Prologue ~ First Hearthswarming
“The fire of friendship lives in our hearts,
So long as it burns we cannot drift apart.
Though quarrels arise their numbers are few,
Laughter and singing will see us through.
We are a circle of pony friends,
A circle of friends we will be to the very end…”
“I do not hate you.”
Words can be easily said. It is harder to truly mean them.
But when these words were spoken, and were meant, the peace formed upon that night between three estranged souls would have always, indelibly held its own magic, even without that which happened next.
Clover the Clever, Archmage of the Kingdom of Unicornia, had been last to speak those words in the presence of his two companions, though he was first to know the source of their woes. Seldom had the three peoples of earthpony, pegasus and unicorn stooped so low as to openly war upon the other; yet this was academic, when exploitation and mutual alienation sufficed to make so many cold-hearted towards one another.
A cold made manifest, as they’d discovered, with the coming of the Windigo spirits.
When the ice which had already took Princess, Commander and Chancellor had spread towards the final circle of warmth in the cave, shared by Clover, the pegasus soldier and earthpony farmer, his last thought, oddly, had been for the verdant green of his coat. Perhaps someday, pony eyes would again behold the lushness of grass in Summer, though he would never see it.
It was then as if the power of the very Sun had erupted from his horn. A power Clover had oft heard described by Starswirl his teacher, readying for the day it would be his burden, even as Starswirl retreated from worldly affairs and the Sun was powerless to thaw the Long Winter.
What emerged must be a power greater than the Sun. One not wielded by Clover alone.
Clover felt the fire of his horn dim, leaving a dull ache. Blinking away the spots dancing before his eyes, he saw the farmer and soldier stare at him, their eyes so wide as to almost push away the brim of their straw-hat and plated helmet.
“What was that?” said the soldier, whose soft voice was, judging from the short time he’d known her, now unusually rid of stutter. She sounded more surprised than awed.
The farmer seemed no less nonplussed, her habitual placidity momentarily displaced. “I didn’t know unicorns could do that,” she said, sounding gravelly despite her youth.
“Neither did I”, said Clover, for right then, truth seemed the best policy. “Nothing like this has happened before.”
Or at least, not so far as he knew.
Gazing around the confines of the cave in which they had all sought shelter, Clover discovered that the signs of Winter were not gone. The sounds of a blizzard still echoed from the outside, blizzard which had followed them into this new land. Accordingly, the air was still quite cold, the three ponies’ breaths coming out in mist.
All this may have been the natural lot of Winter, except that the blizzard was not natural. Were proof required, one need look no further than the three other ponies in the cave; still trapped in their prisons of ice, immobile, as had befallen when they could not cease squabbling. Princess Platinum, Commander Hurricane and Chancellor Puddinghead.
Let them be a problem for afterward. Instead, Clover looked the other two ponies, commoners like he, in the eye. Still wide, yet apparently in marvel, rather than fear.
“But I know it couldn’t have just been me.”
And to his own surprise, despite the ongoing precarity of their situation, Clover felt himself begin to smile, a smile for these two ponies he’d only known one night.
He pushed up the hood of his simple, threadbare mage’s cloak. “It came from all three of us. Joined together. In friendship.”
Old Starswirl may have preferred a different word. Perhaps ‘amity’, or ‘concordance’. Or even ‘peace’. The word his pupil used tonight would strike him as too common, too unrefined.
To Clover, it was evident this had to be the one true word.
“Skies above,” the soldier suddenly spoke. “What is that?”
Her eyes were turned upwards. Quite unlike this pegasus, Clover reckoned, trivially. A pegasus in the airs may keep their eyes in all directions, anticipating attack. When from what he’d seen of this one, she seemed in the habit of keeping her eyes down at all times, especially on the ground.
He wondered why the Commander of the Pegasus Junta would pick her, of all people, as advisor. But Clover got no chance to ponder this, as his own eyes were drawn to a different wonder.
In what lingered of the billowy tendrils that hung in the air, all which remained of the Windigoes following their banishment by the fire of Clover’s horn, there coalesced a form of light and cloud, in rays of a brightness that shone across the walls of the cave, reflected in scintillating diamond patterns upon the crystal-like ice which held the three pony leaders imprisoned.
A form – no, one form split in two, which coalesced into the semblance of equine figures.
Clover felt himself tense at the sight, a gestured echoed by his companions. His heart nearly sank to his knees. Was their victory to be so short-lived? Were the Windigoes already reverting back to the shapes in which, ghost-like, they befouled this world?
But this was a fear, mercifully, that did not subsist long. For the figures, although equine, were so in a manner akin to his company; their proportions, their features, far too small and delicate to be those of the wintry spirits.
Light and cloud completed their mystical weave. And to the ground, the figures came to rest.
Clover and the soldier and the farmer each stared at the other in turn. If the two had expected him to provide the answers, here they found none in his bearing, no more than he in theirs. Of all things they could have expected, never had they expected this.
Two fillies curled up, asleep. Their heads each cushioned by the other’s tail.
One was the colour of ivory white, the other was a midnight black. Upon their flanks, despite their youthful appearance, each seemed to already bear a mark, yet this was hard to tell for sure, hidden by the wings tucked across their backs.
