Lesbian Sheep Syndromeby SilverNotesChaptersI<3Ewe2ISitting on the cloud above the pasture was a sheep. That's what most would have assumed at first glance, anyway, and after the first few times griffons and pegasi alike had slammed into obstacles mid-air during the resulting double-takes, the "sheep" in question had learned to keep the resulting sigh internal. Lamb Chop was a pegasus--a third generation immigrant to Griffonstone, at least up until the day she'd become a first generation one to Equestria--but she was one for whom it was easy to spot the wooly-looking mane and tail long before noticing the wings tucked at her sides. Her legs were a bit longer than average, her body having decided that her adult height had needed a final adolescent growth spurt that went directly to her cannon bones, and her ears had a natural droop that had run in her family for generations and had a side effect of making her seem perpetually melancholy or meek. Her coat and feathers were so deep a blue as to look black in most lighting, and the mess of curls that spilled from her head and her hindquarters were white as snow. It all made it easy to mistake her, at a distance, for a lost lamb who'd somehow gained the ability to cloudwalk. Below her were the true sheep, and those were her charges. Sheepfolk of black, white, and occasional black-and-white milled about below, pausing here and there in their grazing to chatter amongst themselves. A few would look up, meet her gaze, and smile before returning to what they were doing, reminded that they were safe. Sheep were a bit of a paradox. They didn't like being inside shelters, and usually wouldn't go into a house, or even a barn, unless cold or other extreme weather demanded it. Given the option, they would rather be out under the open sky. However, they were also incredibly vulnerable, and so that open space required constant supervision. Some species had developed breeds of dog to act as guardians, but while a large dog could keep wolves at bay, it couldn't always deter monsters, especially the flying ones who sought to swoop down and carry off a wooly snack. A common mistake made, in the current age, was assuming that things were safe now. In cities, that could be true... most of the time. Rural communities still had alarms for things like voracious rocs descending from the sky, and the drills were not for show. Lamb Chop was a flock guardian, and while the flock below technically wasn't hers--she didn't have the bits together yet to buy her own patch of land, and her license to host would need to come after both that, and when she finished all of her citizenship classes--it didn't make her any less diligent. The owners of the land would wander out here multiple times a day--it was often the stallion, sometimes the mare, and rarely the elder or the small filly--to bring her food to eat, and at sunset her charges would be rounded up for the night. It had taken only one reluctant, restless night in a guest room of the farmhouse for her to request to bed down with the flock in their pen instead, and she had fallen asleep the second night with the smallest of the lambs tucked under one of her wings. Summer was shifting into the autumn, and an on-schedule chill breeze made Lamb Chop fluff out her wings and tuck her tail around herself. She would never get used to managed weather, despite being a pegasus herself. She knew the basics, and because she was a guardian, the basics included some enviable lightning control, but Griffonstone didn't have enough pegasi to have everything scheduled to the hour, nor would they want to. One of the ewes split off from the flock, and their eyes met. One ear twitched, then the other, followed by two stomps of the right front hoof. Not an emergency, but she wanted to talk. Lamb Chop nodded, got to her hooves, then glided down to meet her, giving a small shiver as she landed in the cool grass. She smiled, tilting her head slightly. "What's up, Fleeca?" The solid black ewe was particularly fluffy, making her look a lot like a stormcloud, and Lamb noted that she may need to nudge the farm owners about shearing her soon. Fleeca's wool apparently grew faster than usual, and so needed the frequent shearing to keep her comfortable, even when the weather grew cooler. She rocked from side to side on her hooves, awkwardly glancing around, and Lamb tried not to let herself tense up too much. It may not be an emergency, but it was clearly troubling her, and something bothering one of her sheep had alarm bells going off. The third time that Fleeca looked behind her, Lamb Chop followed her gaze, and frowned a bit as she saw Dolly, the snowy-white ewe in conversation with her older sister Roslin. She and Fleeca were nearly always together when they were grazing, and so Lamb found herself asking, trying to maintain a tone of gentle concern rather than reveal the extent of her worry, "Is there something going on with Dolly?" Fleeca immediately cringed at the question, looking from Lamb's eyes to the grass and pawing at the earth with an uneasy hoof. "Well..." Finally, with a few more hems, haws, and baas, Fleeca told her. An emergency would have been easier. "Don't get involved." It was Lamb's second time in the farmhouse, and it was no less uncomfortable than the first time. She had had very little experience with other ponies before leaving Griffonstone. Most who had immigrated there over the ages had been pegasi like herself, and while pony bloodlines were finicky things, so as generations passed, they didn't always stay pegasi, the winged equines remained a majority among Equestrian diaspora communities. Before crossing the border, she had met a grand total of one unicorn in person, and could count the earth ponies she'd seen on her hooves. It had made her first encounter with her current employers incredibly awkward, because she felt that they'd picked up on the fact that she kept glancing at their sides in the expectation of reading the body language in wings that they didn't have. Her inexperience with earth ponies aside, however, she'd come to respect Applejack. She was a reliable, diligent worker, and was fiercely protective of her land and all who lived on it. It was the kind of strength of character that Lamb Chop couldn't help but respect. However, Equestrian ponies were still alien, and the three words had Lamb tilting her head slowly, something she'd realized only after coming here that her family had picked up from living among griffons. "Come again?" Applejack snorted and gave a shake of her head. "You heard me. I had a feelin' that those two were gettin' close, an' speakin' from the voice o' experience, you want no part o' the resultin' courtin'." The head tilted further, reaching the limits of an equine neck. As she stared at Applejack, she was also distantly reminded of the fact that she'd been told, during her first few conversations with Equestrians, that she didn't blink as often as they believed a pony should. "...Why?" Luckily, Applejack didn't seem perturbed by any birdlike qualities in her gaze, instead looking right back into her eyes. "Now, I ain't been one t' pry int' your past, Lamb," she started, her voice steady as her returned stare. "Why you left Griffonstone is your own business an' nopony else's. I sent a letter t' the farm you said you worked at, an' they sent back a reply praisin' you t' high heaven. They told me 'bout the wild storm an' you stayin' with the sheep for days, maintainin' a safe zone, 'til help arrived, an' far as was I'm concerned, that was reason enough t' give you a chance." Lamb Chop could feel the metaphorical shoe hanging in the air, waiting for its moment to drop, and so she gave it the slightest nudge to get it over with. "But?" "But I have t' ask, 'cause I did do some diggin'." Ponies without wings remained hard to read, but she noticed Applejack's eyes slide and knew exactly where they were going. Lamb Chop's mark tended to be mistaken for a cloud, a roundish fluffy shape that was white against her near-black pelt, but she preferred to see it as an image of her charges' wool. "I didn't know anythin' 'bout griffon farmin' before you showed up, an' I was curious what they tended t' farm." Lamb could see the shape of the shoe now, and her head righted itself as she braced. "The sheep there, they ain't so chatty, are they?" The words weren't harsh, and the gaze wasn't accusing so much as studying. "Not like the ones we've got here." Lamb Chop gave a small, tight nod. "They're called mouflon. Animals. Nonsapient." Her wings opened involuntarily, hind hooves shuffling in the urge to flee. "I didn't know that you didn't--" "I ain't mad." The reassuring words relaxed wings, though they didn't quite fold again as Applejack went on. "I could tell you weren't hidin' it, you jus' didn't reckon you needed t' mention it, 'cause t' you, it goes without sayin'." She frowned a little. "But that does mean that you're used t' dealin' with sheep as critters an' not as people, have I got that right?" "That... would be right," Lamb admitted slowly. "This is my first flock of sheepfolk." She had had many reasons to come to her ancestors' homeland, but that had been one of the chief ones. Her mark, her soul, drove her to protect sheep, but the animals that griffons kept as livestock didn't feel like they were her true calling. True sheepfolk were nigh-unheard of in Griffonstone, and so the chance to have charges who she could speak with had required that she leave all she had ever known behind. Can't mess this up. Can't fail them. Can't. So vulnerable... One wrong call... one mistake... "An' that's why I'm tellin' you t' take your snout out o' it." Applejack gave a deep sigh. "They ain't like ponies. Or like griffons, far as I know 'bout those." There was a bit of bite in the last few words, but Lamb sensed that it wasn't aimed at her; there had apparently been a griffon visitor in the town once, and the fact that it was once had implied plenty about the impression left. "All you're goin' t' earn yourself is a headache tryin' t' get in the middle o' their problems." The shoe had dropped, and Lamb hadn't been dismissed for keeping an accidental secret. That fact gave her the boldness to give a stomp of her hoof in protest. "I didn't barge into the situation. Fleeca asked me for help." "Eeyup, they do that. S'easier than dealin' with the problem 'emselves t' push it off on whoever's watchin' over 'em. Trus' me, all you're doin' is findin' a rock t' bash your head against." She gave her own hoof-stomp. "When it comes t' the dynamics o' the flock, you step in iff'n it's one o' two cases: either somepony went an' put a dangerous idea in their heads an' they're goin' t' hurt 'emselves followin' it like it's princess-decreed law, or it's somethin' where they're fixin' t' fight each other an' you need t' get between 'em before it gets violent. Otherwise, don't get involved." "They're your charges, Applejack." Lamb had grown to respect her employer. That's why, when she moved to trot past her to the door, she kept the myriad of curse words she knew, across two languages, to herself. "And mine. I'm not going to ignore a cry for help." The door opened as she was headed for it, and a large red body carefully moved out of her way. "Good evenin', Miss Chop." She nodded at Big Macintosh's greeting, but anything she could have said in response was drowned out by Applejack calling after her. "Jus' don't say I didn't warn you. Sheep romance don't end well for ponies involved!" If there was more, Lamb didn't hear it. Because she still had to get used to earth ponies, but one advantage to being around them was that the easiest way to end a conversation was to go up. And so the moment she was through the door, her wings spread, and she was soaring through the chill night air. Normally, she'd be off to the pen to sleep, but instead, she angled herself toward town. If the supposed caretaker would not be of help with this dilemma, then Lamb would just have to acquire her knowledge another way. It was time to see if the town librarian was still awake. Sheep were sometimes thought of as completely mindless. Most ponies didn't really get to meet sheep, and it was that way with a lot of species that fell under the umbrella of protectorates. Sapience came in a lot of forms, and all of them were just slightly askew from one another. A pony wasn't a griffon wasn't a zebra wasn't a yak, and the misunderstandings between them had ended up the kind of things that made up entire history books. Yet, they all existed on a similar playing field. Species that had founded nations, built societies, and come together to form the Menagerie in ages past and start establishing international law. Other species had not done this. For some, this was simple lack of social instinct. Perfectly capable of friendship or affection, but no drive to form the herds, packs, colonies, or hives that eventually became settlements and turned into kingdoms. There was no land of the yeti, no nation of the chimera, no cities built by bugbears. A rare individual may immigrate into a country, join a society originally founded by other species--Equestria had a sea serpent, but it would be a long while before Lamb Chop met him personally--but they tended to live and die as singular exceptions who never met another. Outside of these exceptions, members of those species were simply known as civis orbis terrarum, with the basic international rights granted to any creature that could think. Those were the species who were content to be left to their own devices, and could thrive in the wild spaces unclaimed by others. Protectorates were ones who, without other sapient species to look after them, would be doomed to extinction. They were wards of whatever nation housed them, and their rights were also enshrined in international law, with their entire host society being held responsible for any attempt at exploitation. Just being able to host any of them on one's land required a rigorous process. It had to be that way. Sheep were people, but they were people easily swayed. Flocks had no leader, instead gathering together and talking amongst themselves until they had a consensus, which usually resulted in a lot of hemming and hawing until one voice popped up with an idea or opinion and it rapidly spread through the rest of the crowd. They didn't lie--omitting truths, however, talking around what they didn't want to share, they did that as easily as any other sapient--and so couldn't quite grasp the idea that other creatures may lie to them. Fear of exploitation was very much founded, because speak to them with enough conviction and they would believe. That was why Applejack had talked about them acting on dangerous ideas, because if they'd all been swayed in a bad direction, sometimes their pony caretaker needed to become the voice that nudged them back to safety. Still, they had their own temperaments, their own interests, and their own preferences. Tell them clover was a super food that would increase their strength, health, and lifespan, and the one sheep in a flock who found clover repulsive wouldn't suddenly have a change in taste buds, they'd just resent every moment as they ate it. Convince the flock that learning to sing would bring them wealth and fame and you'd hear them practicing, but it wouldn't dampen an individual's enthusiasm for painting in between rehearsals. Tell them that their porcine neighbours were plotting against them, and you'd see them all reacting to the sudden appearance of a pig in their pasture very differently, from the ones whose first instinct was to run, to the ones who would freeze in place, to the ones who would storm over to accuse, to the ones who would skip verbal accusation entirely in favour of lowering their heads and charging. They also had interpersonal relationships that were more complex than just a single-minded flock. They could get irritated with one another, even aggressive, but they also formed lasting friendships, deep family bonds, and fell in love. Autumn was the time for new romance for them, and spring the time for new family to be born. And as the days were getting shorter and the air was getting cooler, it was no wonder that Fleeca was having those thoughts right now. Sheep discussed most issues as a group, but when things were personal and private, too delicate to send out into the flock to be discussed by every other ewe, ram, and lamb, they looked outside the group to their caretaker, or in a pinch, to anyone who wandered close to the fence and was willing to tell them something that they were guaranteed to take to heart and act on. Fleeca had chosen Lamb Chop as her confidant. She wanted to be worthy of it. Can't fail them. One mistake... It was nearly a full day since the chat in the pasture, and after a restless night of trying to