All along the river Palomino, crooked and deformed trees made their root. Bent and hideous, they marked the decline of the cold, clinging to life off dead leaves and the cannibalistic consumption of their rotten kin. Further south, in the sheltered mountain caves, a village was settled after the southward travels of a lost caravan two centuries ago. There they made a home, blessed under Her watch, and they thanked Her for the gift of the warmth beneath the Earth and fertile soil.

Steorra watched as his breaths froze in the frigid air, too afraid of the faces in the trees to sleep. The small vessel’s sail had been taken down and used for covering when the tide had begun to pick up, carrying them quicker down the river. Father lay at the back, wrapped in furs, pelts, and leathers alike a chrysalis; the colt’s ego was a tad stroked at his father’s intolerance of the temperature, not needlessly covered in the heavy animal skins like his father. Steorra always thought his father weird-looking for a Southerner. His coat was a color he had only seen once, when a trader from far east near the hissing sea, shared with them a tasty liquid alike the sap from trees, only it was sweet and called honey. The mane of his father was shaggy and black, and he liked it because it reminded him of sky on a starless night. Steorra was born of Her light, but father had Her sky in his hair. When Southerners want foals, they pray to She Born of Starlight, and then she molds them out of snow; this was the cause of Southern foals' white coats and blanket snow manes.

Neck bent over the side of the boat, Steorra’s curious eyes darted around random spots in the water. Father told him, a day fresh into the journey, that the warmer the water got the brighter the scales of the fish. Down South, silver scaled pearl fish were aplenty in the streams in the forest, and the imagination of the young colt at the sight of a orange or emerald scaled swimmer was exciting. For a moment, his eyes flicked upward to the river bank, an overeager twitch; then he was given pause. Why is the ice crying? He pondered, leaning a little over the edge to get a closer look at the marvel. He seen the old Crone drop bucket fulls of snow into the pot, and watched as the fire beneath turned it to water, but there were no fires here, and none beneath the snow as far as he could tell. He leant further out, the rushing water of the river splashing onto the underside of his chest. Does ice get sad?

He stretched out one of his hooves, leaning precariously out far, straining to reach for the river’s edge and to touch this weeping snow. The hoof he stood on began to shake, straining under his prolonged weight on it, quivering. He was so close, he just need to get closer, the snow bank was within a hair’s length away. The boat rocked as it hit a stone in the rapids, then he slipped, a moment of vertigo, and a sickening lurch as the water seems to be shooting toward him; he was falling forward into the icy waters of the river - no - something grabbed his tail, yanking him back; the colt feeling pain and relief when his flank smacked against the wooden floor of the boat.

“What are you doing, colt!?” his father, Sunder, scolded through a tightened jaw. Steorra could feel spittle, not droplets from the rushing rapids, land on his cheek. Sideways he could see his father’s uncovered legs standing next to him, and from the way he was standing, he was pressing them down. Hard.

Steorra couldn’t look up, head down in shame. He could hear father breathe, his icy cold breath brushing against his cheek. He got scary at times. Almost as frightening as the old Crone, but the difference between her and him was that father never hit him. Steorra’s breaths shook as he slowly craned his neck to the right, to look at his father proper, but could only look at him from the corner of his eye. “Sorry,” he said, it was all he knew to say.

He heard his father exhale through his nostrils, and audibly heard the older stallion’s breathing get slower. He still couldn’t bring himself to look. He heard hooves on wood, four individual clops, the sound of a pat, flesh on wood. “You could have been lost, you know,” his father said, sitting so close as to brush against his side, “taken from me.”

“You would have found me again,” Steorra said, meek.

“Sometimes those that are lost are lost forever, Steor,” Sunder retorted, voice soft, “and then you’d never see me again. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the colt nodded, fidgeting.

Steorra felt his father’s hoof press beneath his chin, and directed it upward, his azure eyes looking into his father’s copper irises. “Do you understand?” Sunder said again, his tone underlined with a firmness the colt heard many a time before, each individual use chiseled into his head.

“Yes,” he replied, resolute. “I promise I won’t do it again. Promise.” Promise.

Father gave a grunt, his hoof moving from beneath Steorra’s chin to his mane, and ruffled the platinum locks approvingly; Steorra pouted against the ruffling touch, but did not fight it. Father always smirked whilst doing it. He must have liked it.

