It was a windy day in Ponyville. Some clouds were being pushed around by the weather pegasi in preparation for a small snowing which was scheduled for the evening. The winter in Ponyville had been rather lackluster in snow compared to past years, and even though it brought quite a break to the small village’s inhabitants, they were now missing the soft white chill in the floors, the snowballs and the snowponies in whose creation they delighted so much.
Outside the Carrousel Boutique the Cutie Mark Crusaders looked up to the sky, watching the clouds coming in formation for the day’s snow fall. They were still very few and small clouds for a normal snow season. The three fillies let out a simultaneous sigh and trotted over, looking for something to do.
“How about mailponies cutie marks?” asked Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “It’s as good an idea as any other.”
“Ah’m all fer it,” said simply Apple Bloom.
The three then set off to look for the mail mare.
------
Sitting on the outside of her own cloud home, almost on the edge of the cloud, Rainbow Dash read the document that had been passed to her by Cloud Kicker. She gave the parchment back to her colleague and sighed deeply.
“So we’ve been using half the snow that was assigned to us this winter because the Cloudsdale Winter Factory made a mistake in their deliveries?”
“That’s pretty much it, yep!” answered Cloud, smiling to Dash, who was in not so much of a good mood. She trotted around the cloud, looking below. The white coating of snow down in the streets and roofs of Ponyville was reflected in her eyes.
“And they expect us to use up all the snow that was supposed to fall until now in the time that’s left now? After two and a half weeks?” Dash very much felt the need to throw something out of the cloud, but she had nothing at her reach right at the moment, so she contented herself with puffing.
“That’s it!”
“Well,there’s not much to do but to organize extraordinary snowing sessions for some days now. I’ll check up with you and the rest of the patrol in a while, Cloud. Just let me vent this out a little.”
“Aye aye, captain!”
Both pegasi flew out of the cloud. Dash sped along the Ponyvillian sky, extending fully her wings so as to gain as much resistance to air as she could, and flapped her wings strongly, delivering herself to a calming flight.
As she crossed the blue, endless sky, flying above the clouds where the sun shone with all its strength and its warmth filled her with an indescribable energy, she turned around in midair and performed a roll, descending vertiginously afterwards until she was about half the distance above the ground, at which point she shifted her body around, a highly difficult maneuver at such speeds without quite a lot of training behind it and shot herself upward once again, taking a small cloud apart as she crossed through it, dissolving it into white mist. Her rainbow colored trail followed behind her during the ascension.
She came to a halt and looked below her. At that height, quite a lot of the lands surrounding Ponyville could be seen. Canterlot, and Manehatten, and the Everfree and Whitetail Forests, and even a small bit of Fillydelphia in the distance could be glimpsed from above. She took on the scenery, which along with the low effort flying routine, allowed her to calm down.
She let herself fall down, feeling her mane being pushed back by the strong wind pushing against her. She finished her flight using the air currents as a sort of guiding rail to style a landing right in the center of Ponyville, in the park. Just a few moments after she had touched land, Cloud Kicker also came down, and alongside her came Airheart and Honeysuckle.
“Hiya, Dash. Impressive flight the one you just pulled up! I saw it all the way from here.” called Airheart, trotting next to her. At Dash’s other side, Cloud and Honeysuckle pulled up.
“So, what’s the job now, boss?” asked Honey in a bored, ‘I just want to get this done’ voice. Dash always found her brash, head butting attitude to be off-putting, even if Fluttershy once and again reminded her that they were pretty much similar.
“Well, gals. Turns out that we’re missing about half of the inches of snow that should have fallen in Ponyville until now, so we’re gonna have to distribute that amount in the days that are coming. We need to plan for that, make the report, present it to the Mayor, get it approved and carry it off.” Rainbow lifted her hoof, passing it through her mane as the other mares let out shrieks of disappointment.
“I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we’ve got to do this.”
The four weather ponies took off and went back to Dash’s cloud house, entering. They settled around a table in her living room. Cloud pulled out a piece of parchment and the four ponies looked down to it. It was a list that included all the days of winter up to that day and the precipitation numbers for each day. She then pulled out a blank piece of parchment and a quill, with which she wrote some other numbers and days. She finally got up and showed her partners.
“This is what we would need to cover the difference in snow levels for the next few days.”
Rainbow, Air and Honey nodded, the former already formulating how would they divide the work for the next few days.
“Well then, Cloud, get out another parchment. We’re gonna prepare that report now.”
Rainbow walked into Town Hall and sat down in the waiting room. How boring. She pulled out her copy of Daring Do and the Silver Manticore and continued reading. She lost herself in the world of the book, enjoying as Daring made just another brilliant escape in the nick of time.
“Miss Dash. Miss Dash... MISS DASH!”
Dash jerked, shutting the book with a thud and looking up. The Mayor was looking down to her, her eyebrows slightly lifted. She lowered them quickly, though, and smiled to her.
“Good to have your attention now, Miss Dash. Now, what was your appointment with me about?”
“Oh, yes, Mayor. Well, you see. You’ve noticed how little snow we’ve had these last few days?”
The mayor nodded, without taking her eyes off of her; Rainbow Dash moved nervously in her chair, with all the discomfort the pegasus thought was possible to feel. Celestia help me...
“Well, it turns out the Cloudsdale Factory did have a... small slip in their deliveries. They just gave us our alloted snow yesterday and now we’ve gotta meet the quota or there’s a lot of snow that’ll just go to waste...” She delivered the document to the bureaucratic pony, who read it from beginning to end.
“And how come you didn’t pay any heed to this until it was informed to you?” The mayor looked at Dash from above her glasses. She would never had guessed the old mare could have such a penetrant gaze. She chuckled weakly.
“Well, mayor, it’s such a routine job.. And besides nopony had complained. What was I supposed to do?”
“Never mind, Miss Dash. Just see that this is carried off to its end, and that it doesn’t happen again. You’ve got to inform the population of the change for the next coming days, as well.”
“But... but...” She was at a loss for words.
“No buts, Miss Dash. You’re the weather captain, after all. Well, I desire success to you. Goodbye.”
The mayor retreated back into her office. Dash … dashed out of the hall, puffing and wheezing. She basked on the sunlight once she was outside, letting it warm her body.
“You just didn’t want to face any of that, you old evil mare...”
The next day, Twilight Sparkle woke up. She trotted out of her bedroom, washed herself and climbed up to the small observatory. The weather seemed just like it had been all of the other days. She had never seen such a restrained winter before. She considered talking to Dash about it. Going downstairs again, she met with Spike in the kitchen.
“Hey, Twilight, good morning. Look, you should check this out. It’s being given by the weather ponies.” He gave her a pamphlet. She read it. Her expression turned increasingly sourer as she scanned through it.
“Mistake in the Snow factory.... half the inches of snow …. abundant snow falling in the days to come...”
She dropped the pamphlet in the table. Her face was a mixture of shock and horror.
“Spike, Ponyville is going to be flooded with snow!”
