Chapters It is immediately obvious to me that Lieutenant Armor views the orange juice as a red flag.
"What's this for?" he asks. It is a neutral sort of question, not rude, but also not altogether pleased. It is the tone of voice used by duty-bound soldiers or suspicious ponies on the lookout for danger, which makes perfect sense, as Lt. Armor is both.
"Nothing! I just thought you might like a little fresh orange juice for breakfast. I squeezed it myself. The Resident Minister's kitchen staff has been so busy of late!"
There is a brief pause before I go on to say, "That's what they've been telling me, at least."
"Mm," says Shining Armor. "Just out of curiosity, did this start before or after the Incident?"
"After.“ I break eye contact.
"I see."
"It wasn't my fault, Lieutenant! I had no idea that I was going to inadvertently unleash several years' worth of pent-up alicorn magic all over my guest suite!"
"No one is saying it's your fault."
"No. But they keep looking at me funny. They used to be cautiously polite. Now they're whisperingly suspicious. I am not at all pleased by this state of affairs. But, let's not trouble ourselves with that now. Have some juice!"
Lt. Armor eyes me with the faintest soupçon of a squint, as though I am a distant object he cannot quite make out. He takes the glass in his aura and has a small, businesslike sip. I am proud to note that there are almost no seeds in the juice. Better princesses than I would preamble the discussion I plan on having with a much nicer breakfast, but I am helpless in the kitchen. Sometimes I feel that I am helpless just about everywhere.
"So anyway," I begin, "this whole state of affairs has dramatically accelerated the timeframe in which I will be leaving the Resident Minister's home and acquiring a place of my own in this city."
Lt. Armor is too well-disciplined to fall victim to spit-takes, but I can see him rolling his mouthful of juice around. He swallows most of it and then discreetly deposits just one seed into a nearby cloth napkin.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but you're what now?"
"Have a croissant! They're good! I didn't make them!"
"Here's the deal: I'll have a croissant when you explain to me what you just said."
"I'm getting out of here!" I exclaim. "And, since you are apparently attached to my hip, that means you are getting out of here as well!"
"We do as you wish, ma’am," says the lieutenant, patently wishing that we didn't always do as I wish. I don't blame him. "Whose goodwill are we going to be intruding on next?"
"Nopony's goodwill, Lieutenant. We will be purchasing our own place together!"
Lt. Armor spits out another seed. "Up until a little while ago, I would have suggested using your royal stipend for this."
"Yes, but I gave it all away."
"Yes, you did."
"To a little filly."
“So that she could attend a flight camp."
"Yes!" I say a little more loudly. "I know Posey's little filly is just going to have the greatest of times there. So, I will not have you questioning my judgment calls."
"Wasn't doing any such thing. Merely questioning where the bits will come from."
"I'm getting a job!"
Lt. Armor calmly spits out a third seed. It appears there were quite a few seeds in the glass after all. "As you wish, ma'am."
"You act as though I'm being ridiculous."
"I didn't say anything like that."
"It's your tone. I don't blame you, just so you know. None of this is going according to plan. When you think about it, nothing's ever gone according to plan in this city, since the moment we made cloudfall. But we're making it work, right?"
"We are."
"Yes! And we're doing that by being resourceful and agile." I fret a little, considering my next move. "I wish you could trust that this is all just a step on the journey to me living my best life. That you could see what I'm feeling, see that I'm not just being silly."
"Yes." Lt. Armor takes a little nibble of his croissant, keeping his end of the bargain we struck. "That's something I wish for, too."
A plan of action clicks into place. This is perfect. It can't fail. "I'll help, then. I'll lay out all my emotions in the best little pony way I know how!"
He raises an eyebrow. "How do you intend to—"
"With a big musical number!" I cry out. And then—eyes wide, croissant hanging from his mouth—Lieutenant Armor is swept, by me, out of our suite…
The instrumental music begins as Lt. Armor scrabbles to find his hooves. When I am confident that he can walk, I release him from my telekinetic aura. It turns out that I misjudged, and he trips over the carpet runner and runs into a wall. Normally I would show a bit more concern, but I need to keep pace with the music. My eyes look straight forward as I trot in time down the halls of the Resident Minister's manse. I see a staircase in front of me with an eminently slidable banister. It would be a crime to let such an opportunity go to waste, so I glide gracefully down its curved length and flawlessly dismount. My hooves beat time to the music upon the floorboards. Lt. Armor stumbles behind me, criminally out of rhythm. I kick open the door to the manse, and the foyer is flooded with bright daylight. There are no clouds. Of course there are no clouds! Here in this city, we are the clouds!
My drastic egress startles the heck out of R.M. Weather Eye's two faithful, elderly lictors, Sabre and Spurs. It is not the first time I have startled them, and they are beginning to get used to it by now.
"Good morning, Sabre! Good morning, Spurs!" I chirp.
"Good morning, Your Highness!" they say in unison. Despite their surprise, they are still far more in tune with the music than the lieutenant is.
"How's the weather this morning?" I ask with a cheeky grin.
"You know Cloudsdale!" says Sabre.
"The weather is always..." continues Spurs.
"...what you make of it!" we conclude in unison, sharing a laugh. I give a little twirl and hop down off the stoop to the cloudy streets below.
"What's going on?" asks Lieutenant Armor.
I smile at him, my hooves raising adorable little puffs of cloud to the sound of the beat. "I'm telling you my feelings!" Pegasi of all colors, so long as those colors are pastel, fall into step behind us. They match my stride exactly. "And I'm doing it through song!"
Who's taking on the City of Cloudsdale
"Mi Amore Cadenza , if you want to get fancy!" I run my hoof through a decorative fountain of free-flowing rainbow and scatter the colors skyward. All eyes follow the prismatic spray for a moment, then in a twinkling we are somewhere else, trotting briskly over the gleaming white paving-clouds of the Acropolis. My rapidly growing entourage continues to sing, and we are caught up in the music, like paper boats flowing madly downstream.
Who flutters through the streets of our city
"None of this makes any sense," says Lt. Armor.
"That's because you're not in sync with the rhythm of the city! You've never even tried to fit in!"
"My job here isn't to 'fit in.'"
"You can do your job and fit in too, you silly little stick-in-the-mud! Take the bridge!"
"What bridge? This is a plaza."
"The bridge of the song, Lieutenant!"
He furrows his brow at me for a moment, and then, in an unexpectedly lovely tenor, he sings:
Her Highness forgets some things— Not all of us here have wings! This soldier can't rest at ease Above the clouds...
The entourage!
Above the clouds
Lieutenant Armor!
Above the clouds!
Everypony together, now!
Above the clouuuds!
"You did it, Lieutenant!"
"I feel dirty all over."
"That's just the diegesis! It washes right off!" I spin myself back into the chorus.
Who trips across the plazas of Cloudsdale Smiling at everypony she sees? Who's reaching out to capture her future? Everyone knows it's Cady!
In a twirl of color, Lieutenant Armor and I find ourselves transported directly to the center of the Forum Magnum, the austere heart of Cloudsdale's government. Grand, white buildings filled with civil functionaries tower about us on nearly all sides. Immense tablets of gleaming blue ice bearing the inscriptions of the Acta Diurna glitter in the morning light, having been freshly hauled into place. I love that the news simply melts at the end of the day when everypony is done with it! So much cleaner than littering the streets with newsprint, like we used to in Canterlot! Yes indeed, I say to myself as I happily skim the headlines of the Acta . It feels great to be so far away from—
CLOUDSDALE RETURNS TO CANTERLOT
There is an audible record scratch.
"Oh, look," says Lt. Armor, mildly. "We're closing in on the annual approach to the Mountain."
Cloudsdale is not fixed in the sky, of course. It is the hub of weather production in Equestria, and it only makes sense for us to be on a circuit, delivering packed rain clouds sequentially to the various provinces of the Hegemony. I knew before today, at least intellectually, that Cloudsdale came fairly close to Canterlot once a year. It never floated directly over the city itself, of course. That would never fly—so to speak—because of the blight of fallen debris that Cloudsdale generates wherever it passes. The fancy upper-class ponies of the Mountain would not stand for it. But there are plenty of outskirts of the greater metropolitan area. Plenty of areas still beneath my Aunty's watchful eye...
"Is she going to expect me to visit her?" My eyes are trapped by the problem headline.
"I'm certain I don't know, ma'am."
"Is she going to visit me here?" I feel a tiny little twitch in my left eyelid. "I'm not ready to see her!"
"Ma'am, I don't—"
"I haven't got my hoofing yet! I haven't accomplished anything! I have nothing to show her!"
Who's feeling generational trauma Caught in a web of social despair? Who can't escape Celestia's shadow? Everyone knows it's—
"Ha, okay! I feel like we've all had a great time setting my feelings to music today and now we can be done doing that! Thank you all!" The ponies we've gathered kind of collectively shrug and go back about their business. I squeeze my eyes shut. "Shake it off," I mutter. "Shake it off shake it off shake it—"
"With all respect, ma'am," says Lt. Armor, "you are a Princess of Equestria, the same as Celestia is. You have the right to your own success criteria."
I take a deep, calming breath, bringing my hoof to my chest on the inhale and lowering it on the exhale. "You're right, of course. Nopony can tell me what success means. And if I have to tell my Aunty that I've been kicked out of my lodgings and am living homeless on the streets of Cloudsdale, that's my right and I can have zero shame about it."
"You're catastrophizing," Lt. Armor notes.
"Probably yes. Good call, Lieutenant."
He shrugs. "My sister does it, too. You're two peas in a pod. No wonder you two got along so well."
"I choose to interpret that as a compliment."
"That's how I intended it," says the lieutenant.
I feel a tiny flush build in my cheeks, accompanied by a series of thoughts that I quickly compartmentalize out of existence. "Well!" I say. "Regardless of whether Celestia would be either proud or ashamed of me, I want a place in this city. I don't want to merely be in Cloudsdale, I want to feel like I'm a part of it. Not just a tourist. Somepony with a role. That means having a duty of some description. So, just as I said when we started out today, I'm getting a job. Are you with me on this, Lieutenant?"
He locks his eyes on me, and I notice—possibly for the first time—how magnificently blue they are. One of my compartmentalized thoughts briefly breaks containment and causes all sorts of trouble banging around in various sensitive parts of my body before it is successfully recovered.
"I am always with you, Your Highness."
"Exactly as you are expected to say.” With that, we immerse ourselves in the crowd, on our way to finding me a job.
Me looking for employment is not so strange a situation as one might believe it to be. I have a great deal of experience holding down positions technically unrelated to my royal status. Foalsitting, for example, though I'm not entirely certain that this is the sort of thing that looks good to mention on a resumé. I am a fully-vested Princess of Equestria, with responsibilities at the astronomical level, and it looks a little weird to see "Previous occupation: Cared for fillies and foals as assigned while parents were away" next to "Current occupation: Spreads light and love throughout all of Equestria, responsible for daily motion of small planet." On the other hoof, I actually drew a salary for my foalsitting. The latter is more of a self-identity thing. It's what my Cutie Mark is telling me, at the very least. We ponies never do well when we're working outside the boundary of our Cutie Marks; not for long, at least. So, that's what I'm searching for. Something harmonious with my life's purpose, but also suitable for my admittedly elevated stature. If you think this is the sort of thing one can find simply by wandering about town, looking for "Help Wanted" signs...
...well, join the club!
"Lieutenant Armor! Look! Look at the little monkey!"
"Is that an order, ma'am?"
"No," I say. "I don't actually need you to look at the monkey. It was an expression of sheer delight and glee that welled spontaneously up out of my throat upon seeing the cunning little wind-up monkey ascending this tiny staircase. Are you familiar with the concepts of 'delight' and 'glee,' Lieutenant?"
"Yes, ma'am," says Lieutenant Armor. He is not selling it. I grab his face in my telekinetic aura and forcibly point it at the wind-up monkey. He looks on dutifully.
"It's very cute."
"It's adorable, is what it is! Modern clockworks are so amazing, aren't they?"
"Is this your way of saying that you'd like to speak to the manager about employment here?"
"Well, no.” I look around the vaulted nook of sculpted cloud that is Whizbanger's Quality Toys. What the store lacks in square footage at the foundation it more than makes up for in height. Shelf after shelf of brightly-colored amusements stretches upward in a way that makes one yearn to use the phrase "as far as the eye can see." In Canterlot, nopony would deliberately build toy shelves so high above a foal’s grasping height. In this city, where only a few of the little ones are beholden to gravity, it seems perfectly natural. As if taking a cue from my thoughts, a trio of brightly-colored fillies takes flight right before my eyes, cooing and giggling over a shelf of costume jewelry a full five meters off the floor. "It's obviously a wonderful toy store, and I believe it would be a pleasure to work here."
"There's a 'but' coming."
"But,” I agree, “I'm not feeling it. It isn't me."
"I'm not going to argue. It seems a little beneath your station. Counterpoint, though, it lines up with your work experience, and it dovetails reasonably well with the notion of 'spreading light and love.' Isn't that your life's purpose?"
"Shining Armor," I tell him decisively, "I don't think I exist merely to sell toys."
"Well, then. Check another one off the list."
"Right. The List."
Lt. Armor produces the list, which has become The List—capital T, capital L—in my mind, and silently scratches off another entry with a pencil. As he is rerolling the scroll, I catch a glimpse of a few other scratched-out entries, a small sampling of my litany of not-feeling-its:
~~-fashion model (literal clothes-horse? a ha, a ha ha)~~
"Sorry," I say sheepishly. "Sorry for not feeling this one either. You're not getting impatient, are you?"
Lt. Armor shakes his head as we walk back out into the bright sunshine. "It's a nice day for a stroll. I'd feel worse if it were raining."
"Thankfully, there's little chance of that!" I burble. It never rains in Cloudsdale. It never rains, and nothing grows here. Everything is blue-white sculpted cloud and ice amalgam, dotted with occasional bits of stone and cut wood here and there. You can go days and days without seeing green if you forget to look over the side once in a while. Cloudsdale is Equestria's single largest producer of precipitation, but aside from keeping the aqueducts full of drinking and bathing water, we have no use ourselves for the rain we export to the ground below.
"I know this is a risky suggestion for me to make," says Lt. Armor, "but have you considered asking Princess Celestia? Not the running-back-home option, just getting her advice?"
"I did." I stick my lip out. "A whole series of letters. She told me that my job here is to be a Princess of Equestria, and all that it entails. When I advised her that being a Princess of Equestria wasn't helping me find a place to live, she referred me to my royal stipend."
"Which you've refused to spend and given to charity instead."
"And I don't regret the decision. I just know Posey's filly is going to have a great time at flight camp. But I'm not going to tell Aunty Celestia about it, so that's where assistance from the Tiara ends."
"If it's any consolation, she probably already knows."
"It is no consolation whatsoever, Lieutenant, thank you," I sniff.
"Well, then… pizza delivery?"
I shoot him a chilly glare. "Don't be ridiculous. Can you imagine me in a delivery filly's uniform?"
"So, you admit that you need something presentable."
"Or at least respectable. I think my station demands it."
"Okay! That's great. Now we know something about your ideal job. That's why we brainstorm. You're not approaching this methodically enough."
"Excuse me?"
Lt. Armor takes a rhetorical step back. "Forgive me, ma'am. Out of line."
I wave a hoof dismissively. "Say what you were going to say. Please, Lieutenant."
"Well." He eases back into deeper water. "You're just writing down whatever strikes your fancy and then crossing it out as soon as it stops striking your fancy. This isn't good decision making. We need to approach this in a more organized fashion."
"Why, Lieutenant. You are your sister's brother after all."
"I choose to take that as a compliment."
"That's how I intended it." I breeze out of the toy shop into a small crowd of photographers, enjoying the hushed, impressed murmurs that spread out behind me. Fame doesn't always feel good, but it has its moments. "So, Lieutenant. How should we be approaching this question?"
"Top down. Think back on your time in Canterlot, to a time when you felt truly happy, completely fulfilled in where you were and what you were doing."
"It didn't happen. There was always something missing. Sorry to be a downer."
"That's okay. When did you get close to it?"
"When I was sitting for your sister, no question. I really don't want to go back to being a foalsitter, Lieutenant. It's not a job for a respectable adult mare."
"I'm not suggesting that." We cut smoothly through the crowd with the assistance of a wedge of magenta-hued force conjured from Lt. Armor's horn. "But possibly something to give you a similar vibe?"