Later, a few hours down the river, the clouds obscuring the sky had floated Southward; allowing the pale light from the heavens to shine down over the duo. Father had fallen to slumber again, and Steorra had, to avoid risking his ire again, chose to lay with him. But still, sleep avoided him like spark to kindling in a blizzard. He looked to the sky, remembering the old Crone’s teachings of the world’s ceiling. Na, hung in the sky amongst the stars, and shone its soft white light onto the entirety of the South. It’s been this way for hundreds and hundreds of years, said the old Crone. In the South, they praise Her for blessing them with light that does not burn, as it does in the North. They praise Her for a cold that makes them born strong, and does not leave them without water as it does in the North. In the North, you can’t even look on their Na, Tia they called it. It hurts the eyes. How do they look up, he asked himself, and wondered how they can even have foals if there was no snow to mold them from. As he continued to look upward, he noticed a change in the sky. It was a subtle one, but amongst the void and the stars, interwoven and overlain with the black, was blue.

Steorra propped himself up with a start, and looked ahead, his lips parting. The sky was cracked, like cerulean fabric had been sewed together with jet black string. The sky is broken, he thought, feeling his heartbeat against his ribs. Beyond that, even further, he saw wisps of orange light. He noticed he no longer saw his exhales become clouds in the air before him as he did before, and there was no longer a chill carried ever-present with him, and felt as though he could feel the faint heat of a distant fire upon his body. He was afraid.

He turned to his father; raising his two forehooves, he began to push and rock back and forth the older stallion in his sleep, panting and whimpering, glancing to the orange speckled horizon. “Father, father!”

The old stallion writhed, and tried to blink and stretch, but Steorra continued to punch against his side. Wake up! Wake up! Sunder grumbled at the back of his throat, and looked at the colt with pursed lips and a scowl. “What, Steor! What!” Sunder blurted, stirring awake with a thrash of limbs, trying to push the colt away. Steorra was persistent.

“The sky,” he cried, his words shaking. “It’s broken.”

“What?” Sunder’s voice was quieter, rubbing his eyes with one hoof and propping up against the back of the boat.

“Broken,” he exclaimed, and leant on the word. “The sky is broken and on fire.”

“What?” Sunder scoffed, and furrowed his brows. “What are you talking about?”

Why is he not scared? Why is he smiling, Steorra thought, wide eyes and shaking. “Look! Look!” Steorra threw his hoof to the North. More of the light began to peek over the curve of the world, and he tried to back up more in the small craft, his flank pressing against the stern.

“You’re young, lad,” Sunder began, propping himself up straight. “Too young to have seen the snow weep, to see the blue sky or feel Tia’s heat on your coat. That’s not doom, lad. That’s the North.” He began to chuckle heartily, watching his son’s expression change.

Steorra found that his fear had suddenly been replaced. He followed his father’s eye ahead to blue sky, the yellow light. He looked ahead in full marvel of the sight. He was fully taken by the sight, and even as his eyes began to sting, he couldn’t take them off the light. “Don’t keep looking at it, boy,” Sunder instructed, tapping him on withers. “You’ll melt the eyes outta ya sockets.” Steorra took the warning to heart, yanking his eyes from the distant light to the floor of the boat, looking at his father sideways when he heard a chuckle.

“What’s the North like?” he asked. Father seemed to know everything about everything. He knew how to get the hounds beneath the earth to dig out the earth for them, and fend off the sky demons who mimicked their shape.

Sunder, whilst looking between the horizon and Steorra, took one of the pelt braces on his hoof between his teeth, and yanked at it. “Well, for one, you’ll wanna leave behind your furs and leathers on the boat. No longer will you be feeling the kiss of Na on your coat, lad. Tia’s light is harsh, and will bring the water from your stomach out through your skin. But still, drink plenty of it,” he said, peeling a cotton sock of his hoof. “Northerners don’t take kindly to furs, that you should know.”

“Why’s that?” Steorra asked, removing his hood and cloak, looking at the material in his hooves. The brown material was soft and thick. Father gave him this cloak when they set off on this trek. The material was sometimes delivered by feathered things with beaks, other times it came out of a cabin the foals weren’t allowed in.

