Sun & Moon Act II: A Crown Divided

“Anypony who thinks we created some kind of utopia when we made Cloudsdale clearly doesn’t understand the way that the world works, for politics are complex, and there’s no escaping them.”

• Aqua, Master of the Order of Water

Somehow, it was seemingly only at that point that Wind’s body realized that he had only gotten half a night’s sleep, and that he had just flown the acrobatics routine of his life. He could only half-remember making it back to the ground safely, before the rest muddled into a sleepy blur in his memory.

When he woke up, he was once again resting on the same guest bed where he had healed up his wing for his first week on the ground. And Pa was once again in the kitchen, working on another pot of soup. At least this time, the old earth pony gave him an encouraging smile upon seeing that his guest was awake.

“Some show you put on this morning, son,” he said gruffly, looking up for only a moment from his pot.

Wind nodded several times. “I was only expecting to put on a nice little dance, something to remember for when I’m gone.”

“Well, we’ll all remember that! I can promise that much,” Pa exclaimed with a chuckle. “I don’t expect you’ll find anypony in town willing to rib you about your flying anymore. Except maybe Fern,” he added quickly. “But of course you understand that’s all in good fun.”

“Of course.” By now, Wind was plenty aware that not even a thunderbolt from the heavens was going to stop Fern from ribbing him. Honestly there was a certain charm to it.

Now fully awake, he sniffed the air eagerly, and the smell of that old broth got him out of bed in a heartbeat. “The same stuff from before? Really, you don’t have to make any extra effort just for me.”

Throwing another log onto the fire under the stove, Pa turned around and looked him over, head to hoof, seeming pleased. “You’ve been a big help around here, more than I think any of us thought a pegasus could offer. This whole morning there was a parade of townsfolk coming into our door to wish you well on your way back. True, most of them probably still don’t believe that you’re from up there,” he continued, eyes pointed upward as he resumed stirring the soup with the big wooden ladle. “But they all recognize that without you around there isn’t going to be anything to distract from the cold realities that are facing us out there in the fields, or whatever the next piece of bad news is out of Canterlot.”

Wind felt another pang of guilt in his heart as he heard those words. He remembered what the town had been like when he had first shown up. Southoofton had been on its last legs, as family after family took off for the road to Canterlot. Never could they have enjoyed such an amazing moment as they had this morning for Reaper’s Rise. He couldn’t believe that all of the new happiness had been his doing. He was just one pegasus, after all. But he sure had tried. Would it all fall back again as soon as he left? “Did any of them, uh, wonder about me maybe staying?” he offered.

Pa set down the ladle. “The way Sycamore tells me, you’re just about ready to be called a grown pegasus, is that right?” After seeing Wind’s nod, Pa passed him the bowls to start setting the table up. “Even if the townsfolk don’t know that whole detail, they’re aware of it as much as we are. You’re your own stallion, and wherever you choose to go is your own business. It’s none of our right to make that decision for you, but my understanding is that even if you’ve found a home down here, the surface just isn’t where you belong.” He said the last sentence with a touch of finality, and as surely as he had known it with Sycamore down in the square, Wind knew again that it was right.

“Thanks, Pa,” he said, finishing up the table just as he saw the rest of the family coming up the steps in from the field. He ran over to get the door for them.

There was so much dust settled on Fern’s hat that he made his own miniature cloud whenever he turned his head. In fact the whole of him was just as covered with grit, caked onto his face and run through his mane. Sycamore was behind him, equally dirty and with a scowl on her face. “Well, at least we won’t have to go through much more of that,” she commented wryly as Wind shut the door behind her.

“Problems?” Pa asked, ladling out the soup already.

“No. It’s easy going enough, save that every step kicks up enough dust to fill a bucket. There just isn’t all that much to do. I expect we’ll have everything in and ready to pack up by the end of the week.”

Surely Pa had seen the state of the fields as well as any of them, yet that number still made him look up. “A week? We’ll barely have ten sacks to work with after that long. Not nearly enough to last us through the winter, let alone turn any kind of profit.”