It is at that moment that my eyes fall upon a white building which, even in its stateliness, feels far more friendly than the other imposing structures facing this section of the Acropolis. Maybe it's the architecture, a focus on rounded domes instead of columns. Maybe it's the front-and-center placement of solid, cloud-free ramps leading to the entrance, ensuring easy access to all ponies who might want to visit, pegasus tribe or not.
Or perhaps it's nothing more complicated than the cheery, hoof-lettered sign on an a-frame placard out front. "Foals' Story Hour!" it reads, in large, congenial script. And then, in slightly smaller text, "Volunteers Cheerfully Accepted!"
"Hm." I touch my chin with my hoof.
"And so, the evil master of Midnight Castle unleashed his Rainbow of Darkness upon the little ponies before him, and in a burst of evil magic, they were transformed into horrible dragons!" The sharp intake of breath from the assembled foals fills me with glee. There's a certain captivating wonderfulness in having an audience hanging on your words. We are completely in sync, and the energy is delicious as it cascades back and forth between me and all of the foals.
All of the foals, that is, except Windrose.
Windrose is an elegant little unicorn amongst his pegasus peers, whip-thin and ice-white. His blond mane is appealingly wavy in an effortless sort of way. In a city where the default interactions among children fall somewhere on the spectrum between "hit" and "chase," Windrose is an anomaly, still and quiet. I love him immediately. The feeling is not mutual. Windrose sits placidly on his cushion, his face neutral. He's not ignoring me; if anything, he's listening harder than the others. But he's not engaged, not swept up in the story. Windrose is questioning me. Windrose is judging me.
"Why, though?" asks Windrose, his voice rising above the gasps and giggles of his peers. "Why would Tirac do something like that?"
I grin at him. "Because he's a wicked old centaur. He likes taking pretty things and changing them into things that are nasty-looking and scary!"
"That would matter if it was art," Windrose says, and then quickly corrects himself. "Were art. Something that's only good if it's pretty. But ponies can be good anyway, even if they're wicked-looking. That's what my father always used to say."
I notice the past tense, and it takes all my willpower to not focus my magic into the little colt's heart right then and there. "Your dad was right," I admit.
"So why turn them into dragons at all?"
I turn back a couple of pages. "It sounds like he wants the dragons to pull his Chariot of Midnight for him."
"It's a poor tactical decision. The Dream Valley ponies were helpless against him anyway. So why did he use his magical power to change them into things that could beat him up?"
"Be quiet, Windrose!" a filly on a neighboring cushion whispers. "You're being rude to the princess!"
"No, it's okay. Thank you, but it's good for ponies to ask questions. That means you're paying attention."
"So, what's the reason?" Windrose presses.
"I ... have to admit that I don't know.” I helplessly flip through the library-bound copy of Rescue at Midnight Castle . "He just seems to like changing lovely things into unpleasant things."
"Unpleasant things with big claws and fiery breath, though," says a russet-colored earth pony foal elsewhere in the crowd. Windrose's treasonous ideas are spreading. "They wouldn't have to pull his dumb ol' chariot."
"They could just burn him," adds a shaky-looking, bright yellow pegasus at his side. "Just, fwoom. Four whole dragons."
"There were only three dragons," protests a pink filly. "He hadn't gotten the fourth yet."
"Okay, sheesh! Three dragons! Tirac still would've been burnt toast!"
At this point, I am sensing that Foals' Story Hour is rapidly slipping out of my grasp. "Let's think about this a little more!" I say. "Why would the ponies, now dragons, still agree to pull Tirac's chariot for him?"
Windrose's voice cuts through the confused murmur of the crowd. "Because he made them forget who they were.” There is a murmur of agreement.
Who is this child? I wonder to myself. "It's a good explanation," I say perkily. "Tirac made them forget they were anything other than pets to him. And maybe that's the wickedest thing of all."
The great Foals' Story Hour Rebellion is quashed via peaceful negotiation. Its leader sits back on his cushion, temporarily mollified, but still poised to rhetorically pounce if I step even the slightest bit out of line.
The story of my life, I suppose.
After storytime is over, the fillies and colts disperse, scooped up by parental figures, leaving Windrose and I momentarily alone. The library has turned out to be an excellent shelter from the nagging photographers. Noisy journalists are no match whatsoever for a librarian in full glory wielding the immense power of Shush. I pay particular attention to Windrose and watch as he trots out of sight. As casually and non-threateningly as I can, I follow him back to the stacks, back to a study table piled with an impressive assemblage of books. Aeronautical fiction, to look at the titles. The adventures of bold pony explorers in gallant airships, sailing the high skies to distant lands.
"I'm going to talk to him," I tell Lt. Armor, my ever-present shadow. He nods, and I am comforted by the token of external approval. I don't always want to be the only judge of whether or not I'm acting crazy. I stride gracefully up to the colt’s little dwelling of words. Windrose looks up at me, calm and clear-eyed.
"Hi," I say. "I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciated your questions during story hour. I know some of your friends thought they were rude, but I liked them."
"They're not my friends," Windrose replies. "They're common." There is neither dismay nor scorn in his words. It's just an observation.
"Well, be that as it may, I wanted to let you know how I felt."
"Thanks," says Windrose. "I liked how you said you didn't know what you didn't know. Grown-ups usually don't like to say that to children. They make things up, so they don't have to admit they don't know everything. It's silly, because nopony knows everything."
I shake my head at this most curious child. "Windrose, I notice you're all set up with a big stack of books. Do you have a parent here?"
"Mother's busy dealing with the demonstration. She said she wanted me far away from the protestors. Said things could get dicey."
"Protestors? What exactly are ponies protesting?"
Windrose pauses. "Mother says I shouldn't talk about things like this with strangers."
"Sorry. I understand."
"You're a princess, though," he continues, reasoning this out. "That means you're royalty. Like us. Royalty should stick together, Mother says."
"Windrose, who exactly is your mother? What does she do?"
Windrose hesitates for a moment.
"Mother's in the water business."
Author's Note
Welcome back, folks.
You can hear the shouting hundreds of yards away, but I am already well-prepared for it by the time the voices even reach my ears. I am like a dog coursing overland, and my quarry is a bright knot of negativity that I can smell a mile off. Lieutenant Armor does not question my guidance as we wind our way upward from the Acropolis to the massive public market facing the Bahamoot , the gargantuan moored airship stuck into the clouds like a creative shipwreck. Accidental, however, it was not. The Bahamoot was dry docked here at the conclusion of Duchess Portolan's adventures, when she smoothly transitioned from her role as famed explorer to her equally famed role as Chairmare of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation. Duchess Portolan is the rain. She is undoubtedly the most powerful unicorn in this pegasus city. She may be one of the most powerful unicorns, full stop. Duchess Portolan Blueblood is also, apparently, young Windrose's mom.
The Bahamoot itself is no mere museum piece. Shortly after its permanent docking, the CWC moved in, relocating their entire offices and production facilities to the immense vessel. Shortly thereafter, the weather conduits began to snake from the ship’s smooth oaken sides. The ship itself is the nexus through which all water flows before being diverted to the aqueducts that feed the entire city of Cloudsdale, and then, via cloudsmithing, to all Equestria. It is the very heart of the weather in the entire known world.
It is currently on fire.
It’s not a big fire. Nothing that would possibly constitute a national emergency. It would take more than an unruly crowd to bring down the Bahamoot . But that in no way diminishes my shock, or my outrage.
"Lieutenant! They're trying to burn it!"
Lieutenant Armor is all business. His eyes are steel. "It doesn't look intentional. That's not how you'd burn it if you were trying to."
"You know this how?"
"Did a tour as a 12M Incendiary Control Specialist for the Legion," Lt. Armor says. "Firetight barrier specialist. This isn't arson. This is a demonstration that's getting out of hoof."
"We're in agreement, then." I stride forward.
"Ma'am!" Lt. Armor snags the back of my breastcollar with his aura.
"Lieutenant.” I fix him with a look. "I'll accept that you know your way around a physical conflagration. Let me handle the emotional ones. I've done, like, twenty tours as an Angle Bracket Three Emotional Turmoil Control Specialist in the Royal Court."
"That's not really a thing."
"I am a Princess of Equestria and I hereby decree that it is a thing and am also declaring that I retroactively earn that distinction. Checkmate."
Lt. Armor's lip is a hard line. "Well played, ma'am."
"It rather was, wasn’t it?" I say, and I walk forward into a wall of voices.
Lt. Armor is taller than most stallions, and I am an alicorn. We are each of us half a head higher than anypony here present, and we cut cleanly through the shouting, angry throng like hydrofoils. Occasionally we bank smoothly around a raised sign, hoof-lettered, with poor kerning and erratic margins. "FIX WHAT YOU BROKE!!!" reads one. "QUIT POISONING OUR KIDS!" blares another, with a somewhat more restrained single exclamation point. I hold my head high, all my practice with the bearing rein paying off in spades. I do not feel anywhere as confident as my posture makes me seem. This crowd is furious. Normally, tuning in to the emotional landscape is a voluntary choice, but at this point I simply cannot shut it out. It is salt and mustard, spotlights in my eyes, a sword in my gullet. I try to control my shivering and sweating, drawing strength from Lt. Armor's nearness and precise impassivity.
The target of our search is easy to spot. A frayed-looking orange pegasus sits beneath a pall of smoke, close to the hull of the great airship. True to the Lieutenant's suspicion, the little pony seems to be trying to extinguish the fire, which licks ineffectually against the impermeable wooden hull of the Bahamoot . "Shoo!" she tells the flames at her hooves, as though they are a pesky critter in need of driving off. "Stop it!"
I look at the scene. Fireworks! The mare is lighting off fireworks, presumably to dramatically punctuate whatever it is she's asserting. Something's clearly gone wrong with her pyrotechnic display, however.
"Ma'am." Lt. Armor moves up ahead of me and speaks to the pegasus. "Perhaps we can be of assistance?"
She looks up at the lieutenant, her eyes big and watery and panicked. "Sir, I wasn't—I'm not trying to—"
"I know you aren't," says Shining Armor. He closes his eyes for a moment, and encases a small parcel of cloud-stuff and misbegotten fireworks in a magenta bubble. The bubble rises from the cumulus mass surrounding the immense airship. Gently but firmly, Shining reduces the size of his field, squeezing the fire out of existence and compressing the smoke into a tidy little ball. Just like that, the fire is contained. The Lieutenant apparently did not overstate his credentials. He douses the ashy remnants in a stray bit of slush and deposits them in a nearby bin. "What's your name, ma'am?"
"Fever, sir. I stuck the stupid bottle rockets in the cloudbank there," she grouses. "I didn't expect it to catch fire, clouds and all. I can't explain why that happened."
"I'll tell you what I can't explain." I make my way up to the two of them. "I can't explain why you're lighting off fireworks next to critical civic infrastructure."
Fever is caught off-guard by my sudden appearance. "P—Princess! Princess Cadance! Your Highness! I—I knew you were in the city, the Acta keeps talking about it. Look, I swear to you, the fireworks must have been past their best-by date, I didn't mean to—"
"Be at peace, Miss Fever," I lift her out of her bow with one delicate, gold-shod forehoof. I speak demurely and regally, desperately concealing my reaction to the unpleasant prickling feeling that I’m getting here in the heart of the upset. "Perhaps you can tell me, though, what your fireworks were about in the first place. What is all this?" I look around at the crowd. "What is any of this?"
"We're trying to get their attention," says Fever. "The water's gone bad."
"Gone bad? How?"
"It's just gone bad!" Fever repeats unhelpfully.
"I'm sorry, I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. You're talking about the water? The Weather Corporation's water? The stuff they use to make the rain?"
"The same!"
"The rain isn't poison. Equestrian farmers would know if the rain was poison. We'd know about it." Aunty Celestia would know about it , I add to myself.
Fever shakes her head, still unable to meet my gaze. "It's ... it's not quite poison, Your Highness. Maybe some of these protest signs are a little much. But it gets into your blood! It makes good pegasus families throw earth pony foals!"
I try to keep the chill out of my voice. I think of Posey. I think of her little earth pony bathhouse in the Stratus Quarter, New Veneighzia, a place of most welcome sanctuary to me on one of my worst nights in this city, not so long ago. "And that's a terrible thing, is it?"
Fever's eyes go wide. She anxiously plays with a hank of hair. "No! I mean—sorry, Your Princessness. It's not terrible at all! Earth ponies are fine ponies. It just seems like there are lots of them, lately! Too many!"
"There are 'too many' of these fine ponies?"
Fever is rapidly losing what little cool she had. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Princess! This is all coming out wrong! I'm not a good speaker!"
"Relax, Fever. So, you're suspicious of the Weather Corporation's handling of the water."
Fever's relief is palpable. "Yes. Yes, ma'am. That's it. We've got suspicions.They keep saying they're running the tests on it, and they keep saying the science turns out fine, but it doesn't feel right! When you drink it! On your coat! Anything! We think something's gone wrong with the Pegasus Device!"
"The what now?"
"The Pegasus Device! The thing that makes the weather!"
"Weather is made by dedicated craftsponies. They use water shipped up from the surface and create all the weather you experience. There's not a single 'device' that makes, say, rainbows."
"If everything's fine, and you can just make more rainbows," reasons Fever, "then why aren't there more rainbows to go around? Why do you never get rainbows in the poorer quarters of the city?"
"Maybe because it's resource-intensive?"
"Or because something's wrong with the water! You can help us with all this!"
"Help? How?"
"You're a Princess of Equestria! You're Celestia's daughter!"
"Niece. Not even that, really."
"But you're close! You've got her ear! Cloudsdale is on an approach circuit to Canterlot! I figured you'd be wanting to visit her!"
"I ... might," I say distantly. "You want me to tell my Aunt Celestia to, help me out here, what? Meet personally with the Weather Corporation?"
Fever's open face turns to a shocking glower on the edge of a knife. "We want her to get rid of it. Tear it up. Base to cap."
I stare at her. "I don't understand. Who would manage the weather?"
"Equestria! Equestria can govern the weather! We can reopen the old Weather Factory! Bring Cloudsdale into the Hegemony!"
I barely notice myself stepping back. "But ... it's a city-state. Cloudsdale is an independent, self-governing—"
"It doesn't have to be! It could be part of Equestria! The weather doesn't have to be a company! We could nationalize—"
"You're talking about putting the entirety of Cloudsdale under Equestria's control? Under Celestia 's control?"
"Yes! If the Tiara could run weather as a utility, with total transparency, rather than as a private service, then—"
"This isn't her city," I say quietly.
"Your Highness," Lt. Armor suggests, "perhaps this isn't the—"
I wheel about. "This isn't her city!" I exclaim to the Lieutenant's face. It's too loud. I'm talking too loudly. I can't help it; I'm trying to make myself heard over the salt-sour-jagged-tangle-roar in my head. The raw emotional output of the demonstration tears at my coat and makes my eyes water. I turn back to Fever. "Fever, you don't understand. The Hegemony takes special things and, and, it changes them!"
"Begging your pardon, ma'am," says Fever. She averts her eyes as though expecting a blow. "Maybe some things around here need changing."
"No!" There's something welling up inside of me. It feels immense. It feels like me on the Festival of Venus. That time I exploded an entire room with the power of frustrated love. "Fever, no! You don't understand what you're asking!" A warm wind whips up in the drydock plaza, throwing manes askew. One by one, the demonstrators' voices fall silent, turning heads and craning necks to see what in Tartarus is going on.
The warm wind graduates to a hot gale. I feel my eyes glowing from the inside. My horn ignites without my conscious will. The magic I am shedding resonates with the asterite pendant I wear around my neck, creating sympathetic resonances that feel like the interplay between audience and storyteller that I experienced not long ago. But it's more. It's much, much more.
"Ponies of Cloudsdale!" I intone. "Why this pain? Why this anger? Do you not have affection for this city you call home?"
The floodgates open.
"Do you not LOVE it?"
And you know what? They do. Each and every one of them loves this city. I know this, in an instant. I can feel it in all of them. Gleaming, clear notes of loyalty with the power to drown out the horrid dissonance of their anger. If only they could recall the love they have. If only they could remember.
I make them remember.
The stultifying, cloying, negativity crystallizes out of the atmosphere and crashes to the clouds below us as I shepherd the entire crowd of demonstrators back to the light. I cause them to recall, with heartbreaking clarity, all the beautiful, breathtaking things about their home. The gleaming, pristine beauty of the architecture. The fizzing excitement of race day at the Cirrus Maximus. The cold glory of a winter sunrise from thousands of yards in the air. The crowds. The baths. The feasts. All of it. All at once.
