Please Note Lack Of Horror Tag Before Proceeding
In Cheerilee's rather dismal experience, far too many students treated the learning process as something where they just needed to retain the information long enough to get past the test -- immediately followed by forgetting all of it. Forever, because it also seemed as if some of them had decided that their memory capacity had an ultimate limit. It was far more important to retain a full list of favorite fruits for the members of whatever the most popular colt band was, just in case that tour happened to come into Ponyville. Or near Ponyville. Or passed through a local dream, because if you were going to spend your time in the nightscape happily feeding fruit to the subjects of your current crush, it was vitally important to know whether you had to peel them first.
(Playground gossip claimed the latest drummer had declared no concert could be played unless every grape in the dressing room had seen its skin removed in advance. This was being done to the best of each venue's ability, although the further stipulation that every peeled grape had to be silver was giving multiple ponies some trouble.)
Her charges would retain the names of those band members forever, mostly so they could spend a portion of their later years in hotly blushing while denying ever having liked those idiots and hoping that the last of their old magazine collection had been destroyed. But when it came to the majority of school subjects... too many would decide that they were never going to actually need the information. It was a lack of priorities which had afflicted centuries of students, and the willful absence of memories caused any number of issues for the resulting adults.
Take, just by way of depressing example, International Studies. Teachers used books and maps to take students on a world tour. They would be introduced to other nations and the majority species of each, different ways of living and governing and thinking. The children of each generation would nod thoughtfully, take a few notes, and frantically review for several nights before the final exam. And at the moment the test quill was put down, something in them would decide they didn't need the information. Who was ever going to travel that far? What were the odds of having anyone from those distant lands reach Ponyville? Equestria existed, and... that was enough.
Give that way of thinking two extra decades, let a traveling motivational speaker pass through town -- one who claimed citizenship with the oldest ally Equestria had -- and at least a third of the resulting adults would be found cowering under their beds, waiting for the twin-horned bipedal monster to go away and, ideally, take the goats with him.
International Studies was maps, pictures on a stereoscope projector, and words in old books. It wasn't real.
So Cheerilee had decided to make it a little more personal.
"And that's what griffon cooking tastes like!" Truffle delightedly crowed from his position facing the others -- then frowned a little. "I think. I mean, that's what Domis told me it tastes like. It's hard to turn words into flavors on my tongue. And he knew that, so he put a little drop of the juices on one part of the page. But the smell faded. And I licked the paper, and it mostly tastes like paper." The frown's intensity increased. "Except a little more red. Did you know red had a taste?"
Judging by the expressions of the majority, they hadn't really thought about that. It was easy to distinguish those who had considered the source of that red, because they were the ones who were slowly turning green.
Cheerilee briefly considered getting up from her own bench to open a window, just in case the fresh air helped. But it was the heart of winter: the air outside was clear and moist, just as the weather schedule had dictated for midweek -- but it was also cold. Pegasus magic was already fighting to keep the schoolhouse properly warm: any actual opening would decide the battle in favor of shivers.
A change of topic seemed best, and as Truffle's time was up...
"You're the last for today, Apple Bloom," Cheerilee gently encouraged. "Just take your letter up to the lectern."
The filly nodded, gently clamped down on the reinforced corner of the envelope with her teeth. At the miniature lectern, Truffle was carefully nosing his own papers back into a folded state.
It was an exchange program of sorts. Cheerilee had reached out to teachers in faraway lands, asking if their students would be willing to become quill companions to her own. Letters traveled in both directions. Those leaving Ponyville had to use the postal system, because things had to be as normal as possible and having the outbound missives arrive in a burst of flame tended to upset distant parents. Students watched their mailboxes, haunted postponies for moons before the first replies came back...
...on some level, her students had initially treated the other nations as distant concepts, because words in a textbook just weren't real enough. But when those words came in a letter, one which was covered in strange stamps and personally addressed, written by someone you knew -- that was different.
It had worked. Correspondents had established personal connections from across the planet. The mundane aspects of foreign lives were subjects of wonder for colts and fillies -- although Cheerilee could never be sure as to exactly what would catch her students' attention. It was why she made sure there was an open hour available at the end of each letter-reading session: she would listen along with her class, sort through the topics, and choose at least one to occupy the rest of the day. Lessons she was dearly hoping would be retained.
Her students spoke with the children of other nations, and so learned that others were real. That they weren't monsters. And according to the letters which Cheerilee had received from the participating teachers, those distant youths got to discover that ponies weren't skittish control freaks who went into hysterics every time an unarranged leaf dropped onto their backs.
...well, some of them weren't.
Truffle returned to his desk. Apple Bloom cautiously extracted her letter from the envelope, then nosed it open on the lectern's surface and looked out at the class. Cheerilee watched, and considered whether griffon cooking was an appropriate topic to close out the day. Snips and Snails had seemed vaguely interested, but Cotton's undercoat was on the verge of turning emerald. It probably needed to be something else...
"This jus' arrived yesterday," the filly began. "Didn't see it until Ah got home." Reluctantly, "An' Ah had chores." Which was followed by a very quick, near-accusatory glance at her teacher. "An' homework."
Cheerilee carefully maintained the genially curious expression of the non-torturer.
"So Ah didn't get t' read the whole thing before Ah came in," Apple Bloom finally admitted. "Is that a problem?"
The mare shook her head. "You decide what you want to read out, as always," she told her student.
The filly nodded. "So anyway, with Thesz... there's been a lot goin' on in her life lately. At least, there was for the first couple of pages." She nosed the first one. "Jus' for starters, she's gettin' ready t' vote. Goin' in for the test in two moons." With a soft groan, "We've gotta wait until we're grown up before we can vote, but all a minotaur has t' do is take a test. Whenever they think they're ready. How is that fair?"
Several students expressed their own snorting opinion of Equestria's constitution.
So maybe we can go over Mazein's democracy again. "Different nation," Cheerilee gently said. "Different rules."
Apple Bloom indulged in her own snort, then moved her gaze across the paper. "Her mom taught her a new wrestling move. An' --" the yellow brow furrowed "-- she's right proud 'bout this -- when she wrote this, they'd just scheduled a fitting. It's gonna be her first... bra?"
Carefully, "Apple Bloom, you can skip over anything which is addressed to you alone, or which you feel is too personal --"
"-- Ah don't know what that is."
Cheerilee, treating every youthful expression as its own vote, quickly tallied the class.
Total confusion.
Probably not a good day for minotaur puberty.
"We can talk about it later. Privately," the teacher offered. "Or you can look it up on your own. What else?"
The filly haltingly recited aspects of the distant child's life. Sporting tournaments. Homework, which was globally agreed upon as being an unfair imposition. (The expression maintained.) Getting ready to attend a pre-vote public debate at her father's side --
"-- only they..."
Orange eyes blinked a few times.
"...they didn't get t' go?" the filly wondered aloud. "Why wouldn't they get t' go? She was lookin' forward t' that for the last two seasons! But -- hang on, gotta get t' the last page here..." Nosing occurred. "...she says they had a --"
The blinking accelerated, and a soft tail twisted from lack of understanding.
