Snowy Days at the Turnpine Inn

Starlight left town without another moment’s hesitation, or even a word of her departure to any of her friends. Only Twilight knew, and that was because she was in the way of packing her things.

“This is crazy, Starlight,” Twilight insisted, standing next to the frazzled mare as she packed her saddlebags. “The road west is dangerous. They’re calling for heavy snowfall in that region, and Rainbow Dash says that the factory there is testing a new snow production method. The chances of something going wrong are... are...”

“I’ll be fine, Twi. Honest. Stop worrying about me.” Starlight didn’t even make eye contact as she grabbed her things, methodically laying them out on her bedspread in order of necessity, choosing what to bring and what would have to be left behind.

“But you could wait a week. The train is bound to be running again, and...” Twilight shook her head in disbelief at the very notion of her friend putting herself in such peril. “It’s going to be freezing out there, Starlight. The Equestrian Environmental Department of Weather issued a warning on all travellers not to head west. It was in the paper! You can’t travel now!”

“No, Twi, I have to go.” Starlight sighed wearily, finally giving Twilight her attention as she finished packing, buckled up her saddlebags, and hoisted them onto her back with her magic. “It’s my Dad. Something’s wrong. He needs me.”

“W-well, then at least take somepony with you. You shouldn’t travel alone.”

“I couldn’t ask that of anypony at this time of year, and besides, I don’t want someone hanging around while I work things out with my sick Dad and fumble over our years-long broken relationship to find some semblance of anything but resentment.” She grabbed her scarf and wrapped it around her neck, pulling a toque over her head. It would mess up her mane and make it frizzy later, but she didn’t have much inclination to care about that now. Twilight blocked her exit, standing in the doorway with watery eyes full of frustration.

“Star,” she whispered, “please...”

“I have to. I have to go.”

She brushed past her mentor and dear friend, and without a word to another living soul, walked straight out the front door.

Everything west of Ponyville as far as the eye could see was largely untouched wilderness in a vast open valley. To the south-west was the White Tail Woods, and to the north the Unicorn Range and Smokey Mountains; but due west was nothing but trees and dense forest for miles and miles until one eventually reached Sire’s Hollow.

To get there by train one had to detour around the Smokey Mountains, make a stop near Vanhoover and loop back south. Hardly convenient for a pony on foot. There was a road, more or less depending on your definition of such, that was an ill-fated path for many. True, the unnamed forests swathed across the horizon were not as dangerous as the infamous Everfree Forest, and at first sight it seemed an easy challenge, but for what it lacked in immediate ferocity was its vast nothingness, the long stretch of road that went on for days or weeks depending on how one travelled. Most travellers were either horrifically ill-prepared, tragically lost too far off the trail, or just plain driven mad by the length of travel. Modern ponies just weren’t meant for long trips on the road like they once were.

Starlight knew this road well. She knew the stories, had met many travellers fresh off the winding dirt path and had taken each and every cautionary tale to heart. It was this road she walked on when she first left home, destined to establish her rule over a hamlet of struggling ponies desperate for a purpose. She had walked on this path when she returned home many years later with Sunburst when the Cutie Map had beckoned. But those days were in the summer, during warm days and cool nights when they’d sat huddled around a fire sharing stories of their youth. Now it was winter, and winter on this road was a different beast altogether.

Starlight walked on freshly fallen snow the crinkling sound of hoofsteps breaking through the surface echoing between the trees. In the distance, branches rustled and creaked under the heavy weight. The boughs of evergreens sagged and wobbled, reflecting the glint of perfect white powder into her eyes. She averted her path slight enough to move away from the sun’s glare. She’d heard of a pony who’d gone snow-blind and become lost before, and it wasn’t a fate she desired for herself.

It must have been years since the last time the road had been improved upon. Several months of ice and snow layered one after the other hid the path and made it barely visible. It was no wonder ponies often got lost, though Starlight knew her way home well enough. Still, it wasn’t getting lost that she was afraid of, it was being back at home again.

