~ December 22nd ~

It was snowing lightly in the streets of Canterlot as Lightning and her dad walked through town. The week before, they had gotten tickets for a scenic winter train ride through the city and the woods. It wasn’t exactly her thing, but her dad didn’t really give her a choice.

After about a 20-minute walk, they arrived at the train station. Lightning was glad she wore her heavy coat and scarf, because it was extremely cold and they still had half an hour until the train ride. As they walked around a corner, they noticed a long line of people waiting.

“Is that the line for the train ride?” Lightning asked, sighing in frustration. She absolutely hated waiting in lines.

“Looks to be,” her dad replied. “It is quite a big deal. We’ve got time, though. I’m just going to use the restroom, go and get a space.” He told her as he went in the building.

Lightning looked back to the line and noticed a family approaching. Oh, no you don’t, she thought as she rushed over and claimed her space in front of them. Well, some might say they arrived at the same time.

“Um, excuse me,” a young girl from the family spoke up, getting Lightning’s attention. The girl had red hair with a few purple streaks in it.

“Do you want something?” she asked, rather annoyed.

“We were in line already,” the girl said plainly, adjusting her glasses.

Lightning furrowed her eyebrows. “Oh, looked like you were just arriving.”

The other girl took a deep breath. “Well, we were just about to, actually-”

“Well, that isn’t really my concern, is it?” Lightning asked. “I got here first and you didn’t.”

The girl seemed too shocked to respond. Before she could do anything though, an older woman spoke up.

“It’s alright, Moondancer,” the woman whispered, glaring at Lightning. “Let’s not make a big deal about it. There are already so many people waiting, it’ll just take another minute.”

Lightning could see the resemblance now, the woman must have been her mother, and the man looked to be her father. As Lightning got on her phone, she glanced over and realized she had seen the girl around Crystal Prep before. No one else looked familiar, though. As her dad returned, she spoke up immediately, not wanting the family to mention anything to him about what happened.

“So, uh, how long is this thing anyways?” she asked.

“About 2 hours,” her dad replied. “it’s going to be a great memory.”

Lightning laughed slightly, rolling her eyes. It would be a memory, alright. A memory of a perfectly good afternoon she could have gone snowboarding for her new vlog series. Oh well, there were more days to come. She thought to herself, maybe something exciting would happen on the train.

~.~.~.~.~.~

After about 20 minutes, Lightning and her dad had finally reached the front of the line. A woman stood behind the counter, typing something into her computer.

“Hi, we have tickets for the 12:30 train,” Lightning’s dad said as he held up his phone. “We got them online about a week ago.”

“Okay, let me give you your tickets,” the woman said.

“Thank you so much,” he said as she took the 2 tickets.

The woman smiled. “Have a great time.”

Lightning looked down at her phone while walking ahead. Her dad smiled to the woman before catching up, getting on one of the train cars near the back. It was very cozy inside. The walls covered in red and gold. They took a seat in one of the only booths that was still empty.

“No wonder these tickets were so expensive,” her dad laughed, looking around. “This is amazing.”

Lightning didn’t respond, instead looking at her phone. She was on the Crystal Prep school website, which she had been looking at quite often over the last couple weeks. Her friends’ channel was still as popular as it was when she was on it, and her own video didn’t even have half as many views. She couldn’t help but wonder why. She was amazing and fun, who wouldn’t want to watch her videos?

“Must be snowing quite a lot up in the hills,” her dad commented. “It’s going to be beautiful. I saw on the website that they serve hot chocolate and give out small gifts as well.” There was a pause as he waited for a response, but then looked out the window. It wasn’t anything new for Lightning to ignore him, so he was quite used to it.

After another minute of waiting, the train finally started to move. It gradually got faster as they left the train station, heading off through the city. Lightning still looked down at the view count on her friends’ videos. She had been feeling strange recently. Not insecure, she was way too cool to get 'insecure'. For as long as she could remember, her dad had told her she was amazing and a gift to the world, and she knew it too. She had it all, she was special, talented, fun…but why couldn’t anyone see it? They were the ones missing out, not her, that's she kept telling herself. Whenever she felt this way, she would always find a distraction, knowing that insecurity was a weakness.

Lightning finally looked outside, wishing the train went more than 15 miles an hour. It was definitely not her speed. It had been about 10 minutes, and they were leaving the town and going out into the forest. Lightning watched the snow-covered trees go by, sipping the hot chocolate they had given out just before.

