“Come on, sis! You have to have a story to tell us!” Apple Bloom cried excitedly as the rest of the Crusaders shouted in agreement.
“Yeah!”
“Is it a cool story? Please let there be action!”
“Now now, hold on, y’all,” Applejack said with a sweat drop on the side of her head. “I can’t handle everypony talking at once. Maybe if you could just, uh…” Applejack moved closer to the fire and sat down in the chair Granny Smith usually sat in. “How about we all have a seat in front of the fireplace, Crusaders? I’ll tell you a story.”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders rushed excitedly to sit in front of Applejack, who now inexplicably had a red and white hat on her head. Apparently Applejack didn’t know how it got there either, as she went cross eyed trying to look at it before sighing. “Well, here we are, I guess. Now, I’m certainly no storyteller, but I do have one Hearth’s Warmin’ tale that… Aw shucks, you probably don’t want to hear it.”
“What?” Scootaloo asked in disbelief. “No! Tell us!”
“It can’t be that bad if it’s a Hearth’s Warming tale,” Sweetie Belle argued.
“You can’t get away from us that easily, sis,” Apple Bloom said.
“Alright, alright! Calm down, please!” Applejack shouted over their ramblings and they quickly fell silent.
“Thank ya kindly. Now, are you sure ya want to hear this one? It’s been known to make full grown mares cry, so it may be too-”
“Yes, we want to hear it! Just tell it already!” Scootaloo pleaded and the other two fillies nodded their silent agreement. “We’re strong enough to handle it.”
“Alright, here goes,” Applejack began, “But don’t say I didn’t warn ya.” As the wind howled outside and the snow swept past the windows, the sky began to darken and the light of the fireplace began to dominate the room.
“Once upon a time, there was a land before time…”
...A time when the lands of Equus had been dominated by Windigos.
A time before Equestria. A time of contention and strife.
An age where ponies argued and fought, disconnected and warring. When Windigos roamed freely, feeding off the negative emotions not out of malice, but out of necessity. Ultimately, in an unintentional turn of events, they had brought cold winds that blew through the air, carrying flurries of snow and hail.
When Princess Platinum, Chancellor Puddinghead and Commander Hurricane had gathered together in that fateful cave with their apprentices, arguing and fighting, something happened. Two Windigos had been present, hungrily feeding off their negative emotions as they had been hopelessly hungry for over a year.
Hungry and starving, they couldn’t help but coalesce into the iconic two Windigos that were banished.The apprentices gathered together and bonded to create the Fire of Friendship. A fire that, inadvertently, caused the eventual starvation and death of those two Windigos. It was because of these two Windigos, really, that the Fire of Friendship truly came to be.
Over the centuries and millennia that followed, the food source of the Windigos grew scarcer and scarcer, waning with the growth of friendship across Equus and Equestria. The three tribes bonded, broken bridges were healed, all the while the Windigos slowly began to die out. They eventually became nothing more than myth, a legend told to scare young fillies and colts
And as the Fire of Friendship spread across the land, Windigos disappeared, one by one.
No more disharmony. No more chaos. No more cold. The Windigos had thrived upon these forgotten emotions. And with that amnesia, there was none of it to be found. Many of them migrated north to where the Crystal Empire once lay, but they could only last so long on what bad emotions were left. The Frozen North remains frozen today, only because the windigos were forced… were forced to build their own graves.
Finally, after eons of desperation, one more Windigo remained. The Last Windigo.
The last of her kind, beaten and broken, she made her way across Equestria, eventually residing in the little old forest of the Everfree. All across Equestria, everypony celebrated the reminder of the bond they had formed that night so many years ago, while the last Windigo grieved the day her kind began to fall.
Sad and alone, this mare told it’s story to all that could hear. To all in the forest that would listen. She cried every single day, roaming the Everfree and telling the forest of her woes. Tales of despair, stories of lost family, songs of anguish and loss. She weeped for her kind, because she was the only one that could. And as the years passed, she grew weaker and weaker, the Everfree only extending her life with it’s cold yet homely embrace. An embrace, she knew, would not last.
Timberwolves and Manticores, Cockatrices and Basilisks tried to comfort her. The trees and the caves, the very earth wept with her. The forest serenaded her with the weather of her own kind, but it was never enough. The Everfree’s attempts were fruitless, and soon the Last Windigo was almost too weak to continue living.
Yet one night, on the warm and precious eve of Hearth’s Warming, a crying little filly made her way into the clutches of the Everfree. A little filly that had left home because of a silly little argument between her and her big brother. She ran and she ran, pumping her hooves because that was all she thought she could do. As this filly did so, she unknowingly ran into a den. But not just any old cave or home. No, it was what was to be the final resting place of the Windigo race.
Shivering and with tears streaking her face, this little filly curled into a ball and hugged herself, not knowing what else to do. The cold was turning her mind to mush, and the tears were making it hard to think. Her anger waned, and soon all that was left was an empty feeling inside. She found herself lying on the cold damp and snowy ground of a cave which she knew she might never be found in.