sleep, Lamb was reading. She'd had brief contact with most of Applejack's friends, mostly because being on the Acres made it inevitable. The loud, pink one had insisted on baking her a cake, and the one with fake eyelashes had tried to talk Lamb into letting her do something with her mane, but mostly it'd been an introduction, polite acknowledgement afterward, and that was it. Twilight Sparkle had been a little more extensive, if only because, on that first meeting, she'd made the classic new-pony-in-town mistake of bowing. She'd then been hastily told to please not to do that, had it explained to her that Twilight was only related to the royal family in the sense of being sister-in-law to the Crystal Princess, had gained her wings during a magical mishap that she claimed was a long story, and the association between alicornhood and princessdom was a bit exaggerated thanks to Celestia's long reign. Lamb, as a newcomer in an alien land, had taken her word for all of it. After all, it made sense; stripped of their finery, no one could tell a griffon king from a commoner, so why couldn't an alicorn be a librarian? Twilight was hard to read, in a different way from the earth ponies. Her wings were new, oversized, and didn't quite move right, as if the muscles were firing off at random without any input from the brain. But she'd come across as a nice enough mare, and the previous night, despite Lamb arriving past the posted closing time, she'd still let her into the library to look over the books. The problem was that the library hadn't had much to work with, as the books on dating and romance, few as there were in the first place, had all been about ponies. She'd ended up taking out a book she'd read once already, meant for individuals starting jobs that involved working with sheep. She'd skimmed the section on mating season at the time, because she'd arrived shortly after lambing that year and there'd been plenty of time, and also because the topic had had her... uncomfortable. Lamb, as a foal, had questioned the point of romantic relationships, and been told she would understand when she grew up. Years into marehood, every adult who'd said that had been proven a liar, and the gap in her understanding had steadily come with a profound sense of repulsion to the whole concept. But she'd accepted that there were creatures for whom it meant something, for whom it was important, and so she took their emotions seriously no matter how baffling they seemed. The book really didn't offer much on a closer reread, because it largely glossed over the topic. The deeper into the autumn the year went, the more of them would fall into amorous moods, and they would start to pair off. Ewes would be particularly affectionate and would likely follow the object of their attention around, rams could grow shorter-tempered and lead to scuffles that a guardian would need to break up, and in five or so moons there would be new lambs to coo over. Simple. Sheep were people, and each one was different. Some stayed together with their first sweetheart, year after year, others had wandering hearts, but for each of them, yes was yes, and no was no. Fleeca and Dolly were nearly always together, and had been even before the seasons had turned, and Lamb was certain that if Fleeca were to ask, Dolly would say yes. But ewes didn't directly ask. They signaled. They dropped hints. And Fleeca didn't know how. Not ones that another ewe would pick up on. The book wasn't any help. It treated the whole affair as something observed at a distance, not something to give tips to navigate. A book about sheep, written by ponies, for ponies. It felt like everything in Equestria was for ponies. "Look out!" The shout reached Lamb Chop's ears a second after a blur of rainbow colour hurtled through her cloud. Her wings flared, the cool air twisting itself into just what she needed slow her tumble and go into a hover. Deep instinct took over. Vapor condensed around her hooves as they moved. Static crackled in her feathers. She was moments away from having a new cloud, a storm cloud, to blast away the threat to her charges-- Until she remembered that she was in the east orchard, not the pasture, and she recognized the colourful wrecking ball as being the source of the warning shout. "Rainbow Dash?" The beginnings of the weapon were allowed to dissipate as she swooped toward the tangle of tree branches and limbs. "Grover's gizzard, you scared me half to death. Are you okay?" "Fine! I meant to do that!" Rainbow insisted as she pulled herself out of the tree's grasp, shaking away leaves that were still in the process of turning from green to red. "Except for the part that there was another pony in my practice zone. That was an accident. Though..." She started to laugh a little. "...You do look pretty spooked. You should see your--wait, no, your mane always looks like that." Lamb huffed. "Yeah, yeah, I know..." Confident that the only thing bruised was the other pegasus's ego, she swooped down toward the book laying in the grass. "Little lamb with the wooly mane, heard it all through flight school." "Hey, I didn't mean anything by it." Rainbow followed her down, though her hooves never quite touched the ground. "What are you doing in this part of the orchard, anyhow? I thought you were out in the sheep pasture twenty-four seven." "I take breaks," Lamb said, quickly, as she landed and brushed the bits of grass off of the book's cover. "Apple Bloom and her friends are watching them right now." She glanced over to see Rainbow looking at her with an unreadable expression. "...They didn't shout 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Sheep Guardians' before you left, did they?" "No, there was just a lot of grumbling." The book was tucked beneath her wing again, and she went about creating another cloud, this one much less sparky, so she could float back up into the sky on it. "Apparently Apple Bloom's grounded and that's part of the punishment. The others are with her out of solidarity." "So there's only about a twenty percent chance any sheep explode, gotcha." As soon as the cloud was solid and Lamb stepped onto it, she found the much more colourful pegasus perching there with her in a blatant rejection of the concept of personal space. "So what're you reading? I didn't take you for an egghead." To an extent, Lamb Chop liked Rainbow Dash. During the initial introduction, when she'd recognized Lamb's accent, she'd even spoken a few words in rusty Griffish to her before being assured that Equestrian was fine. She hadn't questioned the name or gotten weird about it, either, and made a point to say hi whenever she came by to visit Applejack. Even if Rainbow seemed to live life at a twelve on a scale of ten, she came across as a trustworthy sort of pony. And so, low on sleep and full of frustration from her attempt at studying, Lamb told her everything. Rainbow's attention never wavered, and she seemed to take every word in. Lamb just didn't know what her mind was doing with it until she grinned and said, "Well why didn't you come to me?" Her wings flared wide open, making the space on the cloud even more cramped. "I can get those two ewes together in a flash!" Lamb's head tilted. "You know about sheep courtship...?" "Courship shmourtship. All you need to do around here to get a special somepony, or a special uh..." "Somebaady," Lamb provided, her voice dipping into ovine tones with ease. "Right, that. All you need is to be so awesome that they fall over themselves to ask you out." A hoof proudly pressed to her own chest. "Just like me!" Lamb Chop liked Rainbow Dash. But she didn't know much about her, when it came down to it. She didn't know about the unbroken streak of singlehood for every Hearts and Hooves Day stretching back to puberty. Nor did she know about the fact that there were ponies in town who had gotten through just enough dates with her to know that "date" usually meant "along for the ride for whatever aerial stunt I'm planning today, and no I don't care if you have wings of your own or not" and tended to respond to the sight of her afterward with diving into the nearest bushes to hide. Had she been so informed, she likely would have tried to politely steer the conversation somewhere else, and gone back to Twilight to see if she could check to see if any libraries in Canterlot had books on sheep dating. Instead, she found herself wearing a hopeful smile as she saw the boisterous mare as a life raft in a storm. "So you'll help me help Fleeca out?" "Of course! Just leave it to me!" Afterward, Lamb Chop would become familiar with the Equestrian term known as "famous last words." <3Two mares and an ewe laid in the grass of the east orchard. Fleeca was huddled against Lamb Chop's side, and the feeling of a woolly body beneath her wing helped soothe the frustrated tension she'd been feeling. Fleeca's ears continually flicked in the direction she'd come from, trying to listen for the bleating of her fellows. Lamb's ears also frequently moved, listening for any kind of distress from either the sheep or the drafted Crusaders. While she knew that Rainbow Dash had been joking about explosions--before they'd fetched Fleeca, she'd requested she keep such humour to herself while actual sheep were present--she still worried about the three fillies being left with the flock for too long. Rainbow had a little more distance from both of them, and her motions weren't restricted to just her ears. It seemed to Lamb that the other pegasus needed to be constantly in motion, be that motions of her hooves, stretching her wings, lashing her tail, or any other twitch of her muscles that her body chose to make to relieve the desire to move. "So..." Lamb started as she looked from sheep to pony and back again. "I was thinking we could maybe... try a gift... first?" The halting words were paired with a nervous fluffing of her wings. Fleeca's ears perked. "I like that ide--" "I guess that could work," Rainbow cut in with a roll of her eyes and wave of her hoof. "If the gift is awesome enough." Bolstered by the reluctant agreement by the resident (supposed) romance expert, Lamb kept going. "Alright, well, in Griffonstone shiny objects are common, but I think the classic move here in Equestria is flowers." She looked at Fleeca with a gentle smile. "Are there any that Dolly really likes to eat?" "Well, she--" "No no no! You're thinking too small!" Rainbow hopped to her hooves, as if her body couldn't bear to lay in the grass for one more moment. "It's gotta be something rare and valuable, like a first edition Daring Do book." Lamb tilted her head. "I thought you said reading was for eggheads." "They're novels. It's different." Lamb shook her head slightly, deciding to simply concede to Rainbow logic for the moment and turn to the black poof at her side. "Does Dolly like to read, Fleeca?" "Ummmm..." Fleeca shook her head a little. "I don't think so, not unless you count maaagazines. She does buy a lot of things from them, though. Maaakeup, mostly." Lamb's face brightened. "That's an idea. We could get her some cosmetics--" "Boooooring. You're still thinking too small." Rainbow soon went from on her hooves to in the air, and each flap of her wings sent a cool breeze washing over the pair. "Besides, it's a really bad idea to buy makeup for somepony else. It's actually really complicated, getting the right colours to match your fur. There's the base hue and undertones and--" She blinked as she caught the stares being aimed at her. "What? Rarity talked my ear off about it once." "Moving on..." Lamb gave Fleeca an encouraging nudge. "So, what other hobbies does she have?" Fleeca shifted a little in place, before offering, "She really likes music." Haltingly, looking unsure if she even could voice her own suggestion, she added, "We could... get her a record?" Lamb smiled. "That sounds good, you can let us know what artists she likes and what she has alread--" "And we've gotta make it a special one!" Rainbow grinned as she angled herself toward town. "C'mon, let's get bits together and--" Lamb's loud clearing of her throat stopped her, and she looked back toward sheep and guardian. "What's the holdup?" "Sheep wealth," she said simply, as she nodded toward Fleeca, in all of her cloud-shaped glory. "Isn't all in bits." Lamb Chop slipped her forelegs out of the loops attached to the sheep shears and slowly lowered out of her rearing stance. Her back would be stiff later for spending so much time on two hooves, even with help of her wings in keeping steady, but it was worth it. Fleeca was now a fraction of her size, and she gave a few hops through the grass to enjoy the loss of the wool that had been weighing her down. Rainbow, who'd looked bored through most of the process, was now staring at the three bags full of black wool incredulously. "How the hay did you get that much wool off of her?" Fleeca paused in her frolicking to fire off a helpful bleat of, "Maaagic." Rainbow blinked, looking at Lamb. "Uh, is she--" "She's serious." Sheep didn't really do sarcasm, but Lamb knew she didn't need to go on that particular tangent right now. "There's a lot of little subtle magics surrounding their wool, but part of it is that there's always a little more of it once it's off them than on them." "A little?" She waved one of her hooves at the piled sacks. "Just one of these bags is bigger than she is." "She's a bit of a prodigy." Lamb carefully looked over the sheep shears as she spoke. They weren't hers after all, and she had to make sure they'd be returned in the same condition they'd started in. Applejack had given her a look of exasperation when she'd come to get them, but hadn't pried into why she had a sudden interest in taking over shearing duty as well as guard duty. "Also it kind of fluffs out more after it's off. A bit like when you groom a dog and the resulting pile of fur looks like more than it is." The pegasus whose only pet experience was with a reptile could only shrug at that. "Right. Okay." She took to the air and flapped over to the bags. "Anyway, let's get this wool to market and see what awesome stuff we can get with it." "So," Lamb Chop started, as she placed the record down into the grass. "We gave your wool to Bumblesweet, to trade it for some honey..." "...And then," Rainbow Dash continued, chest puffed up with pride, "We gave that honey to Harry so he'd catch us some salmon..." Lamb shivered. Getting Harry involved had very much been Rainbow's idea. Bears were one of those animals that were known to live on the razor's edge of sapience, but she still hadn't expected having a friendly conversation with one, through his soft-spoken interpreter, to be something she did today. "...And then we gave the salmon to Berryshine for food for her cat..." "...So we could get the salad bowl to give to Drizzle..." "...And the tea set to give to Holly Dash..." "...So we could get that comic book to give to Spike..." "...And that board game to give to Jetstream..." "...And that set of rare beanbag animals to give to Noteworthy..." "...Who traded us the Songbird Serenade album for them!" Lamb nudged it further toward Fleeca. "It's from her Abyssinia tour." Fleeca blinked several times, leaning down to peer at the golden lettering on the album cover. "Wow... three little baaags of wool led to all thaaat?" Rainbow's proud grin grew all the wider. "That's the power of awesomeness in action!" "And the power of barter." She nudged the record again with her snout. "Go on, go give it to her." Fleeca looked from the record, to Lamb, to the record again, then took a deep breath and leaned down to pick it up, giving a muffled, "Thk yu," before she turned and headed for the pasture. Lamb's sharp eyes followed her, a little hastily-moving spot of freshly-sheared black among the sea of wool, until she stopped in front of Dolly. The placid bleating was broken by a sudden burst of high volume and high pitch, a sound many would be surprised a sheep could make, and yet was immediately recognizable. It was the sound delighted fans everywhere, regardless of species, made when presented with something from their favourite star, and the two pegasi gave a brief hoof-bump of triumph. The gramophone at the far end of the pasture sprang to life--it'd been a purchase made together by the flock, Lamb had been told--and the tones of Songbird Serenade filled the air, making the other sheep raise their heads and perk their ears as the instrumentals and distinct vocals washed over them. Fleeca eventually came wandering back over, and Lamb frowned when she saw that the little black sheep wasn't smiling. Rainbow, however, didn't seem to notice, eagerly getting right into Fleeca's personal space. "So how'd it go? All over you, right?" "She saaaid it waaas really thoughtful of me." "And?" Lamb verbally nudged. "Thaaat's it." Rainbow