A spindly-looking pegasus filly darted from cover to cover as quickly as she could, hoping to avoid getting soaked by the torrential downpour that, if she wasn't careful, would sweep her away just as surely as it would anything else not magically-affixed to the ground. Cloudsdale itself might've looked like a fragile assortment of translucent cotton balls, but it was actually pretty sturdy; it had to be, when the weather team were in the midst of cooking up a storm of this magnitude. Nopony was out on the streets, except a few stragglers – like herself – who were desperately racing homewards.
No storm had been scheduled, of course, which was why there was some confusion amongst the citizens; a mild blizzard had been timetabled to coincide with the end of the Winter Wrap-Up, but no one wanted to wait that long when every thoroughfare in the city was currently a navigational hazard due to the pernicious smog wreathing the landscape like a poisonous veil.
Four days earlier, a swarm of dragons had passed through the area while making their way to the spawning grounds at the very edge of Equestria; though they hadn't stayed for very long, the evidence of their visit clung to everything. Many pegasi had fallen ill due to breathing in the toxic ash they belched, and dozens more were injured in high-speed collisions as a result of not being able to see properly in the sooty fog.
Finally, Cloudsdale's mayor had declared a state of emergency; the weather team would brew-up a flash storm to, quite literally, clear the air.
Fluttershy did not envy those ponies who were hard at work, using the skills of their trade to force the elements into doing what they wanted; there was very little about being a pegasus she enjoyed, and she found herself wondering at times whether or not some massive joke was being played on her. Living in a city woven from strands of gossamer, held together by magical forces she barely understood, didn't strike her as a great idea. It struck her as dangerous. Especially if you were a chronically bad flier. As she happened to be.
If she had gotten out of school on time, things wouldn't have been so bad; the weather team would still only have been in the preparatory phase of the cloudburst, and she would've been able to make it home before things really kicked off. Unfortunately, for the twelfth day in a row, she'd been held back to work on her basic flight techniques. Quivering, despite her woolly hat, scarf and boots, Fluttershy wished that her instructors would just give up and stop wasting time on her.
They were at a loss to explain her apparent lack of progress; at the slightest whiff of peril, even in the controlled environment of flight school, her wings would completely seize up and become useless. Teachers, psychologists, even her parents, were bewildered by this one pegasus who seemed to be afraid of heights.
And useless was one of the kinder taunts thrown her way at recess; still, the bullying wasn't nearly as bad as it used to be, not now that Rainbow Dash had befriended her. Not only was she the best flier, she was also the bravest, most loyal pony Fluttershy had ever met in her short life. If it hadn't been for her, she reflected, she probably would've taken the bully's suggestion and thrown herself over the side of Cloudsdale long ago.
That said, even the delay at school shouldn't have been enough to be seriously inconvenient; she would've been home with plenty of time to spare, if only she had flown there. Fluttershy's self-confidence was on the low side at the best of times, and in inclement weather conditions, it was usually off on the other side of Equestria completely. It just wasn't possible to force herself to do it, and though they didn't say anything, she could see the disappointment in her parents' eyes.
Her ears suddenly pricked-up, and though she was loathe to do so, she slowed her pace somewhat; it wasn't the distant sound of echoing thunder, the terrifying rumble of a very hungry monster that would love nothing better to scoop up some unwary filly. Fluttershy thought about her gawky, skinny body, and decided it wouldn't make a very good meal for any self-respecting beast.
It was a small, sad sound that she was hearing; if the wind had been any louder, if she had been any further away, it would never have registered with her at all. She listened intently, trying to pin it down despite the distractions all around her; if she couldn't fly, she could at least put her heightened senses to some useful purpose.
The noise was coming from a westerly direction, so she trotted off as quickly as she could, a queasy feeling building in her stomach; it wasn't like her to track down suspicious noises, least of all while the weather team tried to break the record for the most hideous storm on record, but … it sounded very much like somepony crying, and that was not something she would've felt comfortable ignoring. Nopony should have to go through this sort of torment, especially not alone.
