Chapters Scootaloo lived in a world that was four blocks long.
It began at the intersection of Saddle Road and Mane Street, where she and her aunt Sunny Shower lived at the top of a three story apartment building. Beyond that, while the town of Ponyville extended in every direction, Scootaloo only went east. She’d walk down Mane Street, past Sugar Cube Corner and the rest of the town square, until she came to the Town Hall and made her way down the diagonal street to the left. One block down that road and she made it to the railroad station. From there, she crossed the tracks, climbed the hill, and entered the schoolhouse. There she stayed, for a little over seven hours a day, until the bell rang and the class poured out the doors. Then Scootaloo began her trek back across her little section of town, up the stairs of the apartment building, down the hall, through the kitchen and into her room.
Not quite the life of excitement and adventure she’d planned for herself.
Being a pony of twelve years, Scootaloo was just now moving beyond art projects and recess and into the realm of studying and testing. While there had been the occasional exam in earlier school years, she often blew off studying to the last minute and spent her afternoons hunting for cutie marks with her friends.
That life continued until their efforts paid off. Sweetie Belle discovered her gift for song and performance, and was sent off to a private school in Canterlot to better foster her talents. Apple Bloom—like most of her family—found herself exceptionally gifted in farming. But unlike the rest of the Apple clan, she’d been sent off to Appleloosa to help the growing town manage its apple orchards. Only Scootaloo had been left in Ponyville, stuck in her four blocks of routine.
And now that would all change, she told herself. School was finally out, which meant months of free days and no more dreary walks across town. Her friends would be returning to Ponyville, and with there help, Scootaloo knew that this would be the summer she proved her skills in daredevilry, earned her cutie mark and finally transferred to a flight school in Cloudsdale.
Step one of her master plan: fly. And for that, she was going to need a ramp. That’s where her friends came in.
“I’ve been back in Ponyville for less than two hours, and you’ve got me digging a hole,” Apple Bloom huffed as she tossed another shovel-full of dirt over her shoulder.
“So what?” Scootaloo said. She took a sip of lemonade and passed the icy drink to Sweetie Belle as the two of them sat in the shade of a giant oak tree. “Haven’t you been digging holes for months? You’re clearly the best pony for the job.”
“If I wanted to dig holes all summer, I’d have stayed in the desert. Plenty of dirt enough out there.”
Scootaloo lay down in the cool grass and grinned. “Well I’d love to help, but I gotta save my strength for the jump. Taking off of a ramp isn’t as easy as it looks.” She took another sip of lemonade. “By the way, we’re gonna need that hole to be a little wider to fit the support system I designed.”
“And I reckon I’m building the ramp and supports too?”
“Eh. Sweetie Belle can help.”
Their unicorn friend wasn’t amused. “If you want to explain to Rarity how I got all dirty and sweaty while wearing one of her favorite hats, be my guest.”
“Couldn’t you—y’know—take off the hat?”
“And get sunburned? I’ll pass, thank you very much.”
Scootaloo rolled her eyes as Sweetie Belle adjusted her large blue hat adorned with ribbons and roses. Canterlot was certainly rubbing off on her.
She let out a yawn as she sat up to see Apple Bloom’s progress. Her friend’s entire lower body was hidden in the hole, leaving only her head and pink bow showing. She’d grown quite a bit in the past few years, so that the bow that had once been larger than her mane was now only half the size, tying the red hairs into a neat ponytail. “How’s it coming?” Scootaloo asked.
Apple Bloom glared at her, her face covered in dust. “How about you come over here and see for yourself?”
Shrugging, Scootaloo stood up and walked out from under the shade of the tree. The difference in brightness was harsh at first, so much so that Scootaloo had to squint her eyes so much that she could hardly see. By the time her vision adjusted, the hole was empty, and Apple Bloom had dropped the shovel at her hooves.
“What’s—woah!” She hadn’t even felt Apple Bloom’s shove until she was already falling. With a grunt, Scootaloo landed face first in a two foot deep hole of dust and dirt. Behind her, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom shared a laugh, and Scootaloo couldn’t help but giggle at herself.