Apple Bloom stared out at the classroom. A frantic gaze sought out the usual two primary sources of misinformation, found no help gazing back, and only then reluctantly turned to the only one who might know.
"Miss Cheerilee... what's a 'snow day'?"
Wild weather and the way it impacts living in the other nations.
Perfect.
"That's a very good question, Apple Bloom," the teacher allowed. "And once you're done with your letter, we're all going to talk about what a 'snow day' is. Along with 'rainouts', and a lot of other things which hardly anypony in Equestria ever has to worry about."
Her student managed a nod, went back to the letter and decided what to recite from the final lines. And once the filly was back at her desk, Cheerilee took control of the class. It was an hour where she introduced her charges to the concept of meteorology as an inexact science, something which had to rely on forecasts instead of schedules. There was a brief detour into probability, a stop at historic climate trends, and she even managed a few minutes for the International Stormbreaker Team: the Equestrian heroes who intervened in distant lands just before the worst wild weather found its chance to kill.
She talked about all of it, saw her class taking notes, and hoped some of the information would be retained. But because she'd promised to do so, she also discussed snow days.
The teacher was facing the chalkboard for that part.
If she'd seen their faces...
It was a rare school day which saw the occupants of Ponyville Primary East so reluctant to simply step outside the doors. Part of that came from the weather schedule: something which had dictated a time when everypony got to be reminded that their fur just wasn't insulative enough.
The air felt like a thin liquid. Cold soaked through every strand of fur. The ground had frozen into something with no give whatsoever, and responded to every hoofstep by sending a burst of ice up through the hocks. When you were young, small, and had a long trot home, it all turned into conditions which almost made students wish for detention as a way of putting off the inevitable.
And then there was the fact of their just having found out that in all the world, Equestria was the single worst place to live. That had a way of slowing things down.
Eventually, the class sorted itself out into clusters: the weary, the emotionally distraught, and the outright dejected (with option to move into full depression later). Three of the fillies in the last category automatically moved closer to each other, split off from the larger group, then began to take the same path away from the schoolhouse. Away from pain.
It took sixty hoofsteps before they were out of sight from everypony else. A passage which crossed some small portion of a cold, near-dead world. One where every bare branch failed to acknowledge the rising fumes of their anger.
"It ain't fair!"
The branches also didn't bother to vibrate from the power of the furious exclamation, let alone catch fire. The world was just that fundamentally unjust.
The unicorn and pegasus looked at the earth pony whose hooves were planted in the center of the path, all the better to let the rage fly. Pressed themselves against her, and so felt the shivers of rage echo through their fur.
"Can y'imagine what it's like?" Apple Bloom demanded. "T' live there, an' jus' -- every time it's cold like this, cold an' damp, y'look up at the sky when it goes all grey --"
The other two automatically glanced up. Registered cold, clear blue, and then returned all attention to their distressed friend.
The brief interval had been used for adding a selection of angry hoof stomps. "-- an' y'go t' bed like every night could be Hearth's Warming Eve, like y'could wake up an' the whole world gave you a present, fresh snow t' play in an' the day off t' go out an' do jus' that!" Furious keratin beat out a song of rage on frozen ground. "A day with no school! A holiday out of nowhere, jus' because they've got wild weather an' us? We've got a schedule." Her voice dropped, became a low growl of purest rage. "The stupid, stupid schedule..."
"We still get snow," Sweetie worriedly pointed out. "The schedule always has snow."
"On the weekends," Scootaloo added. "I know it's not fair, Apple Bloom." Which came with its own, much lighter stomp. "But we've just got to wait for the right weekend. There's one coming up --"
The earth pony's snort failed to warm the air. "The weekend. 'cause y'can't close the shops for snow. Can't have anypony stay home, or give up a day of school, or have fun. An' when it's the schedule -- y'all ain't never seen me on the first day of a snow weekend, have you?"
Slowly, reluctantly, the other two fillies shook their heads.
"Y'know what happens when it snows on the weekend, Scoots?" the rage inquired. "By schedule? Y'wake up. Y'look outside an' see all the fresh stuff, jus' waitin' for you t' go out an' play. An' before y'can get out there, your big sister knocks on the bedroom door an' tells you t' go get the plow. 'cause you're live-in labor an' they knew the snow was comin', so they made their own schedule. It ain't a snow day, it's a plow day!"
"...oh," emerged as a chorus from pegasus and unicorn, accompanied by a matching wince.
"Ah lose hours t' the Acres, jus' gettin' the paths t' the tenant areas clear!" One more hoof stomp and then, because it didn't seem to be enough, a little jump: the four-point landing didn't create any real impact improvement. "But for a snow day, like the other nations get -- Ah could say it was somepony else's turn, 'cause nopony scheduled mine! Ah could jus' go out!"
Which was when the rage left her voice. Something which hadn't vanished, but simply collapsed under the weight of depression.
"It ain't fair," Apple Bloom mourned. "We live in the worst place in the world. The one which gets cold in the winter by schedule, the stupid schedule. Cold an' ready t' storm, except it can't unless it gets permission. We ain't never gonna have a real snow day..."
They pressed more tightly against her, tried to take away some of the pain. Stood in the path with her, wishing for something they could do --
-- Scootaloo blinked.
"Schedule," the pegasus repeated.
"Stupidest thing ever," Apple Bloom decided. "A stupid schedule an' a weather team which makes sure it all comes out on time, every dumb day --"
"-- yeah," Scootaloo broke in, smiling all the way. "A schedule doesn't mean much unless it's enforced..."
The other two stared at her.
And then the smiles began to spread.
It took a few minutes before they found the town's weather coordinator, and that came as a surprise because they'd been expecting the chase to take hours. You generally didn't catch up with that particular adult without some serious effort and somepony with a lasso on standby. The trio had reasonably expected the pursuit to occupy all of the scant amount of Sun they had left for a winter day, and Apple Bloom had already been preparing excuses for being late to dinner.
But it was winter. It was cold. Two factors which, when they'd thought about it, cut down on the possibilities for napping locations. And once they'd shouted her awake and away from the restaurant's steam vents...
It was easy for the fillies to tell that the adult was taking every one of their words seriously. The hover was fairly low to the ground, and more or less level. There were no interruptions, and she didn't yawn once.
It didn't make the slow, sad head shake at the end any less painful.
"Sorry, squirts," Rainbow told them. "Can't do it."
Three sets of miserable gazes sagged to the cold, bare ground.
"But you shouldn't just give up hope like that!" the weather coordinator quickly added. "We're right next to the Everfree! So there's always a chance to get a wild weather front breaking through!"
A surge of hope brought Apple Bloom's head up. "Really?"
Rainbow thought about it.
"Nah," the adult admitted. "I mean, not when I'm in charge of the team." She automatically posed. "Because that's part of being the coordinator, right? Making sure the schedule comes off on time."
Three mouths very carefully pressed themselves tightly shut.
"With some allowance for rest breaks," Rainbow offhoofedly added. "And proper sleep hours. Plus what kind of taskmaster doesn't give you some room for naps? But it's the schedule! So when we do get wild weather trying to, it's just an expression, Sweetie, horn in -- I go out and stop it!"
