Chapter 1 - Echoes of Regret
Starlight Glimmer was sitting in a chair, that had been added just for her, at the large round crystal table that held the magical ‘Friendship Map,’ which was arranged in a circle with other chairs at the same table, mostly consisting of the Elements of Harmony, which formed a loose Ruling Council on which Princess Twilight Sparkle depended upon heavily.
However, the table and map were no longer in the Castle of Friendship in Ponyville… nor was it any longer on the original continent. Moving the map had been a pain but had also been considered necessary… not that there were many friendship problems left to fix.
No… this Ruling Council was taking place on an Island in the South Luna Ocean, Southwest of the Sax Palomino Desert, and was, at one point in time, amongst one of the most tropical paradises that had ever existed for pony-kind. The previously un-named island had been a secret vacation spot for Equestria’s rich and powerful for who knows how many years… but now… it was one of the few places where survival was possible without extreme measures.
It was the end of the world as anypony knew it, but they tried to carry on as best they could. Some would say that this was inevitable, but Starlight knew the truth. She had messed up and only she could be blamed for the results.
Starlight had pushed her magic as far as it could go and then had gotten bored. Turning to science, she single-hoofedly discovered a new mineral, which she later called uranium, and used it to create a bomb that far outpowered the Navies Cannonballs. Based on the chemical reactions she observed, she called the bomb a thermal-nuclear weapon. Catchy… right?
Starlight begged for the chance to test it, if only to see how powerful she could make it, and Twilight had reluctantly agreed… if only because tensions were starting to rise with a few of the other nations and everypony seemed to agree that testing a new weapon that was based on science instead of magic would get trade flowing again with less bickering.
Because… of course the threat of war solved every problem… and nothing was scarier than something that could blow up a whole mountain… like Griffonstone, for example.
After much debate, it was decided that the bomb would be tested on Mount Everhoof, north of the Crystal Empire. Prince Shining Armor was excited to test the new weapon and Princess Cadance was convinced to stay and watch the show, but they had both agreed to send Princess Flurry Heart to Canterlot in case there was an accident.
By simple luck…. Starlight had gotten the flu a day before the test was scheduled and Sunburst had decided to escort her to Canterlot along with Princess Flurry Heart before the test despite her protests of wanting to stay and see how well the new bomb worked.
Mercy for her would have been being allowed to stay and pay for her mistake first-hoof. No… ‘the event,’ as it was now called, was torture.
It was something that she would never live down… not that she deserved, or even wanted, forgiveness.
She could remember with crystal clear clarify the moment the news of the test had been delivered to her… after hours of delays and a white-noise blackout of communications from the newly built radio towers. She could still feel the chill from the blood draining from her face at the updated reports from the Wonderbolts.
Her life as she knew it was over…
Her bomb was the most powerful non-magical explosion to have ever happened on Equus. It should have been a momentous occasion complete with champagne, However, Mount Everhoof itself amplified the explosion by about 10,000 times the planned potency.
Starlight didn’t know… she couldn’t know… that Mount Everhoof was filled with weapons-grade uranium. Weapons-grade uranium was not supposed to be naturally occurring! Though, in hindsight, maybe the magic within the Crystal Heart had affected the uranium as well.
She would never know… as there was nothing left to test, and the Crystal Heart had been lost in the destruction that followed.
The explosion killed Prince Shining Armor and Princess Cadance, and completely wiped the Crystal Empire and Yakyakistan off the map.
Given that Yaks and Crystal Ponies preferred the cold northern climate, they don’t tend to travel much, and even when they do travel, they tend to stay in the north. Therefore, in one fell swoop, Starlight Glimmer’s accident had completely wiped out the Yaks and the Crystal Ponies… Unless a miracle occurred… it was complete genocide of both races… oh, that would be a story to tell the grandfoals.
Yona… the Yak that had studied at Princess Twilight’s School of Friendship, was the last living Yak known to pony-kind, so of course she was added to the island even if we didn’t know what was supposed to happen with her yet. Yona was miserable in the tropical heat but was reluctant to cut her long fur, in case she ever had to travel back northward. Yak and pony breeding might not produce a yak… but they had to try… with Yona’s consent. Once she was an adult. So many maybes…
Other than Princess Flurry Heart… no other known Crystal Pony had survived. With Flurry Heart being an alicorn, no pony was sure if she could legitimately be called a Crystal Pony. That was a discussion for another time.
As if everything else wasn’t bad enough… the explosion caused massive, nearly immediate climate change and forced ponies to evacuate as far south as they dared. Starlight would never know who coined the term ‘Nuclear Winter’, but she knew it was her fault… solely her fault.