deflated like a popped balloon, hitting the ground like a fainting goat and laying there for a moment with her legs in the air. "Uuuugh..." She peered at Lamb from her place in the grass. "Plan B?" Lamb blinked. "We have a plan B?" Rainbow made another agonized, "Uugh..." squeezing her eyes shut, until they suddenly snapped back open. "I got it!" She leaped her to hooves, then into the air, zipping over to Fleeca again. "If giving her something didn't work, you should take her somewhere awesome!" "I still think a Wonderbolts show would've been cooler..." "Shhh." "Or big concert in Canter--" "Shhh," Lamb repeated, giving Rainbow a poke with her hoof as they sat on wooden benches in the town square, watching as four ponies assembled themselves on stage. She briefly waved at Big Mac, who looked surprised at the sight of her before his fellow singers nudged him to remind him to get into place. "They wouldn't want to be away from their flock that long. And Applejack still doesn't want me 'sticking my snout' in all of this, so she'd probably try to chaperone a farther trip herself." "Ehhhh." Rainbow gave a casual wave of her hoof. "I'd've been able to get her to loosen up and let us take them." She grinned. "I can play that farmpony like a fiddle." "Shhh!" Lamb adjusted herself on the bench, fluffing her feathers against the autumn breeze. Not too chill, of course, since the local weatherponies wanted to make sure that the charity concert went off without a hitch. She nodded toward the pair of ewes a short distance ahead of them, as the Ponytones started into their first song. "Let them enjoy the show." And enjoy they did. Even Lamb couldn't help but smile and bob her head to the beat. She hadn't known that Mac could sing like that, or Applejack's unicorn friend--she was starting to feel a bit bad for forgetting her name, and wondered if maybe she should take her up on the makeover to make it up to her--and the four blended together nicely. It wasn't quite like the music back home. Acapella didn't have a huge audience. Griffonstone was fond of drums and other percussive instruments, and weaving their voices in between the pounding beat. A lot songs from her childhood had been modified work or war songs, with a rhythm to labour or march to. But for a time, she could put that on hold and just enjoy the new experience. Just a townspony in the crowd, listening to a performance in an ordinary Equestrian town. ...An Equestrian town that had an alicorn librarian. So mostly ordinary. One song flowed into another, hooves stomping their applause after each one, and once the quartet had given their final bow, Lamb looked over to the see Fleeca and Dolly huddled close, sharing an affectionate nuzzle. "Awww..." She nudged Rainbow with her shoulder. "Look at them." Rainbow chuckled. "Yeah, we totally got this." She offered her hoof for a bump that Lamb gladly returned. "Toldja it'd work." Slowly, the crowd around the concert broke up, ponies peeling off in groups with ones they'd arrived with, all of them heading for home. It was close to when the flock would be rounded up for the night, and Lamb and Rainbow fell back to let Fleeca and Dolly take the lead, even if it seemed to physically pain Rainbow to take things at an easygoing walk. She would often take a few steps, hop, then take wing for a few beats and land again. The two ewes chattered in low voices, and the pegasi attempted conversation as well, though Lamb had to, again, stop Rainbow from trying Griffish. "What? Do I really sound that bad?" she asked with a huff. "That's not it," Lamb assured, thankful that she, herself, was not a sheep, and so could lie. "It's just that I'm an Equestrian now. I should talk like it. I didn't get this fluent by switching back to my native tongue all the time." "Hey, have a little homeland pride." On one of her hops, her shoulder met Lamb's in something between a nudge and a playful shove. "You don't have to act like you were never Griff. I bet Griffonstone has a lot of awesome things to be proud of." Lamb gave a sad smile. "It does." She looked up at the sky, and for the first time in a while, she felt a genuine itch to fly. Not just the need to be on a high perch to better watch her surroundings, but to fly for the sake of it. "I miss it every day. I grew up in a small town, high in the cliffs, about half pegasi and half griffons. Well..." She gave a small laugh. "And one donkey. Everyone kept an eye on him, in case he got in trouble and needed wings to get out of it, but in private we said that he probably could fly, just by staring down gravity and telling it to cut it out." Rainbow laughed too. "See? That's a cool way to grow up, and nopony in town has a story like it." She gave another hop, and the playful shoulder-to-shoulder contact happened again. "You're awesome in your own way, and being a Griff is part of it. Don't throw it away." "Thanks, Rainbow." Lamb sighed a bit. "I guess it gets to me sometimes, how different Equestria is." The night steadily grew colder as they followed the path to Sweet Apple Acres, right on schedule. "So, why'd you leave?" The tone of the question was casual, and yet the weight of it nearly knocked Lamb Chop off her hooves. "I..." "It's just, sure, Equestria is clearly the best place around. It's got me, and my friends, the princesses, me, and everything. But like I said, Griffonstone's pretty cool too, and it's a long way to go for just shee--" "Bits." Rainbow blinked. "What?" "My family is poor, Rainbow." Her eyes went to the moon as it rose above the horizon. The same moon that her old community would be looking up at it as well tonight. "My town is poor. It's not bad everywhere, it might not get bad everywhere before it gets better, but Griffonstone's been in economic decline for years. My best chance to do more than scrape by was to get out." The words felt like acid on her tongue, and she was disgusted with herself for saying them. Her homeland would pull out of this, she knew it would, but until then, it was true. She wasn't just following her mark. Ponies had moved to Griffonstone during its height and now in its low, immigration was flowing back the way it'd come. Applejack paid her more than her previous employers had ever been able to dream of having to spare. She had mostly been working for food and a place to sleep. And she'd still nearly stayed. After the storm-- Can't fail. --She'd had a job for life if she wanted it. Yet, she'd left. Nearly everything had gone into her train ticket, and she'd walked out of the first station in Equestria with less bits than she'd had hooves, praying that she wouldn't need to rely on eating grass and sleeping on hastily-molded clouds for too many days before she found something. "Hey, uh..." Rainbow didn't touch her this time, just stepping a bit closer. "Look, I didn't know--" Lamb picked up her pace to a trot. "Come on. We're almost back." The sheep were settling into their pen, and two pegasi stood at the edge, the awkward silence having well and truly settled over them as they waited. Rainbow Dash occasionally started to say something, but Lamb Chop's eyes never left the sheep, and eventually she gave up, shifting back and forth on her hooves as numerous goodnight bleats were exchanged and lambs tucked themselves against relatives or friends to sleep. Eventually, a spot of black peeled off, and Fleeca approached them. Possibly desperate for some chatter after the silence, Rainbow took wing and zipped over with particular haste. "So, was I right or was I right? A complete success." Fleeca shuffled her hooves. "Well..." "What? Seriously?" Hooves met the grass again. "Still nothing?" "She saaaid she haaad a really good time and waaants to do it agaain?" "Uuuugh." Rainbow shook her head furiously. "She's a tough nut to crack. Okay, time to pull out all the stops." If she had not been so focused on getting into the pen herself for some much-needed sleep, Lamb Chop may have raised an alarm at those words. But as it is, she just walked over to Fleeca and lowered her head to nudge her back to the pen, so she could close and lock the gate behind them. "Tomorrow. We'll do more tomorrow. See you in the morning, Rainbow." Sleep wouldn't come to her that night either. EweLamb Chop can't sleep, not for more than a few minutes at a time. She tosses and turns, listening to her own racing thoughts distort into near-dreams before snapping back to reality with a jolt. Sometimes it's more than near, and she dips into the realm of actual dreaming before the moment when her entire body jerks with adrenaline and sends her back to waking. It's a repeating torment that makes the night agonizingly long, and yet also makes the morning seem far too soon. The fact that she could actually go to the capital and actively petition the sun to rise later is one of the thoughts that tumbles through her sleep-deprived mind before crashing against the rocks of fatigue and being lost. The dreams in those few stolen minutes don't offer rest, either, because Lamb has had all kinds of dreams over her life, but tonight the theme is memories, and so the jolts are a mercy. There were a lot of subtle advantages to Lamb Chop's mark, and she was still exploring them all. One was the fact that a pony tended to be that much more dexterous when handling things related to their talent. Cooks could handle utensils with ease, a tailor could practically juggle needle and thread, and a smith was at their most graceful when handling metal. It was less noticeable with unicorns, whose telekinesis led to an assumption of a certain level of finesse, but for earth ponies and pegasi, the difference could be as stark as day and night. As long as she was doing something for a sheep, Lamb Chop was more coordinated that the average pegasus. It's why she'd been the one to handle the shears, and right now it was why she was buckling the strap on the... contraption that Rainbow had produced for Fleeca to wear. The metal dome was ill-fitting, especially with Fleeca shorn, and Lamb had whipped up a few micro-clouds to act as cottony padding to keep its edges from digging into her skin as it sat on her back. The propeller at the top of the dome was connected to a device with components that looked to have been scavenged from a weathervane, had a faint golden glow, and gave off a magical presence that made the fur on Lamb's fetlocks stand up when her hooves got too close to it. The presstoff strap had needed to be loosened as far as it could be before it was safe to buckle up around Fleeca's waist, and overall it looked a lot like someone wearing a very strange hat on their back instead of their head. Rainbow Dash had also lent Fleeca a pair of goggles, and she was in process of putting them on as she found the courage to bleat, "I'm not sure I know how to fly this..." "You'll do great!" Rainbow patted at the metal dome. "It's magic. Tank flies in it all the time." Lamb took in the name, rolled it around several times in her head, and tried to figure out where she'd heard it before. "Tank?" Rainbow grinned, seeming to take the word as an invitation to talk about one of her favourite things. "My tortoise. He's got to keep up with me somehow. So I had this whipped up for him." Lamb froze. "Your tortoise." "Yeah! I should bring him around so you can meet him. Did I ever tell you the story of how he--" "This is something your pet tortoise wears," Lamb said, her voice oddly calm in her own ears. "Who is smaller than a sheep." "Yeah but, he's got that heavy shell, she's just been sheared. It all balances out, right? And like I said, magic." Rainbow waved a hoof casually, not seeming to notice the way that Lamb's face had gone completely blank. "Plus, we'll set up a safe zone so the only things she could bump into is clouds. Like when you've got a foal practicing and you make sure everything's crash-proof." "Rainbow Dash?" The calm had nearly reached the point of the grave. "Yeah?" Lamb's voice morphed, leaving equine behind for something avian, with feline undertones. "" Fleeca, who did not speak Griffish, merely looked confused to hear a pony suddenly making such un-pony-like sounds. Rainbow, whose own abysmal pronunciation clearly didn't impede her understanding of the language, gave an audible gulp. "...Got it." Rainbow then flapped up in the air, hovering above Fleeca. "A-anyway, let's get this show on the road." She gave the dome another pat as she smiled. "You go out there and do some loop-de-loops, and we'll handle the rest, 'kay?" Fleeca looked up at Rainbow, then at Lamb, and back again. "Okaay." She finished putting on the goggles, and took a deep breath. "For Dolly." Lamb is taller than average, and it sometimes makes ponies judge her age as more than it is. She is young when she leaves her hometown, just barely an adult by Griffonstone laws and in the twilight of her foalhood by Equestrian ones, taking wing and leaving the cliffs behind because all pegasi leave the nest eventually, and some of them fly far indeed. Migration is more natural to the winged ponies, who have spread out to establish populations in more nations than all other varieties combined. In that way, eventually settling in Equestria is honouring a long tradition of pegasi soaring far and wide the moment their flight feathers are in. She doesn't take off for the border right away, however. Her first stop is a farm, owned by pair of griffons who have two chicks only because they don't believe they'd be able to feed three. Their sheep guardian dog is old, slowed by pain in his joints, and they're not sure if they can afford a new puppy to succeed him. They're able to take her in because she can graze with her new charges, supplementing the meager vegetables she buys with her few bits with the hardy grasses the flock of mouflon eat. It takes them almost two weeks to coax her into sleeping in the farmhouse, and to eat at their table. She's so used to the smell of cooked meat on the air from her home town that she doesn't balk at all watching them eat as she chews her hay, and she muses not for the first or last time how much harder it is to be a carnivore. Meat is expensive in many ways, be it bought, ranched, or hunted, while there's a rare place that doesn't have any plants that can be eaten, especially for a graminivore, and grass doesn't typically run away. The sheep are the small family's livelihood, and so Lamb promises to do anything to protect them. Lamb Chop only had the basics, but any pegasus could shape a cloud. It was one of the first things, because it was one of the first ways a foal could exercise a bit of independence. Once you could fly, you'd fly as far as you needed to in order to find a cloud, and you'd shape it into a little hideaway that was all your own, your slice of privacy from the adults in your life. Adolescents would then start to show off their creations to each other, and in order to have anything to show off, they needed constant practice to hone the skills. Any adult pegasus worth the name could cloud-sculpt at least competently, because there'd been a time when their young selves thought it was the coolest possible thing they could be doing. Pegasi in Griffonstone also honed another skill. There was a unicorn spell that would allow any creature to cloudwalk--it also worked on inanimate objects, as Twilight had shown her when she'd borrowed from the library; casting it on anything lent out to a pegasus was apparently standard procedure--but there were barely any unicorns in her home. A certain amount of magic was required to make a cloud hold the shape it'd been given, and infusing just a little more made certain creatures able to interact with them too. Birds, insects, bats... anything with the gift of flight, including griffons. A Griff pegasus learned fast how to solidify cloud that far, because there wasn't much point in sculpting something grand if their griffon friends couldn't join them in it. With the contraption Fleeca was wearing, that list of creatures who could touch clouds included her. That was part of the spell on it, apparently. It not only allowed Rainbow's tortoise to fly, but allowed him to walk on clouds while he wore it. So, for all intents and purposes, Fleeca was like a first-flight pegasus foal, which led to a lot of foal-proofing. Humidity was pulled down, crafted into fog and eventually a spongy cloud-layer to cushion any fall. Hay was then placed beneath the clouds as an extra cushion, just in case. Lastly, several clouds were placed in a rough perimeter of the "stage," something she could bounce off of to reorient if she started to head out of bounds. Only with all of that was Lamb satisfied, and she nodded to Rainbow. "I'll round them up." It was showtime. She doesn't know the storm's coming until it's practically on top of them. Lamb Chop's not a meteorologist. Few pegasi are. Trying