trunks, chests and crates, with many more things covered by blankets or sheets. Some of them, judging by the layers of dust and considerable amount of happy spider families, had not been touched in ages.
“I inherited the place from my parents,” Meridian said from downstairs, slowly beginning to climb the steps. “My mother was exiled when I was young, and my father was lost in the last polar bear raid on our village...”
Fluttershy gasped. “I-I’m... I’m so sorry...”
Meridian looked up, smiling slightly, although he looked very much still downcast. “Oh, it’s alright... mind you, that was ten years ago.” He sighed, taking a few more steps to end up beside Fluttershy. “I just haven’t had the heart to go through their stuff. Except for the telescope, of course, my father always said I got my love for navigation from my mother.”
Fluttershy slowly walked through the attic during the somber silence that followed, shying away from the darker patches of the room. As she neared the telescope, she noticed a significant lack of clutter surrounding it. The area surrounding and including the telescope was devoid of dust as well.
“May I?” Fluttershy asked, lifting a hoof and gesturing towards the telescope. Meridian nodded.
“Be my guest,” he said, bowing his head slightly. Fluttershy walked over towards the telescope, and set her hoof on it gently, leaning down and closing one eye. She blinked, letting her vision adjust as she peered through the lens and out across Artica. Once her blurry sight cleared, Fluttershy let out a small gasp of awe.
The view was breathtaking; all of Arctica's majesty was laid out before her, as far as she could see. She could see over the frozen hills and snow-covered plains of Arctica, and as she pivoted the telescope, she found her view of the forest to be equally astounding. The trees were frosted thick with frost and snow, the tall pines moving gently in the Arctic breezes. When she angled the telescope downward, she came across two reindeer fawns frolicking and galloping together just on the outskirts of Clairvoyance. Fluttershy’s lips turned up in a small smile as she watched the two play, upending snow and leaving long trails of tracks in the snow.
With a few more swivels of the telescope, Fluttershy finally managed to locate her cottage. She almost didn't find it—on her first pass of the area, all she saw were the very corners of the roof sticking out of a snow drift. However, the top of her chimney, nearly hidden in the snow, gave away the location of her cottage.
“It looks like it's to the north of here,” Fluttershy said, pulling away from the telescope. “I had better go check to see if everything of mine is okay in there.” Fluttershy bit her lip. “I don't know how sturdy the building is. It might have even collapsed in the blizzard!”
“I don’t know,” Meridian said, chuckling slightly. “We reindeer know how to build houses that can withstand blizzards. Although... this one was a lot stronger than usual.”
“How much stronger?”
Meridian trotted nervously in place. “Well... the last time a blizzard this big came through, it took out about half the village.”
Fluttershy swallowed nervously.
“But I’m sure that everything’s fine this time!” Meridian added hastily. “In fact, I haven’t heard about or seen any buildings here that’ve collapsed! I’m sure your cottage is fine.”
“Oh, I hope so...” Fluttershy returned to the telescope, looking through it once more. It was still trained on her cottage, and she jostled it around a bit in a vain attempt to discern more information about the building. Sighing, she slowly moved the telescope away from her snow-buried cottage, moving it along the landscape towards the ocean.
“Oh!” she gasped, violently swiveling the telescope around, searching up and down the valley, and then closer to the ocean. “The penguins! Are they alright? That storm was so terrible!”
Fluttershy’s breath grew ragged and labored as she continued her frantic search up the shoreline for her penguin friends, before the soft touch of a hoof on her shoulder brought her out of her frenzy with a jolt. “Relax, Fluttershy,” Meridian said. “The penguins are natives to the land. Why, I’d wager to say that they may have been here longer than the reindeer ourselves! I’m sure no harm came to them.”
Fluttershy turned to look at Meridian, her mane slightly frazzled, her cheeks awash in blush. “R-Right. Sorry, Meridian. Just the thought of those poor little penguins caught in such a horrible storm...”
“Your compassion is incredible,” Meridian said, smiling. “Not too many in our village pay attention to the penguins. They consider them too whimsical and... unenlightened to be worth much attention.”
“I don’t know how anybody could think that,” Fluttershy said. She thought back to the previous deer she had met, and furrowed her brow. “Well... I suppose I can. But I don’t understand it all! How could anyone be put off by those darling creatures?”
Meridian shook his head slightly and chuckled, his smile growing. “You’re such a welcome change, Fluttershy; I thought I’d never meet anyone else out here in this wasteland who could actually look at what’s in front of them instead of staring straight up into the stars.”
Fluttershy’s blush burned a bit brighter, and she returned to the telescope, squeaking quietly. There was a moment of awkward silence as she stared intently through the lens, not looking at anything in particular.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said after a few moments. “I don’t compliment very well...”
“It’s quite alright,” Meridian said. “You remind of a doe in the village, actually; her name is Frea, and she’s soft spoken and if she’d stop spouting odd death-related prohecies, she’d be quite the—” he was cut off by a sudden gasp from Fluttershy. “What? What's happened?”
“Down by the ocean,” Fluttershy said, eye still glued to the telescope. “Have you seen this before?” She stepped away from the telescope, and let Meridian in next to her in order for him to take a look. Meridian leaned down, adjusting the piece for a moment before letting out a small “ah!”
“So you have seen it!”
“Yes,” Meridian said. “It’s a small boat that’s been there for a while. Big enough for... maybe six ponies. Three reindeer at the most. It’s mostly frozen into the ice, since it is the dead of winter, but in the middle of the summer melt, it comes free more often than not.” He stood up from the telescope, and stepped to the side, giving Fluttershy room to return to it.
“Why haven’t you tried to use it?” Fluttershy asked. “You told me there was no suitable boats out here!”
“No one would go with me,” Meridian said, sighing softly. “I couldn’t fair the seas alone, and that craft requires more than one to sail it. Like I said—no suitable craft.” He looked out the window, squinting slightly. “Besides, I doubt it’s seaworthy anymore. It’s been out there so long, the wood’s probably warped and splintered from freezing and contracting so much.”
“I see...” Fluttershy trotted over to the window, and placed her hooves on the sill. Squinting out into the bright sunlight, made all the more intense due to the reflection off the snow, she looked in the direction of the boat. “Suppose if it were still seaworthy?”
“Again, I have no one to go with me,” Meridian said. “I know a decent amount about navigation, and a little bit about sailing, but not enough to work a vessel all on my own. Especially one that requires more than one job to be done at once.”
“I don’t imagine deers are much of sailors,” Fluttershy said. “Do correct me if I’m wrong, though.”
Meridian shook his head. “Unfortunately, you’re correct. I learned everything from a few sailing books in my personal collection. My parents were avid bibliophiles, so I grew up much more well-read than many of my contemporaries.”
Fluttershy took a deep breath. “May I... may I borrow one of these books on sailing?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t see why not,” Merdian said, shrugging. “Although, I hardly think there’s enough knowledge in these books to make any single being skilled enough to sail that boat alone.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be boating alone,” Fluttershy said, her voice much quieter than usual. “Or at least, I hope I wouldn’t be.”
“Oh?” Meridian said. “Who would you be—” he pauses, his eyes widening, his ears pinned flat to his head. “Oh. Oh.”
Fluttershy grinned sheepishly at him.