As the sun passed midday, Scootaloo completed the first hole and moved on to the second. She and her friends talked about school, home, and ponies they’d met over the past year. At one point, Sweetie Belle tried to turn the conversation to cute stallions, but when Scootaloo reminded her that their old classmate Featherweight was “single and looking to mingle,” Sweetie’s face had turned red and she pulled her hat down over her eyes. They all laughed once more, and kept talking.
Scootaloo hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this. Not the crusading for cutie marks or wild antics with her friends, but just talking with them. So much of her past year had been spent in silence, what with her aunt working two jobs and barely being home. To hear another pony’s voice that wasn’t asking about math problems was a great relief indeed.
“So girls, have either of you heard from—”
Clink.
All three of them heard it. Apple Bloom shot up and over to the second hole where Scootaloo was digging, and even Sweetie Belle made her way out of the shade, hat swaying in the breeze.
“Did you find something?” Apple Bloom asked.
“I-I’m not sure,” Scootaloo said. She placed the shovel outside the hole and knelt down, inspecting the dirt. It certainly didn’t look like anything was there.
“Well don’t just stop digging, dummy!” Sweetie Belle said. “Maybe it sank a little, whatever it is.”
“Could just be a rock, y’know,” Apple Bloom joked, patting her on the back.
Sweetie Belle jumped. “Hey, wash your hooves before you touch me! You’re just as dirty as Scootaloo is!”
Scootaloo didn’t hear any of it. She pushed more and more earth to the sides of the hole, so that they built little hills where thin layers of dirt slid down, so that the more she dug, the quicker the hole filled itself. That’s when she began throwing it out of the hole entirely, hoofful by hoofful, while Sweetie Belle screamed and dodged the soil barrage.
Then, she saw it. The tip of a cylinder, unmarked and completely white. As she pulled it out, she noticed it had a cap on the bottom end, the rim of which was lined with a shimmering golden seal. As Scootaloo held the thing, her friends’ heads appeared over each her shoulders, staring.
“What is it? Lemme see!” said Apple Bloom, reaching for the cylinder. Sweetie Belle didn’t ask, she just snatched it up with her magic and pulled it from Scootaloo’s hooves.
“H-Hey!” Scootaloo shouted, jumping out of the hole. Dirt coated every part of her body, and Sweetie Belle took a few nervous steps back.
“I just wanted to look,” she said.
Apple Bloom raised an eyebrow. “Well so did I, but you didn’t see me just up and take it.”
“You were totally trying to take it from Scootaloo before I did!”
“Did not!’
“Did too!”
“Girls! ” Scootaloo snapped. Immediately, her friends were silent, exchanging only a dirty glare before turning to her. “I think it opens,” she said, taking the cylinder from Sweetie Belle. Wrapping one foreleg around the body and another around the cap, Scootaloo pulled and with a pop, the two came apart.
Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom clambered over each other to see. While they fought for the best view, Scootaloo turned the cylinder over and out dropped a rolled up piece of paper.
“Oh, what do you suppose it is?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Well there’s an easy enough way to find out,” Scootaloo said. She dropped the cylinder, unraveled the scroll, and found herself staring at what looked like a hoof drawn map of Equestria and the surrounding lands. The paper was so large that even with her forelegs outstretched, Scootaloo couldn’t open it all the way, causing the scroll to sag. Different places on the map were marked with various symbols, and in the top left corner was a series of concentric circles, decorated with markings similar to those on the map.
“Omigosh omigosh omigosh!” Sweetie Belle squeaked, jumping up and down. “A treasure map! Girls, we found a treasure map! Maybe it leads to jewels or gold or something else that’s really, really shiny!”
Apple Bloom was freaking out as well. “We gotta show my sis! She’ll never believe it!”
Only Scootaloo was silent, eyes studying the paper before her. “Girls,” she spoke calmly, “I don’t think we should tell anypony about this.”