“Well, we’ll do some thinking on that once things have settled down enough to make it worthwhile,” she returned, sitting down at the table and offering Wind a small smile. “You’re up and about again, I see.”

“I’m almost wishing I weren’t,” he replied. “Last night was the time of my life, and at least when I’m asleep I can keep reliving it. But now that I’m up, well…” He didn’t want to finish, didn’t want to address the part they both knew came afterward. But Sycamore reached across the table and gave him a gentle shake.

“We know what’s gonna have to happen,” she said, looking unconcerned. “We’ve all known it ever since you got here. Probably after lunch we’ll send you off, so that you’ve got plenty of daylight left to work with.”

Fern offered them both a sly wink. “Good idea. We wouldn’t want you to get lost and have to go through this same story again at some other random town.” That got a laugh from the whole table, and even Wind was able to find it funny this time.

With that topic broached and left aside, Wind let it be as they had their lunch. The conversation drifted about to a variety of topics, including how everypony else was getting on with their own harvests. Normally it would take the full moon to get everything off the fields and taken care of, so that an accounting could be sent to Canterlot in time for the Harvest Festival, but the word around the watering hole was that nopony in town was going to be spending much more time on their work than Sycamore would.

The one pony able to avoid this issue was Cotton. He now had his own land in addition to Amber’s to scour through, and he also had the land fronting the river, so he actually had a real harvest to put on.

Naturally the morning gossip also included plenty of speculation about the rainbow that had come with Wind the previous night. He was a little chagrined that he wouldn’t be able to put down the rumours himself, but he didn’t have anything to say on the matter. It could be left as an old story that would surely morph into some sort of tale, if it lasted long enough for that. And of course Sycamore knew what he had been trying to do, and that was good enough for him.

Once the soup was eaten and the cookware had all been cleared away, there hadn’t been anything for it but to go. So just like that Wind found himself standing out in the backyard, likely right above the spot that had first received him those two moons ago. Fern and Pa were up on the porch, and Sycamore was right down there with him. She had washed up some, with what water there was to spare, but it didn’t matter: she looked great anyway.

In a perfect contrast to the afternoon that had gotten him here, the sky was blue and clear as far as the eye could see, with not a single puff of wind no matter which way one turned. The Sun was of course scorching the ground as bad as any other day, and Wind wondered for a moment if he wasn’t going to burn up on his way back into the sky. Sycamore had a full canteen for him, though.

“You really didn’t have to do that,” he said as she fastened it over his shoulder.

“You know I did,” she returned, sounding matronly. “As great as all this time has been, we all do want to know that you got back up to Cloudsdale safe and sound.” After tying it tightly, she stepped back so that the two of them were looking at each other face-to-face. “Well, I guess this is farewell then.”

He shuffled one of his hooves idly in the dirt. “I guess so. Thanks, of course. For everything.”

“Weren’t nothing but plain old hospitality,” Pa called from the porch. “Same as you’d get from any other family.”

Sycamore nodded along, and then with a quick look over each shoulder she stepped closer to him, so that she could lower her voice a bit. “Do you think that you could somehow let me know that you got back just fine? Not a visit of course,” she hastily added, a light blush forming, “just something that I could look up at the sky and see, to know that you’re okay.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he returned with a smirk and wink. Without thinking, he reached out and took her by the hoof. She looked at him expectantly, a small quiver in her face. “Someday,” he said, doing his best to make sure these words were the right ones, “someday maybe I will come back too. If I can find the time for one more silly mistake.”

“Oh, I’ve got you covered there,” Sycamore answered, and suddenly the two of them were kissing again. It was sweet, soft and heartfelt, and Wind let it last, knowing that this was the memory he would be taking back to Cloudsdale. When their lips parted, Sycamore gave a final grin. “See ya, Wind.”