"Why would you want any of this to go away?" I ask simultaneously of each of their hearts.
The demonstration evaporates, its members' eyes wet and their jaws trembling. Ponies excuse themselves, headed for the comforts of home, of family. They go to reconnect with the things they love most. Fever hurries off to a suitor she left behind, a suitor whose attention she spurned in favor of attending this protest. I watch them all following the threads of their love, bright lines stretching from their hearts to the objects of their affection. In thirty seconds flat, Shining Armor and I stand alone in the plaza, surrounded by discarded signs and spent fireworks, in the shadow of the great airship.
The hot gale dwindles to a breeze again, and then to nothing. The rancor of the crowd is gone. In its place, a sweet peace. My pendant gleams placidly at my breast.
"Well!" I say. "That feels better."
"Definitely enough job-searching for today," says Lt. Armor. He grabs me by the collar. I feel dizzy, light as a feather, as he hauls me away with his magic. "Back home with us."
"Home." My voice is dreamy.
"Yes, home. The Resident Minister's."
"Home, for just a short time more."
"Probably even shorter now."
He leads me with businesslike efficiency through the city streets, back to the house where my bed is. I do not even mind the photographers along the way.
Evening. The public parlor of the Resident Minister's abode. I am drinking homemade orange juice to recover from the day. It is awful. Whatever convinced me that I was capable of making orange juice? "I should just buy orange juice. That's what Fever would want, right? For us to buy everything we drink? From a store?"
"We didn't exactly get a chance to ask."
"I bet she'd want us to buy water, too! In bottles! Do you know how wasteful bottles are, Shining Armor? Isn't it better to get your water from the tap?"
He grunts, unwilling to commit. I press onward. "Do you know who bottles and exports the most water? In all Equestria?"
"It's Canterlot, isn't it."
"It's Canterlot!" I say. "High-class ponies with their snoots in the air drinking water out of bottles taken straight from the Canter River. That's the future they want for Cloudsdale, Shining Armor! Imported Canterlot water! And since you’re about a thousand miles away from the bottling plant, who’s going to bother returning them for the deposit? Just throw it over the side of the cloud! Who cares, right? Well, I'll tell you something, Lieutenant. I care. I. Care."
"Yes, ma'am. This is self-evident."
"I'm starving," I moan. I lean against an ottoman.
"Magic takes energy. You just bombed an entire square."
"I did not 'bomb' anything, Lieutenant. I just ... exploded on them. So that is a bomb, I suppose."
"I'll fetch you something from the kitchen."
"No. I don't like the way the servants look at me. I don't like how they just barely tolerate me."
"Bread from the charity distribution centers?"
"Absolutely not. Never again." I slump. "Maybe I should just be hungry. Maybe it's all I deserve. Maybe I'm just a bad pony."
"You're an alicorn. Comparing you to other ponies is pointless." Lt. Armor holds up one of the rinds I've squeezed for my juice, and also an apple from somewhere. "Apples to oranges."
"Is that an apple?"
"Yes, the metaphor—"
"Give." I do not wait for him to give. I seize it with my aura and crunch down the whole thing, core and all. It helps, microscopically.
"At least I got the metaphor out first," he says. "My point is, comparing you to anypony else is sort of a foal's errand. Maybe it's possible to compare you to H.R.H. Celestia. That's about it."
"Aunty Celestia!" I snort. "She's the high-class Canterlot pony to end all high-class Canterlot ponies. Aunty Celestia will not get her wings all over this city, Lieutenant. Cloudsdale's ... Cloudsdale is..."
"Yours?"
I open and shut my mouth a few times. "Spiritually, it's mine. I know it's not mine, but it feels like it's mine. Am I making sense at all?"
"Yes."
"Good. So, you understand why I acted the way I did this afternoon."
"Yes." His tone is dour.
I press. "And it makes sense to you, right? We're simpatico?"
"Yes. Always."
"Lieutenant! The truth."
Shining Armor sucks in a breath through his teeth. "You made those ponies very happy today.”
"Yes. Yes, I did."
He shakes his head. "No. You made them happy. They weren't happy, and you made them happy. By force."
"I made them remember the love they have for their beautiful city."
"Overwhelming whatever worries they might have had."
"It's nothing I wouldn't do for anypony else. A squabbling couple, for instance."
"Ma'am, I've been in a couple relationships outside the Legion. There have definitely been times when I've been in a stupid argument, about something stupid, with somepony I should have been treating a lot better. In those times, yeah. It would have been valuable to have somepony there to remind me how much I loved the other pony in question, to restore my perspective. There are times, though, that ponies need to get angry."
"I don't think you know anger like I do, Lieutenant. I don't think you can feel it the same way. Anger is destructive. Toxic. It's awful."
"Of course." The shutters close on his earnestness.
There is a moment of embarrassed silence. "Are you saying those ponies out there had a legitimate concern?"
"It sounded kind of fringey. We have our share of nutcases in the Guard who talk a similar line. Something about the water taking frogs and making them gay, or something."
"If there were an overabundance of gay frogs, I assure you I would be one of the first to know about it. And if there's anything wrong with the water, Canterlot's ambassador plenipotentiary has it well in hoof."
"Right. The mare holding the job you originally came here to do."
"I'm not going to speculate on H.E. Smiles's career trajectory. Aunty trusts her. And you know what? I don't even care. I don't even want that job anymore. Why would I want to constrain myself to being Princess Celestia's agent in this city? Why be a little piece of Canterlot in Cloudsdale when I could just be Cloudsdale instead? I will let H.E. Smiles and Duchess Portolan deal with the weird conspiracy theorists. If the protestors have legitimate grievances, they can take it up through proper channels."
"Via Ambassador Smiles, for example."
"Exactly."
"And how much luck have you had dealing with Ambassador Smiles? How much luck have you had even getting a single face-to-face meeting with her?"
I give him a sidelong look. "Lieutenant, are you certain we are simpatico? Because sometimes I feel the simpatico and then I stop feeling the simpatico."
"We are simpatico, ma'am."
"Good," I say.
A silent moment passes. "So,” he says. “Career search was sort of a bust.”
"Yes," I admit. "But, I'm happy. Under the circumstances, I guess today could have gone much worse."
As though on cue, there is a loud commotion at the door. Lt. Armor leaps to his hooves, shifting into action with impossible speed, before I can even fully process what's happening. He stands ready to throw several megathaums of telekinetic energy, and if that fails, his entire body, between me and whatever's going on outside the door to the parlor.
A matter of seconds later, Sabre and Spurs burst in, talking over each other in their haste.
"Your Highness!" Sabre blurts out.
Spurs cuts in. "Stallions at the door—"
"Lictors!" adds Sabre.
"They want in! We said you weren't to be disturbed—"
"—But, begging your pardon, they aren't taking no for an answer!"
Lieutenant Armor scowls. "This is the dwelling of a Princess of Equestria, gentlecolts. They will take no for an answer. Equestria mandates that they take no for an answer."
"But sir," says Sabre, "they're the lictors of the Duchess!"
"Duchess Portolan?" My ears go forward.
"I don't care whose private enforcers they are," replies the Lieutenant. "The Resident Minister's residence counts as Equestrian soil. Cloud. Whatever. It is not appropriate to allow them inside."
"Problem with that idea, soldier," says a smooth voice from the doorway. A pair of sleek, snow-white pegasi dressed in cloaks of deepest crimson loom up behind the hapless guardsponies. Each carries a reed-hafted axe of bronze. The burnished metal of the weapons glints in the lamplight of the parlor. "We're already inside."
Shining Armor snarls. His horn glows a shocking magenta.
"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza ," says the second of the two lictors. "We request that you come with us."
Night. The sterncastle of the Bahamoot .
It is one thing to witness the scale of this airship from without. When you are deep within it, its expanse becomes positively inconceivable. The upper decks of this ship literally comprise the foreign quarter of the city. Deep below, an endless series of converted cargo holds encloses the entire operations of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation. The ship's sterncastle, as it turns out, contains the private apartments of some of this city's Most Important Ponies.
I am not here against my will. It would have been next to impossible for them to take me against my will. But in that parlor, I saw a situation brewing, a drama that might fracture my relationship with the Resident Minister once and for all. The red-cloaked ponies shadow us all the way through the spacious and well-appointed corridors of the sterncastle. The corridors are lined with hardwood trim and bedecked with classical art. I forget I am within a ship. I forget I am in a city thousands of yards removed from terra firma. I forget, just for a moment, that I am not in Canterlot.
We pass several checkpoints on our way. Each of them is monitored by yet another pair of red-cloaked ponies bearing ceremonial axes. It is the traditional garb of pegasus attending officers from the golden age of Pegasopolis, not terribly unusual to see in the city. Their cloaks are closed with bronze brooches in the shape of a stylized, slightly furled navigational chart. I have never seen the Duchess face-to-face, but this must be an image of her Cutie Mark.
We eventually reach an opulent private atrium somewhere deep within the ship. Outdoors, it is night, but bright, artificial light floods down from above—daystones, probably. The wood paneling gives way to cloud-colored marble, featuring cheery ornamental waterfalls trickling down from above into basins below. Was this how the furnishings looked during the ship's years at sail? It would have been decadent, impractical, but so lovely.
"You go on ahead," one of the red-clad lictors says to me, motioning with his head toward a set of engraved double doors. "Your stallion stays here."
"Like Tartarus I do," says Shining Armor, but I silence him with a nod.
Grudgingly, Shining Armor stands down. I stride over toward the door, open it, and vanish into a dream.
That's how it appears, anyway. My hooves immediately cease ringing against wood and stone and strike soft cloud instead. I look around in wonder.
The room I find myself in is lit as brightly as afternoon, with walls the color of the deep blue sky. The walls are partially obscured by the soft, fluffy clouds that fill the room, accentuating the trompe-l'œil effect of the decor. The air is filled with birdsong, and it takes me several moments to notice that it comes from captive birds in brass cages suspended from the ceiling, rather than wild avians.
"Hello?" I call out.
"Aha!" says a voice from within the bizarre chamber. "There you are, at last. I've been dying to have a good excuse to invite you over."
The clouds in front of me part. Perched before me on a delicate tuffet of cumulus is an immaculately white unicorn mare. She wears a long, flowing robin's-egg gown and a pair of cute little golden spectacles. She smiles angelically, hops off her cloud, and trots to me. The gown parts at her flank just for an instant as she walks, and I do indeed see an image of a sea-chart there, just like the pins that the soldiers outside are wearing. Duchess Portolan, then, as though there were ever any doubt.
Meanwhile, I am struggling to catch up. "I ... I see you have cloud-walking magic? Most unicorns don't..."
"No!" she exclaims. "This is all just something the colts in the weather lab whipped up for me. Not actually cloud at all, some sort of fabric and fiberglass. Perfectly solid to all ponies, not just pegasi, and they assure me the sensation is nearly identical. Oh, but I envy ponies like you, who get to have the authentic experience. You can walk on cloud yourself, can you not?"
"I'm ... an alicorn. I have the inherent magical properties of all three tribes of pony, yes. I'm sorry, what—what is all this—"
"My pegasus room. I've always considered it an absolute crime of luck that I was born a unicorn rather than a pegasus pony. I have such a pegasus spirit. Always have. Nothing wrong with a pony indulging in a little imagination from time to time. Wouldn't you agree, Your Highness?"
"N—no, of course not—rather, of course, nothing wrong with it, I agree."
"Fabulous. I sensed you were a pony of vision. Now then, here you are. Her Royal Highness, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza . Standing here in my pegasus room. Would you like to pull up a cloud?" She turns to look around her miraculous chamber. "I do have quite a few real ones in here."
"Thank you. Perhaps I'll stand."
"Suit yourself!" she says airily. "I just want you to be comfortable." Her voice goes portentous. "...As we discuss your actions of late."
"Duchess," I say. "Your Grace. Let me start by—"
"By using an honorific? For me? Child, you're free to talk down to me. You're a fully-fledged princess. Literally. I do just love your feathers, by the way. Is that amethyst dust at the tips?"
"They're naturally purple." I awkwardly stretch my left one out. "Naturally as of a few months ago, at least." Just one of the many inexplicable cosmetic improvements worked upon my body the moment I set hoof in this city. My mental state changes my biology, sometimes at random. It's really quite unnerving.
"Astonishing," says Duchess Portolan. "But, please, you were in the middle of an explanation for your behavior. Don't let me interrupt you. Haha, haha." She gestures with one hoof. "Go on."
"As ... as I was saying, I was reading stories to some fillies and colts at the public library on the Acropolis, and one of them turned out to be your son."
"Sorry about that, by the way. It wasn't an ideal solution. We're currently between governesses, and the library is an all-access building, to which I make considerable donations. Don't worry, he was being watched. Even if you didn't see anypony watching him."
"He talked with me about the protest, and I decided I had to go see for myself, and ... I got a bit carried away. I'm very sensitive to emotional climates, and there was a lot of unrest outside your airship this afternoon. It led to a ... discharge, I suppose. I am deeply sorry for any unpleasantness this lapse in control may have caused in your operations."
"So, that's it then. That's your full explanation?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"Your Highness. Cadance. You think I'm upset about you clearing a protest away from my door?"
"Well, I mean, under the circumstances—"
"The primary circumstance I care about is that those odd-sounding conspiracy ponies have been bothering me for weeks now, and I've been trying to figure out the most diplomatic way to get them off my doorstep. Suddenly you come along and it's done? In an hour? You think that's what I'm upset about?"
"I figured that since it was such an uncontrolled display—"
"You're worried you didn't fit into society's expectations enough? Cadance, you and I are royals! Society fits us, not the other way around! If anypony should be ashamed of their behavior, it's that erratic mob you took care of. Lighting off fireworks, indeed!"
"It ... did seem a little reckless."
"I should say so. And for what? Protesting something that doesn't even exist. You know what some of those daft ponies say? That we grind up underperforming pegasus foals to make rainbows with!"
"Grind them up? They think rainbow is made from pony bodies?"
Duchess Portolan laughs musically. "I know! Absurd! They theorize the existence of this mythical 'Pegasus Device' and then concoct all manner of ridiculous Grand Guignol stories about it. You want to know the secret of the 'Pegasus Device'?"
"I—"
"It's Obnublium. The Cloudsdale Weather Corporation's patented, hyper-efficient water processing process. It's what allowed us to outcompete that hoary old Weather Factory you can read about in the old textbooks, ushering in a whole new age of prosperity and ease for all of Cloudsdale. And I promise you it involves grinding up zero foals."
"If you're not upset about what I did at the protest, then what are you upset at me about?"
Portolan hops back on her cloud and throws her forehooves wide. "That we're meeting under these circumstances! That I practically had to foalnap you to get a meet-and-greet with you!"
"I'm so sorry, have I missed all of your invitations, or...?"
"My invitations?" Portolan smiles at me in open-mouthed wonder. "Cadance, I was expecting no less than a royal order that I meet you the moment you set hoof in this city! I've grown increasingly befuddled at its absence! It's been months! We've reached a breaking point!"
"I ... I should have ordered you to meet with me?"
"How many times must I repeat this! You're. An. Alicorn! You're better than me! You're better than literally everypony else in this grand old city!"
"But that's ... that's no reason to be rude, right?"
"You're amazing, child. Utterly amazing."
I blink, taken aback. "Well. Well. I mean. Speaking in stern terms hasn't gotten me a meeting with Ambassador Sunny Smiles."
Duchess Portolan clucks her tongue. "Rotten business, that. Equestrian social posturing, I'm certain. I can't even meet with Sunny Smiles. I just send her my ledgers so that she can verify that all the bits we get from the Tiara for the weather are being spent correctly. I guess she thinks they're fine, or I'm sure I'd hear about it! You know how fussy upper-crust Canterlot ponies can be."
I laugh a little nervously. "Yes. Yes, I do." The words feel strange in my mouth, spoken in public. I can say this sort of thing in private, in front of Lt. Armor, but to voice it right out in the open feels like a particularly delicious heresy.
"I've half a mind to position a thunderhead right over her embassy one of these days and give her forty days of non-stop rain just for constantly snubbing me." Portolan chuckles at the thought, and I have to admit to myself that her laugh is a little infectious. "At any rate, it is an honor and privilege to finally be talking with you, even though I had to take the first step. I know it's late, but can I get you a little something to eat?"
My stomach lurches, giving a rumble. Portolan's gaze sharpens. She adjusts her gold-rimmed spectacles. When she speaks next, her tone is careful and precise.
