A young Earth Pony foal was trotting around the large house. His family has having a reunion and all the adults were mingling as they caught up on their lives leaving the foals to entertain each other. However all the other kids were older than him so there wasn't anypony for him to play with.
That changed soon enough when more of his family arrived. They landed outside having flown from Cloudsdale. As they entered the house a young filly jumped from her mother's back, small wings fluttering to help her descent.
As they were only a few months apart in age, their parents shooed them off to play together.
“I'm Thag.” said the marble coated earth pony.
“Alto.” Said the filly, brushing her blue/green two-toned hair out of her face.
“Let's explore the house, maybe we can find some toys to play with.” He said.
“Sure. It'll be better than listening to the adults talk.” She replied.
Sometime later found the foals in a bedroom, bouncing around as they played with toys. Alto jumped off the bed and landed on Thag's tail, before grabbing onto the red hair and pulled him out from under the bed.
“Aha! I have drawn you out of your base, now fear my minions.” She cried in triumph while gesturing at the toys she had lined up on top of the bed.
“Well, I guess I have no choice but to... Tickle my way to freedom.” He said, before using his hooves to tickle her tan coat.
As Alto fell to the floor laughing, Thag slipped away to the other side of the bed to plan out his next move.
Several years later Thag Vertice was enjoying his summer vacation when he heard some ponies landing out front. A few moments later Alto came out to the back of his family's house.
“Hey. My family is passing through and thought it'd be nice to spend a few days with yours.” She said timidly.
“Cool.” He said, before kicking a ball over near her. “Was just playing around, wanna join?”
“Sure.” She replied, her wings fluttering quickly before kicking the ball back.
They were soon running around the yard as they played with the ball. Shortly they were called in for dinner. Staying inside afterwards they played in Thag's room until it was bedtime.
The next day found them playing on some of the equipment at the playground. Pretending to be adventurers running around and exploring dangerous ruins.
The day after that found Alto Chisel and her family leaving so that they could finish going home.
A couple of years later she returned to spend a a couple weeks with Thag. She had learned how to fly and enjoyed being able to show her new skill off. During one lazy day she decided to gather up a small amount of cloud to rest on.
“Clouds are so comfortable, you should try it Thag.” She said, pushing the cloud next to the ground before landing on it to rest.
“I don't know if that would work very well 'cause I'm not a pegasus.” He said, waving a hoof carefully through the cloud.
“Gotta be a way for you to be up here as well. Hmmmm. Oh, I can stay on it, so you just stay on me.” She reasoned.
Alto pushed the cloud down a little further to let Thag climb onto it easier. She laid down as he jumped lightly, trying to land on her back without hurting his cousin. After some maneuvering he laid down with his head next to hers, having been careful so that he wasn't laying on her wings.
They stayed there for a little while, chatting about what to do next. Once they had decided they jumped down and went to go swimming down at the lake.
As they swam the had fun splashing each other, pretending to be sea monsters and just enjoying the water.
After several days of growing closer and having fun, Alto eventually had to go home.
Some months later Thag received a letter from her, detailing that she had gotten her cutie mark in cloud sculpting.
Thag manged to get his own cutie mark while working on a science project that required him to build a replica of a pyramid.
That year Alto came to stay with him again. This time it ended up being around the Summer Sun Celebration which meant that they got to play with fireworks.
The two of them had just finished gutting many small firecrackers to make one large one. They took to a remote area of the park and tried to set it off. It took some doing before they did get it to explode. Afterwards they played with sparklers and enjoyed launching bottle rockets.
The next day Thag and Alto went swimming, reprising the games played when they were younger. Later that night, as the sun was setting they enjoyed the firework show the town had arranged.
The day after she showed off her talent at shaping clouds by making several cool statues and other things for them to play around. Thag explained his talent at doing equations since it didn't lend itself to being displayed easily.
Having spent a lot of time getting to know each other and growing closer as friends, Thag found that he had started to have a crush on her.
Alto had taken to teaching him how to be a gentalecolt and instilling a sense of chivalry into him. She also liked to listen to music alongside him.
His family decided to take a trip up to the mountains a week after the celebration, both for some hiking and to enjoy the snow on the heights.
“Heads up.” Alto said, just before tossing a snowball at Thag, who was quick to retaliate.
The fight didn't last for to long before his family called them in so they could head down the mountain for lunch and to go hiking along some none snow covered trails.
Alto returned home a couple weeks later. She and Thag continued to trade letters for some times as they grew up.
