Chimera

The sun shown high in the sky over Ponyville, doing its best to fight the chill in the air. Winter was in full swing in Equestria, and snow had blanketed the land in white. In fact the last blanket had been particularly thick. While the pegusi of the local weather team were usually in complete control of the weather over Ponyville they were not in control of it over its neighbor, the Everfree forest.

The Everfree was one of the few places in all Equestria where wild weather was common. No amount of pegasus cloud wrangling, or unicorn spell casting had ever managed to bring the sky over the forest to heel. To everyponys great annoyance, this wild weather occasionally spilled out over Ponyville. Such had been the case last night, when rogue snow clouds had rolled over the town, and preceded to dump their payload all over the place.

Needless to say, the citizens of Ponyville were quite surprised when they woke up to find two feet of snow on the ground. While this did not mean much to the pegasus ponies, everypony else was suddenly chest deep in snow. It was so deep in fact that the local school, and most businesses, had remained closed for the day.

The children of Ponyville, as well as some of the adults, were initially ecstatic. That lasted only long enough far the mayor to issue a public announcement requesting that all able bodied ponies help in the cleanup.

So it was that the citizens of Ponyville set about the task of unburying their town. The earth ponies strapped on their small plowing harnesses, and began cutting pathways through the streets, the pegasi were busy clearing out the remaining snow clouds, and the unicorns were using their levitation spells to pile the snow into large mounds for later transport out of town.

All the citizens of Ponyville were busy at their traditional winter rolls. All except for one.

Bellerophon Michealides, or Lero to his friends, was not a typical citizen of Ponyville, or Equestria in general.

He was a human, the only one in the world, and as such was at something of a disadvantage when it came time to clean up after the blizzard. Being neither as strong as an earth pony, nor capable of magic, or flight, the ponies had at first been unsure of just how he could help. Their uncertainty was dispelled, however, when he picked up one of the extra long shovels that they usually used to push snow off of roofs, and began throwing around scoops of snow as fast, if not faster, than most unicorns could by using their magic.

So, shovel in hand, and bundled up in a thick winter coat, Lero was now busily clearing the snow from the walkway of one of the towns private houses. The main streets, and town square, had already been cleared, and now all that was left was the personal residents. In truth, the work had progressed faster than he had expected. The ponies were nothing if not efficient, and all thanks to one pony in particular.

"Hi, Lero," came a familiar voice.

Lero turned, and smiled at the approaching pony, who was decked out for winter in a light blue scarf, fuzzy pink ear muffs, and those adorable wool booties that ponies wore on their hooves when it got particularly cold.

"Hey, Twilight," he said, while taking a knee so that they were roughly eye level.

"How's it going over here?" she asked.

"Just about done with this one," he replied, "I was about to start on the next."

"Maybe I can help with that," she said.

Twilight closed her eyes, and focused her magic. Her horn was immediately enveloped in a bright pink glow, and the faint tinkling sound caused by active magic in the air.

As Lero watched, the snow in the walkway of the house next door was bathed in a similar light and, starting at the door, began to rise into the air in large clumps. They then floated towards the side of the road where they were added to one of the larger piles awaiting disposal.

What had taken Lero a good twenty minuets of shoveling, Twilight had just accomplished in as many seconds.

"Sheesh, do you really need the rest of us for this?" said Lero as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

Twilight blushed. No matter how often she heard it, getting praise from him always made her as giddy as a school filly. It was one of the many reasons that she had courted, then joined his herd.

"Don't worry," she said, as she rested her head on his shoulder. "You'll have plenty of time to shine during winter wrap-up."

"What's winter wrap-up?" he asked as he wrapped his arm around her neck to gently scratch behind her ears.

"It's, oh, that feels good. It's an a tradition here in town that goes all the way back to Ponyville's earth pony settlers," she explained.

"Ok, but why would I shine at something like that?" Lero asked, as he stood up.

"Because," she explained, "it's a lot of the same work we're doing today, but magic is not allowed."

Arching his eyebrow, Lero asked, "If magic isn't allowed, then what do the unicorns do? They don't just sit on the sidelines do they?"

Twilight had just opened her mouth to answer when a soft, familiar tittering caught both their attention.

"Oh, come on, Fingers, I know we unicorns use our magic for a lot of things, but give us a little credit."

That soft, whimsical voice could only belong to one pony.

Lyra Heartstrings came trotting up to her herd mates with her ever-present grin on her face, and a thick winter cloak draped over her. Pausing to nuzzle Twilight's cheek, she turned and looked up to Lero expectantly.

