Our Kind of Weather

Captain Downdraft and her team winged silently through the empty night. Many of them were flying upside-down.

Any other time, Downdraft would have snapped at them. But Downdraft herself had spent the last three miles drifting on her back, gazing up at the rippling velvet sky.

With the winter wind burning behind them, they had flown southwest, giving them a perfect view of the sunset. The sun had been eerily red and large, like a dying star. In its final minutes, the sun had seemed to loom close enough to the Earth, towering over it like the mountain peaks above the griffon villages, that Downdraft could see the motion of the huge red orb spinning above them. Arcs of fire bigger than the Earth streaked over the center, like the tail of a great phoenix. And Downdraft wondered if there had once been something flying over the surface of the Sun very much like she flew over the Earth now, watching the small blue planet below, watching the ocean slowly turn black.

Veins of superheated plasma bulged throughout the sun, like a tumor inside it had expanded and metastasized.

“Sweet Celestia,” yelled Scud, “the Bank is pulling the Sun into the Earth!”

Doldrum knew then that it wasn’t just a vision she was seeing. The Sun really was falling toward the Earth. In the dying light of the evening, something long and narrow flashed in the distance. It was thin, but dazzlingly bright. When Downdraft blinked, she saw a thin purple line imposed on her eyelids, the result of local dimming in her retinas.

“She wouldn’t,” gasped Lieutenant Stratum. “She can’t!”

“She’s not,” said Downdraft. “The Sun is tethered. When you swing something on the end of a string, how do you slow it down?”

Tears stung her eyes. The realization that Princess Celestia had to participate in this process wounded her heart. She had been on Princess Celestia’s side against her detractors ever since the Nightmare Moon incident. Nightmare Moon hadn’t even ruled for twenty-four hours out of a thousand years. Downdraft couldn’t get that kind of consistency from the fly-thru at the local Hayburger. And the oat fries always got soggy in the bag by the time she got them home.

The ultimate free-body diagram burned above them, meteoring to its final answer.

What did this look like from the ground? If there was any life anywhere else in the world, what did it look like across the oceans? And from the mountains? And in the Crystal Empire, if they weren’t all busy playing hockey and licking the maple syrup off of trees?

What did this look like at home?

Downdraft’s throat constricted. Her heart throbbed. She squeezed her eyes shut to fight the pain. That purple line stretched across a year of memories of cold beds and dinners left in the oven overnight. She remembered their Hearts and Hooves day, celebrated two weeks late, in a crummy diner sitting in the booth together, sharing chocolate chip pancakes and complaints about new noise regulations for thunder. Then it was March, and she’d just heard about his parents, and rushed home as fast as she could, and she’d still been a day late, not in time to hold his hoof or slap the doctor across his face for thinking he had any right to say that it was really for the best.

It was spring, and they were talking about children. She was lying with her head in his lap: “I kind of like where my career is going. We might as well wait till I’m fired to get pregnant.”

“I don’t know, the benefits package is actually pretty good for new parents.”

“Either way, we’d have to spend an actual night together. Remember what those are like? You know, I’m thinking we should sell the bed and get a single.”

“Is an entire night required?” He grinned down at her. “You know, eagles do this thing where they meet in midair and—”

She jammed her head into his stomach. “If you want to mate like eagles, then you can sleep in a nest like one.”

“Will you be there?”

“If there’s food.”

“Then nests are okay.”

Then it was summer, and everything was about the NGDP Targeting Festival and the weird guidelines that Princess Celestia had set. Then it was eternal night, for a few hours or so, and then it was about recovery and repair, reorganizing and recounting. And it was politics with a fresh edge, a razor slicing open the skin under old, hairy moles.

Autumn, and...what had even happened in autumn? Just one overtime job after the next. Date night had been early morning burritos and the shock of realizing she was already late for her shift.

It would all be better once the new year started. Although she was starting to see the appeal of doing things eagle style.

A hundred different images of herself broke across her eyelids like a reflection in cracked glass, and the only clear vision was the purple line from a single bright flare from an invisible chain. It was a gash between them all, or it was glue holding it all together, or it was just the sunlight bleaching the pigment out of the back of her eyes. Recovering from the damage—rebuilding the pigment in an ungainly purple fissure—took precedence over her personal life even in memory.

Her eyes opened, and the sun died.

It hurtled below the Earth and disappeared. And then it was silent.

Not that the Sun dying had made any noise. There wasn’t exactly a great crashing noise as the Sun hit the concrete floor on the bottom of outer space. But there was an unfreezing of the muscles throughout Downdraft’s body that felt a lot like silence.

Nighttime, and the stars didn’t come out.

Nighttime, and there should have been a moon.

After a while, Downdraft turned over onto her back and stared at the sky while she flew.

Now she was facing forward again. Looking down, actually, because the quiet gloom underneath her was quite interesting. She had never seen Equestria so un-lit before. It meant there were no shadows to disguise depth, nor to add it.

Little points of light flickered in the direction of Ponyville. Who are you, that you would light lights tonight? thought Downdraft. She remembered what she had read in the newspapers during early morning flights, the occasional flock of geese dodging out of her way with indignant squawks while she sipped cold coffee and caught up on last week’s news. Twilight Sparkle, was it? One of the ones responsible for the “brilliant” weather plan. Though Rainbow Dash, who was painfully honest (or was it loyalty?), had nothing but praise for the purple egghead.

She felt a slight change in the direction of the wind through her feathers. Lieutenant Stratum pulled level alongside her.

“Hey, Downie,” whispered Lieutenant Stratum. “What’s up?”