Sunder was quiet for a few minutes, and Steorra began to think he had ignored him, then he seemed to shift in his spot; sniffing and pursing his lips. “They don’t appreciate the difficulty of attaining such a skill. The effort required to make it.”

The colt knitted his eyebrows together, and tilted his head. He removed the final piece of pelt attire on his forehoof, and then looked sideways, curiously at his father. “Attaining?”

“Ay, lots of hard work that it. Learning,” Sunder said, sighing.

“Will I learn it too?” Steorra asked, looking at Sunder with a raised eyebrow.

“I s’pose, yes. When you get to my age you’ll learn a lot of things, Steor,” Sunder said, “some things are harder than others though.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, lots of things,” Sunder responded simply with a smirk, but then looked at Steorra, but not in the eye. “Even that bump on your head.”

“My horn?” Steorra clarified, and his father nodded. In the village, there was only one of him, with a horn atop his head. It wasn’t very big, but he saw no other pony like him in the entirety of his short life. Father said he was rare, and claimed that he never saw another in his entire life, a unicorn he was called. The Crone called him one of Her blessed. “How?”

Sunder began to chuckle, and slightly shook his head. “I don’t know!”

“But you said you’re old, and that you knew everything,” he whined, looking at Sunder with a frown.

“No I did not,” Sunder snapped back with chuckle, “‘sides, I’m not that old.”

Steorra grumbled, sulking. “Why are we going North anyway?” Steorra asked, laying beside his father.

Sunder remained quiet, his jaw jutting out and he looked off somewhere. “Get some sleep. We’ll be at the Freeland Banke soon, and you don’t want to walk in the heat whilst tired.”

“But—”

“Sleep, boy,” Sunder interrupted with a commanding tone, scowling at the colt. “You’ll miss the cold soon enough, so sleep in it whilst you still can.”

Steorra grimaced, and turned onto his other side, away from his father, eyes clenching shut. It wasn’t defiance, but Steorra sniffed, upset. Before sleep caught him, he watched as the snow gradually began to fade, and what stood in its place were little green stalks in the dirt. Before long he felt his father press a soft hoof into his back, a soft press, before it retreated away from him. Before the colt fell to sleep, he heard his father sigh. Father didn’t like to be asked certain questions. Unfortunately for Steorra, he didn’t know which ones he didn’t liked to be asked.

Steorra awoke, not remembering having any dreams. He felt a harsh light on his eyes, and the heat on his coat felt as though he awoke in front of a fire. Stirring and climbing to his hooves, he fell when the boat was yanked forward. “Father?” He yelped, climbing back onto his hooves, rubbing his head; and looked around himself with bug eyes.

“We’re ‘ere,” Sunder replied from off the boat, off the bow. Steorra made his way to the front, seeing his father hefting the craft onto the shore with a rope tied around his stomach. “Welcome to the Freeland, Steor.”

Steorra was taken with a keen interest, rose himself up on the aft, eyes jittering around the landscape. He had never seen waters as blue as sapphires before, nor the wide spanning beachhead, the bright sand glittered like gold to the eyes of Steorra. As his father brought the boat further onto the sands, the colt got impatient, and jumped from the boat into the warm waters of the Freebank with a splash. He saw Sunder cast him a disinterested look before he resumed his pulling, and Steorra took that as free reign. He waded through the hoof deep water until he got to the sands, taking a moment to feel the odd texture of the beach beneath his hooves. He tried to advance up the beach to be alongside his father, but as soon as his hooves left the moist sands and stepped onto the dry, he retreated back into the water. The sand was rough, course, irritating, and hot. But even submerged he couldn’t avoid the light above, which continued to beat upon his body. He tried to look up at it, the orange carved circle in the sky, but it hurt him to do so. Why does anypony live here? he griped internally, already longing for home.

“It’s hot,” he complained. Even the reflection of Tia in the water got into his eye, and he struggled to even look up.

“Ay, and it’ll get hotter,” Sunder replied casually, dropping the rope in the sand turning behind himself, climbing back into the boat. “Not much I can do about that, I’m afraid.”

Steorra looked at his father crooked, squinting one eye and keeping the other closed, and saw his father rooting around in the boat. “How am I supposed to see?” He asked, his tone growing irritated.

