The Route
By Cormac McCloppy
When the mare awoke before sunrise in the desolate town, she wrapped her forelegs around the still-sleeping filly. To reassure herself that she was still there. That she was still warm. The mare laid her hoof gently on the filly’s chest, watching it rise and fall with the intake and expulsion of each precious breath. A sudden breeze descended upon them, and the mare shivered as it brushed against the sweat on her back, formed in her sleep thanks to the warmth of the sleeping bag they shared. The nights were becoming colder, she knew, and her sleep had become restless. Already abandoned by the rest of the world, with no explanation, her dreams were of loss. The loss of what little she had left.
The mare rose from the sleeping bag, taking in the moist scent of the dew-laden leaves and the condensation soaking the bag’s fibers. The sun’s heralds of swirling pink and blue filled the sky above, with nopony to greet the coming dawn save for the mare and the sleeping filly. Beside them, the rest of their makeshift camp: a tarp with folding aluminum poles to keep them dry in case of rain, the mare’s mailbag, overstuffed with letters and newspapers, and a ring of stones, inside of which still smoldered the charred remains of several of the letters. It wasn’t much. They traveled light.
The mare knew she should feel bad about burning the letters, but with nopony else to receive them, there was little point to their existence. The nights had been growing colder, too. Winter was coming, and nothing was more important than keeping her filly, her precious muffin, warm and safe. She would burn more of the letters within the hour, she knew, just as soon as she found something suitable to cook for breakfast.
Heaving a stone through the nearest house’s window after finding the door locked, the mare frowned and reflected on how not too long ago, she never would have done this. Of course, the Old Her was from before… whatever had happened. It all felt so long ago, but despite how she strained her brain, the mare couldn’t do any better than guess at how much time had passed since everypony else had vanished from the town.
Aside from the complete absence of ponies, nothing in the house looked out of the ordinary. Books were neatly arranged on rows upon rows of shelves, enough to make the mare dizzy as she spun around to look at them all. She made a note to herself to return here in case she ran out of letters to burn. These books could keep her and her muffin going for weeks to come, perhaps even months.
No sweets in the kitchen. A shame. Her muffin loved sweets. There was, however, plenty of food, most of it various kinds of flowers. A few green vegetables. Some hay fries from one of the town’s restaurants in a white, greasy takeout box. The mare grabbed the hay fries, several flowers, and some stew mix – GOOD MOOD FOOD FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY, it said in block print – from a cabinet before returning to the campsite. The filly was still asleep, murmuring softly. The mare nuzzled her little filly before setting to work cooking, and by the time the filly woke, breakfast was ready.
They ate in silence, the filly happily munching on the hay fries as she picked them out of the stew, the mare reflecting on her dream. It had been the same dream every night. Not a nightmare per se, but disconcerting. As though she had forgotten something important. To her chagrin, the mare was used to forgetting things, but none of those forgettings from the Before Time had stuck with her so stubbornly as this feeling from the dream.
“Mama?” the filly asked suddenly, and the mare realized that the filly had stopped eating several minutes ago, just staring at the dying fire.
“Yes, muffin?”
“Are we going to die?”
“Someday, but not today. And not soon,” she added.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” the mare probed, expecting more after such a question.
The filly shrugged. “Nothing. Just okay.”
However, after several more seconds of silence, she spoke again. “Mama, what would you do if I died?”
The mare cringed. It was the last question any mother wanted to hear. “I would… I’d want to die too, muffin.”
“To be with me?”
The mare nodded. “To be with my sweet muffin.”
“Okay.” The mare didn’t ask for clarification this time. Okay was okay.
The mare walked around the fire to sit beside her filly, pulling her into a hug, each the other’s world entire.
_
“Mama, are you sure this is the way?” the filly asked her, looking up into her eyes. It was late at night, and the only light came from the stars and moon.
“It’s not what the flier said, but do you see that striped tent there?” She pointed. The filly saw. “Now what could that be but the circus?”
The filly didn’t know, and that was proof enough for her. Mama always knew better. They drew closer.
“There doesn’t seem to be anypony else here,” the filly frowned.
“Well, we are here pretty late, muffin. Even though we hurried.” The filly wasn’t too disappointed. There was always tomorrow. And besides, that was just life with mama.
