“I’ve said it more times now than the number years I’ve lived: it was an accident! And nothing even came of it!” The Doctor protested against Derpy’s constant reminding him of the incident he nearly caused at their lunch earlier in the day.

“It doesn’t matter,” she kept chastising him, “you still need to start being more careful! If Skasis hadn’t used his magic to catch your plate in midair before it flipped over that Colonel’s head would've gotten drenched in syrup and covered in butter! You probably would’ve ended up ruining the future by starting some kind of pony war or something!”

“I can assure you completely that no such would have happened. I easily would have been able to explain the whole situation perfectly," he said back with confidence.

“What? You mean, with one of your ridiculous ramblings you do just because you know ponies that actually listen to them will get so lost that stop even questioning anything?” she responded.

“Precisely!” he confirmed with guiltless smile.

“Ugh, I can’t take any more of this; I’m going to bed,” she declared the end of it between the two of them and stepped back to wait for him to open the TARDIS doors.

The Doctor rubbed one of his own eyes before reaching for his TARDIS key. “Capitol idea, it is rather late isn’t it,” he conferred through a yawn.

The Doctor unlocked the door and took a step to go in, only to have Derpy shove past him to enter in first. He went to enter himself after, but then to go ahead and allow Skasis to come past him as well. When he turned around though, Skasis wasn’t right behind him anymore. Instead, The Doctor saw him off a little ways sitting at the cloud edge and looking up to the night sky.

“You coming in Skasis?” he asked.

“Yeah, eventually, just leave the door unlocked,” the unicorn answered looking part-way back at him, but then just lifted his head up to the starry night again.

“Right-ee then,” The Doctor broke into a yawn in between sentence fragments, “see you on the morrow.” After finishing saying what his own yawning had interrupted, he finally stepped inside, and made sure to leave the TARDIS door just ajar enough as to not close on itself.

Skasis continued to look up at the stars above . . . wishing he would see Himmel’s silhouette flying against the starlight at any moment, but the hundred billion nuclear furnaces of the galaxy were alone, just as he was.

“Wo bist du . . . Glau Himmel?” he whispered in Germane to his absent familiar and pet . . . his brother, in his own eyes.

Flying through nigh on the same location in place and altitude, two thousand years in the future, the very being Skasis was thinking of, the Red-Tailed Hawk from Germaneigh that had all but always been with him, found himself asking the same question about Skasis Paradigm.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you all . . . like this. Since before Canterlot,” Skasis thought to the stars he sat gazing up at.

Skasis kept his eyes aimed up at the uncountable twinkles, and after a few moments his horn hued blue and blurred at the edges with silent vibration, ceasing after a mere two seconds.

The spell he had cast allowed him to hear, to hear the sounds of all the ageless nuclear occupants of the night, calling out across all the universe in the same frequencies they’d held unfaltering for time-spans beyond the scope of pony minds.
Just as Skasis was becoming lost in the deep, deep celestial white-noise, a pair of wings flapped nearby as Lieutenant Stratomane lighted down a few steps away from him.

“Emissary Paradigm?” the Lieutenant asked to gain Skasis’s attention.

Skasis snapped out of it, and flashed his horn for a brief instant, dispelling his ears of their ability to hear the universe.
“Lieutenant?” Skasis recognized him immediately once he looked to see who had come up behind him.

“Um-would it be acceptable for me ask something of you?” the Lieutenant begged his own question cautiously, showing a look of urgency and concern, more than enough for Skasis to notice.

“Uh, it’s fine. What is it?” Skasis asked, turning the rest of the way around.

“It’s my son, sir,” the Lieutenant told him with worry, “he’s become very ill. I think he’s nauseous. He’s been telling his mother that his stomach feels horrible, but it doesn’t hurt. When I arrived home after my duty and I asked him what it felt like he didn’t know any words to use for it. Please, sir, he can’t even get to sleep even though he’s tired. We don’t what else to do to help him and any Pegasus medic would just tell us to make lie down deal with it until it’s through. Please, sir, can you make something for like you did for me?”

“Ahh-I know of a few things for nausea. Most of them are really strong, though. If it’s THAT bad I guess I’ll come with you,” Skasis was hesitant, but not really about wandering away from the TARDIS at this point, at that particular moment it was about somepony entrusting him with the healthcare of their foal.

