When The Snow Falls

When The Snow Falls
Sane Marbles

It was a dark and stormy night. It was the type of night that would be best spent by a fire. Unfortunately for our intrepid hero, a fire would have to wait. The pounding rain was doing its very best to become an all out gale. Night became day as lightning flashed – striking the ground no more than a hundred hooves in front of her.

BOOM

The crash of thunder weighed in. And yet, our brave hero trudged onward, this massive storm unable to deter her.

boom

The wind howled as it sent the rain to lash against her squinted eyes. She was only just –

boom

– able to close them in time to prevent –

boom

Wait. That wasn’t in the book. Capper looked up and peered about the room.

The window vibrated from a bitter cold wind – empowered by the densely packed and heavy with moisture, snowflakes. Pea soup was more opaque than it was outside. It was not a night to be out at all. In fact, it was the best sort of night to be curled up in front of a nice warm fire with a good book – or perhaps even with a ball of yarn.

“Hello? Any creature there?”

Snap Pop. Crackled the fire in reply.

“Hmmm, it must have been the wind. That or the book was getting to me.”

boom
boom
boom

That was definitely not imagined. It was coming from the door. More precisely, it was coming from the front door – the one that led to the outdoors. Which was very odd as it was dark out. Not to forget the more important part, that it was storming out – well more accurately, it was blizzarding out – it is winter after all.

boom
boom

“Be right there.” Capper called out as he hurried over, quickly unlocking and opening the door.

And was promptly greeted by a flurry of snow pelting him mercilessly without a single creature in sight. Not that you could see more than ten or twenty hooves in front of you in this snow storm.

“C-can I come in?” A voice called out from below.

Capper looked down. There was a pony. Of course. He had forgotten that when he was in Equestria he needed to look down more since every creature here was about half what he was used to.

“Of course.” He stepped aside letting the pony in. No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t a pony. It couldn’t be as there were far too many pointy ends on them to be a pony.

He quickly ushered the shivering, uh … griffon? No, that wasn’t right. Hippogriff! That was it. This was a hippogriff – a shivering one – but definitely a hippogriff.

❬❆❭ ❬❆ ❆ ❆❭ ❬❆❭

The cheery fire and a pot of warm tea made quick work of the shivering. It also helped coax out the tale of why the hippogriff was out in the storm.

“That’s rough buddy,” Capper consoled the hippogriff. “A delayed train.” He shook his head. “I’m sure your sister would have enjoyed you surprising her.”

“Yeah,” Terramar sighed. “The train ride home would have been much more pleasant together. I’m really not looking forward to it now.” Terramar took another sip of tea. Tea wasn’t something he normally enjoyed, however this one had a pleasant taste, but more importantly it was warm. “When I first realized that I was going to be passing through Ponyville on the same day that Silversteam was going on break, I couldn’t believe my luck.” He took another sip.
“I still can’t believe my luck. Ugh,” the hippogriff moaned as he stared at the fire. “It wouldn’t have mattered if she had known I was coming anyways,” He lamented. “The train was so late, that when I finally got to where I needed to switch to the connecting train, I just barely made it on the last train of the night.”

“Why didn’t you just stay on that train then? If you figured that your sister would have left already, why bother getting off?”

“That train was heading west. I had to swap to a train heading south when I arrived at Ponyville anyways, hence why the days lining up were so perfect.”

Sitting by the warm fire with a teacup in claw, he was starting to feel a little guilty. It felt a bit presumptuous that he would be able to stay here at Princess Twilight’s Castle. On top of that he had probably woken Capper from his slumber. “I hope I didn’t wake you. When I realized I was stuck in Ponyville for the night, I wasn’t sure where to go. I first tried the school in case Silverstream hadn’t left yet, but the lights were all off and the doors locked. It didn’t look like anygriff was there. This was the only place I could think of,” Terramar trailed off. Ponyville probably had an inn or hotel or something like that, but he had no idea where they were. Not to mention that the castle was the closest place to the school that he knew of.

“You didn’t wake me. I was still up reading a book.”

“Oh, I didn’t mea-”

“The book wasn’t very good. There were not enough explosions in it.”

Capper looked over at Terramar. The hippogriff’s droopy ears and thousand hoof stare into the fire left him an open book. It was obvious that he was feeling down from his misfortune. Perhaps there was something they could do that would perk him up. He glanced over to the book he had been reading. Perhaps … no, that wouldn’t work. Books typically weren’t a social activity, along with Terramar only having a short stay here. Leaving a good book behind when you were part way through it was worse than reading a disappointing book. Ase looked around the room, searching for an idea, his gaze fell upon a closet. That could work.

“Since you have several hours before you have to head back to the train station, want to play a game? Twilight’s got a whole closet full of them. I’m sure there are some two player games in there.”

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“Uh, let’s go with Air B5.”

BOOM

A small explosion erupted from Capper’s board with a jet of magical flame shooting up high enough that it was easily visible over the top of the game.

“It’s a hit!” Terramar shouted. “I still can’t get over how cool the pony version of Battleclouds is. The magical explosions make this so much better.”

“That it most certainly does.” Capper purred as he leaned in close to the board and removed his now sunken cloud. “Looks like you sunk my cumulus cloud. Give me a second to figure out where to put the new fog piece on the ground.” With a quick click Capper slipped the fog into a hopefully hard to guess location on the ground.
“Ready. How about Ground H3.”