“Why don’t we look around anyway?” the mare asked with a mischievous smile. “Even though the performers have gone, maybe there are still some animals to see.”
“In the tent?”
The mare laughed. “Where else would tigers and elephants sleep? They didn’t bring a whole zoo enclosure with them, after all.”
The filly nodded. It made sense. “But won’t the tigers be mad if we wake them up?”
“That’s why we’ll be quiet, muffin,” the mare said with a conspiratorial nuzzle. “I’ll go in first to make sure the coast is clear. I’ll always be there to keep my muffin safe.”
“Forever and always?”
“Forever and always,” the mare smiled before lifting one of the tent flaps and stepping inside. And then-
A noxious fog. Darkness all around. Searching desperately for her filly, but finding nothing.
-
“Mama?” The mare realized she was being shaken. Hard. “Mama!”
“I’m here, muffin,” the mare said, shaking her head to clear her thoughts and running a hoof through the filly’s mane gently.
“You did that thing again, like you were somewhere else,” the filly pouted.
“For a moment, I was, but I’m here. I’m here.”
“Please don’t ever leave me, mama.”
“I won’t. Mama will always be here for you and love you.”
“Forever and always?”
“Forever and always.”
_
Another gray dawn rose with only the mare and filly to greet the pale light. Even the sunrise was beginning to lose hope, the mare thought to herself. Every night was colder than the one before, and so they were headed south. It would be warmer there, she’d told her filly, and we could laugh and play in the grass all year round.
It had rained during the night, and the filly was shivering in the damp sleeping bag. The mare set the tarp over the campsite and relit the fire, feeding it letters to various ponies, some of whom used to be quite important before they all disappeared. The fire consumed them like a gossip, ravenous for juicy stories and intimate details. She spread out enough newspapers to ensure the filly would have a dry bed - far enough from the flames that it wouldn’t catch alight, but close enough that she’d be warm - before leaving their camp and heading down to the river.
Ashamed of herself, the mare dipped her wing in the chilly water. It stung, but she knew she had to keep it clean. When she and her filly had first awoken alone in the world, she’d realized that her left wing was broken, though she had no memory of breaking it. The filly still didn’t know, and the mare didn’t want to worry her with the knowledge. Mama needed to be strong for her daughter.
All around the river, an unending expanse of gray. What ground had not been turned into cold mud was covered in a grayish frost that froze the blades of grass stiff, pointed upwards offensively like the readied quills of a porcupine. The whole world stood in arms against the two of them. The mare looked to the sky, spitting a curse. “Are you out there?” she wondered and accused. “Can’t you see the two of us down here? Don’t you see that we are alone, bound to die? Do you even care? Do you have a neck by which I can strangle you for what you’re doing to us, God?” she cried. “You son of a bitch.”
The mare ruffled through her mailbag, pulling out a crumpled picture that was always at the bottom. She was never without it. Below the water stains and crumples, the smiling face of a unicorn stallion. The one who’d left her with that most precious of gifts in the one night they shared together. She ran a hoof along a crease over the stallion’s cheek. “I don’t know whether to love you for the one night we shared, or hate you for leaving afterward.”
“Don’t worry,” she said over the silence of the river, “I won’t let our baby die.”
_
As they had traveled, something that the mare couldn’t quite place a hoof on bothered her more and more with each day that passed.
Every ashen morning fractured the beautiful colors of their dreams, like glimmering sunken treasures hauled up to crumble in the light of day. Their beauty was such that even the most powerful of daydreams couldn’t hope to match. Briefly, as the two crunched through drifts of snow, the mare recalled happier days spent munching popcorn in the dark of the movie theater. The smell of lilac wafting from the navy-maned unicorn beside her. So much like Him, yet so much more. The way that smell made her heart flutter too fast like a foal’s wings as it tried to fly, and the shame that accompanied the fluttering because she knew she could never confess such a thing. She had never managed to understand that feeling, and it was much too late to tell her now, but still the thoughts helped keep her warm even as snow piled in her mane like dandruff.
