Focusing warily, my horn glowed and I carefully levitated to myself my saddlebags. With a grunt, I hurled them over my back and fastened their straps as I waited by the door. Through Candy Cane’s nagging, care, and days of sleep, my headaches had subsided.

I was ready to hurl myself into the breach once more.

Now we were saying our goodbyes. Hopefully not for the last time.

The last time I said goodbye … I lost so much. So had Summer Smiles and the girls. They were reluctant to let Candy Cane go again after the short time she’d spent with them. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, not when the wasteland could take any of us away at any moment.

Summer Smiles, standing beside me at the front door, fidgeted nervously upon her hooves. She looked at me worriedly, her lips pursed and her brows furrowed.

I knew what she was thinking.

‘What if we never came back?’

She loved Candy Cane. Summer Smiles watched the mare with a longing stare, biting her lower lip as she struggled to bring forth words. Words that she hoped would not be the last she’d ever say to her closest friend.

But as Candy Cane approached, fillies in tow, Hops stole the words from Summer Smiles’ mouth.

“Please don’t leave us again, Auntie Candy Cane ...” Hops whimpered.

Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut and steeled herself as she levitated Hops off her back. The filly floated sluggishly to an open chair, Candy Cane’s magical field lingering for several precious seconds before she finally let go.

Hops’ lower lip quivered as she held out her forelegs. “Please don’t go …”

Candy Cane sniffled and lowered herself to the floor so that they could see eye to eye. She ran a hoof through the filly’s blonde mane, touching the girl’s cheek as she swallowed her tears.

Doodle raced over to the mare and hugged her foreleg tight, unwilling to let go.

“I’m sorry, girls … I’ll be back. We’ll be back.”

“But what if you don’t!?” Doodle whinnied, her eyes welling up with tears.

Candy Cane ruffled her mane with her other hoof, smiling warmly. Her horn glowed and she lifted Doodle to Hops’ chair and hugged them both. The fillies whimpered, squeezing her tight with their little legs as Candy Cane forced herself to let them go.

“I will … I’ll never leave you three ever again …” I heard her whisper, looking both fillies in the eye.

Summer Smiles bowed her head to the floorboards, and I watched as her shoulders began to quake. I rested a gentle hoof on her shoulder consolingly.

“Do you promise?” Hops cried, softly, burying her face into the curls of her candy cane mane.

There was a long pause as Candy Cane exhaled a trembling, uncertain breath.

“I promise.”

Candy Cane stood to her four hooves, clenching her jaw and swallowing her sorrow once more as the fillies stared up at her with their wide, teary eyes. Doodle stepped off the chair and helped Hops onto her back, following closely as Candy Cane started toward the door.

Summer Smiles sucked in a breath of air and straightened her spine. She unslung a short-barreled submachine gun from around her neck. With a tap of her hoof, the underbarrel flashlight flickered to life, and with another press of a button, it went dark.

She sighed softly, closing her yes for a moment before holding it out to Candy Cane. Her eyes darted to the weapon, then to the mare holding it.

Summer Smiles leaned in and whispered in Candy Cane’s ear, “It was Sugar Rum’s … she left it with me in case somepony broke in and I needed to protect the foals.” Summer Smiles held it higher, her hoof trembling beneath its weight – not from the weight of the weapon, but the burden of truth she’d kept from Sugar Rum’s daughters. The mare blinked away fresh tears.

“She’d want you to have it.”

Candy Cane’s horn glowed and she swirled a silvery field around it, holding it before her, barrel pointed to the floorboards. “But what about you? What if somepony …”

Summer Smiles poked her muzzle into her winter coat and tugged at a pistol that was tucked away inside.

“We’ll be safe here.” She looked at us both, but her teary eyes lingered upon Candy Cane.

“Cane …” Summer Smiles began, but before she could say any more, Candy Cane took her off guard and wrapped her legs around her. Summer Smiles tensed and stood just there, petrified as Candy Cane squeezed her tight.