"Can I get you," she says, "a lot of something to eat?"
"Yes," I practically squeak.
Her eyes do not leave me as she calls out to one of her lictors. "Brutus!" she sings. "Are we all provisioned for the feast tomorrow with Senator Wreath and his household?"
"We are, Your Grace."
Portolan gives a little smirk. "Send word that it's been canceled. I've just made other plans for the food."
A tiny droplet of liquid pats to the cloud-covered floor. I am barely aware that it comes from my own mouth.
"I've heard stories about it. Unverified, of course. But to see it in action is a little astonishing."
I attempt a half-hearted apology around my fifth dish of ova spongia ex lacte . The sweet cream and egg omelet tastes exactly as delicious on its fifth iteration as on its first. Helplessly, I drip a bunch of black pepper honey on dish number six while still stuffing myself with number five. It feels vastly important that there be no interruption in the omelet-to-mouth pipeline.
"I don't understand where the food even goes," she muses. "Is your gut just burning it wholesale?"
"Kind of," I mumble around bite after bite of egg. "Alicorns use up pretty much everything right away."
"Even roughage?"
"I cannot be thwarted by roughage!" I declare. Then I cry a little. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about this. I'm sorry."
"For the eighth time, Cadance, there is literally nothing to apologize for. Are you starving yourself?"
"Yes," I say. "Most days, I am."
"By all the stars and planets, why, child?"
"Eating so much looks weird. It looks really weird. Aunty Celestia says it looks really weird."
"Cadance! This is Cloudsdale . Your Aunty Celestia holds no sway here. Well, some sway. She could stop funding the weather. But then we'd stop giving her rain. I think you can tell how long that state of affairs would last."
"Forget Aunty Celestia, then," I say. "It's still not acceptable behavior."
"In Canterlot, perhaps. I repeat: you're in Cloudsdale, my dear! The absolute epicenter of epicurean overindulgence."
"I have, heh, heard rumors you have special rooms where you go to throw up when you're done eating so you can eat more."
"Slander," replies Portolan. "A popular misconception. Vomitorium is a term for an outlet of a stadium or a racecourse. It has nothing whatsoever to do with bringing up dinner."
"I thought it sounded a little out there. Throwing up just to eat again?"
"Oh, that we do indeed do," says Portolan. "We just don't do it in specific rooms. We use chamber pots or flushable basins for the purpose, like civilized ponies." She gazes at me critically as I tear into dish six. "Not that you'd ever have to worry about that. Have you ever had too much to eat? Ever? In your life?"
"I ... I don't think I ever have." I pause for the briefest of seconds to consider this before sticking my face directly into the sweet omelet. Dignity has departed these shores. "Not ever once."
"Well, Cloudsdale will give you a run for your money, if you let us," she says. "I see Brutus is signaling to me that they've finished frying up the aubergines. How much parmigiana would you like?"
"Yes," I reply.
She chuckles. "Understood."
I stop after my sixth pan of ova spongia , intent on saving room for the parmigiana, and I am shocked to find that I am thinking of my dietary capacity as having a limit. I know it must have one, just as I know that the moon must have a dark side, but that does not mean I have ever seen it.
"Portolan," I say. "I need to ask you something."
"Anything. Go ahead."
"I don't know if you know this, but when I was small, I was tutored by a unicorn named Prismia. I understand you two knew one another."
"I was wondering when this would come up," says Portolan. "Yes. She and I traveled far and wide together. On this very ship, in fact! I'd show you her old quarters, but unfortunately, we had to remodel that whole area into a hotel. Quite a nice one, too. The Cloudcliff. Very exclusive."
"She met with me shortly before I came here to the city. She told me that you raided a treasure trove in the ruins of old Corazón once, a long time ago. That it was filled with cursed things that could spell a pony's ruination."
"Ah," says Portolan. "I thought I recognized that blue heart charm you wear. I mistook it for an image of your Cutie Mark at first."
"My Cutie Mark story is intimately tied up with this jewel."
"Makes sense." She eyes it critically. "The chain is different, pearls instead of jet, but no doubt that's Prismia's old warding pendant, isn't it?"
"The same. She gave it over to me. She couldn't trust herself with it."
"That sounds like Lady Prismia, all right."
I press on. "She told me that you took something from the trove as well."
"Ah," says Portolan. "Now I see the concern. Yes. Yes, I also selected a prize from old Corazón. It was a stone that gave its bearer some measure of control over creatures of faerie. Useful, but dangerous in the wrong hooves. Rest assured, Princess, I gave that bauble away a long time ago."
I cannot disguise my tiny frown. Portolan is unbothered. "I see that look. Peer into my heart, then. See if I'm telling the truth."
"I can't ... I can't exactly do that."
"But you could tell if I'm anxious about deceiving you, yes?"
"Probably."
"Then do so. I'd rather you see my heart than be worried about its contents all the time. If it takes too much strength from you, I promise you, my kitchens have many more fortifying dishes on offer."
Warily, I open the eye of my heart to Duchess Portolan, and am taken aback by the sudden glare. Duchess Portolan loves this city, loves the corporation she built atop it. She loves her son, whom I now sense is asleep and dreaming not far off. She possesses a sort of fierce, intense love that I've never seen in my Aunty, not once. The only dimness I can see in her love is a little patch of smoky darkness at her core, the innermost zone of a candle flame. Portolan loves everything around her except, perhaps, herself. It is a tragedy, but a common one. Her emotions toward me are untroubled, and I feel myself relaxing again.
"Satisfied?" says Portolan.
"Yes.”
"Good. Prepare to be satisfied on a whole different level when you taste the aubergines parmigiana. My chefs have perfected the recipe. I do believe I hear the service coming, right outside the door."
Portolan and I look toward the door to the dining room at the exact moment that it literally explodes inward.
Framed by the ruins of the door and cloaked in a swirling bubble of magenta force stands Royal Guard Lieutenant Shining Armor.
He snarls, breathing hard. Two of Portolan's lictors advance on him. His telekinetic field repels them with moderate prejudice. "Duchess Portolan Blueblood! Unhoof Princess Cadance this instant!"
"Lieutenant!" I say gleefully. "Have some omelet! There's one sixteenth of one pan left!"
Lieutenant Armor looks back and forth between me and the Duchess. "What is this? What's going on?"
"Supper?" I say.
There is a dangerous pause. "Your Highness. I have been waiting for you, without word, my every effort at contact rebuffed, for over an hour."
I flush a little. "Oops. Sorry. I ... guess I got a little carried away with eating."
Lt. Armor casually bats aside a third lictor. His jaw is a hard line.
"That's ... that's fine. Good. I'm glad everything is fine. The circumstances under which this visit began were pretty irregular."
"Exactly what I was just telling your liege lady here, Lieutenant," says Portolan. "The three of us should have been dining together ages ago! Honestly, we were just having a bit of a good time. There's no need to be the Good Time Police."
"Join us! We're having eggplant soon! It'll be divine!"
"I'm fine," says the Lieutenant, dropping his force field but otherwise not relaxing one iota.
"Good Time Police," I murmur. I giggle a little.
"Oh, but who am I kidding?” says the Duchess. “You've probably just been occupied, is all. Can't go a day without reading something about you in the Acta . I expect your dance card has been far too full to spend time with a working pony like me, titled or not. I must say, it was just lovely for you to make time in your busy schedule to read adventure stories to foals."
"It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing."
"Really! Something else canceled at the last minute, then?"
"Duchess Portolan, I don't know how to say this, but I'm not actually doing all that much here. I expected to have a job, and that didn't pan out, and I just don't know how to feel useful anymore."
"You're a princess!" Portolan protests. "A privileged class! You'd be within your rights to just feast and sleep your whole life through!"
"But I don't want to do that. I want to be doing things! I want to be spreading light and love! I want to be making the world a better place!"
"Well," says Portolan, rolling a table napkin thoughtfully with one hoof, "you could make the world a better place with us."
"With you? With the CWC?"
"Of course! Oh, I'm getting agitated just thinking about it! We're all about the continuation of a strong, independent Cloudsdale via efficient, convenient, ecologically-sourced weather, but not all ponies appreciate the work we do. Most ponies quite sensibly love us, but there's a certain slice of this city's population with whom we have an image problem. You cut straight through a P.R. disaster earlier today like the legendary Bucephalus with his famous knot. That wasn't just diplomacy, it was flat-out diplomancy ! If I'm already in your debt for that, the least I could do is be paying you for it."
"You're ... you're offering me a job?"
"Why not? Oh, Cadance, can you imagine? You could be our Public Relations mare! The very face of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation!"
I start to feel swimmy in my head, like falling at too great a speed. "I could do that!"
"Absolutely! We could even work you into our branding initiatives! Quick, what's your favorite type of weather?"
"I rather like snowflakes."
"Excellent choice! Imagine: Snowfall, by Cadance !"
Lt. Armor clears his throat. "With all respect, Your Grace. Her Royal Highness Princess Cadance isn't a brand."
Portolan gives me a sly little grin. "You let your lictor speak to you like that?"
"I value his input. Even if he is the Fun Police sometimes. Nearly all the time, in fact. But, yes, let's ... maybe rein this in for the moment."
"Of course! Let's not get ahead of ourselves. At the very least, though, I'm over the moon at the idea of having you onboard in any capacity. If nothing else, you can spend time tutoring little Windrose. I think it'd do him a world of good to spend time with true royalty. The last thing we want is him growing up with common tastes. Do you have any experience caring for foals?"
"Do I ever!" I say.
"Excellent! Oh, to think that this morning I was in such a state, and now, suddenly, everything's falling into place! It's kismet, for certain!"
Proving her point, this is the moment that the parmigiana comes through the broken door, and my world goes away again for a while.
The daystones in Duchess Portolan's pegasus room have been dimmed to a tasteful dusky hue. Portolan and I relax on clouds, I on one of the natural ones, she on her artificial. The room is filled with warm evening breezes which have literally been brought here through ducts. Lt. Armor is presumably somewhere. I've a bit lost track of him. I suppose it might be too much to hope that he's lost track of me, too. Just for a few more minutes.
I am satisfied.
I can't say how long it's been since I've been able to say that honestly. It took about an acre of tiramisu to push me over the line. Portolan politely tapped out early, continuing to watch me with a sort of curious fascination. Apparently, she hasn't gone so native as to purge her dinner in a vain attempt to keep up with me. For my part, I wouldn't get rid of this meal for all the crystals in Canterlot. You would have to fight me.
I roll over on my cloud and look over at the Duchess.
"Duchess Portolan, may I ask you something a bit silly?"
"Nonsense. You won't be able to think of a thing to say that I would judge as such."
"What is the nature of love? One word please."
"Oh, a fun question. And a big one. Lots of room for interpretation."
"Just answer in the way that feels right to you."
Portolan draws a pattern in the air with one lazy hoof. "When I think of what I love, I think of the things I've made for myself. My home. My company. My child. They are all things of such beauty and quality. I feel my heart come near to bursting when I think about them. I am unspeakably proud of them all."
"So, it's pride?"
"Something like that, yes. Let's say pride."
I roll this around in my head for a moment.
"I feel like this was a test, and I've let you down."
"No!" I say hastily. "No, it's not like that. You're fine, Duchess. It's just ... not what I'm looking for."
"Well, there's a great diversity of opinion in the Weather Corporation. If you're looking for answers to a philosophical question, I'm sure you'll find someone here in our family who'll give you the answers you need."
"Yeah," I say. "I'm sure, too." The birds sleep in their cages above us. There is nothing but the noise of gentle wind. I feel like a filly in a crib, completely without care. It is a moment I wish could last forever.
And then, Shining Armor and I are back on the streets, hurrying through the cold and the dark. Duchess P. offered us temporary lodging with her, so we wouldn't have to go back out into the chill. Predictably, Lieutenant Armor frowned at the idea. She offered us chariots, an escort, anything to make it a little more tolerable. Again, the Lieutenant bristled. It was my call to make, of course, but against my better judgment, I acquiesced to him. So, here we are. The wind slices at me, shaving off bits of my postprandial contentment, but thank the stars it is still holding.
"I have a job, Lieutenant." I give him an impish smile.
He harrumphs, the enormous killjoy.
"Be happy for me!"
"Is that an order, ma'am?"
"No. And I'll thank you to keep your attitude in slightly better check."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't take that tone."
Lt. Armor ceases breaking a path through the wind and turns to face me. "I don't know what you want, ma'am. I honestly cannot tell. Do you want me to keep silent? Or say what I'm thinking? Because what I'm hearing is 'tell me what you’re thinking but it has to be good,' and I cannot do that."
"You could do it, if you tried a little harder to have a better mindset. What's bothering you?"
"I am here to protect you, ma'am. Not just your corpus. Your entire well-being."
"And you're doing an excellent job. Well beyond what you need to. Are you still upset at those guards of Duchess Portolan's?"
"I'm upset at Duchess Portolan. She worries me."
"Lieutenant! That mare has shown me more kindness than anypony in this city so far!"
"I see." The wretched cold of the wind has nothing on the Lieutenant's voice at this moment. He turns away and continues trudging toward home.
"Anyone from this city!" I hurry to follow. "You know full well what I meant. You're searching for reasons to be offended."
He whips back around. "All I know is that there is something off about that mare. The world is full of strange creeps from whom I need to defend you, and by this point, I have a pretty good idea when there's one around."
There is a whump immediately behind Lieutenant Armor as a massive, gray-feathered shape makes a hard cloudfall behind him.
"Oh, hello," says Auric Turncoat. "I didn't see you there. Total lie. I've actually been seeing you for the past several minutes, on account of the fact that I've been intently watching you. The two actions are inextricably linked, I'm afraid."
"You," says Lt. Armor.
"Correct! Very perceptive!" Auric replies. "Of course, you'd be equally correct if you said that to anyone at all."
"Auric, we're cold and, well, I'm hungry, even if my charge isn't."
"We offered you dinner, you goof. You're the one who turned it down." I turn to the big griffon. "It's lovely to see you again, Auric."
Auric looks back and forth between us. He points at me. "The feeling is mutual when it comes to you, Your Highness, and honestly, the feelings between me and the crabby white one are also somewhat mutual in a different way. Mutualism all around!"
Lt. Armor snorts. "Why are you bothering the princess?"
"My business is with you, boy," says Auric. "Tangentially related to Her Highness there, but with you primarily. I seem to recall a conversation we shared during the Festival of Venus Verticordia where you accused me of being malignantly overprotective of our mutual pink lady-friend."
I bark out a laugh. "Pot! Kettle!" I say. I am a bit silly right now. I blame the tiramisu.
"I stand by that," says Lt. Armor.
"As well you should," Auric replies. "That's the crux of my little impromptu alleyway visit tonight." Auric gives a ludicrously formal bow. "Lieutenant Shining Armor, I am here to tell you that you were correct. Spot-on. I have been terrible. Hovering around like an airship, pouncing on you whenever you step the slightest bit out of line. I am making a decision to trust you for a number of days."
Lt. Armor raises an eyebrow. "What brought this on?"
"Nothing! This job I've assigned myself is wearing on me, and it's clearly wearing on the two of you. So, I'm going to take a vacation. Cloudsdale will be at its closest approach to Canterlot in a day or two more, and I thought I would use the opportunity to visit the Mountain, take in a few restaurants, enter a baking contest, that sort of thing."
"You're being silly," I say.
"Madam, I am not," he says, with an uncommonly warm and genuine expression. "You've both earned a little bit of trust. It seems like you've got a job and everything! Based on what I heard as I skulked around eavesdropping on your conversation. That certainly seems like a grand decision and not one that you'll come to regret."
"You confuse me, Auric. I don't know how I'm supposed to take this."
"Then take me at my word.” He lifts my booted hoof and gives it the daintiest of pecks with his ridiculous yellow axe-blade of a beak. "So glad I was able to meticulously stalk you to this location and then have this little chance encounter. I wanted to let you know that I hold you in the highest esteem, and I trust that you'll behave yourself in my absence. Are there any further questions?"
The Lieutenant starts. "I—"
"No questions! Excellent! Ta-ta, both of you!" With that, he spins up into the night with a few powerful beats of his great white wings and is gone.
"Ha!" I say, in his wake. "Even Auric doesn't want to be the Fun Police anymore!"
"Fewer officers on the beat," mutters the Lieutenant.
"Pish tosh," I say in a sort of blanket dismissal of anything and everything at all, and we make our way back home, my excellent mood holding all the way there.