The filly, too, was lost inside of her own head as she followed after her mother. Even with her general bedraggled appearance, the filly could spot the bags under her mother’s eyes and the lingering redness from crying. She’d been calling out to God again, she knew.
Almost a year ago, her mother had decided that there had to be something larger and more powerful than Celestia. Celestia never claimed to have created Equestria, so something else had to have. It only made sense, didn’t it? That something had to have made everything that is out of a love for life and fairness. At least, it had made sense before the world was covered in snow and everyone else went away. Where was it they had gone? Mama wouldn’t say.
That meant they were dead. The filly wouldn’t let herself cry, though.
She wouldn’t make it harder for mama by crying.
_
Back at camp, the mare stared blankly at a heavy book in her hooves. It had been addressed to Twilight Sparkle. Though they never got the chance to know one another well, Twilight had been very understanding regarding some of the mare’s clumsier moments. The closest thing to a true friend she’d had in years. Twilight had told her that it was okay, but each remembered slip-up still brought her shame. She couldn’t afford to have anything happen now. Not with everyone gone. Not with her wing broken.
Not with her muffin depending on her.
Now it’s very important that this book arrive from Manehattan before noon on the Twelfth of January. I will be using it in a lecture in Canterlot the next day, and I need time to reread it and select appropriate passages to quote in my talk. I don’t want to be a bother, but could you please take extra care to ensure it arrives on time?
“I’m sorry, Twilight…” the mare murmured as she stroked the book’s velvet cover. “I’m sure it would have been a good talk.” Reverently, the mare lowered the thick volume into the fire, cringing at the initial hiss of the pages catching alight. “I meant to ask you if I could come…”
The filly, who had been amusing herself with a Rubik’s cube she’d found in one of the many abandoned houses they’d passed, looked up. “Could come to what?”
The mare forced herself to look away from the blackening, curling signature on the book’s title page. “A talk that Twilight was going to give to a lot of high society ponies up in Canterlot.”
“Would it have been fun?”
“I’d like to think so. I didn’t understand it, or a lot of things Twilight liked to talk about, but it was always nice hearing her talk.”
“You liked her, didn’t you?”
“She would have been a good friend,” The mare said simply as she watched the book crackle and collapse in the flames, and her promise with it. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“I know…” The filly quit turning the cube and tried to peel the stickers off with her teeth. The puzzle had been no good anyway; her hooves shook too much to turn it properly. Mama hadn’t had a special somepony for a very long time. As long as the filly could remember. “…but wouldn’t you want a very special somepony?” She sneezed, then shook from the unexpected coldness it left her with.
The mare trotted over to the filly, taking her in her forelegs and rocking her back and forth by the fire. “I already have the most special pony in the world.”
_
Knowing her sense of direction wasn’t the best, the mare had led her filly what she felt was Eastward in order to go South. As the days passed by, the unease that had been growing in the back of her mind took form. The nights were colder, each more than the last. The snowdrifts were deeper. The wind stronger.
They had been heading North. And now, surrounded by whirlwinds of snow, no landmarks were visible. The mare and filly had emerged from a thick wood onto a series of rolling hills, only noticeable in the expanse of white by the sun glinting off the snow. They had been following a road, but it had long since become indistinguishable from the surrounding blanket of white.
The filly sniffled and coughed again. Despite the mare’s hopes and care, the frequent stops to rest by a fire, her illness had only gotten worse with the deepening snows. Looking at her coughing filly, the mare felt a pain like she had never known. Together, they walked. For minutes or hours. It was hard to tell.
The wind swirled thicker than either had ever seen. Neither could see much beyond a few feet. Not that there was much to see. Only more blankness. The mare held her trembling filly to her side as the trudged through the endless snow, extending her good wing over the filly’s back. Inside the mare, tears welled, but she held them back, knowing they would freeze on her cheeks. Feeling had long since left her hooves, all the way to her knees.
They were going to die, she knew. Soon. Today, even.
In the murk of the snowstorm ahead, a shadow began to grow. Pony-like, yet massive. Monstrous in form, it shimmered between the flurries. Death. Raising a ghastly hoof, it beckoned them closer.
“So, you’ve come to put an end to us. To this misery.” The mare was shaking, but her voice was even. The wind howled so loud, she could hardly hear herself over it.