Lero knelt down, and wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace, stealing a quick smooch from her lips as he pulled away.

"Ok, Horny," he jibed, "enlighten me."

Lyra smirked before saying, "There is a lot more to winter wrap-up than moving snow. For starters all the local animals that are still hibernating need to be woken up. Plus the ice on the ponds, and lakes has to be broken up, and next year's seeds have to be planted on all the farms."

"And you do this all without the use of magic?" Lero asked.

"Sure do," she responded, puffing out her chest.

"How long dose that usually take?" he asked, a hint of concern evident in his voice.

Lyra visibly deflated a bit at this question. In truth, winter wrap-ups of the past where something of a sore spot for Ponyville's residents. For all her charm, and public speaking skills, the mayor seemed to be quite unaccustomed to directing multiple groups of ponies to do multiple tasks at the same time. As a result it was usually a mad scramble to get everything done simultaneously, and they usually ended up finishing a week or two behind schedule.

Lyra wracked her brain, trying to find a way to explain all this, that didn't make the town sound like a bunch of disorganized ninnies. Then she noticed Twilight out of the corner of her eye looking at the ground, and kicking at the snow. Most likely because a coveted chance to explain something had been snatched out from under her, and a smile crept back onto Lyra's face.

"Well it doesn’t take any time at all thanks to Twilight here," she said, wrapping a foreleg around her herd-mate, and pulling her close.

"Oh, what do you do, Twilight?" Lero asked, looking back to her, much to Lyra's relief.

At this Twilight's ears perked up, and her eyes started doing that sparkly thing that Lero still couldn't quite explain.

"Well you see I-"

"Look out!" came a scream from above.

The three looked up just in time to catch a blur of oncoming motion. Lyra quickly cast a levitation spell, while her herd took the blow head on. Of the three only Lyra was still standing, her assailant having been intercepted and held aloft in a light green field of magic. Lero, and Twilight on the other hand had taken the full brunt of the impact, and where now sprawled out unceremoniously in the snow that Lero had just finished piling on the side of the walkway.

Lyra regarded the object currently held in her magical grip. It was a very familiar orange pegasus filly by the name of Scootaloo, eyes still covered with her hooves , and wings beating furiously in anticipation of impact. That left little doubt as to the identities of the other two. Sure enough, when Twilight stood and shook the snow from herself, she had the telltale yellow, and red form of Apple Bloom on her back. As Lero sat up, and shook the stars from his head, he noticed two white hind legs sticking out of the snowbank beside him. The legs where kicking in the air, and struggling to dislodge the other half of their owner. Lero took hold of the small hooves, and with a firm tug, managed to pluck the small form of Sweetie Belle from the snow like an oversized white carrot.

Setting the three fillies down, and taking a moment to make sure they weren’t seriously hurt, the three adults leveled some very unhappy looks at the children. For their part the fillies did their best to look anywhere but the eyes of the grown-ups.

Lero was the first to break the silence.

"Okay, girls, dare I ask what you were trying to get them for this time?" Lero was, of course, referring to the cutie marks that the three girls had been questing for since the day the met.

"Bobsledding," the three sheepishly said in unison.

"Girls, what was the one thing we asked you to do, before trying something dangerous?" Twilight asked after an exaggerated sigh.

"Make sure we have adult supervision," Scootaloo answered.

"And what was the one thing you didn't do, before trying something dangerous?" Lyra continued.

"Make sure we had adult supervision," Apple Bloom answered.

"And what did we say we were going to do, if you did not do this one thing?" Lero finished.

"Tell our sisters, and let them decide our fate?" Sweetie Belle asked, with a slight cringe.

"That's right," the adults all said in unison, as if they had plenty of practice with this little routine.

Scootaloo didn't like the sound of that one bit. Then she remembered something Rainbow Dash had told her a while back, when in doubt, plea-bargain.

"Aw, come on, we didn't know it was going to be dangerous," she said in her best half-whine, half-complain voice.

"How could you not think flying through the air, on a sled, would be dangerous?" Twilight asked, with a huff.

"We didn't know we where going to get that much air," Scootaloo retorted.

"Yeah," said Apple Bloom, "the plan was to use that snowbank to stop us before we hit anypony."

"How were we supposed to know there was a weird-shaped rock hiding in it?" Sweetie Belle griped.