“Cane …” she whispered again as her legs slowly found their way around her.

The two closed their eyes and swayed back and forth.

“I’m sorry,” Summer Smiles sobbed into Candy Cane’s shoulder.

Candy Cane shook her head. “Don’t be. Please don’t …” She pulled away so that they could see eye to eye. “You’ve been so good to us … to me. You’re one of my best friends, Summer. Nothing can ever change that.”

The mare nodded, sucking in her tears as Candy Cane hugged her once more.

When the two finally pulled apart, Summer Smiles’ forelegs still hung from her shoulders.

“You be safe out there, okay?”

“I will,” Candy Cane replied. She hesitated for a moment, brushing a bob of her candy cane mane out of her eye. Candy Cane clasped her hooves around Summer Smiles cheeks, leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead. Summer Smiles looked startled, wobbling dreamily on her hooves as Candy Cane turned, and started for the door.

Summer Smiles shook her head furiously, blinked, and stopped her just as Candy Cane’s horn began wreathing the door’s locks in her magical grip.

“You’ll need these,” she said, hoofing her a map to the Inner City, and several magazines for her submachine gun. Candy Cane took both, and tucked them into her peacoat.

“Thank you.”

“And you, Red.” She hoofed me a thick, hooded wintercoat to wear over my security barding, and a flashlight of my own. I thanked her for the rather thick winter wear, shrugging off my bags and buttoning it across my chest, before hurling my belongings over my back once more.

With a clack, clank, and a creak, the front door lurched open and the wasteland’s unforgiving breeze engulfed us once again. My flesh bristled with goosebumps, and I shivered inside my barding.

I reached out with a leg, ready to take a step outside – but hesitated. It was like dipping my hoof into a body of frigid water, and I recoiled at the wind’s chilling touch.

Candy Cane buttoned her peacoat tight and walked out the door without a flinch.

I steeled myself to follow her, but a hoof clenched my shoulder, tightly.

I turned, and met Summer Smiles’ stern gaze.

“You keep her safe, Red,” she told me – no – ordered me.

I turned and opened my mouth to say yes, to tell her that I would, that I would protect her like I protected my friends.

My dead, dead friends.

But instead, I nodded, and walked out into the howling darkness.

The wind screamed outside, shrieking through the twisted mass of metal and concrete that sheltered us from the blizzard. The whiteout had rendered the world outside nearly impossible to see, and I was thankful that Candy Cane’s wits and forethought had pushed us indoors before the storm actually hit.

Tucked away inside of a questionably sturdy shelter beneath the rubble of an ancient Ponevan ruin, I shivered uncontrollably.

Our cozy little shelter was a small crevice just big enough for the both of us to squeeze into. A crevice tucked into the rubble of some unfortunate building that had collapsed above us long ago. My eyes glanced nervously at the ceiling every time I thought I heard the rubble tremble. Sitting inside of a crumbling hole in the ground was the last place I wanted to be stuck in during a blizzard.

But then again, I had no choice.

Inside, thanks once again to Candy Cane’s survival skills we were able to build a small snow shelter by digging in a little bit more. With a vestibule to keep the cold air three feet below us, a raised platform to sit on, and a bunch of rocks to block the entrance, I kept telling myself that being in there was much better than out there.

Because Goddesses help whoever was still outside. The last time I was in a whiteout, the storm had ripped a friend out from my hooves. Out there, in the blizzard, you were on your own. You couldn’t see, you couldn’t stand, and you could only just barely hear yourself think.

Even in there, tucked away from the brunt of the storm, it was almost the same, trapped inside of a pitch black hole in the ground.

Shivering, I fumbled for the flashlight Summer Smiles gave me. But I thought against it. Flashlights ran out of battery, but my PipBuck, while dimmer, didn’t. Sighing, I pawed incessantly at my PipBuck’s interface with a shivering hoof. I missed the right button a few times, my uncontrollable shaking throwing off my aim. But with a curse on the tip of my tongue, and a barely audible clack, I illuminated Candy Cane and I with my PipBuck’s teal glow.