The decision to evacuate off the main continent to a tropical island to try to maintain a viable population had been a hastily made, but necessary decision. Of course… not everypony could go to the island, so some very harsh and important decisions were made. Decisions that didn’t sit well with a lot of the ponies on the island, including the Ruling Council.
The hardest short-term decision was deciding who should go to the Island in the first place. They needed ponies with a variety of skills, like farmers to grow food and bakers to cook food, but they also needed Guards to maintain society and order and a ‘breeding population’ of young mares to repopulate Equus. Despite the need for diversity, a higher priority was placed on highly skilled unicorn mages, plus scientists and engineers from all three tribes to build up the island’s infrastructure and try to reverse the Nuclear Winter.
If it was even possible.
The island had long term potential, but due to the current shortage of food and shelter, only stallions of exceptional pedigree with the skills they badly needed and mares of foal-bearing age that was up-front willing to bear dozens of foals as literal foal-factories, plus some promising young colts and fillies were allowed to go to the island. No ponies with a disability of any kind were allowed on the island. That left ponies like Scootaloo and Derpy Hooves to fend for themselves on the mainland, which had really upset Rainbow Dash.
Of the millions of ponies in Equestria, only 500 stallions, 1,000 mares, 300 foals, 1 Yak and the ponies that made up the Ruling Council made it to the inland from which Twilight Sparkle now ruled from. 1,809 total.
The rest were left to die.
This awful plan of who could come to the island was also her suggestion, but it was another decision that Starlight would never live down… despite Princess Twilight Sparkle having the final say. Starlight had requested to be left behind in the mainland as well as part of her punishment… but Twilight needed her scientific knowledge to try to fix this. Or so she had said.
It was a heavy burden… made harder by how little her former friends trusted her. Now that everyone that was chosen to come to the Island were actually here and more or less settled in, the biggest short-term concern was figuring out how to feed the island’s population…
If regrets could become food that could feed a population… the ponies that were left would never starve… but Starlight Glimmer wasn’t so lucky.
The Council had been on the island for a month already, but it had felt like a lifetime.
“Starlight… did you hear my question?”
There it was… that tone. Ever since the ‘accident,’ Princess Twilight seemed to carry a sharper tone and wore a semi-permanent frown. Princess Flurry Heart was sitting in the chair beside Twilight that Spike used to sit in… but he had returned to the Dragon Lands where the volcanos and lava kept that continent warm. A dragon could survive nowhere else in this nuclear winter… and she hoped that Spike would marry Ember or Smolder and find love… being deprived of every pony else.
She was startled out of her reminiscences. “I’m sorry… I was lost in thought… can you please repeat yourself, your majesty?”
Starlight had found herself being far more formal with her mentor. She could barely stand to look her mentor in the eyes as the overwhelming shame of having killed so many creatures continued to weight her down. She had failed on so many levels…
She knew that she would never atone for killing her mentor’s brother and sister-in-law, especially with them having been Flurry Heart’s parents.
In fact, even Princess Flurry Heart, herself, seemed to show some resentment over the death of her parents and of her Auntie Twilight stepping into a motherly role, as Flurry had no other living family now. Flurry Heart was more than old enough to remember her parents, which would make the loss harder to bear. Sunburst still helped out when he could but being a mother suited Twilight… however, Starlight would never be able to tell her that. Out of guilt or shame, even she didn’t understand her own feelings on the matter, but they were very present.
Twilight deadpanned as she repeated the question. “Did you finish the analysis of how many ponies the island could support?”
Starlight looked down at the table and cleared her throat.
Oh, yeah… the actual work I was given. I almost forgot…
“O… Of course, your majesty. The island has a natural supply of both banana trees and coconut trees, but ponies can’t eat too many bananas without getting a stomachache. The coconuts pose no harm to us. With the natural trees already bearing fruit, we can comfortably feed about 1,000 ponies right now. Applejack, Big Mac and Apple Bloom are already in the process of planting Apple Trees and planting more banana and coconut trees into organized groves. With how fast the trees will grow in a tropical climate, we should be able to support 10,000 ponies within the next 3 years and 50,000 within 10 years. The island will never be able to comfortably hold more than 50,000 ponies… although we might can find more near by islands to expand to… and save more ponies from the mainland.”
The news was a relief to some at the table, but not to all.
Rarity spoke up. “But darling, we have a population of 1,809 ponies, at present. How are we all to eat if we can only support 1,000 ponies at present?”
Starlight gulped. “I… it may be hard to swallow… but we can supplement our diets with fish if we can get some pegasi willing to become fisherponies.”
