I exhaled a contented sigh, peering out the very same window Box Cutter and I had been looking out of only minutes earlier.

Only this time, I was looking through glass, and the trees outside had leaves of a very lively shade of green.

‘Impossible.’

Everything was dead a blink of an eye ago.

‘Where am I?’ I tried to say …

… but I floated a bright glass of lemonade to my mouth instead.

I swung the window open and looked out into the verdant, green yard outside. The tart, freshly squeezed juice swam down my parched throat and I smacked my lips with a satisfied “Whew!”

“Hey Flashy! How’s everything in the Empire?” I asked out loud ... in a mare’s voice.

‘Wait.’

Those weren’t my lips moving. Suspended before me was … the same blue orb that I saw earlier.

“I really hope you get this before Princess Luna ships you back to Canterlot,” I sighed ‘… no, she sighed – no, I – t-the mare? I ... I’m a mare!’

“When you get back, you are going to love what I did to our yard.” I let out a weary chuckle. “I even planted your begonias – just like the ones in Princess Cadance’s garden.”

The smell of freshly-cut turf was still in the air. I smiled out the window at what had to be an entire day’s work, admiring the lawn of lush green grass that stretched across the front yard. My smile grew wide as I followed the cobblestone path, lined by rows of pink begonias and stalks of balsams that ran from the front door, down to the white picket fence at the other end of the yard.

It was a dream. It had to be.

I tried to train my eyes down the stone path. But I couldn’t. I was frozen. Frozen in another pony’s body. Wherever she looked, I looked as well.

“Oh … and you’re going to love this.”

I grinned with pride at the newly-planted evergreen sapling that was the lawn’s centerpiece. “Yup. I did all this all by myself. Popped three babies outta me and I’m still going strong.” I yawned, my horn tingling wearily at the sight of the shovel, planted on a mound of dirt beneath its immature branches. “Yeah I’m fine … we’re doing fine here. Just fine.”

I stared at my hooves.

“Flash, I miss you …” I whispered, my ears wilting. “I really wish you were here. It’s … been really hard trying to stay focused when there’s a war going on on your doorstep. Our kids are always asking me when you’ll be home … when it’ll all be over.”

I let out a soft breath, feeling the warm, golden light of the sun shine onto my face for the first time in my … life. In her life.

My weary eyes fluttered to the clear, blue skies – and saw distant shapes soaring through the clouds.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of cloudships lately. They’re all flying south – away from Poneva. Been doing that for hours now, and I still don’t know what’s going on.” I leaned against the window, resting my chin on a hoof. “God … I hope you’re wrong. I hope it’s still safe. I hope it’s still safe in the Crystal Empire. I … I just hope you’re okay. I haven’t heard from you in weeks.”

I lowered my muzzle onto the windowsill, watching the fleets of cloudships sail across the sky.

“The kids miss you. I really miss you. We … really miss you. The kids I can manage, but I can’t keep my head on straight knowing that the front line’s getting closer every day.” My ears perked at the percussive echo of distant artillery fire.

Artillery fire. I knew exactly where I was. This was Equestria. Was. And those distant cracks were coming from the war that ended the world.

I sniffled, my voice trembling as I gazed longingly at the pink begonias outside. “We need you here, Flash. Our children need you here.” I shook my head, tears welling up in my eyes as the distant cloudships continued their flight south. “God … I don’t know how much longer I can stand this war. It’s gone on long enough, Flash – and we’ve got kids to raise for God’s sake!”

I sighed, pulled a chair behind me, and sunk into it. I eyed the lawn outside as I flicked through static and voices on the radio. On a table beside me, a radio played a gentle tune that brought a weary smile to my lips. I closed my eyes and hummed to the words as a mare sung over the radio.

“Sompony's dreaming

Dreaming a bad dream

Soon it’ll be over

Soon we’ll be waking

Waking to a summer day.”

I leaned against the window, admiring the mare’s heartwarming voice. Her words echoed through my thoughts … I played the song over and over, again and again ... ‘somepony’s dreaming … dreaming a bad dream …’

“That was Sweetie Belle’s ‘Summer Days!” another mare cheered as Sweetie Belle faded away. “Boy, do I love that song – really gets me in the mood to sit out, sip a glass of lemonade and watch the day go by! This is DJ PON3 wishing you sunny days from Maaanehatten!”

My eyes fluttered open, chuckling tiredly. I took another sip of lemonade as I rested my hindlegs on the windowsill. “Well, as you can see, Flash, I’m really trying.” I levitated the glass into the air. “Here’s to summer days, Flash!”

