“This is really nice,” I said softly, scooting closer to Tranquility as we sat in the uppermost branches of a tree, looking up at the night sky.

“This…” Tranquility began, smiling softly. Just the sound of her voice right then made my heart skip a beat. She sounded so content, so happy… those soft words contained the essence of what some ponies strive for their entire lives, peace and happiness. She was at her best right then, in the low light of the moon and stars. Her smile…

“This is what I live for,” she said softly, continuing. “The night is so beautiful for me… you have no idea how amazing this place is for me. In Canterlot, there were streetlamps everywhere at night, so ponies could find their way around… here, there’s no light pollution… I can see everything!” It was if a spark went off in her eyes as she waved a hoof above her, drawing my gaze to the sky above. She was right, the sky was a lot better than in Canterlot. I personally wasn’t really all that invested in it, but if she was… I scooted a little bit closer, to the point where we were almost touching. If she noticed, she didn’t tell.

“And there’s nothing here but us and the crickets, so it’s so quiet…” she whispered, still looking up. “I’m glad we chose to come here. It’s the perfect way to end this lazy day.” What she said was true, it was perfect, and the day was rather calm and nice. My weather shift was literally just us having fun. There were no storms scheduled, and we were supposed to keep an eye on things, but nothing happened, so we spent the time throwing hooffulls of cloud at each other. And when I got home, Tranquility suggested I spend the night outside with her, as I didn’t have work the next day. And so far, it was a wonderful idea.

“So should I go nocturnal or something?” I whispered back.

“No, silly,” she replied, giggling, before a wince crossed her face. “Shifting out of your preferred sleeping schedule is… painful.”

That’s right, thestrals are naturally nocturnal. When she was in Canterlot, the school system didn’t accommodate that at all. I remember that her foster family painted her room like the night so that she could wake up in the morning, and even then she always looked like she was on the brink of falling asleep. It really was hard on her and her grades… although it was rather easy for her to get on the weather team when she told the manager that and I confirmed it. Still didn’t make up for the toll it took on her.

“What if I’m not in my preferred sleeping schedule right now?” I asked softly.

“Then you’re a silly, deluded fool,” she replied, pressing my snout.

A playful frown crossed my face. “I will take those titles with honor,” I said, slowly extending a wing to wrap around her.

“Oi, lovebirds!” a voice shouted at us. I snapped my wing back to my side and a furious blush covered my face, while Tranquility seemed rather unaffected by it.

“Yes, Gentle Gust?” she asked. “What do you need?”

“You,” the aforementioned pegasus said, alighting on the branch we sat on. “And him,” she added, pointing to me.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my tone a little harsher than I wanted it to be, but Gust interrupted a moment between us.

“We don’t know,” Gust said, “but the manager called literally everyone. Apparently the monitoring instruments picked up something huge.”

That couldn’t be right. It was such a nice day! There was no way a storm could have formed that fast. Yet the manager called everypony...

“How huge?” Tranquility asked.

“She didn’t say, but she was scared,” Gust said. “You know how calm she usually is, right?” I nodded; our weather manager is one of the most cool-headed ponies I’ve ever met. Even when someone on the weather team got seriously injured, she kept her cool. If she was…

“She’s panicking.”

Oh, that’s bad.

Tranquility stood and spread her wings, stretching. The moonlight softly played across their surface, highlighting the strange white patches on them. “If he called everypony, that’s not good, especially in the middle of the night,” she said calmly.

“Hold on, I’ve been awake for over sixteen hours!” I interjected. “Will it be safe for me?”

“I don’t think it matters,” Gust replied. “She called EVERYONE. No exceptions.” And just like that, she left, flying down through the forest, weaving through the trees like a pale specter. I stood as well, grunting, and stretching my wings.

“We need to get going,” Tranquility said. I sighed and nodded, looking down. She noticed, peering at me curiously. “Is something wrong?” she asked, folding her wings again and walking over to me.

“I just…” I began, looking up. “Blame it on my lack of sleep, but I feel… this was an important moment for me, and now it’s gone.” I looked down and away from her.

“Fall…” she said, stepping over to me. “I’m sorry, nothing can truly be planned for. I’m saddened as well.” She nuzzled the back of my head, causing me to freeze up and blush, which she thankfully couldn’t see. “And besides, there’s always another night. Just wait until firefly season.”

“That’ll be something else,” I said, standing up and smiling at her, my blush thankfully having faded. I don’t know how well she can actually see in the dark, but I don’t want to find out.

