The storm blew in from the west. It was planned by the Pegasi who lived near Road Island; the notice of the storm was posted on fliers around the city two days in advance, and the wealthy and dutiful earth ponies and unicorns who lived in the area made sure to finish their lawncare and pick up the laundry the day before.
By ten in the morning, the rain was a mist. By eleven, it had escalated to a steady, shower-like texture, gently washing over treetops and rooftops alike and casting the streets in the faint glow of lights reflected off of slick pavestones.
By two in the afternoon, the sky was slate grey and the rain continued to fall, showing no signs of stopping. And when Gallus came out onto the lawn again, carrying a very large umbrella with a stake at the base, Silverstream was still lying on the top of a small hill, face-up in the tall grass, eyes closed.
Gallus didn’t say a word at first. He took the walk slowly, letting his paws and talons squelch satisfyingly into the wet grass as he watched the prone figure for signs of motion. Eventually, he drew up next to her and stared at her placid face with an inscrutable expression, eyes lingering on her for several seconds before staking the umbrella into the ground next to her and settling down under it as a beachgoer might shelter under a parasol.
The clatter of rain on the roof of the house was drowned out by the sound of rain drumming against the umbrella. It was several seconds later before Gallus opened his beak to speak.
“You know, the other ponies in town would think you’re making a scene.”
Silence.
“They’d assumed something awful would have happened to you, or between us, and that was the reason you’re lying out on the lawn in the elements like…I dunno, a heartbroken pony in one of those romance novels Professor Rarity always left out in her classroom.”
Silverstream opened an eye. “You read those?”
“What? Me?” Gallus’s eyes widened. “Why would you think I read those things?”
“How would you know what happens in them if you didn’t?” Silverstream opened her other eye and rolled over, beak curled impishly.
“Wh—uh, it, I mean maybe I’ve heard enough about what goes on in them to know this sort of thing happens!” Gallus sputtered, raising a claw to his chest defensively. “It doesn’t mean—”
“Gaaaaaaallus~” Silverstream cooed, using her arms to pull herself over the grass like a legless zombie. “Are you gonna admit you like romantic things now?”
“Never.” Gallus pouted, cheeks going somewhat pink. “You can’t make me.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that~” Silverstream pulled herself under the umbrella, rolled over and sat up next to Gallus. “I think I know how to extract that information out of you~”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You w-”
Silverstream leaned in and cut off the rest of Gallus’s protest with a kiss. Gallus’s eyes widened, then his entire body relaxed. Silverstream reached up and stroked his cheek, and Gallus’s eyes closed as he replied with a gentle, appreciative moan.
Finally, Silverstream pulled away with a giggle. “There. Now am I going to need to kiss you again, or…?”
“Okay, fine! I admit it!” Gallus replied, looking sheepish. “I like those fancy romance stories too. I asked Rarity if I could borrow one a couple of weeks after we helped banish the wendigos and I was bored, and then she let me borrow one, then another, and…why are you staring at me like that?”
Silverstream’s eyes sparkled. “Aww, Gally-wally, did you read all of her Vanity and Vengeance novels?”
“Wh-I told you not to call me that!” Gallus sputtered, going rather red in the face.
“What, Gally-wally~?”
“Yes! That! I mean, no, don’t call me that! Ever! I—”
Silverstream leaned over and gave Gallus a light peck on the cheek. Gallus’s expression changed from indignant to stunned, as if Silverstream had just turned him off and on again.
Then, finally, he sighed and looked back at Silverstream with a soft smile. “Bullying all this information out of me when it’s impossible for me to resist…you’re so mean, Sylvie.”
Silverstream wrapped a foreleg around his back and nuzzled the blushing Griffon. “And you’re so cute when you get all embarrassed like this.”
“You aren’t worried about making a sc— wait, why are you dry?” Gallus looked over at Silverstream. “You were literally just lying in the middle of a rainstorm a minute ago. You’ve been out there since the rain started, haven’t you?”
Silverstream shrugged. “More or less!”
“So what, are you waterproof or something?”
“Hippogriff!” Silverstream chirped.
“...And that somehow explains everything?”
“Yep!”
“...You have no idea how it works, do you?”
