Octavia stepped forwards, leaving everypony she knew wondering what she was doing.
The snow beside her shimmered and shone white, as the pure taste of snowflakes infiltrated any mouth that was open. In the sky, snow
fell on a "clear" night, and the ponies below shifted uncomfortably, as if they were nervous.
Understandably nervous. After all, a windigo in the sky was slightly frightening.
Even if she was the windigo.
Earlier that day,
Twilight, as always, was studying. Today, she was enlisting the friend Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was flying out into the clear, blue sky and pushing small parts of clouds into Twilight's library. Meanwhile, she studied them, hoping to find out their secret.
Twilight, frustrated at the clouds not appearing, shouted, "How the buck do they make these things?!"
Rainbow Dash: "I think they use water."
"But how?!"
"You're the egghead."
Frustrated, the purple pony glanced outside through the window. She saw Rainbow Dash getting another cloud -
Why in Celestia's name is a fluffy pink pony with a cardboard horn dancing on Rainbow?!
She blinked, taken aback by surprise, and when she did, nopony was there.
"I must be more tired than I thought," muttered Twilight. "And to think that there was somepony dancing on Rainbow's head!"
As Twilight fell asleep, Rainbow Dash flew back into her house, caught her snoring on her desk, and ~~gently~~ heaving, carried her into the bed. "Geez, she's heavy! Must be all the food she eats," she grunted mildly derisively.
After a few minutes of shifting uncomfortably, Rainbow Dash decided to leave. Not wanting to feel like she abandoned Twilight, though, she left a note on her desk, so Twilight would know
"Sorry, had to go! Meeting with Flutters to learn how to care for turtles. Be back tonight! -RD"
In her dream, Twilight walked downstairs to grab a cup of cold milk. However, as she reached the stairs, she slipped, and she soon magically pulled a cushion she had installed for such emergencies (ponies were unsurprisingly bad with stairs, and Twilight wasn't exactly the most coordinated pony around). She gripped the magic with her horn, pulling it and manipulating it so that it acted on the mattress. A whump and a soft feeling a few hundred milliseconds later and Twilight, though stuck in white, was safe.
She got out of the cloud, and noticed that she was in the sky.
"Wait, what?!"
Yet, she didn't fall. Something kept her from falling. She glanced down. Yes, her hooves were on cloud. Yes, the earth was miles below. (Yes, she was scared of heights after that time in the Everfree forest.)
But no, she was not falling to earth.
Growing slightly more confident in her safety, she tried stepping, which succeeded, walking, which succeeded, and trying to see if she had miraculously grown wings. She failed at that last part, and resorted to asking passerby if she had wings.
She didn't.
Now thoroughly confused, she paced around, looking for something that would help her find out what in Equestria was happening. She found a mirror, levitated it to find her hooves -
- and only then noticed the magic flowing through her hooves.
"Eureka!", Twilight shouted, before charging through the city, shouting "Yes yes yes yes -"
With a gasp of "Yes!", Twilight awoke, threw the comforters off, and stood in one swift motion.
It covered a sleeping Spike, but Twilight paid no heed as she concentrated on what she had felt in the dream. That strange magic that she had felt.
It came.
Unfortunately, without anything to guide it, the weather magic quickly destabilized and exploded in a hot and cold, wet and dry comgloberation, leaving the unlucky pony in the center of a miniature storm, that thankfully died quickly.
Nevertheless, it left her with a mess of a room to clean up, with scorch marks and frost everywhere.
Just then, Rainbow Dash flew in through the window that Twilight had left open. She landed, took a single look at the damage done, and asked, "DId you try to use weather magic without something to control it?"
And only then did the memories of the weather factory, where she had learned that clouds needed water, come back from whatever hiding place they had found.
Twilight groaned.
After they had cleaned up the library, Twilight was set up and ready to experiment. Rainbow Dash was on hand, ready to control any weather that might prove too much for Twilight alone. For extra safety, a shield spell protected the world from Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Spike (who had refused to move because he wanted to sleep), and a wooden bowl of pure, magically distilled magic. Of course, Twilight had a checklist for anything (yes, anything), and so she used it to make sure she had done everything right.
"Step 1: Write letter to Princess Celestia."