The Lieutenant’s faces abruptly changes to a stretching smile of relief and gratitude. “Thank you so much sir!” the Lieutenant let out with grateful relief, “I must admit I have no way I can immediately repay you for this, nor would I know necessarily how you would wish me to,” the Lieutenant quickly indicated their direction and began trotting off in the direction of his cloud home with Skasis coming up beside him.

“There ISN’T anything you should do to repay me for this,” Skasis countered the Lieutenant’s intent right then in there. “Besides, I probably won’t even be here long enough for you actually see me again after this anyways,” he added a few seconds after, as he slowed done his trotting pace having caught up to the Lieutenant.

“Your emissarial business requires you to return to the ground soon?” the Lieutenant asked. The question caused Skasis’s eyes to expand rapidly as he realized that he just almost slipped on concealing who he, Derpy and The Doctor really were and were really doing there . . . neither truth of which he really had any clue about himself. Still, a good shoot of epinephrine ran through his bloodstream for the immediate moment following, as he tried to explain the lie the Lieutenant already believed. “Uh-y-yes, we’re unfortunately only likely to be here for a few days," he told him.

Skasis looks all around at the crafted cloudscape, and then up briefly to the night sky overhead. “And I like this place too," he said after a sigh.

“Really?” the Lieutenant looked over at him, lost a little bit between surprise and actual disbelief. “But . . . you’re a Unicorn, a ground-dweller. We were always made to believe you are all even afraid of heights for the most part. Do you really enjoy being up here among the clouds?” he couldn’t avoid asking about something that was unheard of to him, no matter what Skasis had already said about himself.

Skasis only confirmed what he’d already said. “Yeah, I love being up in the sky," he looked up at the stars again as they continued to walk. “And I love being able to see the night sky so clear,” he spoke up about one of the things he’d always enjoyed, since he was a colt, even. The Lieutenant lifted his own head up as well, really never having done so in such a way before, and having an understanding come almost at once of what Skasis meant.

“Put me and my friends aside,” Skasis said suddenly, bringing his head back down, “Your son, is he allergic to anything?” “That’s when you eat or drink things and they make you swiftly ill, you said?” the Lieutenant asked just to confirm, having remembered what Skasis had already explained earlier. “Or touch or smell them, yes,” Skasis filled in what the Lieutenant didn’t know, and repeated his question, “Do you know of any your son has?” A detectable amount of regret crept into both the Lieutenant’s face and his voice when he answered. “You would do better to ask his mother such questions," he said, “I . . . I’m not home very often, so I don’t really know anywhere near as much as she would about what he does and doesn’t eat or goes around.”

The two kept walking across the southern portion of what had been built of the city, with silence dominating the rest of the way.

***

Skasis and the Lieutenant both passed through the shut cloud into the Lieutenant’s home, only ending up with a few tiny droplets of water gathered at some of the ends of their fur. The Lieutenant’s wife, a bright yellow pegasus with an alternating pink and red mane was standing at a cloud counter, appearing to be adding something to a cup of water. The Lieutenant, having been in armor with no helm this time as opposed to the first, removes his armor and places it on a fitted stand on which his helmet is also mounted, and then turned around and closed up the awkward opening in the cloud behind them he and Skasis had just made.

“Stratus? Tell me you were able to find that medic?” the Lieutenant’s wife asked upon catching their movement at the edge of her vision. “Don’t worry Sunrise; he was still out and awake, and he’s come back with me," he told her with a calming voice.

The Lieutenant’s wife instantly lifted her head up at those words, drops open her mouth in the start of a soft sigh relief. As Skasis emerged from behind Stratus, head fell in slow motion to one side and her eyes grew as wide as hooves. It was near the exact same look both Skasis and The Doctor had gotten from hundreds of ponies already when they saw them able to stand on clouds. Skasis was still a bit lost on their complete shock. Starswirl The Bearded had already invented the cloud-walking spell earlier in history, along with his credited hundreds of others. So . . . had he just kept it to himself all this time, only writing his discoveries down in notes and journals or something?

