The Stormmaster

Try as she might, the pale blue pegasus could not stay still. Her mane was tightly braided, ready to pop off her head at any moment. She could feel every one of the seamstress’ pins against her skin, and the cold silk was like a constant trickle on her back.

“Almost done, ma’am,” the old mare said in her smooth, kindly voice. “You’ll look gorgeous, I promise.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Jenny.”

A hot breeze swept across her back, so gentle that most ponies wouldn’t have noticed it.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Jenny, it’s okay. It’s nothing personal.”

“I’m sorry,” the other pegasus sighed, ruffling her wings noisily. A few pins dropped onto the fluffy cloud floor. “I’m just so used to… well…”

“You can say it, Jenny.”

“I’m used to normal clients,” she finished.

“And that’s what I expected,” the silk-draped pegasus said with a gentle smile. “I trust your judgement, Jenny. At the very least it’s better than mine.”

The seamstress was reluctant to laugh until she laughed, but the mood lightened noticeably when their last chuckles died down.

“It’s great,” Spinning Jenny said, now fitting a ribbon to her waist. “This is white silk from beyond the Foal Mountains: light as air and durable too. I knew I had to use it when I heard you were coming. And trust me, this blue linen looks great on you. It really brings out your coat, and it’s not too bright in sunlight either. It’s a really good contrast for the dress. Do you have any preferences for hemlines?”

“I leave it all under your wings,” the young mare replied truthfully.

“Perfect. I was thinking swastikas in every colour, and the same for your waistband. Trust me, swastikas are the next big thing.”

“It sounds a bit… boisterous,” she interjected. The seamstress was circling her with a stick of chalk in her mouth. The ends of her long tape measure whistled and clicked as they swung out of synch like pendulums of an untuned clock. “I’ve never heard of a dress with a rainbow hem before.”

“Well… maybe,” Jenny admitted, stepping back with her bottom lip crinkling between her teeth. “Come to think of it, that might be overdoing it a little. Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out in time. The event isn’t for another month, right?”

“Not until the Harvest Moon Celebration,” confirmed the other mare.

“Wonderful.” The seamstress worked in silence for a while more before removing the pins and lifting the roughly dress-shaped shroud.

Snowdrop stretched her muscular wings and shook out her shoulders before turning away from the window to face the other mare. She did her very best to “focus” on Jenny’s face, but her eyes shivered in their sockets like caged animals.

“Thank you for taking this job, Jenny,” she said with a deep bow. “I know you’re quite busy, but Stitching Awl says she doesn’t know how to make good dresses. I really like her work, but she insisted I come to you.”

“Well no offense to her, but Stitch was right.” The cloud puffed softly under Jenny’s hooves as she paced the studio. “Her cloaks and work clothes are comfortable, but sometimes I wonder if she weren’t colorblind. I think that’s why most of her fabric is undyed.”

“I never noticed,” Snowdrop said.

“Smell your jacket if you don’t believe me,” she said haughtily, adjusting her client’s thick trailing braid before draping the garment across the younger mare’s shoulders. “It looks wonderful on you, don’t get me wrong, but have you ever seen a purple pony wearing something that colour? Well, I guess you haven’t. I’m sorry dear…”

“It’s fine, Jenny,” Snowdrop said. “If that’s everything, I really must get going.”

“Be careful on your way home,” Jenny said, holding open the circular cloud door. “It’s getting dark, and…”

“I know my way,” she said. “Take care.”

The air had changed since she was last outside. Tiny ice crystals tickled her nostrils, foretelling a chilly night in Cloudsdale. In the temperamental days between seasons anything could happen. Storm clouds offloaded in transit, hailstones formed out of morning mist, and just last week there was snow in Baltimare. In the city of clouds sidewalks could disappear over the course of the day, and losing furniture through the floor was not unheard of. Parents padded their children’s rooms with many layers of dense storm clouds, lest they wake up in the morning to find a five kilometre drop on the spot where they’d tucked in a filly or colt the previous night.