I closed my eyes once more and tipped the glass back into my lips.

Crash!

My eyes shot open.

The sound of laughing children yanked me to my hooves. Outside I watched as a trio of young ponies galloped after each other across the lawn. One of them, a colt, ploughed straight through a line of flower pots and sent them spilling into the cobblestone path.

My right eye twitched. “Boys!” I jumped out of my chair and raced outside, the colts and one filly tumbling over each other in the grass.

“Boys!”

I chuckled, “Ah … here comes our monsterfoals.”

I trotted outside into the afternoon sun, a cool breeze caressing my soft, brown bangs. My … pine green coat blazed a brilliant white as I stepped out into the front porch and bathed in the warmth of that great ball of fire in the sky.

I hoofed the yellow lily tucked behind my ear as I cantered toward the rampaging foals.

“Boys, please – you might hurt yourselves –”

One of the colts squeaked as his leg clipped a rose bush.

“Sunchaser!” I growled.

He froze in his tracks. “Sorry, Mom,” the pegasus colt sighed as his brother and sister trotted up to us.

I glared at him, and he bowed his head to his hooves. A weary breath sighed from my lips, and my eyes softened. “It’s not safe to be running around in the garden,” I told him, gently, touching his cheek. “There’re too many thorny bits to hurt yourself with!”

The colt glowered at his grinning siblings as I brushed his amber coat gingerly with a hoof. Sunchaser winced. I cooed softly, plucking thorns out of his hide. “There,” I said, ruffling his mane. “Let’s go inside and get you some bandages, Sunny.”

The three kids looked at me, at each other, and at me again.

The youngest of the three, a tawny pegasus filly, grinned.

She swiped a hoof at my shoulder.

“Tag, you’re it!” she nickered, and they scattered.

“H-hey – Cinnabelle! What did I just say about running in the garden!?” I moaned, facehoofing, “Flash, where are you when I need you to corral these out-of-control kids!” I said out loud, starting after them. “Get back here!” I stomped a hoof into the grass as they galloped away as fast as their little legs could take them.

I sighed.

Then a playful smile slowly crept across my lips. I sprang to my hooves and dashed after them, whirling upon Cinnabelle.

But I slowed as I caught up. The filly’s voice cracked, “You’ll never catch me!”

“Cinnabelle, you stop right this instant!” I demanded with a grin. “Just wait till your father sees this!” She veered through a garden of pony-shaped bushes. I ducked under a stray branch and pounced on the filly.

Cinnabelle squawked, flapping her little chicken wings before she ducked out of the way. My eyes widened.

Crash!

I ate a mouthful of leaves.

“Argh!” I whinnied, shaking the leaves and twigs out of my hair. "Pwa, pfft!" I plucked a stray leaf from my tongue, grinning. “You slippery little filly!” I got to my hooves and charged after her, my long emerald mane whipping behind me as I closed in. “This is what happens when you marry a soldier pony! He gives you fighter foals!”

I snapped my jaws closed and bit down on her mane, yanking the filly off her hooves. Cinnabelle dangled from my mouth, her wings beating in futility. A unicorn colt dashed past us, giggling. But my horn glowed and I yanked her older brother into the air in a field of emerald magic.

“Gotcha, Spring Fresh!” I cheered.

“Oh come on, that’s not even fair!” Spring Fresh pouted, folding his legs across his chest as he floated towards me.

“One more to go!” I said through a tuft of Cinnabelle’s blue hair.

“Mom! Put me down!” Cinabelle laughed, flapping her little wings.

“Not till I find your brother!” My eyes darted across the yard, frowning mischievously. “Now, where is he?”

I took one step forward – and the world around me flashed green.

My ears popped.

Then the cottage’s windows exploded.

I swung the kids away from the window behind us and hugged them close.

Broken glass ripped into my hide. I cried out through Cinnabelle’s mane and nearly dropped the screaming filly to the grass. With a suffocated moan, I lowered the children to my hooves and panted through the pain with teary eyes. Blood trickled down my chest as the sky darkened over us.

Just above the tree line, a plume of greenish-black clouds erupted to the skies in the distance.

“Dear God …” I murmured, watching the mushroom cloud swallow up the distant landscape with a tidal wave of spellfire. I felt Spring Fresh and Cinnabelle huddle between my legs.

Then my legs began to shake. It wasn’t fear. It was the earth.