He dipped his head. “Farewell, Sycamore.” He looked up to see the rest of them one last time, Pa giving him a solid nod while Fern’s expression he couldn’t quite place. In any event, he gave them a quick wave before turning around, skipping forward a couple of steps, then unfolding his wings and launching himself up into the air. He didn’t look back.

The sky welcomed him once more, a quiet place where he could be alone with his thoughts and with the four winds, though for once he didn’t take the time to listen to their song. He climbed for the first few minutes, until the features on the surface collapsed into blobs of colour. Here he circled for a couple of minutes, committing the whole area to his memory. One day, he thought to himself. No matter what eventually came to pass, no matter what life in Cloudsdale ended up looking like for him, one day he would find his way back.

Once that was done, he turned northwest, in the direction that Amber had pointed him. It wasn’t long before the landscapes underneath him started to look more familiar, and then all of a sudden on the horizon Cloudsdale appeared, shining white in the Sun’s brilliant afternoon light.

There were the fields and the Old Quarter up above, the towering Spire and the rings of developments down below in the Mid-City, and there even was the depths of the Undercity, hidden from view unless a pony ventured down there, but a part of the place all the same. On the far side of the city was Pega’s Perch, where Sun and Snow would be waiting, living out their lives under the weight of wondering what had happened to their son. There too he would find Morning Shine, probably deep into her training for professional racing by now, and somewhere else in the city he would find Tin, tending to his beans or else reading up on them.

Wind chuckled when the memory of Tin came to his mind. His friend would probably be the one who found his stories of the surface most interesting. Having lived with earth ponies for as long as he had, Wind probably knew more about agriculture now than any other pegasus in the city. Maybe he could convince them to plant some of the crops that Sycamore grew, hopefully so that there would be something to eat besides beans every day. How could he ever have thought that beans for every meal was okay?

As he coasted on into the outer rings of the Mid-city, he started passing by other pegasi on their way about their daily routines, some gathered in neighbourhood squares to sell their various wares, or others on their way home after taking an early day off of work. Here in the city, the sounds all came back to him too: the clanking of gears as the cloud-layers went about their business of expanding the city’s new boroughs, the cries from those marketplaces as merchants talked up their wares, and the gentle swish of feathers on the breeze, everywhere you turned. Cloudsdale was going about its business as it always had, just as he remembered it.

The Spire beckoned up ahead, the eight principal avenues of the Mid-city gathering up into it, every road converging for the great climb into the Old Quarter or the fall down into the Undercity. This plaza was always a hive of activity, but nopony noticed him as he made his turn into Pega’s Perch. Nopony except one, at least.

“Wind!” came a call behind him, a rolling drumbeat. He turned around, and there was his father, spectacles straddling his nose, eyes magnified as wide as saucers behind them.

“Dad!”

Snow was on him in a heartbeat, checking him out from head to toe, then grabbing him around the neck and pulling him into a long, tight embrace. “Oh, Wind, it is you,” he sobbed over his son’s shoulder, for a moment his composure completely gone. “We’ve missed you so much, we thought you were gone forever!”

Wind held him just as tightly. “Well, I’m here now, and happy to see you.”

“Of course you are. Come now, I have to take you to see your mother.” Snow let go of his son for a moment, but kept a firm grip on his shoulder as he climbed up into the thoroughfare that led to the Old Quarter. “She’s still at the Academy, and she’s been working so much more since you disappeared. Oh, she’s going to be absolutely over the cloud-tops to see you.”

Wind couldn’t remember ever seeing his father flying as fast as they were now, to the point where he could barely keep up. Sometimes he forgot that Snow had been a champion racer back in the day. He glanced over at his father’s face, and quickly noticed a new emerald sash of office slung across his shoulder. “Did you get a new promotion, Dad?”

“Master Acorn made me Chief Advisor for Construction,” his father said proudly, before throwing them both into a sharp turn as they came out the top of the Spire into the Old Quarter proper. The last time Wind had seen the place it had been Championship day, and naturally the square was less crowded now than it had been then. Instead, the more usual crowd of bureaucrats and businessponies were fluttering about, and all of them gave Snow a wide berth, to the degree that they saw him in time, at least.

