Starhoof Valley

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Ma'am it's for your own safe-"

"Where was THIS notice on the evening news last night?!"

"It was issued a couple of hours ago, the temperatures are just too-"

"UGH!!! I do NOT have time for this!!!"

Crystalline turned, quickly galloping away from the guard who had just (very irritatingly might she add) scolded her about trying to fly in a 'Flying Restricted Time Slot', and dashing for the nearest passenger chariot depot. Apparently, sometime in the wee hours of the morning the weather team declared Cloudsdale to be in a state of 'unsafe weather conditions'. The temperature it seemed was getting colder and colder by the minute, a scheduled 'record low' on the agenda for this year's Winter weather. This made it particularly dangerous for most Pegasai who weren't equipped with the weather teams' Specialized Environment Gear and Apparatus (Or S.E.G.A. as they started to call it, though Crystalline was pretty sure the corporation was staring down the barrel of some legal trouble on that one for some reason) to be flying, as the cold could result in locking up joints, stiff wings, or even a dreaded case of Featherbite.

Whatever reason it was that they could have instilled the restriction, it wasn't a good enough one for Crystalline as she hadn't exactly planned on not being able to just fly directly up to the factory. The CPP was located on Tier Eight of Cloudsdale, two below the top layer where the corporation sat along with all the other business headquarter buildings, with Crystalline herself living on Tier Three. It took around twenty minutes or so on a good day with pleasant updrafts to navigate the tiers of the city to her work, and that was with air traffic included. Public transit for unicorns and earth ponies however, or wounded or otherwise grounded Pegasai wasn't quite as forgiving. It doubled the amount of time it took to get pretty much anywhere, and you could easily triple or quadruple that if you ran into active school zones or rush hour flying.

She was hoping it was just the double. She could still make it on time if that was the case. Rounding the corner of her building she could see the chariot stop come into view...and saw that it was packed with at least thirty other ponies. Some were sitting on the bench, some in front of it, but most others were standing around it, checking watches or straightening ties. "Cock suck fuck-a-duck." Crystalline swore, her gallop quickly slowing into a light trot and then a walk when she saw how cramped the depot was. The chariot could only fit about twenty or so ponies at a time, and there was at least a ten to twenty minute wait time between each one if the routes were running smoothly. They weren't designed to hold so many ponies based on the extreme ratio of the population when it came to Pegasai versus the other two races, and even if she could make it to the other depot there was little to no chance that it wouldn't have been as crowded as this one.

Walking up to one of the business-dressed Pegasus colts she gave him a light tap on his side to garner his attention. He turned his head, raising an eyebrow as Crystalline motioned her head towards the road sign with the picture of a chariot on it. "Lemmie guess...you didn't get the 'No-Fly' announcement either?" She said, her question turning the heads of a couple of curious ponies before most of them turned away.

"Yeah pretty much," The colt said with an affirmative nod "Heard it on the horn already, apparently every stop from Tier One all the way to Tier Five is like this," He shook his head, letting out an aggravated sigh "Weather team totally dropped the fucking ball on this one." Yeah...she figured the congestion was pretty bad. Five tiers though? Somepony on the weather board was getting drawn and de-feathered today over this. "I heard most businesses on the higher tiers are trying to compensate so their workers don't get pegged with tardies, so I guess that helps."

Crystalline's lips pulled back into a tight grimace. There was no way she was getting a pardon for this. She had a hoof in making the weather, so she was sure one of her supervisors was going to give her the whole 'Didn't you get the memo?' routine. Just the thought of it made her annoyed and anxious.

Several ears perked up, heads rising up and turning as the sound of a creaking chariot made its way to their ears. Peering over some of the crowd, she could see the six-horse-power chariot rolling across the cloud road towards them. She quickly took her spot and line, and as she predicted, the damn transit couldn't hold any of them. She sighed as she dropped to her haunches, the chariot closing up and rolling away.

It was another boring ten minutes before a burst of feedback made many ponies cover their ears in instinct, voices of protest crying out as an announcement was being made from the emergency PA system. The PA system was a communications platform that ran speakers all the way across Cloudsdale and was run from the news station on Tier Nine. It was mostly used to declare quick changes of weather patterns or the like to keep the population informed if the weather team goofed it...and judging by the announcement, they sure did goof it bad.