About 20 minutes later, they were handed small gift boxes to open. Lightning’s dad offered for her to choose one, and she took the one with red wrapping paper, her favourite colour. She quickly tore the paper off, taking out the gift inside the box. It was a necklace with a snowflake on it. Lame, she thought, her excitement disappearing.

“That’s so beautiful, Lightning,” her dad told her with a smile.

Lightning stuffed it in her pocket, then got out of the booth and stood up. “You can open yours.” She looked around, deciding to go into the next car and see what was there. When she entered the other car, she saw that it was a gift shop, and they had things like plushies and various clothes to buy. She saw that they were giving out cookies at a small stand, and went to get one.

However, before she could get there, she caught sight of the last person she wanted to see heading for the cookie stand as well. Her former friend, Minty.

Lightning had no idea she was even on the train, but if she was, then Frosty must have been around, too.

“Hey, what happened to the cookies?” a familiar calm voice spoke up. Frosty had come out from behind a shelf and was looking at Minty.

“Oh, right, the cookies! I was getting there,” Minty smiled, just as forgetful as she always was. “They had this really cute plushie, you just have to see it. It’s a hedgehog, and it has the name of the train on it.” Minty then showed her the plushie. “Isn’t it the cutest thing ever?”

“Yeah, sure, but do you wanna know what’s cuter?” Frosty asked, walking up to the cookie stand. “Christmas cookies to go with that hot chocolate.” She took about 5 cookies and put them in a napkin, then stuffed them in her bag.

“You can’t take that many,” Minty laughed.

“Well, I guess whoever was supposed to be here should have stayed around then,” Frosty said, looking at one of the keychains they had for sale.

Lightning wasn’t going to wait around, and these girls were not going to get between her and her cookies. She confidently entered the car and walked over, noticing the girls’ surprised expressions.

“Lightning Dust,” Frosty looked down, avoiding eye contact and seeming almost sad. “What do you want?”

“Hey, don’t think I came in here to see you or anything,” Lightning said bitterly, grabbing 3 cookies in a napkin.

“...oh, I see how it is,” Frosty said after a minute, glaring at her. Minty backed up a little, clearly afraid of any conflict. “What are you even doing here? Thought you didn’t go for ‘boring’ Christmas events.”

“My dad surprised me with the tickets, isn’t he amazing?” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t choose to get on this thing, I can walk faster than this.”

“Uhuh,” Frosty said, unimpressed. “Well, we’re here to make a video for our channel. It turns out you were wrong about us. People do love our vlogs. Hey, when are you starting your channel up? You’re a little slow there, Dusty.” Frosty laughed.

Lightning felt her anger raising at those words, glaring at her former friends. She didn’t even think, and let her feelings take control as she grabbed the plushy out of Minty’s hands and walked over to one of the open windows.

“Give that back to her!” Frosty ran after her, but it was too late. Lightning tossed the plushy out the window, and turned back feeling satisfied with her revenge. Frosty looked over at Minty, who was about to cry, and that was all it took. When one of her friends was hurt, Frosty would defend them no matter what. She grabbed Lightning harshly and shoved her into a shelf behind her full of blankets. Lightning nearly collapsed, but quickly got to her feet and shoved Frosty back.

“Oh my gosh, please stop it!” Minty cried out, hiding her face in her hands. “Don’t fight!”

“You know what?” Frosty raised her voice as she and Lightning got up. “I was going to apologize to you! Minty and I have been feeling bad about what happened, and how things ended. But it was definitely for a good reason, and you haven’t changed at all. I don’t want things to be like this, but I don’t know what else to do.”

“Oh, I know what you can do,” Lightning said. “If you want to make me really happy, Frosty? You can go to the back of this train and-”

Before she could say another word, there was a loud screeching noise followed by screaming, and then a bang.

The train crashed.

⚡⭐⚡⭐⚡⭐⚡⭐⚡⭐

Author's Note

Well, she wanted something exciting to happen 🙄😂
I'm back!! Looks like I haven't given up on this book after all, just have been deciding where to take it next. I have so many ideas that I want to write about but can't do them all at once ahaha, but I should be updating more frequently now. I will be developing Minty and Frosty's characters more coming up as well!! -Faith x