“Stratus, he’s-“ Sunrise was about to let her disbelief drive her to point out the obvious, but her husband cut her off for the sake of getting straight to their son. “I know, but you’ll just have to wait for an explanation until afterwards," he told her. She still couldn't help gazing at Skasis for a little while longer, raising her hoof to the midpoint between her chin and her mouth without it making contact, as if internally in some debate. But she quickly let it back down and nodded with resolve.

“Where’s Soot Blizzard?” the Lieutenant asked her. “In our room,” she answered right away, “I was just adding some ginger and salt into some water to have him drink it. Many of the Earth Ponies I spoke with on the migration said it was what they drink when they have queasy stomachs," she added as well, and then looked at Skasis to address him with her question. “Would that help little Soot at all?” she asked.

Skasis nodded back. “It usually does. Even if the stomach is being bothered severely it can still help lessen the nausea a little," he explained.

The Lieutenant lead Skasis, followed by Sunrise, into their room. Inside, their son Soot Blizzard was lying on his side on their bed with an utterly exhausted, but also very squeamish look on his face.

Skasis began to feel quickly uncomfortable, not having any particular admiration for foals, or more so just not for dealing with them. He forced himself to take a single, soundless deep breath, stiffening his resolve to help the Lieutenant, and to relieve anypony of nausea, the one sickness above all else that he could not stand when he dealt with it himself. Being sick never bothered him that much, and pain, despite how he sometimes whined about it, he didn’t care all too much about either. But nausea . . . nausea was something else to him.

“Soot, it’s me,” the Lieutenant said quietly, stepping over to the bed. The little grey colt picked his head up. “Daddy?” he asked, sounding surprised to see his father. “Daddy’s here Soot,” the Lieutenant reassured him, “and daddy has somepony you have to talk to.”

The Lieutenant indicated Skasis over to the bedside with a head motion, and Skasis came over as he was signaled. “This is Emissary Paradigm,” the Lieutenant explained to the little colt, “he’s a medic who’s gonna make your belly feel ok again.”

The little colt’s face let its sickened look almost slide right off as he was lead to gaze up at Skasis with some bit of marveled admiration. “Really? Can you make me feel better mister unicorn?” he asked, sounding practically awestruck. “Yes, so long as you do what I say,” Skasis said, knowing he probably sounded incredibly blunt, if not just awkward, although the little Pegasus colt didn’t seem to care.

“Just do whatever the nice Unicorn medic asks, Soot,” Sunrise affirmed more gently what Skasis had said to her son.

Both parents were smiling warmly at the young colt. Skasis looked from one to the other, and felt rather horrible for being so awkward to the point that they were having to gently reinforce what he said.

“Can you stand up?” Skasis made himself just move on and ask.

Soot Blizzard responded by slowly, and a bit wobblily getting up on his hooves, standing up on top of the bed sheets. Skasis’s eyes narrow slightly as he entered thought for a brief moment. “Does it feel better you stand up after you’ve been lying down?” he asked next. The little colt nodded his head. “How about lying down after standing up for a long time?” Skasis asked then. “For a whittle bit,” Soot Blizzard answered.

Skasis nodded and was about to speak again, but he halted, instead obeying an odd compulsion to look back towards the colt’s parents for a split-second. He felt his temperature rise as he made up his mind to try something he never had before.

Skasis looked back at Soot and spoke with as much gentleness as he thought he could make himself without sounding unnatural. “You can go ahead and lie back down now,” he said. His voice didn’t come across as profoundly comforting, but to the little colt it was a deal more caring than Skasis thought. Soot Blizzard laid back down on his other side as Skasis turned about to speak to both of his parents.

“Has he eaten anything he normally doesn't in the last few days?” Skasis asked them. The Lieutenant looked to Sunrise and Skasis then did the same. She shook her head. “No, rationing has everything mostly the same from one day to the next until the Earth Ponies till more farmland," she explained.

Skasis nodded a couple times before concluding his own thoughts and giving a brief exposition to them both. “Well, he can still stand without real trouble, and he isn’t vomiting at all. Plus, the fact that he get temporary relief from shifting positions would mean that his organs in that region shifting and then settling is creating enough new sensory signals that they’re counter-balancing some of the nausea’s neuro-signals for a few minutes each time. So I'm pretty sure it's not medically severe, since I’m guessing from that that whatever the actual condition is it’s probably localized in just one portion of his G.I. tract. It’s probably being caused by a bad stomach virus, but I can’t be sure. But, a Serotonin Receptor Antagonist should definitely at least quell out the nausea long enough for him to get to sleep," he explained, the molecular-biological portion of which they obviously didn't comprehend.