Sunder landed back in the sand, his black shaggy mane hanging free down his face. He wore on him now two large saddlebags, and held a wide brimmed hat between his teeth. “Wear this,” he said, chucking the hat into the sand, just out of the tide. “Keep a hold of it for me.”

The colt smiled, running onto shore, kicking up sand; some landing and sticking to his coat. The colt leant down, picking it up with his hooves and sitting on his rear, and upon closer scrutiny, he recognised the material. Leather. “I thought you said Northerners didn’t like leather,” He said, and flipped the hat, placing it on his head.

“Ay, they don’t,” he confirmed, walking over the colt, “but they’ll just pretend. Northerners like playing pretend.”

“Why?” asked the colt.

“It’s easier than accepting truth,” he replied, walking over the stationary colt. “Let me look at that. Make sure you wear the brim low, alright?”

“Why?” Steorra asked.

Sunder pursed his lips and grumbled. “There are some things you don’t need to know, alright? If anypony asks what that bump is on your head, tell them it’s a deformity, that you were born wrong, alright?”

“Why?” Steorra asked again, this time tilting his head. Why would Northerners care about my horn?

“What’d I say?” Sunder snapped, frowning.

“Oh,” Steorra flinched, his lips tightly pressed together and quivering.

The father signed, and pressed a hoof on the underside of the colt’s chin, directing it his eyes up. “Learn to be like a Northerner, right? Pretend, okay… okay?”

“O-okay,” the colt swallowed, forcing himself to keep staring into his father’s eyes.

“So when someone asks if you got a horn, what do you say?”

“N-no?” The colt was wary with his language. He had never been a Northerner, and was struggling to get into the role of one.

“Good,” Sunder congratulated, ruffling Steorra’s hair before brushing past him, patting him on the haunches.

“Isn’t that lying?” The colt turned to follow his father, who dawdled at a slow pace.

“Ay.”

“Isn’t lying bad?”

“Ay, it is,” the father nodded, looking up the beach to the incline of land, where an entire line of brown shrivelled stumps marked the Freeland Bank. “Pretend that it isn’t. Practice being like Northerners. Think of it like a game.”

“How can lying be a game?” Steorra looked at Sunder, expression incredulous.

“That’s easy. You do it all the time when playing games. You chase another colt, but you’re not a monster. You see shapes in the clouds, but they ain’t dragons or animals. Games are pretend and lies, lad. And the Northerners play plenty of them,” Sunder explained, glancing every few words down to the hat-clad colt. The two continued up the beach, the land sloping upward, where there was a sudden flattening of the Earth.

“Do all Northerners play it?” Steorra asked, climbing up the small ridge.

“No, no. But enough of them do, and since you need to pretend to be one whilst you’re here, you best get into the habit of playing it,” Sunder instructed, mirroring his son.

Steorra was confused by this. If Northerners always lie, then it’s okay for me to lie too, since I’m pretending to be a Northerner; I’m not really lying since I’m only pretending to lie, he thought, logic doing circles as he tried to understand. This left his expression screwed up tight, squinting, and he kicked up a clump of sand in minor frustration. When he looked back up, he was stunted by captivation of what lay before him. Thousands, a number he had never seen of anything prior, and found himself overwhelmed; lost in his enthrallment of the barrenness.

Thousands of broken columns, gnarled, snapped and splintered; all of them aiming Westward. It was a graveyard. Corpses of trees, husks of roots came up through the sand, dried up and shrivelled, jagged splinters coming off the stumps; looking horrific to the colt’s eyes. There was an air of pain, fear, and dense misery; even the colt could perceive it. I don’t like it here... Steorra resolved to not think about it. With a sharp exhale he sped up to his father, tailing him closely, ignoring the heat on his back as his eyes flitting about; his mind going wild imagining the horrors residing in those hollow stumps.

Sunder glanced down at the colt beside him with a pursed frown, exhaling through his nostrils before looking ahead. “This place used to be a forest. Long ago, the trees here reached the clouds, and took on many different colours. They could never be uprooted, or destroyed. No axe, no magic, no fire. Magic was strong here, and it protected them, as did it the many creatures and beasts that lived within it,” Sunder talked, and sighed. He’s always sighing... thought Steorra, who listened intently to his father’s words. “Hundreds and hundreds of years before my time, this place. It was special, you can feel that. And now it’s gone. Forever.”