Both her friends stopped in their excitement and looked at her, puzzled. “Why wouldn’t we?” asked Apple Bloom. “If we show this to Applejack, she and her friends may be able to figure it out and—”
“That’s just it, Apple Bloom,” Scootaloo said. Some feeling was welling up within her, growing stronger and stronger as she studied the circles. “She didn’t find this map. Rarity didn’t find it, Applejack didn’t find it, even Rainbow Dash didn’t find it. We did.” She rolled the paper back up as her friends exchanged confused looks. “If there’s anything we know about cutie marks, it’s that they’re tied to destiny. I’ve been searching for mine for longer than anypony we know, and now something like this drops into my hooves?”
"So what, you're just gonna take off? What about school?"
"And what about your aunt?" Sweetie Belle added. "There's no way Sunny would let you go treasure hunting, let alone by yourself."
Turning away, Scootaloo placed the map back in its container and sat down. What her friends said was true—Sunny would never in a million years let her leave Ponyville alone. Granted, this wouldn't be the first time she'd snuck out of town without her aunt's knowledge, though in previous years she'd never been gone more than a night. If she followed this map, there's no telling where she'd wind up, when she'd be back—if she'd be back.
"Y-Yeah," Scootaloo said. "Yeah, you're both right. Sunny wouldn't let me leave. Even if she did, it's not like I'd be able to make heads or tails of this old thing."
"Best leave it to the adults," Apple Bloom said.
The three of them began the walk back to town, having entirely forgotten an afternoon of hole-digging and ramp-building. Each agreed they'd show the map to Applejack the following day, and that Scootaloo would be the one to take it home for the night.
As she said her goodbyes and made her way back to the corner of Saddle and Mane, she clutched the map a little tighter under her wing.
There was no air conditioning in Scootaloo’s apartment, and on a summer night like this one it was all the more aggravating. Even beneath a single thin bed sheet, the air was hot enough to make her flip over every few seconds. Glancing at a clock on the wall, she saw that it was barely past midnight. She groaned, turning her pillow over again and again, until finally she threw off the sheet and clambered out of bed.
Something was eating away at her mind, even more than the heat. Her eyes wandered between posters and pictures hung on the walls, finally settling on the white, dusty cylinder in the corner. Scootaloo crossed the tiny bedroom in five steps, picked up the container, and removed the lid with a pop.
Out slid the map, complete with cryptic markings and symbols. Even in the dimness of the night, Scootaloo could see everything on the paper clearly, almost as if it glowed. In the center was Canterlot Mountain, labeled something else in a bizarre language she couldn’t read, as were most of the familiar landmarks. And yet other places—some that she knew and some that she didn’t—were labeled in modern Equestrian. Had the map been added to over time, she wondered? Or were the unreadable words some sort of secret code?
One word was repeated over and over, or written large and circled several times. “Ru... Rujejm?” she whispered into the night air. It was likely a word from a long dead language, she thought to herself. Or maybe it was a code, or a magic word that would open a door somewhere.
The thought of discovering and solving such mysteries made Scootaloo’s heart flutter. For so long she’d been stuck in Ponyville, travelling the same four blocks from home to the schoolhouse and back. Now she’d found this map, and who knows where it may lead her? Many of the drawn locations were beyond Equestria, across oceans or beyond the northern mountains. Deserts, valleys, and great glacial expanses called to her from within the paper.
But once she gave the map to Applejack and her friends, that would be the end of it. The adults would take her map, discuss it behind the closed doors of Twilight’s castle, and set off on some grand adventure while Scootaloo stayed behind. She’d spend the rest of the summer wandering Ponyville with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, until the two of them left her again to go back to whatever futures they had. Then it was back to the same four blocks, these same four walls, over and over until who knows when.
It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Eyeing a set of wavy lines marked northwest of Canterlot, Scootaloo rolled the map back up and placed it in its container, shutting the lid. Across the room, she pulled a blue saddlebag from her dresser’s bottom drawer and opened the left pouch. She stuffed in the cylinder, a set of tools, and a small knife.
Before she closed the bag, Scootaloo pulled the knife out again. It was a tiny thing, with a blade barely two inches long and a handle of dull red crystal. On one of her trips to the Crystal Empire, she’d found a vendor selling decorative knives and snuck away from her friends to buy it. She had fashioned a small covering for the blade out of canvas, and hidden it beneath her dresser. Her aunt never even knew she had it.
