A Cold Wind Blows

Chapter 1
I like my Coffee Straight

The monotonous clacking of the typewriter hammers on paper rang throughout a small home near the outermost edge of Ponyville. There, practically hunched over to the point of having a hunchback, sat an icy-blue Pegasus stallion named Glacier Wind. You see, Glacier Wind was caught in the throes of his latest novel. It was romantic endeavor not only for the stallion, but for the book as well. So much so, that he had found it rather difficult to leave his home as of late. Getting to the point that his only friend, a mare that matched him in coat colour but who was completely different personality-wise, had come to his home on many an occasion asking him to come out.

He refused on all these occasions, stating that he was far too busy to “go out”, that he was just getting to the good part of his story. The stallion in his story had finally found the love of his life and was drastically trying to hold onto his affection, regardless of the feelings his parents showed towards the couple. The story rang true with the stallion, as the novel was a mirror reflection of his own past relationship with a very similar stallion featured prominently in the novel.

But it was all ink on the paper to the stallion, this had come and gone, and he was completely content with the ways things had turned out for himself. He was a remotely popular author (almost obscure), with a dedicated reader base. A little too dedicated a reader base; as such was proven on his last tour with mares throwing themselves at him, wanting autographs with custom scribbles of appreciation, pictographs, and overall attention. Truth be told, the stallion did like the attention, but he preferred a more masculine appreciation. A small, lithe and handsome stallion that would sweep him off his hooves just as his closest friend had over eight years prior. He didn’t think it would happen, though. Not many stallions were interested in the lovey-dovey stuff he wrote, and were usually only at the signings as a sign of caring for their mare-friends. He had yet to meet one single stallion that was interested in his scribblings, let alone one who would talk to him about them.

With a sigh and the ding of the typewriter, Glacier pulled the parchment from its roost in the carriage and placed it in a growing pile of papers; the stack lay next to one completely void of words. It was nearly there, just two more chapters and the story would finally be complete. The stallion would have his love. And Glacier? He would still have no-pony. Nothing new.

There was a knock at the door that shook the stallion from his self-loathing. He looked to the door, the small window in the wood still covered by the curtain he had forgotten to draw back this morning. He had been wondering why it had been so dark in there this entire time. Now he knew.

Stepping off of his seat to be sure to not disturb his pile of work, Glacier made his way towards his front door. He passed by an out cove in his stairs, and made his way through his moderately sized common-room before arriving at the doorway. Drawing the small yellow curtain back, Glacier wasn’t surprised to see who it was. He was hoping it would have been the local mail-mare, Derpy, but fate wasn’t smiling upon him this morning.

“What do you want, Ice Stream?” Glacier asked with a sass present in his voice.

The unicorn mare cocked her head to the side as a wry smile graced her soft and delicate features. “Aww, is the popular and wonderful Mr. Wind not want to be visited by his one and only friend today?” The sarcasm was sweet like honey.

It was now the colt’s turn to flash a smile, much to his own dismay. But it was impossible to control. The colt just loved to flash his cocky grin whenever he could. “Now, now Ms. Ice, I never insinuated such things.” But he sure was thinking it. “What would make you think such a thing?”

“I don’t know, Glacier…” the mare huffed out, losing what little resolve she had brought up to the door with her. She should have brought more. “Maybe it’s because you haven’t gone to the café with me in nearly two weeks. You’ve been coopt up and won’t even leave to hang out with me.”

But there was a tick in the back of her head that went off. Something that brought some promiscuously placed puzzle pieces into their respective resting places, and she got a wicked idea. An Idea good enough to rattle the stallion. Maybe even make him open his door to talk to her properly. “How are you going to meet a stallion, Glacier, if you keep yourself inside, away from all their eyes?” There was a drippy desire that fell off of her words. Almost as if she wished to watch Glacier and another stallion—

The door finally opened and the mare seized the moment, using her magic to force the door agape as she squeezed into Glacier’s home. The stallion stumbled back as she forced her way by him and he tried to refrain from falling whilst using his wings to regain balance, but ended up falling flat on his flank anyways. Turns out having wings doesn’t mean you have perfect balance.

“What the hay was that for?” Glacier all but snarled as he rubbed at his aching flank idly with a hoof. It didn’t help that he had wood floors either.

“For not opening the door when a lady knocked.” She smacked the stallion with her ice-blue and white tail. “You really should learn how to treat a lady. What would the other stallions think of you if you can’t even treat a mare right?”

The Pegasus on the floor looked to her with an angered expression on his face before rising to his hooves. He quickly brushed the slight dust that had somehow accumulated upon his withers and barrel away with a few gentle strokes of his wings. “I can’t learn how to treat a mare well when you are, indeed, not a mare.” He threw the icy mare a glare of triumph as her ears flicked back.