to translate something they navigate by instinct into science encounters several stumbling blocks, and she's just barely out of secondary school with no intent of pursuing further studies. The most she can say about the scientific field is that it exists. All she has is her own senses, and those don't reach far. She can see the clouds, hear and feel wind, and there's a sense that the air is angry, rumbling and howling and calling for violence. It appears fast, too fast, faster than any weather has descended on her before or since. She's out in the pasture with the flock, the farmhouse is too far away, and the kind of rain, wind, or lightning that would take an entire pegasus team to create, or to stop, comes upon them like a monster roaring as it pounces. (It'll take weeks before she hears the words cloud demon on lips and beaks, spoken with shock, awe, and the kind of whispers that came from fear that just saying it will call another one down on the speaker's head.) The mouflon don't like the thunder, and they like the sheets of rain even less. The earth beneath will swiftly turn to mud, and the word flooding rushes through Lamb's mind and sends her flying against the wind with frantic wingbeats, trying to make the avian screeches that the flock know mean move loudly enough to be heard She just needs to get a few in motion, and the rest will follow. The farmhouse is too far away, but she knows where there's higher ground. They'll be safer there, until the storm rains itself out or blows away to elsewhere. Gathering the flock had been as easy as asking nicely, though the fact that the reason for the gathering was a surprise had set the sheep moving with an ongoing group-wide murmur. Theories for what was going on were being offered and spread through the flock at record speed, each new voice adding a detail, and by the time they'd gotten close enough to see the cloud formations, they seemed to have gathered together enough material for the first draft of a novel. "In-troducing, the Amazingly Awesome Flying Fleeca!" All conversation ceased at Rainbow's announcement, and several dozen heads lifted up to see one of their own in the sky, held up by twirling propeller blades. Rainbow was at Fleeca's left, hovering near one of the barrier clouds, and Lamb flapped up to take her own position at the right. "You got this," Rainbow said with a grin as Fleeca looked at her. "We'll be right here if you need us," Lamb added as the flying ewe's gaze sought her out next. Fleeca nodded, and the show began. From the point of view of a flying species, it wasn't anything that fancy. She flew side to side, up and down, a few circles, and, when she'd gathered the courage, tried a loop-de-loop. It very much was like a young foal on their first flight, one who'd just gotten enough feathers in to be past the gliding stage. To the sheep, however, Lamb imagined that it looked like something close to miracle, and they had the awed expressions to match. Both pegasi struck at the clouds closest to them, setting off booms and flashes of thunder and lightning. Neither were overly musically inclined, but they managed to fall into a pleasing rhythm with their special effects that mostly stayed in time with Fleeca's flight. Flight that got more and more confident as she got a feel for how to move and lean to direct the propeller, and her uneasy expression soon bloomed into a smile. Lamb couldn't help but smile as well. Maybe she'd been overly worried. Fleeca was enjoying herself, discovering a passion for the sky before her eyes, and regardless of whether this succeeded in getting the two sheep together or not, there was something to treasure in that. She might even be able to get a similar device, sized properly, just for the joy of it, and Lamb would have a flying buddy among the flock. Then she spotted the bats. Three days. She hasn't eaten. She hasn't slept. Her body is running on fear and willpower, dredging up what magic she has left to keep fighting. The mouflon are huddled beneath an open space in the clouds, but it always threatens to close, and while the floodwaters have stayed too low to reach them, the land beneath their hooves has still steadily grown muddier despite her efforts. They keep bleating in distress, wet and hungry, and all she can do is keep fighting back the storm. Her fur, hair, and feathers are waterlogged, and any attempt to dry them just gives the storm more time to try to close in on her safe zone. It feels like it's worked its way down not just to skin, but right to her bones, filling her with a chill that no warmth will ever banish. She's drenched to the soul, and there's no sign it will let up any time soon. She doesn't know where the family is. She can only hope they got away before the floodwaters reached the house. There's a moment where it seems like the storm is bored of struggling with her. A bolt of lightning arcs with a roar of thunder, and strained throats still manage the sounds of ovine terror. Mind narrowed to a tunnel of instinct, Lamb moves. It was easy to forget about the west orchard and its ongoing little pest problem. Lamb Chop took her breaks in the east orchard, because she'd been advised to stay away from the west one. Fruit bats could be territorial, and like all other magical varieties of bat, they didn't quite keep to the expected nocturnal schedule. While likely to do no more than harass her or steal her food, they were still best left alone until a way to make them move on could be found. Lamb took her breaks in the east orchard. But they'd needed more room for this set up, enough to form their cloud perimeter and not need to worry about encroaching branches, and so had moved to a different part of the farm. Not in the heart of the bats' territory, but instead in an open area that acted as something of a border; the stretch of land without any trees was the main reason why the bats hadn't expanded further, as they didn't like traversing that much open space to reach more fruit when they had plenty of trees to nest in and feed from right where they were. There would eventually be an attempt to cross that gap, but Applejack had been hoping to relocate them before that became a worry. They weren't in the bat territory, because that would be putting them close to the trees. But they were on the border, and even if fruit bats had been nocturnal, one thing that could wake up a sleeping animal was thunder. One of the nuances of the colony that Lamb would come to learn later was that the strawberry fruit bats were the primary scouts and defenders of it. They went toward potential food or threat first, and the others would follow sometime after. And heading toward them right now was a tightly-clustered flock of red and green, seeking the roaring monster they were hearing so that they could see if they could drive it off. Lamb spotted them early. Rainbow, who'd been in the process of acting as Fleeca's hype mare, spotted them a moment before the first bat went through a perimeter cloud and hurtled right at her face. A blinded pony, pegasus or no, unsure of whether there were other attackers, would always kick... Lightning arced out. Fleeca cried out in fear. Lamb moved. It's the first time she touches lightning with her bare hooves. They tell her later she's lucky she still has hooves. One wrong call... one mistake... And it's over. Being a flock guardian meant having good lightning control, because a well-placed bolt was a pegasus's best defense against flying monsters. But once a lightning bolt was in motion, there was often little that a pony could do to change its direction. They didn't touch the lightning itself, but instead encouraged the cloud to generate it and to send it in a particular direction. Manipulating a bolt directly was an act of the reckless or desperate, because it was replacing the cloud's role as conduit with their own body. Long legs reached out, and hooves met the bolt. Her heart pounded so hard that it felt like it was sending vibrations rattling from her ribcage to every single bone, and yet her breathing was slow, almost meditative, and she was aware of every single breath. She moved like she was weaving fibers, sending the electricity twisting in a figure-eight as her mane puffed out with crackling static, and steam rose as every drop of moisture in her coat evaporated at once. There were other things going on around her. The bats where steering clear of her, because that was where the lightning was, but they continued to swarm Rainbow and Fleeca, and she saw blurs of red, blue, black, silver, gold... so many colours that didn't resolve into objects in her eyes because the fierce glow of the electricity sought to overwhelm them. She couldn't hold it for long, and every second she tried was another one where her control could slip, so she sent the lightning in the direction where red, with hints of green, was most clustered. The fruit bats scattered, but Lamb could tell that the bolt had struck something. The burning scent wasn't flesh or hair, and she distantly hoped that Applejack would forgive her if she'd accidentally hit one of her trees. "Easy, Fleeca, I gotcha..." The words sounded distant, and Lamb just barely recognized Rainbow's voice for what it was. She felt heavy, her body hanging in the air like a hat on a hat rack, the muscles in her wings feeling sluggish as they continued to give each laborious flap necessary to keep her in a hover. She started to sink down, seeking the clouds and hay below and the softness that she could rest on, and she managed to turn enough to see Rainbow Dash and Fleeca sinking as well. The device was still glowing with power, but the propeller had stopped, no longer needed when Rainbow had both of her front hooves on the dome and was guiding her down. It was when hooves met clouds that she noticed a set of familiarly-coloured, pony-shaped objects racing toward them, though that observation was overshadowed by the blinding flash of white light that placed a winged, horned, purple pony-shaped object right in front of Lamb. "What happened? I saw the lightning from the library and--" "What in tarnation is goin'--Dash, why in the hay is Fleeca wearin' Tank's copter?!" "I was just trying to help! Lamb, back me up here." Lamb Chop swayed on her hooves, raised her head, and looked around at the earth ponies, pegasus, and alicorn present. Then she slowly walked over to Fleeca, undid the strap holding on the copter, and let it tumble to the ground. No longer under the effect of its magic, the little black sheep sank through the cloud until her hooves were resting in the hay, and Lamb's voice came out with a slight croak. "Fleeca, can you come with me for a second?" "O-okaay..." Lamb walked over to the flock, who had clumped together in a frightened huddle, and raised her voice as best she could to be heard over the frantic conversation amongst themselves. "Dolly, can you come over here?" Dolly hadn't needed to be asked twice, racing out of the mass of wooly bodies and nearly tackling Fleeca in her rush to nuzzle her comfortingly. "Fleeca! Are you okaay? Are you hurt?" Fleeca ducked her head bashfully. "It's okaay, Dolly, I'm not hurt. Raaainbow caught me before I could faaall." "What on this lifebearin' land were you thinkin'? Lamb's new, but you've been here enough times t' know not t'--" "We set up safety stuff! And I knew not to set up in the west orchard." "Your 'safety stuff' involved somethin' that can shoot lightnin'." "Dolly." Both ewes looked at her, and Lamb took a deep breath, feeling like the next words took what was left of her energy. "Fleeca here would really, really love it if you would be her special somebaady." Dolly's eyes went wide. "Fleeca..." Fleeca shrunk in on herself, her ears twisting backward. "It's okaay to saaay no..." Dolly shook her head, wearing a gentle smile. "You silly." She closed the distance, pressing her forehead to Fleeca's. "I thought I already waaas your special somebaady." Fleeca's ears shot forward again, her own eyes going saucer-wide. "You..." Words were left behind as she bleated in joy, and she hopped a circle around Dolly as she watched the display and giggled. Already the rest of the flock were cooing to each other about how cute it was, and as the new couple headed back toward the pasture, the rest needed no instruction to follow them. Lamb watched them leave, then looked over as Applejack came up to her side, with a thoroughly-chastised Rainbow Dash grumbling behind her. "Now, I usually ain't one t' say 'I told you so,' but what did I tell you 'bout gettin' involved?" Lamb sighed. "I'll have a letter on your desk tomorrow with everything I learned today." A wide yawn delayed further speech, her jaw threatening to dislocate from the force of it. "Right now, if you could have somepony watch the pasture while I go to the barn and pass out, that'd be great." Applejack shook her head a little, then nudged Lamb with her shoulder. "Go on. Me an' Mac can take shifts 'longside Apple Bloom. Doubt the cattle will mind you takin' a nap in the straw pile. Daisy Jo might jus' try t' feed you cookies when you wake up." Rainbow perked. "You know, a nap in some straw sounds pretty good right about now." Lamb gave her a sideways look. " "Buuuuut a nap at home sounds even better, so I'll just--" "Is this the book I lent you?!" Lamb was suddenly extremely, incredibly awake, and both she and Rainbow looked at the nearly-forgotten alicorn, and the pile of scorched paper she was starting at. Lamb abruptly remembered where she'd placed the sheep book, and looked up, noting an absence in the safety ring in the direction she'd sent the lightning. Well, that explained the burning scent... Staring into the furious gaze of a mare she'd been assured was not a princess, but who remained a member of the rare breed of pony who could casually juggle the heavens, Lamb heard Rainbow ask, "Truce?" And she nodded without hesitation, noting that Twilight's mane seemed to be smoking. "Then fly for it!" "You two get back here!" It was as they were flying for their lives from a mad alicorn, who was trying to master the art of the mid-air teleport on the literal fly in order to catch them, that Lamb Chop noticed after a time that Rainbow was grinning. It was official. Everyone in this town was crazy. 2Dear Garrett and Georgina, I hope this letter finds you well, and I apologise that this is the first time I'm writing you. Finding my hoofing in Equestria has taken up a lot of time, and it feels like the last year has flown by without much chance to land and catch my breath. Applejack mentioned that she'd written you, and I can't thank you enough for the glowing reference. That also means you already know the good news, that I found a farm to work for that has sheepfolk! It's a small flock, because she only has so much land to host them on. The majority of the real estate is apple trees and a few other crops, and she also has cattlefolk and pigfolk claiming their own spaces. I don't mind, though, since fewer sheep means more time to get to know them as individuals. There's a pair of ewes, Dolly and Fleeca, who I'm especially attached to. They're a couple, and just this year they've adopted one of Dolly's sister's lambs. She had three a couple of months ago, and one of them got sick, so the poor thing needed a little extra care, and the two of them stepped in to help. The little guy's doing a lot better, now. They named him Shaun. Speaking of flocks, I hope all's well with yours, and all's going well training the new puppy. I passed on what I could before I left, and I know the old boy still has a couple of years in him to show her the ropes. I hope Greta's doing well, too. I know that leaving for schooling was a hard choice to make, but I'm proud of her for taking the opportunity. I miss her. And little Gracie. I miss all of you, every day. I'm still not sure if I belong in Equestria. The ponies here are almost like a whole new species. They aren't like what I expected. One of the pegasi in town does speak a bit of Griff, which would be nice, but she's also insane. She regularly straps a magic flying machine on a tortoise. There's an alicorn running the town library, too. I think I narrowly avoided being sent to the moon once already for accidentally damaging a book. I still have dreams about the cloud demon It's still hard to sleep sometimes I still feel like I'm going to mess this up I hope I get the chance to visit you all soon. Maybe this summer I can come out and see you, while Greta's home on break? I'd love a chance to catch up, and a letter doesn't feel like the right medium to tell you everything that's gone on. I'd rather tell you all in person. Best Wishes, Lamb Chop Author's Note Credit to Estee, for whom without their worldbuilding on protectorate species and their graciously giving me permission to use it, this story wouldn't exist.