Scootaloo stopped her preparations at the thought of her aunt Sunny. She would be really, really mad once she found out. She’d probably throw a fit and call the police, expecting Scootaloo to be lurking around town somewhere. Maybe she would even ask Rainbow Dash to help find her, if she was really upset.
“Oh, come on, Scootaloo. What’re you thinking?” she said as she shut the bag and crawled downstairs. Sunny was barely even home, often away for so long that Scootaloo only saw her once every few days. She was gone in the mornings and often came back after Scootaloo was asleep. If she was lucky, her aunt wouldn’t even know she was gone until she was already at her destination.
She made her way out of her room, walking on the tips of her hooves. The knife handle and the map’s container clicked together with each step, causing Scootaloo to wince and slow down. There could be no mistakes now, not when she was so close.
Making her way to a set of drawers, she opened the top one and found several bags of bits. Emergency funds, her aunt had called them, for a time when they needed something and didn’t have time to wait for a paycheck. Now seemed like a good enough time.
Placing the coins into her saddlebag, she crossed the room to the pantry. The shelves were mostly empty, save for a few boxes of cereal or bags of grasses. Scootaloo stuffed her bags with as much food as she could, before making her way to the front door, where her scooter was leaned against a wall.
This was it. If she left now, she could ride for a few hours and make it to a train station somewhere out of town, where nopony would recognize her. From there, she could go north through Canterlot and make it to the location marked by the wavy lines.
As she opened the front door, she hesitated. Her aunt’s bedroom door was closed, a sure sign that she was sleeping. And yet, as perfect a time as this was for Scootaloo to leave, she couldn’t bring herself to walk out the door.
Sunny had cared for her, raised her, taken her in when she was barely old enough to talk. She had given her shelter, food, and a place to sleep. She was the only family Scootaloo had ever known.
Scootaloo blinked, her head low. With a single, deep breath, she grabbed her scooter and was out the front door.
Forty miles north of the last train stop, Scootaloo buzzed through sloping fields of green. The air was noticeably cooler here. Even on an early June morning, a chilly wind drifted between the foothills, causing the grasses and flowers to sway and dance in the breeze. Scootaloo breathed deeply, smiling. Something about the coolness of the morning was refreshing, like swimming in a crystal clear lake on a hot day. Whether she owed this feeling to the altitude or the latitude, she could only guess.
She zipped along a thin dirt path that had been carved into the hillsides by years of hiking hooves. Her scooter barely fit between the grass, but even still she felt a jolt as she passed over a bump or veered too far to one side. Every once in a while, Scootaloo would come to sections so rocky that she had to walk, dragging her scooter along behind her.
Another gust of wind blew through her mane. She’d tied it up in a neat little ponytail, and could feel the hairs ever so slightly as the air pushed it around. Her saddlebag was draped across her back, but every so often she would reach back just to make sure it was still there.
As Scootaloo crested another hill, she found the dirt path descending into a field of bright yellow flowers. She squealed—much more girly than if somepony else were around—and dismounted her scooter. Leaving it on the path, she scampered off into the meadow, saddlebag in tow.
Though she would never admit it if asked, Scootaloo hadn’t prepared very well for her trip. Somehow the issue of food had completely been forgotten, and within two days she was hungry with nothing to eat. For the first night she’d managed with plain grass, but it was hardly the diet she’d grown accustomed to living in Ponyville. When living alongside families named the Apples and the Cakes, one rarely had to settle for anything so boring as grass.
But flowers would do just as well as fruits or sweets. Scootaloo stuffed her bag to the brim, filling each pocket with petals and stems. As she made her way further into the field, the yellow daisies were joined by a small blue flower she didn’t recognize. She leaned down and took a bite of one, and within several minutes she’d tosses many of the daisies from her bag and replaced them with the blue flowers. A grin was plastered to her face, and she walked with a skip as she made her way back to the path.
Another mile, and the dirt path grew wider and less curvy. Scootaloo slowed her pace, her wings humming rather than buzzing. Before her, the foothills stretched further into the sky, and fields of grass and flowers were replaced by tall, dark pines. Bushes that had seemed ankle high from a distance stretched well over her waist as she passed them. And far in the distance, two great stone giants rose from the earth, their faces coated by nothing but rock and ice.