“Nope!” Silverstream shook her head, still beaming. “I’m an architect, remember?”
“An architect smart enough to somehow combine a water turbine with a spiral staircase, gave Seaquestria and Mt. Aris nearly unlimited sources of free, exportable energy and made both it and yourself incredibly rich in the process.”
Silverstream cocked her head. “Uh…and your point is?”
“That you’re smart, Sylvie. Like, crazy smart.” Gallus gestured vaguely at the stormy sky. “If somecreature could figure out why you’re all waterproofed like that, it’s probably you.”
“What if I don’t want to?” Silverstream stuck out her tongue. “Nyeah.”
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting you to. Besides, if I thought that I could say something that’d make you get mad scientist again and lock yourself up in Professor Twilight’s personal library for the next several weeks, I’d keep it to myself.” Gallus shrugged. “Or save it for when you’re being really annoying.”
Silverstream’s eyes watered. “You think I’m—”
“Don’t even start.” Gallus reached over and ruffled her mane. “If you’re gonna guilt-trip me, save it for when you want to guilt-trip me into doing something, don’t just do it for the sake of doing it.”
“Aww, caught in the act.” Silverstream giggled. “Wellllll…what if I do want you to do something?”
“Which is—” Gallus squawked as Silverstream scooted next to him and wrapped him up fully in a warm, soft hug.
“Mmmm…” Silverstream cooed. “What if I want you to be here and hug me back? You’re all warm and fluffy and stuff.”
“...okay. Fine,” Gallus groused as he returned the hug. Everything besides the exasperation in his voice, however — from the lashing of his tail to the smile he seemed to be trying rather hard and entirely failing to suppress — suggested that he was more than pleased with his situation.
Together, the two hugged each other under the umbrella, letting the rain wash down and around them, and it seemed for close to a minute as if both had silently agreed to banish words and thoughts alike, and let quiet companionship reign in their absence.
Eventually, Gallus broke the silence. “...I guess I still kind of don’t get this, though.”
“Mmm?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly happy with…this. This whole deal. Living here in this big mansion on an island by the coast, just the two of us, never having to worry about…anything ever again, really. But why here? Why not Mt. Aris, or Seaquestria?” Gallus cocked his head. “I know you’re extroverted. Like, really extroverted. And it’s not like all the old-money inheritors and new-money fauxrisocrats seem like great conversationalists, unless you somehow broke through that snobby shell while I wasn’t looking.”
Silverstream gently ruffled Gallus’s feather fringe. “Being an extrovert doesn’t mean wanting to be around big crowds all the time, silly.”
A sudden gust kicked up rain droplets under the umbrella, dusting them both in a fine mist; neither seemed to notice. “That’s still not an explanation, you know.”
Silverstream sighed, voice tilting somewhere between contentment and melancholia. “I’ve spent most of my life in the company of friends and family. Really, really super wonderful friends and family, don’t get me wrong! But when we do things, we do things all together. Knotted like a kelp blanket.” Silverstream pulled her claw back, scooted back a bit and latticed her fingers together. “Like that. And sure, friends and family can sometimes bicker and argue, but at the end of the day they’re still all together with each other, and that never changes.”
Gallus nodded. “Like it or not, right? I mean, maybe like it more often than not, depending on who it is, but…”
Silverstream nodded, sighing softly. “And sometimes, well…it’s nice to imagine a kelp front on its own rock, floating in the middle of the endless blue. Sunlight filtering down, wonders and mystery stretching out infinitely below…”
“Able to just drink it all in, without worrying about the kelp all around you.”
A little smile drifted over Silverstream’s face. “It’s nice to be able to enjoy the blue. Or the air equivalent, I guess, the…clear?”
“Looks like it’s the grey today.”
Silverstream giggled, and Gallus raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry” Silverstream said, not looking sorry in the least. “It was funny.”
Gallus rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “It wasn’t my best material.”
“Then I guess I’m lucky you didn’t use your best material on me! It might make it hard for me to talk after laughing so hard.” Playfully, Silverstream leaned forward and booped Gallus’s beak. “Boooooooop.”
“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Gallus replied, a blush returning to his cheeks.
“Guilty as charged!” Silverstream sighed. “But…it’s nice to be silly out here.”