“So you Can give him something?” the Lieutenant asked with hope quite audibly hanging in his voice.

“Yes; Ondensetron,” Skasis told them.

“I’ve never heard of anything that sort,” Sunrise said at the mention of it.

“I wouldn’t expect anypony to have,” Skasis responded.

Sunrise gave a confused look to her husband, but he just nodded her over in the direction of their son. Willingly, she walked around Skasis and started gently running her hoof through Soot Blizzard’s mane.

“Has he ever eaten Peppermint?” Skasis asked her, to which she nodded back and said, “The few times I’ve been able get some. it’s one his favorite treats.” “Then he should be able to handle a small bit of Ondensetron,” Skasis concluded aloud.

Skasis immediately removed a tuft of cloud from the floor with his hoof and held it up in front of his face. As with the Tramadol earlier, he exhaled slowly and directly onto the cloud tuft. His horn illuminated and tiny blue crackles lightning sparked about the little space in the air above his upheld hoof.

Over the course of ten or so seconds, a very small white tablet, barely larger than a grain of sand transforms out of a third of the cloud tuft. Skasis was about to stop, having produced the four milligrams he was aiming for, but his eyes darted down as he thought for a second.

Instead of halting, Skasis decided to carry on, using up the remainder of the little piece of cloud and transmuting two additional tablets of Ondensetron.

Skasis looked back up, facing Soot Blizzard again. He went ahead and levitated the first tablet he’d made over to the colt. “He’ll need to let this sit on his tongue until it dissolves,” Skasis said to Soot’s parents. Sunrise nodded. “Open wide now like the chimney you came from,” Soot’s mother told her son. Referencing a chimney was something playful they usually did with him, given his name.

Soot looked to his mother and then back at the floating little white crumb, as it looked like to him. He opened his mouth gaping wide, almost to the point of straining his jaw. It actually, to Skasis’s somewhat shock, made Skasis laugh. He floated the Odensetron in and let it all settle down on the grey colt’s tongue.

“Now shut that mouth before you swallow the moon,” the little colt’s mother instructed him again, “and don’t you gulp that magic medicine down until you can’t feel it on your tongue anymore. Okay?” Soot nodded, and sat back down on the bed, unswallowing.

Skasis turned around to completely face the Lieutenant and Sunrise again. “Even if were to stay awake, that dose should take his nausea away for at least eight hours," he told them, and then craned his head to the side levitate and deposit the other two Ondensetron tablets on the top of the hard-cloud bedside stand on the nearer side of the bed. “If he still doesn’t feel well tomorrow you can make him take another one of those,” Skasis went on. “I can’t say anything about how long this might last since I can’t actually see inside of him,” he somewhat confessed his medicinal-magic limits as he knew them.

“How would anypony see inside of anypony?” Sunrise asked, utterly confounded at the idea.

“With magic,” Skasis responded, “which I obviously have.” He even lit his horn for a few seconds in a demonstration of what his pony-type made already obvious about him. “But I don’t have anywhere near the skill to pull that off. There’s SO MUCH chemically going inside a pony’s body that it . . . only somepony trained can filter it out. I could try, but it would probably just give me a headache,” Skasis finalized his explanation.

“Can you please try, emissary Paradigm? That is, if I’m not overstepping my boundaries by asking it of you?” the Lieutenant pleaded with him. “Please, neither I nor almost all of the other pegasi you met today ever believed it was possible for even unicorns to walk on clouds, but you’re standing right here. I don’t know anything at all about magic, but if what we all thought impossible isn’t, then what you’re speaking of can’t be either," he tried his best to encourage Skasis.

“Ugh . . .” was all Skasis thought to himself; he knew exactly how an attempt at such again would end. He was reconsidering drilling in his point when he looked back over his shoulder at the little foal, who was looking up at him with wide childhood eyes again.