I thought that maybe, if my screen’s color was orange, I’d have felt a little warmer. I would’ve even taken green. Though I wasn’t even sure if balefire alone could melt that winter wonderland.

It was a deeply-penetrating kind of cold. It stabbed deep, through your clothes, your coat, your flesh. My hooves and joints were feeling stiff. My ears and my nose were almost numb. I could feel it seeping into my eye sockets – I could feel it freezing my eyeballs!

Even beneath all that barding, I was only warm enough to be alive. And even then, I was still shivering like I was going to drill a hole into the ground.

I clenched my eyes shut and sat on my hooves, hoping my buttcheeks would be enough to warm them. Truly I was desperate to come to my ass for help.

Turns out they weren’t much help.

I glanced at Candy Cane as she pulled her legs to her chest and huddled in the corner, tucking her muzzle away behind her collar. "So," I began, shivering uncontrollably, "I-is it just me, or is it weird how everyone keeps saying 'everypony'?"

Candy Cane just lifted an eyebrow at me.

I wheezed a trembling chuckle, trying to keep my mind focused on anything but freezing to death. "You know I-I'm pretty sure that's not even correct Equestrian. I-I feel like people are just saying that because everyone is doing it. I-I mean, I'm not surprised, since most ponies here have never even gone to school, and probably don't even know how to read, a-and ..."

Candy Cane was staring at me quietly.

I grinned sheepishly.

"Well, no offense ..."

"I know how to read, Red."

My rambling fell silent. We looked at each other in freezing exasperation, our teeth chattering. I groaned, thumping my head against the wall.

“I-I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! This is insane!” I rasped, “If it keeps snowing like this, I swear the whole world is going to freeze over.”

“This isn’t even the worst of it,” I heard her muffled voice tell me, barely audible over the wind that screamed past us outside. I shifted closer to her so we sat shoulder to shoulder, both our backs pressed against the wall behind us.

“P-please … y-you’re joking, right?” I chuckled, hugging my saddlebags close to my chest. “It wasn’t even this cold when I first left my stable.”

“If I was joking, nopony would be laughing,” she intoned, darkly. “These are just ripples of the biggest snowstorm you’ll probably ever see in your life, Red.”

‘Ripples,’ I thought, ‘Lovely,'

I thought that if that snowstorm was a ripple, then the actual one would have to be something along the lines of a tidal wave. ‘Fuck.’

“If this isn’t a storm, I don’t know what a storm is, Cane,” I sighed.

“People around here call it ’the Tempest’. It comes every year around this time like clockwork, blowing in from beyond the Crystal Mountains in the Frozen North."

"Luna,” I whinnied, “How the hell did ponies live on this frozen rock two centuries ago?"

Candy Cane chuckled softly, pulling her legs as close to her body as she could.

"It wasn't always like this,” I heard her say.

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

"I-it wasn't?"

She shook her head. "Before the bombs fell, the weather here was rather nice, or so my father told me." Candy Cane gazed quietly at her hooves for a few heartbeats. Then cocked her head at me, brushing out of her eyes a bob of her curly mane. "Have you heard of the Crystal Empire?"

I nodded. I knew that it was an immense sovereign nation that bordered Equestria. But when the world ended, it became like everything else: more rubble to litter the earth.

"The Crystal Imperials once had an ancient artifact called the Crystal Heart. It was what made the Imperials different from the Equestrians: it controlled their weather, and it empowered their magic.

“It even protected them from evil."

I laughed bitterly, "Evil, huh? Didn’t help them so much when the megaspells started raining down on them."

"Unfortunately so," she mumbled, somewhat annoyed by my snide remark. "The Crystal Heart projected a shield – a barrier to the Frozen North and its winds. It controlled their weather - it kept the Empire in a state of perpetual spring. It kept all the Crystal Ponies safe. And when they were all safe, they were all happy – and that made the Heart and their magic even stronger."

