"Dear, how could you not think to inform me?" Pipp shied away from her phone and the angered matron on it. "Really, this is a momentous discovery for all pegasus kind. Their queen really should be involved, don't you think?"

Zipp nudged her sister with a smile on her face. "Sounds like someone's hearing it."

Sunny nudged Zipp right back. "Be nice! She has a point."

"Quite right! The current Queen ought to be involved with such matters." Queen Haven scowled at Zipp just as intensely. "You could have told me, but you didn't. You share at least some of the blame here, Zipp, before you think you're entirely off the hook."

Zipp blushed deeply at the scolding from her mother. "Yeah, yeah, I know." She looked down with shame on her face. "So I forgot! It's no big deal, we've been busy."

Pipp moved the phone to focus on Rain who was helping Sparky cut out paper shapes with her hooves gently holding his claws to make sure they were on the right spot on the paper at the right time without anycreature getting hurt in the process. "Rain Shower is adorable, and having a good time. I didn't want to swamp her with too much, um, everything."

Haven relaxed a little. "Well, that's a far better reason. Still, she is the key to a pegasus birthright we didn't even know we had. This is an important matter. I will be stopping by. That pony should be here, in Zephyr Heights."

Zipp sighed loudly. "Mom, I get it! I know we're royalty and all, but it's fine to have somepony living with friends elsewhere."

Pipp rubbed Zipp's shoulder soothingly with a big smile on her face at her sister trying to spare Rain the overly stuffy possibility of becoming a project for her mom. "Mom, seriously. Rain's having a fine time here. She can teach pegasi about weather magic right here. In fact, she's already doing it! She's teaching right with me."

Haven threw up her hooves at that information from her older daughter, since it meant Zipp was even more involved in all of this too. "And I'm only hearing about this now? It doesn't look good for the queen to be the last to know about something this enormous! Did you expect me to be happy when pegasi all around me just start doing this and I'm the only one not able to?"

Zipp grunted at that argument from her mom. "Well, you don't have to worry about that because I'm learning too." She huffed softly and glanced away from the screen. "Is it really that bad?"

"Yes!" Haven leaned in on the camera. "Even my daughters, ahead of me. Expect me shortly, and I'll be learning this weather control too. Really, thinking you can leave me out of this." The call ended, though they could easily imagine the grumblings of their mother.

"And there it is." Zipp got up and sighed softly at the screen showing they had been disconnected. "Mom doesn't let anything get in her way once she's set on it."

Rain joined them with Sparky on her back and crawled up on the couch with him. "You too look very serious. Anything I can help with?" Sparky made a noise of support, just as ready to lend a small hand to any project.

"We were just talking about my mom." Zipp motioned towards the phone in Pipp's hoof. "She's going to be stopping by to learn this weather magic thing, I guess. Nothing we can do to stop her when she gets all intense about something like this."

Pipp threw up her hooves. "Sorry. I really should have just, you know, called her. I mean earlier. You don't mind, I hope? She's gonna want to learn weather control too."

Rain thought about that for a moment. "Sure! She can learn! Any pony can! It's just practice and effort. She'll pick it up just fine in no time." She cuddled Sparky closer to herself with a big smile on her face. "But, wait, queen? We have queens now?! Wow, things have changed." She clopped one hoof to her face. "Back in my days," she said with an overly old-sounding tone. "We had princesses, and we liked them!"

Zipp glanced aside at Pipp and back at Rain. "Uh." She pointed at herself. "Princesses, right here." She pointed to Pipp and herself. "If you're missing them so much."

Rain glanced between the two of them. "But there's only two of you." She motioned around them at the sprawling city below and around them. "Maretime Bay isn't exactly small either. And there's wherever your mom's from. That's a lot of space for just two princesses. Then again, we used to have just one and she did a lot." Rain frowned with thought, tapping her chin. "You're going to have to tell me how this works now."

