“Sandbar!” the hippogriff called out. She looked all over the courtyard. Despite the few weird looks she received from a few of the fellow students in the area, she paid no mind to them as she continued her search.
Opening her beak and raising her talon up to help amplify, she was about to call out again. However, something caught her eye at the roof of one of the buildings. It was a familiar shade of green.
Flapping her wings, she took off to the room of the dormitory. As she drew closer, it was evident that the familiar shade of green belonged to a familiar earth pony stallion. He was lying on his back, almost lounging, as he looked upward at the cloudy blue sky above.
“Sandbar!” she called out again.
His body jolted upward to meet the pink hippogriff. “Oh, Silverstream! I thought I heard my name,” he casually waved. “What’s up?”
“We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Silverstream landed nearby on the roof. “Gallus said you just disappeared after Professor Applejack’s poetry class! Smolder thought you died!”
“Why would she think I died?” Sandbar asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.
Silverstream’s talons were raised up, “Because we didn’t know where you went!”
Sandbar couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought, “Well, call off the search party because you found me. No need to get all worked up all because of me.” He laid his head back down on the tiles of the roof and looked back upward toward the sky above.
Looking down at Sandbar, Silverstream tilted her head a bit and asked, “Why are you up here anyway?”
“Enjoying the day,” the pony simply stated as he used the closest hoof to Silverstream to tap the tiles next to him. “Wanna join?”
She paused for a moment before answering, “If it means I don’t have to go to Professor Rainbow Dash’s physics class, then with pleasure.” Both Sandbar and Silverstream shared a laugh at the statement.
For a few moments, the two watched a number of clouds slowly sail across the sky. The sound of the wind was audible, but it seemed like a distant whisper from where the two were at. After a bit, Silverstream spoke up again:
“So, what are you watching for? Is this a pony thing I don’t know about?”
“Sorta,” Sandbar answered. He was about to give a more fuller explanation until he saw a few pegasi ponies flying high in the sky. “Oh, here we go!”
Before Silverstream could ask what was about to happen, she also saw the pegasi ponies above. The ponies began to do something Silverstream had never thought about: they began to kick at the clouds. After a few kicks from each of the pegasi, the cloud disintegrated into nothing. From there, they moved on to the next and did the same. One by one, they began to vanish before their eyes.
After a few clouds, Silverstream had to ask, “What are they doing?”
“Cloudbusting.”
Silverstream lifted her head and looked at Sandbar in confusion, “Whatbusting?”
“I don’t think that’s what it's officially called, but my dad and I called it cloudbusting when I was little,” Sandbar explained with a slightly guilty smile, “but it’s something we used to do during the last days of Winter Wrap-Up.”
“Wait, I know what that is. It’s when all the ponies work together and help bring spring to Equestria, right?” the hippogriff recalled.
The pony smirked, “Oh, looks like some creature has been paying attention during some of her clases after all.” A sour look appeared on Silverstream’s face for a moment, to which Sandbar laughed at. “But that’s correct, cloudbusting is one of the last parts of Winter Wrap-Up. It’s when pegasi ponies go out and destroy the last of the winter clouds to make way for spring and eventually summer.”
The pink hippogriff looked back up at the pegasi working in the sky above, “I never thought so much work went into pony seasons.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of work that goes into it.” Sandbar kept his eyes locked as he looked up at the work the pegasi were doing, “My dad showed me this one year and it sorta became a bit of a ritual between us. And now watching it gets me all excited for the upcoming year.”
“Excited for what?”
“Heh, all of it!” Sandbar said as he peered to the side to look at Silverstream lying next to him. “The new school year, watching spring bloom, and especially surfing! Almost always on the first day of the summer, my dad would take me to the beach and surf!” his words were animated as he spoke, matching the smile on his face. His gaze returned upwards as he concluded, “Watching the clouds disappear always gets me excited for what’s about to come for the year. Like, I just know that something good is going to happen.”
One part of what he said stuck with Silverstream, “Surfing? You mean like at Basalt Beach? That’s actually near Mount Aris.”
“I wish, we mostly go somewhere near Baltimare. One time, he took the whole family out to Californeigh for a week and we had a blast surfing out there!” Sandbar mused. “I hope to try and surfing everywhere I can. Basalt Beach is on my dream list!”
Silverstream had a small smile as she looked toward Sandbar, “If you do go surfing near Mount Aris, maybe you could teach me to surf?”
This surprised Sandbar as he turned to look back at Silverstream, “You wanna learn how to surf? How come? You’re already half-aquatic.”
The hippogriff’s face became a little flushed as she answered, “Because it looks fun….and it seems to be something that you like a lot, I want to share that interest with you.”