I exhaled sharply as the breeze penetrated our shelter and caressed my rosy cheeks.

"D-damn … I could really use a Crystal Heart right about now.” I cocked my head at her. “What happened to it?"

Candy Cane shrugged solemnly, her eyes fluttering closed.

"Nopony knows ... My father told me that the balefire melted it into molten lava … I don't believe that though … its shield should've been strong enough to repel whatever the zebras threw at it. They had everything they could’ve wanted, needed – protection – and still the balefire swept them away."

I’d seen pictures of the Empire before the war. They were elegant, posh looking ponies. They enjoyed and loved life as much as they loved each other. It was sunshine and ladybugs all year long in the Empire. But sunshine and ladybugs didn’t save them from the balefire. Neither did their Crystal Heart.

I snorted, chuckling bitterly. "Maybe the wasteland could’ve been a little less awful if they’d just kept the Frozen North from shitting on us.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered in Poneva. It still snowed here, naturally,” she said.

I rolled my eyes, groaning, "Terrific."

“But with their shield repelling the Frozen North’s winds, it was bearable, I think. My father taught us extensively on the Crystal Borderlands and the Empire. He said that it wasn’t as bad back then as it is now, with the Northern Gales blowing in unhindered.

“The Empire was the only thing between Equestria and whatever else lurked on the far side of the Crystal Mountains. Back then, without them, all of Northern Equestria would have been … well, a snowy wasteland.”

“And look at us now,” I muttered. “F-funny how it all works out in the end.” I paused, pursed my lips, and frowned. “Y-you know, I never knew that. I never even knew that – the Crystal Heart I mean. I-I feel like they cut that part out of our history,” I trailed off, “All I ever knew was Equestria.”

I couldn’t even remember if the Empire had an entire chapter dedicated to it.

“Where’d you even learn all this?” I asked. “Sorry, but I can’t imagine there being any public libraries in Poneva,” I smirked.

She nodded slowly as a slight smile crept across her lips. “My father taught me. He also had a wealth of books at his disposal – so a wasteland library isn’t quite out of this world.”

I grinned. "Your father must've been an egghead."

Candy Cane giggled at that, sighing as she rested her head against the wall behind her.

"He sure was. He was the most learned pony I’d ever known. He showered my sister and I with books. We’d finish an entire book one week after the other, and he always had more …” She closed her eyes, smiling to herself. “My father even homeschooled us on everything from Discord to derivatives.” She pursed her lips and touched a hoof to her chin. “Though my math skills are little rusty, now … it’s been so long.”

"How'd he know so much? Hell, I don't even know so much, and I'm a stable pony." I paused, my muzzle scrunching up. "Eh ... that was more or less my fault," I confessed with a dry chuckle.

"Aren't Stables supposed to have top of the line education?" she asked.

"Sure, but you can only learn as much as they’d teach you … or as much as you wanted to learn," I added with a crooked smile. "I for one hated history, so if you ever tried asking me how Discord’s Reign of Chaos came to be, I’d probably just give you the same awkward smile I’m giving you now."

Candy Cane chuckled softly. "My father would've thrown a book at me if I said that. My sister would’ve too … she liked history more than anypony. She loved it. Thought learning from it was the only hope for this wasteland.”

“Oh yeah?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “She sounds a lot like –”

“Hops,” she said, plucking the word right from my lips. Her smile was bittersweet.

My eyes softened. "What was she like?"

“She was just like Hops,” Candy Cane murmured, closing her eyes. “She was so quiet, so shy – but so wise. Doodle and Hops are both really smart fillies, but Hops is truly the wisest.”

I chuckled softly, remembering the demure little filly. “Almost too wise for her age,” I scoffed. “And your sister?”

Candy Cane nodded, smiling to herself.

