The sky and ground were barraged with endless amounts of icy flakes, each one bigger than the last. Inside the houses, the older ponies were panicking, although they kept this feeling inside so as not to concern the younger ones, who didn't know any better. After all, they were bunching up by the windows to look out at the storm. There couldn't be anything to truly worry about, could there?

They were wrong.

~~~

"So let me get this straight, y'all have no idea why you dislike alicorns?" Applejack inquired silently, her muzzle hovering over the mouth of the porcelain cup she held in her hooves. Steam twisted in warm coils from the tea inside, forming spindly shapes in the air.

The room was casual and minimalistic, with only three simple cushioned chairs pushed around a square coffee table. The walls were bare but for a single framed photograph picturing Snowflake and two other mysterious ponies, too young to be her parents but too old to be siblings or friends. One of their faces were obscured by a large black spot on the picture. With the bare appearance of this one room alone, it was a mystery as to how or why the young mare had enough tea and cups to accommodate her six unexpected guests.

"That's right." Snowflake replied, silently sipping on her own tea.

Rainbow Dash hovered angrily in the corner, keeping her guard up and her eyes on every possible exit. "So then why even keep hating on them?!" She nearly shouted.

The dark blue pegasus shrugged, averting her eyes to the bare wooden floor beneath her, avoiding all eye contact with the lavender alicorn seated across from her. "Pack mentality, I s'pose. They do it because they're used to it. Been that way for years. Since nopony said otherwise, of course they just assumed this thought process is correct."

"Who came up with this idea? It's absolutely preposterous!" Rarity asked, a hoof placed dramatically over her chest.

Again Snowflake shrugged, now squirming beneath the twelve eyes focused on her form. "I don't know. No pony here does."

The room went silent, the situation seeming to weigh down on each of the six newcomers, and the emptiness of the room seemed to make the silence echo even louder, until it was once again broken by the new pegasus.

"Except Amethyst Rose... she's the librarian."

Twilight's expression immediately brightened up, her smile stretching so wide it caused Fluttershy to send a panicked glance her way, as if fearful her friend's face would break any second.

"There's a library?!"

"Yes. Just up the road. Amethyst knows everything." Snowflake looked up, her violet eyes shining an emotion none of the other ponies in the room could recognize, making it seem almost intimidating. "But I recommend you don't go back out. Now that the whole town knows you're here, you won't get anywhere."

"Ooh! I have just the spell for that!" Twilight exclaimed, standing up and trotting over to an open area in the room -- which wasn't all too hard to find -- and taking a deep breath. "I learned this spell a while ago, I call it the changeling spell."

Just then, a bright flash of light filled the room, and when it vanished, Twilight was gone. The pony that stood in her place was a cream - coated earth pony with short red hair and green eyes, a pony easily recognizable to any Ponyville natives, or at least to someone who had been to its resident flower shop enough times.

"Roseluck? How'd you get here?" Pinkie Pie asked, cocking her head almost a full one - hundred - eighty degrees.

Roseluck giggled, "no, Pinkie! It's me, Twilight! This spell only allows me to change into somepony already existing, and for an hour at most."

"Ooohh.. that makes sense!"

"Well let's go, then!" Rainbow shouted, zipping out the front door in a rainbow blur, and the rest of her friends followed.

Snowflake sighed, finishing off her tea.

"I can't believe I forgot to ask them about the tea..."

The library was shockingly large for such a small town, making it seem as though the majority of the town's funds had gone into building it. Twilight -- or Roseluck, rather -- couldn't have been more happy about this. Shelves upon shelves of books filled the single - roomed two - story building, and the wooden theme of the place brought a tear to Rose - Twilight's eye, immediately reminding her of the Golden Oak Library she had lost what felt like centuries ago.

"You okay, sugarcube?" Applejack asked in a motherly tone, placing a concerned hoof on her friend's unfamiliar shoulder.

It was then that Twilight realized she had been crying. "Ah..." she quickly wiped the tears away, returning Applejack's concerned expression with a weary smile. "Just... happy to see so many books in one place is all!"

"Egghead..." Rainbow muttered, her eyelids getting heavy just looking at so many books that probably had nothing to do with her favorite book series, Daring Do. Her comment earned her a rough nudge in the ribs by Rarity, who trotted further into the seemingly empty room.

"It doesn't look like anypony is here." she said in a low voice, afraid to speak any louder in the eerie silence of the library.

Fluttershy shuddered, inching back towards the door. "Guess that means we can leave then! Maybe even go back... home...?"

Applejack's tone was grim. "You remember what happened to the train, dont'cha? We can't go back, like it or not."

"Ohh that's what I was afraid of..."

Twilight walked around the desolate library, surveying the books stacked neatly across the shelves. They were meticulously organized, the technique done so well she didn't dare touch a single one and risk ruining such perfection. What shocked her the most, however, was the fact that she recognized none of the titles or authors. The alicorn - turned - earth pony finally worked up the will to pick up a rather fat publication on the history of ice pythons, a creature she had never heard of until then, and found that the book wasn't even published in Equestria, rather in a place unknown to her called Icemare.

"Strange..." Twilight whispered in Rose's voice. "I've never seen any of these books before, not even in Princess Celestia's library."

"You wouldn't have."

An unfamiliar voice piped up, and all six heads turned simultaneously to face the young unicorn standing in a doorway none of them had seen upon first entering. Her coat was a pale lavender, and her eyes a similar purple. Her hair was brown as dirt, tipped with white, like snow. She was barely as tall as a fully grown mare, and clearly couldn't have been older than eighteen.

