Hearth's Warming in the Wasteland
Windup limped into Appleloosa's city hall and started to make his way through the crowd to the mayors office. The interior walls being made of wood Windup could almost blend in with the interior of the building as well as he could outside with his fallow colored coat and drab scales however his xanadu colored mane and dark and moderate amaranth horn would still stand out a bit as would his labrador blue eyes. A stallion stopped him halfway to the mayor's door.
"I've never seen a pony like you before," the stallion said, "are you a Changeling?"
"No," Windup flatly replied, "I'm a Kirin."
"I've never heard of a Kirin before. Are you making that up?"
"He is there in front of you isn't he? He is not making it up. Now leave him be." Said a mare from the now open door to the mayor's office.
With that the unknown stallion backed off and left the town hall as Windup proceeded on to the mare quickly moving on from the curious stallion.
"Thank you mayor but what was that about?" Windup asked.
"A refugee from the south is the best that I can give you. I don't know beyond that. Sorry." Replied the mayor, "Shall we get to business?" she added as she gestured to her office.
"Please." Replied Windup as he limped into the office.
The room was lightly decorated to take note of the fact that it was Hearth's Warming however nopony would have known it with the weather outside. On the table in the center of the room was a map of Equestria which had pins noting locations of known settlements, known recent attacks on trade roads and notes on dangerous areas of travel for various reasons.
"There are more ponies turning to raider ways around the area and the raider parties are becoming more aggressive as more join." The mayor stated.
"Those ponies are being too self centered focusing on their own short term needs and aren't concerned about anything long term." Windup replied.
"Can you blame them with how things are?"
"Yes." Windup replied nonchalantly.
At the mayer's flat stare in reply Windup added, "We are trying to rebuild Equestria. That isn't going to happen overnight. Its going to take a lot of time and effort just to clean the land alone with how polluted it is. That doesn't even take into account that the settlements that have formed since the war are basically city-states politically that refuse to band together and are, at times, barely willing to trade with each other what little they have to help each other."
"Windup your trying to rebuild Equestria. Most everypony else is just trying to survive to make it to the next day. It is hard for them to see past the short term most days when around them is so much gloom and dread."
"That is all anypony is ever going to be doing unless we start to put effort into rebuilding again. The sooner we start the better."
"There is only so much we can do with the land poisoned and nopony knows how to go about cleansing it. Not even you."
Windup sighed for he knew the mayor was right. The bombs that had destroyed the major cities of Equestria had also poisoned the land via fallout from the explosions in a way that he, nor anypony he could find up to that point, could understand nor figure out how to cleanse. It didn't help that he hadn't seen another Kirin since before the end of the war. Another Kirin might have been able to help with a Kirin's magic mostly limited to Geology based abilities and Windup's own magical abilities didn't include any soil cleansing abilities. With that major stumbling block to a rebuild being impassable there was a serious limit to what could be done to restore ponykind as a unified group to anything resembling what Equestria had once been.
"Besides," the mayor added, "There is the unknown threat to the south that is a more pressing concern. A group of unknown ponies is taking other ponies captive without any given reason or leaving any sort of ransom. Reportedly they are being helped by various felines. I think it may be a changeling attack--"
"Its not changelings," Windup gave the mayor an agitated look to go with the sharp interruption, "Its been nearly 10 years since the war. They would have made a move a long time ago."
"Who do you think it might be then?" The mayor questioned.
"I think I have an idea but it doesn't make a lot of sense to wait this long to make a move for them either," Windup replied, "It is something I am going to have to look into."
"You can't," The mayor protested, "Your the only pony all of the other towns and villages will collectively listen to. If they are a growing threat we need you to start organizing some sort of defense."
"What is the point of mounting a defense if you don't know what your defending against?" Windup asked, "Besides a number of these city-states only grudgingly let me into town nowadays as a gesture of good will and respect for what I have done for them. They are getting tired of me trying to encourage them to be more open to trading what resources they have to help others in need. Too many are not willing to follow my lead that me trying to lead a collective defense would be futile. The collective group would fracture as individual groups would leave to go defend their own their home towns at the smallest bit of pressure. If they aren't willing to openly help each other now they won't stand together as one when the pressure gets turned up in a true fight."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Windup replied as he limped to a bench on the other side of the table grimacing slightly as the pain in his hip started to grow from being on his legs for such an extended time, "Getting the city-states to even do anything together is only getting harder over time never mind the fact that what should be minor disputes and misunderstandings is causing even more aggressive responses between them. Without the southern threat to the area things are seemingly getting more and more out of control. With it the situation just seems... impossible."