Pipp pulled out her phone to snap a selfie with Rain, while pointing at her, and added the caption #herhighness to it before hitting send with a flick of her hoof across the screen. "Look, it's not complicated. Mom, Queen Haven, is the queen of Zephyr Heights, where pegasi live, um, mostly. As you've seen, some don't. Like us! And all the pegasi you and Zipp are teaching."

Zipp laughed loudly at Pipp putting herself on the spot. "If you're going to say it like that, then what about you?" She fluttered her wings.

Pipp grunted softly. "The fairest and most beautiful and most popular social media pony in all of Equestria?"

Zipp pointed at Rain. "I more meant, how did it work where or whenever you came from? You said you had princesses, but no queens?"

"Not a one." Rain set Sparky down to dash off. "Princess was the highest a pony could aspire to, and most of them didn't 'aspire' to it so much as fall over it. But they were all good ponies, the best!"

Pipp mouthed silently to Zipp with a tilt of her head and a touch to her chest at this statement from Rain Shower about the greatness of princesses and how there were no queens before she pulled out her phone and started typing in notes in her notepad. "Some of that sounds familiar to what Sunny's talked about a few times. Like her favorite pony ever, Princess Twilight was it?"

Rain clapped her hooves in response to that name being mentioned and bounced up and down with a delighted noise on the couch cushion she was sitting on. "Yes! That's her! So nice! So gentle! Always had a word of encouragement! So smart! And could she make anything happen!" She lifted her hooves to the ceiling. "She was a great princess. It was the saddest thing, learning she wasn't around anymore. I was a teeny, tiny, barely even counts, princess. I was so small I tucked myself away and nopony even really noticed."

Pipp waved off those comments with a swipe of her hoof in front of herself for such a downbeat remark from Rain at this point. "Don't even think about it! We can't let that get to us!" She touched her hoof to Rain's shoulder reassuringly. "And also, seriously? A princess? You?"

Rain lifted her hooves as if to make it all abundantly clear she was indeed, once upon a time, one of those. "I traded in my horn." She pointed up at the lack of one she had. "But I thought it was for the best. I want to start over, not just come in with old stuff in a new age. I don't deserve to just step in and be all high and mighty."

Pipp hummed softly with amusement at Rain Shower talking about being a princess like it was something she didn't really have the right to enjoy. "Look, you're awesome! So if you were a princess, that's amazing!" She made a show of bringing up her social media page on her phone and checking her own numbers briefly. "You just keep being you, which is a pretty great thing to be, from where I'm sitting. I'd say I'm jealous, but then I'd be lying. Pipp's also a pretty great thing to be." She giggled with a grin. "Not giving it up."

Zipp hoof bumped Pipp lightly. "We got it." She twirled in the air to face Rain. "And so do you. You're bringing back a pegasus magic. That's a big deal! Be a little proud of yourself. Speaking of that, you'll be teaching tomorrow, right? The students were pretty stoked about the idea."

Rain's cheeks warmed at that encouragement from Zipp and that last bit about her teaching. "If you think I can! They'll be in good hooves! I'll make sure of it!" She hopped up with a giggle. "We'll start with approaching a cloud. Remember that? You were so surprised when I just sat down on one like it was a fluffy couch."

Zipp blushed with embarrassment at that memory being brought up like that from earlier. "Oh, yeah, I remember that." She cleared her throat. "But yeah! We'll see you tomorrow."

Rain reached out and squeezed Zipp into a tight hug for a moment before pulling away again with a cheerful smile on her face. "There! See you!" She waved to Pipp and headed towards the door excitedly with a spring in her step that hadn't been there in quite some time. "I can't wait! It's all going so well!" She kicked at the air with joy just outside the door before taking off in a light blur towards the streets and along them towards the house. Not just any house. Her house!

Her giggles rebounded in volume, thinking about that home. "Thanks Comfs!" She threw a salute at the sky, sure that, somehow, Comforting knew she was being thanked. "Oh!" She tilted her head at some colts digging up dirt on a plot of land across the street from her new home and zipped over to them with a smile on her face at watching them working hard. "Whatcha up to?"

