Pegasus Device: Reckoning

It was a strange feeling. She had felt the effects of unicorn magic before, but this wasn’t quite the same. It wasn’t some tingly pressure or strange buzz of the air around an object like she remembered. It was as if it was her own magic, flavoured differently from all others. She felt like her flesh had been replaced with carbonated water.

When Contrail had activated her amulet, she experienced teleportation for the first time in her life. There was a certain ‘freeness’ about it all, being thrust out of the three physical dimensions she was so used to living in. It wasn’t as if she had been ripped out of the world, but more of a sliding, like when you are about to fall asleep after an incredibly tough day and feel as if your bed has become void. And just as if that was what she was experiencing, she jolted at the disorientation, and found herself back in the comfortable embrace of the x-y-z axes.

Cloud Cover had been far too distracted to remember how the amulet was supposed to be used. Right before the gemstone cracked and spilled its mystical contents into her heart, all her mental faculties had been taken up by trying to figure out who--and what--had saved her in the first place. She missed out on high school biology as well, but she was pretty certain a pony sliced up like an accordion would not be capable of standing up, nevermind holding her steady against the efforts of two stallions with a single hoof. Why had that… thing bothered to intervene in the first place? And what was with the sea of children that surrounded them?

No, there was far too much that she had been thinking of, so she did not consciously provide a destination for the magic when she slipped out of existence. But then--in what must have been a millionth of a second--when she found herself in a universe devoid of stars and depth, a small, lilac filly deep within the corridors of her psyche called out, wanting to go home.

And now she was home.

She landed--or appeared--on her bed, still on her back, still filthy and twitchy and shocked. She blinked, and found a familiar ceiling returning her gaze. The window blinds were open, yet it was dark in her apartment. She tested a leg and found she could move it fairly normally, though it was still weak. She repeated it for the other three, and then risked rolling over on to her side to check the alarm clock.

It was five-thirty in the morning. In about half an hour, Celestia’s burden would lift past the edge of the Meganimbus, basking the city in its majestic light. Cloud Cover squinted. The sun had not yet risen above Cloudsdale, but it would have crossed the true horizon by now and started to brighten the sky. Yet, her room was just as dark as midnight.

She rolled out of her bed, silently hoping that she had simply had one hell of a nightmare, while knowing otherwise. She pulled Gentle’s ID tag and the steel necklace that remained from the amulet off her neck, set them on her dresser, and felt them with a hoof.

Solid. Real.

She walked forward down the hall, legs shaking yet functional now, and slipped into her bathroom to inspect herself in the mirror. If she hadn’t felt so awful, she would have laughed at just how terrible she looked. She could hardly recognize herself with her mane matted and flat, her coat glistening with sweat and oil, her eyes red and sunken into blackened sockets. A particular darkness on her coat that did not reflect in the bathroom light caught her eye, and she reared up onto her hindlegs, and then retched.

Her entire belly, from her stomach to her groin, was stained with dried, blackened blood. She grimaced and quickly patted herself down, trying to find any sort of gash or misteleported chunk, and realized it had not come from her. She dropped from the air onto her flank and held her head in her hooves.

They would notice she was missing soon. The guards would calm down or be found and the Corporation would know she hadn’t died yet, and they would be coming for her. For sure they would check her home, likely before anyplace else. She knew she had very little time to figure out a plan and leave, and that it must be her first priority to do so.

Instead, she stood up and turned the shower handle to the hottest it would go, dropped the CWC saddlebag onto the floor, and sat down in the quickly-heating rain.

Cloud Cover made no noise and no movement, simply letting the steaming water drench her fully, cutting through the buildup of grease on her body. She let the heat singe her skin, let it radiate deep within her, let it warm her to her bones.

After ten minutes, she stood up and grabbed her shampoo and started lathering it into her short mane, working it down to her scalp, pressing harder than she needed to with her hooves. She could feel the dirt start to lift off of her, and continued massaging the shampoo for far longer than was necessary, rhythmically rubbing her head and neck with it. After another ten minutes, she dropped her hooves and leaned forward into the scalding shower and rinsed.

Her skin burned again, but as the ick was carried away from her with the shampoo, she felt a weight far greater than the dirt that had been in her mane lift away. She ran her hooves through her hair once, getting every last ounce of the now-gray shampoo out, before sitting back out of the spray of water.