"Attention Cloudsdale, we're experiencing a heavy slowdown of traffic in Tier Six due to an accident and a large amount of snow discharge, and as such chariot times are expected to be delayed. Please bear with us as we try and-"

The rest of the announcement was completely engulfed in the angry outcry of the crowd around her, with one colt's voice roaring out over the others that carried the words "SUCK MY BALLS!" through the air. Crystalline merely bowed her head, pressing a hoof to her face as she shook her head.

===Three Hours Later===

"What do you MEAN you had no idea about the announcement?!" Shouted (Practically shrieked...) Clear Blue, one of Crystalline Dancer's two supervisors. The mare was as loud as her mane, done up in a eye-bleeding hot pink color that did absolutely nothing to compliment her chocolate brown fur.

"I mean that I didn't hear it! There was no notice, no warning, nothing!" Crystalline retorted, punching in for her shift in the time clock with a 'KER-CHUNK' of the machine. She placed the time card in the 'in' slot with her name taped next to it, turning to get another few sucker punches in from the irritated pegasus.

"Didn't you-"

Don't say it.

"-get the-"

Please, don't say it. Oh my stars.

"MEMO?!"

"NO I DIDN'T THE SUN-DAMNED MEMO!" Crystalline snapped, throwing her hooves up in the air "Who expects a memo at five o'clock in the morning?! I didn't get a p-mail notification, I didn't get a physical copy, I didn't get diddily daddily squat!"

Clear Blue shook her head, pointing towards the hall doors that lead to the main plant as she called after Crystalline who was now making her way towards the factor floor "You're practically a part of the weather team Crys, you don't get to use those kinds of excuses!" After a few moments of not getting response, Blue shouted after her "I can hear you rolling your eyes!!!!"