“We’ll do this again sometime,” she said, spreading her wings. “Once this is over.”

“Tranquility?” I said softly. She froze and turned to me. “Thank you.” I said, smiling.

She smiled back at me. “You’re welcome,” she replied before taking off silently. I followed behind her in her slipstream. It’s always a little unsettling to see her fly. Because she doesn’t have feathers, there’s no rustling when she flaps her wings, just a barely audible whooshing sound. It’s almost like she’s a ghost with how silent she is. I don’t mind. In fact, I’m a bit envious. She could play so many pranks…

I heard a soft gasp from her, and she pulled up sharply. “Tranquility? What is it?!” I shouted, following her up.

We broke through the canopy of the forest and stopped. “What’s happening?” I asked.

“Look…” she said, pointing ahead of us, towards the rising moon.

Oh, that was definitely a storm.

A gasp escaped my mouth when I followed her gaze. A gigantic mass of pitch-black clouds was… billowing towards us, almost as if some deity had spilled a jar of ink into the sky. And it was moving fast. Really, really fast. I couldn’t see much, but as I watched, the clouds spread over the moon, plunging us into darker darkness.

Then I started to hear the muffled cracks.

Lightning began to lance through the storm with alarming frequency, throwing the world into stark relief every time a bolt broke through the clouds. Looking to my left, I say Tranquility muttering under her breath, eyes wide with fear. It was fair to assume that she was… swearing, as she described it, in the thestral tongue. I’m not exactly sure what she was saying, as she told me there’s no direct translation between her swears and Equestrian. She told me to imagine they were like the word… peeved… but much worse.

“Airote,” she swore. “We’re going to break up that?!” I could hear something in her voice, something I heard very rarely from her… fear.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “It’s a little big, but nothing we can’t handle, right?” Confidence was evident in my voice, and I puffed out my chest a little.

“It’s not moving towards us,” she said, fear evident in her voice. “It’s growing.”

“Oh.”

We moved a bit faster after that revelation.

It took us five more minutes to get to the weather base. We landed in front of the wooden door and pushed our way into the building. It wasn’t really an office building, per say. Our weather manager, Soft Breeze (also known to her frequent frustration as Breezy) actually converted the first floor of her house into her workspace, while her basement was storage and the second floor her living space. Gust wasn’t kidding, literally everypo- everyONE, considering Dawson the griffin was there, was called to report, and no one looked particularly happy about it. I could hear unhappy conversations everywhere. We had to push through a lot of ponies to get to the meeting area(her kitchen/family room). Breezy was nowhere to be seen. Tranquility and I trotted up next to Dawson, who gave us a glance before going back to scowling at the manager’s office.

“Dawson,” Tranquility said, lightly prodding his side.

“What do you need,” he said is his deep bass voice. It’s always really cool to hear. I can only imagine how he sounds when he sings.

“Get ready,” she said. “I could see the storm as Fall and I flew over here. Breezy had reason to call everyone.” I nodded frantically to help emphasise her point.

“Enough reason to pull me out of my bed?” he replied irritably.

“It covered the moon in about two seconds,” I said. “It got really dark, but I could still see because of all the lightning.”

He whistled slowly. “Dang,” he said. “Is this even safe?”

“Breezy thinks so,” I said. “And she’s the one paying us.”

“Our medical bills will be much more expensive than one day’s pay,” he grunted, starting to stretch his wings.

“QUIET!” A commanding voice shouted, bringing the room to a complete silence in an instant. I jumped a little, turning around to see where the voice had come from.

My jaw dropped to the floor with what I saw. Breezy was trotting down the stairs in a state I never thought I’d see her in. Her mane was a mess, and she was nursing a bruise on her forehead with an icepack. Her coat was ruffled as if she hadn’t brushed it in weeks, and her feathers looked as if they hadn’t been preened in ages. The most shocking thing, however, was her eyes. Her eyes were wide with panic, her pupils dilated to be smaller than a bit. I wasn’t the only one taken aback by this. Murmurs and whispers spread throughout the team as ponies took in her appearance. Even Tranquility’s eyes widened a bit.