As she rode, Scootaloo found herself staring half at the road and half at the sky. As tall as they were, the mountains and hills were dwarfed by the enormity of the white fluffy masses above them. While the clouds shared the sky with patches of blue, most everything above was covered by cumulus.
Scootaloo closed one eye, then opened it again. Try as she might, she was unable to judge just how large the clouds were. She remembered the time Rainbow Dash had told her that some storm clouds grew to be many times the size of Canterlot mountain, and even regular clouds could be almost as large. In her mind, she pictured snatching up one of the rocky peaks before her and dragging it up into the sky to hide within a cloud. Something about the image of a little orange pony tugging a mountain thousands of feet into the air made her laugh a little, then sigh.
The path she followed was now bordered by the pine forest on one side and shoulder-high brush on the other. Every so often, a branch from a tree or bush would stick out into the road, and she would either see it or hit it. Eventually, Scootaloo took to riding with her head down, and her mental game of clouds and mountains ended.
It was past noon by the time the path left the forest’s edge. Now a wide field of dandelions, white and feathery, stretched between Scootaloo and the pines. And far into the distance, the hills and grasses were overcome by colossal walls of granite and snow. The two mountains that had seemed so close that morning loomed in the distance still, despite half a day of riding. Her wings ached, her stomach growled and her mouth was dry, but she had to keep moving.
The brown dirt road gave way to a gravelly path the color of smoke. Tiny dark stones clicked and clacked together beneath her as she buzzed along. The details on the mountain faces were becoming clearer as well, with steep gray faces exposing gashes and divots. Snow and ice marked the slopes as well, in thin white lines that shimmered in the summer sun. Some parts of the rocks remained hidden in their own shadows, while others slept under blankets of pines. But it was the peaks of the mountains that Scootaloo stared at. The entirety of both summits were coated by ice so white that it seemed to blend in with the clouds. Only by squinting could she make out the line between snow and sky, and even then she wasn’t sure if the mountains pierced the bottoms of the clouds.
The gravel and grass seemed to stretch on forever. As the sun dipped behind the gray wall of the mountains, Scootaloo’s wings slowed. Her breaths came in slow and deep, and that cool mountain air that had so easily charmed her that morning only stung in her throat now. Eventually, the sound of wheels on gravel was silenced, and she stumbled off her scooter. She threw her saddlebag to the dandelion field with a thud, and flopped to the ground herself.
With a pillow of flowers and a bed of grass, Scootaloo was asleep before the stars were even out.
When Scootaloo awoke, it was still dark. Or at least it was still night.
There were more stars in the sky tonight than Scootaloo had seen all her life. They covered the world, gleaming and twinkling as she blinked, seeming to dance as she moved her head. Most of them were dim pinpoints, but some shone brightly like candles. And in the center of the sky, rising up from the valley between the two mountains, a shimmering column of blue starlight rose. It thinned out the further it stretched from the horizon, so that the stars that made it grew dimmer and dimmer until Scootaloo couldn’t tell where they ended and the rest of the sky began.
Once, many years ago when Twilight Sparkle had first moved to town, Scootaloo and many other ponies had gone to watch a meteor shower. While she remembered it primarily as the first night Rainbow Dash asked her for something, it had also been the first and only time she had seen what Twilight called a galaxy. It had been the brightest night of Scootaloo’s life, and in the weeks after she’d often wondered why she never saw such beauty when looking out her bedroom window. Her aunt had explained it as Princess Luna having just recently returned from her exile and needing rest, and Scootaloo never questioned it again. But now, seeing this magical display, she couldn’t help but wonder if some beauties were beyond a goddess’s control.
Rising up, she stretched all her limbs and buzzed her wings for good measure. If she started back on the path soon, she would likely make it to the spot marked on her map by sundown. If it was indeed a town, as having a road to it would indicate, then maybe she would even get to spend the night in a real bed.