"None of these books were published in Equestria. In fact, a majority of them weren't even officially published. These are all books written by the ponies of this town, over the course of a thousand years. Speaking of which-" the unicorn paused, cocking her head. "You guys look unfamiliar. Have you moved here recently? I haven't left the library in days, so I apologize if I-"

"We're looking for Amethyst Rose." Rainbow Dash interrupted, already in a bad mood from the unexpected events of the morning.

"Oh... um, she's-- wait, wait, that's me!" The unicorn smiled, trotting over to the rainbow - maned pegasus and wrapping her in a constricting hug. "Have you heard of me? Has my legacy finally spread beyond this town of ice and snow?"

Rainbow blinked. "Your... legacy...?"

"Oh yes!" Amethyst bolted back through the door she had originally appeared from, and returned mere seconds later levitating stacks upon stacks of notebooks and loose papers, promptly dropping them on top of the unsuspecting cyan pegasus. "I write poetry! Oh, I've been yearning for so long to get out of this frozen town, to travel across the world and spread the art of my written works to the ponies and creatures of this planet, to weave the web of my words and phrases and catch my unsuspecting prey in the chain of my feelings spread out with paper and parchment!"

Gathering herself, Amethyst cleared her throat and placed a hoof over her heart. "It is my heart's desire. But alas! I have not been allowed to leave, despite my many attempts, I am possibly doomed to spend all of eternity here, and must lock my heart in a cage, until it is allowed to fly."

At this point, Applejack was holding back laughter due to Rainbow's more than irritated reaction, and Rarity was choking back tears.

"Amethyst, darling... that... that was simply astonishing! Brava!"

Before the unicorn could go taking any bows, Twilight stepped forward. "Wait. Amethyst, you said you couldn't leave...?"

"That's right. No one here can."

At that, the room went silent, and Amethyst looked around at the newcomers, starting to get the feeling that they weren't here because they were fans of her work...

"Do you girls uh... wanna follow me for a second?"

The group of friends silently agreed, and followed the young mare back to a room hidden behind a shelf of fiction novels, clearly meant to be more secretive than the open space they had just left. The room was much bigger than expected, empty but for the tall walls of books, the singular wall filled to the brim with papers, notes, and photographs, and a single mirror that stood taller than the doorway, causing the unspoken question to arise of how this small unicorn managed to get it into this room. Once everypony was settled, Amethyst took her place in the middle of the room.

"I've been studying the world outside of the town for a few years now. All these books belonged to outsiders who just happened to find this place at some point."

"H-how did you end up with them?" Fluttershy worriedly stammered, peeking out from her place behind Rarity.

Amethyst smiled mischievously, running a hoof along the shelf closest to her. "They were confiscated when the outsiders arrived; outside materials besides food and sometimes clothing is prohibited. Mayor kept 'em in his office, but I snuck in and grabbed as many as I could carry and booked it back here. There are so many interesting concepts tucked away in these books. I even read about the Equestrian princesses being kind and benevolent creatures, but I obviously know that can't possibly be true!"

Once she said this, all eyes except Amethyst's turned towards Twilight, who was still magically disguised as Roseluck. Sighing, a magenta glow appeared where her horn would be, and in another flash of light, she took her regular form. The young unicorn's eyes widened, and her pupils became so small they were practically pinpricks against her pearl white sclera. The lavender in her face paled to an almost white shade of pink, and her mouth started opening, moving to form words, but no sounds came out.

Then, suddenly, she screamed, a shrill, high - pitched shriek that a banshee would envy. Her outburst was immediately muffled by Rainbow Dash, who muzzled the young mare with her cyan hoof.

"Are you trying to get everypony in town in here after us?!" the rainbow mare hissed, earning a fearful whimper in return.

After Amethyst quieted down and returned her breathing to normal, albeit with much trouble, her mouth was released, and she exhaled, taking one long look at each pony in the room with her, eyes lingering on the alicorn princess standing taller than the rest of them. "M-my deepest and m-most sincere ap-apologies, Princess... I-I, y-you, please don't hurt me, please, I d-didn't mean-!"

"Now calm down, sugarcube, Twilight wouldn't hurt a mosquito if it sucked all the blood from her body." Applejack spoke.

"No, I wouldn't. And I definitely won't hurt you." Twilight finished, stepping forward, and causing the unicorn to step back in response.

"I-It's just... the Equestrian princesses are supposed to be evil and selfish and stuff, at least, that's what I've been told..."

Pinkie Pie snorted a loud giggle. "Pffftt Twilight?! No way! Twilight's the goodiest, non-selfishest, not horribliest princess to ever princess!"

"Yea!" Rainbow added. "And the other princesses are like that too!"

"That's what we came to you to talk about, actually." Twilight said, silencing her friends before more could be said. "Do you know Snowflake?"

Amethyst Rose nodded, a lock of brown hair falling into her face. She didn't seem to notice.

"Well," Twilight continued, "she's the one who sent us to you. We were hoping you'd be able to tell us why it is that your town hates alicorns so much, and why you're all so secluded out here, in the Frozen North."

"Wh-why would I know anything about that?" Amethyst asked a little too defensively, before realizing that she had practically revealed just how knowledgeable she truly was in comparison to her neighbors by leading these ponies to her secret room, and let out a defeated sigh. "Alright... I'll tell you everything I know... but, it's not a lot..."

Author's Note

Cliffhanger!

Ooooh I wanna get used to doing these
Anyways! Another chapter! Woo! There are so many things I want to reveal and talk about all at once but the story wouldn't be as interesting, ugh!

Now, the next chapter was supposed to be a part of this chapter, but there's something I'm working on that I need a little more time to set up and work out in terms of the writing part of this.
I'm also a little worried if I can keep this story under the E rating given what'll happen, but if Gravity Falls can do it, then so can I!