ISitting on the cloud above the pasture was a sheep. That's what most would have assumed at first glance, anyway, and after the first few times griffons and pegasi alike had slammed into obstacles mid-air during the resulting double-takes, the "sheep" in question had learned to keep the resulting sigh internal. Lamb Chop was a pegasus--a third generation immigrant to Griffonstone, at least up until the day she'd become a first generation one to Equestria--but she was one for whom it was easy to spot the wooly-looking mane and tail long before noticing the wings tucked at her sides. Her legs were a bit longer than average, her body having decided that her adult height had needed a final adolescent growth spurt that went directly to her cannon bones, and her ears had a natural droop that had run in her family for generations and had a side effect of making her seem perpetually melancholy or meek. Her coat and feathers were so deep a blue as to look black in most lighting, and the mess of curls that spilled from her head and her hindquarters were white as snow. It all made it easy to mistake her, at a distance, for a lost lamb who'd somehow gained the ability to cloudwalk. Below her were the true sheep, and those were her charges. Sheepfolk of black, white, and occasional black-and-white milled about below, pausing here and there in their grazing to chatter amongst themselves. A few would look up, meet her gaze, and smile before returning to what they were doing, reminded that they were safe. Sheep were a bit of a paradox. They didn't like being inside shelters, and usually wouldn't go into a house, or even a barn, unless cold or other extreme weather demanded it. Given the option, they would rather be out under the open sky. However, they were also incredibly vulnerable, and so that open space required constant supervision. Some species had developed breeds of dog to act as guardians, but while a large dog could keep wolves at bay, it couldn't always deter monsters, especially the flying ones who sought to swoop down and carry off a wooly snack. A common mistake made, in the current age, was assuming that things were safe now. In cities, that could be true... most of the time. Rural communities still had alarms for things like voracious rocs descending from the sky, and the drills were not for show. Lamb Chop was a flock guardian, and while the flock below technically wasn't hers--she didn't have the bits together yet to buy her own patch of land, and her license to host would need to come after both that, and when she finished all of her citizenship classes--it didn't make her any less diligent. The owners of the land would wander out here multiple times a day--it was often the stallion, sometimes the mare, and rarely the elder or the small filly--to bring her food to eat, and at sunset her charges would be rounded up for the night. It had taken only one reluctant, restless night in a guest room of the farmhouse for her to request to bed down with the flock in their pen instead, and she had fallen asleep the second night with the smallest of the lambs tucked under one of her wings. Summer was shifting into the autumn, and an on-schedule chill breeze made Lamb Chop fluff out her wings and tuck her tail around herself. She would never get used to managed weather, despite being a pegasus herself. She knew the basics, and because she was a guardian, the basics included some enviable lightning control, but Griffonstone didn't have enough pegasi to have everything scheduled to the hour, nor would they want to. One of the ewes split off from the flock, and their eyes met. One ear twitched, then the other, followed by two stomps of the right front hoof. Not an emergency, but she wanted to talk. Lamb Chop nodded, got to her hooves, then glided down to meet her, giving a small shiver as she landed in the cool grass. She smiled, tilting her head slightly. "What's up, Fleeca?" The solid black ewe was particularly fluffy, making her look a lot like a stormcloud, and Lamb noted that she may need to nudge the farm owners about shearing her soon. Fleeca's wool apparently grew faster than usual, and so needed the frequent shearing to keep her comfortable, even when the weather grew cooler. She rocked from side to side on her hooves, awkwardly glancing around, and Lamb tried not to let herself tense up too much. It may not be an emergency, but it was clearly troubling her, and something bothering one of her sheep had alarm bells going off. The third time that Fleeca looked behind her, Lamb Chop followed her gaze, and frowned a bit as she saw Dolly, the snowy-white ewe in conversation with her older sister Roslin. She and Fleeca were nearly always together when they were grazing, and so Lamb found herself asking, trying to maintain a tone of gentle concern rather than reveal the extent of her worry, "Is there something going on with Dolly?" Fleeca immediately cringed at the question, looking from Lamb's eyes to the grass and pawing at the earth with an uneasy hoof. "Well..." Finally, with a few more hems, haws, and baas, Fleeca told her. An emergency would have been easier. "Don't get involved." It was Lamb's second time in the farmhouse, and it was no less uncomfortable than the first time. She had had very little experience with other ponies before leaving Griffonstone. Most who had immigrated there over the ages had been pegasi like herself, and while pony bloodlines were finicky things, so as generations passed, they didn't always stay pegasi, the winged equines remained a majority among Equestrian diaspora communities. Before crossing the border, she had met a grand total of one unicorn in person, and could count the earth ponies she'd seen on her hooves. It had made her first encounter with her current employers incredibly awkward, because she felt that they'd picked up on the fact that she kept glancing at their sides in the expectation of reading the body language in wings that they didn't have. Her inexperience with earth ponies aside, however, she'd come to respect Applejack. She was a reliable, diligent worker, and was fiercely protective of her land and all who lived on it. It was the kind of strength of character that Lamb Chop couldn't help but respect. However, Equestrian ponies were still alien, and the three words had Lamb tilting her head slowly, something she'd realized only after coming here that her family had picked up from living among griffons. "Come again?" Applejack snorted and gave a shake of her head. "You heard me. I had a feelin' that those two were gettin' close, an' speakin' from the voice o' experience, you want no part o' the resultin' courtin'." The head tilted further, reaching the limits of an equine neck. As she stared at Applejack, she was also distantly reminded of the fact that she'd been told, during her first few conversations with Equestrians, that she didn't blink as often as they believed a pony should. "...Why?" Luckily, Applejack didn't seem perturbed by any birdlike qualities in her gaze, instead looking right back into her eyes. "Now, I ain't been one t' pry int' your past, Lamb," she started, her voice steady as her returned stare. "Why you left Griffonstone is your own business an' nopony else's. I sent a letter t' the farm you said you worked at, an' they sent back a reply praisin' you t' high heaven. They told me 'bout the wild storm an' you stayin' with the sheep for days, maintainin' a safe zone, 'til help arrived, an' far as was I'm concerned, that was reason enough t' give you a chance." Lamb Chop could feel the metaphorical shoe hanging in the air, waiting for its moment to drop, and so she gave it the slightest nudge to get it over with. "But?" "But I have t' ask, 'cause I did do some diggin'." Ponies without wings remained hard to read, but she noticed Applejack's eyes slide and knew exactly where they were going. Lamb Chop's mark tended to be mistaken for a cloud, a roundish fluffy shape that was white against her near-black pelt, but she preferred to see it as an image of her charges' wool. "I didn't know anythin' 'bout griffon farmin' before you showed up, an' I was curious what they tended t' farm." Lamb could see the shape of the shoe now, and her head righted itself as she braced. "The sheep there, they ain't so chatty, are they?" The words weren't harsh, and the gaze wasn't accusing so much as studying. "Not like the ones we've got here." Lamb Chop gave a small, tight nod. "They're called mouflon. Animals. Nonsapient." Her wings opened involuntarily, hind hooves shuffling in the urge to flee. "I didn't know that you didn't--" "I ain't mad." The reassuring words relaxed wings, though they didn't quite fold again as Applejack went on. "I could tell you weren't hidin' it, you jus' didn't reckon you needed t' mention it, 'cause t' you, it goes without sayin'." She frowned a little. "But that does mean that you're used t' dealin' with sheep as critters an' not as people, have I got that right?" "That... would be right," Lamb admitted slowly. "This is my first flock of sheepfolk." She had had many reasons to come to her ancestors' homeland, but that had been one of the chief ones. Her mark, her soul, drove her to protect sheep, but the animals that griffons kept as livestock didn't feel like they were her true calling. True sheepfolk were nigh-unheard of in Griffonstone, and so the chance to have charges who she could speak with had required that she leave all she had ever known behind. Can't mess this up. Can't fail them. Can't. So vulnerable... One wrong call... one mistake... "An' that's why I'm tellin' you t' take your snout out o' it." Applejack gave a deep sigh. "They ain't like ponies. Or like griffons, far as I know 'bout those." There was a bit of bite in the last few words, but Lamb sensed that it wasn't aimed at her; there had apparently been a griffon visitor in the town once, and the fact that it was once had implied plenty about the impression left. "All you're goin' t' earn yourself is a headache tryin' t' get in the middle o' their problems." The shoe had dropped, and Lamb hadn't been dismissed for keeping an accidental secret. That fact gave her the boldness to give a stomp of her hoof in protest. "I didn't barge into the situation. Fleeca asked me for help." "Eeyup, they do that. S'easier than dealin' with the problem 'emselves t' push it off on whoever's watchin' over 'em. Trus' me, all you're doin' is findin' a rock t' bash your head against." She gave her own hoof-stomp. "When it comes t' the dynamics o' the flock, you step in iff'n it's one o' two cases: either somepony went an' put a dangerous idea in their heads an' they're goin' t' hurt 'emselves followin' it like it's princess-decreed law, or it's somethin' where they're fixin' t' fight each other an' you need t' get between 'em before it gets violent. Otherwise, don't get involved." "They're your charges, Applejack." Lamb had grown to respect her employer. That's why, when she moved to trot past her to the door, she kept the myriad of curse words she knew, across two languages, to herself. "And mine. I'm not going to ignore a cry for help." The door opened as she was headed for it, and a large red body carefully moved out of her way. "Good evenin', Miss Chop." She nodded at Big Macintosh's greeting, but anything she could have said in response was drowned out by Applejack calling after her. "Jus' don't say I didn't warn you. Sheep romance don't end well for ponies involved!" If there was more, Lamb didn't hear it. Because she still had to get used to earth ponies, but one advantage to being around them was that the easiest way to end a conversation was to go up. And so the moment she was through the door, her wings spread, and she was soaring through the chill night air. Normally, she'd be off to the pen to sleep, but instead, she angled herself toward town. If the supposed caretaker would not be of help with this dilemma, then Lamb would just have to acquire her knowledge another way. It was time to see if the town librarian was still awake. Sheep were sometimes thought of as completely mindless. Most ponies didn't really get to meet sheep, and it was that way with a lot of species that fell under the umbrella of protectorates. Sapience came in a lot of forms, and all of them were just slightly askew from one another. A pony wasn't a griffon wasn't a zebra wasn't a yak, and the misunderstandings between them had ended up the kind of things that made up entire history books. Yet, they all existed on a similar playing field. Species that had founded nations, built societies, and come together to form the Menagerie in ages past and start establishing international law. Other species had not done this. For some, this was simple lack of social instinct. Perfectly capable of friendship or affection, but no drive to form the herds, packs, colonies, or hives that eventually became settlements and turned into kingdoms. There was no land of the yeti, no nation of the chimera, no cities built by bugbears. A rare individual may immigrate into a country, join a society originally founded by other species--Equestria had a sea serpent, but it would be a long while before Lamb Chop met him personally--but they tended to live and die as singular exceptions who never met another. Outside of these exceptions, members of those species were simply known as civis orbis terrarum, with the basic international rights granted to any creature that could think. Those were the species who were content to be left to their own devices, and could thrive in the wild spaces unclaimed by others. Protectorates were ones who, without other sapient species to look after them, would be doomed to extinction. They were wards of whatever nation housed them, and their rights were also enshrined in international law, with their entire host society being held responsible for any attempt at exploitation. Just being able to host any of them on one's land required a rigorous process. It had to be that way. Sheep were people, but they were people easily swayed. Flocks had no leader, instead gathering together and talking amongst themselves until they had a consensus, which usually resulted in a lot of hemming and hawing until one voice popped up with an idea or opinion and it rapidly spread through the rest of the crowd. They didn't lie--omitting truths, however, talking around what they didn't want to share, they did that as easily as any other sapient--and so couldn't quite grasp the idea that other creatures may lie to them. Fear of exploitation was very much founded, because speak to them with enough conviction and they would believe. That was why Applejack had talked about them acting on dangerous ideas, because if they'd all been swayed in a bad direction, sometimes their pony caretaker needed to become the voice that nudged them back to safety. Still, they had their own temperaments, their own interests, and their own preferences. Tell them clover was a super food that would increase their strength, health, and lifespan, and the one sheep in a flock who found clover repulsive wouldn't suddenly have a change in taste buds, they'd just resent every moment as they ate it. Convince the flock that learning to sing would bring them wealth and fame and you'd hear them practicing, but it wouldn't dampen an individual's enthusiasm for painting in between rehearsals. Tell them that their porcine neighbours were plotting against them, and you'd see them all reacting to the sudden appearance of a pig in their pasture very differently, from the ones whose first instinct was to run, to the ones who would freeze in place, to the ones who would storm over to accuse, to the ones who would skip verbal accusation entirely in favour of lowering their heads and charging. They also had interpersonal relationships that were more complex than just a single-minded flock. They could get irritated with one another, even aggressive, but they also formed lasting friendships, deep family bonds, and fell in love. Autumn was the time for new romance for them, and spring the time for new family to be born. And as the days were getting shorter and the air was getting cooler, it was no wonder that Fleeca was having those thoughts right now. Sheep discussed most issues as a group, but when things were personal and private, too delicate to send out into the flock to be discussed by every other ewe, ram, and lamb, they looked outside the group to their caretaker, or in a pinch, to anyone who wandered close to the fence and was willing to tell them something that they were guaranteed to take to heart and act on. Fleeca had chosen Lamb Chop as her confidant. She wanted to be worthy of it. Can't fail them. One mistake... It was nearly a full day since the chat in the pasture, and after a restless night of trying to sleep, Lamb was reading. She'd