“But I have to know. What did we do wrong? What was so terrible that we all needed to die? Why weren’t we good enough? We tried. We really tried…”
The mortal phantom tilted its head, as though curious. It gestured toward the filly, sneezing and whimpering under her mother’s wing.
“No!” The mare’s wing clenched protectively over her filly. “I’m ready to die, if it means keeping her safe, but be you spirit, immortal, or God, you will not take my daughter from me!”
A light grew outward from the shadowy figure, brilliantly white. Blinding. The mare threw her hooves and wings around her filly.
“Close your eyes, baby. Mommy loves you.”
The brilliance swelled until it blotted out everything else that could be seen or heard. There was only its high-pitched whistle, like a tea kettle boiling over. Then, a sudden warmth.
I’ll love you forever. I’ll love you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.
The lullaby seemed to come from everywhere at once, and it took the mare several minutes to realize it was her own voice. She was still kneeling with her muffin in her hooves, singing the same lullaby she’d sung to her in the crib. The pair were still in the endless field of snow, which the mare realized as she opened her eyes, had become grass. The howling winds had died down. And the phantom, Death’s avatar, was-
“Twilight Sparkle?” the mare gasped, mouth hanging agape.
“Derpy? Dinky? Is that you?”
The mare floundered for words for a moment, but just as some came to her, she found herself wrapped in a pair of forceful lavender hooves.
“You’re alive! You’re really alive!” the unicorn sobbed. “Oh thank goodness!”
_
A few minutes later, Twilight had finished crying. The mare had managed to accept the extraordinary fact that she and the one she loved most were not, in fact, dead. And with this realization and a few minutes in the sunlight, feeling had begun to return to her legs. The rest of the troupe Twilight had been leading had gathered around, and the mare recognized each one of them. Her fellow citizens of Ponyville.
“M-momma? Can I open my eyes now?” the filly squeaked.
“Yes, muffin,” the mare answered with a smile. “You can open your eyes.”
The filly’s eyes opened slowly, and she blinked several times to bring everything into focus. “Are we in heaven?”
“No, muffin. Heaven will have to wait for us. We’re safe and alive.”
_
Several minutes later, the mare had finished her strange story about taking the filly to the circus after-hours.
“But- Oh, um, I’m sorry to interrupt,” piped up a voice so quiet that its owner was easy to identify, “but the circus had already left early in the evening.”
“But then, that would mean that ‘tent’ was…” Applejack mused.
“Oh my goodness!” Fluttershy squealed, being the first to catch on. “Th-the house that was being…” she hesitated, “fumigated.”
The mare’s head tilted in confusion, so Rarity took it upon herself to explain. “It seems that Berry Punch’s house had a very large infestation of- of roaches.” Rarity’s nose wrinkled at the last word.
“But still, wasn’t it a bit much? They didn’t need to die,” Fluttershy whimpered from behind Twilight, who rounded on her. “We could have reasoned with them…”
“Fluttershy,” Twilight groaned, “they were demanding to form an autonomous collective- outside of Celestian Law, no less!” She straightened herself, adopting the posture of authority. “We don’t make deals with terrorists.”
“Actually, um, they were communists, not terrorists,” Fluttershy trembled.
“Terrorists… communists…” Twilight lilted her head from side to side, “same blacklist.”
Fluttershy murmured something about the right to self-governance, which Twilight pointedly ignored, choosing instead to return her gaze to Derpy. “So, yeah, that all… happened.” She seemed not to know what to say next. Derpy, ever helpful, nudged the conversation along.
“What I don’t understand is: where did that snowstorm come from all of a sudden?”
“Well,” Twilight took a breath before launching into her explanation. “It was discovered that an unprecedented cold front was sweeping in toward Ponyville all on its own – no weather team made this thing – so Celestia ordered everyone into Canterlot palace for their safety. We looked for you everywhere that morning, but we couldn’t find you anywhere and we had to leave or we’d have been snowed in too.” Twilight’s face fell. “I’m so sorry…”
“It’s… it’s okay.” It wasn’t okay, but the mare found it difficult to fault Twilight. “You had to keep yourselves and your families safe. I understand. …what happened next?”