One relentless nighttime beauty and dental hygiene ritual later, I am lying in a soft, becomfortered bed, a little smile on my face.
"I have a job," I whisper to myself. And then, after an astonishingly long day, I finally sleep.
Consciousness comes slowly. Under the circumstances, I am happy that it comes at all.
I am lying in a field of luminescent blue. It’s foliage of some kind, impeccably soft. It glows serenely in the dark. Motes of gold rise from the bed and drift up out of sight.
I can see angry, spiky, twisted trees on all sides. A miracle, then. This little clearing was the one patch I could have plummeted to, possibly for furlongs, the impact with which would not have wrecked me completely. The spongy mass of flowers seems to have broken my fall without any major internal damage. I am astonished at this mind-bogglingly lucky save.
Nevertheless, I don't feel quite right. My kinesthetic sense is all out of whack. Almost certainly something is broken, despite the fact that there is no pain. I am convinced that I am just waiting for my body to register it.
I roll over and sink my claws into the earth below me.
Speaking of registering pain, do you know that moment when you see yourself whack your hoof hard on something solid, and you know, just know, the pain is going to come, but there's a horrible millisecond where all you can feel is a quiet, prickling intellectual dread? I live in that place for about five seconds as I stare down at my claws.
I scream.
I say that I scream, but it comes out as an unambiguous roar. A gout of intense flame pours from my mouth, reducing a triangular pattern of the flower field and a patch of the dark wood beyond into char and cinder. I am startled by the sudden fire really close to my face, so I scream again, with the same result. It is dangerously close to becoming a self-sustaining feedback loop. I hyperventilate for a minute, which only makes the flames worse, and then gain a certain measure of mastery over myself.
I look down at myself. Back at myself. I scream again. The cycle repeats.
Eventually I am able to not incinerate everything around me in my panic, and I take stock of myself. I'm still pink. There's that, at least. Everything else is unrecognizable. I have glittering scales in place of my coat, and my wings are stretched and bat-like, no feathers to be seen. My tail is huge. It's grotesque.
I have very little reference for the size I have become. None of the plants here are familiar to me. I get a sense just from the way my body moves that I'm bigger, but maybe not enormous? The relative size of my ruined gown beneath me confirms it. I’m probably about two ponies wide and, I don't know, four or five long?
The pollen , I suddenly realize. These are those flowers. This is that pollen. The stuff that goes airborne and gets wrapped up into the hailstones above the Everfree, the ones we came here to harvest. The ones we put in our drinks. Maybe in small enough doses, they produce fun little chaotic effects, like a puff or two of fire breath. But maybe if you tumble into a whole huge patch of it...
I spend another minute dipping back into panic. I try to get a hold of myself, try to breathe without flame. I fail to do so. I have no idea how any of these processes work. I've never been a dragon before.
"Rough night, huh?" says a voice from nearby. A figure emerges from behind one of the unburnt trees.
On top of everything else, the figure is me.
My draconic maw opens slightly in abject confusion. It's me. It looks a little older. A little taller. About a million percent more poised. But it's me. It steps with graceful tread over the smoking wood, crushing some of it beneath its hooves.
"Hey," says the figure. "I bet you're wondering what you're supposed to do next. That's perfectly normal."
"Yes!" I try to say. I cannot make my tongue or my throat make the words. All that comes out is an animalistic growl and yet more fire. The figure, the other me, neatly sidesteps the flames.
"Be careful," Other Cadance says in a gentle tone. "You're not going to be able to talk at this point. Nopony's going to be able to understand you, except me. And the only reason I can understand you is that I remember what I was trying to say when I was you."
Cadance gazes at me for a moment. "Wow. I really didn't get the full effect when I was over there. It's pretty impressive, truth to tell. Kind of fun."
I try to shout the word "What?" It doesn't go well. More tree limbs are incinerated in my attempt.
Cadance shakes her head. "Sorry. Listen, this is all very complicated, and I have to make this brief. We've done the math. Me and … a very close friend of mine believe that you won't make it out of here with your life if I don't intervene at this specific point in history. There are things in this forest that will make short work of a pony, even if that pony is temporarily a dragon."
In spite of her alarming words, Cadance's eyes go foggy. "It's funny. There've been so many instances where I could have done this: go back and tell myself a really important piece of information. I could have saved us all a lot of heartbreak. But this is the only time I remember seeing myself, from your side, I mean. So that must mean that this is the only time I ever choose to do this from my side. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense."
I stare at her, dumbfounded. Cadance sighs. "Yes, of course. I remember it not making sense. I also remember recontextualizing this whole encounter as a pollen-induced delusion, so I'm fully aware that that's exactly what you're going to do immediately after I finish this sentence."
This has to be some weird kind of hallucination brought about by the enchanted flowers. "I have no idea what you're talking about!" I fail to say. I roar instead.
"I know," Cadance says. She sighs. "I'm not cut out for this. Temporal admin is a trash fire. The point is, I've been trying to puzzle through why I'm here now, of all times, and I think I've figured it out. No matter how bad it got ... gets ... whatever, this is the one time in our life when we're the most alone."
"Just tell me what I need to do to get out of here!" I fail to plead at her.
"Right," says Hallucinatory Cadance, understanding what my roars mean. "Okay, for starters, I can't tell you what direction you need to go, because I don't remember."
"Then what good is any of this?"
"What I can tell you is that there's a family who lives on the outskirts of Ponyville. Orchard folk. In the day and age you're in, right now, that's going to be the nearest settlement. There are ponies there who can help you. Okay?"
"How am I supposed to know which direction to go?"
"Concentrate, Cadance," says Cadance. "There are some very strong family bonds in that household. Just shut out all this weirdness, tune out the confusion, and pay attention. I know you'll be able to feel them."
Finally, the apparition is saying something kind of reasonable. I try to relax, try to sense what the pollen-induced figment of my imagination is telling me to sense.
Eventually, I hear/smell/taste it. It's faint, just on the edge of my perception. A couple, their son, their young daughter. A third child on the way. A grandmother on the father's side. Their love for each other circulates back and forth in a golden braid, a distant wind chime made of sugar and flour and blossom.
There is a sudden pang in my heart. I wonder what it's like to be them, to love so much and to be loved so much in return. I wonder what it's like to have a family. I quickly stow the feeling in favor of more immediate concerns. I can hear (smell, taste) where they are. A way back to civilization. I've got it. I nod to Cadance, briskly, still trying to center myself.
"Good," she says. "Now remember, stay under the canopy to avoid rocs. Forget trying to fly, you're not ready for that. Cragodiles are fast, but they tire quickly on land. Outrun, rather than fight. Stranglevines can be burned. And if you see anything that looks like a chicken, do not look at it. I am confident you can handle this, because I did, and I'm you. All right?"
I nod.
"Good dragon.” Cadance pats me on the snout with her hoof. She glances over her shoulder, apparently at an unseen figure. "I think that's all that I can say without totally rupturing causality. You're going to get through this, Cadance."
She begins to tear up. "You're going to get through all of this. You're going to come out on the other side braver, stronger, better than ever before. And things are going to be wonderful. I can't even describe how wonderful they are. There's—"
Cadance stops, looks over her shoulder again. "It's just as well that I can't describe how wonderful they are, because I'm also apparently forbidden from doing that. I think I've said pretty much everything I can remember me saying, and Tw—my temporal auditor is cutting me off. I have to go. I love you. You love you too."
I try to say something in response, but my words are unintelligible and also on fire. Cadance accepts it nonetheless, and she begins to fade into a fizzing pattern of cobalt sparks.
"Oh!" she says at the last, her voice distorted by powerful static. "Sunny Smiles! You have to know about Sunny Smiles! She isn't—"
The vision of myself fades, but my draconic form persists. Princess Cadance is gone, leaving Dragon Cadance behind. I poke at my sides and run my claws over my wings. Solid and unyielding. I had hoped that this whole situation was part and parcel of my chemical delirium, but apparently that only involved my subconscious talking to me in the second pony. The dragon thing is real.
My introspection is cut off by my stomach lurching. I am hungry again. My brain's just dumped a cartload of information on me mid-hallucination, and it's going to take whole ages to analyze. I'm in no state to think about it now. For one thing, I'm a hungry dragon. I think this fact alone snuffs out any hope of meaningful introspection.
I try to focus, to pick up the scent of the orchard family. It's harder the hungrier I get, but I can still manage. Even without a Cutie Mark, I can still hear what my Cutie Mark is telling me. I pluck my asterite pendant out of the ruins of my dress, select what I pray is the correct direction, and lumber ponderously out of the clearing and into the Everfree proper.
There are monsters here in the wood. I am one of them.
I break the tree line close to midnight. My pink scales are not as shiny as they once were, marred as they are with fang and scorch marks. I claw my way into the clear, breathing heavily, burning everything in my path. Then I throw myself on my back and look up at the stars. Despite everything, I can hear crickets.
I am starving to death. Prior to this moment, I'd thought being an alicorn was bad. It is nothing compared to being a dragon who has poured everything she has into fighting forest monsters. A few hours and an entire lifetime ago, I recall Captain Sungrazer urging me to master the limits of my body. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of that tonight, and it isn't even my own body that I'm mastering. Every fiber of my being is taut, burning. I cough. Fire flickers forth, a weak, guttering flame. The party feast feels like a distant, half-remembered thing.
Weakly, I rise, stumble a few more steps, and fall into a huge patch of ashy earth.
The earth isn't natural. It smells sharp and sulfurous. There is very little organic about it, nothing that feels like it'd be good for plant life. It's like pulverized rock, not soil. It drifts and puffs in the dim light of my dragonfire. I try to assess the size of the patch; it is hard to see in the dim light, but it appears to go on for acres and acres. It feels weird on my compromised scales, alkaline and irritating.
I am hardly able to process it at this time. After the riotously fecund Everfree, whose life is constantly trying to extinguish yours, a bit of a dead patch is calming, despite the mild irritation. It feels like peroxide on my wounds. The irritation of the strange soil gives me impetus to continue. There are ponies ahead, ponies who can help, or at least that's what my subconscious was trying to tell me. Ponies who run ... an orchard?
I smell the apples before I can see them, and my entire focus slims down to a tightly wound crossbow of focus. Surely, it's too early for apples, here in the midsummer. But then again, I've been told that certain talented earth ponies can call forth fruit from the trees far earlier, and with far greater frequency, than their more mundane cousins.
I'm not going to spend too much time thinking about it. I can't, I just can't. No longer in control of my body, I find myself bounding overland, half lumbering, half flying, toward the delicious smell of ready fruit. Soon enough, I can see a line of apple trees in front of me, and I barrel into them with gusto. Somewhere deep in my rational brain, I am trying to tally how much fruit I intend to eat, and what the going market rate of that would be. Deep down, I am vainly attempting to account for everything I consume so that someone, somewhere, can be reimbursed for it.
My last remaining rational particle thus satisfied, I begin wolfing down everything in sight. Tree after tree of slightly unripe (but almost there!) apples disappears down my gullet, dripping juice down the sides of my jaws as they go. It's not really helping, but I keep trying with increasing desperation, moving from tree to tree. I just need a little satiety. A little clarity. Something so that I'm not absolutely mad with hunger when I go to meet the ponies who can help me. They'll understand. They've got to understand. I'll just explain to them what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and surely they'll see the—
There is an impact at my shoulder, unbelievably powerful, and it sends me skidding away from my latest tree. I tumble over once and then sink my claws in the dirt to stabilize myself. I look up in panic to see what struck me, and I see...
"There you are, ya' ragged beast!"
Oh, no.
Standing before me in a ferocious pose is a powerfully built, buttercup-yellow stallion, his flank adorned with the image of a pared green apple. He spits into the dirt.
"Get! Out! Of my! Orchard!"
"Oh, hello!" I say. "Listen, I know this looks bad, but it turns out you're just the pony I've been looking for. I am Princess Mi Amore Cadenza , but you can call me 'Cadance.' It's a pleasure to meet you!"
That's what I try to say, at least. I wince as my words come out as a threatening-sounding roar, accompanied by yet more blue flame. The yellow orchard-keeper leaps into a quick dodge roll, avoiding harm. He taps his brimmed hat back into position and squares up for another charge at me. I concentrate magic into my unicorn horn to try and smooth over the orchard-keeper's mood, until I realize that I don't have my unicorn horn and my will is going nowhere.
"Pa!" comes an adolescent voice from slightly further back in the tree-row.
"Li'l Mac, you stay back! Keep away from this critter!"
"I wanna help!"
"You help me by staying safe, hear?" The orchard-keeper, Pa, charges me again. I try to hold my claws up in a reconciliatory gesture, but my whole body is unfamiliar to me, and the wiggling daggers at the ends of my forelimbs end up looking pretty threatening. Pa skids beneath them and then reverses his motion mid-slide and gives me a pair of rear hooves to the side. It's nearly enough to crack a rib. I fall against a tree. Pa spins around again and goes for my face this time. I hold up my claws again to try and shield myself, and, oh no, I am certain that does not look good either.
I am kicked straight in the snout. I bellow in pain and fire. I don't mean to make fire, but—
—yes. Yes, I mean to make fire. I do intentionally make fire, not trying to hurt anypony, but just threatening enough to make him reconsider another kick. Maybe it'll keep him at bay for a little bit, force a stalemate, let cooler heads prevail?
Pa backs away, assessing my threat response. "Change of plans, Li'l Mac! Fetch my lariat!"
"Yes, Pa!"
Worse. Much worse. I think I might die from the indignity alone. Bad enough being an animal, much worse a trussed one. I consider turning tail and fleeing, but earlier, my subconscious seemed convinced that these ponies were my best hope of making it through this powerfully strange night. I pour everything I have into making reconciliatory gestures, putting myself through a five-second crash course in my own altered body language. Li'l Mac tosses Pa a lasso, and he spins it over his head...
"Well," says a creaky, clipped little voice. "Isn't this a curious thing?"
Stepping placidly into the melee is a tiny, fragile, unicorn mare of dusty periwinkle, with a Cutie Mark of a single lit candle. She walks calmly, but with purpose.
"Miss Lamplight!" says Pa. "Stay back!"
She peers at him over the rim of her half-moon spectacles. "Stay back from what, darling?"
"From the monster! The dragon!"
She makes a little piff noise with her lips. "Dragon! There's no dragon here."
"Yes! There is! Right there!"
She looks at me. "Oh, I see that thing, well enough. But it's no dragon."
"Thank you!" I try to say. Gargle, gargle, fire.
Pa flinches at the display. "But Miss Lamplight—"
"Tell me, Bright Mac, what do dragons eat?"
"Ponies, I reckon!"
She clicks her tongue, shakes her head. "Then why is the beast eating your apples?"
"I dunno!" says Pa, apparently the one named Bright Mac. "Maybe they're like bears! Omni-vorus!"
"Omnivorous," says Miss Lamplight. "Possible. Dragons can and do eat apples. But they don't crave them. Not enough to go ruining crops in the dead of night. This beast believes it can satisfy itself with apples, but it cannot. That means that it does not think of itself as a dragon."
Bright Mac scratches at his cherry-red mane. "I ... I guess I follow."
I nod vigorously. This much, at least, seems universal. Listen to the little old mare, I will at Bright Mac. The little old mare is smart.
"What do we do with a dragon that doesn't think it's a dragon, then?"
"First thing is we give it what it actually needs." Miss Lamplight fishes around in her saddlebag and produces something on her hoof. She approaches me, utterly fearless.
I look at the tiny object nestled in the frog of her hoof. It is a double-sided mahjong tile, made of polished white wood and inset with smooth, precious gems. The gems on the tile are the most delicious-looking things I have ever seen or even conceived of.
Dragons eat gemstones. That much is clear, according to the texts. We know very little about them other than that, since there hasn't been a migration in quite some time. Prior to this moment, I had thought of them as tasting like colorful rock candy. It seemed intuitive enough.
It may have been intuitive, but it was completely wrong. At the least, woefully insufficient. I take a moment to bask in the smells that waft from the tiny little mahjong tile. All the trace elements and impurities in the crystalline structure of the gems give the tile a heavenly aroma, wonderfully complex and subtle and evolving.
She tosses it to me and I catch it in my mouth like a dog. The hunger begins to go away.
"There we go," says Miss Lamplight. "Does it want more?"
I nod pathetically.
She smiles and removes a case from her saddlebag. She opens it. It is stuffed full of glittering tiles.
"Thankfully, I have a whole set."
"Don't know why you had to feed our entire mahjong set to this varmint!" says the creaky, crabby voice of a pony I have quickly come to know as Granny Smith, at my right shoulder.