A colt looked up at her from digging in the ground with a big smile on his face. "Oh! Just planting a tree, y'know?" He looked down at the hole he had dug with a little groan of dismay at how slowly it was going. "And it's going well!" He didn't sound convinced.

Rain frowned at that situation, seeing what needed to be done and jumping into action. She landed next to the hole and rammed her hooves into the soil, digging it up quickly and tossing it out of the way where it couldn't just fill the hole back up again. "Now it's going well."

The colts all gathered around and gasped in awe at Rain's ability to dig at speeds they could only dream of and making short work of this very specific problem for them that had been vexing them all morning long with just how much effort it was taking. The power of being an adult was a vast and amazing one, at least in their young eyes. With communal cheers, the got to planting the little tree in the new hole and throwing dirt over its roots.

Rain collapsed next to them and sighed contently at a job well done. "It's gonna grow big and strong one day." She curled up with her hooves on the ground next to her and closed her eyes with exhaustion from digging like that so suddenly. "Big, and strong. Oh! Hey, I'm Rain Shower." She pointed towards her house just across the road. "I moved in across from you."

The colts all talked excitedly at this pegasus moving into their neighborhood, but only for a little bit before they started running off with hoofsteps echoing across the ground. They wanted to go play now that the hard part was over and done with after having been delayed all day already from this problem of the hole not going in quickly enough.

Rain inclined her head, losing her little friends so suddenly. "Ah, to be young again." She hopped up to her hooves and shook off the dirt in her coat. "Hope they have a good time." She turned for her house and left without feeling too bad about it. The colts had their own things to do.

She arrived home, twirling around with wings outstretched to face the sun high overhead that warmed her nicely on that summer day and she headed inside to rest on her hooves in front of the house's tall windows and simply stand there gazing out at the wonderful sight of the ocean. "Loving this view." She leaned against the glass with a happy little sigh at all of it in front of her.

From somewhere nearby, there was the sound of a chain rattling before the splash of water rose up from below and caught her attention enough to make her glance over at the edge of the property where that sound had come from. She pushed open the window and slipped out to get closer to the edge. "Everypony okay out there?"

A stallion from earlier called back up from down below in front of her house with a smile on his face at hearing Rain Shower's voice above him. "Nothing to worry about! Just getting some work done down here!"

Rain relaxed on seeing him, and not being in trouble. "Oh, okay! But what are you doing?"

"Sprinklers! Got them hooked up just fine! I wanted to check it all over before dark, just to be sure everything's running just right." He turned the water on with his hoof on the device's lever and rain started falling around them, pelting Rain's coat and sprinkling the grass all around her.

"Oh!" She hopped back, but was still being showered. "Ha! Wow." She looked thoughtful more than shocked. "If you can control the weather, you'd never think of this. I never thought of this!" She twirled in place, still being rained on. "Rain on demand, without clouds. Amazing."

He flicked it off with a laugh and shook himself dry in place while smiling at Rain standing there with water dripping from her mane and coat. "Well, I'll be seeing you around then, Miss Shower! Enjoy your sprinkler." He paused in his escape. "Oh, there's a lever just over there." He pointed to one by the house that was far closer than the pipes he had been working on. "I suggest using that instead of climbing all the way down there."

Rain followed where he was pointing with her gaze and raced towards the lever he had pointed out for her to reach out with her hoof to flip it on just to feel the cool spray from the sprinklers washing over her mane and body like a gentle, cool bath on a hot day to take the edge off of how warm she felt.

"Perfect!" She flicked it back off, making a mental note about it. "That's really cool!" She turned for the stallion, but they had already walked away. "Thanks," she said to nopony at all. Shaking off the water, she headed back inside. "Today has been great."

Author's Note

Rain Shower has become quite a character, just stealing a story arc all to herself really, and I don't even feel mad. And you?

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