It quaked beneath my hooves.

The ground ripped open around us.

It tore apart beneath me and my hooves slipped.

“NO!” I shoved the foals back.

Then the earth crumbled away.

“MOMMY!” Cinnabelle shrieked.

My horn glowed. Green magic enveloped me and I righted myself.

I hurled myself away from the edge and watched as the cottage rumbled and shook. A fissure ripped across the garden and tore her home in half. Its roof caved in and its walls collapsed from the inside, engulfing us in a suffocating blast of dust and debris. Billowing brown clouds surged past us as we fled from the collapsing cottage.

I swept the foals into my forelegs, and peered into their teary eyes.

“Where’s your brother?! Where’s Sunchaser?!”

“I-I don’t know!” Spring Fresh stammered, “I saw him running to the shed!”

I swung my head in its direction. My heart sunk as the shed sunk beneath a sea of smoke and embers.

I felt Spring Song tense.

“Stay close to your mother, okay!” I wheezed through the smoke, leading the foals out of the thickening black cloud and away from the shattered earth. An ocean of black smoke swept away the trees, the cottage - even the sun – silhouetting them with a dim, greenish hue.

I watched as the sun slowly faded away into the darkness and our wretched shadows melted away.

The day became as dark as night.

“Sunchaser!” I cried, but I couldn’t hear his voice.

My eyes darted all around me. A small sliver of hope burned weakly inside my heart. Maybe they could escape. Maybe there was a way out.

I saw, through the smoke and the darkened trees, a long road that stretched to the north and south. North toward the balefire. South into the distance.

We were in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if the mare knew she was going to die.

“Sunchaser!” I screamed, and I hoped to the Goddesses that he’d reply or come running out to see them.

He didn’t.

My horn sparked to life, lifting both her foals onto my back as we raced to the cottage. I screamed at her to stay outside – but she couldn’t hear me. They were going to be roasted alive in there.

I kicked down the door and looked over my shoulder. My eyes glistened with emerald light. A blinding tidal wave of spellfire annihilation that burned a swath towards us as fast as fire burned through paper.

They were going to be roasted alive out there too.

A deep rumbling resonated through my bones.

Then the world flashed around me.

The forest blew away in a flash of emerald spellfire that scoured away the grass, and the trees, and everything that lived.

The entire world burned as the mare ducked with her screaming foals under the quaking kitchen counter. Blinding balefire crashed against the cottage’s brick walls and spilled inside. Flames leaped across the floor at my hooves as I shielded the whimpering foals with my trembling body.

I blinked away the sweat that poured down my prickling, burning face. I could feel it: my coat withering away – my flesh shriveling away as the moaning spellfire crept closer and closer, threatening to devour us all alive. But even as an inferno consumed the world around her, only a mother’s will to protect her children kept that mare going. I felt Spring Song squeeze her children tighter.

I didn’t want to watch. But there was nothing else I could do as Spring Song’s teary eyes remained open.

They were going to burn. I knew it. But burning alive was the least of her worries. I turned my head to Spring Song’s foals, their tears glistening against their cheeks in the cruel emerald light.

With my magic I gathered the foals onto my back. I took a shallow breath as my muscles tensed – and I leaped over the flames.

I landed at the edge of the inferno. Most of me did. The parts that didn’t burned away with my tail as white hot blisters ripped across my hind legs. I held back the urge to scream at the gnawing, scorching heat that crashed against me. I looked up and saw that were standing in the very same room I found Dew Drops in earlier.

I lowered myself to the floor with a moan and felt the foals roll off my back.

My horn flickered with a ruddy sheen. A trap door opened up before me, and I levitated the foals into the basement’s depths below. Was there any point? I knew that she was only forestalling the inevitable. It was the only place inside and outside that hadn’t yet caught flame. Below the concrete foundation they’d be safe.

But I knew they weren’t.

My shallow gasps turned into sputters and chokes as acrid smoke wheezed into my lungs.

‘Soon,’ I thought grimly as the mare lowered Cinnabelle, then Spring Fresh into the darkness. ‘Too soon.’

“Mommy!” Cinnabelle whimpered.

I reached down to touch her cheek. “Stay down there,” I wheezed. “I’ll be back – I promise!” I stood to my hooves and felt Spring Song hesitate, her foals’ teary eyes weighing heavily upon her shoulders. I turned around, clenched my teeth, and closed the trap door behind me.