Apple Bloom went back to looking at the ground. There were cobblestones in this part of Ponyville. She didn't understand how anypony was supposed to completely clear snow away from the hollows between cobblestones. Not that the problem was going to come up before the weekend.
The weather coordinator noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm in her audience.
"But I'm not always here," she added. "Not with the missions and all."
"So the rest of the team might let some wild snow come in?" Sweetie hopefully asked.
"...no," Rainbow eventually admitted. "They're good. I mean, they're not as good as me --" pose "-- because you really can't ask them to be. But if I'm gonna let them work with me, or get started on things while I'm building up some strength to tackle the schedule with a strategic nap, then you know they've gotta be pretty good on their own. For not-me ponies."
The fillies went back to sulking.
"Sorry?" their hero offered.
"Doesn't anything break the schedule?" Scootaloo's rising frustration demanded. "Ever?"
They all heard the wingbeats slow, and looked up at the same time.
"...sometimes," the adult's oddly thoughtful voice announced to the otherwise-empty street: it was just too cold for very many ponies to be outside. "Emergencies, mostly. If it isn't an emergency, then somepony might complain to the Weather Bureau. Like when we had that tick infestation, and the one-day deep freeze to kill them off." With a snort, "And some ponies complained anyway, because they missed all of the public notices, didn't open their mail, and they didn't think that not itching for a extra moon was important. And Canterlot's team uses snow to break up riots, because nopony wants to stick around yelling when they've got a blizzard driving into their feathers."
"Snow every time?" inquired Sweetie's morbid curiosity.
"Nah. Can't always set up for it," Rainbow admitted. A forehoof tested the air. "Not like today. These conditions, I could get snow going on this block in about a minute. Setup for the whole town would just be a couple of hours, since we've got some scheduled on the weekend anyway. But the warmer it gets, the harder snow is gonna be. Sometimes you just go up higher and arrange some hail."
"Hail," repeated the part of Apple Bloom's mind which wasn't planning on retaining the information.
"You can do hail in summer," Rainbow proudly announced. "But Canterlot's team doesn't use it much, because it's hard to keep the stone size under control. Still -- that's the most common reason for a fast tweak. Break up a riot. Or a stampede."
Magenta eyes briefly shifted left.
"Oh," the adult darkly added, "if they really wanted to, if their priorities were straight... they could break up a line."
Three fillies looked up. Blinked at her.
"A line?" Sweetie asked.
"Like... lines where everypony's waiting for something," Rainbow failed to clarify. "And they've been waiting for a long time. And they get really upset just because somepony who wants to get in the line decided to sleep at home. And not in the line. And she needs to be at the front of the line, because she's got a really important life and she doesn't have time to wait around. Because something could happen to call her out of the line."
"Um..." Apple Bloom offered up. This was ignored.
"Something like a scroll," the adult's increasing frustration told them. "Which just shows up in a flash of fire. And hits her in the snout. Again."
"...okay," Scootaloo tried. That didn't work either.
The wingbeats accelerated.
"Tomorrow's Release Day," Rainbow said. "Another Release Day."
The fillies, in what would turn out to be their most intelligent decision of the week, collectively remained silent.
"There's a new Daring Do novel," the adult continued. "And you don't know about me and Release Day. I don't get to the line in time on Release Day, and everything sells out before I get in the shop. There's been missions called on Release Day, and I got one notice just when my snout was going through the doorway. And Bluestocking won't take a reservation for me, not without bits. Paid in advance! What if I need those bits for something else that week? What if I see a new fountain somewhere, one that looks even cooler on my porch? Or there's a stable sale, I get a miracle because the seller doesn't know what she has and I have to pass up an error copy, one of fourteen error copies in the world on Canon Seven because I paid for Canon Fifteen about six moons before I'll ever see it! I pay for things when I use them! Why can't she just take my word that I'll come in when I can?"
The wind was beginning to pick up and, given the increasing speed of the expanding spiral, the fillies had about two minutes before what it picked up was them.
"But it's gotta be the line!" Rainbow furiously snorted. "She expects everypony who isn't stupid enough to pay in advance to stand in the stupid line! A line which starts forming the night before, when sane ponies are sleeping! And stuff happens on Release Day, every time! Missions! Emergencies! Short stock, because I swear she doesn't order enough for me to get one on purpose! Do you know how easy it would be, just to show up at any hour after she opens and be the first one in because nopony wanted to stand outside her shop all night in the stupid snow?"
"Really easy?" proposed Scootaloo's verbal expression of a collective IQ plummet.
Rainbow blinked. Wings decelerated. Windspeed dropped.
"...yeah," the adult slowly said. "Yeah..."
The weather coordinator looked around. Up. 'Down' just found the confused fillies again.
"You three should go home," Rainbow decided. "Right now."
The confusion did its best to rise up and meet the adult halfway.
"But we --"
"-- there's got to be some way --"
"-- Ah jus' wanna know what it's like, not t' be the unluckiest kids in the whole world --"
A static discharge crackled across cyan feathers.
"Go. Home."
It put them on a different path. Or rather, off to the side of it, within bare trees, more or less out of sight at the edge of town. A private place, to confer as a group one more time before the misery split off and headed for three beds.
"Ah can't think of any other adults who might do it," Apple Bloom sighed. "Anypony?"
Sweetie shook her head. "A snow day would have been fun for everypony," she wistfully said. "As a surprise. I thought Ms. Dash would see that..."
"An' we need an adult," Apple Bloom regretfully repeated -- then abruptly looked to her right. "Unless -- ?"
Scootaloo sighed. Wings flared out to what was now a measurably larger full span, flapped a few times. Hooves parted from soil and, after a number of seconds, came back down.
"Not for that long," the pegasus reluctantly admitted. "Nowhere near as long as it would take to do a whole town -- and it would have to be the whole town, or it looks too suspicious. And..." Her tail drooped. "...nopony's shown me how to do snow. I'd be guessing. I don't know if I'm strong enough to do a whole town, I can't stay up long enough, and even if we got a balloon or something and I guessed right -- the weather team's gonna notice, when they set up for tomorrow. Rainbow could have done something like -- I don't know, rearranged everypony's assignments, told them to take the rest of the day off or at the edges of town while she set up everything herself. I sure can't."
The misery, making sure each had an equal portion to carry, steadily soaked into their fur.
"Does anythin' else make snow?" the earth pony futilely asked. "Anythin' at all? 'cause Ah can't think of nothin' that would do it."
They all thought about it for a few minutes. Making sure they'd exhausted all of their options in a hopeless cause was a good deal of what being a Crusader was about.
Finally, accompanied by an awkward shift of feathers, "Windigos?"
Most of the remainder was being sure to make the right mistake.
Apple Bloom and Sweetie stared at their friend.
"Wasn't that what the Hearth's Warming play stuff said?" the pegasus asked. "Windigos make it snow."
"I think," Sweetie carefully proposed, "that they might just make it really cold. So cold that ponies freeze. And it's already cold."
"Well," Apple Bloom considered, "it's gonna be cold, t' get snow. Ain't no hailigos." And because it was still Equestria, "That Ah know of. But maybe the windigos jus' sort of -- finish it off. Scootaloo, y'sure?"
Orange fur creased across the wince. "I already took that test..."