She grabbed her bottle of oat-infused coat wash next and squirted almost half the container into her hoof. She smashed the glob of soap against her chest and started her same methodical massaging movements as before, then reached lower down her body after a full minute of scrubbing, and repeated this ritual until she was standing, holding herself up by the shower curtain bar, rubbing one rear hoof on the other hindleg. Still she did not speak, or make any noise at all, or even really blink. Her face was neutral, giving only a thousand-yard stare off into the small bathroom fan as she worked.

With her whole body sudsy and bubbly, she dropped back to all fours and moved again into the water, turning her dead eyes towards the drain. She watched as the water turned white with foam, and then grey, and then red, and then black. She turned around, leaning against the surround to let the water get at her undercarriage, looking away from the seemingly endless amount of blood as it slowly drained from her fur.

It was only when the water started to change from radioactive to merely hot that she finally looked back and inspected herself fully. Her coat shone beautifully, with the dusty-lilac colour almost glowing in its wet splendor. She turned the rapidly-cooling shower off and stood still while the excess moisture in her fur started to drain.

She listened to herself drip, and did nothing else.

When the tiny ‘plink’s of water on the shower floor slowed enough to her satisfaction, she bent down, spread her wings, and shook, flinging even more water against the shower. She flicked her feathers rapidly, almost subconsciously, fluffing them out and stretching the muscles.

Finally, she stepped out of the shower, towelled off her mane, and checked herself in the mirror.

She looked much more now like she remembered herself normally looking like, but at the same time she didn’t seem to recognize the eyes staring back at her from the mirror. She tried on a smile, and took it off in disgust.

“Right,” she said, breaking the silence, “I suppose I should go.” She wasn’t sure who she was speaking to, or if she was simply trying to convince herself. She hadn’t wanted to leave her world behind when the guards were dragging her to the Pegasus Device. She didn’t want to leave her world behind now, either. She knew though that she had to choose between the two options, and the one which didn’t involve her body being finely diced was by far the more tempting choice.

Listening to the silence of her apartment one more time, she stepped out of the bathroom and looked around, paranoid.

There was no pony there, and she sighed happily.

Cloud Cover grabbed a few things; her second-favorite notepad and pencil, every bit of non-perishable or long-lasting food she could get to fit, and an old hoodie from Cloudsdale at Seven, and tucked them all into the stolen saddlebag alongside the Reckoning files. She headed for the door and then stopped, stepped quickly into the bathroom, and came out with her favorite brush; a gift from Pop Screen from when she first went on camera. She tucked this into the bag as well and made for the door again before she froze in place.

She looked back to the window, and saw it was still dark outside.

She looked to the alarm clock, and found it was now six-thirty.

Cloudsdale did not get storms, nor dim foggy days.

Where is the sun?

She raced outside now, not even bothering to close her door behind her. She skidded down the hallway to the apartment exit and slammed it open, tumbling outside. She made ten steps out into the plaza outside her home and suddenly lost all the recently-regained control in her legs. She dropped to her haunches and looked slackjaw out to the west, as Gentle’s words rang softly through the back of her mind.

...So I could break you.

Her eye twitched ever so slightly.

Off in the distance, straight west from Cloud Cover, past the edge of the Meganimbus, was a strange shimmering rainbow, like an oil slick in the air. Behind it, massive, tumultuous thunderclouds--larger than the Meganimbus--reached halfway from the troposphere to the ground. They battered this strange pearlescent shimmer, with lightning clearly striking it a dozen times a minute for as far as Cloud Cover could see from her vantage point.

...So I could break you.

Her legs, though seated, started to shake.

She followed the gleaming wall southwards and caught the peculiar sight of a solitary cloud with an industrial tower upon it. She recognized it as one of the many Auxiliary Factories that had been shipped off to every corner of the world while she had grown up. At its top, a ray of rotating rainbow beamed up, over her, and behind. She twisted around slowly as her face followed the beam to its destination; the peak of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation.

….So I could break you.

Tears started to form in her eyes.

The rainbow did not stop there, however. The dark shadow of the Rainbow Factory was made even more noticeable in the skyline by the connection of 19 other beams, and where they all met at the roof was so bright it scarred Cloud Cover’s retina when she looked at it directly. From there, a massive pillar of multiplicitous colours reached to the sky right above, where it collided with some arbitrary atmospheric border and spread out around it, turning the entire sky into that same oil-slick sheen, all the way to the mirage-like barriers so many miles away.