Thag was on his bed reading the latest letter from his cousin Alto. She talked about some of the things she had made while practicing her cloud sculpting work. The letter also talked about a friend of hers whose talent in extreme weather control got her a scholarship to Celestia's School for Talented Pegasi.
He sighed as he thought about Alto. Remembering the times that she has visited and the fun they have had with each other. It had been a couple years since they had last spent time together and he could still feel his crush on her.
In his letter he mentioned that he was doing well academically, and how it had has felt like forever since they had spent time with each other.
The next year Alto came out to visit again. Her and Thag enjoyed staying up late talking with one another. He help her with her sculpting by striking random poses for her to make out of clouds.
As they spent time just hanging out Thag had trouble determining if his feelings her just a simple crush born out of puppy love, or if it was developing into something more real.
Once the month was over and Alto left for home leaving Thag to realize that his feelings were definitely turning into the real thing.
The young colt slowly become a young stallion all while working hard on his education with aims to become a teacher of sciences and mathematics. Having been inspired by his own teachers to help the next generations.
His hard work got him accepted into the Canterlot University which required him to move into the mountain-side city to attend. His cousin sent her congratulations in the reply to the letter he had told her about it in.
As he began his classes Alto told him about how she had gotten a job at one of the clouddscaping businesses that tended to the public areas of Cloudsdale. She used the yard in front of her house to showcase some of her own work at cloud sculpting, selling one on occasion and even getting a special commission sometimes.
Thag sent his own congratulations in return and focused on his schoolwork. It wasn't long before life turned his path. He had been getting a stipend from the school to cover a small apartment in the city, but he was quickly racking up student loans to pay for the school.
Deciding that looking for a job would help cover his expenditure during his education he began looking around. He was easily handling his early courses but the job hunt was going as well as trying to move a mountain.
As the weeks turned to months he put off the job hunt to tackle his finals for the semester. Once Thag picked out his next classes he turned back to looking for a job. He even managed to make a couple friends to hang out with.
In that manner he spent the first year and a half of his college years. As he was in the middle of a semester he managed to find an easy job waiting tables. It didn't earn him a lot of money, but he did get enough to be able to get away from the stereotypical college diet. His schoolwork did begin to take a small dive bringing his GPA to the low 3's.
The dean for Thag's course called him into her office.
“Thag Vertice I have a little bit of bad news for you. The school has decided to increase the tuition, and during the reworking of the financial aspects several things had to be cut from the budget. As such a couple of the loans you are currently applied for are no longer available as well as the living stipend.” The mare stated.
As he processed the information the numbers were crunched in his head. With the little amount he was making from his job, there was no way he could afford to finish the course. He wouldn't even be able to stay in the city itself.
Thag was able to finish the semester while making arrangements to return home. He got a cart and packed up everything he own just before he took his finals.
He looked over the letter he had gotten from Alto once she had gotten his that talked about what had happened. The comforting words calmed him and got him through the tests.
The day he got the grades from the finals back was also the day he left Canterlot. He had a few days of travel ahead of him.
Thag was camping in a forest, his cart parked on one side of a small clearing as he tried to get a campfire going. The wood he had picked up would not light and after being stubborn and trying for longer than was necessary he gave up and ate his dinner cold.
He was grateful that the sun hadn't quite set yet as he laid out his sleeping bag. Curling up in it to get some sleep when the lack of noise caught his attention. A moment later a loud roaring filled his ears. Afraid that some monster was barreling down on him he slid out of the bag.
Looking around Thag noticed something wrong with the sunset, mainly that it was setting in the north. He quickly figured out why that was when a wall of fire started to rapidly swept towards him. He ran over to his cart to pull out his large wool blanket. He also bucked the cart over completely hoping that it being upturned might save some of his things now underneath it.
Move towards the center of the clearing he tossed the blanket over himself and tried to settle in under it. Mere seconds later and he could hear and feel the fire as it began to consume the forest around him. His breathing became more and more laboured and combined with the exertions of the day caused sleep to start to claim him.
The mighty roar of the fire lulled him into the darkness.
Alto Chisel was on her way home. It had been a long and tiring day as the company she worked for had to pull some overtime to get a park properly cloudscaped after a small accident where a pony crashed through the parts that had already been finished.
They were alright, clouds tend to make for soft landings, but the clouds had been scattered. After work Alto had to run several errands and ended up only getting done as the sun was starting to set.
She was just about to get home when she saw a large plume of smoke emanating from a glow in the distance. The sight of it caused her to pause as she pondered what it could be. She caught sight of a couple of the Wonderbolts flying off to scout out what the problem was. A klaxon was audible calling in an emergency for the weather factory.