Snowdrop felt the beating of every pair of wings in the streets, recognizing a few of them. Alpine Breeze passed on the other side of the street. The powerful wake of her massive wings was interrupted by the uncertain fluttering of her daughter Firefly, who was panting from the long flight. Sunny Sky made unstable eddies and gusts as she came to an ungraceful halt, narrowly avoiding a large delivery wagon full pianos that creaked and hummed as it swerved to avoid the collision.

“Are you okay, Sunny?”

“I’m fine. I’m sorry, Thunder…”

Cloud walls cracked and hissed as water droplets formed and evaporated, unlike the silent rocks used in the cities of earth ponies and unicorns. The aura of wet air surrounding every cloud warned her of unexpected structures, and she could identify buildings just by their smell.

The young mare followed her nose to a two-storey building surrounded by a low cloud wall sitting atop ten metres of dense cumulonimbus. The Sunrise Daycare Centre reeked of ozone and carrot soup, and of course there was also the noise. Children were playing in the yard; a dozen of them, each one with a unique voice and flight pattern.

“Careful!” Cirrus gasped, barely catching Nebulous Sky before the four-year-old colt could jump off the side of a short slide.

“I can fly!” He yelled as the soft-spoken caregiver set him down gently on the courtyard.

“Snowdrop!” Cirrus greeted. “Come on in, Wintergreen’s inside.”

“I hope he’s staying out of trouble,” Snowdrop said.

“No more than usual,” reported the mare in the yard. “He’s got a lot of energy, and he knows just a little too much about lightning. Have you been taking him to work with you?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?” Snowdrop laughed. “It’s never too early to start. I was about that age when I first learned to work with clouds.”

“Looks like it runs in the family,” Cirus said good-naturedly, tapping her on the shoulder with a cold, smooth hoof as she passed through the circular gate. “He didn’t fry my tail today, so that’s nice. I’ve learned to check the floor for dark patches. If there’s just a little piece, Wintergreen can find a way to use it.”

“Mommy!”

Snowdrop reached out in the direction of the overused voice, catching the little colt in a smooth, well-practiced motion. His straight “red” mane was getting long, falling just short of his eyes. His coat, “ocean-blue” according to his grandmother, was well-groomed and already thickening for the winter ahead. He squirmed and giggled when she kissed him on the cheek, and gave her a crushing hug in return.

“How was your day, sweetie?” She asked with a smile. “Did you have fun?”

“Yeah!” His neck clicked like a ticker tape from his enthusiastic nodding. “Mommy, I drew a picture for you!”

He ran into the playroom without another word, returning a moment later panting heavily. Snowdrop felt the wrinkled sheet pressed against her foreleg, and took it hesitantly. Cirus had water paint in her daycare, and Snowdrop sometimes wondered if it was for her benefit. She traced the contours of the warped paper, smiling when she found the monstrously-distorted representation of her face that often appeared in these masterpieces, next to a stallion with ears as big as his face. And of course there was the artist himself standing between the two, standing twice as tall as the real thing.

“It’s wonderful,” she declared, hugging her son with one wing before lifting him onto her back.

“Have a great weekend Wintergreen,” Cirrus said in parting.

Snowdrop was relieved that none of the other parents were around. She got along fine with her former classmates; it was the immigrants that bothered her. Most were pegasi who had moved to Cloudsdale to feed the exponentially-growing demand for weather teams, oftentimes from grounded cities. She despised the mothers who stood in their close rings and whispered among themselves as if she were not there, unaware or unconcerned that she could hear their every word from the end of the street.

“Where’s your dress, mommy?” Wintergreen asked after a few quiet minutes.

“I’m getting it made, sweetie,” she replied, twisting her neck to face her son. It took practice, but she had long ago figured out how to fly with her head turned in any direction. “I’ll show it to you and daddy when it’s ready, and you can tell me how good I look.”

“I wanted to see it today,” the colt whined.

Snowdrop touched down on a familiar patch of cloud smelling faintly of night-blooming lilies. The single-storey cloud house was quite similar to the one she grew up in. From the front it looked tiny; a mere hut compared to the cloud mansions that had become so popular in recent years. But invisible from street level were two spacious storeys in the thick permanent cloud that formed the foundation. Truly permanent clouds were hard to come by, but a sufficiently skilled pegasus could build a close approximation.