The others nodded. They'd all taken the test. Information had been transferred to the answer booklet, and nopony had anticipated needing any of it back. Still, they seemed to be in possession of at least half a fact. It had to be better than none.
"Where d'you find windigos?" Apple Bloom asked, because some plans seemed to require precise intellectual steps.
"I think..." Sweetie's proposals weren't getting any more certain. "I think -- they find us?"
"How?" was obviously a logical process of inquiry.
Three of Scootaloo's neurons made a poor choice, and fired.
"Fighting," the pegasus recalled, and stopped remembering there because the part of the legend which said the entire world could wind up frozen was just too much trouble to bother with. You didn't become a Crusader by coming up with the bad parts. "They show up when ponies are fighting..." With fast-increasing enthusiasm, "Or arguing! Or just not getting along!"
The trio excitedly looked at each other. They were already starting to forget about the cold. Enthusiasm was a warming thing and when it came to basking next to warmth, you just couldn't beat the heat of blazing stupidity.
"So we jus' need a little fight!" Apple Bloom decided. "Enough t' get maybe one of 'em!" With a small laugh, "Maybe jus' a windigo foal, t' take care of one town!"
"And we're good at fighting!" Scootaloo happily enthused.
"Think about all the things which happen when we fight!" Sweetie merrily called out --
-- the smallest of the fillies stopped. Slowly looked from one to the other.
"I'm thinking," a slightly musical (and somewhat hollow) voice announced, "about some of the things which happened when we had fights..."
"Yeah, but that worked out in the end, didn't it?" Scootaloo gleefully decided. "Let's go! Apple Bloom, you start!"
The earth pony took a deep breath, felt the air failing to chill her lungs as her brain blazed with thought.
"Scootaloo?"
"Yeah?"
One more breath, and then the next words were forced out through a fast-rising storm of giggles.
"Your ideas for Crusadin' are the most fur-brained things ever!"
"HOW DARE YOU!" roared a mix of 99% joy and 1% incidental outrage.
Two fillies mutually pounced. After a moment, the third one joined in just to make sure nopony really got hurt.
There was a certain art to fighting. For starters, you had to be really careful around the wings, because one of them had flight training sessions three times a week and would be understandably miffed about losing any of them to injury. Also, there was Sweetie's horn. When it came to close-quarters tussling with a unicorn, safety required knowing where the horn was at all times.
So it wasn't so much rough-and-tumble as fur-ruffle-and-roll-a-little-that-way, with Scootaloo exempted from rolling. There were a few shoves and pretty much nothing in the way of kicks, but having twelve legs involved meant some knees got knocked together. Beyond that, most of the details got lost in the laughter.
Eventually, they stopped. All three looked up, and the joy vanished.
"Ain't snowin'," Apple Bloom dismally noted.
"Give it a few minutes," Sweetie proposed. "Maybe they need travel time."
They waited, watching the clear sky. Nothing happened.
"Where do windigos live normally?" Scootaloo asked, maintaining her position under Apple Bloom's barrel because the earth pony was warm. "The Empire?"
"I'm not sure..." Sweetie admitted. "Why?"
"Because it's cold up there," the pegasus reasoned. "And they've got to live somewhere."
"That's a really long trip."
"Ah guess -- they could take a train?"
"When they could just fly? It's longer by train."
They kept looking up. The ongoing nothingness dutifully cooperated.
Finally, they all looked at each other. Collectively sighed.
"Maybe they can tell when it's not a real fight," Scootaloo offered.
"Yeah," Apple Bloom reluctantly agreed. "An' Ah don't think Ah wanna have a real one."
Sweetie's tail twitched. "No."
They stayed like that for a few seconds. Cold again, dejected, and still stuck living in the worst place for a kid in the whole world. Looking at nothing except each other, and so they all missed the streak which flashed through the sky.
"I should get home," Scootaloo sighed.
"Yeah. Ah should --"
"-- once you get off me?"
"...right. Sorry."
Movement occurred.
"So Ah'll see you t'morrow, Sweetie," the earth pony finally said as she got back to her hooves. "At school. Since we ain't gonna have a snow day. Since we'll never --"
Which was when she looked up again, just to give the sky one more chance to insult her.
"-- where did those clouds come from?"
Two more heads jerked upright.
"They're grey!" Apple Bloom's eyes had hardly ever gone that wide. "Dark grey! It was clear when we started!"
"Is it working?" Sweetie's tones didn't exactly hold out hope for the prospect. (She had it, but a significant period of Crusading meant she wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.) "Is it really...?"
"Those are snow clouds," the pegasus firmly said. "I know it."
The trio just stared up for a while. There was a certain question as to how they were supposed to act in the face of success, and nopony was entirely sure what the answer was.
"...okay," Apple Bloom eventually began. "Had a little fight, got a few clouds. But that ain't enough, is it?"
"Not for the whole town," Scootaloo announced. "Not that most of the town can even see it, when we're this far out. But that's barely enough to get this area started."
"An' it's here," the earth pony more or less reasoned. "Where we were fightin'."
"So if we traveled around a little more," considered the pegasus. "Had a few repeats..."
The little unicorn was putting in some rather hard thought.
"If this works..." Sweetie slowly said, and then quickly amended it. "If it works more -- I don't want to have another fight. We could... have a snow day. We don't want to be bruised up and stuck in bed with lineament for a snow day..."
The other two quickly nodded. The point of a snow day was that it was something everypony could enjoy. Working the equation as Everypony Minus Us seemed to take something out of the total.
"Does it have to be us fighting?" Scootaloo asked. "Can any argument do it?"
"...yeah," Apple Bloom exhaled. "We've jus' gotta find some more fights..."
But the unicorn was still thinking.
"Ponies argue all the time," she said. "It doesn't snow every day."
"But we talked about windigos!" Scootaloo pointed out. "Maybe that lets them know we're interested! And that we just want the one storm! So they're helping!"
Light green eyes kept watching the sky.
"I don't see any windigos."
"They're invisible," Scootaloo decided.
"How do you know that?"
"...find fights," Apple Bloom steadfastly ignored them both, "or get a few little ones goin'. Jus' small stuff, like us play-fightin'. Stuff where we could jus' apologize later, explain what we did while everypony's playin' in the snow. Betcha some adults wanna play in the snow. Adults who got stuck plowin' all the time when they were kids, an' never had a real snow day..."
She started to move.
"Well, it's obvious! They're windigos! So they're made of wind! You can't see wind!"
"...right," Sweetie eventually failed to decide. "Apple Bloom, what do you think -- where are you going?"
"Back t' town!" the earth pony called back across six body lengths. "An' we've gotta do this fast, if'fin we're all gonna be home in time!"
"We --" the little unicorn tried.
"Ain't much Sun left! Come on!"
The pegasus hurried to follow. But Sweetie hung back for a moment, looking up at a sky which was still cold and damp, but no longer quite so clear.
"Windigos," she half-whispered, and followed that with a very uncertain "...hello?"
Something streaked across the sky.
Sweetie's head whipped to the right. Tried to track --
"Come on, Sweetie!" Scootaloo yelled. "We've gotta move!"
The unicorn didn't move for a few seconds.