“Say nothing, forget how I look, and focus,” she hissed. The whispers cut off instantly and everyone stood up a little straighter. Taking to the air, Soft pointed at the window. “I’m sorry to have pulled you out of bed at this time of night. I am fully aware that it is one in the morning, but this is serious. About an hour ago, our instruments picked up a wild storm. I normally wouldn’t have pulled you out of bed for that, but this storm grew fast enough to sound the emergency alarms, startling my and causing my to hit my head. There, now you have an explanation for the bruise. I immediately called Gust, who spent the last fifty minutes rounding you all up.” Gust grinned and took a little bow. “Thanks to her, we’re all here. Now, this storm will cause damage if we don’t break it up. Huge amounts of damage, comparable to the hurricane that hit six years ago.” That statement caused worried murmurs to break out.

“I can vouch for that assessment,” Tranquility said.

“Really?” Breezy said.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “The storm is growing at an alarming rate. There’s absurd amounts of lightning, and I could see trees bending slightly in the wind from my position in the sky.” More murmurs sounded, this time with traces of fear.

“Hush it, now!” Breezy shouted, quieting everypony once more. “This will go quicker if I can finish, and we don’t want the storm growing any bigger than it already has!” No one said another word. “Now, this is a big storm, but it’s just a storm. It’ll be broken up if we do the normal routine: cut it up in rows until it doesn’t have the ability to continue, at which point the storm will break up. Split up into groups of fifteen, now.” At her command, everyone quickly split up. I stuck close to Tranquility. In thirty seconds, the whole team was split into four groups of fifteen, with Breezy in front of us.

“Good!” she said. “Now, you may not be able to hear me in the wind, so when we get out there, each of your teams will fly into a row, with the rows spaced fifteen feet apart. You will give two bucks, one to rid the clouds of lightning, the other to break the cloud up.” We all nodded, and she smiled. “Good luck, guys. Let’s do this.” And with that, we marched out the door.

The second we did, we were hit by a blast of wind.

The storm had moved in while we were inside. Rain hadn’t started pouring down yet, but lightning was starting to strike the neighborhood. With unspoken agreement, we all took to the air, fighting the errant and wild wind.

My group was the one second closest to the outside of the storm. Breezy flew right in the middle and started to give the signals. Buck one went well. Buck two… not so much.

We broke the clouds, but the ones we de-charged had moved, so almost everyone got a shock, including me. Now, getting struck with lightning, combined with having been awake for way longer than I should have been, wasn’t the greatest thing for me. The blast stunned me, and I just kinda hovered there in shock. I drifted out of my line and towards the center of the storm. I was vaguely aware that Tranquility was following me, shouting and trying to get to me. I was also vaguely aware of a roaring sound.

I think that what snapped me out of that trance was when I drifted past Dawson’s line and they suddenly broke formation and began flying away as fast as they possibly could. I regained control of myself, and suddenly the roaring became a lot louder.

“FALL! FLY! FLY AWAY NOW!” Tranquility screamed at me.

“What?” I murmured back, still dazed. I turned around, and suddenly it became very clear why she had shouted at me.

A massive tornado was heading my way, sucking up debris and trees. It was bigger than anything any team of pegasi could ever create, and much, much more powerful. I’d never seen a wild tornado before, but I knew the protocol. If you saw one, fly away and alert someone.

The problem was that I was already in its pull.

I started to fly as fast as I could away from it, but I kept inching backwards. Tears formed in my eyes. My thought process at the time was something along the lines of I’MGONNADIEI’MGONNADIEI’MGONNADIEEE! And I just kept getting closer and closer to the tornado.

Eventually I couldn’t fight it. My wings were getting fatigued. The last thing I remember before everything went black is that Tranquility screamed and dove towards me.

Author's Note

I got a chapter out in THREE DAYS?! Unheard of!

So yeah, this is the catalyst for everything else that happens in the book. Fall fell into a tornado and Tranquility followed. *Slow clap*

On the subject of the thestral language, it's pretty much my excuse for me to swear without actually swearing, although it will be used for things other than that. So, if I use the thestral language, I'll put a translation down in the author's notes.

So...

“Airote”- Pretty much the equivalent for shit, but not a direct translation, more along the lines of “terrible waste.” It can also mean “Deserted” The reasoning behind that translation is that in the past, before the tribes united, thestrals were a very, very poor society with very few of them left, due to a lack of resources given to them by the separated pony tribes. They had to be VERY careful with any resources. Any waste was a threat to their lives, so that grew into a swear term. Is used in shock, as humor (sometimes), and (very rarely due to its connotation) as an insult.

As normal, let me know if there are any errors and I will fix them. Thanks for reading!

~Pyrepinna