had brief contact with most of Applejack's friends, mostly because being on the Acres made it inevitable. The loud, pink one had insisted on baking her a cake, and the one with fake eyelashes had tried to talk Lamb into letting her do something with her mane, but mostly it'd been an introduction, polite acknowledgement afterward, and that was it. Twilight Sparkle had been a little more extensive, if only because, on that first meeting, she'd made the classic new-pony-in-town mistake of bowing. She'd then been hastily told to please not to do that, had it explained to her that Twilight was only related to the royal family in the sense of being sister-in-law to the Crystal Princess, had gained her wings during a magical mishap that she claimed was a long story, and the association between alicornhood and princessdom was a bit exaggerated thanks to Celestia's long reign. Lamb, as a newcomer in an alien land, had taken her word for all of it. After all, it made sense; stripped of their finery, no one could tell a griffon king from a commoner, so why couldn't an alicorn be a librarian? Twilight was hard to read, in a different way from the earth ponies. Her wings were new, oversized, and didn't quite move right, as if the muscles were firing off at random without any input from the brain. But she'd come across as a nice enough mare, and the previous night, despite Lamb arriving past the posted closing time, she'd still let her into the library to look over the books. The problem was that the library hadn't had much to work with, as the books on dating and romance, few as there were in the first place, had all been about ponies. She'd ended up taking out a book she'd read once already, meant for individuals starting jobs that involved working with sheep. She'd skimmed the section on mating season at the time, because she'd arrived shortly after lambing that year and there'd been plenty of time, and also because the topic had had her... uncomfortable. Lamb, as a foal, had questioned the point of romantic relationships, and been told she would understand when she grew up. Years into marehood, every adult who'd said that had been proven a liar, and the gap in her understanding had steadily come with a profound sense of repulsion to the whole concept. But she'd accepted that there were creatures for whom it meant something, for whom it was important, and so she took their emotions seriously no matter how baffling they seemed. The book really didn't offer much on a closer reread, because it largely glossed over the topic. The deeper into the autumn the year went, the more of them would fall into amorous moods, and they would start to pair off. Ewes would be particularly affectionate and would likely follow the object of their attention around, rams could grow shorter-tempered and lead to scuffles that a guardian would need to break up, and in five or so moons there would be new lambs to coo over. Simple. Sheep were people, and each one was different. Some stayed together with their first sweetheart, year after year, others had wandering hearts, but for each of them, yes was yes, and no was no. Fleeca and Dolly were nearly always together, and had been even before the seasons had turned, and Lamb was certain that if Fleeca were to ask, Dolly would say yes. But ewes didn't directly ask. They signaled. They dropped hints. And Fleeca didn't know how. Not ones that another ewe would pick up on. The book wasn't any help. It treated the whole affair as something observed at a distance, not something to give tips to navigate. A book about sheep, written by ponies, for ponies. It felt like everything in Equestria was for ponies. "Look out!" The shout reached Lamb Chop's ears a second after a blur of rainbow colour hurtled through her cloud. Her wings flared, the cool air twisting itself into just what she needed slow her tumble and go into a hover. Deep instinct took over. Vapor condensed around her hooves as they moved. Static crackled in her feathers. She was moments away from having a new cloud, a storm cloud, to blast away the threat to her charges-- Until she remembered that she was in the east orchard, not the pasture, and she recognized the colourful wrecking ball as being the source of the warning shout. "Rainbow Dash?" The beginnings of the weapon were allowed to dissipate as she swooped toward the tangle of tree branches and limbs. "Grover's gizzard, you scared me half to death. Are you okay?" "Fine! I meant to do that!" Rainbow insisted as she pulled herself out of the tree's grasp, shaking away leaves that were still in the process of turning from green to red. "Except for the part that there was another pony in my practice zone. That was an accident. Though..." She started to laugh a little. "...You do look pretty spooked. You should see your--wait, no, your mane always looks like that." Lamb huffed. "Yeah, yeah, I know..." Confident that the only thing bruised was the other pegasus's ego, she swooped down toward the book laying in the grass. "Little lamb with the wooly mane, heard it all through flight school." "Hey, I didn't mean anything by it." Rainbow followed her down, though her hooves never quite touched the ground. "What are you doing in this part of the orchard, anyhow? I thought you were out in the sheep pasture twenty-four seven." "I take breaks," Lamb said, quickly, as she landed and brushed the bits of grass off of the book's cover. "Apple Bloom and her friends are watching them right now." She glanced over to see Rainbow looking at her with an unreadable expression. "...They didn't shout 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Sheep Guardians' before you left, did they?" "No, there was just a lot of grumbling." The book was tucked beneath her wing again, and she went about creating another cloud, this one much less sparky, so she could float back up into the sky on it. "Apparently Apple Bloom's grounded and that's part of the punishment. The others are with her out of solidarity." "So there's only about a twenty percent chance any sheep explode, gotcha." As soon as the cloud was solid and Lamb stepped onto it, she found the much more colourful pegasus perching there with her in a blatant rejection of the concept of personal space. "So what're you reading? I didn't take you for an egghead." To an extent, Lamb Chop liked Rainbow Dash. During the initial introduction, when she'd recognized Lamb's accent, she'd even spoken a few words in rusty Griffish to her before being assured that Equestrian was fine. She hadn't questioned the name or gotten weird about it, either, and made a point to say hi whenever she came by to visit Applejack. Even if Rainbow seemed to live life at a twelve on a scale of ten, she came across as a trustworthy sort of pony. And so, low on sleep and full of frustration from her attempt at studying, Lamb told her everything. Rainbow's attention never wavered, and she seemed to take every word in. Lamb just didn't know what her mind was doing with it until she grinned and said, "Well why didn't you come to me?" Her wings flared wide open, making the space on the cloud even more cramped. "I can get those two ewes together in a flash!" Lamb's head tilted. "You know about sheep courtship...?" "Courship shmourtship. All you need to do around here to get a special somepony, or a special uh..." "Somebaady," Lamb provided, her voice dipping into ovine tones with ease. "Right, that. All you need is to be so awesome that they fall over themselves to ask you out." A hoof proudly pressed to her own chest. "Just like me!" Lamb Chop liked Rainbow Dash. But she didn't know much about her, when it came down to it. She didn't know about the unbroken streak of singlehood for every Hearts and Hooves Day stretching back to puberty. Nor did she know about the fact that there were ponies in town who had gotten through just enough dates with her to know that "date" usually meant "along for the ride for whatever aerial stunt I'm planning today, and no I don't care if you have wings of your own or not" and tended to respond to the sight of her afterward with diving into the nearest bushes to hide. Had she been so informed, she likely would have tried to politely steer the conversation somewhere else, and gone back to Twilight to see if she could check to see if any libraries in Canterlot had books on sheep dating. Instead, she found herself wearing a hopeful smile as she saw the boisterous mare as a life raft in a storm. "So you'll help me help Fleeca out?" "Of course! Just leave it to me!" Afterward, Lamb Chop would become familiar with the Equestrian term known as "famous last words."
<3Two mares and an ewe laid in the grass of the east orchard. Fleeca was huddled against Lamb Chop's side, and the feeling of a woolly body beneath her wing helped soothe the frustrated tension she'd been feeling. Fleeca's ears continually flicked in the direction she'd come from, trying to listen for the bleating of her fellows. Lamb's ears also frequently moved, listening for any kind of distress from either the sheep or the drafted Crusaders. While she knew that Rainbow Dash had been joking about explosions--before they'd fetched Fleeca, she'd requested she keep such humour to herself while actual sheep were present--she still worried about the three fillies being left with the flock for too long. Rainbow had a little more distance from both of them, and her motions weren't restricted to just her ears. It seemed to Lamb that the other pegasus needed to be constantly in motion, be that motions of her hooves, stretching her wings, lashing her tail, or any other twitch of her muscles that her body chose to make to relieve the desire to move. "So..." Lamb started as she looked from sheep to pony and back again. "I was thinking we could maybe... try a gift... first?" The halting words were paired with a nervous fluffing of her wings. Fleeca's ears perked. "I like that ide--" "I guess that could work," Rainbow cut in with a roll of her eyes and wave of her hoof. "If the gift is awesome enough." Bolstered by the reluctant agreement by the resident (supposed) romance expert, Lamb kept going. "Alright, well, in Griffonstone shiny objects are common, but I think the classic move here in Equestria is flowers." She looked at Fleeca with a gentle smile. "Are there any that Dolly really likes to eat?" "Well, she--" "No no no! You're thinking too small!" Rainbow hopped to her hooves, as if her body couldn't bear to lay in the grass for one more moment. "It's gotta be something rare and valuable, like a first edition Daring Do book." Lamb tilted her head. "I thought you said reading was for eggheads." "They're novels. It's different." Lamb shook her head slightly, deciding to simply concede to Rainbow logic for the moment and turn to the black poof at her side. "Does Dolly like to read, Fleeca?" "Ummmm..." Fleeca shook her head a little. "I don't think so, not unless you count maaagazines. She does buy a lot of things from them, though. Maaakeup, mostly." Lamb's face brightened. "That's an idea. We could get her some cosmetics--" "Boooooring. You're still thinking too small." Rainbow soon went from on her hooves to in the air, and each flap of her wings sent a cool breeze washing over the pair. "Besides, it's a really bad idea to buy makeup for somepony else. It's actually really complicated, getting the right colours to match your fur. There's the base hue and undertones and--" She blinked as she caught the stares being aimed at her. "What? Rarity talked my ear off about it once." "Moving on..." Lamb gave Fleeca an encouraging nudge. "So, what other hobbies does she have?" Fleeca shifted a little in place, before offering, "She really likes music." Haltingly, looking unsure if she even could voice her own suggestion, she added, "We could... get her a record?" Lamb smiled. "That sounds good, you can let us know what artists she likes and what she has alread--" "And we've gotta make it a special one!" Rainbow grinned as she angled herself toward town. "C'mon, let's get bits together and--" Lamb's loud clearing of her throat stopped her, and she looked back toward sheep and guardian. "What's the holdup?" "Sheep wealth," she said simply, as she nodded toward Fleeca, in all of her cloud-shaped glory. "Isn't all in bits." Lamb Chop slipped her forelegs out of the loops attached to the sheep shears and slowly lowered out of her rearing stance. Her back would be stiff later for spending so much time on two hooves, even with help of her wings in keeping steady, but it was worth it. Fleeca was now a fraction of her size, and she gave a few hops through the grass to enjoy the loss of the wool that had been weighing her down. Rainbow, who'd looked bored through most of the process, was now staring at the three bags full of black wool incredulously. "How the hay did you get that much wool off of her?" Fleeca paused in her frolicking to fire off a helpful bleat of, "Maaagic." Rainbow blinked, looking at Lamb. "Uh, is she--" "She's serious." Sheep didn't really do sarcasm, but Lamb knew she didn't need to go on that particular tangent right now. "There's a lot of little subtle magics surrounding their wool, but part of it is that there's always a little more of it once it's off them than on them." "A little?" She waved one of her hooves at the piled sacks. "Just one of these bags is bigger than she is." "She's a bit of a prodigy." Lamb carefully looked over the sheep shears as she spoke. They weren't hers after all, and she had to make sure they'd be returned in the same condition they'd started in. Applejack had given her a look of exasperation when she'd come to get them, but hadn't pried into why she had a sudden interest in taking over shearing duty as well as guard duty. "Also it kind of fluffs out more after it's off. A bit like when you groom a dog and the resulting pile of fur looks like more than it is." The pegasus whose only pet experience was with a reptile could only shrug at that. "Right. Okay." She took to the air and flapped over to the bags. "Anyway, let's get this wool to market and see what awesome stuff we can get with it." "So," Lamb Chop started, as she placed the record down into the grass. "We gave your wool to Bumblesweet, to trade it for some honey..." "...And then," Rainbow Dash continued, chest puffed up with pride, "We gave that honey to Harry so he'd catch us some salmon..." Lamb shivered. Getting Harry involved had very much been Rainbow's idea. Bears were one of those animals that were known to live on the razor's edge of sapience, but she still hadn't expected having a friendly conversation with one, through his soft-spoken interpreter, to be something she did today. "...And then we gave the salmon to Berryshine for food for her cat..." "...So we could get the salad bowl to give to Drizzle..." "...And the tea set to give to Holly Dash..." "...So we could get that comic book to give to Spike..." "...And that board game to give to Jetstream..." "...And that set of rare beanbag animals to give to Noteworthy..." "...Who traded us the Songbird Serenade album for them!" Lamb nudged it further toward Fleeca. "It's from her Abyssinia tour." Fleeca blinked several times, leaning down to peer at the golden lettering on the album cover. "Wow... three little baaags of wool led to all thaaat?" Rainbow's proud grin grew all the wider. "That's the power of awesomeness in action!" "And the power of barter." She nudged the record again with her snout. "Go on, go give it to her." Fleeca looked from the record, to Lamb, to the record again, then took a deep breath and leaned down to pick it up, giving a muffled, "Thk yu," before she turned and headed for the pasture. Lamb's sharp eyes followed her, a little hastily-moving spot of freshly-sheared black among the sea of wool, until she stopped in front of Dolly. The placid bleating was broken by a sudden burst of high volume and high pitch, a sound many would be surprised a sheep could make, and yet was immediately recognizable. It was the sound delighted fans everywhere, regardless of species, made when presented with something from their favourite star, and the two pegasi gave a brief hoof-bump of triumph. The gramophone at the far end of the pasture sprang to life--it'd been a purchase made together by the flock, Lamb had been told--and the tones of Songbird Serenade filled the air, making the other sheep raise their heads and perk their ears as the instrumentals and distinct vocals washed over them. Fleeca eventually came wandering back over, and Lamb frowned when she saw that the little black sheep wasn't smiling. Rainbow, however, didn't seem to notice, eagerly getting right into Fleeca's personal space. "So how'd it go? All over you, right?" "She saaaid it waaas really thoughtful of me." "And?" Lamb verbally nudged. "Thaaat's it." Rainbow deflated like a popped