Lesbian Sheep Syndrome

Lamb 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. "