...So I could break you.

Her mind raced. Gentle had told the truth. She was too late. She didn’t save anyone. The world was being destroyed. There was no one to stop it. There was no way to stop it. She had been a pawn all along. All her friends and contacts from other towns, other cities, other countries, would be consumed by the Reckoning. Cloudsdale was all that remained of the world, and she had been exiled.

As the sun finally broke above the sieging storms, so too did Cloud Cover.

It was night now, and Stormy Night was enjoying the strange peacefulness of the Safe Zone. Perfectly mild, early autumn weather, he thought as he paced in the darkness, as it should be.

He ached slightly less now. It had been about twenty-four hours since he had blacked out, broken but alive, on the dry side of the wall. Pegasi medical technology was--like most other forms of Pegasi technology--very advanced, but it was the two Unicorns who had raced from the town to his side that had done the most work in patching him up. They were not the town’s best healers; that distinction had gone, unfortunately, to one who also knew a flight spell. He breathed deeply, enjoying the scent of the still-damp grass beneath his hooves, and enjoyed the fact that he could breath too.

The medics of the Thirteenth Primary had confirmed that his chest and back muscles were mended, and the Unicorns had been promised extra rations for a month for their efforts. Stormy Night smiled, thinking of his colonel. Those Unicorns had broken past the demarcation line set up and ran right next to the equipment keeping the air wall online. Two guards from a different squadron had tried to stop them, but when they saw the unicorn’s magic working on the lump of recoiled muscle that had been his left pectoral, let them be.

Had it been any other Primary, their commander would have thanked them and then had them incinerated for insubordination. But not Colonel Sundown. He had always been fine with his squadrons breaking the rules, disobeying the orders, so long as they ended up being right.

I wonder who determines what ‘right’ is, though, he mused, turning the corner of the fence he had been patrolling.

He found that the smallest, tiniest part of him was upset that he had been healed and sent back to work so soon. Sure, he couldn’t fly right now, especially not with his wings wrapped tightly in binding gauze, but he wasn’t really in any pain. A week of physiotherapy and they would be strong enough for him to get back to--

--To what? There wasn’t really a need for all the squadrons of all the Primaries to maintain the Safe Zone’s weather. Tartarus, Stormy thought, Cloudsdale already had its own dispatch of weather ponies for this entire area. He did remember some talk of the Primaries being absorbed into the Department of Lightning Production, though what Director Sapphire needed them for he had no idea. There must have been some sort of plan. It wasn’t in the Corporation’s modus operandi to not have a plan for any and every possible outcome. Whatever it was, he knew somewhere it was in writing.

He continued on walking, returning to his earlier musing about the healing. He had temporarily lost his ability to fly, but by all other accounts he was strong and healthy. Colonel Sundown, ever the pragmatist, had found him capable of working, but tried to offset Stormy’s disappointment by promising him some shiny medal and a lovely ceremony with Executive Director Foresight.

There were a lot of things that had happened in a very short amount of time, but that was the one that confused Stormy Night the most. Where was Director Gentle? Now, by far, did not seem the time for a management change. But he was a mechanic and they were the leaders, and he did not question it beyond confirming he had heard right. There must have been a reason, it must have been planned, and she must have known of it. He looked up at the rainbow ray where it met the sky, knowing that at its base was Headquarters, and within it were all the answers.

All would be explained tomorrow, he was told. Currently the colonels were all in a meeting, preparing the debrief for all the workers and the bulletin for all the citizens. Stormy smiled at the orderliness of Pegasi. In the course of thirty-six hours, the entire planet had completely changed, yet he had not heard of a single incident in the City proper. They just accepted that what was done must have been done. Good little Pegasi, he thought, chuckling aloud. It hadn’t taken much to train him to take orders. Maybe it’s a genetic thing?

He reached the gate of the fence and unlocked the latch, stepping in through the only portal past stakes and barbed wire. An electrified barrier would be installed soon, but for now the old fashioned defensive measures would have to do. He cocked his head to his left and turned on the flashlight attached to his vest.

Yes, he had been broken, and only partly fixed, but even a broken Pegasus can patrol the stockpiles, Sundown had figured. It was busy-work; an unneeded public-relations sort of job for him to be able to say that not only had he saved everyone’s lives, but he had been right back to work the next day, and all without actually overextending himself or contributing. He could heal, and no pony would be upset that he got to relax in a stiff hospital bed.