Sunchaser was still out there. I hurled myself out a window, screaming as broken glass raked against my flesh. I crashed into the scorched earth outside, shielding my eyes as I struggled to see outside. All around me the world was on fire.

At the other end of the yard, across a charred, blackened field of nothingness … the shed.

“Sunchaser …” I whispered. I wreathed my body in an envelope of green magic.

I felt my body tense.

My eyes fluttered closed. A shallow breath wheezed through my lips.

I galloped into the balefire.

My tears evaporated. My mane burned away. My nerve endings shrieked. Everything inside me convulsed in agony as the radioactive spellfire crashed against my body, cooking me alive.

Only Spring Song’s magic kept her from being utterly incinerated.

It wavered. It sparked.

Then my skin. Blisters popped. Flesh seared, closed, and tore apart once more with every tormented step I took. My body told me to die. I screamed in the silence behind her eyes, my burning flesh as real as hers. But the mare powered through it all – the fire, the flames – even after her coat burned away. Even as everything burned away.

I bucked the shed’s door down and found Sunchaser cowering underneath an overturned wheelbarrow.

He screamed.

“M-Mom?!”

“I-It’s me …” I wheezed, my voice as coarse as gravel. My blackened flesh was almost unrecognizable. “Sunny! Come on, I need to get you someplace safe!” I pleaded with him. He cried, shaking his head.

“Mom – where’s Dad?”

Tears trickled down my scorched cheeks.

“Sunny …”

“He’s dead isn’t he … we’re gonna die, aren’t we?!” Sunchaser cried, smothering his face with his hooves.

“No …” I whispered. “NO!” I levitated the trembling colt, threw him over my back, and galloped as fast as my dying body could take me.

“What about you!?” he asked, but I didn’t answer.

I wrenched open the basement door and lowered him into the darkness. I raised a hoof to follow him down and –

An avalanche slammed me into the floor. Then nothing.

Bones broke. Flesh squelched. I lost the feeling in my legs, trapped beneath the mountain of bricks that crushed me beneath.

I howled – I shrieked my throat raw in agony at the nerves that hadn't yet gone numb. The foals screamed, crying for their mother as my blood puddled around me and dribbled down the trap door and onto their horrified faces. My horn flickered and died. Dark tunnels closed in around me. Wretched breaths wheezed out of my scorched, bleeding lips.

I reached a trembling hoof across the trap door only for it to stop at the basement's edge.

“Mommy, please don’t go!” Cinnabelle cried out to her mother, reaching out to me with a foreleg not long enough to touch my own.

Blood trickled through my teeth. My eyes began to glass over.

“Stay down there … you’ll be safe ...” I sobbed, “I love you … I ….” Streaks of blood trailed down my face, mingling with my tears. “Your father and I will come back for you … I promise … don’t come out until I say it’s safe.”

The foals whimpered silently as the light faded from my eyes.

“Mommy …”

I smiled tenderly, craning my neck so that I could see them for the last time.

“It’s going to be okay. Don’t come out, it isn’t safe out here anymore,” I rasped, suffocating under the black smoke that hung above the floor. “J-just close your eyes and … go … go to sleep.” I choked on my words, tears streaming down my cheeks. “When you wake, up your Daddy and I will find you, okay?”

The three foals gazed up at me helplessly, their eyes glistening with tears. Cinnabelle struggled to reach me, fluttering her wings and, to the mare’s widening eyes, taking flight for the first time. I lowered my head and wept into the bloody floor.

“Cinnabelle… don’t look ... Spring, Sunny … take care of your sister.”

Sunchaser pulled her back down as she kicked, and screamed my name.

My hoof caught the basement door’s latch.

“Mommy, no! DON’T GO!” Spring Fresh wailed, her voice growing farther and farther away as black tendrils twisted and curled around the closing tunnels in my eyes. “NO!”

“DON’T – !”

I pulled the latch down and the door swung closed.

With a dying moan, I slumped to the floor, a puddle of my own blood pooling around me, seeping through the debris that trapped my broken limbs. I stared at death’s door, the black, veiny tendrils that curled around me giving way to a light … a light that drew me away from my ruined body and all the pain and suffering that licked at my trembling flesh.

My body clung desperately to life, but it wouldn’t stay for too much longer.

“Flash … Flash … I tried,” I said, pushing a blue orb to my face with a trembling foreleg. My horn began to glow as I poured into it all the magic I had left. “They’re safe now … I hope you made it out alive. I couldn’t save myself. I told them it’s going to be okay. I … I hope you’re okay … I love you,” I said with a grim finality that shook me to the core.