You couldn't really see wind, other than by looking for what it was carrying. And at certain speeds, cyan with a trailing prismatic streak didn't stick around for very long either --
"-- Sweetie!"
The unicorn finally looked down, and the slowest among them did her best to catch up.
High in the atmosphere, operating in the confidence that very few ponies ever truly looked up, the weather coordinator continued to work.
Harmless arguments. Things you could apologize for later, because it was still upsetting ponies -- but only a little, because you were just playing. The adults would understand, once the snow had fallen and everypony had time off to be a kid again. There had to be something in every grown-up heart which longed for a snow day, especially when nopony had ever truly experienced one.
They had a plan, because they always did. Having a plan was at the heart of so much for what they tried, and not fully thinking it through formed the beat. But -- for this, they didn't have to think. There had been so many times when the Crusaders had upset the adults through the simple act of existing. How hard could it be to do that on purpose?
Starting arguments. Fights. But only little ones. Really, it felt as if all they needed to do was say a few words in the right places. But they had to work quickly, because there was so little daylight left.
The lack of winter Sun would eventually help them. It was going to be a new Moon on that night, cold and dark, when the Weather Bureau's schedule had dictated that some clouds would be wrangled in. Enough to keep ponies from wondering where the starlight had gone, because there wasn't supposed to be any. And it wasn't as if there were all that many Ponyville residents on the Lunar shift. By the time those scant citizens noticed what was going on, it would be too late...
They told themselves all of that because like many children (and far too many adults),they often filled the void of facts through the simple act of telling themselves what things should be.
(For what it turned out to be worth, they were right.)
The trio discussed the plan all the way back into town, keeping their tones low: even with the empty streets, there was a chance to have somepony overhear. And then they split up.
On the whole, they'd found they could do more damage that way.
In one sense, it was possible to say that this particular shop kept reliable hours. Ponies who weren't trying to be quite so polite would usually go with something more along the lines of 'He keeps saying that somepony might need to make a purchase at any time. So if he's awake, it's probably open. And we might be better off that way, because --' which was when the speaker's voice would typically drop somewhat '-- I'm not sure we're better off with having him out here. I guess he's fine as long as you talk to him in there and you stick to one of those two topics --' the shudder apparently came with the speech '-- but he's a little bit... off...'
So the shop was open, because the items within needed polishing. Rearranging with a frequency which the local librarian found troublesome. Oddly, the lighter pieces always seemed to require the majority of the display time, but that was retail for you.
The proprietor was humming to himself as he shuffled portions of the central case around. It had actually been rather expensive to get one in the right size, but he felt it set off the contents nicely and anyway, the glass barrier did a lot to keep ponies from bouncing on the cushions.
It also blocked the blast of cold air from the opening door, and so he only knew there was a customer in the shop when he saw the mane bow bobbing its way towards him.
"Oh, hello!" the stallion smiled, and then noticed that his voice had a bit of echo to it. Well, how often was he going to be dealing with somepony while arranging the case? "A little later than I'd normally expect you." He began to turn, heading for the back of the enclosure. "Just your standard order of school quills, then? I can have your box wrapped up in about two minutes."
The filly looked at him. Light orange eyes carefully inspected the furniture-sized glass box. To the proprietor, she looked like a pony who had a question, and this was true. She also happened to be one who, given what she'd been planning to say next, was happily surprised to have any kind of barrier in the way.
"Do y'have any padded benches?"
Davenport's eyelids locked in the open position.
"...what?"
"Padded benches," Apple Bloom casually blasphemed. "'cause the one in mah bedroom ain't really big enough for me no more --"
"-- I sell sofas," Davenport slowly said, and did so at the same moment when he felt his tail hit the edge of the display case's trot-in entrance. Then it hit the other edge. "And quills. I do not sell 'padded benches' --"
"Well," the filly shrugged, "when y'think 'bout it -- that's all a sofa is, ain't it? Jus' a bench with a lot of paddin'. So Ah really ain't askin' you for anythin' which y'shouldn't be carryin' already."
It would not have surprised many ponies to learn that the building hosted a holy text of sorts. It was the master retail plan, written up in loving detail on the day when the owner had found his mark. It consisted of two hundred pages of very small mouthwritten text, it was kept in a secret place of both honor and near-worship, and Davenport was now waiting for the filly to set it on fire.
He stared at the youngest member of a family who'd been purchasing school supplies (or rather, supply) from him for years. A few rational brain cells briefly worked the math of Customers I Have versus Ponies I Can Afford To Kick Out Forever, just before his mark sat on them.
Davenport was self-trained towards politeness. It helped to be both polite and calm, especially when surrounded by otherwise-reasonable ponies who possessed the collective delusion that he was insane. It made coming up with a comeback somewhat more difficult than he would have expected.
"I want to place an order with your older sister."
The filly cocked her head slightly to the right. Listened.
"For late spring, of course," Davenport added. "When the first crops come in."
She nodded.
"I would like," the stallion rather calmly snarled, "a cherry pie."
"All right," Apple Bloom reasonably replied. "Ah'll ask her t' start on that right after Ah get mah padded bench. Did y'need mah current body length so y'can pick somethin' out? Ah could use some extra room, though: tellin' y'that now. Still got some size comin' in."
Davenport took a deep breath. Portions of the glass case tried to bow inwards.
"A sofa is not a padded bench," the stallion hissed. "It is not also not a loveseat, or a tailrest, or a --" he could barely make himself say the hated word "-- futon --"
"Oh," the filly thoughtfully countered. "So it's worse than all of those?" And before he could say anything, do anything, the demon in pony form added, "'cause all Ah've got is a little bedroom. Well, not so little, in some ways -- unless there's a sofa takin' up about half of it. Because a good sofa is what, most of a bed for space? Put a sofa in mah room and y'know what there ain't gonna be? Room. In the other sense. So Ah really jus' need a new padded bench. Next time Ah'm in, Ah expect t' see a catalog."
She started to turn. Flicked her tail in his general direction, trotted towards the exit as a stallion half-paralyzed by horror and repeated blasphemy tried to figure out how her soul could exist without any faith at all --
-- the filly stopped. Glanced back at him.
"Ah mean, think about it," she told him. "Sofas are big. Bedrooms can be pretty small. Use the bed every night, but not a sofa every day. An' it ain't like Ah can get it out of the way by jus' foldin' it up into the wall!"
Which was when she laughed. Laughed at him, at his shop, at his mark, and merrily trotted out the door.
The stallion stood within the huge glass case, and everything within shuddered with him. Fought the urge to scream, with his very mark feeling as if it was twisting, trying to lash out --
fold it up into the wall
-- Davenport looked to his left. Took in the Mare's Collapse Deluxe (With Optional Abacus-Based Fainting Counter). Saw it as if he was perceiving everything for the first time. Recognized its sheer bulk.
Somewhere deep within his soul, a mark moved forward. Peeked out through his eyes. Examined the back of the beautiful piece, and made a few notes regarding strategic hinges.
"She would purchase a sofa," the stallion murmured, "if she could put it away when she wasn't using it. If it just... folded up into the wall..."
Apple Bloom cleared the shop. Glanced back to make sure nopony was following her, then risked a look up. There were more clouds and because she'd spent a few extra seconds in delivering her spontaneous closing line, she'd missed their true source.