“As opposed to being silly all the time?”
Silverstream’s expression softened. “...Yeah.”
“Wait, really?”
Silverstream nodded, smile soft and small enough that it seemed almost as if it had disappeared entirely. “I don’t have to be the silly one. I don’t have to worry whether I’m good-silly or bad-silly, or too silly, or not silly enough. At the end of it all…”
Before Gallus could respond, Silverstream scooted back, spread her forelegs and flopped back-first onto the grass again.
“...I’m silly by myself. However much I want. And I have only the ocean and the sky to watch and listen to me.” Silverstream chuckled, still not looking sodden in the least. “And they’re good at listening.”
“...Huh.” Gallus scooted closer to the edge of the umbrella, but stayed under its shelter, curling his body slightly and keeping his eyes fixed on her. “That…isn’t how I operate at all.”
Silverstream didn’t respond.
“But I think I get it, kind of.”
“You do?” Silverstream replied softly.
“Yeah.” Gallus reached forward and picked at the wet soil, talon sinking freely into the mud. When he pulled his talon out again, his claw was slick with rain and his offending talon was coated in a fine layer of muck. “When I’m…me, on my own, then the only creature I can be a jerk to is myself. I don’t have to worry about making anycreature else feel bad because of something they did that deserved, y’know, being called out. And if I ever feel like a cracked pebble at the bottom of a gorge, nocreature has to worry about me, since there isn’t anycreature around to notice.”
Silverstream turned her head to look at Gallus as he inched a little closer: still tucked away under the umbrella, but looking as if teetering on the edge of exiting the shelter and joining her in the downpour.
“I still don’t get it, though” Gallus admitted. “If you like being alone, why here? Why in a town full of stuffy rich people who turn up their beaks at anycreature who doesn’t meet their impossible standards? Isn’t that the opposite of what you want?”
“Only if I actually cared about their feelings!” Silverstream chirped. “And I do the opposite!”
“Wait, you actually like to ruffle their feathers?”
“Well, not getting into fights! I’m not a punchy-punch hippogriff!” Silverstream replied, belying her words by jabbing a playful fist into the air. “But what better way to feel like you’re free to be yourself than to actively reject what they want? It’s like they’re helping me feel free to be myself — the more they think I’m being too silly for their standards, the more I know that I can be as silly as I please and never have to worry about anything else at all!”
Gallus snorted. “Never figured you for an Iconoclast.”
“I’m not! I’m me! That’s way, way, way better.” Silverstream poked out her tongue at Gallus, then looked a bit quizzical. “Wait, where did you learn the word Iconoclast? It’s kind of a big word.”
Gallus shrugged. “I’m allowed to learn what I want to learn. And heck, there’s something fun about breaking out fancy-pony words from time to time. They can’t hog all of them for themselves, and if I can annoy them by using their fancy words - me, a scruffy, impoverished griffon without a drop of nobility in my veins…”
Silverstream beamed. “You get it!”
“Didn’t I just say I did?” Gallus arched an eyebrow, briefly looking pleased with himself. “...Okay, one last question, I swear.”
Silverstream nodded. “Okay!”
“Why me?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t want to worry about your friends and family. You don’t mind rubbing it into the snooty ponies that you don’t have to be what they want. But if you really wanted to be unabashedly yourself and nothing else…why did you want me to stay with you?” Gallus cocked his head. “Wouldn’t that be more pressure for you?”
Silverstream sat up and scooted within foreleg’s reach. “Because you help me feel free.”
The conversation fell into silence, letting the patter of rain on umbrellatop and soil alike fill the gap between them. Questions unanswered crept between the two but found no purchase, and were washed away with the rainwater.
But, finally, one final question climbed into the space between the two. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“If you know how I feel, and you say you feel a similar way…” Silverstream cocked her head. “Why did you come with me? Why are you here?”
Gallus smiled gently. “I never feel like a cracked pebble anymore. Not while you’re around me.”
The answer slithered away with the question, and uncounted seconds ticked by and disappeared in another sudden breeze.
Finally, Silverstream offered her claw. Without question, Gallus took it; and when Silverstream pulled him close and pressed her beak against his, he kissed back without any hesitation at all and fell freely into the feather-soaking blanket of rain.
