> Alicorn Down > by Scriblits Talo > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > In the snow > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- She wouldn’t speak.  The mangled sky-blue Alicorn I had found, lay on the sled staring up at me in a muted daze.   We both shivered as the Icy wind blew again between us, tumbled drafts of snow drenching our vision in white or blinding us with its shimmer. I shook myself, emptying my mind of the countless questions I had, none of which would mean a thing if we couldn’t…   Survival was paramount.   I bit down on the rope and thrust my hooves into the snow, pulling against the weight of the sled, and began to trudge against the unwavering wind.  Who was she? She looked familiar but… who… and a fifth princess? How had she gotten out here in the snow all alone, and who, who was she?   I continued to pull, rebelling against the unwavering storm. She hadn’t said a thing, just looked at me, with those violet sunken eyes. even in her weakened state, her body was defined, not the bulk of a bodybuilder, but athletic, like… an acrobat, or a sprinter, she made me think of a soldier or a Wonderbolt… It felt like that should mean something, was somehow important.   The snow was blinding, it was all I could do to move forward, not stop. To stop was death, to trudge was life, and I had to keep moving.   Who was she? There were only three, no four princesses I knew of, there was Celestia, oh Celestia save us…there was her sister Luna the Princes of the Night…, there was Cadence, and Twilight the newest princess.   I looked back at my companion, blinking back icicles despite the shielding of the snow mask…  Who was she? Hooves trembling, I struck flint against steel, sparks flew a brief bright contrast against the darkness of the cave only for them to flicker into not. Again and again, I struck all too aware of the howling wind outside, our impending sniffles, and worse, until finally, a whisper of flame came to light. With a sigh of relief, I leaned down and coxed it to life with my breath. Warmth and light now touching all three walls of the cave, I sat back in relief and gazed at my companion. She was looking better if still dazed, less gaunt… the fire was doing her some good.   She still hadn’t said a word.   As the room, if the simi shelter of stone could be called that, warmed I began removing my wet layers of clothing, folding them neatly by the makeshift hearth. I then drug my sled-bound companion closer to the flame, for better light, and more importantly warmth, and begin removing her soaked layers and dressing her wounds… As powerful as she might have once been, at the moment she looked like she had been sent through a woodchipper. What could do this to a pony… to an alicorn?   This consideration made me shiver. “What could do something like this?” I whispered half to myself. Some gashes three inches wide and many a near yard across, blood long dried in frost.   She looked up at me, a silent expression, she shivered and not just from the cold, but still the flames flickered in her eyes. Determination.   For a while, despite the ruckus gatha of wind outside, the eerie verses of the storm, for us, in that cave, in that moment there was peace.   I tucked her in, snugly wrapping her in a nesting of my best wool blanket, then for myself, I lay by the fire too tired to bother unpacking any more than the bandages and blanket I already had. She was watching me silently. I chuckled half-heartedly, bemused at our newfound comfort. “I never did get your name,” I told her.   She puffed a bit of mane away from her eye in mock frustration and smiled weakly.   She did look familiar.   “I feel like I should know you… I mean I know I had seen you somewhere, I mean, you think I would remember a princess such as yourself, an alicorn at that.”   She cocked her head to the side in what seemed to be confusion and then surprised me by leaping off of the sled sending Blanket everywhere.   no no, no, no No, she seemed to say.   She limped over to the fire and gazed down at her reflection in a puddle developing from the nearby thawing clothes. She touched her hooves to her horn, and at the gash in her throat, and the horn again mortified, perhaps more so at the delicate horn, which glistened gossamer in the firelight. It was as if she was surprised to see herself in that state, not only her injury, but being an alicorn at all, and being unable to speak she just gasped in shock, a rasping cry issuing from her throat. She fell to her knees in tears and began yanking at her horn with her hooves as if trying to pull it off. I shot to my hooves and ran to her side… “Woah woah woah, that’s not going to help anything… It's ok, it's ok, it's going to be ok.”  I put my hoof on her shoulder, and she flung herself into my arms, crying into my mane. “It's going to be ok. It's going to be ok” I whispered. It struck me… She hadn’t always been an alicorn… and…   The embrace was broken, she pulled back from me, perhaps she felt the change in my posture that came with my recollection. I looked her in her roseate eyes.   “Dash?” I asked, “Rainbow Dash?”   She nodded, wiping a tear from her eye with her hoof.   I drew the blanket back over her shoulders somewhat easing her trembling form and then I surprised myself and hugged her.   Tears touched my eyes. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” I said… and I didn’t completely know why… but maybe I did. I did not know Rainbow Dash that well. Not personally… but I felt like I knew her… all the stories I had heard about her, and her friends. It should have been no surprise to me that she was an alicorn now, but the tragedy that would have had to occur for her to end up as such, and in such, such a state… What Rainbow Dash would do for her friends. What I knew she would do for those she loved. And what she must have gone through. I could almost see it in her eyes, the fire there was more than just a reflection, that was a fire that had seen things.   It was too much.  And I cried. I cried for her sake, for my own. I cried for the sake of her friends, who I hoped were all right, her friends whom she would so readily give herself up for. It was a miracle she was still alive. Her eyes said it all. But in my heart, I knew. I had seen the explosion the day before. The absolute mushroom clouds that erupted from Canterlot were even visible here in the frozen north. The countless rainbooms that shook the earth.  The elements had been fighting something, and here Rainbow Dash was alone, wounded, and an alicorn.  All alone.   “I’m so sorry” I sputtered again, and she held me in her embrace.