The thought of pillows and sheets had Scootaloo smiling, even after having so recently given up her own. Once she found the town, her plan was simple. Ask anypony and everypony about Caldrath and Chorus, and if that didn’t work, dig through every last inch of every building for a clue. Whatever she found would surely be enough to point her in the right direction, and from there she could improvise. Growing up near Rainbow Dash taught a pony many things about making things up on the fly.
First things first, though. Following Rainbow Dash around for years taught her more than just improvising skills. One tended to learn the life of an athlete, and one of the most important rules was never skip breakfast. Scootaloo opened her saddlebag and snatched a few of the flowers from within, but as she went to close the pocket, the map container caught her eye.
Something about the scroll was captivating. It was never far from her thoughts, its cryptic symbols and bizarre words always in the back of her mind. As she chomped down on the first blue petal, she pulled out the container and popped it open, spreading the map out before her.
Immediately she spat out the flower and gasped. All across the paper, white words shone faintly in the starlight. Though the night was silent save for the rustling of wind through grass, Scootaloo could swear she heard a low humming emanating from the map.
Even more alarming than the hidden words was the wheel of symbols in the map’s corner.
One of the black and white circles on the inner ring glowed hot white, forming a pale crescent that looked like it would burn right through the paper. Numbers were drawn in or next to the circles. There was 19 , 235 , and many others. The spaces around the wheel were noted with various equations and fractions, few of which Scootaloo could make sense of. Beneath the wheel was a drawing of Princess Luna’s cutie mark, accompanied by the number 6,940 .
The rest of the wheel held secrets as well. The star in the center twinkled like those in the sky, its six points seeming to shrink and stretch as Scootaloo tilted the map in her hooves. The innermost ring and its four symbols were dimmer than the rest of the lit markings, save for the one symbol on the top left, beneath the glowing crescent. The symbol of half-circles above the wheel didn’t just glow, it shimmered and flickered like a flame. And both left and right of the outside ring, where two identical symbols were drawn, the same word was written, once forwards and once mirrored.
“Teros... ” she said aloud. Her hoof slid over the glowing word, expecting to feel a heat that wasn’t there. She turned her gaze to the column of stars, then back to the wheel and its word, then back to the map.
There were more words she could pronounce now. What had been a previously unlabeled sketch of sand dunes to the south was now marked as Shal-Harai . Within that same stretch of land, the words Urador and Varos were written. Over an eastern continent previously described with unreadable text, the words Alatun and Caelos were penned in radiant light. There were more words too: places, names, things Scootaloo knew were important but couldn’t decipher. Astaes , Tondraes , and Rosaes to the west, Lusanis to the south, and more.
And written and circled on nearly ever margin of the page, next to or overlapping the darkly inked Rujejm, was another word. “Valari ,” she whispered quieter than the wind. It was brighter than everything else, and repeated all over in various hoofwritings. Scootaloo couldn’t help but wonder if she was the first to discover this map buried somewhere, or if she would be the last.
Her stomach growled at her suddenly, pulling her attention away from the map. As much as she wanted to stare into the scroll's light until dawn, she had to get moving now if she wanted to make it to her destination before dark. With one last glance at the words, she rolled the paper up and put it back in her bag. A few flowers to fill herself up, and she was back on the road, with only the wind in her mane for company.
Tiny stones clattered beneath the scooter’s wheels as Scootaloo buzzed down the gravel path. Her windswept mane fluttered about, as she had undone the ponytail before setting out on her ride.
As the path turned left and down a hill, Scootaloo’s ears perked up. Her wings slowed and the scooter came to a stop, the gravel beneath her silent as the mountains above. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the bubbling flow of water.
Immediately her pace quickened. She sped down the hill, pebbles and dust kicking up behind her. Licking her lips, Scootaloo squinted into the wind, eyes peeled for a creek or pond or anything drinkable.
Finally, she saw it, off the path and about fifty feet down a hill of trees and grass. Letting her scooter flop to the ground, she made her way through the rising pines until the green beneath her hooves gave way to white stone. Flowing steadily before her, in a clearing nearly a hundred feet across, was a wide creek lined with fallen logs and flowers. Smooth rocks lined the bottom, easily visible through the crystal clear water, which flowed left and right around small boulders.