One of the few physical structures in Cloudsdale was the port that housed the hot-air balloons used by visitors; it was here that the path Fluttershy was following ended, but she couldn't see anypony, and the noise seemed to have abated also. Either that, or it was lost in the intensifying gust.
Fluttershy strained her ears, and soon heard a pitiful wail. It was coming from the basket of one of the balloons; she approached it carefully, lifted herself up, and peered inside. Inside was the tiny, delicate-looking form of a unicorn filly. Her coat was a deep lavender colour, and unlike Fluttershy, she already had a cutie mark: a six-pointed star, the same shade as one of the stripes in her hair.
Lack of a cutie mark: another thing that the pegasus had received no end of taunts about.
It wasn't the best hiding place, however; with the gale worsening, the balloons would probably be torn free from their restraints. “Hello,” Fluttershy said softly.
The unicorn looked up at her, her purple eyes showing the same fear that Fluttershy felt. She tried to speak, but a bolt of lightning chose that moment to streak across the sky, and the unicorn huddled deeper against the fabric, quaking with fright.
“Do you need help?” asked Fluttershy, wishing that all the questions she wanted to ask didn't sound so ridiculous under the circumstances.
Tearfully, the unicorn nodded. “I don't know what went wrong,” she tried to say between sobs, but mostly, Fluttershy was hearing salt water and snot at work.
“Don't worry,” the pegasus tried to say as reassuringly as possible, sensing that the unicorn needed to be calmed down and that wouldn't happen if she projected her own misgivings. “We can figure it out later, once we get you out of here. Can you move?”
“Yes, but not out of this basket,” replied the unicorn.
There were spells that allowed non-pegasi to walk on the clouds, but they were available only to the most powerful magic-users. Even if the unicorn knew how to perform the enchantment, it was doubtful she had the energy required. There was only one thing Fluttershy could do, really, to get her charge to safety. “Hop on my back.”
“Huh?”
“It's okay,” Fluttershy said with a confidence that she didn't feel. “I might not be good at much else, but I can do heavy-lifting.” She blushed, realising what she was implying. “Uh, no, I didn't mean it like that ...”
Despite herself, the unicorn managed a weak smile; with some effort, she crawled out of the basket and lowered herself as gently as she could on to Fluttershy's back. It was awkward, positioning herself on the pegasus with her forelegs wrapped as tightly as possible around her neck without choking her, and her hindlegs entwined around her waist. Even with the wind and the rain, they managed it with a minimum of fuss.
“What's your name?” asked Fluttershy.
“Twi-” The final syllable was obliterated by a peal of thunder.
Fluttershy moved quicker than she ever had before; she may not have been much of a flier, but she could certainly run. Something about being responsible for another pony's safety was overriding her tightly-wound sense of self-preservation and she used the adrenaline rush to coast through Cloudsdale's rain-strewn streets. The once-familiar sights were rendered harsh and uninviting by the enveloping darkness, but the pegasus manoeuvred as if she were operating in brightest day. Sodden to the bone, they reached Fluttershy's house a scant ten minutes later.
“I'll take you to the guest room,” Fluttershy said to the unicorn, who was clinging more tightly than ever now, probably trying to soak up any extra bit of warmth that she could. “My parents have a lot of earth pony visitors, so everything in there is real. I mean, made of real stuff. I mean, well, you know what I mean.” The pegasus felt a sharp pain in her side, and it wasn't the first time. “Is everything all right back there?”
“Hm?” asked the fretful unicorn. Fluttershy couldn't see her wincing in obvious distress.
“It's just that you keep digging your knees into me.”
“Sorry. Uh ...”
“It's all right.”
“I haven't been to the bathroom in ages.”
“Oh.” Fluttershy could well imagine the unicorn's agony. “The guest room is, ah, fully-equipped.”