Rolling her eyes a second time, Crystalline pushed her way through the double doors and into the 'ready room'. The ready room was the staging ground for incoming employees to stash belongings in their lockers, tie their manes up, sanitize, and all the other menial garbage the corporation made them go through to prepare for work. Why anyone needed to sanitize for a job that consisted of simply packing clouds into a box was a mystery that was beyond her scope of guessing or reasoning. Throwing her purse in one of the lockers, she let out a heaving sigh and started to put her mane up. Even though she had gotten to the factory hours late, she could tell the day was still going to be long as hell.

~~~

'WWWWHHRRRR....thud thud, shuffle......WWWHHHHRRRR.....TWHUNK'

Wait for the box...pack the box...push the box...

One, after another, after another, after another.

Crystalline watched with her eyes only as the next box wheeled in front of her on the conveyor belt. She stopped it with a meek pat of her right hoof, slowly reaching over to grab a tuft of white cloud with her left out of a secondary belt that ran just under the one before her across the floor. She placed the tuft within the box, pressing it down a few times before closing the flaps of the box and gently nudging it out of the way and onwards down the belt towards the cloud crusher which was a large hydraulic press that stamped the boxes with a large seal bearing the corporation's logo on it.

She huffed loudly, rinsing and repeating the process of stopping, packing, and pushing the boxes down the line. "Sun above I could really use another cup of coffee..." She whimpered softly, pressing another tuft of cloud within the empty box before her and pushing it down the lane. She swayed slightly, fighting back the urge to close her eyes as yet another empty box presented itself before her. She had to admit, her job was easy...but in the most agonizing way possible. Nothing could be more boring than this, of that she was sure. She could have gotten herself some coffee from the break room, but the garbage they brewed in that pot was more akin to radioactive sludge that had reached sentience and was begging to die than what could pass as actual coffee.

Her eyes fluttered a moment, nearly closing fully before a sneeze jolted her awake. She jumped as the voice of the mare at the station behind her whined softly "Oh dammit...now I need to go sanitize again..." She looked over her shoulder as the mare raised a hoof and shouted "Supervisor! Sanitation!", causing in turn for Crystalline to feel a little more 'caffeinated' now that attention was getting drawn to them. If any of the floor observers caught her dozing off she'd be in for it for the write up haul for sure. One of the supervisors stopped on one of the catwalks lining the far wall and tipped his hard hat to her, clearing her to go. Crystalline listened as her hooffalls retreated towards the ready room, leaving her once more alone with her work.

Even with the small distraction, it wasn't long before fatigue once more weighed heavily on the back of her brain. She muttered something under her breath, another box getting packed and sent on its way. Her thoughts roamed as they usually did, going over to-do lists and lists of upcoming bills and company events she needed to pay and attend. She often found herself wondering how she even ended up in this mess in the first place. She tried going to school, but she just couldn't manage it with her finances. She wouldn't dare ask her parents either, since they weren't exactly that well off either. Vinyl often offered to help pay her way but the amount of guilt she felt in mooching off her sister was too much for her to bear. Vinyl's money was Vinyl's...she earned it, she ought to keep it.

Still, with school not an option she had considered the Equestrian Guard but...the recruiters all made her nervous. She had heard too many stories from her friends who were already in about the thick slab of meaty lies they plopped in front of you to try and get you to sign up. It was enough to make her skin crawl, and thus was also scratched through as an option. Where did that leave her then? Her parents couldn't realistically afford to keep paying for her and there weren't any stable job positions in Ponyville to help pay for room and board for the amount she'd need to contribute. Besides...she was a mare in her early twenties, which was a bit old for their race to still be living with mommy and daddy. They were like the gryphons in that regards: once you left the nest, you seldom went back.

She hadn't really any major life goals though. No big dreams, no aspirations or drive. She was just...there. The thought of such a dead end life was something that had kept her up for many nights, unable to fall asleep due to the agonizing 'what ifs' that kept poking her in the nerve center of her brain. Who was she going to be? What was she going to do? Was she going to be a cloud-packer for the rest of her life? It was these questions that haunted her each and every day of her life since her move to Cloudsdale, the only thing stronger being the absolute unshakable feeling that she was about to pass out at any second.

She swayed to and fro, mumbling incoherent words at this point as the lack of decent sleep and cramming in sixty hours this week finally took their toll. Her head tilted back suddenly as she leaned backwards, a startled snort escaping her as she quickly tried to compensate and tilted back forward. Her face hit the soft plush of a gentle cloud, her eyes fluttering shut as a feeling of bliss overtook her. Ah, at last....a comfortable pillow worthy of her head. She smiled slightly, her body feeling like it was flying as the gentle headrest started to carry her far away towards a land of dreams. Though her head felt weightless, her body seemed so heavy, as if it was weighing her down, even dragging her across an unseen floor.

There was a noise, a low one, but a noise none the less. She couldn't really pinpoint what it was exactly, but it sounded so familiar. A light thudding gently reached her ears, and along with it she could hear something more akin to a running river. The oddest part overall...was that all the noises were getting progressively louder. Confusion swam through her mind. What was with all the noise? If this was the land of dreams, shouldn't it have been more peaceful? Relaxing even? She could have sworn that the noises she was hearing were starting to sound like...voices. But whose were they? What did they want?

"CR...CER!!!!" she heard, loud but soft at the same time. What were they on about? Couldn't they tell she was trying to sleep? "STOP THE.....SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT IT..." Her brow furrowed as she let out a heavy grunt of disapproval. Seriously, who the hell was doing all the damn shou-

Kerthunk...kerthunk...kerthunk....KERTHUNK!!!!

"CRYSTALLINE WATCH OUT! OH MY GODS!!!!"

Crystalline let out a shrieking gasp as something firm crashed into her, her vision going nuts as she felt her head hit the solid floor of the factory and a thunderous slam of the hydraulic press ring through her ears. Her heart thudded a mile a minute, her breath coming out in quick, shallow pants as her eyes darted about this way and that. She saw movement everywhere, an alarm went off in her ears, voices crammed their way into her brain. A pair of hooves shook her as a low ringing made itself known as the backdrop amongst the other sounds.

Her eyes finally settled on the pony shaking her, tears spilling from the frantic-looking Pegasus as she shouted her name at her, tapping her cheek with a hoof. "CD! What the hell?!?! Are you ok!? Speak to me!!!"

"W...eather...Vane?" She croaked, her eyes still wide and her wings twitching like mad. The emerald coated, yellow-maned mare in question pulled her into a tight hug, sobbing as Crystalline's eyes wandered over to the press. The box she had packed was sitting just past the press, all that was left of it smashed into a flat pancake. "D-d-did I...did I a-almost...oh my fuck..."

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

This time, sleep didn't take 'no' for an answer.