The trees remained unsightly, but knowing they were gone forever left him strangely melancholic. He had lost things before, whilst playing in the woods around Arim and never saw them again. He remembered how upset he had been, but he had never lost anything as big as a forest. “That’s sad,” Steorra said, who looked around himself with a softer expression on his face.

“Ay, ‘tis,” Sunder confirmed.

They continued their walk without another word. Steorra followed closely, stopping with his father whenever he stopped, who would squint and look off in certain directions, before changing the direction they walked with a satisfied grumble and nod. He’s been here before, Steorra surmised, it was obvious his father stopped to recall the path. Steorra kept his father in his peripheral vision, but looked at the dead trees with an inquisitive gaze, trying hard to imagine what they looked like, as well as trying to imagine something that reached the sky. He would jump when he heard a crunch underhoof, sighing when he realised it was only a root, and pouting whenever his father would smirk, which was every time. Soon the colt began to feel clammy, and his coat go damp in places with sweat. Magic. Father said magic kept protected these trees, the thought occurred to him, and his curiosity was rekindled.

“Have you ever seen magic?” Steorra asked, taking his father out of a stupor.

“Me? Goodness no,” Sunder scoffed, sucking his teeth, “but I think your mother did.”

Mother… he thought, looking up at Sunder with slightly parted lips, and tilted head; a tinge of mourning in his expression. He lost mother when he was young, too young to remember anything of her. “Mother?”

“Ay,” Sunder slowed his pace, looking to his son as he spoke, “she told me stories. Her mother was born with a horn, just like you. It glew a pale white, and she could pick things up from faraway.”

“Really?” Steorra said. It was disbelief in his tone, but he desperately wanted to believe.

“Ay, yes. Your mother was vivid. She’d have her hair brushed by her mother, all by a floating brush held in her mother’s magic. She could also make the trees grow cumbersome with fruit, start fires without wood, and make month long sicknesses end in minutes,” Sunder talked on, his brows slightly raised, a curve to the end of his lip.

“How?” Steorra asked softly, lost in his own fascination and imagination.

“Because she had a horn on her head, just like you,” he pursed his lips, jutting out the lower one, “‘cept it was longer.”

“And how did she use her horn?”

“The same as I said on the boat, lad,” Sunder replied, chuckling, his expression softened when Steorra frowned. “One day, I’m certain of it, you’ll be capable of doing anything with that horn of yours.”

Steorra didn’t reply, but his father’s encouraging words prevented him from moping, instead he went into his own mind and began to imagine. He pictured small things, such as making his chores a breeze, lifting harvest baskets without his hooves; then he imagined lifting everypony else’s baskets. He pictured being able to conjure toys out of the air, and give one to every filly and colt in the village, feeling a pleasant warmness inside his chest compared to the one on his coat. He then imagined making everypony’s plates and bowls full and hot and tasty, and making the campfire as large as one of the trees father described, and then nopony would have any reason to be sad anymore. I could do a lot, if I could do anything, he mused with a large grin on his lips, and continued forward with father.

It took long, but soon they were out of the tree’s graveyard, and set their hooves upon the beginnings of an expansive dune. More sand... Steorra moaned internally, already feeling irritation as grains brushed against his coronets as he walked. When ever he pressed a firm step down, he sank a few inches, as if being submerged in a shallow puddle. But I don’t want to drink this, he thought, and dragged a tongue against his dry lips. The longer they walked, the more the skin beneath his coat felt like fire, and he grew discontent; becoming thirstier than he had ever been. His mouth grew so dry, he couldn’t swallow his own spittle for relief. I hate the North he suddenly became resolute of, and looked to his father’s saddlebags.

“Do we have anything to drink?” Steorra asked. “Is there water in those saddlebags?”

“Nay,” Sunder replied simply, “they’re both empty.”

“But I’m thirsty,” Steorra moaned, his throat somehow becoming dryer. “Why do you have saddlebags if they’re empty?”

“We left in a hurry, remember? No time to pack water. That’s why we drank from the river,” Sunder explained, “but I have them for a reason. We’ll get everything we need, and soon.”

“How soon?” Steorra asked, persistent.