Soon, the Last Windigo finished her last foray into the depths of the Everfree, finally having spread the memory of her race far and wide. But when she returned to her final resting place, she found a freezing, shivering and crying filly in her wake. Her magical trail blew in, freezing the cave even further, but now she tried to withhold her own magics. Something that would kill her even faster as her magic was meant to be released, yet she had compassion on the filly.
The filly slowly opened her eyes to see a white beast that so few had ever seen before. A beast that was the last of her kind. She did not comprehend this at the time, however, for all she knew was she saw a horsey that sadly looked upon the quivering form of a rebellious earth pony. The Last Windigo whinnied and shed a frozen tear at the sight of this filly, and swirled around her to eventually nuzzle the filly and lay side by side with her.
She knew this would freeze the filly. She knew it would only accelerate both of their deaths, but she resigned herself to this. One last act, even if it went against the very nature of her kind. She began to sing. A beautiful lullaby that soothed the aches and fears of this little filly. She sang until her own voice was quivering with a lack of strength, but she had done it.
Though she was dying, and the filly was freezing, she had let the little filly rest peacefully. She cried at the sight of the filly, now seeing her as if she were one of her own. She now hugged the filly closer, now wanting her to live, at the cost of her own life. She knew that if she focused her remaining magics, it would be enough to warm the cave. It would be enough to let the filly survive. It would be enough, for her to see this filly live to tell it’s tale and to go on living for her. And so, she sang once more.
Singing her tale. The tale of her race. The story of the Last Windigo. Even to her dying breath, she wished upon the filly only the remaining goodness of her soul, and magic rushed through the cave, filling everything with the warmth of a fireplace, the smell of ginger and cinnamon, the feeling of sacrifice.
Something changed that night. Now, magic is something that cannot be explained fully, even by those fancy magic scholars and the Princesses themselves. But know this, the very essence of the Windigo was changed. She had sacrificed herself, yet magic told her she had more things to do, and many more things to come. So they changed her. Her magic swirled differently. The Fire of Friendship, for the very first time ever, reached the cold hearts of the Windigo race.
And so, the Last Windigo became something else. Something more. She no longer fed off the negative emotions of ponies, but the good and the positive. She now blazed with a force that she could not have ever anticipated, and she cried tears of joy and sadness as she could now take care of this little filly, until she had to wake up.
On the morrow, this filly found herself lying in a warm and cozy nest made of twigs and branches, surrounded by snow that impossibly radiated heat. One that not only warmed the body, but refreshed the mind and comforted the soul. She found herself completely forgetting why she was mad at her big brother and somehow knew her way home, even through the cold dark paths of the Everfree. What she did not know was that the Last Windigo was guiding her home, watching her closely, and finally secretly seeing her goodbye, without the filly ever knowing.
As the years passed, the Last Windigo graced the Everfree evermore, soon becoming more than just the last of her kind, and the Windigos were born again. She never forgot that little filly who warmed her heart, but she could only hope the opposite was true.
And it was. As the little filly grew up, she realized that it had not been all a dream, but was real. She ventured into the Everfree again one Hearth’s Warming eve to see if she was right, and once again found the cave in which she had once lay freezing and dying in.
As fate would allow, the Windigo that had so many years ago saved her life also came back to the cave on that night, and found the filly that had so many years ago saved her soul, in turn saving her own.
And as they acknowledged each other, the little filly promised that every year, she would come back to visit on Hearth’s Warming Eve, to see the Last Windigo no longer, and to always remember the bond they had made that night…
“...And so is the tale of ‘the Last Windigo’,” Applejack finished as she wiped her eyes with a nearby hoof-kerchief.
The Crusaders fared no better as they were all bawling their eyes out, hugging each other as tears flowed and they sniffled and cried. They couldn’t help it. It was too much for them. “Th-that w-was…” Apple Bloom cried as her breath hitched from all their crying.
“I’ll never leave you girls!” Sweetie Belle sobbed.
“I-I’m n-not crying, w-what are y-you talking about?” Scootaloo wailed and the Crusaders laughed a little before crying once more into each others grips.
Finally, Applejack couldn’t help it and pulled the three fillies into a large hug. “Oh, y’all are just being overdramatic,” Applejack whispered as they all laughed again and she hugged them with all her might and mind.
And with that, Applejack sniffled, holding the Crusaders until they fell asleep in the hooves of Apple Bloom’s bigger sister. She smiled warmly at the little fillies in her forelegs, before staring at the fireplace, and then out a window in the direction of the Everfree.
Seeing the image of a horse whinnying and rearing it’s legs, Applejack closed her eyes and lightly laughed once, before nuzzling her head in with the Crusader and falling asleep to the warmth of a burning fireplace… and the smiling figures of her bigger brother and Granny Smith.
“She really does love telling that story, hm?” Granny Smith asked quietly so as not to wake the four girls. After some contemplation and the blowing of his nose, Big Mac nodded.
“Eeyup.”
Author's Note
Merry Christmas and a Happy Hearth's Warming!
Stay warm, my friends 
