Uncertain Weather
Admiral Biscuit
For EFNW Iron Author 2024
“Tell them,” Commander Hurricane said, “that we cannot send any more rain at this time.”
His interpreter looked over at the two earth ponies, standing uncomfortably on a rug in Commander Hurricane’s office. The cloud floor hadn’t been firmed up all the way just yet, and there was a risk they’d fall through if they stood on their own hooves.
Words were exchanged, and Commander Hurricane frowned as the exchange between the two earth ponies and his interpreter started to get heated. “They say that if they don’t have rain the crops won’t grow and then there won’t be enough food for everypony.”
“I know that.” Slamming his forehooves on a cloud table wasn’t all that satisfying, but he did it anyway, knocking a pair of divots in the surface. I’ve barely got Pegasopolis organized and now I have to deal with earth ponies, too?
The earth ponies had recoiled back, and he plastered a fake smile on his face. Deep breath, getting angry won’t help anypony. “We--our resources are strained. We’re working on that, but we don’t have enough pegasi who can work cloud duty.”
It was a problem. They’d lost so many in the war, and he didn’t trust the peace treaty to hold.
“We will do what we can, I assure you.” Commander Hurricane stepped around his table and bumped hooves with each of the earth pony envoys in turn. “Try to conserve what water you can, and we’ll give you as much as we can. Together we’ll get through this.”
If I pull ponies out of the hipparchia, we won’t have defense if the war starts up again . . . but if we can’t get food, it’ll be either a war or a rebellion.
Or both.
Leading his soldiers into battle was much easier than governing a city. Commander Hurricane sighed and stepped out of his temporary office: walls and a roof that a foal could punch through, a floor that couldn’t support two guests.
Still.
He took flight, surveying his domain, the burgeoning city of Pegasopolis. Reconnaissance flights circled overhead, and all around him workers were towing clouds in, setting them on flat spots in the city that had been designated as cloud-formings sites.
From there, craftsmares formed them into building clouds and then carried them off, adding on to the barracks and the granary (currently so empty that it was a joke), setting up the foundations of the hippodrome.
He watched the balloon that had brought the earth ponies as it sank back to earth, back to the fields below, already blooming with new growth, demanding water.
I could slow down construction, we could turn some of those clouds into weather clouds. That would affect the morale of the pegasi, but it might be a necessary sacrifice.
“Commander?”
He snapped his head around at the voice.
“There’s a petitioner to see you.”
Commander Hurricane sighed. “Is it another crisis?”
“I don’t know. She said it was important.”
***
The device sat in the middle of Commander Hurricane’s desk. It wasn’t much to look at; a short squat brassy amphora, glittering with magical sigils.
The tiny wisp of cloustuff emanating from the mouth, however. . . .
“So this makes clouds?”
Cirrus nodded, and poked at the amphora. “The runes around the base concentrate moisture from the air and condense it inside. According to my calculations these cloud-bottles could be made much larger, large enough perhaps to supply the whole city.”
Commander Hurricane nodded. Getting clouds was a perennial problem; the city demanded so many for construction and then what was left over got used for weather. Most days when he looked around Pegasopolis, the only other clouds he could see in the sky were those far distant clouds that the pegasi were harvesting.
If he could make clouds here, that would solve all his problems.
“What would it take to build a full-sized cloud-bottle? No--a full factory? A proper weather factory?”
TWO YEARS LATER
The two envoys stood before Commander Hurricane, their hooves resting lightly on the compacted cloud.
So far, things had been going well. The entire eastern end of Pegasopolis had been turned into a weather factory, now with three cloud bottles pumping out clouds as fast as they could. It still wasn’t enough; they were now experiencing a vapor shortage, and his smartest pegasi were working on ways to get more water up to Pegasopolis. Zephyr had some ideas on that front.
If they solved the vapor supply problem, and if they got a couple more cloud-bottles completed, they’d be able to supply several counties with rain and have plenty left over to complete the hippodrome and the dorms and everything else that needed building.
“If you could spare a little more rain,” one of the envoys said in broken Pegos, “we could get our reservoirs filled and our fields all productive.”
Commander Hurricane nodded and replied in Ponish. “We can. Our weather factory is almost fully-operational.” He smiled: there were still a few techinical glitches to work out, but he’d seen it in operation and knew what it could do. He had full confidence that Zephyr would solve the vapor problem, and after that they’d be off to the races. The peace treaty would hold, the raids would be a thing of the past--he’d seen the earth pony villages being built, watched as they cleared fields and put up barns.
Irrigation ditches, too--they wouldn't need them once he got the weather factory working properly. “Gentlemares, we are on the cusp of a new ponish society, one where the three tribes are united, where you get all the weather to make your crops thrive.”
And so it seemed.
He’d started to thin out the ranks of the hipparchia, sending some to the burgeoning cloud factory. He’d halved the reconnaissance patrols, retasking them into water-hauling duties. It was brutal work and he knew it, but once Zephyr solved the problem of getting water up to the city, they wouldn’t have to deal with a bucket brigade any more.
Every night, pegasi were going to sleep in their own barracks with sore wings, yes, but full bellies.
SIX MONTHS LATER
Commander Hurricane surveyed the fields below him with dismay. Instead of being a vibrant green, they were all brown and wilted, owing to a lack of rainfall.
It wasn’t from a lack of water vapor. Zephyr had figured out how to make a tornado to suck water up into the cloud, and the bucket brigades were a thing of the past.
It wasn’t from a lack of cloud-bottles. They had three and a fourth was under construction.