It didn't take long for one of the Wonderbolts to return, which heralded an alarm going off alerting all the pegasi in Cloudsdale to a wildfire.
Alto quickly dropped off her stuff in her house before flying off to the weather factory to do her part in emergency cloud handling. The ponies responsible for moving Cloudsdale shifted it's careful drifting into purposeful movement to bring it closer to the fire. Others had gone off to pick up any stray clouds near it to start the rainstorm needed to put it out.
Once she got to the factory she moved to the side that had already begun to output rain clouds en masse. Finding a free spot she started shaping the clouds as they came out for ease of transport. Soon teams were taking the clouds to the site of the fire.
She soon fell into a pattern of grabbing a chunk of cloud, shaping it, and hoffing it off. Time passed both quickly and slowly as it seemed to take forever as she processed the clouds but soon enough the factory stopped making clouds.
Looking around Alto noticed that the sun had finished setting and that there were small clouds with lightstones stuffed into them to provide lighting for the workers. She saw that search and rescue volunteers were being rounded up to check over the damaged areas of the forest and flew over to assist.
Soon she was flying over a section of burned down trees with a pair of enchanted goggles to help her see in the darkness. There wasn't much to see as she could see nothing moving nor anything unusual to indicate even a normal forest animal had been caught by the blaze.
Then the search pattern brought her over a clearing. It was obvious that a cart had been in it at the metal axle was laying on top of a bunch of charred wood and a variety of other things. As she flew down closer to the clearing she noticed the ring of stones that the pony had set up for a campfire.
Landing next to it, Alto looked over the logs in the attempted campfire. Seeing the steam escape from them told her that the wood was from an aquavine. Shaking her head at whoever would be stupid enough to try to make a fire out of it since it would be trying to set fire to a full water bottle.
Trotting over to the overturned cart she hoped that the pony wouldn't have been stupid enough to try to take cover underneath it. Looking in the holes in the burnt lumber it became clear that only their possessions were under it. Some of it was destroyed, a couple of the things were largely untouched and several others at least seemed salvageable.
Scanning the clearing once more, Alto shifted the goggles up on her head and activated a lightstone to get a better look. In doing so she caught sight of an odd mound as close to the middle of the clearing as possible. Staring at it for a moment caused her to notice that it was moving slightly up and down.
Moving over to it her hoof landed on something more than just the soot and ash covered ground. Nudging it caused the edge of the wool blanket to fold over itself.
'Maybe they're not that stupid if they knew to use a wool blanket to protect themselves from the fire. Guess they could have just not recognized the aquavine.' She thought to herself as she pulled the blanket further back.
Once she caught sight of one of the pony's legs she halted in moving the blanket. Looking at the black coloured coat and hoof she nudged it lightly, starting when it jerked in response. Gently poking it again resulting in a similar result she reared back and launched herself vertically into the air leaving behind a flurry of ash.
Flapping to gain some altitude, Alto oriented herself towards the nearest cloud hosting a medic station. She flew to them until one of them noticed her waving. The pegasus took flight as she turned around to return to the air over the clearing where she then circled to indicate that the medic should go there.
After a couple laps she saw the medic dip and angle himself towards the clearing and waved to indicate that she should return to her search pattern.
Alto nodded in response and flew off. It wasn't long before she finished searching her section and she returned to the station set up to handle the search and rescue effort. Seeing that one of the organizers was her boss from her normal job she flew over to her.
“Finished up my section, found 1 pony and alerted the medics, no other anomalies found.” She stated with a rough salute.
“Okay. You can return home now Alto.” The red coated mare said.
“Sure, and see you tomorrow at work, Garnet Flight.” Alto replied before flying off towards home.
After a quick shower to get all the soot and ash off of her, she collapsed onto the bed quickly getting to sleep.
The next day found them fixing up one of the parks that had been flattened out to make a meeting area for one of the various groups from last night. During lunch Alto walked over to Garnet.
“Hey, so how did things turn out last night?” She asked.
Garnet swallowed her food before saying, “1 casulty, which seemed to be near the start of the fire, probably made their campfire to large or something. A couple other were found with a few small burns but they managed to get across a natural fire break. The pony you found had the worst injuries. He breathed in a lot of the hot air, so they have him in the hospital right now.”
“I'll swing by and check on him after work. Did they figure who his is?” Alto queried.
“I think it was Thag Vertice.” Garnet answered.
“Thag... Marbled coat, red mane, number and letters for a cutie mark?” She said, a little bit of panic in her voice.