Captain Downdraft nodded at her.

Stratum gave an embarrassed smile. “It’s just...I know the sky is all crazy and whatever, but it’s been two hours and no pony is talking. I’m kind of going insane, you know?”

Downdraft exhaled.

“What’s up with that over there?” said Stratum.

Downdraft looked in the direction of Stratum’s gaze. “Ponyville. Some hicks setting their hay on fire, maybe.”

“Yum! But I meant over there.”

Downdraft squinted.

“See where the snowfall stops?”

“Oh...yeah. That’s the Everfree Forest,” said Downdraft.

“Doesn’t it need snow too?”

“If you want to fly a cloud over it, be my guest. Just be sure to finalize your will first.”

“I’m good.”

Their wings beat the air behind them.

“Doesn’t it need water though? A forest is trees, right?”

“No pony knows what the Everfree Forest does about water,” said Downdraft. “Only eight ponies alive today have ever been inside it.”

It wasn’t much longer until sunrise. Behind her, Downdraft thought she could see the first intimation of pink light at the edge of the world. Westward, somewhere in the distance, her husband was waiting at home. There were probably oat cakes in the oven. That, or she was getting a divorce.

“But, but Downie...look at that! Isn’t that tree on fire?”

Downdraft looked, but there was nothing.

“No, Downie, look—that little ripple!”

Downdraft saw it.

She said a word that made Lieutenant Stratum cover her ears politely.

Oat cakes browning in the oven, and a pot of coffee boiling…. He knew exactly how she took it. Twenty lumps of sugar. And a few more to suck on. It pulled at her attention like a magnet on iron.

“Change course,” she muttered. “We need to check that out.”

“You don’t want us to go into the Everfree!” squawked Lieutenant Stratum.

“No, but we can talk to the pony who does.” Downdraft remembered the name from the papers and Rainbow Dash’s rather baffling description of her. “Pinkie Pie.”

Black flames rushed up Willow’s body like a thousand teeming ants. More black torches were pressed against parts of her trunk and to the ends of her long hanging leaves. Everywhere the torches touched, black flames clung on and started to climb.

Her screams were like a saw blade against a metal pipe. The sky above was serene, empty, and waiting, like a freshly erased blackboard. Her voice scratched across it like nails.

The black fire was spreading all over her body. It carved into the exposed places on her trunk with brutal intelligence. Smoke made of Willow’s body filled the air.

The ones who carried the torches touched them to other places on Willow. She went up like a rocket.

“Next,” said a tree, a black walnut.

They dragged the next one forward.

“Where is the Decision Tree?” prompted the black walnut.

“Dead,” mumbled Holly.

“Burn hir children first,” said the black walnut.

“First,” roared Holly with unexpected strength, “do not think about pink elephants—”

A scream lit up the night, brighter than a forest fire.

Far away, to the north and east, three windigos cut through the snow like seals arching their bodies through living water—

—when there had been living water—

—they swam on, and above them, in the sky—

Elsewhere...the night dragged on.

It teetered on the edge of yesterday and tomorrow.

Under the unwatching sky….

Darkness gloomed into a clearing in the Everfree Forest. It fell languidly, like snowflakes in a snowglobe. This darkness wasn’t just the absence of light. It was thicker, like a fluid. Translucent in the nighttime, like a jellyfish in the water, its tentacles touched here and there, groped and felt….

The murky black jellyfish settled like snow over an island surrounded by a moat. There was a castle, and around the castle was a garden.

Trails of darkness glided over the plants that bordered the exterior of the castle. Purple Knights they were, though the leaves were falling off and the stems cracking. Elsewhere, the tenebrous shadow oozed through rough bluestern grass, which surrounded a small pond where slimy pondweed floated on the surface, gently decaying.

Plumes of Indian grass were so dry they broke off under the gentle pressure of the darkness, which hastily withdrew. What should have been bright purple blooms of blazing star had flaked away.

Individual sunset-colored honeylocust trees stood over dying rows of wild rye. Dry husks of white snakeroot jutted out here and there.

There was a dry feeling to the whole collection. These were prairie plants, out of place in the wet, shadowy Everfree Forest.

A little bit of shattered glass was on the ground. The caliginous tendrils rushed up and found the broken window. They flooded in…

...searched the lifeless rooms…

...found a smashed table, dust and splinters, and flecks of dried scraps of leaves, as if caterpillars had been there and consumed all but the most disgusting parts…

...hesitated for a moment in the library...

...and retreated.

A hypothesis was confirmed. The darkness lifted, leaving only the regular sort.

Tomorrow became today, and today became yesterday. Like an uphill sprinter, the Earth strained toward morning.

The sun began to rise.

In the morning hours of the new year, three windigos streak across a white plain. In the morning they skulk under the shadows of a long-leafed tree and watch the brilliant red blaze of the newborn sun sweep across the sky and burn away the shadows.

The fire-sparked light touches them, and to their astonishment, they are not burned.

And the colors are like nothing they’ve ever seen.

Across Equestria, across the whole expanse of the world, creatures big and small, smart and dumb, magical and ordinary, watch the sun fall and rise and die and be reborn.

Some of them have snow in their hair….

There are two creatures who miss the New Year’s sunrise.

One is Nightmare Moon, a pony. The other is a tree who wanted to be a pony. Their meeting, brief and violent though it was, would prove to be a turning point in the history of Equestria.

But that was over six months ago. And now, it is…

...One week later.

Shh. The creature called Twilight Sparkle is waking up.

Let’s see what she does.