Her stomach grumbled words of malcontent and the worldly distraction came as a welcome respite from her thoughts. Starlight slowed her trot and came to a halt under a tree that looked like it wouldn’t leave her an icy surprise should she linger too long. Those were stories she’d heard, too, and the lesson was that one could never be sure about falling icicles in the thickness of the Woods.

Settling onto her haunches, tail wound tightly between her legs to give some space between her bottom and the cold forest floor, she reached into her saddlebag. She’d brought enough supplies for five days of travel, meaning she’d most certainly have to stock up as soon as she made it to Sire’s Hollow. Still, she had food, mostly protein bars and nuts, a tent, cooking gear, a pot to boil water with, her sleeping bag, a water bottle, and socks for sleeping. One could never be too comfortable on a winter’s night where one’s hooves were concerned, and socks were the only luxury Starlight had made space for.

Starlight munched thoughtfully on a bar of granola as her eyes scanned around the treeline. It surprised her how different everything looked under all that snow. It stood to reason, then, that she hardly knew where she was. That probably should have troubled her more, but she found herself in want for a reason to care.

She watched a small rabbit hop through the snow in search of food, presumably for its family sleeping back in its den, seemingly unafraid of predators or the imminent starvation it might face. As it hopped through patches of snow and checked under trees, it seemed to catch her gaze, stopped in its tracks, and wiggled its nose to pick up the scent of her food. Its ears wiggled and it turned to look straight at Starlight, peering right into her eyes from its spot some hundred feet away. It seemed to try and gauge her as friend or foe before it turned about and hopped away behind a tree.

Back on the road again, Starlight thought about the rabbit, how it hunted through the cold to fend for the needs of others despite the dangers posed to itself. Maybe it saw a kinship in Starlight, recognizing her as somepony who struggled on the same path. Supposedly, the rabbit hadn’t left home full of resentment to terrorize an entire town of ponies into subservience, but maybe Starlight was projecting herself. Okay, she was definitely projecting.

A particular gust of wind that sliced through the air caught Starlight’s back, stinging her with a biting chilliness that cut through her to the bone. She shivered and pulled her scarf. Four to five days on the road, depending on how fast she walked. She might even be able to do it in three and a half if she cut back on sleeping, which was ill-advised, but certainly not impossible.

It had been some hours since she’d been on the road, but it felt as though days had gone by, and the drop in temperature made it feel even longer. She was lightly shivering under her feather-down jacket that had protected her through many a cold day, but none had been like this. Had it ever been so cold in the days of her youth when she’d gone sledding with her father?

Happier times. When she didn’t think about friends, or cutie marks, or Sunburst. Bitterness had been planted in her heart like a seedling, but it had yet to bloom until years later. Her father, before picking up his new job, had taken her to the sledding hill nearly every weekend in the winter. Snowball fights, hot cocoa while resting in his lap. Those were sparkling, joyful memories she held fondly.

Then the new job came about. It was better for the family, he had said, and it was true they could afford more things and objects, luxuries they didn’t have before. Starlight’s little bookshelf in her play room grew and grew as her budding fascination with magic blossomed and swallowed up the room until it was a play room no longer, and her study henceforth. The same room she’d spend sunny, summer days playing Dragon Pit until her best friend had been unceremoniously taken away and her life had been flipped upside down.

The trips to the park ceased after that. No more sledding, hot cocoa or cozying up by the fire with Dad. He was always tired after that, thanks to the long hours of work, and Starlight began to enter her teen years when things really took a turn for the worst. They barely talked anymore. Meals were hardly shared. Outwardly, Starlight despised him for little reason other than his inability to be everywhere at once and teenage hormones telling her that parents were fascists by nature and didn’t understand what being young was like anymore.

An owl hooted far off in the distance and she thought back to the rabbit scurrying through the underbrush. Maybe the owl would catch it and eat it for dinner. The rabbit family Starlight had imagined would almost certainly starve off then. More likely was that they would all eventually emerge from the warren, facing starvation, and subsequently picked off by the same owl.