"Check," RD grumbled. At least they had goten Spike to send a letter to Celestia. Fortuantely, she agreed, although she did have the Royal Guard on high alert - "Just in case," she had said.
"Step 2: Research."
Twilight shuddered, recalling the poorly-written, disorganized, confusing wreck of a branch of magical study that was weather magic. She had barely learned anything about the subject, and she had read every book on the subject she had! It was almost as if nopony had really studied weather magic before!
"Check," replied Rainbow in the same tone, breaking Twilight from her thoughts.
"Right," Twilight sheepishly responded. "Now, where was I? Step 3: Protection."
At this, RD perked up somewhat, inspecting the pink barrier, poking it a couple of times, and trying to fly against it for good measure. Then she checked the flares, inspecting them. They had been enchanted to go off at a moment's notice, and they left a visible mark on the surface itself. She only had to find the sign on the fuses. Finally, she examined herself. Mostly mentally, although she did check to make sure she was in good condition. Now assured that Twilight's preparations and her own awesomeness could handle anything thrown at it, she affirmed, "Check!"
Smiling, Twilight finally turned to the bowl of water and started to reach for the weather again. Rainbow Dash, wanting a closer looked, sneaked around mesmerized -
The young dragon somehow managed to scream and reflexively shoot a fireball. This, in turn, freaked Rainbow Dash, who kicked Spike away as if he was a hoofball - and into Twilight, in the middle of casting the spell.
As Spike plowed into Twilight, she instinctively tried to blast Spike and RD away with magic. However, the weather magic, combined with her own apitude for magic, interacted with, changed, and amplified the spell into a beam. It fired, even as she was tackled, and the surge of unicorn and pegasus magic that she had released was so unpredictable that she had no idea what would, should, or even could happen.
And Rainbow Dash, after colliding with the ceiling, fell and grazed the beam, shaving off about half of it. The rest of it bounced off a convienently placed mirror and off the glass of the window.
Twilight and Rainbow had both fainted, so Spike, the only one awake, slowly peeked outside to find that one Octavia Melody had been zapped. He looked back in the room, but noticed Rainbow Dash was missing. She looked around, but couldn't find anything new except the rainbow bounding around -
The RAINBOW?! Uh oh...
Octavia sighed, massaging her horn, as Rainbow Dash - an actual rainbow now (who knew they were sentient?) - bounced behind her in a frenzy that would leave Pinkie Pie in the dust. To her left, she saw the Royal Guard approach from Canterlot. Of course, in her new form, who knew what would happen between herself and them. To her right lay Ponyville, and it seemed everypony was staring at her.
Without anything else to do, she flew - somehow - towards Ponyville, saw it from the sky. The view of the snow-covered roofs and streets looked amazingly pretty. The chimneys emitting grey smoke and the lights in the windows only made the scene more amazing. And the ponies that had come in wonder, in fear, were the final touches in a beautiful scene of a winter wonderland.
It was perfection. Complete and utter perfection.
Octavia, overtaken by the immensely awe-inspring view, shed a single crystalline tear, and watched it fall while the ponies gazed in awe. Only then did she notice that she was a sight of her own. Her magic expressed itself in ephemeral, glistening displays of ice crystals, dancing and shimmering in the full moon.
She could feel something new building in the air, in the ponies around her. An emotion. What was it? It was a positive emotion, yes, but it wasn't quite love. She felt it in one pony by the Town hall, and then another, and another. Suddenly, everypony was fascinated, as if they were a child again, and Octavia finally recognized it. It was awe.
Had she been an ordinary windigo, she would have despised the ponies, perhaps even hated them.
But she wasn't an ordinary windigo. She was Octavia Melody. She loved her audience back, even if this time, it was not her music but her art that they loved. Looking back at the Royal Guard, she recognized that they were closer. But she didn't mind. Twilight and Spike were probably already solving it.
She stepped, sending a magic wave of snow through the air. One day, she would ask Twilight to turn her back. After all, she was a pony at heart. Besides, she couldn't stay as a windigo forever - how would she perform? But for now, she had plans, and the rainbow to her side felt the same way.
Author's Note
I wrote this on a cold night, where (not coincidentally) a storm called Octavia is hitting the southern United States and Mid-Atlantic hard.
It was a random idea, and it's practice as much as it is a story by itself.
Thank you for reading through my story! Did you like it? Please comment below!