Looking over at the hill the three girls were pointing at, Lero, and his herd, could see that the snowbank that the fillies had been aiming for did indeed contain a rather steeply angled small boulder. Buried in the snow like that it would have been pretty easy to miss.

"Well," Twilight said while exchanging glances with her herd-mates, who's features were starting to soften just as much as her own, "I guess we can call this one an accident. I mean you were just sledding after all."

The fillies were smiling at each other, figuring they had dodged a bullet, when Lero spoke up again.

"Speaking of sleds, where is yours?" he asked.

"Oh, well it's kinda up there," said Apple Bloom, pointing up.

A quick glance up reveled that the sled in question had landed on, and then slid down, the roof of the house they were all standing in front of, only to catch on the gutter by the hooked end of one of its runs.

With an agitated groan, Twilight walked up to the front door of the house, and gave it a few firm knocks. The pony that answered turned out to be on of Ponyville's many florists, a pretty earth pony mare with a pale beige coat and beep maroon mane by the name of Rose.

"Oh, hello, Twilight", she greeted with a smile, "what brings you by?"

"Um, hi, this may sound kinda strange, but can we have our sled back?" Twilight replied, pointing up with a nervous chuckle.

Rose stepped out in front of her house, and glanced up. She then glanced at Twilight, then up, then back at Twilight.

"How in the-!"

*****

With the day drawing to a close, and the sun setting in the distance, the sky over Ponyville was cast in a brilliant shade of pink. The sole blemish to the otherwise picturesque scene, being a small dark cloud floating lazily in the sky.

Out of the upper reaches of the stratosphere, rainbow trailing her like a comet's tail, came the unmistakable form of a pegasus. Lancing through the cloud like a lightning bolt, and pulling up just in time to avoid a head-on collision with the ground, Rainbow Dash spared a glance over her shoulder just in time to see the cloud dissipate behind her.

"Thunderlane!" Rainbow barked.

"Yeah, boss?" the black pegasus replied, with a wince.

"Get your head out of the clouds, and get back on that perimeter. We don't need any stragglers getting left behind," she instructed.

Rainbow Dash, and her team had been at this all day, and it was beginning to show in their work. The basic plan for getting rid of the snow clouds was surprisingly simple. It involved having all the pegasi in town who weren’t part of the weather team form a semicircle around a large chunk of cloud, and use the combined force of their wing beats to create enough wind to blow the cloud mass back over the Everfree. Meanwhile the weather team would circle the perimeter, and disperse, or redirect any chunks that split off from the main body of clouds.

While the plan seemed easy, at first, she hadn't realized just how long it was going to take. Most of her team had been in the air for hours with no break. Dash didn't like pushing them quite this hard, but she was determined to get this done before the sun set completely. They were on the last of the snow clouds, and in the home stretch. She'd probably give her team tomorrow off to rest, but right now she needed them.

"Come on, everypony, this is the last one. Cloud Kicker, Flitter, you're on the bottom. Thunderlane, Blossomforth, you're on top with me. Everypony else, push!" she yelled.

With a last burst of energy all the pegasus ponies in Ponyville began flapping their wings as fast as they could. The wind quickly picked up to a strength that even Dash would have had trouble navigating.

"This is good," thought Dash. "We must be close to four hundred wing power by now."

The clouds were quickly speeding up, and before long, passing over the border into the Everfree from witch they came.

"Alright, everypony, break," Dash ordered.

With that the pegasi all backed off, and slowed the beating of their wings. Some even descended, rather quickly, to the ground below. All were exhausted, their wings beats barely keeping them in the air, but still they made time to thank and congratulate each other.

Dash, meanwhile, was still hovering over the edge of the Everfree, watching the clouds. They were drifting at a good clip, and hopefully the crazy air currents of that forest would keep it that way.

As she surveyed the forest below her Dash shivered.

"I don't know if that forest looks creepier with, or without leaves on the trees," she muttered to herself.

Dash would never admit it, but despite how intimidating the Everfree was during the warmer months, in the dead of winter it looked downright sinister. Even now the bare branches seemed to be reaching out like hands, eager to grab her and pull her in.

Dash pushed those thoughts from her head. It had already been a long day, and if she kept this up she would just end up giving herself nightmares.

"Alright, everypony, that’s all for today. Go home and get some rest, you all earned it," she said as she turned her back on the forest.

With the day's job done, Dash headed back towards the recently expanded town library that was the home of her herd.

"Maybe there'll be some hands there waiting to reach out and grab me," Rainbow mused to herself.

As she left she didn't even notice the brief flash of light in the depths of the forest.