High Sun 3rd 3473 EE
Up early, I couldn't sleep, or didn't want to sleep any more than I have to. This is probably the only time I'm going to have to update this journal, so let's get updating.
We finally have the remnants of Maresia squared away into something resembling a working entity again. In truth, our once great Fife has little more land than a large county, mostly along the near side of the magically irradiated zone. Ponyville, our farming centre, Trottingham, with it's trading links along the Great South road, and Shirefield in the Emerald hills, one of the towns we'd encouraged to become an haven for artisans because of it's mines.
If only Mareseyside and Manechester had survived, so much of our new flying chariot manufacturing was on the banks of the Maresey. Unfortunately they were both too near to Maresia Keep and the epicentre. Well at least we have at least something to work with. Both Luna and myself have visited the remaining towns, and held memorial services for the rest of the Fife before swearing our remaining subjects. We have our select-ponies for the Citizen's Council, communication routes set up, and mayors to handle each town's internal affairs.
Reading those last few paragraphs makes me sound dreadfully cold-blooded, I know. Talking about economics and resources and ponies as if they were tools. The truth is I want nothing more than to go somewhere and lay down and cry for a couple of decades, and scream for several more, but I can't. I still have responsibilities for the ponies that are still alive, and the best way I can discharge them is to do my job, and the science necessary to _keep_ them alive. Part of that requires me to find ways to keep our people fed and our economy running. We are too few to be independant of the rest of Equestria, especially now.
Luna, after her initial depression seems to be doing a better job of handling things than I do. But she's always been better at holding onto her emotions; I'm the one who wears my heart on a stocking. She's helped me so much, comforting me in those moments when I couldn't hold it in and coming into my dreams to guard against the nightmares. My guilt over my part in the event makes me see all the ones I couldn't save. It's one of the reasons I always wake early. So many thousands of eyes, all looking at me accusingly. My own family_
Had a bad moment there, a case of the shakes. Luna somehow knew, she winked in and brought me out of it. I have to stop relying on her, it's not fair that she has to help me on top of what she's dealing with, but I can't, not just yet. When did she become so strong? She's also been doing the dragon's share of the research for our stabilisation plan, while I took on the administrative duties for the Fife. Maybe now I have things up and running I can help her for a change.
I threw a whole lot of ideas at her to start with, but she's the one who's experimenting with them, figuring out what will be most effective, and all the nitty-gritty details. It's work for a researcher and spell crafter, and Luna is both. She's far better at pure research than I am in all truth. I tend to bull ahead, once I have something that works, whereas she is a perfectionist, though we're both as stubborn as bricks... I mean determined and focussed, always a useful talent in a researcher.
There has been one positive thing happening in the last few days. Ponies have been staggering out of the irradiated zone, with a higher than normal background magic level, but otherwise relatively healthy. It seems that along the border, the power level was not high enough to create permanent transformations, and ponies are now reverting, whole families in some cases.
Organising a relief effort, and setting up a search and rescue unit of pegasi chariots to recover ponies deeper in was an additional task to add to the huge list, but one I went to gladly. We have teams with flight converted farm carts and healers on board circling the irradiated zone, picking up survivors and dropping off supplies when the cart is full.
It may be possible to do more, recover ponies from further in if we can figure out a thaumic signature to use in a detection spell. I say we, but it's likely to be Luna again. There should be ponies that will not change back from plants or rocks or whatever they've turned into naturally, but could be reverted by a small magical push. Of course the refugees bring their own problems.
Thankfully food isn't an issue just yet. While much of the food plants in the fringe were warped by the transmutation, a lot of them are still edible, even tasty, and other stuff is reverting to normal. Likewise the stored food, which was already dead, was practically unaffected. For now we're just retrieving that, but only things that have records. We won't attempt to harvest the live food until we can check there aren't transformed ponies mixed in with it.
Of course, we haven't tried to contact Canterlot yet, and no envoys have arrived from there. My solar sight, when I've had a chance to use it, shows they're still in turmoil themselves not to mention terrified of the two of us. Not that I blame them, Nightmare Moon and the Pitiless Sun went through everything they could buck at them like poorly made thatch. However, once we have worked out the plan to stabilise the ecology, we will have to get the whole country behind it. If only Atlas or Ponydra or Gladstone were here, they could sell the plan with soft words and sweet reason. Of course if Atlas were here, none of this would be needed.
In our case, we're going to have to be rather more muscular. 'Do it our way or the entire world will die.' That would be accurate, but a bit hard to prove. The theory behind it is new, brand new and somewhat esoteric. We could probably prove it to another mage, but it would mean revealing more of the theory that lead up to it and our research into hetero-thaumic triunes than I'm comfortable with.
We may have no choice, but it means that theoretically someone else could start messing with them. Of course they couldn't use our anchors, our link would warn us of any such interference, but they could try something similar. I've had some vague thoughts about using something non-physical for a double triune or pentagram. Intangibles like concepts have reality, and our tied into the collective consciousness of pony-kind. Life, especially intelligent life produces magic far more intense than any natural process, so it might be able to provide more powerful anchors and a higher order energy amplification effect. The trick would be linking it to us, and finding other powerful ponies to take the free corners.
Darn, I drifted off into theory again. Focus Celly. Back to our short term plan. I suspect 'Do it our way or else!' will be our method. Breaking off a mountaintop and waving it about should get their attention. King Goldmane is not strong, and the current crisis has all but incapacitated him. Part of this is because he has lost some of his closest advisers. Up until recently, the King accounted a certain group of unicorn supremacist nobles as his closest friends, which explains why they'd been given such free rein over the kingdom as they kindly took one duty after another from his shoulders, doing them instead. How self-sacrificing of them.
His father was a far wiser and more capable pony, which is why that same clique of nobles had him assassinated. Solar sight, (and Lunar sight) is very useful for finding out where the bodies are buried, and how they got to be there. If we can prove that to him, we may be able to shake him out of his current funk. One thing I'm going to do before we go there is write up a big black scroll of all the corruption and double dealing I can find with my sight, so we can clean up the court. At the moment, the factions are still forming, no-pony has the ear of the King yet, but we will have to act soon, before some new clique has a chance to entrench itself.
Well back to work. I have crop estimates to calculate, a cloud city to design, and a planet to spin up for day-break. I'm not just swamped, I'm underwater! Fortunately, I'm also an excellent swimmer. The workload also helps to keeps me from unquiet thoughts.