All she had to do was apologize tomorrow, during the snow day. It was easy to calm Davenport, especially when you need to pick up a fresh supply of quills anyway. And she'd just realized that if you could do anything with a new sofa cushion, it was surely riding it downhill through the snow. A sled which came with padding! Surely he had to possess some older ones which he'd be willing to let go...
Or maybe he'd ride down the hill himself. Belly and barrel flat against the sofa cushion, legs dangling over the edge. With quills tied to his hooves, so he could use them for brakes.
She giggled. Looked up at the clouds again, and happily hurried towards home.
Three minutes later, a stallion whose face was alight with rapture, one who had spent part of the time before opening his shop in international studies because a high-backed product seemed to require learning about a species with a vertical back, dashed out the door, failed to find her, and allowed his joyous shout to take over the street.
"εύρηκα!"
But he'd never been very good with the language. As far as Davenport was concerned, the translation worked out to 'You can have the very first one at cost!'
It was close enough.
Berry suspiciously glanced up from the bar as the minor came in.
Technically, there was no rule against having children in The Whole Bunch. They just couldn't order alcohol. Or stay around anypony who was drinking for too long. Or stand anywhere near the dartboard, because Berry was trying out dartboards for the first time. She'd ordered hers from an import catalog, which had said it was a feature of bars in many nations and that meant the Bunch had the obligation to at least try it.
(Hanging the dartboard had been easy enough. The earth ponies and pegasi were still trying to work out a means of using the actual darts. It had been rather conclusively proven that spitting them didn't work or rather, it had been conclusively proven right up until somepony reached their fifth mug: at that point, somepony generally wound up proving it again, generally into their neighbor's flank. In the meantime, the unicorn customers were steadfastly demonstrating their ability to sling small pointed objects in a given direction and around the third mug, that direction gained the definition of Anywhere. Having a mark for operating a bar granted a certain number of crucial subskills, and Berry had been slightly surprised to learn that the group now included speed-drops to the floor.)
"Why?" she rather pointedly asked the approaching little unicorn. Berry didn't believe in wasting time.
"It's cold," Sweetie politely said. "May I please buy a hot chocolate?"
The bartender took a quick look around. Winter was when it got late early: some of her customers only started drinking after Sun was lowered, and the season allowed them to get what they considered to be a reasonable head start. But there was still some daylight left, and that meant the Bunch was mostly empty. There were currently two regulars in place, but... those were ponies who didn't really acknowledge all that much in the way of time, at least when it came to the actual clock. There was Start Of Season and End Of Season, neither of which referred to winter. They potentially had two other personal settings on their inner timepieces. One said Argument Start. In theory, the other should have said Argument Stop, but Berry had never heard it go off and suspected it had been repurposed to As I Am Not The Same Gender As My Opponent, I Cannot Continue This Argument In The Bathroom. Trying to shout through the closed door just didn't have the same effect.
Each of them was wearing a scarf. The current weather schedule made that a sensible choice, but the ponies didn't really care about any warmth granted by the accessory. It was about the color, and the little symbol near the hanging end. The symbol was always visible. There were ponies who entered wars without making their chosen side quite that clear. And they were arguing, because they were always arguing. Berry had spent a few years waiting for the whole thing to end in murder, then realized that if either ever killed the other, the remainder of the argument would have to wait until the temporary victor died.
The other option seemed to be a wedding, but that hadn't happened either. Berry didn't understand why. In her opinion, when it came to arguments, marriage was just one endless opportunity.
Her, Those Two were wrapped up in each other as usual, and the kid -- who would only stay for the duration of a hot chocolate. That seemed safe enough.
Except that it was Sweetie Belle.
"One," Berry suspiciously declared. "Straight up. No additives." She immediately reconsidered. "Except marshmallow. I'll do a marshmallow."
The little unicorn politely nodded. Berry turned away from the bar and got to work.
It took some effort for the filly to climb up onto the bench near the regulars: she was small for her age, and nothing in the bar was truly designed for child use. Some awkward foreleg hooking got involved.
She looked at the regulars. Ponies whom she'd seen a few times around town, because the arguments occasionally became mobile. Checked one symbol, then the other. Neither adult noticed.
It was a standing argument. Also a sitting one, occasionally trotting, and sometimes it took a little tour of the countryside. And Sweetie wasn't entirely sure as to whether the windigo theory was working, because she thought she'd seen something in the sky and anyway, to have clouds gather in the presence of arguing ponies would have placed those two under their own permanent storm system.
Of course, it was possible that the windigos were just used to this particular fight, in the same way that Sweetie had eventually learned to fall asleep to the sound of fabric bolts crashing onto the floor. And this was for her friends. When it was Scootaloo and Apple Bloom, she didn't argue very much. And she always tried.
So she listened, because there were ways in which it was a circular argument and you just had to wait until it came around to the right place.
"-- and they never should have let that go through!"
"If the referees let it pass," the stallion said, "then it's over."
"Then the referees were blind," the mare stated. "That should be a referee's mark. A blindfold. Or a hoof scraping bits backwards."
"And if your team had gotten away with it," the stallion countered, "you'd never care. You'd be happy --"
"-- so you're saying there was something to get away with! If your so-called star player didn't have half the league trying to keep his fur-polished flanks from getting hurt --"
"-- it was a legal spell, we all saw pictures of the casting in last moon's sports pages, you just want it to be wrong --"
Sweetie took a breath.
"It was cheating."
Ponies really weren't designed to be a swiveling species, especially when they were starting from a seated position. It took a few seconds before portions of the mare and stallion stopped colliding. Other aspects knotted into each other.
"What did you say?" the adults mutually hissed, and it would be another three crucial minutes before they each recognized that it had been mutual.
"Nothing should have counted," Sweetie calmly told them. "He falsified his corona. Make it tilt so that it looked like a legal spell, while he was actually casting another. The referees just didn't know to look for it, because it's so rare to find a pony who can do that. But my daddy did." With a happy little smile, "He's a hoofball coach. So he knows. He told the league. And then he told me the whole game is being reviewed, play by play. They're deciding what to do about it. Forfeit, or replay, or even banning that player for a whole year. The news should break in a few days."
She looked at the stallion's red scarf. The golden trim.
"That's a championship scarf," Sweetie politely observed. "Their first in fifty years. Does it really count, to wear it when you know your team cheated, and you'd never have the scarf without it?" Followed by turning her attention to the mare. "But it's been sixty-two for your team, hasn't it? Maybe you're just upset because you're losing honestly. Over and over. Shouldn't it feel good, to know they have integrity? Or are you mad because they can't even cheat right?"
The mare and stallion stared at her. Their fur rustled. Strands turned against the grain, then found that wasn't enough and looked for some way of sharpening themselves. Pupils contracted or, given that they'd been in the Bunch for a while, contracted more.
A mug filled with hot, steaming brown liquid slammed onto the bar.
"Hot chocolate," Berry half-hissed. "With marshmallow. I think you'd better take it to go."
Bits were quickly nosed across the wood.
"I'll bring the mug back tomorrow," Sweetie offered. "Thank you!"