Most startling of all, however, was that equal to their wings did the fillies each sport a horn, as though they be unicorn and pegasus in one.
“By Epona,” whispered the farmer.
The soldier’s voice, if possible, grew even smaller. “I don’t believe it.”
Scholarly curiosity urged Clover to approach the sleeping fillies. Tact held him back. Now was no time for a unicorn to tread where an earthpony and pegasus did not dare, lest it seem he believed he was meant to be first.
Either they all would approach, or none would.
A long wait stretched out, the three ponies standing near as stock-still as their frozen leaders. Eventually, Clover decided he must take his turn to speak.
“Gently,” Clover said, speaking quietly. Not out of fright, but so as to not disturb the children. “I believe… Yes, I believe we are in no danger.”
“But have you ever heard of their like?” the farmer said. “Ponies what wear a horn and wings at the same time?”
Clover considered the fillies, still from a distance.
“Well,” he said at last. “We shall gain nothing more from just standing here.” He looked toward the farmer and the soldier. “We've taken one big step already. Surely we can take another.”
The farmer smiled wanly at his statement. Still the soldier appeared hesitant, yet when she piped up, it was not for the reasons Clover had expected.
“Um, shouldn’t we worry about them too?” she asked, nodding at the three frozen leaders. “Whatever happened to us, and– and whyever these fillies are here, it doesn't seem to have helped them.”
Clover had to confess he’d scarcely spared a thought for his Princess, let alone the earthpony or pegasus leaders.
“I imagine you are right,” Clover acknowledged, reluctantly. “It wouldn’t do for me to return with news to King Bullion that I made peace with my enemy, only to put his daughter on ice.”
The farmer chuckled heartily.
“Right you are,” said she. “Tell you what, folks. How about I fix us up a fire. There’s kindle left in my supplies, and now there ain’t no ice-demons lurkin’, I imagine a nice roaring fire ought to melt ice same as it should.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” smiled the soldier. “Besides,” she added, “we wouldn’t want those children to catch cold.”
The farmer nodded. “You see to the children,” she told Clover. “After all, you’re one who got what they most need right now.”
At first Clover could not discern her jist. Inwardly he questioned if these were but excuses, and a latent cravenness kept his companions from taking this step with him.
But when the farmer glanced meaningfully at his cloak, Clover understood and cursed himself for his faithlessness. By the same token he silently praised the farmer for her practicality. Learned he may be, he did not know everything.
The kindle in the farmer’s bags proved to be insufficient, and so while she set up what she could, the soldier braved the cold in search of more, her pegasus resilience her ally. As those two saw to the fire, Clover approached the fillies, and draped his cloak over their slumbering forms.
Once the fire was burning and all three ponies were huddled by its warmth, the fillies close by, they made counsel, ahead of what their leaders might decide.
“I believe this to be a sign,” Clover said, hooves wrapped around his barrel as he moved closer to the fire, hairs standing on end upon his bare coat. “Foals who sport wing and horn, given unto us in the wake of the Windigoes’ banishment… Could there be any greater symbol of peace?”
“Your mentor say anything about that too?” asked the farmer.
“Not that I can recall,” said Clover. “But if I could only find his trail again, I might be able to seek his wisdom.”
The soldier’s eyes were on the cloaked fillies. “They're… cute…” she said softly. “But… why are there two of them?”
“Would you rather there be only one?” Clover asked of her. “A lonely pony, without any like her in the world she could relate to?”
“Still…” said the farmer. “Be it two or one…”
Her eyes narrowed subtly, and her voice carried just a pinch of envy.
“Three pony tribes. Why only two? Why not three?”
Clover hesitated at that, feeling the weight of her gaze. The same question had, indeed, nagged at him from the moment he’d more closely studied the children.
Drawing from this, he fished out a plausible answer from the back of his brain.
“Take a look at their flanks. What marks do you see?”
He withdrew his draped cloak, just the time it took for them to look, his expert mage’s touch bringing no disturbance to the children as they dreamt. Smiling, Clover replaced the cloak, hoof only briefly brushing against the white filly’s dawn-like, resplendent rose mane, and the dark filly’s mane of midnight.
“Hitherto, even as our tribes bickered, the unicorns made a costly sacrifice for all,” said Clover. “Every morning, under the guidance of my mentor, five unicorns gave up their magic so the Sun might carry on her course, blazing a thousandfold hotter and brighter than this fire. Only seldom could we bring the gift of the Moon. Now her light shall bless our every night too.”
Thinking of Starswirl, and the tales passed down from Starswirl’s father’s father, Clover wondered lastly what the old stallion of Dream Valley might say to hear the Moon was come again.
Author's Note
This story was originally intended for publication on December 25th 2024, completed and all chapters available, but time got in the way, as it is wont to do. Although in this case, it's because after wracking my brains for weeks, the idea hit me literally only two days before Christmas.
Instead, here it is to start off the New Year 2025. 
And while this is meant in honour of the tenth anniversary of Spectrum, my long-lasting collaboration with Sledge115, it is written specifically so no familiarity whatsoever with that setting is required.
Be it as an introduction or a standalone, I hope you enjoy this story, and the homage to G1, without which, however it may hold up today, there would be no Friendship is Magic.
Cheers,
~VoxAdam