“The plan was to wait for a few days for the worst of the storm to be over, then come out and clear away what was left, but somepony neglected to mention she was coming down with the Feather Flu.” Twilight shot a glare at the pony responsible.
“I said I was sorry already,” Rainbow Dash huffed, rolling her eyes. “What more do you want from me?”
“Dash. I spent nearly a week vomiting blood. Not vomiting with some blood in it. Pure, unadulterated blood, and all of the cookies and orange juice in Canterlot haven’t kept me from feeling woozy. You can always apologize again.”
“I have been. For two weeks! When are you gonna let it go?” Dash hovered indignantly, her forelegs crossed.
“Hmm,” Twilight stroked her chin, “once the last of the storm has been cleared away sounds fair. After all, this is still mostly your fault. And since my mood's not getting any better standing here in the freezing wind, you'd probably better hop to it.”
“Oh, eheh heh, I’ll… get right on that, then. Real sorry Derpy. Dinky.”
Derpy nodded. Dinky shivered. Then, without another word, Rainbow Dash took off to clear away the clouds.
“Soooo, anyways,” Twilight said shakily, trying to steer the conversation back on track, “it turns out that the Feather Flu, though originally thought to only be transmittable between pegasi, can affect all types of ponies in confined quarters. So everyone’s spent the last two weeks too sick to handle the storm outside. Somehow, I ended up with the worst of it, with symptoms Dash still insists ‘shouldn’t normally happen.’” She made air quotes with her hooves, then paused for a moment, looking at the shivering mare and filly. “Sorry, I’m a little bitter, woozy, and strung out on all the sugar from the cookies and juice. Anyway… we’re really glad to see that you and Dinky are okay. You’re not hurt, are you?” Sudden concern entered her voice.
The mare shuffled her hooves, not wanting to make eye contact with Twilight and not understanding why. “Well, I think we’ll be okay, but I broke my wing – I think it must have happened in Berry’s house – and Dinky’s getting really sick. I’m worried about her. I kept her warm as best I could, but we ran out of mail to burn yester-” She was cut off by several incredulous cries.
“You burned our mail?!”
“We were freezing!” she objected, but a hundred voices rose at once in indignation.
“My tax return!”
“I was expecting an invoice from a very important client! Of all the things that could happen, this is The-”
“Shut up, drama queen! My son’s a soldier! How will I know he’s okay?”
“My issues of PlayColt! ”
“…”
“I like the articles! What?”
The mare looked desperately to Twilight. “Please,” she said, “I thought we were all alone. We needed to live.”
Twilight nodded, smiling, sending warmth through the mare’s face. She urged everyone to calm down. Everyone in Equestria would have heard of the anomalous natural blizzard, she argued. They would understand. The crowd was starting to calm down when the mare’s conscience got the better of her.
“Um, Twilight… there’s something I need to tell you. About your book.”
“Do you have it?” Twilight’s eyes widened, voice tinged with glee, face inching too close to the mare for comfort.
“Actually…” the mare sighed. Then, like ripping off a bandage, she got it over with in one breath. “I had been holding on to it but the weather kept getting colder and colder and Dinky got sick and I needed to keep her warm but there was no more mail so I burned it and I know you’re probably mad so I’m sorry!”
“You… you…” Twilight fell onto her flanks, pupils shrunk to pinpricks. Her voice quavered between ragged gasps. “You burned… the book? The last remaining… original copy? In the whole… entire… world? The only one signed… by Starswirl… himself? That book?”
“Yes…”
Twilight said nothing for a long time. The only sounds were the impatient breathing of the crowd and the squelch of her fluttering eyelids.
“Twilight? Are you-”
“YOUR HEAD!” she screamed. “ON A STICK!”
It took several breaths for Twilight to regain motor control after her outburst, completely seized with anger like a machine without oil. During this time, the mare scooped her filly onto her back.
“Muffin?”
“Yes, momma?”
“We should get out of here.”
The filly nodded her agreement and the mare cantered off. The rest of the crowd were too stunned to stop them after hearing Twilight calling for death like a mullah. Down the road and up the sloping road they ran, mother and filly. Toward Canterlot and its hospital. Each the other’s world entire.