“She was,” she whispered, turning her eyes low. “I loved her so much. Father loved her so much. He raised us both and believed we had a lot in store for the wasteland ... and my sister ... she was our little treasure box. She had so many great things and great ideas to offer.” Candy Cane smiled, staring into the ceiling with dreamy eyes. “I think if she was still here today, the wasteland might’ve been a little different.”

I looked at my hooves as Candy Cane let out a trembling sigh.

“Do you remember what Hops said that night during class? ‘Ignorance only makes more monsters’. It’s why my sister loved history so much … why she wanted to teach it. So ponies wouldn’t make the same mistakes our ancestors did."

I snorted, muttering, "Our ancestors were idiots. Hypocrites that preached friendship but slaughtered zebras by the millions.” I sighed, glaring gloomily through the crevice’s entrance. “They made this world. It’s why I hate history ... they have nothing to teach me.”

Candy Cane shook her head. “It wasn’t always like this … it wasn’t. She and Hops, well, they could see the best in everypony. Even our ancestors …” she trailed off, sounding unsure.

My ears perked.

“That sounds difficult to do.” I turned and met her eyes, searchingly.

But Candy Cane broke away from my gaze and fell silent.

“It … it is,” she whispered.

A shivering silence hung over us as we listened to the wind howl outside. “My father … he made her that way. He always said that the reason why the wasteland ia the way it is, is because nopony knows better anymore. Everypony’s forgotten what it was like to live in peace."

"But he knew?"

"He wasn't a stable pony, but he was raised around ponies whose generations had seen the world go to hell. He had an idea of what life was like then, how better it was."

I snorted, folding my legs across my chest.

"You mean the old world that blew everyone to smithereens?"

She shook her head. "That war lasted twenty years Red. They grew up knowing only hate. They too forgot what it was like to live in peace." Candy Cane looked away, staring desolately at her own shadow. “So did we.”

Candy Cane lowered herself to the floor and laid her head down between her forehooves. "Father always believed that we could learn a lot from the old world. That's why he always said history was so important ... he raised us hoping we'd learn. And … we learned a lot." She smiled, closing her eyes. "We didn't even know how to read until we met him ..."

I wasn’t sure if I heard that right.

"Until ... you met him?"

Her eyes fluttered open, and she paused for a long moment. Her gray eyes turned cold as steel as she lowered them quietly to the floor.

"What happened to them – your sister, your father?"

There was a long silence as she sat there huddled together, her legs tucked to her chest. Her voice was but a trembling whisper.

“What happened to them ...” she murmured, echoing my words in a voice entire worlds away from where we sat. Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut. "It’s … better if I remembered the way they lived, not how they …” she trailed off, her eyes still closed shut.

I stared at her for a long while as she lay there.

My voice eventually broke the stagnant quietude around us. "I never knew my father," I murmured. "He was an engineer, too. Died in a steam accident when I was just a foal." I thought for a moment, then added, "At least you knew yours."

For many long seconds, Candy Cane didn’t say a single word.

"We'll rest here for a few hours until the storm blows over," she said flatly, "Two hours should be enough before the visibility clears up again."

I said nothing as I set my PipBuck's alarm to go off two hours later. With a shuddering sigh, I hugged my bags close to me and huddled as close as I could to the concrete behind me.

"Dear Celestia, it's so cold," I sighed with a puff of mist, wrinkling my numbing nose. I levitated Dew Drops' scarf, wrapped it around my muzzle, and tucked it behind my collar.

Several minutes passed as I shivered there, restlessly.

Then I felt someone's legs wrap around me.

Candy Cane buried her muzzle into the scarf around my neck as she hugged me tight. I felt a warm, drawn out breath seep through the fabrics of Dew Drops' scarf and into the chilled flesh of my neck.

"Um ... Candy Cane?" I asked, shifting uncomfortably as I felt her skinny legs press against my barding.

Her words sent another tingly warm breath into my chilled coat.

"Still cold?" she asked.

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

"No."