Her face was in the water before she took a breath, and her first drink in over a day was spit out with a gasp. Scootaloo sputtered for a moment, before laughing into the cool breeze and taking a large gulp of water. It was ice cold, likely melted from one of the increasingly common snowbanks she saw further up the mountains. Finding a particularly deep section of the creek, she dunked her entire head underwater for less than a second, before rising again and swinging her mane about wildly. It was frigid, but refreshing.
Looking up from the water, Scootaloo saw the first mountain beyond the two flanking her path. Unlike the gray giants behind her, the rock of this peak was a light orange, almost the color of copper. Although with the sun lowering behind her, she surmised that the mountain may be more the color of rust. The tips of the valley walls behind her cast a V-shaped shadow over the lower half of the stone face, shrouding the fine details of its base from her eyes. Still, she could make out a pine forest similar to the one she was in that carpeted the lower half of the prominence.
Above the shadow line, the features were very distinct. The one summit had two sharp peaks, dipping low into each other with a deep split at the center, filled with ice. The right half of the mountain continued flat for a few hundred feet before dropping nearly vertically to the earth. The left side stumbled up and down for as far as Scootaloo could see, until the mountaintops were hidden behind the pines on the other side of the clearing. And all across the tops, great smooth patches of clay and dirt marked the scars of rock and mudslides from ages past.
How much of Equestria’s history could be found in this range, she wondered? In school, Scootaloo had been taught that the battles between the Royal Sisters and ancient foes had torn landscapes apart, reshaping the mountain range around Canterlot into flat plains. Later, after alicorns battled for the fate of day and night, Nightmare Moon’s followers had waged a bloody civil war, where unicorn magic burned down forests and sliced deep canyons into the earth to mark off territories. Had such battles been thought here? How many scars on these mountains were natural, and how many were the result of ponies fighting monsters, or each other?
It didn’t take much contemplation on the subject for Scootaloo to remember why she’d always fallen asleep in history class. With one last long drink from the creek, Scootaloo turned and made her way back up the hill to the path.
Her scooter and saddlebag lay waiting for her. As she picked them up and continued down the road, she noted the lack of towns, or even signs. She’d expected to reach her destination by nightfall, and the sun was nearly down. Perhaps she wasn’t quite as good at reading maps as she once thought.
Scootaloo shrugged, a small motion next to her speeding scooter. If she didn’t find anything at the map’s location, it was entirely possible she was just reading the map wrong. Regardless, this road existed, and roads had to lead somewhere. So long as there was a path in front of her, Scootaloo resolved to see what was at its end.
The more Scootaloo tried to sleep, the louder the world became. Every time she leaned her head against the window, a bump in the rails would cause the entire train to jolt her awake. If she closed her eyes and rested her head behind her, she could hear every word of whatever conversation was taking place in the next car. Every noise piled onto her irritation, until she threw her hooves up with a groan and gave up.
There wasn’t much to do on this ride, and she’d only boarded about an hour ago. A two hour scooter trip from Ponyville to Whinnypeg, and Scootaloo found herself sleeping on a bench in the train station. Or rather, staring at the ceiling until the ticket booth opened. It was still dark, and the gravity of what she was doing had already set in. Every pony she’d seen while ordering her ticket and boarding the train had reminded her of somepony she’d known in Ponyville. Faces and voices bounced around her mind, each one leaving her a little more remorseful.
Still, it was a little late for guilt now. With a sigh, Scootaloo opened the blinds of the train car window, filling the tiny space with blinding sunlight. She winced as the brilliance of the morning forced her eyes shut once more, the darkness of her eyelids permeated by dots of color.
After a few seconds she was able to squint, and through her lashes she saw shimmering pink bands of dawn stretch out across the early morning clouds. The sun peaked halfway out from behind the horizon, wide and shining. As her vision adjusted, she saw that the tracks had led the train up and along the side of a mountain, so high up that most of what she saw out the window was sky. It was only by standing on her seat that Scootaloo could make out a valley below, carved by a thin, white river. A range of gray, sloping mountains stretched far into the east, only the very tips coated in snow. Half way down the sierras was the border of a forest of pine trees, which covered the interior of the valley like moss. The further away she looked, the less pines there were, and the gaps between mountains were instead filled with emerald green grasses and patches of stone and ice.