The head of the Cloudsdale Weather Team was one such pegasus.

She did a quick lap to check the integrity of her home. Apart from some reshaping on the east side, no maintenance was needed.

The interior looked unfurnished at first, until Wintergreen reached into the floor and pulled up a short, fluffy cylinder. Snowdrop felt around the north wall, searching for a suitably dense patch. Water vapour flowed with the consistency of slightly-molten glass, becoming a floor-to-ceiling sheet as the mare pulled with patient strength. She heard three whooshes as the colt prepared chairs, and soft flapping as he crafted a rather lumpy sofa in an awkward location.

“Don’t do walls,” she said without turning. “Wait for daddy.”

Snowdrop gathered the stormy patches in the floor and raised them to shoulder height. Placing a pot on top, she flew up to the ceiling and brushed it once with the back of a hoof.

The seasoned iron sang in the downpour, its tone deepening as it was filled with fresh icy water.

Her hoof tingled as she caressed the thick clouds of her stove. Tiny bolts of lightning crackled against the filled pot, as effective as fire for the earth ponies or enchanted stones for unicorns.

Food was always frozen in Cloudsdale; a side effect of cloud houses that few would complain about at the end of a scorching summer day. Snowdrop pulled out of the floor sacks of bistort and tuberous spring beauty, salt and garlic, and cold-blackened spinach. The last ingredient she retrieved grudgingly. Unlike the wild plants from Rainbow Falls or the sea salt from the west coast, the spinach was grown by earth ponies. Earth ponies, who found all the wild things unpalatable; who were too good for black nightshades and wild raspberries, and too delicate for mountaintops. Their spinach was like their tomatoes and cucumbers and other such innovations: too sweet; too digestible; too tame.

A hole opened in the dining room wall, one that was quickly patched by a pair of sleek, muscular wings.

“Daddy!”

“Winter! Come here!”

Wintergreen’s tender wings fluttered happily; Sunshower’s snapped forwards with a soft pop, embracing the colt with greasy feathers.

“And how are you doing, oh great Stormmaster?”

“Not yet,” Snowdrop reminded him. “Not for a while.”

“And why not?” He teased, nuzzling her neck with his ears pressed against his head. “You are the Stormmaster. It’s already official. We’re just waiting for the after party.”

“It’s not official,” she said with a smile as she the rumbling soup with one wing. “I’m trying this out for the winter, and then the princesses will decide if this system works.”

“Sure,” he snorted. “Trying it out. You know, I’m not some earth pony with a crystal ball, but I’m pretty sure I can see the future. It’s going to be another great winter, there won’t be a food shortage, everypony will love you, and you will take on a new apprentice next spring… maybe three.”

Snowdrop smirked and rolled her glazed blue eyes.

“Winter,” she called, escaping her husband’s embrace momentarily. “Set the table please.”

The colt scampered into the kitchen, bounced off the far wall and landed in the middle of the floor. Bowls and spoons rattled noisily upon his back; had there been a stone floor instead of cloud they would have run out of dishes a long time ago.

Dinner conversation was a one-sided activity. Sunshower seemed to know everything about her situation, and told her stories with much embellishment. She could only assume that the stories he told of his own exploits in Canterlot were crafted in the same way. Wintergreen listened in rapt fascination, so much so that Snowdrop had to periodically tap him on the shoulder so he would not forget about his dinner entirely.

“I want to be a royal guard when I grow up,” he said in one of the pauses when Sunshower had a spoon in his mouth.

“And not a weather team leader?” Snowdrop said with a crooked smile.

“I’ll do that too!” Wintergreen corrected. “I’ll be the captain of the royal guards and head of the weather team! And I’ll have lots and lots of medals!”

“Not if you don’t eat,” she pointed out. “You have to be strong to be a royal guard.”

“I’m already strong!” The colt protested.

“You can be stronger,” said his mother. “Come on, finish your soup.”

She knew he was scowling as he slurped up the remnants of his lukewarm dinner. Perhaps she was the only one in the house that evening who noticed the last colours of day fade from the horizon, and she was certainly the only one who heard countless twinkling stars chiming the soothing song of the night.