"It's only a thing, Granny," says Miss Lamplight, who is walking on my left. "Things can be replaced."
"It was a pretty thing, though! What am I gonna do without my mahjong?"
"You could buy your own? Not use mine?"
"Pah. Waste of good bits."
I am trudging along between the two elderly mares, under a tarp. It is somewhat less humiliating than being tied up. Miss Lamplight apologized for the awkwardness at first, but noted that, even in the dead of night, my uncloaked appearance would cause far too much of a stir in town. I had to agree. Bright Mac was evidence enough of that.
"You gotta understand, Bright Mac ain't a violent sort! He's gentle as the day is long! But when a big ol' critter like yourself come hollerin' into the east orchard, rampaging through the red delicious, what'd'ya expect out of a pony?"
I mumble an apology. It singes the edge of the tarp.
"Yeah, you better be sorry," says Granny Smith, who understands the intention, if not the words. "Mac's got enough on his mind, what with Butter expecting like she is. Miz Lampy, what are we fixin' to do with this here animal?"
"If I have ascertained the nature of the problem correctly, I know of a book that can help."
"A book!" hoots Granny Smith. "You're always turnin' to books!"
"I am a librarian. When all your problems are esoteric and magical, every solution looks like a book."
Granny grunts. "So where are we storing this critter while you go fetch your whatever?"
"I was thinking we could store it with me, in the library."
"In the library!" Granny practically shrieks. "You got a weird beastie practically made of fire, and you're taking it into the most chock-full-of-paper place in town?"
"I trust that it has control of its fire now." She gently strokes the scales of my cheek. "I trust it has not completely forgotten who it is."
I murmur something. There is no flame.
Granny Smith and Miss Lamplight hustle me through the deserted streets of the little farming village near the orchard. I am proud to note that I do not burn even a single thatched-roof cottage. Eventually, our path ends at a huge, tangled oak tree in full green leaf. Through some miracle of earth craftsponyship, the interior of the tree looks to have been hollowed out, creating a quaint, twisting structure of rooms and stairs and passages, while leaving the tree itself still alive around it all. It is a singularly miraculous building, and even in my miserable state, I feel my heart opening to it. A small sign nearby indicates that, yes, this is the town library. It is a marvel. I wish I'd known that it was here.
"Here we are," says Miss Lamplight. She pushes open a friendly red door emblazoned with an image of her Cutie Mark and hustles me inside with only a little squeezing. "Home sweet home."
The three of us find ourselves in a calming, dusk-hued antechamber. The walls are lined with an impressive number of bookshelf nooks, shaped with love directly into the mother wood of the tree itself. My nose is overwhelmed by the comforting, vanilla-like smell of old tomes. For the second time this week, I am taking refuge in a fortress of books, like little Twilight Sparkle used to construct out of her home library. Back when I was her foalsitter, back before I was a dragon, back when life was infinitely less complex.
Peeking out from my concealing tarp, I look around at the foyer of the library and allow myself a little smile. Twilight would love this place.
I am a pony again. I never want to not be a pony, ever again.
I am cuddled in one of Miss Lamplight's old bathrobes. It smells like old mare. That is not a bad thing. I lounge in the basement room of her library home after a shockingly complicated series of herbal remedies that slowly but surely washed away my dragonhood and restored me to my proper form. As an alicorn, I am already somewhat mutable based on my mood and my perception of control, but nopony should be that mutable.
There is a film playing, a little light entertainment while I recover from my exertions. Some sort of instructional movie about the archaic means by which Cloudsdale used to gather water, before modern water-collecting methods took over. It was the first film canister Miss Lamplight could find. I am not complaining. It is fascinating to see how times have changed.
"They used to round up every pegasus pony in town," comes Miss Lamplight's voice, as she plods carefully up behind me. "Fly them 'round and 'round and 'round and make a funnel that would suck the water out of our reservoirs and poof! Shoot it all the way up to Cloudsdale."
"Sounds dangerous.”
"Oh, it was, it was." Miss Lamplight gives a dry little chuckle. "I brought you some tea and cookies.”
"I'm ... I'm not hungry." Shockingly, it is true. There is something really wrong with my digestion right now, and I cannot imagine consuming a single thing.
"Suit yourself.” She lifts a pink-iced biscuit in her aura and takes a delicate nibble. "It was dangerous, but it was also alive. Vital. The energy those pegasus ponies put into it. They used to have big competitions between the towns. See how powerful their wind funnels could get. Pegasi love competition. They love having something to fight for. We are healthiest—Equestria is healthiest—when we give pegasi things to fight for that improve all our lives."
"This is sounding a little tribalist."
"Merely observational, ma'am.” She gives a little curtsy. "In any case, that all changed when the Weather Corporation moved into Cloudsdale. Said the old Weather Factory was operating a monopoly, and they got the Senate to agree. And why wouldn't they? Tanker ships were better, safer, more efficient. The CWC was putting out weather at a rate that the Weather Factory just couldn't compete with. And now, ironically, it's the CWC that's the monopoly. And they do whatever they please."
"But that's good, right? You just said it's better, safer, more efficient."
"Mm," says Miss Lamplight. "But what's the cost? Tell me, Your Highness, have you ever seen strange things during your time in Cloudsdale? Substances whose presence you can't quite explain?"
I perk up at the oddly specific question, and then realize that I have an answer. "There was a flow of something, one time. In New Veneighzia. A friend of mine called it 'archonium.' Said it wasn't supposed to be there. All I can remember was that it was cold. Really, really cold."
Miss Lamplight nods, deep in thought. "Anything else?"
"Tonight. There was a large patch of ... some other thing. Between the forest and the orchards. Dirt, but crumbly. Tingly."
"Denebium. Rare sterile earth."
"But that wasn't in Cloudsdale."
"Earth is heavy," says Miss Lamplight. "Earth falls."
"I don't understand. What does this have to do with Cloudsdale? Is strange dirt getting filtered out of the water during weather processing? Is the water picking up contaminants when it's down here? We've already got novelty ice filled with weird transmogrifying pollen. Maybe this is the same, just not intentional?”
Lamplight chuckles. "It's an interesting question. Few enough ponies know what goes on in the Weather Corporation. Trade secrets. It makes me worried when there are things here that should not be here. Much as I am worried when a dragon shows up in a dear old friend's orchard."
"Maybe ... maybe I can find out?"
"Maybe you can, ma'am," she says.
I suddenly get a sick sensation in my gut. Lamplight looks over at me, sees my discomfort written on my face. "I know it sounds a little scary, dear. But perhaps, if you could give yourself some answers, you would find some peace in knowing—"
"No." I wave a hoof in front of my face. "No. I'm not scared. It's not—I'm not feeling—" I take a deep breath, and speak quickly. "Miss Lamplight, do you happen to have someplace I could—"
"Chamber pot is in the side closet." She returns her attention to her biscuit. I leap out of my chair and rush over to the side closet. In a rather dramatic series of coughs and gags, I bring the offending substance up from my gut and back out into the world.
A weary quiet settles back over the room. "Finished, ma'am?"
"Yes," I say weakly. I look down into the pot. There, in the little basin, is the remnants of one hundred and forty-four wooden gaming tiles, every last scrap of their gemstone inlays stripped clean. Just lots and lots of bare-naked wood. Apparently, in extreme enough scenarios, I can be thwarted by roughage after all.
"The tiles?" asks Miss Lamplight.
"Yep."
"Shapeshifting is difficult," she says, as I drag myself back to my chair. "The food you put into yourself one day becomes poison the next. Such is the way of many things in this world."
I smile, despite it all. "You're filled with clever words."
"Librarian!" she shouts, thrusting a hoof in the air. "I am surrounded by so many words on all sides. They seep into me through my skin."
"Sorry about your mahjong set."
"The night has been a strange one for us all. If that is the greatest loss we face from your plunge into the Everfree Forest, we should count ourselves lucky."
A voice comes from upstairs. It's Granny Smith.
"Miz Lampy! Yer Highness! There's a situation developin' up here!"
I sit upright. "What is it?"
"Beggin' yer pardon, it's best if y'all come up and see it for yourselves!"
Miss Lamplight and I rush up the stairs to the library foyer. What was once a peaceful and dark refuge is now flooded with harsh white light, spilling in from the outdoors like sprays of diamond. Shielding my eyes and casting a jagged shadow, I make my way to the front door and push it open.
The little town square abutting the library tree is lit up like full noon. Hovering low over central Ponyville are two capital-class airships of the Royal Navy. Each is equipped with a battery of calcium lamps, the harsh and jarring light of which floods the immediate area. I can hear the hum of propulsion vanes from overhead.
Brighter even than all that is the stern, white figure standing in the middle of the square, wings wide. She has a bearing of sharp poise, a lightning stroke caught and made flesh. She shines like the sun, which, admittedly, is a pretty short intuitive leap.
"Cadance," says Princess Celestia.
I expect another bath, another meal in the night kitchen, another maternal lecture. It rapidly becomes clear to me, however, that there is to be significantly less comfort involved in this rescue. Celestia's aura feels rough as it tugs me along, and I am in no position to resist. I am dragged like a scruffed cat through the upper halls and high towers of Canterlot, whereafter I am finally deposited on the carpet of Aunty's smallest audience chamber, the one that leads out onto her primary sun-raising balcony.
She fixes me with a glare. I have never seen such an expression on that placid, ever-wise face. Celestia Sol Invicta is angry . With me. Part of me is delighted to have made such a mark. Part of me is terrified for my very life.
"Cadance," says Princess Celestia. "You promised me. You promised . You told me you would never run off like that again."
"Aunty, if I could just explain—"
"Explain? Explain what? Explain why you decided to leave everypony guessing as to your location and well-being, yet again?"
"It's not like that! This wasn't like the glacier incident!"
"Explain to me how."
"That was different! Back then, I was upset! I was trying to find something that's missing! Something about myself, my past, my life! Tonight, I was just trying to have a little fun for once! Yes, it went horribly wrong, but you can't blame me for—"
"For what? For lying to your retainer so he wouldn't know where you went?"
I groan. "Lieutenant Armor snitched to you?"
Celestia stares at me as though I've grown a second horn. "Of course he did! What did you expect him to do?"
"Keep it on the downlow! Not run screaming to my pretend aunt!"
Her eye twitches. I'm hurting her. I don't want to hurt her but—
—okay, I do. I do want to hurt her. I quiver inside, horrified at the realization that I have wanted to hurt this mare for decades. I am terrified of what this signifies about me. I do not even know who I am.
"Mi Amore , for all he knew at the time, you had been abducted by merchant airponies out from under his nose. You must realize what this looked like from his perspective. I did not think I would have to teach you, of all ponies in Equestria, about looking at things from another's point of view! Lieutenant Armor has been doing his job flawlessly, except for the fact that earlier this evening he was quite taken by surprise by your rather bald-faced lie, a fact that I will forgive him for because when I learned of it, I was rather surprised myself!"
"All that stallion does is fuss! He's like a miniature you , standing at my shoulder! He's an entire miniature Hegemony!"
"That is exactly what I need him to be!"
"Wonderful! Thanks, Aunty Celestia! Decide to let me be free and live my own life, and then saddle me with a constant reminder of your inescapable gaze!"
"Princess?" comes a voice from the arched doorway of the audience chamber.
“Yes?” Celestia and I say, at the same time. We look up to see a teen-aged unicorn mare, silhouetted by the light of the corridor. Her coat is a bright orange hue, and her hair is the color of fire.
Celestia breathes, centers herself. "Sunset, I am sorry if our argument disturbed your sleep."
"I was awake. What's going on?"
"Princess business, my faithful student."
The unicorn, apparently "Sunset," edges into the room. Bold little thing. "Princess Celestia, as your personal student, I'm now part of the upper court. If there's some kind of royal conflict going on, I need to know. I have a right to know."
"Sunset!" Celestia now trains her fearsome gaze on the unicorn. "This is not the time! Return to your chambers!"
There is a brief stand-off. Sunset breaks first. "Yes, Princess Celestia.” She vanishes back into the hall.
Celestia rubs her poll with one hoof, just below her horn. "I am ... teaching her to have confidence in herself. I feel like I may have taught her too far." She shakes her head. "Overcorrecting. Always overcorrecting."
"Personal protegee?"
"Yes."
"You were quick to replace me."
"You seemed eager to be replaced."
"I guess I was."
Celestia sighs. "Cadance, I'm sorry to inform you that I will be recalling you from Cloudsdale. I am not certain that city has been a good influence on you."
The bottom drops out of my stomach. "Recalling me? From what?"
"From that city! As I explained!"
"I'm an adult!"
"I gave you a post there—"
"A post I'm not currently occupying! You could eliminate the entire Embassy! It would have zero effect on me! You are looking at the new Associate Vice President for Public Relations of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation."
"You didn't."
"I did."
"You accepted a job? Under Portolan Blueblood?"
"Yep. I work for a private corporation in a city-state completely outside the Hegemony. You have no power over me."
"Cadance," she says, "please come home."
"Home?" I shout. "Home? To Canterlot?"
Celestia turns away from me. "Yes. Of course."
"We talked about this! Canterlot isn't home, Celestia! Not anymore! I don't think it ever was!"
"I showed you every kindness—"
"Did you love me?"
Silence drops like sudden snow.
"You don't have to answer. I know what you feel. I can see it. All the times I've looked at you with my heart, I never saw the tiniest flicker of real, genuine love for me there. Not for anyone."
In the ensuing quiet, I hear a noise. I do not recognize it at first. It is like trying to discern the call of a bird species that dwells on the far side of the globe. It is restrained, almost inaudible, and I finally realize that it is a sob.
"It's happening again," whispers Celestia. "It's happening again."
"What? What's happening again?"
Celestia does not look up at me. "You should go, Cadance. For everyone's good."
"Tell me what you're—"
Celestia does not respond, or at least, does not respond with words. In a flurry of feathers, she hauls me out to her private balcony. A commanding view of the night-shrouded Heartland stretches out before us. The moon is bright overhead.
"All those times you searched my heart for love. Found me wanting. Did you ever, even once, do it outdoors? At night, specifically?"
I am momentarily taken aback. I search my memory. "N—no, I don't think—"
"Do it now," says Celestia, with fearful intensity. I swallow, gather my focus, and see with my second sight...
...I am blinded. It is how things were in the town square of Ponyville an hour ago, facing down limelights and angry sun-alicorns, but ten times worse. A hundred times.
The glare is coming from the moon itself.
"Aunty," I breathe.
"You see it, I trust," says Celestia. "The love that edges out all else." For the first time in our lives together, Celestia looks old to me. Beaten, frail.
"This doesn't make sense. Even if the object of my sight isn't in view, there's always a line, or a trail, or—"
"That cord was cut a long time ago, Cadance. Long, long ago. I have no desire to have such a thing happen again. That is why you need to leave, as soon as possible."
"I ... I don't—"
"You've said what you wanted. I've said what I wanted. One of my capital ships can ferry you back to Cloudsdale. Or you could fly, as much as it matters to me."
"Aunty, I'm s—"
"Just go, Cadance."
She turns away from me again, and this time, it feels like a gesture of final punctuation. I stand there for a moment, helplessly, and then I turn to go. My departing hoofbeats are muffled by the carpet.
I return to Cloudsdale, under my own power.
"I'll be terminating their contract immediately, of course," says Duchess Portolan, as she shuffles a few papers into place on the surface of her enormous rosewood desk. "Captain Sungrazer and crew have submitted their report and have apologized for the incident, but we hold contractors to a certain standard here at the CWC. Engaging in outright foolishness that endangers the life of one of our senior executives is clearly beyond the pale."
"I'm asking you to reconsider, Duchess Portolan."
She waves a hoof. "They're contractors. Contractors can be replaced."
"Please," I say. "It was an accident. Plain and simple. Yes, the Comet was engaged in unscheduled extreme water-gathering, but I was the one who asked to go with them. After I went overboard, I'm told they immediately started combing the Everfree at great personal risk to themselves, and were still at it by the time the Royal Navy showed up. I only think they didn't find me because I, um, didn't exactly look like myself while they were searching. Overall, they went above and beyond the call of duty after I disregarded a couple of very basic safety protocols. The crew of the Comet doesn't deserve to be punished over that."
Portolan eyes me up. "Oh, very well. Because I like you, and I think you'll be a tremendous asset to us, I'll overlook their indiscretion on this one occasion."
"Thank you."