Rarity looked green at the statement. “Fish? You suggest we eat fish?”
Starlight nodded weakly. “The local ocean is full of fish. Pegasi already eat some fish to support healthy feathers. My research over the last month has shown that Earth Ponies and Unicorns can eat fish will no ill effects… once you get past the fact that you are eating meat in the first place. We will be eating fish with half of our meals… if we can fish up enough… it will be a hard adjustment, but we will survive.”
Rainbow Dash snorted. “I always did enjoy a good baked fish, but I never brought it up to my non-pegasi friends. Being able to eat more fish is at least one good thing that came out of Starlight’s Winter.”
Starlight winced and lowered her head further. She had no retort to Rainbow’s statement.
Rarity had no love for Starlight from her mistake and all the changes ponies were forced to make but she also held no intentional ill will towards her.
She cleared her throat to rephrase her question. “Is there anything else we can do, darling?”
Starlight nodded slowly. “We could try to plant some strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. The plants would grow quickly in this tropical climate, and we would get a harvest within a few months. It would take a few years for the other three types of bushes to reach full size, but strawberries grow fast. It wouldn’t eliminate the need for fish, but in 6 months or so we wouldn’t need as much as we do right now. That is… if we can get some farmers willing to plant them and tend them. A lot of farmers don’t see berries of any kind as a main food source, but more as a luxury food source, mostly for snacks and desserts. But they could be grown in the private gardens around the houses being built without having a dedicated grove for them… maybe some ponies would accept the inconvenience of not having private flower gardens to be able to save more ponies from the mainland by being able to feed more ponies faster.”
Pinkie Pie was unusually quiet. She had been sad that Mrs. Cake wasn’t allowed on the island. Mr. Cake and the cake twins made it… since he had a valuable skill as a professional baker and the twins were still under the age of 10… but Mrs. Cake was beyond her safe foal-bearing years… and it had been a miracle her twins were as healthy as they were. She wouldn’t be able to bear anymore foals though… so she was left behind. To Pinkie’s further dismay, all her sisters had decided to remain on the family rock farm and not travel to the island. The farm was close to the Pax Palomino Desert and not far from the port they used to get to this island, but Pinkie hadn’t wanted to leave them behind.
Pinkie spoke up quietly. “Mrs. Cake made a mean raspberry tart… I still have all her recipes. It’ll take years… but we can have some fun parties in the future.”
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sure you can get into high spirits eventually… but you still have Cheese Sandwich. Every stallion that I would have ever considered having a foal with is still on the mainland. I’m the only Wonderbolt on the Island… but my only purpose is to relay messages from here to the mainland and back again… in between voting on things in Council.”
Twilight spoke up. “I’m sure that unicorns could use magic to fish up large amounts of fish daily so at least my ponies won’t starve. I also like the idea of planting berry bushes everywhere they can fit. There are no personal gardens… all food grown is for the benefit of the entire island. Does anypony have anything else meaningful to add before I announce how we shall proceed?”
Everypony shook their head, allowing Princess Twilight to continue. She took in a measured breath and tried not to sigh as she made life changing decrees.
“First of all, there will be no pregnancies until we have a stable food source, either from fishing being consistent or from fruit trees literally bearing fruit. Once the infrastructure is in place and the food is stable… I will be suspending the concept of marriage so we can produce a diverse population. Once it is safe to do so, resource-wise, every mare will breed during every heat with a different stallion each time and will bear anywhere between 5 and 10 foals each, with a diverse genetic background so our species will survive. Earth Ponies with Earth Ponies. Pegasi with Pegasi. Unicorns with Unicorns. But with a different stallion each time. This will continue until we have a population of roughly 50,000 ponies. No incest of any kind… as we don’t have the medical or magical facilities to undo birth defects. Any objections?”
Applejack lowered her head and whispered “Phooey.”
Nopony commented on that as they would rather give AJ the benefit of something else bothering her. But nopony objected in general and Twilight continued.
“Starlight… I want you to continue do experiments and come up with ideas to limit the damage as best you can. The so-called ‘Nuclear Winter’ hasn’t fully set yet so we still might be able to make some moves to save more ponies on the mainland before it’s too late. I’m trusting you to come up with ideas to fix this. Do you understand?”
Shaking on her hooves, she stood up to bow low. “I understand completely, your majesty. Any idea I come up with, of merit, I will bring to you immediately.”
Twilight’s frown never left her face. “Good enough. Council adjourned.”
As Twilight trotted away and the rest of the council gave her a side long glance, Starlight was feeling more alone than she had ever been.
“Buck… how am I supposed to fix this?”
* * *
Author's Note
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