“Rude dude, Glacier,” the mare mock scowled, swatting a hoof at him playfully. The stallion dodged her mock assault, laughing internally all the while. She leaned forwards however, pulling the stallion into a strange hug of sorts, nearly tackling him to the ground. She towered over him with a mock grin of superiority.

“Okay, okay, Ice Stream!” the stallion pleaded. “You can get off now.” The mare continued to eye him down, looking over him tantalizingly. Her grin grew bigger before she finally spoke up, breaking the small bit of silence that had begun to grow.

“On one condition…” She paused again, an air of caution growing in the stallion as he awaited the mare’s batted response. “On the condition that you go to the café with me and try to at least meet a stallion for once. You staying cooped up in here all the time, writing about romance having never really experienced it yourself, is unhealthy.”

The stallion pushed the mare’s barrel with both hooves, forcing her off of his body and onto her flanks. She landed a little hard on her haunches but steeled herself against the pain. She was kind of asking for it, after all. He smirked back, and rose onto his flanks himself, sitting before the cocky mare trying to hide the fact that she was rubbing her own flank. He watched her before rising to his hooves and walking around to the door. He grabbed his saddlebag, threw it across his chubby barrel and buckled it with his teeth in a flash. He was now ready to go out into town with his friend.

Looking him over with a grin of pure and utter jubilation, Ice Stream trotted over next to him and jumped up and down playfully like a rather happy bunny. “You really mean it, Glacier?!” she nearly shouted in the stallion’s ears as he motioned her towards the door with an extended wing. “You’re going to make a conscious effort to meet a stallion finally?”

The stallion blushed, not expecting his friend to really care all that much. Since when in his life has he ever had another pony, let alone a mare, want to help him with finding a mate. Especially once they knew that he was into stallions and stallions alone. Truth be told, Glacier had previously believed himself to be purely bisexual. However, after much deliberation and internal debates with himself, he decided that he was mostly and mainly interested in the male persuasion. So much so that he found himself referring to his future mate as a stallion at all times: future colt-friend and husband alike. And when he wasn’t referring to his future mate with a masculine noun, he was fantasizing about other stallions. Most of them being rather girly-looking males, but males nonetheless. He just really liked a feminine stallion. One that he could hold, giggle with, and cuddle endlessly. Glacier really likes to cuddle.

“Yes, yes,” he said, rolling he eyes as his friend continued her seemingly endless hopping. She continued to smile as well, moving to and outside the door in a rather speedy manner. She turned on a dime, looking to Glacier as he walked out of his home after her, closing the door and locking it promptly and skillfully with a wing. Throwing his key into the side pouch of his saddlebag, Glacier motioned his head and Ice Stream joined by his side as they made their way towards town.

“So,” Ice Stream pipped up, looking up to Glacier with a beaming smile that seemed to stretch on as long as the horizon itself, “what is your new story really about this time?” Glacier looked to her with a confused smile. He cocked his head to the side, taking in just what she was asking. He was certain he had told her the last time she had been here. Even though it was two weeks prior.

“Hadn’t I told you what I was writing about?” Glacier asked back, looking for confirmation of his previously conceived thoughts.

“Um…” Ice Stream looked up and seemed to be concentrating on her horn, deep in thought. She got so lost in her own thoughts that she had not even noticed that she was trailing off to the right, and would have walked right into a tree if it had not been for Glacier pulling her out of the way with a wing. “Thanks…”

“No problem, Ice,” Glacier retorted with a slight smirk, flicking the mare in her flank with his black and purple stripped tail.

“Well”—Ice giggled and looked back down to her hooves for a moment before looking to Glacier with a skewed smile of her own. “I know it’s a romance story,” she said in a sing-song tone. Glacier nodded as they continued on. He didn’t make eye-contact but that mattered little. “But what are you doing differently in it this time compared to the others?”

“I’m working on the more…intimate aspect of the relationship this time,” Glacier said, looking back to his friend for a split second before eyeing the dirt pathway beneath his hooves with a blush. The light of the blush was just light enough that Ice could barely make it out in the contrast of the colour of his fur, but that didn’t stop the mare from noticing it completely.

Knowing what Glacier knew by his tone, blush, and the lowering of his head, Ice dropped the subject with an, “I see. That’s okay…” She smiled, though it looked strained. She kind of regretted asking about it now.

“Yeah,” Glacier said, looking back up from the ground and his hooves. He looked back ahead, seeing that they were coming close to the inner workings of Ponyville now. They could see the various other ponies that lived there, all walking around, conversing with one another, pulling about various carts and wagons. Glacier was even sure that he seen a very familiar orange coloured mare walking by with a wagon totting barrels nearly pouring over with freshly picked apples.

Soon the duo reached a rather humble-looking building. It bore two-tone colour of brown on its wood and brick—as caddy and tacky as they may be—and had a rather nicely, perpendicularly running sign above its door. The sign had a bone-white coffee cup atop a saucer of matching hue; the cup was filled with a steaming liquid that could only be suspect of actual coffee. Under the cup hung a rectangular wooden cut-out that read: ‘Fresh Brew Café’.