“Soon,” he replied curtly and firm, but looked down to Steorra, a slight curve to his lip. “Where we’re heading, they have apple juice, and grapes. You ever have grapes?”

“No?” Steorra replied, but interest was piqued within him.

“They’re sweet, and juicy, and will quench both hunger and thirst. We don’t have lots of fruit down South, but up here, on the border, they have it in abundance,” Sunder explained, “you remember that trader from the far east, the hissing sea?”

“Yes, the one with the honey!” Steorra nodded.

“You remember the taste?”

“I’ll never forget,” replied Steorra. Pastries were made with wheat. The harvest was good that year. For warmer’s eve, the honey was mixed into the dough, and baked until brown. Steorra still remembered it vividly, how the Crone hoofed one to each foal, and when after the prayer he sunk his teeth into the dough; how one bite made his mouth water, and caused drool to fall down his chin. It was one of the best days of life.

“The sweetness, imagine it, and being able to drink it like water,” Sunder said. Whilst he managed to sell the destination, he did not sell Steorra patience, and Steorra grew terribly short of it.

“How long?” Steorra asked, yawping. Every step he took now he became acutely aware of, and hated taking them.

Sunder looked straight ahead, seeing that the dune’s elevation began to rise into a ridge, an aeolian breeze brushing against the sand; carrying it with it. “You’ll see our heading just over that rid— Boy!”

He couldn’t wait anymore. His hooves carried him forward in a gallop. He didn’t look over his shoulder, he didn’t want to see if father was pursuing him, but he couldn’t help it; he just had to go. He climbed up the ridge, kicking clumps of sand behind him as he did, pushing big indentations into the soft orange grains as he did so. The incline grew so steep, that he had to climb up onto the ridge, the sand falling down beneath his weight, his back hooves kicking to keep him going, a lone swimmer in the sandy sea. When he finally climbed over the top, he was out of breath, and took a moment to rekindle himself. When his breathing more more steady, he looked straight on ahead, to what lay before him. When he looked upon the graveyard of trees, he was overwhelmed by its size, and his eyes lay upon a colossus.

A sprawling metropolis, an island in an ocean of desert. From the distance, it appeared so far away, yet seemed to press against him at the same time. Thousands, there must have been, the sprawling gathering of houses and buildings a sight to behold in a world that appeared so empty of them. He knew not what their purposes were, but he imagined the number of ponies outnumbered his village by thousands of thousands. The city spanned from a nearby desolate mountain, all the way to a gently flowing river a half mile from the ridge, but obviously spanned outward from a certain point. His eyes followed the most interesting things by whatever was closest, his young mind trying to take everything in. There were dozens of multicoloured workers on an irrigated farmland nearby the river, a building off the distance made of what appeared to be a purple stone, and even further beyond that he saw the earth was brown and covered in hundreds of lines and zig-zags. Across the city, from building to adjacent building, he saw lots of colour. Purple, blue, yellow, pink, and orange. He noticed that the roads into the city went beneath those tarps, and how it looked at though ponies would end up walking under colourful shadows. Are they pretending they not under the light of Tia? He mused as a foal would, but tore himself from thought when he heard heavy exhales behind him.

“Don’t do that again,” Sunder scolded, breathing too heavily to be able to shout, “don’t go anywhere without me, alright? Not unless told.”

“I swear,” the colt promised, only taking his eyes off the city for a second for courtesy, and continued to watch it in wonderment and awe.

Sunder smirked, and Steorra felt his presence near him, and heard the crunching of the sand as his father stood beside him. The two looked at the city together, and when he heard his father inhale and exhale, he looked up at him to see his eyes were already cast down toward him. “Steorra,” he began, using his full name, “welcome to the city of Ponyville.”

Author's Note

Chapter 1 is more of an extended prologue than a true chapter. Also, certain pieces of information, and how the narrative is handled, is restricted to certain POVs of the chapters. I was heavily inspired by the writing style of George R.R. Martin whilst writing this.

How it fits into the theme:
Since we were allowed to interpret it anyway we wanted, I probably picked the biggest stretch, and applied it to the world as a whole. Society had to begin again after a near, if not, apocalyptic event.

I hope you enjoy.

I don't know if this will actually get finished before the deadline of August 15, but regardless, I will still enjoy writing this.