Windup collapsed on the bench blankly staring at the map. After the war there was a short but wide surge of effort to rebuild however the spark of that surge died quickly as most ponies came to realize the extent of the devastation of the bombs that ended the war. With all major cities but Canterlot in near complete ruins from direct impacts and Canterlot itself somewhere nobody dared to go with an ever lingering pink cloud that was reported to kill within a handful of hours all of the smaller cities and towns left behind didn't have the resources at hand to truly rebuild. As a result most towns eventually just focused their efforts on short term survival.
While the spirit of cooperation and friendship had lasted longer than the rebuilding effort even that started to degrade and fall away as ponies became more and more desperate as ready supplies needed for survival became fewer and fewer. With the land poisoned replacing the basic supplies with non-tainted supplies was exceptionally difficult. The reality was that until the land could be cleansed day to day survival was going to be difficult however focusing on surviving day to day was doing nothing to help any effort into cleansing the poisoned land that would go into making daily life easier. With the newer addition of the southern threat the entire situation just seemed untenable from Windup's perspective.
"You look like you could take a break from all of this." The mayor finally said walking to the door.
"What do you have in mind?" Windup asked as he looked quizzically at the mayor who had opened the door and was looking outside it.
"There is a group of foals in the town hall that was asking for a Hearth's Warming story. Why don't you go tell them one?"
"Ok," Windup replied with no real way to object, "Sure."
Windup got up and hobbled his way out of the mayor's office and to the foals off to one side of the main room. About a dozen were sitting in a group by a bench as a mare sitting on one end of it was keeping their attention via a book decidedly not Hearth's Warming related.
The mare stopped her reading as he approached and asked, "Windup is there anything I can do?"
"Forgive me for interrupting but I heard that these foals wanted to hear a Hearth's Warming story." Windup replied.
"Please!" Shouted one of the foals.
The mare let out a giggle, "Its perfectly fine Windup and if you have a Hearth's Warming story I would be delighted to let you share it."
A collective cheer came from the foals as Windup laid down on the bench.
"Thank you ma'am," Windup replied, " I'm going to tell you foals my favorite Hearth's Warming story. The Kirin call it 'The First Hearth's Warming.' A long, long time ago before Equestria even existed all the pony tribes lived in their own groups. While the Alicorn and Kirin tribes were largely open and warming to others the leadership of the three major tribes; Earth pony, Unicorn and Pegasi were very close minded and concerned only about their own tribes. Despite that we all still had to work together to survive. The Kirin would bolster the soil with nutrients so the Earth ponies could readily grow their crops for food while the Pegasi provided good weather for growing the crops and the unicorns would provide the necessary sunlight for the crops to grow. The Unicorns and Pegasi demanded food for payment of their services provided to help the crops grow."
"This continued over time until a terrible blizzard came upon the land which made it impossible to grow food. As a result a meeting was called between all of the leaders of the tribes to find a solution to the crisis. Unfortunately nothing was achieved at the meeting because the Unicorn, Pegasi and Earth pony leaders couldn't stop arguing. The only thing that came from that meeting was the universal decision from every tribe that they were going to leave the land from which they currently resided. The Kirin went to the Alicorns for advice. The Alicorns deduced that the uncontrollable blizzard was most likely due to a creature called Windigos and that the Windigos were likely looking to feed off of the growing fighting and hatred between the leadership of the Unicorns, Pegasi and Earth ponies. The Alicorns encouraged the Kirin to find their own place to stay but told them to warn the other three tribes before they left of the dangers presented by the Windigos."