And I still don’t need to do anything except work the night shift. He smiled.

In the darkness, behind a long and tarped bundle of all the non-perishable foods they had looted, there was a scuffle, and Stormy Night internally swore.

Well, maybe I have to do something. I hope this is a pigeon or something.

He walked quietly now, trying his best to not make any noise with his hooves on the packed farmland the depot had been set upon. He rounded the corner casually, figuring none of the earth ponies or unicorns could have gotten past the barriers, crude as they may be. They had no reason to, either. The Corporation had provided generous rations for the night to the town, easing them into the idea of limited food intake. Nothing personal had been taken from any of the houses, save for a few spell books with the banned flight and cloudwalk instructions, anyways.

He stopped, seeing in the dark, in the beam of his weak flashlight, the silhouette of a cloaked pony with their head tucked under the tarp, with some loose satchels of oats by its hooves.

“Halt!” He called, and then tapped his radio. He wouldn’t be able to chase after them if they fled, but so long as he kept his light on them, other guards on the night shift could grab them. “Patrol to Command,” he started.

The pony jumped back, and wings spread out from its back in shock. Their hood fell back, revealing lilac fur and a cool teal mane.

A Pegasus…? Stormy Night tilted his head and his left eye twitched once in confusion. Overtop the hooded cloak was also an old Corporation Saddlebag. What was a pegasus from the city, an old employee perhaps, doing all the way out here, rummaging through the stockpiles? It wasn’t like access to food had changed in the City.

“Command to Patrol, something wrong?”

“Please, no, no no no, for the love of Luna, I’m sorry, I’ll leave, don’t tell them,” the mare whispered desperately, grovelling and inching backwards from Stormy.

“...No Command, just looking for a time update.”

The mare stared at him incredulously, but he whispered back at her sharply, “Don’t you dare move.”

“Quarter past midnight, Patrol. Three hours left on your shift. And get a watch.”

“Yes Command,” he replied, and then tapped the radio off. “Come here, right now.” He glared at the Pegasus in front of him. What in Luna’s name was she doing, stealing Corporation goods?

The mare looked around cautiously before standing up to a slight cower and approaching Stormy Night. She sat down where he had pointed, and stared at the ground. Despite the layers she had on, she was shaking, and Stormy Night glanced over his back before placing a forehoof on her shoulder. She jumped, but then settled, and after a minute, the shaking stopped.

“Who are you?” He spoke less forcefully now. Something felt entirely wrong about this whole exchange, and from his best guess the mare needed compassion more than anything. Addressing her transgression could wait another minute.

Cloud Cover sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes, and then looked up to meet Stormy Night’s own. Stormy was shocked; her eyes were bloodshot and bruised, and her expression was one of grief and devastation.

“What happened to you?” he asked, even softer.

New tears spilled from her eyes, and she opened her mouth to speak only for the noises to catch in her throat, and she quietly wept instead. Stormy Night let her cry for a minute, before tapping his hoof on her shoulder.

“Listen, I need you to answer me, or I need to report this, because I can’t stand here all night, and I can’t let you go until I know what’s going on.”

“I couldn’t save them.”

What? Stormy thought. “Save who?” he said.

“Everyone. I tried, tried to find out about… what Gentle was doing… and why, and… I tried to help, and I failed, and now they’re all dead.”

Stormy didn’t need to know who she was talking about. He glanced over his shoulder at the gleaming rainbow, clearly visible against the dark of night now. Beyond it, the intensity of the storm had subsided with the cooling night, but that meant nothing. In a minute it could change to hellfire. He looked back at the mare.

“I’ve lost some friends too,” he said sincerely. “Why don’t you come with me, I’ll get you some hot tea, the Corporation has some great therapists-”

“NO!” The interjection spooked him backwards, and Cloud Cover shook her head violently. “No. They hate me. I need to leave, I need to… I can’t let her be right.” She raised her head and locked eyes with the stallion, and beyond all the fear and grief Stormy Night could see a rigid determination. He blinked.

“Hey, haven’t I seen you on T.V?”

“I can’t let her be right. I can’t have been too late. I have to save them. There must be… there must be some ponies still out there. I have to check.”

“Out, what, out there?” Stormy Night gestured to the rainfall beyond the wind generators. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll die in a day, at most. It can’t be survived.”