“It’s been useful work,” Snow continued, weaving his way around the ponies that couldn’t vacate his path in time. “Good to keep my mind off of things, but that’s not important.” The two of them came to a halt on one of the Academy’s wide landing platforms, ringed with miniature statues of planets and snowflakes in detail. “The important thing now is that you’re here. Come, your mother’s office is the third one on the right.”

Without waiting for an acknowledgment Snow took off again, though this time at least walking instead of flying at top speed. The hallways of the Academy were empty and silent in a heavy and official sort of way. Wind didn’t think that he had ever actually seen the inside of this place, but he didn’t have much time to commit it to memory. It was only seconds before Snow had found Sun’s office, and no sooner had the door opened than he was wrapped up in a tight embrace again, to the point that Wind wondered if his mother was ever going to let go.

“I always knew you were still out there somewhere,” Sun Swept sobbed over her son’s shoulder, just as her husband had done. “Even after weeks, I always knew! You would never go, you couldn’t ever!”

Finally, after about a minute of tears, Sun eased up enough to be able to look her son in the eyes. “You must tell us everything, from the night of the Gala to this morning. Leave nothing out! And Snow!” she called over his shoulder, to her husband standing and beaming by one of her bookcases. “Call the Master, and the rest of the Council. We’re going to have a party tonight, and I want to make sure that everypony is there to see that our son has returned!”

So the rest of that afternoon became a whirlwind of activity, taking place at such a pace that Wind was barely even able to keep his mind straight. First his parents had taken him home, or rather, to his new home; he had stepped in the door by the time that he realized it was a newer, bigger house in an even newer neighbourhood, no doubt paid for by his father’s promotion. After assuring him that she had held on to all of his things, and that they were still packed up in his new room upstairs, Sun had set him down on the edge of the dining room table and again demanded to hear everything, from the top, without any details left out. Neither of them stopped moving to hear it, though, as his mother was constantly stepping in and out of the kitchen to prepare for the celebration, and Snow was busy writing up invitations to all of his colleagues on the Council.

Wind told them the most of it, though, in all of the broad strokes, and they gasped at each detail that they did hear. Snow shook his head at any mention of the Senate in Canterlot, and Sun brought her hoof up to her mouth during the whole tale of the dust storm. He left out the bare details, though, of Amber and Cotton and their dispute, of Reaper’s Rise and the impression he had made there, and of course of Sycamore and the relationship that they had. Somehow he knew that those parts of the story, true as they were, weren’t exactly what his parents were eager to hear.

Then his mother had been all “Look at the time!” and hustled him upstairs to get him dressed in another hastily-assembled suit, and his mane tucked under another tasteful hat. The dignitaries of the city had all arrived in their splendour, each one offering him a couple lovely words and his parents a similar platitude, before going off to join the others for cocktails. There was a dinner, in the grand dining hall of the new house, consisting of the finest beans that his mother had ever cooked, but in spite of all the work that she had put in, they all tasted the same to him.

A reception followed, held in the expansive backyard that came with the property, lit by several natural firefly lanterns strategically positioned throughout the space. Snow got up to the front several times to make speeches to the assembled members of the Council, and once Wind had to join him, to retell a piece of his tale to the same half-interested awe that his parents had given him before. An hour or so into the whole affair Wind slipped out, and made his way up to his new room.

Just like the old house, there was a window ledge here, if perhaps a bit smaller. Thankfully, it did not look down upon the backyard, and so Wind was able to settle himself out there and breathe in the warm night air once again. From his perch, facing inward to the neighbourhoods around the Spire, he could see almost the whole of the city, and it all came back to him, as familiar now as it always had been. And it brought with it the same feelings as always.