Starlight shook her head firmly. Not only was she projecting again, she was over-sympathizing with the concerns of rabbits. She was no Fluttershy, and she did not fancy herself the type of pony to fret over the cycle of nature that she could do little to control anyway.

Control—Starlight almost smirked to herself at the irony and sheer amazement that the idea of trying to control the world around seemed so alien, when there was a time not so long ago that it seemed as if that was her only goal. That was a different time, and a different Starlight. She didn’t like thinking about her anymore.

Would her father still see her as the same Starlight? Despite his desperate attempt the last time they’d met at treating her like the cute little filly he so often took sledding on the weekend so long ago, his memory of her was no doubt tainted by that of the horrible daughter she’d been during her teenage life, and for that matter most of her life up until a short time ago. When he saw her, did he see old, controlling, antagonistic and misguided Starlight? Or did he see the new, level-headed, thoughtful and redeeming Starlight she so desperately tried to be?

She was so busy being deep in thought that she failed to notice how far down the sun had gone. Which suited her just fine considering it was her whole intention to stay on the road as much as possible, if it weren’t for the whole absence-of-sunlight thing, and how she could barely see the trees on either side of the path. She also couldn’t see the rock on the ground before she tripped on it with a forehoof, tumbling forward face-first into the cold, unforgiving snow and dirt. Her vision spun, and she landed in a daze.

Righting herself, Starlight busied herself with brushing as much snow out of her fur before it could melt from her body heat and make her fur wet. As she did so, she scanned around to get her bearings. Only the never-ending line of trees, layer after layer, greeted her, all the way from the north and to the south. To the east, road. Or was that west?

The realization that she’d lost her bearings hit her immediately with a sudden force harder than the tumble to the ground a moment before. She looked up to use the stars, only to find Luna’s beautiful night sky obstructed by nothing but grey clouds. She was lost.

It was hopeless travelling the road now in the dark. She could be going in any wrong direction and fail to see wolves, a bear, or worse. She had brought a compass, but in the dark there was no use trying to fumble with one of those. No, the best course of action for any pony with a two-bit brain was to make camp for the night and stay put.

She spotted just off the road a small clearing that had enough space for her tent and a fire but still offered coverage from snow or rain above, and promptly pulled her saddlebags from herself with the intention of setting up camp. The freezing, nightly temperature had really started to set in, and she found herself fumbling, her hooves numb with cold. Items from her bag went left and right into the drifts of snow that she could not see in the dark. She could swear that half of her food had fallen under that tree over there...

It was no use, better to build a fire to warm up first. Had she thought to bring matches, fire-starter, even flint? To her horror she found none of those things in her saddlebags or the surrounding pile she sifted through. She lamented her stupidity for not bringing them. At the very least she was a unicorn with magic, so there was still hope if the cold hadn't numbed her too much. She struggled to grab as many sticks as she could find, a paltry amount by any standard, and threw them into a pile. She yanked off her toque, wincing as she exposed her ears to the biting cold, and tried to conjure a spell.

Funny thing about unicorns in the extreme cold is that their horns don’t work a damn when they’ve gone completely numb. Kind of like when you lose sensation to your extremities, so too does a unicorn first lose their ability to conjure a simple spell, and any scholar of magic will tell you that conjuring fire from the basis of nothing is no simple spell. Starlight's horn sputtered and crackled but nothing meaningful came out.

Starlight slumped into the snow and quietly sobbed as everything fell apart around her. Her supplies scattered around her pathetic attempt at a makeshift camp, her tent in shambles. Before the aching cold could wear her down any longer, she abandoned her attempt at a fire and grabbed the fallen branch of an evergreen, pulled it over herself, and huddled under a tree, hugging herself for warmth.

Dad was waiting out there somewhere, maybe freezing like she was with the family house in such disrepair, if Stellar Flare was to be believed. But he had ponies around him who cared enough to check on him, ponies who were able to help at much less a cost. As Starlight shivered intensely under that tree, she cursed him, cursed his selfishness. The moment she stepped hoof in Sire’s Hollow, she was going to set him right.