“Yeah. Do you know-” Garnet started, only to be interrupted as Alto flew off towards the hospital.
“Think she's going to come back?” Said one of the other ponies on the crew.
Alto rushed through the doors of the hospital. Looking around she trotted up to the nurse station to ask about her cousin.
Getting directions to his room she quickly headed off towards it, being mindful to keep her speed down in respect to the building around her. Finding the room and entering it she found Thag laying on a bed, a couple machines next to him monitored his condition but the information meant nothing to her.
Standing next to the bed she looked him over, seeing that he was still breathing, albeit with some difficulty, she relaxed. A moment later a nurse showed up to get her information and to check weather or not she had a right to be there with their patient. Once that was handled Alto asked about his condition.
“He has some lasting lung damage due to the hot air he was breathing. Nothing too severe, he should easily have a normal life. He also is suffering from some oxygen deprivation, but is recovering well. He'll probably wake up in the next couple days so a familiar face will do much to help him recover.” The nurse said before leaving to tend to other patients.
Thag woke up to a very groggy feeling. Opening his eyes lead to a very blurry room. It seemed to be largely white. Shifting his head left and right caused a tan blur to be noticeable to him.
“Thag! You're awake. Let me call the nurse.” The blur said in a very familiar voice that caused his heart to beat a little stronger.
It took a few seconds for his vision to begin clearing letting him see his cousin properly. As her face came into real focus the nurse came in to check up on him.
“So how long have I been-” Thag start before going into a coughing fit.
The nurse gave him a glass of water with a straw to drink from. “You've been in the hospital for about 2 and a half days.” She said before finishing looking him over.
The nurse made a note on his chart before leaving the room.
Alto nuzzled Thag before saying “So glad you're okay. When I heard that you were the pony I found after that wildfire I panicked.”
“You found me? So I guess you saved me then.” Thag said quietly, his voice still recovering form his multiday rest.
“I found you, but the medics and doctors saved you.” She replied.
Thag brought a hoof over to her face, bringing it over to his own.
“Semantics, you are the one who found me, therefore you saved me.” He said.
Letting his hoof down, he smiled at his cousin.
They chatted for a few minutes before Alto noticed the time.
“I gotta get back to work, and finish setting my home up so you can stay there for now. I already moved what stuff of yours was recoverable there, and got the paperwork for you to get compensated for what was destroyed.” She said, before giving him another nuzzle.
“Okay, see you later. Have a nice day at work.” Thag stated.
The next day saw Alto guiding Thag towards her house. He was wearing a small amulet enchanted with a cloud walking spell. He stopped in her yard to admire her sculpture work displayed there.
Once inside he sorted through his stuff there to see what all he had left. Smiling at some of what managed to stay intact. He then went to take a quick nap while Alto prepared some food.
Over the meal they talked about what to do next. Thag decided to stick around for a little while, mainly to spend more time with her and to better think out where to take his life.
Alto headed off to spend some time at work as he organized his stuff in the boxes.
Thag spent a little time over the next few days walking around Cloudsdale getting to know the city. He was also making a plan for the weekend.
When the weekend came up he asked Alto to spend the day with him out on the town.
First they walked through the shopping district looking at the many shops. After a light lunch, they proceeded to visit a couple of the art galleries in the city. The date ended with a nice dinner as they talked about the day.
Once they got back to Alto's house they cuddled up on the couch.
“Hey Alto, there's something I've been wanting to tell you.” Thag started.
“Yeah?” She said.
“I love you. For several years now I've felt it. At first I thought it was just a crush or something, but it's just grown and grown into something I feel at the very depths of my being. I love you and since I have to forge a new path for my life I want you with me as I do so.” He said, looking into her eyes.
Alto replied by giving him a kiss. “I love you too. When you were in the hospital that became clear to me. I would be glad to help you forge a new life.”
They kissed some more as they cuddled on the couch. Eventually going to bed to get some sleep.
Some time later as Thag and Alto were watching the sun set he saw a circular rainbow get formed due to the angle of the sun and the clouds. This lead to him asking Alto if she could replicate it with a sculpture, helping her figure out the angles needed to do so.
After a week of it being on display in her yard somepony bought it to have for a traveling showcase of art. Thag made sure to include instructions on aligning it as they showed how to set it up.
A couple months went by before they heard about a new town getting built. It was a pegasus and earth pony town being set up on the edge of a cliff. Checking it out they decide that it would be a good place to move to as Alto could get work on the weather team.
In time Thag was able to finish his teaching degree and got a job at the local school. Then a few yeards later they had their first foal.