balloon, hitting the ground like a fainting goat and laying there for a moment with her legs in the air. "Uuuugh..." She peered at Lamb from her place in the grass. "Plan B?" Lamb blinked. "We have a plan B?" Rainbow made another agonized, "Uugh..." squeezing her eyes shut, until they suddenly snapped back open. "I got it!" She leaped her to hooves, then into the air, zipping over to Fleeca again. "If giving her something didn't work, you should take her somewhere awesome!" "I still think a Wonderbolts show would've been cooler..." "Shhh." "Or big concert in Canter--" "Shhh," Lamb repeated, giving Rainbow a poke with her hoof as they sat on wooden benches in the town square, watching as four ponies assembled themselves on stage. She briefly waved at Big Mac, who looked surprised at the sight of her before his fellow singers nudged him to remind him to get into place. "They wouldn't want to be away from their flock that long. And Applejack still doesn't want me 'sticking my snout' in all of this, so she'd probably try to chaperone a farther trip herself." "Ehhhh." Rainbow gave a casual wave of her hoof. "I'd've been able to get her to loosen up and let us take them." She grinned. "I can play that farmpony like a fiddle." "Shhh!" Lamb adjusted herself on the bench, fluffing her feathers against the autumn breeze. Not too chill, of course, since the local weatherponies wanted to make sure that the charity concert went off without a hitch. She nodded toward the pair of ewes a short distance ahead of them, as the Ponytones started into their first song. "Let them enjoy the show." And enjoy they did. Even Lamb couldn't help but smile and bob her head to the beat. She hadn't known that Mac could sing like that, or Applejack's unicorn friend--she was starting to feel a bit bad for forgetting her name, and wondered if maybe she should take her up on the makeover to make it up to her--and the four blended together nicely. It wasn't quite like the music back home. Acapella didn't have a huge audience. Griffonstone was fond of drums and other percussive instruments, and weaving their voices in between the pounding beat. A lot songs from her childhood had been modified work or war songs, with a rhythm to labour or march to. But for a time, she could put that on hold and just enjoy the new experience. Just a townspony in the crowd, listening to a performance in an ordinary Equestrian town. ...An Equestrian town that had an alicorn librarian. So mostly ordinary. One song flowed into another, hooves stomping their applause after each one, and once the quartet had given their final bow, Lamb looked over to the see Fleeca and Dolly huddled close, sharing an affectionate nuzzle. "Awww..." She nudged Rainbow with her shoulder. "Look at them." Rainbow chuckled. "Yeah, we totally got this." She offered her hoof for a bump that Lamb gladly returned. "Toldja it'd work." Slowly, the crowd around the concert broke up, ponies peeling off in groups with ones they'd arrived with, all of them heading for home. It was close to when the flock would be rounded up for the night, and Lamb and Rainbow fell back to let Fleeca and Dolly take the lead, even if it seemed to physically pain Rainbow to take things at an easygoing walk. She would often take a few steps, hop, then take wing for a few beats and land again. The two ewes chattered in low voices, and the pegasi attempted conversation as well, though Lamb had to, again, stop Rainbow from trying Griffish. "What? Do I really sound that bad?" she asked with a huff. "That's not it," Lamb assured, thankful that she, herself, was not a sheep, and so could lie. "It's just that I'm an Equestrian now. I should talk like it. I didn't get this fluent by switching back to my native tongue all the time." "Hey, have a little homeland pride." On one of her hops, her shoulder met Lamb's in something between a nudge and a playful shove. "You don't have to act like you were never Griff. I bet Griffonstone has a lot of awesome things to be proud of." Lamb gave a sad smile. "It does." She looked up at the sky, and for the first time in a while, she felt a genuine itch to fly. Not just the need to be on a high perch to better watch her surroundings, but to fly for the sake of it. "I miss it every day. I grew up in a small town, high in the cliffs, about half pegasi and half griffons. Well..." She gave a small laugh. "And one donkey. Everyone kept an eye on him, in case he got in trouble and needed wings to get out of it, but in private we said that he probably could fly, just by staring down gravity and telling it to cut it out." Rainbow laughed too. "See? That's a cool way to grow up, and nopony in town has a story like it." She gave another hop, and the playful shoulder-to-shoulder contact happened again. "You're awesome in your own way, and being a Griff is part of it. Don't throw it away." "Thanks, Rainbow." Lamb sighed a bit. "I guess it gets to me sometimes, how different Equestria is." The night steadily grew colder as they followed the path to Sweet Apple Acres, right on schedule. "So, why'd you leave?" The tone of the question was casual, and yet the weight of it nearly knocked Lamb Chop off her hooves. "I..." "It's just, sure, Equestria is clearly the best place around. It's got me, and my friends, the princesses, me, and everything. But like I said, Griffonstone's pretty cool too, and it's a long way to go for just shee--" "Bits." Rainbow blinked. "What?" "My family is poor, Rainbow." Her eyes went to the moon as it rose above the horizon. The same moon that her old community would be looking up at it as well tonight. "My town is poor. It's not bad everywhere, it might not get bad everywhere before it gets better, but Griffonstone's been in economic decline for years. My best chance to do more than scrape by was to get out." The words felt like acid on her tongue, and she was disgusted with herself for saying them. Her homeland would pull out of this, she knew it would, but until then, it was true. She wasn't just following her mark. Ponies had moved to Griffonstone during its height and now in its low, immigration was flowing back the way it'd come. Applejack paid her more than her previous employers had ever been able to dream of having to spare. She had mostly been working for food and a place to sleep. And she'd still nearly stayed. After the storm-- Can't fail. --She'd had a job for life if she wanted it. Yet, she'd left. Nearly everything had gone into her train ticket, and she'd walked out of the first station in Equestria with less bits than she'd had hooves, praying that she wouldn't need to rely on eating grass and sleeping on hastily-molded clouds for too many days before she found something. "Hey, uh..." Rainbow didn't touch her this time, just stepping a bit closer. "Look, I didn't know--" Lamb picked up her pace to a trot. "Come on. We're almost back." The sheep were settling into their pen, and two pegasi stood at the edge, the awkward silence having well and truly settled over them as they waited. Rainbow Dash occasionally started to say something, but Lamb Chop's eyes never left the sheep, and eventually she gave up, shifting back and forth on her hooves as numerous goodnight bleats were exchanged and lambs tucked themselves against relatives or friends to sleep. Eventually, a spot of black peeled off, and Fleeca approached them. Possibly desperate for some chatter after the silence, Rainbow took wing and zipped over with particular haste. "So, was I right or was I right? A complete success." Fleeca shuffled her hooves. "Well..." "What? Seriously?" Hooves met the grass again. "Still nothing?" "She saaaid she haaad a really good time and waaants to do it agaain?" "Uuuugh." Rainbow shook her head furiously. "She's a tough nut to crack. Okay, time to pull out all the stops." If she had not been so focused on getting into the pen herself for some much-needed sleep, Lamb Chop may have raised an alarm at those words. But as it is, she just walked over to Fleeca and lowered her head to nudge her back to the pen, so she could close and lock the gate behind them. "Tomorrow. We'll do more tomorrow. See you in the morning, Rainbow." Sleep wouldn't come to her that night either.
EweLamb Chop can't sleep, not for more than a few minutes at a time. She tosses and turns, listening to her own racing thoughts distort into near-dreams before snapping back to reality with a jolt. Sometimes it's more than near, and she dips into the realm of actual dreaming before the moment when her entire body jerks with adrenaline and sends her back to waking. It's a repeating torment that makes the night agonizingly long, and yet also makes the morning seem far too soon. The fact that she could actually go to the capital and actively petition the sun to rise later is one of the thoughts that tumbles through her sleep-deprived mind before crashing against the rocks of fatigue and being lost. The dreams in those few stolen minutes don't offer rest, either, because Lamb has had all kinds of dreams over her life, but tonight the theme is memories, and so the jolts are a mercy. There were a lot of subtle advantages to Lamb Chop's mark, and she was still exploring them all. One was the fact that a pony tended to be that much more dexterous when handling things related to their talent. Cooks could handle utensils with ease, a tailor could practically juggle needle and thread, and a smith was at their most graceful when handling metal. It was less noticeable with unicorns, whose telekinesis led to an assumption of a certain level of finesse, but for earth ponies and pegasi, the difference could be as stark as day and night. As long as she was doing something for a sheep, Lamb Chop was more coordinated that the average pegasus. It's why she'd been the one to handle the shears, and right now it was why she was buckling the strap on the... contraption that Rainbow had produced for Fleeca to wear. The metal dome was ill-fitting, especially with Fleeca shorn, and Lamb had whipped up a few micro-clouds to act as cottony padding to keep its edges from digging into her skin as it sat on her back. The propeller at the top of the dome was connected to a device with components that looked to have been scavenged from a weathervane, had a faint golden glow, and gave off a magical presence that made the fur on Lamb's fetlocks stand up when her hooves got too close to it. The presstoff strap had needed to be loosened as far as it could be before it was safe to buckle up around Fleeca's waist, and overall it looked a lot like someone wearing a very strange hat on their back instead of their head. Rainbow Dash had also lent Fleeca a pair of goggles, and she was in process of putting them on as she found the courage to bleat, "I'm not sure I know how to fly this..." "You'll do great!" Rainbow patted at the metal dome. "It's magic. Tank flies in it all the time." Lamb took in the name, rolled it around several times in her head, and tried to figure out where she'd heard it before. "Tank?" Rainbow grinned, seeming to take the word as an invitation to talk about one of her favourite things. "My tortoise. He's got to keep up with me somehow. So I had this whipped up for him." Lamb froze. "Your tortoise." "Yeah! I should bring him around so you can meet him. Did I ever tell you the story of how he--" "This is something your pet tortoise wears," Lamb said, her voice oddly calm in her own ears. "Who is smaller than a sheep." "Yeah but, he's got that heavy shell, she's just been sheared. It all balances out, right? And like I said, magic." Rainbow waved a hoof casually, not seeming to notice the way that Lamb's face had gone completely blank. "Plus, we'll set up a safe zone so the only things she could bump into is clouds. Like when you've got a foal practicing and you make sure everything's crash-proof." "Rainbow Dash?" The calm had nearly reached the point of the grave. "Yeah?" Lamb's voice morphed, leaving equine behind for something avian, with feline undertones. "" Fleeca, who did not speak Griffish, merely looked confused to hear a pony suddenly making such un-pony-like sounds. Rainbow, whose own abysmal pronunciation clearly didn't impede her understanding of the language, gave an audible gulp. "...Got it." Rainbow then flapped up in the air, hovering above Fleeca. "A-anyway, let's get this show on the road." She gave the dome another pat as she smiled. "You go out there and do some loop-de-loops, and we'll handle the rest, 'kay?" Fleeca looked up at Rainbow, then at Lamb, and back again. "Okaay." She finished putting on the goggles, and took a deep breath. "For Dolly." Lamb is taller than average, and it sometimes makes ponies judge her age as more than it is. She is young when she leaves her hometown, just barely an adult by Griffonstone laws and in the twilight of her foalhood by Equestrian ones, taking wing and leaving the cliffs behind because all pegasi leave the nest eventually, and some of them fly far indeed. Migration is more natural to the winged ponies, who have spread out to establish populations in more nations than all other varieties combined. In that way, eventually settling in Equestria is honouring a long tradition of pegasi soaring far and wide the moment their flight feathers are in. She doesn't take off for the border right away, however. Her first stop is a farm, owned by pair of griffons who have two chicks only because they don't believe they'd be able to feed three. Their sheep guardian dog is old, slowed by pain in his joints, and they're not sure if they can afford a new puppy to succeed him. They're able to take her in because she can graze with her new charges, supplementing the meager vegetables she buys with her few bits with the hardy grasses the flock of mouflon eat. It takes them almost two weeks to coax her into sleeping in the farmhouse, and to eat at their table. She's so used to the smell of cooked meat on the air from her home town that she doesn't balk at all watching them eat as she chews her hay, and she muses not for the first or last time how much harder it is to be a carnivore. Meat is expensive in many ways, be it bought, ranched, or hunted, while there's a rare place that doesn't have any plants that can be eaten, especially for a graminivore, and grass doesn't typically run away. The sheep are the small family's livelihood, and so Lamb promises to do anything to protect them. Lamb Chop only had the basics, but any pegasus could shape a cloud. It was one of the first things, because it was one of the first ways a foal could exercise a bit of independence. Once you could fly, you'd fly as far as you needed to in order to find a cloud, and you'd shape it into a little hideaway that was all your own, your slice of privacy from the adults in your life. Adolescents would then start to show off their creations to each other, and in order to have anything to show off, they needed constant practice to hone the skills. Any adult pegasus worth the name could cloud-sculpt at least competently, because there'd been a time when their young selves thought it was the coolest possible thing they could be doing. Pegasi in Griffonstone also honed another skill. There was a unicorn spell that would allow any creature to cloudwalk--it also worked on inanimate objects, as Twilight had shown her when she'd borrowed from the library; casting it on anything lent out to a pegasus was apparently standard procedure--but there were barely any unicorns in her home. A certain amount of magic was required to make a cloud hold the shape it'd been given, and infusing just a little more made certain creatures able to interact with them too. Birds, insects, bats... anything with the gift of flight, including griffons. A Griff pegasus learned fast how to solidify cloud that far, because there wasn't much point in sculpting something grand if their griffon friends couldn't join them in it. With the contraption Fleeca was wearing, that list of creatures who could touch clouds included her. That was part of the spell on it, apparently. It not only allowed Rainbow's tortoise to fly, but allowed him to walk on clouds while he wore it. So, for all intents and purposes, Fleeca was like a first-flight pegasus foal, which led to a lot of foal-proofing. Humidity was pulled down, crafted into fog and eventually a spongy cloud-layer to cushion any fall. Hay was then placed beneath the clouds as an extra cushion, just in case. Lastly, several clouds were placed in a rough perimeter of the "stage," something she could bounce off of to reorient if she started to head out of bounds. Only with all of that was Lamb satisfied, and she nodded to Rainbow. "I'll round them up." It was showtime. She doesn't know the storm's coming until it's practically on top of them. Lamb Chop's not a meteorologist. Few pegasi are. Trying to translate something