“Oo con o it mit-er un-icorn!” the little colt suddenly encouraged him, in broken, half-pronounced words coming from his mouth still being occupied with the dissolving tablet. But he encouraged Skasis with such foalhood, idolizing enthusiasm. Both parents smiled at the colt’s half-pronounced encouragement, and it ended up even being too much for Skasis to say no to.

Skasis sighed, and gave in. “Alright, I’ll see, but nothing is probably going to come of this," he forewarned them of disappointment.

The little grey colt smiled cheerfully, which lightened both of his parents’ hearts, having seen nothing but his expressed discomfort all day.

Skasis stepped up to the very edge of the bed, and leaned his head close in to the colt, staring intently at the bottom of his chest where the start of his stomach would be. Skasis’s horn began to encompass itself with his blue aura, and his eyes begin to luminesce their green as he attempts to cast a functional medical-magic Sight to peer inside the Pegasus’s body.

At first it seemed like he could see, catching glimpses and glimpses of all he knows how to target: chemical reaction, energy exchanges and concentration gradients. He struggles to look further, pouring in more raw power, but what he predicted came about, and a sensation of oncoming pain began to work about his head.

Skasis relented from his effort after about a minute, once his head really began to hurt. He was left taking deep, but panting breaths, as well as a sequentially pounding pain throughout most of his head. The others all looked at him hopefully, but he just shook his head gently, trying to avoid intensifying the pain. “No, I’m sorry,” he said, feeling humiliated for making a failed attempt, “I’m just not capable of it.”

“No, sir, everything else you’ve done for both my son and I is already well amazing enough. We should just be thanking you now,” the Lieutenant tried to reassure him, though Skasis’s self-doubt didn't budge.

Sunrise smiled gratefully. “Oh thank you, um . . . Skasis?” she asked, not entirely sure of his name, not having been particularly focused on it when the Lieutenant had mentioned it to Soot Blizzard.

“Skasis, Paradigm,” Skasis gave out his name again.

“Is there anything we can do for you while you’re still here with us Skasis?” she asked whole-heartedly once he’d given his name. “Emissary Paradigm, dear,” her husband calmly corrected her, which nodded to acknowledge.

“No, Skasis,” the unicorn repeated, correcting the Lieutenant.

The Lieutenant looked almost taken aback. “But . . . sir, with your position you cannot have ponies addressing you by your first name, and with no recognition of your title being given," he insisted.

“Fine, just your family then,” Skasis allowed. “Now I have to get back to the TARDIS, I want to go to sleep," she told them, holding a hoof up to the side of his head as the pain intensified.

“You need to get back to the what?” was the Lieutenant’s confused response. “Ahh-just lead me back to where you found me, both times," Skasis corrects himself, in a sense. The Lieutenant nods once in response. “Certainly. Let us leave right away," he said, and lead Skasis out of their home, and back off in the TARDIS’s general direction.

***

“Well, this is where I recall first meeting you," the Lieutenant said as the two of them halted near the cloud edge where the TARDIS still sat. “Agh, thanks,” Skasis said back, squinting his eyes just a bit, and rubbing one side of his head with his hoof. The headache was still present. “Of course,” the Lieutenant nodded and stepped away, as Skasis went to go inside.

“Sir,” the Lieutenant suddenly asked after him, “are you sure there is nothing else at all that I might be able to do for you and your fellow emissaries?” Skasis sighed and gave him the same answer as before, “No, don’t worry, we’re fine.”

Skasis opened the TARDIS door and made to step inside. The Lieutenant saluted him one last time, and turned to leave himself. At the last moment Skasis suddenly recalled one particular desire Derpy had expressed since their arrival that morning.

“Actually . . . I doubt it’s something that anypony could do for us on such a short notice,” Skasis initially went to say, until he reached the conclusion of the request being absurd, and inconvenient. “Please sir, anything,” the Lieutenant only encouraged him again. “Could we, er-emissary Doo, meet the Commander?” Skasis tentatively asked.

Author's Note

2nd installment.

Don't forget to read the first chapter before this one, don't ever want to have anypony getting lost.

For reference also, Himmel, or Glau Himmel, is Skasis's familiar/pet hawk back in present-day Equestria, whom he's had since a young age and views as his brother.