“Then I’ll die knowing I tried to help.” She said this, and Stormy Night could not be sure if she was trying to convince him or herself. Regardless of the intended target, though, it had worked.

He looked up, behind her, to the blackness in the sky that was Cloudsdale. And then he returned his gaze to Cloud Cover. He had had many moral fights over the last few days, and each time he had looked to his home to reassure himself that what he did was right. He abandoned his old friends and left them for dead for the Flock. He rounded up his fellow ponies and helped force them into slavery for the Flock. And now, he was supposed to report this crazed mare for reconditioning for the Flock.

But what is the Flock if not for its ponies? It’s not some coliseum in the sky, not some expanse of clouds that hung above a prairie, never moving. It was the Pegasi who lived within it.

He thought of what he had been a part of, and what he was going to continue to be a part of. He was home, now, but what is home if there is nowhere else? And why was it always for the Flock? Were they not all Equine creatures?

He stared into her gold eyes still. The resolute pony, hidden somewhere behind the sobs, was becoming more apparent.

“...Two miles to the north, there is a metal tube cocked out of the ground about two hundred metres back from the wall. It’s an access tunnel to some chaos generators, and will get you past the wall without you being sandblasted to death.” Why am I telling her this? Who is this mare? “Take no more than you can carry in your saddle bag, and never stop for too long.” She’s just going to die of exposure in a couple hours. “If I see you again, I will report you immediately. Go.”

Cloud Cover nodded, her muzzle stiffening and brows firming at Stormy Night’s orders. She quickly grabbed the few bags of oats she had left on the floor, and then in the darkness of night took off noiselessly. Stormy Night watched her reach the air walls and then dive low to the ground, bobbing and weaving over various massive cables and parts. With her dark cloak, and in the limited light, he quickly lost sight of her.

He left the compound and double checked the lock, continuing on his patrol. His mind was not with him, wondering instead only about what had happened. His heart was pounding hard in his chest, a constant reminder that he had gone against training and orders and expectations. He looked up again to Cloudsdale, and then back down again. It didn’t quite feel like home.

It could be described as nothing short of a miracle how the structure had survived.

Picked up by a tornado, flung a hundred miles from its foundation through falling bricks of ice and spiderwebs of lightning strikes, only to be placed down somewhat gently--if upside down--in the middle of a small clearing in the woods.

It wasn’t necessarily clear if the gap in the trees had existed before the house had been placed there, or if it was just one more symptom of the hurricanes that had ripped through the valley over the past two weeks, but regardless, there it rested, mostly intact save for a small amount of missing straw roof and some window panes.

Cloud Cover smiled when she reached the edge of the forest and spotted the house. The shade of the canopy had helped protect her somewhat from the intense sun that beat down relentlessly over her, and the building would provide adequate safety from the burning rays.

She wasn’t sure if she disliked the hot days less than the cold ones, but she always appreciated a dry road instead of a muddy slog, and so had either resigned to or accepted the sweltering heat as her new level of ‘alright’ weather. It didn’t matter so much, anyways; come nightfall, the dip in temperature would stir up some new form of hell for her to somehow navigate through to her next checkpoint. She didn’t worry about where she was going though, only how she would get there; so far, her guide had been correct every time.

She whispered a soft thank you to the sky, as she had done each time the location in her dreams had turned out to be real. An abandoned caravan near the gorge. A tucked-away cave in the foothills. A fox den, large enough to crawl into for the night. An upside down house, hidden in the trees.

She risked a glance skyward to check for any possible clouds or dust storms that might lessen the sun’s energy, but knew before she had checked that there wouldn’t be any. She lifted her hood over her ears and aimed at the house, and then flew as fast as she could.

It felt like stepping into an oven, and the exertion of beating her wings in the stifling heat only made things worse. It wasn’t far, though, and she dived and slid under the straw roof, and then climbed through the broken part to the still-hot but much more livable shade within.

Her first night after leaving Cloudsdale had been the worst night. She had left in a rainstorm, which quickly became a snowstorm, which then became a blizzard. Going was slow as she had tucked her wings into her cloak to keep them from leaking body heat. She had picked the general direction of the nearest town she could remember that wasn’t in the ‘Safe Zone’, but in the white-out that fast came upon her she knew she was likely headed nowhere near it. When the snow finally settled and the clouds finally parted, and with nothing but moonlight to guide her way through an ocean of ice, she realized she could go no further. She was quite proud of how she had survived that sub-zero night, digging a tunnel into a packed snow drift, deep enough that the air could not steal away her body heat, and small enough it would reflect said warmth. As comfortable as she could be, and as exhausted as she was, she closed her eyes and hoped it would not be for the last time.

