A breath in.

Pinpricks fill my lungs.

A breath out. It crystallizes in the cold air—a foggy mist that glitters in the sunset light.

The snow has swallowed everything below my fetlocks. I stamp my hooves to pound feeling back into them, an act borne more out of frustration than purpose. There are long icy needles pressed deep into my skin, tingling, numbing, and twisting the flesh. My well-worn hood can do little against this kind of cold.

Platinum is wearing even less than I am, but she stands absolutely still beside me. There are tear streaks staining her cheeks. A pang of pity lances through my breast—any moisture is sure to freeze solid in this unrelenting cold—but that tiny mote of sympathy is swallowed up by cold anger before words can form on my frostbitten lips. I remain silent.

“I… I can scarce believe what has just happened,” she has the audacity to say.

I am tempted to snap at her.

What just happened, I would say, is that you’ve single-hoofedly dashed every unicorn’s hope of making it through this winter with their heart still beating. I am going to die because of you, you stupid and arrogant child.

Clenched teeth stop these words from leaping from the tip of my tongue. Lashing out in fury would be something he would do, were he in my place. I am better than him.

“It was all that brute, Hurricane’s fault!”

The foal. I come so close to slapping her. A deep breath of the frigid air quenches the fire in my heart enough for me to keep listening.

“He had the gall to say that this accursed winter was our doing.” Another tear is streaking down the fur on her face. It leaves a fast-freezing trail behind it. “I… I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to scream at him for being such a foul-breathed, addle-minded fool. I wanted to drag him all the way to The Peak and show him my sisters’ graves and ask him if he still thought that it was my magics that froze the earth!”

“Why should you care,” I say, “if he believes some stupid notion like that or not. Have I not reminded you again and again of the importance of getting those two to sign the treaty? Our efforts to lengthen the days are wasted if there are no pegasi to remove the clouds or earth ponies to grow crops.”

“But I couldn’t just sit there and listen to that filth!” Desperation cracks her voice. “I had to do something.”

“And what have you done?” My throat rasps from the cold. “You lost your temper like a foal. In but a moment you managed to render useless the many months of hard work that has lead to this day.”

Platinum covers her face with her hoof and turns away to cry. Her form shakes with every sob.

“I’m so sorry,” she blubbers between gasps of breath. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She cries unrestrained, with short, sharp sobs and gasping hiccups. My heart softens as I listen to her childish weeping. It dawns on me that she is only sixteen, after all. No matter how much we needed her, it was unfair of the world to demand that she carry such a heavy responsibility alone.

I reach out and brush shards of ice out of her mane and coat before taking her into my embrace. She flinches at my first touch, but calms when she realizes that I am comforting her.

Platinum sniffs, and I wrap my cloak around her. The needles of cold in my back redouble in strength, but I ignore their bite as best I can. With a nudge, we begin making our way back to camp, in the valley below.

“We can’t stay here,” I realize. “We will have to move south where it is warmer. All of us. There is nothing for us here, but frozen death.”

“B-but how? How can an entire nation of ponies just get up and go somewhere else?”

“We pack our things,” I say with a grim smile, “And we walk.”

“But the young ones! And the old mares and stallions! Clover, how could they possibly make such a journey?”

I am acutely aware of the arthritic pains in my knees, and of the hint of a stumble that has developed in my gait in the past few years.

With a spiteful chuckle, I say, “They will have to manage.”