Standing at the precipice of the establishment, Glacier placed his hoof upon the handle of the door and flicked it down with a thunderous clank. The door opened, smacking a bell on the innards of the café, signalling that he and Ice Stream were entering. As they walked in the building a couple ponies looked over from their seats, investigating the couple that had just breached the quiet of the tightly-knit group. Their eyes fell on two ponies that, with ignorance to their gazes, continued on their merry way, sitting at a table off to the far end of room.

Seating themselves in the bench seating that was lain about the perimetre of the room, both ponies laid their hooves upon the surface of the table, looking intently at one another. If one were to see the couple from afar, they would think that both of these ponies were looking upon one another with a lover’s eye. And apparently somepony did think this, as the waitress pony who had approached the couple had been standing there trying to get the friend’s attention for about three minutes before she was finally able to claim it.

“Good afternoon,” the young, snow-white unicorn mare coughed out.

Startled, Glacier threw his head back and over towards the young mare standing at the side of their table. Ice did very much of the same, looking to the mare with eyes wide, pupils dilated. Her mouth was a gape, whereas Glacier was just rather cool with the whole thing. He knew what the waitress was thinking, he could read it all over muzzle. But he knew that there was nothing there between him and Ice. And he knew that Ice felt the same way.

“G-good afternoon,” Glacier stuttered out, looking to the snow-white mare with an almost ghostly expression. “How are you…?” He trailed off, searching for a name where one hadn’t been. He looked to the mare’s breast, seeing if he could spot a nametag of some sort. Unfortunately, there was no nametag to be found. Celestia be merciful this day.

The mare smiled a slightly wry toothy grin then, with the bit of her silver-esque magic, flipped open a pad of paper she had been toting. Glacier could have sworn the mare wasn’t holding anything in her magic, let alone was using her magic at all, but looks can be deceiving perhaps. Just like Ice and himself, as they both had come to this very café for many years now. Most of the staff, minus this particular mare, all probably thought the two were romantically involved. But the more Glacier thought about it, the more his head hurt and he started to place lines and connections where they didn’t belong. And once he had reached the point of connecting the livelihoods of his two favourite radio show Celestial Detectives, Moulder and Scully, he had to finally put that train of thought to rest. He broke the bridge crossing the metaphorical ravine and the etheric train tumbled into the black abyss below.

“The name’s Sweet Tea!” the unicorn mare chirped happily. “Unfortunately, because of being rather new here, I don’t really have a nametag yet.” Glacier looked up into her violet eyes. They were soft, kind, and caring. There was a hint of flirtation in the way she swung her words around him and Ice. Either this mare was really peppy and sincere, or she was interested in Glacier. The look in her eyes when he continued to stare didn’t help the assumption either.

Glacier looked away and Sweet Tea’s smile faltered. He replaced his gaze on Ice and asked her what she would like to get. Ice looked to Sweet and then back to Glacier. Her expression was a skewed as Sweet’s wavy lips. She had even parted her own for but a moment before sealing them shut again. She didn’t dare speak. Instead she remained quiet.

“The usual?” Glacier prodded. Sweet looked to Ice, whom simply nodded to the stallion in front of her. He returned his gaze thereafter to Sweet and looked her dead in the eyes. He cleared his throat with a strangled cough, and the mare readied her pad and pen, attentively waiting for the stallion to place his order.

Straightening himself in his seat, Glacier took to finally answering the poor mare. “I’ll have a cup of coffee, three cream and three sugar.” He motioned his hoof to Ice and continued on with her side of the order next. “And she’ll have a cup of coffee—straight.”

The waitress mare smiled, jotting the order down on her pad as quickly as it was relayed to her. She then nodded and excused herself from the table before returning promptly to the kitchen. Once she was gone, Ice looked to Glacier whom had been watching the mare leave. She coughed and the stallion looked over to her with a slight smirk on his features.

“Well she was certainly smitten,” Ice said with a certain twain of annoyance in her voice. She looked over to the employee door on the other side of the café, before looking down to the table with a slight sneer.

“What’s the matter?” Glacier chuckled evilly. “Jealous?” He lightly smacked the table in front of Ice’s muzzle and then rose her head up with the same hoof. “Don’t be. I’m not really into mares, and you are really into them. Don’t be upset. Okay?” He smiled softly after, placing a hoof on his friends, reassuring her in his actions.

Ice’s features softened and a smile graced her muzzle. “I suppose you’re right.” She placed her other hoof atop her friends, and Glacier followed suit by doing the same with his other hoof. “Soon I’ll find a mare to be my filly-friend. As will you with a stallion to be your colt-friend. And then—“

“We’ll both be free of the cold of loneliness,” Glacier finished.