She left. The two-tone tail rather quickly whipped itself clear of the closing door, which was all the more impressive when you considered that the owner was moving on three legs.
Berry looked from one regular to the other. Listened to the silence, saw the way both sets of nostrils had flared, measured the twin lashing of tails, and recognized that silence was probably going to be a rather short-term thing.
"She's just a kid," the bartender hastily said. "She didn't think about it." And did so while her forehooves were casually shifting towards that special hidden shelf, where she kept Get and Out. Get was the slip-on steel shoe with the spikes. "You two don't need to --"
"-- her father's a hoofball coach?" the stallion's hollow voice just barely managed to ask.
Berry risked a nod.
"Professional?" the mare weakly inquired.
"And a retired player," the bartender reluctantly admitted. "He's got a couple of foreleg loops."
"So the whole game," the stallion forced out, "is being reviewed..."
He twisted his head, managed to look at his own scarf. Tracked the golden trim all the way to the end --
"-- I didn't mean to get that tangled with yours," he told the mare. "That wasn't on purpose."
"I know."
Twisting ensued. Benches scooted backwards, then forwards again.
The freed stallion stared down at his mug for a while. It was empty. It kept doing that.
"Fifty years," he finally said. "Fifty years and -- I thought it was a trick play. You just weren't ready for it, and that's why you were angry. A loophole, not -- something that was against the rules. Fifty years and the only way we get the last win is cheating..."
"Sixty-two years," the mare observed, with her eyes seemingly searching for words floating at the bottom of her own mug, "and my team doesn't even have a trick play. Besides, warped corona casting was legal seventy years ago."
"Well, the rules change," noted the stallion. "All the time. Half the stuff which the old-timers got away with would be grounds for a ban now."
Berry was very slowly looking from one to the other. Over and over again.
"Like horn tackles."
"And wing pins."
"Did they ever have legal grass tangles, or was that just banned before it was outlawed?"
"I've never even heard of that. Grass tangles?"
"First two moons of the sport. Earth ponies. Sneak some weed seeds into the playing area. Make them grow so fast, it tripped ponies."
The mare snorted.
"Wish I'd seen that."
Each pony looked at their own scarf. Then each other's.
"I didn't know about grass tangles," the mare said. "I thought I knew everything about hoofball. But grass tangles..."
She carefully got down from her bench. Glanced back to the stallion.
"I'm hungry," she told him. "Want to get dinner?"
"...I think so," he decided. "Where?"
"Someplace with good lighting," she considered. "Somewhere... formal."
"Which probably doesn't allow scarves."
"Probably not..."
There were no customers in The Whole Bunch, and most ponies wouldn't be getting off the Solar shift for another hour. But there were two scarves on the floor.
Berry came out from behind the bar, picked them up and put them away. Then she looked at the dartboard.
"That one drink," she muttered to herself. "The one which discolors saliva, makes it glow..."
She tested it out through swishing the concoction around her mouth: bartenders had to remain sober. And then she spat.
It took six tries to get the range. This was followed by fifteen minutes of trying to scrub the dartboard.
Still, it was a start.
There were three earth pony mares in the town's market square. Up until a few minutes ago, they had been the only ones who'd ventured into the cold empty space at all, and that was because their cause knew no restrictions. The trio believed themselves to exist in the name of public education and on the worst days for the weather schedule, you just took whatever degree of public happened to come along. Ideally, that provided a private audience, which mostly meant a lack of those who would publicly question their sanity.
They had Arrangements, when it came to the empty square. A place they liked to set up, which they'd found had the best acoustics. There were three mares in that space, as there so often were. But they weren't looking around for a receptive audience: i.e. those who hadn't been in town long enough to ignore them. They were mostly staring at cold stone, and doing so from atop half-collapsed soapboxes.
Every so often, one head would come up. Glance quickly, guiltily at the others, and then dropped again.
There was no audience. The only potential witness was fifty body lengths ahead of them and gaining ground with every hoofstep. A purple tail was still happily swaying from the joy of release, because the small pegasus had wanted to say something exactly like that for a very long time. The words had been fully sincere, which meant the apology could be the lie. The pegasus felt that the mares would always fall for a well-told lie, because they'd been doing exactly that for an even longer time.
She didn't glance back. She didn't have to: she knew the words had done their work. The mares were in shock, because -- well, they were good at that. Shock and fainting and denial. But with denial came arguing and when the mares argued, they pushed back against the whole world.
The small pegasus didn't glance up. She knew it was getting darker, and doing so at a far greater speed than a dropping Sun would have allowed.
(There would have been something to see this time. The weather coordinator had been working hard, at a level of intensity which was normally held back for stunts -- and it was something which was starting to slow her down, because she was trying to set up conditions which would effectively conclude the process without her supervision, doing so overnight while a deliberately-depleted Lunar team was busy with something else. It was exhausting. Certain aspects of the prismatic trail had begun to sag.)
All she had to do was get home and await the results.
So she left, well before the mares could recover enough to shout. They would argue with the air, because they were good at that too.
But they didn't shout. The trio simply stayed in the market square. Looking at the ground and, when they felt there was no chance of getting caught, at each other. Until finally, the last ergs of remaining strength were forced into a soft voice.
"She said we make ourselves afraid."
Neither of the other two mares could manage a word.
"That... it's easier," the speaking one just barely went on. "To be afraid, instead of -- trying to understand. Because there's always a little fear when you do a stunt for the first time, she said. And that gives her strength, to push past it. But when you have the fear... you can feel like the fear is the thrill. The adrenaline. All of it. And if you tell yourself that the fear is where the thrill comes from, that the thrill can't be from anything other than fear... then you'll make yourself afraid. Over and over. And... she said that once you do a stunt a few times, the fear is gone. So she has to push for something stronger. So if it feels like the fear is ever fading for us, and we're so addicted to it that we need fear just to feel normal... we have to find more things to be afraid of. Stronger things. Closer things. Everything..."
It took a certain curl of the body, to stare at your own tail that way. A given tilt of the neck. The willingness to hold back tears.
"She didn't have any reason to say that," the mare continued. "The conspiracy doesn't directly recruit them before their marks come in. Not before they know whether a pony is going to be useful. We all know that."
Normally, her friends would have offered reassuring nods, and that was at the minimum. Nuzzling was also an option. But nopony moved.
"The conspiracy," the mare repeated, and there was something odd in her voice. "The thing we're all afraid of, because... we found the magazines which told us about it. Because we looked. And she said... we make ourselves afraid..."
Roseluck took the slowest breath of her life.
To any witnesses, she would have simply seemed to be staring at stone. The actual gaze had finally turned inwards.
"What if she's right?"
Apple Bloom dimly recalled a time in her life when she'd somehow become convinced that the Princess was responsible for the delivery of Hearth's Warming gifts. She wasn't sure how she'd come to that conclusion, but she knew it had been well before the Return because that was what had eventually disproved the whole thing. After all, if Princess Celestia was going to fly across the nation to give out presents, why would she do it at night?