Of course he was happy to be back here in Cloudsdale. It was his home city, the place that he knew better than any. He had been happy to see his mother and father again, and especially to know that they had kept his things, and had even bought a new house with a room for him. Yet now, life looked about ready to go on as before. Doubtless, tomorrow night’s supper would be another discussion about whether anything had changed in his decision about his vocation, the ceremony for which was now only a few days away. Sycamore had told him that this was his life, that he was born into it and it was his duty to carry it on. He was a pegasus of Cloudsdale, and that was where he belonged, and he had known that she was right.

He sighed. If that were true, though, why was it that being back here now felt so wrong?

A rustle of feathers from somewhere out in the distance caught his attention, and then without any warning Spry Acorn, the Master’s son, appeared around the corner of the house, dressed in a simple yet fine white shirt and tie. It had been so long that it took Wind a moment to remember why seeing the green stallion turned his stomach. Then he remembered the race, and gave Spry a preemptive scowl.

“What are you doing here?”

Despite the hostility, Spry approached the sill, but held his distance about six feet off, in a gentle hover. “I noticed that you had left the reception,” he replied amiably. “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Wind grumbled, stepping in off of the sill. “Just getting some fresh air is all. Maybe I’ll be back down there soon enough.” He made to turn around and head back downstairs to the yard, but Spry apparently hadn’t taken the hint.

“Hey!” the Master’s son called after him, enough to make Wind pause and turn. “I can tell you’re not much into the parties that your dad or mine puts on,” he said, approaching the windowsill and leaning on it with a casual elbow. “This is your first day back in the city, so you should enjoy it, right? Maybe we can find some friends and take a little flight instead?”

Coming up to the window, Wind reached up for the blind. “Don’t worry about me, Spry. I said I’m fine,” he said. “Besides, what makes you think I would want to go anywhere with your friends?” He gave Spry a glower as he started pulling down the blind, only to be interrupted by a songbird’s voice, also from around the corner.

“Oh! That was actually pretty harsh!”

“Yeah, it’s definitely him all right!” came the answer, and after that both Shine and Tin flew into view, arriving on Spry’s flanks. “But I don’t know,” Tin continued, snacking, as always, on a bag of beans that he had gotten from somewhere. “I would say that his friends are pretty cool, though I may be biased.”

Wind blanched. “You two are friends with this jerk now?”

“Ah, come on, Wind,” Shine said in exaggerated exasperation, clapping herself on the forehead. “We don’t see you for two months and this is what we get? I would have thought that the absence might have mellowed you out a bit. But seriously, Spry’s cool. Maybe you just need to get to know him a bit better.”

“I think that I know him well enough already,” Wind replied, though he didn’t close the blind. “What have you two been up to, though?”

Tin opened his mouth to answer, but Shine cut him off. “Uh-uh! You don’t get to have your conversation leaning out of the window. We have to find somewhere better for that. No exceptions for you, mister.” She had on a cocky grin, and Spry was matching it, a tad uncannily in fact. Tin just took another hoofful of beans out of his bag.

Wind considered it. An evening with Spry was not at all what he had intended his first night in the city to look like, but could it possibly be worse than shaking more hooves at the party in the backyard? “Okay, fine,” he said, looking away for a moment as he said the words. He quickly took off his suit and hat, then joined them outside in the air.

Shine gave him a simple embrace. “I’m sure that you must have plenty of tales to tell from such a long absence. But like I said, let’s find somewhere private first.”

“Are you kidding, I want to hear now!” Tin answered, giving Wind a quick jostle with his shoulder. “Whatever stopped this flyer from getting back to Cloudsdale for a whole two months must have been a real whopper!”

Running a hoof back through his mane, Wind chuckled, letting a slim smile form on his lips. “Naw, it wasn’t that bad. But sure, maybe you guys will appreciate the story.”

So he told them, and this time kept all of the highs and lows, the drama and the fire from down on the ground, as Spry led the group on in search of a secluded spot where they could spend the evening. But he still didn’t mention Sycamore. Not while Spry was listening, at least.