And she dreamed.

She did not dream her usual nightmare of fleeing through twisting corridors of metal and rust, but of a quiet, hilled field at night, with a full moon lighting all the posies and daisies and grass in wonderful silver shades. Within that field a village shimmered into existence, and she was picked up gently and brought forward through the village to a single house. She was placed down, and the door was opened, and she walked forward to find a trapdoor open in the centre of the room. She looked down the trapdoor, and found there was another moon within, and then woke.

Most nights of Cloud Cover’s life, her dreams did not stay with her. She hardly even remembered the nightmares any more, knowing she had dreamt them only because she woke up with damp fur and aching heart. And so, it had surprised her when she remembered this one particularly well--so well, in fact, that she knew exactly where the village was, and where the house would be.

She crawled out of her hole and found the world to be just as uniformly caked in snow as it was when she had slept. There was a cloudless sky that seemed to have let all the warmth from the world escape into space overnight, but the sun had risen and its heat on Cloud Cover’s face was enough for her to keep hope. In the distance, she could see thick, anvil-shaped clouds forming, but they were behind her, away from where she needed to go.

Wasting no time, she had left, flying over depths of snow she would have drowned in, crawling under fallen trees, always moving in a straight line no matter what she had to do to keep it that way. She feared if she turned for even a moment, the surety of her oneiric directions would leave her and she would be lost again, and so even if she had to take her wings out of her cloak to flutter above an outcrop of rocks, she had done so.

And when the sun had set and the moon had started to rise, and the rain had almost caught up with her, she found herself at the edge of a town she had never seen before yet recognized all the same. She did not look for survivors; she knew there was none. She did not look to see how they died or vanished; she would join them if she did. She simply ran down the roads until she stopped in front of the house she had seen last night. Within it, there was the trapdoor; and within that, shelter.

She dropped down and did not find a moon as she had in her dream, but found instead jars of applesauce, bags of expensive oats, matches, candles, and a small hearth with dry tinder already set up within. She lit the matches and started the fire, and once she was satisfied the smoke was indeed being taken up and out by the chimney, she ate some of her prize and swapped out her cheap goods for the luxury brand ones.

She slept well that night by the fire, grateful for the gift and towards whomever had shown it to her. She did not question why, nor who had bestowed it upon her; she was too cold and tired. Curiosity could come tomorrow.

And she had dreamed.

Every night, a new location. Not always as comfortable or supportive as the last, not always as easily accessible or clearly found, but always shelter from whatever calamity the night’s cooling air had brought. She had wondered for the first week if she was being directed anywhere in particular, or just to whatever place would be safe for the night, but by the eighth night she needed wonder no more.

There, just before the end of the earth on the first night of her second week, peeking up over some foothills, was the silhouette of Mount Canterlot. It was not quite right, with the castle’s shape clearly missing from the western face, but it was immediately recognizable all the same. With every dream, and every day’s journey, Cloud Cover found it grew larger and more distinct.

She had an idea as to who was summoning her there, but still did not know why. So far, she had found no other living pony. Plenty of frozen corpses, or charred skeletons, or wet and rotting carcasses, but nothing warm, dry, and breathing. Perhaps her saviour was doing the same for others as it was for her; bringing those who lived to a place of more permanent safety, to protect them, to comfort them, to at least give them hope.

She checked the food stores here and found nothing worth replacing her current inventory with, but at the back of the house, on top of an unfortunate and unnamed jumble of limbs, there was a broken-open cupboard with dozens of blankets and towels. Cloud Cover glanced out one of the less-shattered windows and saw snowflakes starting to descend, their flighty dances concealing the menace they hinted at; when they landed on the ground which just thirty minutes ago had scorched her hooves, they did not melt.

Cloud Cover apologized to the former owner before taking all the blankets to a different room, one with the fewest windows. She wrapped herself in them and then settled down, saying a small prayer to the night, and then gently dozing off as hoarfrost crept up the outside of the building.

And with hope, and a grin, she dreamed.