they navigate by instinct into science encounters several stumbling blocks, and she's just barely out of secondary school with no intent of pursuing further studies. The most she can say about the scientific field is that it exists. All she has is her own senses, and those don't reach far. She can see the clouds, hear and feel wind, and there's a sense that the air is angry, rumbling and howling and calling for violence. It appears fast, too fast, faster than any weather has descended on her before or since. She's out in the pasture with the flock, the farmhouse is too far away, and the kind of rain, wind, or lightning that would take an entire pegasus team to create, or to stop, comes upon them like a monster roaring as it pounces. (It'll take weeks before she hears the words cloud demon on lips and beaks, spoken with shock, awe, and the kind of whispers that came from fear that just saying it will call another one down on the speaker's head.) The mouflon don't like the thunder, and they like the sheets of rain even less. The earth beneath will swiftly turn to mud, and the word flooding rushes through Lamb's mind and sends her flying against the wind with frantic wingbeats, trying to make the avian screeches that the flock know mean move loudly enough to be heard She just needs to get a few in motion, and the rest will follow. The farmhouse is too far away, but she knows where there's higher ground. They'll be safer there, until the storm rains itself out or blows away to elsewhere. Gathering the flock had been as easy as asking nicely, though the fact that the reason for the gathering was a surprise had set the sheep moving with an ongoing group-wide murmur. Theories for what was going on were being offered and spread through the flock at record speed, each new voice adding a detail, and by the time they'd gotten close enough to see the cloud formations, they seemed to have gathered together enough material for the first draft of a novel. "In-troducing, the Amazingly Awesome Flying Fleeca!" All conversation ceased at Rainbow's announcement, and several dozen heads lifted up to see one of their own in the sky, held up by twirling propeller blades. Rainbow was at Fleeca's left, hovering near one of the barrier clouds, and Lamb flapped up to take her own position at the right. "You got this," Rainbow said with a grin as Fleeca looked at her. "We'll be right here if you need us," Lamb added as the flying ewe's gaze sought her out next. Fleeca nodded, and the show began. From the point of view of a flying species, it wasn't anything that fancy. She flew side to side, up and down, a few circles, and, when she'd gathered the courage, tried a loop-de-loop. It very much was like a young foal on their first flight, one who'd just gotten enough feathers in to be past the gliding stage. To the sheep, however, Lamb imagined that it looked like something close to miracle, and they had the awed expressions to match. Both pegasi struck at the clouds closest to them, setting off booms and flashes of thunder and lightning. Neither were overly musically inclined, but they managed to fall into a pleasing rhythm with their special effects that mostly stayed in time with Fleeca's flight. Flight that got more and more confident as she got a feel for how to move and lean to direct the propeller, and her uneasy expression soon bloomed into a smile. Lamb couldn't help but smile as well. Maybe she'd been overly worried. Fleeca was enjoying herself, discovering a passion for the sky before her eyes, and regardless of whether this succeeded in getting the two sheep together or not, there was something to treasure in that. She might even be able to get a similar device, sized properly, just for the joy of it, and Lamb would have a flying buddy among the flock. Then she spotted the bats. Three days. She hasn't eaten. She hasn't slept. Her body is running on fear and willpower, dredging up what magic she has left to keep fighting. The mouflon are huddled beneath an open space in the clouds, but it always threatens to close, and while the floodwaters have stayed too low to reach them, the land beneath their hooves has still steadily grown muddier despite her efforts. They keep bleating in distress, wet and hungry, and all she can do is keep fighting back the storm. Her fur, hair, and feathers are waterlogged, and any attempt to dry them just gives the storm more time to try to close in on her safe zone. It feels like it's worked its way down not just to skin, but right to her bones, filling her with a chill that no warmth will ever banish. She's drenched to the soul, and there's no sign it will let up any time soon. She doesn't know where the family is. She can only hope they got away before the floodwaters reached the house. There's a moment where it seems like the storm is bored of struggling with her. A bolt of lightning arcs with a roar of thunder, and strained throats still manage the sounds of ovine terror. Mind narrowed to a tunnel of instinct, Lamb moves. It was easy to forget about the west orchard and its ongoing little pest problem. Lamb Chop took her breaks in the east orchard, because she'd been advised to stay away from the west one. Fruit bats could be territorial, and like all other magical varieties of bat, they didn't quite keep to the expected nocturnal schedule. While likely to do no more than harass her or steal her food, they were still best left alone until a way to make them move on could be found. Lamb took her breaks in the east orchard. But they'd needed more room for this set up, enough to form their cloud perimeter and not need to worry about encroaching branches, and so had moved to a different part of the farm. Not in the heart of the bats' territory, but instead in an open area that acted as something of a border; the stretch of land without any trees was the main reason why the bats hadn't expanded further, as they didn't like traversing that much open space to reach more fruit when they had plenty of trees to nest in and feed from right where they were. There would eventually be an attempt to cross that gap, but Applejack had been hoping to relocate them before that became a worry. They weren't in the bat territory, because that would be putting them close to the trees. But they were on the border, and even if fruit bats had been nocturnal, one thing that could wake up a sleeping animal was thunder. One of the nuances of the colony that Lamb would come to learn later was that the strawberry fruit bats were the primary scouts and defenders of it. They went toward potential food or threat first, and the others would follow sometime after. And heading toward them right now was a tightly-clustered flock of red and green, seeking the roaring monster they were hearing so that they could see if they could drive it off. Lamb spotted them early. Rainbow, who'd been in the process of acting as Fleeca's hype mare, spotted them a moment before the first bat went through a perimeter cloud and hurtled right at her face. A blinded pony, pegasus or no, unsure of whether there were other attackers, would always kick... Lightning arced out. Fleeca cried out in fear. Lamb moved. It's the first time she touches lightning with her bare hooves. They tell her later she's lucky she still has hooves. One wrong call... one mistake... And it's over. Being a flock guardian meant having good lightning control, because a well-placed bolt was a pegasus's best defense against flying monsters. But once a lightning bolt was in motion, there was often little that a pony could do to change its direction. They didn't touch the lightning itself, but instead encouraged the cloud to generate it and to send it in a particular direction. Manipulating a bolt directly was an act of the reckless or desperate, because it was replacing the cloud's role as conduit with their own body. Long legs reached out, and hooves met the bolt. Her heart pounded so hard that it felt like it was sending vibrations rattling from her ribcage to every single bone, and yet her breathing was slow, almost meditative, and she was aware of every single breath. She moved like she was weaving fibers, sending the electricity twisting in a figure-eight as her mane puffed out with crackling static, and steam rose as every drop of moisture in her coat evaporated at once. There were other things going on around her. The bats where steering clear of her, because that was where the lightning was, but they continued to swarm Rainbow and Fleeca, and she saw blurs of red, blue, black, silver, gold... so many colours that didn't resolve into objects in her eyes because the fierce glow of the electricity sought to overwhelm them. She couldn't hold it for long, and every second she tried was another one where her control could slip, so she sent the lightning in the direction where red, with hints of green, was most clustered. The fruit bats scattered, but Lamb could tell that the bolt had struck something. The burning scent wasn't flesh or hair, and she distantly hoped that Applejack would forgive her if she'd accidentally hit one of her trees. "Easy, Fleeca, I gotcha..." The words sounded distant, and Lamb just barely recognized Rainbow's voice for what it was. She felt heavy, her body hanging in the air like a hat on a hat rack, the muscles in her wings feeling sluggish as they continued to give each laborious flap necessary to keep her in a hover. She started to sink down, seeking the clouds and hay below and the softness that she could rest on, and she managed to turn enough to see Rainbow Dash and Fleeca sinking as well. The device was still glowing with power, but the propeller had stopped, no longer needed when Rainbow had both of her front hooves on the dome and was guiding her down. It was when hooves met clouds that she noticed a set of familiarly-coloured, pony-shaped objects racing toward them, though that observation was overshadowed by the blinding flash of white light that placed a winged, horned, purple pony-shaped object right in front of Lamb. "What happened? I saw the lightning from the library and--" "What in tarnation is goin'--Dash, why in the hay is Fleeca wearin' Tank's copter?!" "I was just trying to help! Lamb, back me up here." Lamb Chop swayed on her hooves, raised her head, and looked around at the earth ponies, pegasus, and alicorn present. Then she slowly walked over to Fleeca, undid the strap holding on the copter, and let it tumble to the ground. No longer under the effect of its magic, the little black sheep sank through the cloud until her hooves were resting in the hay, and Lamb's voice came out with a slight croak. "Fleeca, can you come with me for a second?" "O-okaay..." Lamb walked over to the flock, who had clumped together in a frightened huddle, and raised her voice as best she could to be heard over the frantic conversation amongst themselves. "Dolly, can you come over here?" Dolly hadn't needed to be asked twice, racing out of the mass of wooly bodies and nearly tackling Fleeca in her rush to nuzzle her comfortingly. "Fleeca! Are you okaay? Are you hurt?" Fleeca ducked her head bashfully. "It's okaay, Dolly, I'm not hurt. Raaainbow caught me before I could faaall." "What on this lifebearin' land were you thinkin'? Lamb's new, but you've been here enough times t' know not t'--" "We set up safety stuff! And I knew not to set up in the west orchard." "Your 'safety stuff' involved somethin' that can shoot lightnin'." "Dolly." Both ewes looked at her, and Lamb took a deep breath, feeling like the next words took what was left of her energy. "Fleeca here would really, really love it if you would be her special somebaady." Dolly's eyes went wide. "Fleeca..." Fleeca shrunk in on herself, her ears twisting backward. "It's okaay to saaay no..." Dolly shook her head, wearing a gentle smile. "You silly." She closed the distance, pressing her forehead to Fleeca's. "I thought I already waaas your special somebaady." Fleeca's ears shot forward again, her own eyes going saucer-wide. "You..." Words were left behind as she bleated in joy, and she hopped a circle around Dolly as she watched the display and giggled. Already the rest of the flock were cooing to each other about how cute it was, and as the new couple headed back toward the pasture, the rest needed no instruction to follow them. Lamb watched them leave, then looked over as Applejack came up to her side, with a thoroughly-chastised Rainbow Dash grumbling behind her. "Now, I usually ain't one t' say 'I told you so,' but what did I tell you 'bout gettin' involved?" Lamb sighed. "I'll have a letter on your desk tomorrow with everything I learned today." A wide yawn delayed further speech, her jaw threatening to dislocate from the force of it. "Right now, if you could have somepony watch the pasture while I go to the barn and pass out, that'd be great." Applejack shook her head a little, then nudged Lamb with her shoulder. "Go on. Me an' Mac can take shifts 'longside Apple Bloom. Doubt the cattle will mind you takin' a nap in the straw pile. Daisy Jo might jus' try t' feed you cookies when you wake up." Rainbow perked. "You know, a nap in some straw sounds pretty good right about now." Lamb gave her a sideways look. " "Buuuuut a nap at home sounds even better, so I'll just--" "Is this the book I lent you?!" Lamb was suddenly extremely, incredibly awake, and both she and Rainbow looked at the nearly-forgotten alicorn, and the pile of scorched paper she was starting at. Lamb abruptly remembered where she'd placed the sheep book, and looked up, noting an absence in the safety ring in the direction she'd sent the lightning. Well, that explained the burning scent... Staring into the furious gaze of a mare she'd been assured was not a princess, but who remained a member of the rare breed of pony who could casually juggle the heavens, Lamb heard Rainbow ask, "Truce?" And she nodded without hesitation, noting that Twilight's mane seemed to be smoking. "Then fly for it!" "You two get back here!" It was as they were flying for their lives from a mad alicorn, who was trying to master the art of the mid-air teleport on the literal fly in order to catch them, that Lamb Chop noticed after a time that Rainbow was grinning. It was official. Everyone in this town was crazy.
2Dear Garrett and Georgina, I hope this letter finds you well, and I apologise that this is the first time I'm writing you. Finding my hoofing in Equestria has taken up a lot of time, and it feels like the last year has flown by without much chance to land and catch my breath. Applejack mentioned that she'd written you, and I can't thank you enough for the glowing reference. That also means you already know the good news, that I found a farm to work for that has sheepfolk! It's a small flock, because she only has so much land to host them on. The majority of the real estate is apple trees and a few other crops, and she also has cattlefolk and pigfolk claiming their own spaces. I don't mind, though, since fewer sheep means more time to get to know them as individuals. There's a pair of ewes, Dolly and Fleeca, who I'm especially attached to. They're a couple, and just this year they've adopted one of Dolly's sister's lambs. She had three a couple of months ago, and one of them got sick, so the poor thing needed a little extra care, and the two of them stepped in to help. The little guy's doing a lot better, now. They named him Shaun. Speaking of flocks, I hope all's well with yours, and all's going well training the new puppy. I passed on what I could before I left, and I know the old boy still has a couple of years in him to show her the ropes. I hope Greta's doing well, too. I know that leaving for schooling was a hard choice to make, but I'm proud of her for taking the opportunity. I miss her. And little Gracie. I miss all of you, every day. I'm still not sure if I belong in Equestria. The ponies here are almost like a whole new species. They aren't like what I expected. One of the pegasi in town does speak a bit of Griff, which would be nice, but she's also insane. She regularly straps a magic flying machine on a tortoise. There's an alicorn running the town library, too. I think I narrowly avoided being sent to the moon once already for accidentally damaging a book. I still have dreams about the cloud demon It's still hard to sleep sometimes I still feel like I'm going to mess this up I hope I get the chance to visit you all soon. Maybe this summer I can come out and see you, while Greta's home on break? I'd love a chance to catch up, and a letter doesn't feel like the right medium to tell you everything that's gone on. I'd rather tell you all in person. Best Wishes, Lamb Chop Author's Note Credit to Estee, for whom without their worldbuilding on protectorate species and their graciously giving me permission to use it, this story wouldn't exist.