But she'd still tried to stay awake at least once, hoping to catch a very large mare who, for some reason, was supposed to be sneaking in through a rather small chimney. (There was a persistent rumor which claimed the Princess was immune to fire, and Apple Bloom supposed that made sense. She just didn't see where size-changing fit into any of it.) And it had let her learn a lesson which wasn't quite suitable for a scroll, one she remastered as she tried to wait for the morning's results: the one which said that even if you were an earth pony, if you spent too much of the night wriggling with excitement, you were probably going to wear yourself out.
She woke up. She kicked off the blankets, and heard them impact the wall. Leapt from the bed, and sheer hope sent her scrambling for the window as a soul which had spent years trying not to drown in a flood of disappointment asked the world to give her something once --
-- at the side of the window, there were pale pink and yellow blankets sliding down to the base of the wall.
She looked through the glass, and found another blanket. It was white, thick, pristine, sparkled slightly, and it was very probably the reason why she'd just heard her rooms-removed big sister take a rather distant and very loud inhale --
"-- not it!" Apple Bloom called out, and the sheer mirth in her own voice was enough to part hooves from the floor: most of the journey to her wardrobe was conducted via speed pronk. "Not mah day t' plow! Wasn't scheduled! Not it, not the plow pony it, goin' out, goin' out t' see if we're havin' school at all when the road teams didn't know t' clear anythin' an' oh dear Sun an' Moon, not it...!"
She bundled up as quickly as she could, because there were sibling hooves on the way and to not clear the area in time might see the call of Not It invalidated by the weight of years. But the older sister had been slowed by stun, while the younger was moving at the speed of joy. Of triumph and success.
Apple Bloom cleared the front door well before anypony else could reach the ramp. Nearly crashed snout-first into snow as her legs tried to fight against the resistance of a half-expected, very real knee-high barrier, laughed all the louder, and pushed towards town.
How did you describe a miracle?
Apple Bloom wasn't sure. And in some ways, there wasn't that much to look at, not when it came to the environment. She'd certainly seen snow before. It was just that up until now, she'd seen it by arrangement.
It was never fresh, untouched white. There was always a plowed-out road, and it went directly to the schoolhouse. But now she was making her own path, breaking the coating one hoofstep at a time. It forced her to slow down. Something which gave her time to look. And what she saw...
It wasn't the environment. The true miracles were the ponies within it. Those who realized that there was little point in opening their shops, or trying for the train, or anything else. For one day, they existed in a world where there was snow without schedule.
For some, it was a terrifying thought. There would always be those ponies who were skittish control freaks, looking for a place to run any time an unarranged leaf fell upon their backs. The snow represented a considerable weight in leaves, and more than a few found themselves shivering.
Then they looked at the snow. Truly looked. And somewhere behind their eyes, the dreaming soul of a foal looked again.
That was the miracle.
Oh, there were those who grumbled. The road plowing team found a few ponies outside their homes -- eventually, because every first path had to be forced and by the time the grumblers reached their destination, the plows were on the way. But on the whole...
There were three earth pony mares. They'd found couch cushions somewhere: oddly flat ones, which looked as if they'd been subjected to great pressure. All three were riding the things down a hill. Over and over, while laughing. Apple Bloom stopped to watch that for a while, because she'd never heard those mares laugh. Making a personal record of the event seemed important.
Get into town, and... some businesses had managed to open. The device repair shop had the lights on, and it was just possible to make out the shadows of two ponies within. The earth pony stallion was merrily going over a selection of springs and hinges, while the pegasus mare busied herself with trying to make a very large sofa compress into a rather small space.
Both outlines seemed happy. Apple Bloom promptly told herself that they would be happier if they just came outside.
A couple passed her, simply enjoying the day. One was a mare, the other a stallion, and the recovered scarves had been tied together at the fringed end.
There were snow fights between all ages. Pristine streets found their first paths carved by sleighs. Mr. Waddle found a fake beard somewhere and began to pass out snout-rolled snowballs as gifts to all. There was a spit-for-distance challenge in front of a bar, because colored saliva showed up rather well against the white.
She made it past the bakery and found a snow fort under rapid construction. Then there was the bookseller: another shop which had decided to open. The front of the store featured a snow trench trampled by multiple hooves, one with no actual pony occupants. The only outdoor ponies in the area consisted of three pegasi. Two of them were wearing what felt like oddly formal outfits: the sort of thing which Apple Bloom associated with those who had replaced Sense with Government. They were both rather obviously saying something to the third, and the unheard words had driven four cyan hooves to the ground. The prismatic tail was drooping just as much as the mare's empty saddlebags.
Every so often, the weather coordinator managed to raise her head just enough to look at the display window. One glance took place in time to catch the placement of the Sold Out sign.
But Apple Bloom had left hearing range long before that particular scream shattered the new day. She had a goal. She had to reach it. She had to know.
She found the school.
The single trail made by adult hooves leading to the door, and the Closed sign upon it.
Within minutes after that, while she was still staring at the final proof of miracle and wondering what she could possibly put into her next letter to Thesz, her friends found her.
And then there was laughing and rolling and snow in the fur which somehow didn't feel cold at all.
It only took one day to clear the snow, at least to the point where everything could go back to normal. However, four additional days of expert stalling would pass before Rainbow was forced to openly tell the town about her part in all of it, followed by a full moon of Weather Bureau probation. Fortunately for the town's sanity, it took less than a week before the librarian managed to procure an extra copy of the book, and a pegasus who had won most of the wind-slung snowball fights would eventually declare the whole thing as Worth It.
Four days before the Crusaders were told that the only part they'd played in the whole thing had been to give Rainbow the idea. But that was also the four days before a wedding was announced, before Davenport debuted the prototype of the Fjord Sofa, and it happened to be four days in which the Flower Trio failed to relapse. In many ways, the time which passed between event and admission, following the only snow day of Apple Bloom's childhood... those were among the best days of her life.
Four days.
They'd recruited Diamond on the first.
"So the hard part is going to be hiring fight-starter teams all over the continent," the newly-designated project manager said from her position at the front of the clubhouse, carefully reviewing the new plans for everypony in Ponyville Primary East. "Since we can't travel all that much. Not during the winter, not when we're kids." Confidently, "So a lot of this has to be done by mail. And magazine advertisements. Ones we have to word very carefully, so the adults don't catch on. And no matter what we do, I don't think we're going to be ready until at least next year. But my daddy is going to take at least one tour of all the stores during the summer, so I'm going to ask if I can come along. And that'll let me check on some of our new franchises!"
"What's the pay?" Snips checked.
Diamond sniffed. "A snow day," she declared, "is clearly its own reward. Besides, after we pool our allowances to purchase ad space, what are we paying them with?"
Silence.
"Right," the best possible project manager stated. "So we'll start working on the recruiting ads. At least a week for that, to make sure they read properly. And once that week is up, and the adults aren't wondering where the snow came from any more -- that's when we can start figuring out the math."
"Math," Cotton carefully repeated.
Another sniff. "Time spent arguing," Diamond explained, "to hoofheights of snow produced. We need the exact numbers. And we should find a way to find and speak with the windigos. Make sure they're willing to keep working for free, because we can't pay them either. Oh, and they have to stop when we say so. Every time."
Four days of believing they'd found one of the levers which moved the world.
"We don't want any global cooling!"
All things considered, that was probably about the limit.