An idea came to the stallion’s mind, “How about when I go to surf down in your neck of the woods, I’ll teach you how to surf if you let me try out that necklace of yours.” Sandbar pointed with one of his hooves to the necklace around Silverstream’s neck.
“My necklace? You’d want to try it on?” Her face still burning, Silverstream raised one of her talons to touch the jewel shard.
With a small laugh, Sandbar confirmed, “Yeah, I’d like to try out being a seapony and, you know, check out all the coral reefs and fish down there.”
Silverstream suddenly and with a bit of volume responded, “I would be happy to show you underwater!” The sudden response startled Sandbar a bit, who silently laughed as the hippogriff continued with a bit of a softer tone to her voice as her face still brightly beamed, “It’s absolutely beautiful underwater and I would be honored to show you anything you’d like down there! There are a number of marvelous places I will have to take you! Not to mention there’s also Seaquestria, which is majestic and grand in it’s own right, I would be so proud to show you both the kingdom and the palace!”
“The palace?” the earth pony asked with a bit of surprise. He had forgotten his hippogriff friend was actually part of the royal lineage.
“Yeah! I can show you all sorts of neat places around the palace grounds, like where I used to hide from the guards when I was little! Oh, and then there’s all sorts of really cool spots around the capital that we should go to, like my favorite place to eat when I was growing up!”
“That all sounds great and I’m already excited to go, but that also means you have to teach me how to swim as a seapony as well,” Sandbar laughed at the thought.
“And I’ll be honored to do so!” Silverstream proclaimed with a spirited smile. She took a moment to look at Sandbar’s whole body for a moment and then added, “In fact, since you’re already a strong swimmer, I think you’ll be a natural as a seapony!” A sly smirk was added at her last statement, “Not to mention a handsome one at that.”
Sandbar’s face became a pink tint at her words, “Wha?!”
A laugh escaped from Silverstream as she saw Sandbar’s reaction. She gave him a playful shove, which he returned with a smile as well. Both of their faces were still flushed. After a bit of antics between the two, they both looked back upward at the sky. The pegasi were still cloudbusting, but were nearly done.
“Wow, they work fast up there,” Silverstream commented.
“Some of the Wonderbolts help with the cloudbusting, so it doesn’t usually last long. It’s why I wanted to get out here and see it when I could,” Sandbar said, watching another cloud vanish.
Silverstream had a thought come to mind, “May I ask you a question, Sandbar?”
“What’s up?”
“Why didn't you tell us about this? I’m sure every creature would have enjoyed watching this with you.”
Sandbar didn’t have an answer he was entirely happy with. “Honestly, I think it seems a bit silly. Watching the last part of winter make way for spring feels just….I don’t know, completely weird to bring up to any creature in normal conversation. How would I put it into words? I still don’t think I really explained why I like watching cloudbusting all that well. Either way, all I know is that every time the clouds disappear, the sky feels new. Everything feels new.”
“I think you did a great job of describing it,” the hippogriff smiled at the stallion.
Sandbar shrugged a little, “Maybe, but it still feels a bit childish to me.”
“Nothing wrong with being a little childish!” Silverstream beamed with a laugh.
Sharing in the laugh, Sandbar added, “Perhaps you’re right about that. Seems I’m learning new stuff each day.”
After listening to Sandbar, Silverstream spoke softly as she stared skyward, “Guess we’re all still learning stuff about each other, huh?”
Sandbar nodded and he smiled, “Never hurts to swap places once in a while. Even more so with friends to see where they are coming from.”
The two continued to watch the pegasi work above them. The sky had only a scattering number of clouds remaining.
“Thank you for watching this with me, Silverstream.”
“Huh?”
Sandbar repeated himself with a gentle smile towards the hippogriff, “Thanks for watching them cloudbust with me. This has been nice.”
“Of course,” Silverstream replied, smiling back. “I really liked doing this too. I never did get many chances to look up at the sky growing up, so this is a nice experience.”
“That’s right, you never really got the chance since you grew up underwater, right?” Sandbar asked.
Silverstream shook her head, as she looked back upwards at the sky. “Not really. But I think that’s why I enjoy watching the sky as well. Whenever I look up at the sky, I feel small. Not in a bad way. Just….small. The sky is so big and always filled with things, like clouds, stars, and all those things that Ocellus keeps talking about in astronomy class. I may not fully understand all that I see in it, but I still love seeing every single bit of it.”
Offering a hoof, the stallion looked at Silverstream with a warm smile, “Maybe we should do more skygazing together.”
She returned the gaze and the smile, her talon meeting Sandbar’s hoof, “I’d like that.”
END
