Excerpts From Winter

"I slept so horribly last night...

Being so used to animals and hooligans around town raising Tartarus all night, the silence was weird. While disturbing, it was kind of nice to have a moment or two to myself. I doubt I won't get sick of it, but I have this journal. I heard something about how companionship is important in these kind of situations, and when you write down what you feel and think, you get this sort of feeling like it. I bet it sounds so much better wherever I read it first, but if anyone reads this, then that'll have to do.

Some more bread and a makeshift mug of tea - found some leaves in the back of one satchel - and I'm ready enough to start the day. That idea of the raid on funland-funnelcake-emporium, as I'm calling the colorful monstrosity I can see over the horizon for eternity now, was pretty solid. The hills of snow seemed to have thinned out while I was asleep, so it shouldn't be as bad of a trek as I thought at first. I wish I had something to carry some things in besides the half-full saddlebags and a bit-purse.

It was a bakery! Of all things, funland-funnelcake-emporium was just a bakery! I suppose it warrants a story, though.

The thing was standing like a tower in the middle of this patch of leveled houses. There were barely any real damages to it - whatever I saw before was just debris from the things around it - and inside, besides dark and frosty, it was practically pristine. The cases in the front were empty, but not like I thought they would be. They had crumbs on the bottom, and the backs were open. Almost like it was ransacked, but carefully. Either they had a lot of time and respect for the owners, or the owners themselves liquidated all their treats. Either way, there weren't any for me, so I looked around.

The back was just as, if not more, clean than the front. It had to have been the kitchen, so naturally, I look for bread or leftover flour to make my own. I didn't expect to come up with much, since the case was picked clean, but again, the place gets weird.

Bags and bags of sugar! Just so much sugar! Cupboard after cupboard! You'd think the ponies that ran the place were using them like sandbags! Somepony must have been just eating it raw, because no bakery in Equestria could have sold enough cakes, even if they swapped everything in the recipe for sugar, to use all this. A few cupboards had more practical stuff. I'll take an inventory:

- 5 full bags of flour, 2 half-empty
- 3 full bags of cooking salt, 1 a third-empty
- 2-and-a-half pounds of butter, intact and fresh enough
- 4 bags of coffee grounds
- 4 bags of chocolate chips, 2 bags of chocolate chunks, both milk
- 2 bags of caramel/butterscotch? chips
- A couple wheelbarrows of candy - almost literally, there's at least one wheelbarrow here that I've seen
- Pots and kettles up the flank

I'll put the nifty stuff in a pile or something.

I've made an important decision. Funland-funnelcake-emporium is going to become Fort Funland. Since the thing must have been built like an actual fort to have lived through whatever blew through this town, I moved my cushions and chair over. I cleared out some space by putting anything that doesn't work outside - all the ovens, one of the ice boxes, and a few mismatched standalone cupboards that were practically taped on to the walls - and found a hole in the wall, but not a messy one, like if something crashed through. I'm pretty sure it's a brick oven. I saw a chimney on the outside, so it might work.

The wind started to pick up again while I was outside dragging my cushy chair uphill. I don't know what leads to it, or if anything even does, but it is already a pain. I'm wrapped up like a walking sleeping bag with a diving helmet, and I still feel this chill down my neck. It's a brand new coat, so it shouldn't have any tears or anything. I checked it, too, and unless it's some kind of malfunction I can't see, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. All that means that it might be getting so cold it seeps through professional equipment.

I didn't check upstairs. Hay, I barely even saw the staircase until the last trip out. The roof looked intact from the outside, but even if something's bust there's a pretty sturdy door at top that'll keep the wind or snow out.

The next run will probably be the last. I'm going to liquidate what I can from that office upstairs and maybe try to find those pages I ripped out. They were... important, in a way. They had some personal things on them, but if I don't find them, I'll just re-write it - its not like they were magical or written on diamond-studded parchment (a real thing I found in a market once). I'd just rather not have to put all that down again. It was three or four pages, so it'd be a lot to just start from scratch. I guess I have time, though.

I'll get to sleep.

Day 5

Office:
- More pencils, ink + quills
- Blank paper + parchment rolls
- A desk clock - slow
- Compass, straightedge, protractor (why in here?)

Fort Funland Attic (Apartment?)
- Bedroom (sheets, blankets, five million pillows, mattress, small hooful of candles, 1 and a half packs of matches)
- Bathroom (sink, tub, closet, towels, soap, curling iron, five different brushes)
- Small bits of candy hidden here and there in bags or taped to something?

That last one is concerning. Did this place sell drugs in the shape of candy? It was like those noir movies I saw back in school, where the guards did a bust or something and found knives and gunpowder hidden in shoeboxes or under a table. I tried a few pieces, then a few more, and even waited an hour. Either I have some paranormal immunity to something freaky in these, or whoever lived here was obsessed with ordinary, if delicious, candy. All this brings me back to those bags of sugar, too. My only guess is that this is the place of the owner of the bakery downstairs, and they have a massive sweet tooth. It makes sense - drunkards open taverns sometimes, and other things like that. Hay, if I had the money, I would open a store that sold all my favorite stuff, too.

That was probably the last list I'll write in this book. I'll do the rest on rolls or scrap that I found, now that there's so much of it.

Put some of the excess cupboards upstairs and moved the mattress next to the oven. Tested them both - the oven and the mattress - and both work amazingly. I'm staying here as long as I can."

There is a piece of paper folded up neatly and wedged carefully between the pages.

Houses intact besides Fort Funland
- Book Tree (library?)
- Carousel (tailor?)
- Town Hall
Mostly intact - salvageable supplies
- "Quill and Couch" Store
- Orchard farmhouse + barn
- Candy shop
- Various homes
everything else is up in the air
have to search places to find out