“Sompony’s sleeping …” I crooned, singing Sweetie Belle’s lullaby in a haunting tune that I would never forget. Blood trickled through my teeth as my voice wavered through the darkness that closed in around me. “Somepony’s sleeping …sleeping …through a bad dream … soon it’ll be over …

“… soon we’ll be waking … waking … way ...”

My own eyes opened. I blinked away a glassy tear and Dew Drops watery eyes gazed down at me.

“You saw it too?” she asked as if she'd seen a ghost.

My eyelids fluttered closed and I nodded slowly. The sensation of my flesh being lit aflame lingered even as the wasteland wind whispered across my shivering limbs.

‘I’m alive,’ I thought.

“What ... was that? How?”

Dew Drops pushed the orb away with a hoof.

“It’s some kind of memory orb,” she replied, quietly. “Lets you experience the memories of other ponies.”

I looked at the small blue orb and wondered how it could have ever survived that long. I pushed myself upright and saw Spring Song's crushed, lonely skeleton. “That was how it ended, wasn’t it,” I said, not asking. I let out a trembling breath that turned into a cloud of misty vapor.

“How could anyone deserve … this?” she asked, tears pouring down her cheeks. “How did it ever come to this?” She shook her head, staring down at her hooves. “The foals, Red … the foals …”

Dew Drops reached for the basement door and her hoof hesitated.

Giving her a weary, somber look, I stood to my hooves and gripped the latch with my magic. My chin trembled with quaking sobs as I lifted the trapdoor open, flicked on my carbine’s flashlight, and descended into the darkness below.

Among the dusty, fallen cabinets and the ancient debris I saw what I already knew. Huddled in the shadowy corner was a trio of skeletons, their limbs tangled together in a ghastly embrace. I turned away, dropping my flashlight as burning tears welled out of my eyes.

They were just foals. Just … foals …

That was the world we left behind. We left all of that behind. All of them. We closed our doors while everyone outside burned – Cinnabelle, Spring Fresh, Sunchaser …

I heard Dew Drops’ hooves clop next to me as she trotted to the dusty corner. She let out a shallow, trembling breath.

I watched as she carefully lowered each of their small, curled up remains onto a dusty tarp that we found lying on the floor. Like a funeral procession and with our heads hung low, we carried their tattered bones into the snow.

With our spades, we dug through until we unearthed the blackened soil beneath.

Dew Drops and I stood solemnly over the black mounds we dredged out of the frozen earth. Her blue scarf billowed in the somber, wintry breeze. Together, we levitated a blackened gravestone and drove it into the ground among three others.

The largest of the broken headstones belonged to Spring Song. We buried her next to her foals. We gave her what I knew she would have wanted; she and her foals would never be separated ever again. I hoped that we brought them some measure of peace.

One day, I hoped, their graves would feel the warmth of a summer day.

We sat within an alcove by a burned out window, listening to the wind. Dew Drops’ forelegs were wrapped tightly around me as we rested our backs against the wall beneath the windowsill.

It was still dark outside. I wondered if it was like that all the time in the wasteland. If it was always night.

In the small, scorched room, I could just barely see a foot in front of my hooves. From what I could make out, the window overlooked what I thought was the remains of the cottage’s backyard. The view from there might have been beautiful once, had the world been not a dead, frozen wasteland. From the charred outlines of what looked to be small furniture, I figured that it must have been one of the foals’ rooms; it was down a hall near the master bedroom Star Glint and Lightning Twirl claimed for their own.

Other than the occasional sob and the moaning wind, the night was a rather quiet one.

“DD?” I asked, softly.

“Red?”

“Are we going to find a Water Talisman?”

She rubbed one of my forelegs tenderly.

“Yes.”

I nodded, slowly.

She turned her head to look me in the eyes. “Don’t make Amber’s death be in vain, Red,” Dew Drops whispered, “We’re not done yet.” Her words echoed hauntingly through my thoughts. “Don’t give up on our Stable.”

I exhaled a cloud of mist and hugged Dew Drops tighter. She sighed, tucking her head under my chin.

“I won’t,” I whispered, burying my muzzle in her soft mane.

“Promise me.”

I lifted my head and stared down into her gray eyes, my expression rife with grim uncertainty. I leaned in and kissed her.

“I … I promise,” I added, forcing a grim smile.

But in the darkest corner of my mind, I kept telling myself that that was a hollow promise.