"But! They had better be on their best behavior from here on in. The last thing I need is for us to suddenly lose critical personnel. We're entering an interesting time in the history of the Weather Corporation, and my vision for our future can't come about if I don't know whom I can count upon. Can I count on you, Princess Cadance?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good. All yesterday's unpleasantness aside, I think it's a great thing that you're taking such an active interest in the nuts and bolts of Weather Corporation business."
"Yes, ma'am. Er, on that topic."
"Mm hm?"
I take a deep breath. "Do you know anything about a form of matter called 'archonium'? Or perhaps 'denebium'?"
"No. Should I?"
"A contact of mine identified some strange substances I've been seeing in and around the city. Showing up in odd, out-of-the-way places. I think maybe they're some sort of impurity that the water is picking up during its time on the surface, that then gets ferried back here. Is there any possibility that your, what was it called, Obnublium system isn't fully processing some waste products that it's filtering out?"
"I'm not aware of anything like that going on, but I'll admit that sometimes I have my head stuck up in the clouds of high-level administration. There may be some trivial day-to-day details that I'm not aware of." She trots out from behind her desk. "Tell you what, I'll have a chat with some of the boffins in the weather labs. I will make sure to ask them about this 'archonium' substance."
"Thank you."
"Of course! We've got wild protesters constantly at our doorstep. The last thing we want to do is give the slightest bit of credence to their weird beliefs. They'd be on us like jackals. We'd never hear the end of it. Better safe than sorry! If the bulk water we use is picking up any surface contamination, we'll get to the bottom of it."
"I appreciate your extra attention." It's my first week on the job, and I've already got a lot on my plate. "I also think we need to look more closely into the Sunny Smiles situation."
"Cadance," says Portolan, "if you could crack that particular nut, I'd be forever in your debt."
"Something tells me that things aren't right with her. More specifically, something told me that things aren't right, and that something was me, during last night's altered mental state. I told myself that Sunny Smiles 'isn't' something, but I don't know what it is that she isn't."
"Well, Sunny Smiles isn't very professional, for one thing. Your subconscious just cut off like that, mid-sentence?"
"I was on powerful magical drugs at the time."
"That might explain it." She gets a slightly silly look. "Had my share of such things, back in my callow days. In any case, whenever I had a particularly bad trip, I'd want to take a while to bounce back from it, and I expect you're in a parallel situation. Why don't you take a few days off to recover, and we'll start tackling both these problems next week? You'll want time to get settled into your new place, anyway."
"My new place?"
Duchess Portolan gasps. "Oh! In all the commotion, I must have forgotten! The Board has decided that it's not becoming for you to be staying under the same roof as the Hegemony's Resident Minister. At best, it might look like a conflict of interest, and at worst, well, there's always the possibility that certain trade secrets might slip out along the edges. Not that I'm accusing anypony of corporate espionage, but, again, better safe than sorry."
"Really? You're rescuing me from R.M. Weather-Eye's house? This is amazing!"
"If you want to take such a dramatic tone, certainly. We've cleared the penthouse of the Cloudcliff for your personal use. It's yours to come and go as you please. Should be plenty of room for you and whatever lictors you wish to start gathering. I know you have the one already."
"Lieutenant Armor."
"Big white unicorn. Blue hair. Broke my door. Good initiative, if unpleasant. You really should have some more, by the way. You can have some of mine."
"I've already got other ponies and griffons and whatever else taking a personal interest in my life."
"Offer remains open. Think it over."
I smile. My lip quivers a little. "Duchess Portolan, it's been a really long sixteen hours. It is a treasure to me to have someone to lean on during times like this. I am overwhelmed with your generosity, and I promise you that I'll find a way to pay you back for it someday.”
She chucks me on the chin.
"I know you will," she says.
About ten minutes after leaving Duchess Portolan's office, I am striding across the upper deck of the foreign quarter, hounded by photographers. Suddenly I don't mind so much. I have a job. I am respectable again.
I am startled by a rustle of wings, and a heavy thud in front of me scatters some of the pesky journalists. Auric Turncoat stares at me. His eyes are molten.
"I," he says with remarkable calmness, "am never leaving you unwatched again. Ever, ever again."
He does not wait for me to respond as he beats his wings and vanishes into the heavens.
So, that much has returned to normal.
And finally, there is nothing left to do but to go back to the Resident Minister's house for what may be the last time. I say hello to Sabre and Spurs and explain the situation, and they are nothing but happy for me. I never had a problem with the R.M.'s guards. I mean, they're not very good guards, so there's that, but otherwise, no complaints.
Humming a little tune, I approach the door of our private apartments, open it, and—
Shining Armor is upon me. I barely have time to react as he clutches me in his hooves, holding me tightly.
"Cadance," he says. His voice is muffled by my coat.
It takes me a few seconds to gather my wits. "Lieutenant!" I eventually blurt out.
He realizes his catastrophic social misstep and quickly backs away. "Sorry. Sorry, Your Highness. Sorry, ma'am. I'm ... I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what had happened to you. I checked with the harbormaster and he told me that the vessel you were on left without registering a flight plan, and the eyewitnesses weren't reliable enough to get a read, so I hopped ship to Canterlot and contacted my commanding officer. I guess it made its way all the way up to Princess Celestia. I'm sorry, I know you probably hate having your aunt meddling in your affairs, but I thought you might be in danger and..."
"Lieutenant, it's ... all right. I was upset, but you did the correct thing."
He nods. Then he offers me a glass full of a bright, sunny liquid.
"I made you some orange juice," he says.
"Give." I seize the glass and down it like an alcohol shot. It is marvelous. Juice has no right being this good. I should have left the juice-making to the lieutenant all along.
"Lieutenant," I say. "Two things. One: that is some truly excellent juice. Thank you. Two: on reflection, I apparently need ponies around at all times to keep me from becoming a monster. Can you be such a pony for me?"
"I am your servant, ma'am. We are simpatico."
"Good," I say. "As long as that is clear, I have some wonderful news."
I search around under my wing and emerge with the shining brass key of the penthouse suite of the Hotel Cloudcliff. I suspend it between us. It glitters in the light. It is the most precious of precious metals, not because of what it is, but because of what it represents.
"We've got a home.”
Author's Note
Thanks to Feech for the beta on this one. Cady and Shiny will return in "The Vigil," a story about firefighting in a city where 90% of everything is water or water-derivative, and why this is not as silly as it sounds. See you then!
One thing you learn really quickly when you become an employee of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation is that they throw a lot of parties.
The CWC takes Cloudsdale's reputation for partying and cranks it until it's beautiful. I’ve only been employed for a week, and already there have been two. The party I am at now is the third, the largest of them so far. They've even expanded the guest list to include some members of the general public, and the general public is eagerly taking them up on it.
Every party in Cloudsdale has a theme. Many of them are themed around the plethora of civic holidays or planetary festivals dotting the calendar, but when they run out of those, creativity goes wild. There are (to hear tell) positively ghoulish Nightmare Night parties, ludicrously overabundant harvest season fetes, and stately Hearth's Warming galas that will make your eyes water. I cannot wait to experience them all.
Today's party is thrown in honor of the Canterlot perigee, Cloudsdale's closest point of approach to the Mountain. And what better way to celebrate the day than to throw a "Canterlot" party? The quotes are there because there is a distinct air of farce and parody to the occasion. Good-humored unicorn nobles from the Mountain itself have been ferrying into the foreign quarter all evening on airships. So close is our position now that we are but a quick hop away, a reasonable distance for a soirée. The Canterlot unicorns are dressed to the nines, formal Equuish gowns and tailed tuxedos, vests included. And what do they meet when they arrive here? Not our usual light togas and dresses, but instead a distorted fun-fair mirror of themselves: tailed jackets that practically trail on the clouds, brilliant white spats, comical Derby-grade hats with far more than the required number of peacock feathers. It is ridiculous. Everypony laughs, and then they drink the Canterlot ciders being served in abundance (fountains of them!) and then they laugh some more. All the festivities are set to the just-barely-too-loud music of string octets. Why octets? It's double what you need. That's the only reason.
I am as dressed up as I have been in years, and I still feel like a model of restraint. My gown is of sparkling red, a true misstep in packing when I originally emigrated from Canterlot to Cloudsdale. It is a garment too gaudy to have been touched in all my months here. I pondered getting rid of it, but tonight, I am thankful that I did not. A feather boa originally completed the ridiculous ensemble, but I've long since relegated it to the cloakroom. I wear a lavish fascinator in place of my tiara, and, in an attack of silliness, I have adorned my Cutie Mark with a small red jewel directly between the lobes of the crystalline heart. I can sense Lt. Armor's disapproval. Decorating one's natural Cutie Mark with additional ornamentation is at best a social gaffe and at worst an act of abhorrent tackiness. Tonight, nothing is off the table. And besides, it's not as though Lt. Armor's disapproval is anything new. His dour bearing has become positively bleak in the past few days. He never smiles and rarely speaks, and even when he does speak it is usually to chastise me about something. Right now I have the strong feeling that Lt. Armor can take his disapproval and stick it in the deep crystalline vaults below Canterlot Castle, where the sun perforce does not shine.
I am dining with stallions.
Specifically, I am dining with the crew of the MV Comet , a privately owned light weather-hauling sloop on commission to the CWC. These are rough-and-tumble airponies, but they are also distinctly upper-class in bearing. One of them, a gangly pegasus pony named Graham Cracker, is technically a licensed physician, though I am unclear—even after an entire night of conversation over bubble-pipe foam—what exactly it is he practices. There's Kelvin, the chilly helmspony; Rainbowshine, the bubbly little first mare (not technically a stallion, but certainly One Of The Boys); a pair of deckhooves named Vapor Trail and Full Spectrum; and in the center of them all, last and not in the least bit least, Captain Sungrazer.
What to say about the Captain?
His Cutie Mark is astronomically-themed. A shooting star, or something similar. His coat is a burnished gold color, and his mane is blond streaked in red and gray. His face bears a near-constant, good-natured smile. And his throat is, I don't know how better to put it, awfully scarred all the way from side to side. I have no idea of the story behind what must have been a catastrophic wound at the time, and I get the sense that he is not fond of talking about it. The injury to his throat has permanently impacted his voice, and when he speaks, it ranges from a harsh, rainlike whisper to a gravelly roar.
I am sorry for Captain Sungrazer's injury, and am trying desperately to tamp down the fact that his raw, dangerous voice is making something in my belly do jumping jacks.
Like everyone here at the party—everyone except, predictably, Lt. Armor, who merely wears one of his many sensible uniforms—the crew of the Comet is dressed in over-the-top formal wear. Graham wears a full wedding ensemble, complete with top hat; Kelvin is in a pompous navy suit; Rainbowshine wears a silly rainbow-colored gala gown; and Sungrazer has a khaki military uniform with a sarcastic quantity of medals attached. None of them are real. I am certain he has never even served. He jingles like sleigh bells.
We are in the process of stuffing ourselves with stylized Canterlot foods, served in portions suitable to Cloudsdale. Plates of what would be tiny tasting-plate entrees (miniature hot vegetable skewers, tiny savory soufflés) are here produced in tureens, to be spooned up like casseroles. There are whole buckets of fairy cakes. It is high-class Canterlot cuisine in ghastly excess.
I am eating my fill. In public.
I am ... not ashamed anymore.
In fact, I feel a blossom of pride in my breast as I realize that even the stallions are unable to keep pace with me. Graham tries, bless him. Eventually even he must excuse himself for a moment of privacy, presumably to visit one of Duchess Portolan's civilized chamber pots, only to be outmatched a second time an hour later by my ferocious ability to consume.
They don't think I'm weird. They are smiling at me, laughing with me, urging me on, amazed at my capabilities.
"More tarts?" offers Rainbowshine. Sungrazer waves her off, and Graham looks a little sick.
"Yes please!" I say, to another round of laughter. Rainbowshine empties a deconstructed mixing bowl of tart ingredients all over the plate in front of me, just cream and cake and fresh fruit everywhere, and I tuck into it, just hitting my stride.
Friends! These ponies could be friends! I might not have to rely exclusively on my sourpuss white shadow of a household guard for socializing!
Speaking of whom, the Lieutenant's mood has only been worsening all evening. A less emotionally aware mare might not see what's going on here, but I don't even need to use my second sight to see the jealousy sizzling off him like sauna steam. That's fine. He can learn to live with me socializing a little.
"Digestifs!" Kelvin calls out.
Graham turns a rather unwell shade of olive. "None here. Would almost certainly have the opposite effect." He fails to stifle a burp.
"Ey, Cracker," says Sungrazer. "These aren't the normal drinks. These are the special ones."
"Ooh, the special ones!" says Graham, suddenly brightening. "Yes, please, then!"
I look up midway through tart-vacuuming. "Excuse me?" I mumble around a mouthful of fruit.
Sungrazer grins at me. "Oh, Princess, have we got something for you to see," he growls. "And taste, as well."
Vapor Trail flags down one of the circulating staff, whispering something in his ear. The waiter nods briskly, and eventually returns with half-pint glasses filled with a swirling sherbet liquor of some kind. They fizz and bubble, spilling thick, cold steam over the rims of the glasses and onto the tray.
"Ooh!" I stick my face right up to the glasses. "Pretty!"
Sungrazer laughs, and it sounds like a branch cracking in a storm. "Pretty, yes. But the drink itself isn't the great part. It's what we put in it."
My curiosity more than piqued, I lick up one last smear of tart and select a glass, staring down into its smoky depths. "What ... how do I..."
"Just drink it," says Kelvin. "But get a good breath of the steam."
I nod, putting my well-being in the hooves of strangers for not the first time. I pull steam into my nostrils and gulp down the swirling sherbet.
The vapor roiling off the drinks is like nothing I have ever taken into my body before. It's cold, harsh, and pleasingly floral, with a humming aftereffect. My eyes go wide as I drink it all in, and then I sit back, startled.
I hiccough. Blue flame plumes from my nostrils.
The table erupts in laughter as I hiccough again. I have no pride in this moment, and laugh along with the joke. "Fire breath! Amazing!"
"Not always!" says Kelvin, with a grin.
"What do you mean?"
Rainbowshine giggles. "When I drink one, it reverses my gravity! I can stand on the ceiling! Have to stand on the ceiling!"
"Spectrum's wings get all tiny," says Kelvin.
"Let's not talk about my wings, okay, ponies?" Spectrum says.
"I can't stand up for five minutes and have to wiggle around on the floor!" Graham pipes up.
"Sure that's not just the alcohol?" says Sungrazer.
"Not entirely?" Graham replies. "But mostly sure!"
I smile wickedly at Sungrazer. "And what about you, Captain?" I ask as the thin flames slowly vanish from my nose and mouth.
Sungrazer downs his exotic drink. Instantly, his coat shimmers in patterns of vertical stripes.
"Ooh!" says Rainbowshine with facetious awe. "Aah!"
"You know you love it, 'Shine."
"We've never seen fire breath before, though," says Kelvin. "Everypony gets a different effect."
"It lasts just a second or two," says Graham, also downing his drink. "And it's nothing dangerous! Just funny!" He instantly collapses to the floor in an apparently involuntary comedy pratfall. "Ah, that's the stuff!" he says, his voice muffled by the floor.
"What is this magic?" I look around our little group. "What's causing it?"
"Ice," says Sungrazer. His stripes slowly shimmer away. "The ice in these drinks is hailstones harvested from unmanaged weather that circulates the darker places of the earth."
"Pollen in the ice, more specifically," says Graham. He worms his way over to me at floor level. "Old magic gives rise to plants with some odd properties. We think the pollen from these plants gets aerosolized and seeds the hail. This is the last of the stock from last year's perigee. We take it from over the Everfree."
"We'll be going again in a few days, now that we've moved into a proximal position. You should tag along, Princess."
"To the Everfree?" The sweet sherbet turns sour in my belly. "Aunty—I mean, my—I mean, Princess Celestia always said I should never go in there. Said there were 'secrets there better left undisturbed.'"
"We're not going into the Everfree," says Kelvin. "Just the airspace above it."
"Nothing more than a routine hail-gathering expedition!" burbles Rainbowshine, from above, as she holds onto a chandelier for dear life.
"With a bit of a thrill mixed in," Sungrazer rumbles.
"Her Highness will be declining your generous invitation," says Lt. Armor, who eyes the tray of drinks as though they were brewed from pure hemlock. "She has a job now, don't you know."
"As do we all, little stallion," says Sungrazer. "This is our job. I gather water products. I draw pay. I see nothing wrong with Corporate's new ... what, Associate V.P. of Public Relations?"