The mountains closer to the train were much more jagged, their peaks sharp and split with the aftermath of rockslides. The faces were nearly flat, as if something had grabbed half the rock and torn it clean off, leaving the remainder broken and scarred. Where the distant mountains were lined with pines and fields of grass, these were half-buried in what Scootaloo could only guess was gravel. If she squinted, she could follow the trail of the valley’s river up and into a space between the rocky summits.
Scootaloo gazed out her window as the valley came alive with sunlight. The morning star rose a bit higher above the horizon, so that sunbeams stretched down between the mountains, and the sun shined like a golden flower. Dark pines became greener, gray stone grew textured and white, and whatever small patches of ice dotted the mountain range sparkled in the dawn like diamonds. The few clouds that lined the horizon had shrunk into thin bands, leaving the rest of the sky an unblemished ocean of cerulean.
She’d never taken the time the time to appreciate something like this before. Maybe it was the ever-similar scenery of Ponyville that had trained her to ignore natural backgrounds. There wasn’t much beauty to be found in clay cottages covered in dirt and hay. Some of the newer buildings were brick or wood, like the apartment building Sunny—
Scootaloo shook her head, her expression lowering. Sunny always woke up with the dawn so she could catch the morning shift at the weather factory in Cloudsdale. If her aunt was waking up, there was a good chance she’d check Scootaloo’s room.
The more she thought about Sunny Shower, the worse she envisioned her aunt’s reaction. First it was a gasp, then a scream, then flying through the streets of Ponyville, slamming on every door and forming a massive search party to hunt her down. It was less than half a day ago that Scootaloo was certain her aunt either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care, but as the train rattled its way through the mountains, the more she wished she’d left a note.
Letting out a long sigh, she reached down to the floor and picked up her saddlebag. That was all behind her, and there was no changing it—now she needed to think about what was ahead.
The map container opened with its familiar pop, and Scootaloo unrolled the scroll within. The symbol she’d selected earlier, northwest of Canterlot, would likely be a few days’ scooter trip from where she planned to get off the train. If she was lucky, the train station would have maps of the surrounding area, and there would be a town near the symbol she was headed for.
Scootaloo studied the symbol closely.
It looked like a venn diagram of two horseshoes. There were two words, one on each side: Caldrath on the left, and Chorus on the right. She knew one of them and could pronounce the other, so they likely weren’t from the same dead language as Rujejm. But Caldrath? What did that even mean? Was it the name of a town next to the symbol? Was it something the symbol represented? Or maybe each word corresponded to one of the two horseshoe shapes. Two parts of the same whole, maybe objects she’s need to collect.
“Why couldn’t they just write, ‘Hey you, here’s what you’re looking for and here’s where to find it.’” Scootaloo groaned. She stole a glance out the window and saw the train was taking a corner. Miles and miles of mountains and valleys seemed to rotate around her as the tracks wound around the side of a peak. As the train hit another bump in the tracks, Scootaloo envisioned what it must be like to stand atop one of those summits, to touch the sky and see everything else beneath you.
Her gaze drifted back from the window and back to the map. Once again, she stared blankly at the horseshoes, the strange words, and then the wheel of symbols. Across the map, each symbol on the wheel decorated some distant location, each one paired with words she either couldn’t read or didn’t understand. And beneath the wheel, in the oceans, and just about every other part of the map, the word Rujejm was written out and circled, half of them paired with the number nine.
Nine of something? Was a Rujejm some special object that she needed nine of? Or maybe it was just another riddle, and Rujejm meant nothing at all.
As much as Scootaloo hated to admit to herself, there was no way she would figure it out now. A grumble, and she rolled up the map and put it away. She closed the blinds to the train car, shutting out the dawn, and propped up her saddlebag on the empty seat next to her. In the past twelve hours, she’d maybe slept one, and it had been on an old bench in a train station. Rolling onto her side, Scootaloo let out a yawn and lay her head down on the saddlebag. There would be time for maps and riddles later.