"When the Kirin got back to warn the three tribes they found them gone already. Concerned they went back to the Alicorns seeking help in finding them. Together they searched however when they caught up to fresher tracks they found the way blocked off by ice made by the Windigos. With concern the Alicorns told the Kirin that the other three tribes were now completely isolated and that their survival was completely up to them. In the mean time the other three tribes happened to stumble across a magnificent land that they all tried to claim for their own. With the leaders arguing once again a blizzard started to make things unbearably cold so the three tribes retreated into a cave. Inside the cave the leaders continued to bicker even as the entrance to the cave was frozen over and the only thing that stopped them was them being frozen by the Windigos themselves."
A few gasps escaped from some of the fillies gathered around Windup. He slowly looked at all of the fillies in front of him with a slight smile before going on.
"With the advisors being the last ones left to be frozen by the Windigos they huddled together and deduced that their leaders behavior had brought about all of this. They also realized that they didn't have the same attitudes to each other as their leaders had displayed admitting their own wishes that their leaders had displayed the same attitude of friendship that they were now displaying to each other. Just as they were about to be frozen by the Windigos Clover the Clever, not knowing how, unleashed a spell creating The Fire of Friendship. That spell drove away the Windigos and started to thaw the other members of the tribes out while they continued to tell stories of friendship and sing songs that became the Hearth's Warming carols of today."
"After their leaders thawed they came to realize the mistakes that they had made and decided to settle their differences. As the three tribes left the cave that they were trapped in they met the Alicorn and Kirin searching for them and admitted that, while they had found the perfect land for each of them to move to, it was a land that was perfect for all of them. With that they also decreed that they all should live together in that land as one. However they also realized the danger of what just happened happening again under split leadership of the three tribes and admitted to the Alicrons that they couldn't lead themselves without great risk of going down the same path they just traveled that nearly lead to disaster and asked if they would be willing to provide them with the leadership required to keep the tribes united as one. With the Alicorns agreeing to provide the tribes with the leadership that they were looking for Equestria was born. That day, from that moment on, was then forever known as Hearth's Warming Day."
The fillies cheered with excitement and joy as Windup finished the story.
"What do you say to Windup for the story?" The mare asked.
"Thank you Windup!" was the reply from all of the foals.
"Thank you." Windup replied with a bow of his head.
"Can I ask a question?" One young mare asked.
"You may." replied Windup.
"Are Windigos real?"
"I believe that they did exist in the past but what happened to them I don't know."
"Could they come back?" another one asked.
"I don't think so anymore," Windup said, "Its just been such long a time since any evidence to confirm the existence of one has been found that I think that they are gone for good."
Suddenly two earth stallions came bursting into city hall and galloped at full speed into the mayors office closing the door behind them. This stopped everyone else in the city hall from what they were doing as they all looked at the closed door to the mayors office with mixed expressions.
"Pardon me kids." Windup said as he slowly got up and started hobbling to the mayors office knowing that this wasn't a good thing and that he would likely be called by the mayor.
Before getting far the mayor opened her office door, "Windup get in here."
"Nope, not good." Windup muttered under his breath.
Author's Note
So the story here is another perspective of the story told in S:2,E:11 Hearth's Warming Eve. This version however is told from a potential Kirin's perspective. I think it is more than safe to say that the Kirin and Alicorns were around at the time of the story in the actual show however for whatever reason they largely aren't mentioned if at all. However to what degree they were around and what they may have had to do with the story, if any, is completely unknown.
This then presents an opportunity for fun story and lore creating and that is just what I decided to do. If you go back to that episode and compare stories you will notice some differences. This is deliberate on my part on the simple fact that similar ancient human stories from relatively similar origin can change a lot over time and distance. Thus I thought it fun to apply that here as it makes the Kirin perspective that much more unique.
That said I don't think either version of the story is more accurate than the other. They are age old versions of the same story passed down orally for a long time before being written down much later in time. Thus they would have changed over time from the actual story before they were actually written down.
Also word of warning to those that will continue to read these stories beyond this one. They all jump around through time. While the first series of stories here goes in chronological order there is quite significant time gaps and thus changes in the character of Windup. This first group of short stories set the stage while building the world for the first major standalone story of Windup that isn't a short story like these. The following ones after the first group will be in no particular order. I figured this warning would be appropriate in the author's notes.
Thank you for reading this first chapter and I hope you enjoyed.