"That's correct, Captain."
"...tagging along on a hailing expedition to see how CWC contractors work in the field."
"No," says the Lieutenant.
"Lieutenant," I say, "you will not order me around."
Lt. Armor's neck muscles could probably deflect arrows at this point. "I am sorry, ma'am," he says eventually.
I sigh. "Regardless, Lieutenant Armor is right, even though he's being my Fun Police again. I am a Princess of Equestria and, now, a CWC executive. My public image is tied up with both this company and the Hegemony at large. This is not something I can just agree to do on a whim. Certainly not with just a few days of planning." I smile gently at Lt. Armor. "Lieutenant, you wouldn't be able to go fetch my feather boa, would you? All the cold drinks have me feeling a little chilly." I give a little shiver.
He nods curtly and makes his way back toward the cloakroom where I deposited my boa.
When he is out of sight, I lock eyes with Sungrazer.
"Unlike the Lieutenant, I'm capable of recognizing a diversion," he says.
"Obviously," I reply with a grin. "Captain, would the Comet be ready to fly tonight? Instantly?"
"The Comet is always ready, Princess. I keep her burner fueled, even in port. She is hot, around the clock."
Graham leaps from the floor to his hooves, his drink expended. "Wait, we're doing this? Now? Really?"
"Second thoughts, Cracker?"
"Barely have first thoughts even on a good day, Captain!" Graham replies with a salute. "Much less second ones!"
The Comet 's crew and I look at one another for a moment, in giddy disbelief.
"Last one to the ship's the foal of a mule," says Vapor Trail.
We scarper, overturning chairs in our haste.
Laughing, practically tumbling over one another, we rush away from the foreign quarter en route to the docks, our ridiculous gowns and tuxedo tails catching the wind. Half-flying, half-galloping, we find ourselves in a riot of noise and light and color. Between the Bahamoot and the docks lies a series of amusement piers, a riotous maze of skywheels and carnival lights and ball-pitching games. The atmosphere is soaked with the sound of steam calliopes, driven by pressurized CWC-brand steam. I am thrilled beyond the capacity for rational thought. There is a tense knot of yellow-gold joy in my breast, and I am clutching it for dear life.
"This is so crazy!" I do not know how to get the words to come together any better.
"Crazy is what the boss here does!" says Rainbowshine. Graham nods, mouth full, having obtained cotton candy from one of the many brash hawkers lining the piers. He presumably has purged his dinner once again. I can't even bring myself to worry about whether the deed was done somewhere sanitary or not.
"Lies!" roars Sungrazer. "Everything I do while on the job is perfectly in keeping with the CWC Employee Handbook."
"That's a meaningless standard, and you know it," says Kelvin.
"One time, Cap'n had us bind our wings all up and leap off the side of the ship to fetch water out of a river," Vapor Trail offers.
"Excuse me?" I blurt out. "Why in Tartarus would you order your crew to do that?"
"Wasn't an order," Sungrazer says. "Just suggested it. Thought it'd be fun. The boys were on board."
"We tied giant elastic bands to the side, just exactly long enough so's we wouldn't hit the ground," says Spectrum.
"Despite that, I think my earlier question generally stands!"
"Why?" Sungrazer leaps into the air and throws his forehooves wide. "Why not? Most everypony in this entire world goes through life not knowing what a rush it is to come within a hoof-width of disaster. Even in Cloudsdale! Especially true in your Hegemony."
"It's not my Hegemony anymore!" I holler. "I'm a Princess of Cloudsdale!"
Rainbowshine whoops, thumping me on the shoulder. Sungrazer grins. "In that case, Princess, I'd say that means living as Cloudsdale ponies do. Taking risks. Mastering the limits of your body. Pushing the envelope."
"I am all about pushing those envelopes! I’m like one of my Aunty's majordomos directly after taking down a dictated letter!"
"Good energy," says Kelvin. "Next time, tone down the cringe a little."
"You're out of line, Mister Kelvin," laughs Sungrazer. "I thought it was sweet."
I feel a flush in my cheeks. It is invisible, thank goodness, since my face is lit with a riotous rainbow of colors from the nearby carnival lights. "Hey! Captain Sungrazer?"
He pivots toward me. "Yes?" he rasps.
"Silly question! Bear with me! What's the nature of love?"
Graham laughs so hard that he chokes on his candyfloss. Sungrazer's eyes twinkle at me.
"Ooh, Cap'n got so drunk at dinner that he's going to get poetic on us."
"Hush up, Vapor," says Sungrazer. "The lady asked a serious question and it deserves a serious answer." Sungrazer returns his attention to me. "I'd say that perfect love is like perfect freedom. It means finding someone who'll help push you past your fears and your doubts. Somepony who can get you past the things that hold you back from being the best 'whatever' you can be." His smile turns sly again. "And, it can't hurt if she's a warm body on a cold night, ey? So, Princess, are you going to instruct me how I'm wrong? Rumor has it you're an expert on the topic."
"I'm not teaching you the right answer," I say. "I'm hoping you can teach me the right answer."
"Aha," says Sungrazer. "Was that the right answer?"
I roll it over in my mind. "Freedom?"
"Yes."
"I think," I say eventually, "that it's a good enough answer for tonight."
"Sometimes, the night you're in is all that matters."
"I'm on board with that.” We resume our gallop to the docks.
A short rush later, I finally behold the Comet . She is sleek, with clean lines and aggressive propulsion vanes, made of solid-looking yellow oak. She looks like a vicious bird. I do not know what I expected a water-gathering sloop to look like, but this isn't it. Comet doesn't look like some kind of plodding old trawler. She looks fast. She looks agile. She looks sexy.
"She looks so ... new!" I rein in my descriptive language for the sake of propriety.
"Well, that's where you're wrong," says Kelvin. "Comet is pushing twenty years in-air. She's breaking all the time, tell the truth."
"On account of how much punishment we give her," says Graham.
"She only looks new because we keep replacing the bits that break with new parts. Must have replaced damn near the entire ship by now."
"So, in that case, she's not really twenty years in-air, is she?" I say.
"Ah, Princess Mi Amore is feeding us the Ship of Clew thought experiment!" says Sungrazer.
"Why, Captain! You're a stallion of learning!"
"Thank you, m'lady.” Sungrazer touches his cap. Graham facetiously mimics the gesture, but is silenced by a glare from Sungrazer. He looks back at his vessel, less with pride and more with critique. "Comet 's the same ship she's always been, to answer your question. A ship isn't a collection of boards and rope. A ship is an idea. A ship is what you think of her."
"And what do you think of her?"
"She's a good ship. She takes abuse, but she takes it well, and she's never let me down for long. And that's what the Comet is, no matter how many planks we replace."
And then, totally unannounced, he grabs me about the waist. My eyes go wide as, with a few powerful beats of his wings, he hauls us both up from the docks. We land with a heavy thud on the deck of his ship.
"Deckhooves!" he shouts. "Prepare the lines! Rainbowshine, fire up the burners! Graham, unlock the propulsion vanes! Kelvin, to the helm! All hooves, begin preparations to leave port!"
He looks at me. I am vitally conscious of his hoof still around my waist.
"And Princess," he says, "hold on tight."
When it comes to high-performance air sailing, "hold on tight" is not just a dramatic thing to say. It is an important and extremely literal instruction. Sungrazer is apparently at least a little concerned that I am not holding on tight enough, because he keeps grabbing me whenever there's the least jolt. If I trusted Sungrazer any less, I'd say that he was using it as a convenient excuse to get his hooves all over me, but his touch isn't intimate; it's credibly cautionary. That doesn't stop me from getting all silly-flutters about it. I am over one thousand years old, and I feel like a giddy schoolfilly.
Comet slips smoothly out of port, her vanes propelling us forward uncommonly hard as soon as we hit clear sky. Her piecemeal nature was not immediately obvious on a surface visual inspection, but now that we are underway and straining at the traces, you can feel that her bits don't quite fit together with mathematical perfection. Her joints creak a little, her ropes slip a bit, and occasionally, I can hear something vibrate that probably ideally should not be vibrating. She doesn't feel unsound, as such, but the experience reminds you that the Comet is indeed, a collection of fitted-together parts, no matter what her captain feels about her.
I don't care. I am loving it. I am loving the feel of the wind in my comically outsized mane, flowing out behind me like a banner of war. I love the sting of the wind in my eyes. I love...
...I love not being constrained. Sungrazer's protective hold notwithstanding, I feel free, in a way I haven't felt in decades. I have spent my entire life as a relay baton being passed from caretaker to caretaker, from nuns to sorceresses to alicorns to lieutenants. Here on the deck of the Comet , I feel like I did on that dreadful day so long ago when the Heart-Eaters attacked the Fortress of Song. For one moment in time, as I stood on the edge of my fillyhood home staring out into a dark and twisted wood, there was a gap in the endless cycle of watchfulness. Just me; and before me, an unexplored world. I am sucking in this feeling like oxygen, like a legionnaire guzzling water at an oasis. Maybe Sungrazer is right. Maybe freedom is what love means.
Comet heels around, and the Canterhorn swings into view. Canterlot itself glitters like a lamp hung from the side of the great mountain. For a brief, mad second, I think of begging Sungrazer to do a brazen flyby of my Aunty's private chambers. I imagine rude things to say to her that I would never, realistically, ever say. But, no, that's not our goal. We're not headed all the way to Canterlot, but to old Everfree, a grim and tangled forest just a bit off the Canterhorn's base. A much smaller jewel of lamplight marks a settlement on its rim, probably the prosaically named "Ponyville" if I've got my geography brain on right. I dimly recall that they grow fruit there. Some towns just don't have a lot going for them.
There is a storm gathering above the Everfree, but not a single weather team in sight. It is so strange to see wild, unmanaged weather. Even in the failing nautical twilight, the clouds look ugly and bruise-black. Lightning flickers inside them, the bolts not lined up neatly for deployment but instead rattling weird and loose. I wonder for a moment how the rural weather ponies in the little town below deal with all that chaos right on their stoop. I wonder if they hate it.
"There we go," says Sungrazer, gazing at the massive cumulonimbus structures. "Hailstones for days. We won't even have the hold space. There'll be ice going spare."
"Enough to fully replenish Cloudsdale's strategic novelty party ice stockpiles," Kelvin says from the helm. He barks out a laugh.
"Laugh if you will, Mister Kelvin," I say. "I think it's grand that the CWC gathers all kinds of water, fancy novelty water included."
Kelvin snorts. I look at him crosswise.
"Don't be such a ninny all the time, Kelvin.” Rainbowshine bustles up. "Captain, Graham says we're on a good approach vector. Impact with the liminal edge of the first thunderhead in twenty minutes." Sungrazer nods his acknowledgement.
"What's there to be a ninny about?" I ask the little first mare.
"Some ponies with their heads way too far up their own tailholes have this theory that there's too much novelty water being collected. Boutique stuff. That there’s not enough, you know, just plain old water."
"Do the numbers, Shine," says Kelvin, in a tone that suggests this is not the first time this discussion has played out.
"I don't have to do the numbers!" says Rainbowshine. "You can see the tanker ships go out every day! With your own eyes!"
"Yeah. They make a big deal of it. Just enough to make it look like the numbers add up. But they don't."
"They're collecting water, though," I say. "They have to be. We're not running out of rain."
"See?" says Rainbowshine. "Listen to the princess, Kel. They're just really efficient with what they collect."
"It's not a realistic level of efficiency," says Kelvin. "It might not even be physically possible."
"Quiet, the both of you," growls Sungrazer. "Miss Shine, thank you for the update. Mister Kelvin, keep your mind on the helm."
"Aye, sir," says Kelvin. He squints into the dark, then whistles through his teeth. "That stormfront's a real looker, Captain."
"Pretty as a peach."
"A really old peach," I say. I join him at the rail. "More like a plum that's gone off. We're heading into that?"
A sidelong glance from Captain Sungrazer. "Cold hooves, Your Royalness? You want to head below?"
I stiffen my lip. "Absolutely not. Pegasus life!"
"Good. You have wings. You'll be fine."
"Hey, yeah! Just as well my unicorn retainer isn't here, right?"
"For a couple of reasons," says Sungrazer. He gives the storm, on which we are advancing, a steely glare. "Graham! What percentage of safe capacity are we running on the vanes?"
"Eighty percent, Mon Capitaine !" comes Graham's voice from below.
"Take us to one-twenty," Sungrazer calls. "See if we can't shave off some time. Get back before the bar closes."
"Aye, sir!" Comet bucks, shudders, then evens out, and we are carried at speed toward the pulsing maelstrom.
I am soaked. Absolutely soaked. My sequined dress practically sloshes around my shoulders, and my mane hangs heavily in my eyes as I am tossed rail to rail. I am dimly aware of someone shouting with joy. I am dimly aware that it is me. Lieutenant Armor would hate what I'm doing right now. Celestia would hate what I'm doing now. I don't care. Neither one of them is here. The asterite heart pendant at my throat shines like a searchlight into the dark.
It is our third pass through the main body of the storm. Comet 's hail skimmer is out, causing the deck to lurch erratically every time a cross-gust takes us. Theoretically, the skimmer is supposed to be both tight enough and porous enough that it catches hail but not the wind, but with gusts of this intensity, it doesn’t entirely work. A chunk of ice as large as my hoof careens at my head and is deflected by the ward my pendant is emitting. It ricochets off, splintering a section of rail.
"Sorry!" I shout to Captain Sungrazer, pointing at the rail.
"No matter!" he bellows back. "It can be replaced! Everything can be replaced!" A shifting of the deck throws me bodily at him, and he catches me in his hooves.
"Captain!" Kelvin shouts, as he struggles with the helm. "How about putting the novice in the cabin?"
"Denied! I'm not a novice! I'm an associate vice president!"
"Captain?" repeats Kelvin.
Sungrazer sucks on his teeth. "Let her stay! She knows what she's doing!"
"Thank you!" I shout over the storm. First Auric and now Sungrazer, I am really striking it rich with folks trusting my judgment.
"Trawl net's filling up, Captain!" comes Spectrum's voice from the stern. "We should haul it into the hold!"
"Wait until we're done with our pass, Mister Spectrum! We can't shift our wind signature in this!"
"We're taking on too much ice!" he shouts back. "We need to open the flaps and jettison some!"
"Jettison some of what?" shouts Vapor, also from the stern. "The hail? The stuff we came here to harvest?"
"Just some of it!" Spectrum protests.
"Comet will hold, Mister Spectrum! Mister Kelvin, come about! Vent the envelope, Miss Shine! We'll get wetter the lower we get, but we'll drop below the worst of the convection!"
"Aye, Captain!" shouts Rainbowshine, her gown just as soaked as mine. Straining against the helm, Kelvin hauls us hard to starboard. We heel about again, and my heart rises to my throat. I have never, not once in my life, felt this viscerally alive. I want more. Need more.
I hardly realize what I am doing as I crawl, hoof over hoof, to the little railed platform just over the bowsprit. Nopony watches me go. Sungrazer is busy barking orders to his crew, and the rest of them are at stations. They're busy, and I trust myself. My position directly at Comet 's bow grants me an unparalleled view of the frantic arcs of raw lightning ahead of us. They dance against the dark like the world's angriest fireflies, illuminating the great bluffs and chasms of roiling thunderclouds. It is like staring into a living canyon. I rise up and spread my wings against the storm. I close my eyes in exultation and laugh.
The trawl net rips.
In an instant, one quarter of the load of gathered hail sprays out behind us in a white ice contrail. Comet lurches ahead, suddenly under too much thrust for her reduced weight, and we are caught by a wicked cross-squall, made worse by our asymmetrical drag. I am thrown from the platform, clutching at the bow lines with my hooves.
My heart racing, I ignite my horn and focus my telekinesis on the bowsprit, hoping to give myself a point of leverage by which I can pull myself back on deck as the Comet rights herself. I struggle, groaning with exertion. A tiny part of my brain notes that I have gone from "viscerally alive" to "struggling for life" in the span of three heartbeats.
There is a crash of thunder, and suddenly a hailstone the size of a cinder brick shears the bowsprit clean off. No longer directly attached to the Comet and under the force of active telekinesis, the bowsprit hurtles directly toward my face. I reflexively snuff my aura, but I lose what little grip I had on the bow lines. I spread my wings to avoid disaster.
It is not enough. The broken bowsprit impacts my head, sending me tumbling away from the ship. I am briefly conscious of the sensation of falling, and then everything is blackness.