Once in the comfortable, if spartan, room, the unicorn practically jumped off Fluttershy's back and proceeded directly to the tiny restroom adjacent to it. She returned a few moments later, looking relieved – in more than one sense of the word – and much drier. “Thank Celestia,” she sighed, feeling as content as she could under the circumstances. The unicorn flopped down on the floor, exhausted by the events of the day.
“How did you end up here?” Fluttershy asked.
“Oh, I was working on my teleportation,” explained the unicorn. “I was supposed to reappear just outside the castle walls, but uh, somehow I ended up clinging to dear life at the balloon port. I guess I forgot to properly account for the y-axis drift when I was doing my calculations.”
The pegasus didn't know what that last part meant, but she knew something of unicorns and their powers. “So. You can just … appear, like, anywhere you want to? That's so cool,” she said excitedly. “Never having to fly anywhere. I'd love to be able to do that. Save me a lot of trouble.”
“You don't like flying?” the unicorn asked in surprise. Most pegasi she'd met – which wasn't all that many, but there were at least a few in and around Canterlot – had to be bolted to the ground to stop them from just taking off. Then again, not all pegasi had been like her saviour; most were lean, athletic types, but this one was so awkward-looking, with comparatively underdeveloped wings. She guessed that she was at least a year or two older than she was.
“Uh-uh,” Fluttershy affirmed with a sad shake of her head. The unicorn was shivering still, so she walked over to the bed, pulled the covers off, then wrapped them around her guest so that they were snug but not confining. “You, uh, you can't just teleport home, can you?”
“Travelling this far has left me drained of energy,” said the unicorn. “I probably won't be able to teleport again until morning.” She would get better with practice, of course, but it would probably be years before she was proficient with the ability. “Why?” she asked with a sly grin. “You want rid of me?”
“No!” said Fluttershy, genuinely offended by the implication. “It's just that, ah, my parents are away a lot, and my grandmother usually falls asleep the second she gets here. It's, um, a bit lonely at times. It's nice to have another pony to talk to.”
“Don't you have any friends?”
“One, but, um ...”
“What is it?”
“Just … sometimes I get the feeling that she only hangs around with me because she feels sorry for me,” said Fluttershy, instantly regretting her dour thoughts about Rainbow Dash.
“I'm sure that's not the case,” replied the unicorn. “You seem pretty cool to me.”
“Cool?” Fluttershy was flabbergasted. No one had ever called her that before.
“You did just rescue me from a storm.” The unicorn shuffled her hooves on the floor. “Um, is there some way I can repay you?”
“There is something.”
“Name it.”
“Tell me about the ground.”
“You've never been?”
The pegasus shook her head again. It was something a pegasus saw only fleetingly while zooming over it, or – a favourite game of the young as a test of their bravery – dangling over the side of Cloudsdale and hoping that a sudden updraught didn't sweep you away. Fluttershy had done neither of these things, and she doubted she ever would. “You said something about a castle. D'you live in one? Are you a princess?” Fluttershy's eyes went wide at the possibility.
“No,” the unicorn laughed, “I am not a princess. I'm, uh, I'm a student.” For some reason, she was hesitant to tell another pony of her status, as Celestia's protégé. Embarrassment? The fear of being judged? She didn't know. “But the ground. It's … beautiful. As far as the eye can see, there are trees, rivers, and all sorts of animals that couldn't exist up here. That castle? It's set into the side of a mountain. From there, Equestria unfolds below you.” Her eyes went wistful. “Sometimes, I just like to sit and watch everypony going about their day. I hope you get to see it for yourself one day,” she finished with a yawn.
As the unicorn fell asleep, unconsciously nuzzling against her new-found friend for warmth and safety, Fluttershy decided in that moment that, one day, she would visit the ground and see all of this splendour for herself. Castles and mountains, trees and animals! It sounded so much better than what life could offer her up here: a pegasus who could barely get herself in the air. Some gut feeling told her that her that things would make so much more sense down there. With a smile, Fluttershy wormed her way under the covers, and then slid a foreleg as gently as she could under the unicorn's head as a makeshift pillow.
“Good night.”