The problem was that they just didn’t work like they used to. They were constantly breaking, and even when they were fixed, they didn’t make the same quality of cloud as they had in the past.
Construction on the hippodrome had ceased, and his office had been broken up to serve as rainclouds. Most of his apartment, too. The barracks had been stripped as well, and it still wasn’t enough.
He spotted a balloon rising up and took flight in the direction of the weather factory.
Cirrus was surveying it, fluttering around the cloud bottles and then barking orders at the pegasi working the clouds as each one reluctantly issued forth from the maw of the bottle.
Cirrus did not look good. Her wings were unpreened, her fur matted; there were deep bags under her eyes. A familiar enough sight; he’d seen plenty of his soldiers during the war that looked like that.
“Cirrus,” he barked. “Come with me.”
The two of them flew off to a small street cafe. Already the prices of the food had risen, in anticipation of a bad harvest in the fall.
He was the governor of Pegasopolis and his meals were official business, but even if he ate for free it was good to know what other ponies were paying for food.
“What’s going on with your weather bottles? They were working and now they aren’t.”
“I don’t know.” Cirrus admitted, a tone of defeat in her voice. “Everything should work, I’ve checked the sigil and everything, and it all seems to work fine when I foal-sit the bottle, but as soon as I leave it alone it stops working right.” She poked at her food and then took a bite.
As if a dam had burst, she shoved her muzzle down in her bowl and bolted her food, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment as she realized that Commander Hurricane was watching her, mouth agape.
“Sorry, sir, I . . . I think I forgot to eat breakfast this morning.”
He could plainly see her ribs--it wasn’t just breakfast this morning.
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“Well, I get little naps whenever I can.”
Commander Hurricane couldn’t see the parched fields below him from the cafe, but he didn’t have to; he knew if they didn’t get rain soon the crop would be lost and they’d be back to foraging for wild food in the grasslands, raids would inevitably begin even if he forbade them. If they couldn’t solve this problem soon . . . “Cirrus, I order you to take the next two days off, to sleep and relax, I’ll send a pony around with proper food. Only then shall you get back to figuring out what’s wrong with the weather bottles.”
“Sir?”
“Please excuse me, I need to meet with the earth pony envoys.”
***
There wasn’t much to the cloud bottles--not to his eye, anyway. He still had the first one that Cirrus had made on a shelf in his bedroom, and it sat there happily misting the room with the thin trail of cloud that constantly drifted out of it.
If it was really dry sometimes it would get the moisture from the shelf below it.
There’d been no need to plaster a fake smile on his face when he’d talked with the earth ponies. They could see from the remains of his office--a few wispy clouds left of the foundation--that he was trying his best, and they were too.
There wasn’t much to be said at that meeting, and he’d returned to his room to contemplate the cloud bottle.
He grabbed it in his hooves and flew off to the weather factory, where dozens of dejected pegasi were coaxing malformed clouds out of the bottles, trying to form them into some semblance of shape. Half of them just came apart into vapor, raining back down onto the factory floor.
Commander Hurricane set his bottle down, watching as the little puff of vapor from its mouth thickened, formed into a proper cloud. All around him, the clouds from the other bottles were improving, too--they were more substantive.
He moved over to the first bottle in the row, the oldest--the cloudstuff issuing forth was good and thick, bouncy, bursting with potential. He tore a tuft off and rolled it around in his hooves, working his magic into it, briefly condensing it into a raincloud, and then thickening it into a brick. He wasn’t particularly skilled in cloudwork, but like all pegasi he could do it.
His mind wandered back to past campaigns, to setting up their cloud bivouacs in the night, fortresses and encampments, defensive breastworks--
He passed the cloud off to another pony and picked up his cloud bottle. Why isn’t it working?
***
That night, he circled above the weather factory. He’d ground charcoal into his fur and feathers until he was as dark as the night, and he’d strapped on his armor. He didn’t yet know why but he had the feeling he’d need it.
The cloud output from the afternoon had dried up once again. Almost as soon as he’d left, in fact. He’d watched from the roof of his home--odds were that was the last time he’d be seeing anything from the roof of his home, since it was scheduled to be removed tomorrow to make emergency rainclouds for the fields below.
While nopony would tell him to his face that they’d lost confidence in his governorship, he knew. Their smiles around him weren’t genuine any more, there was hesitation when he gave orders . . . he could keep power for a while, but maybe it was better for everypony if he didn’t. Maybe Pegasopolis didn’t need him any more.
And then he happened to glance down just as a pegasus bumped up against one of the cloud bottles, he saw the cloud at its base change, and he pulled his lips back, baring his teeth.
Sabotage.
There was nothing wrong with the cloud bottles, but there was everything wrong with some of the ponies working them.
And where there was one, there would be more. As tempting as it was to swoop down and deal with the one, he stayed all night, circling and watching.
***
Most of them came willingly enough. Some of them confessed, and one of them named other ponies.
The trial was short, and the sentence inevitable. Commander Hurricane could have asked the judge for mercy but he did not.
“You were one of my best,” he told a prisoner before her execution was to take place. “You helped build Pegasopolis . . . why, then, did you try and destroy it?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she spit.
“Try me.”
“Pegasi aren’t meant to work in factories,” she said. “Making clouds, making rain, being subservient to the earth ponies. We want food, we fly down and take it. We don’t accept tribute, we fight for what is rightfully ours.
“I thought that this city was to be a proper castle in the sky, a fortress even the unicorns couldn’t conquer . . . when you started stripping ponies out of the hipparchia and sending them on bucket brigade, I knew you’d gone soft.” She spit on his hooves and he tensed a forehoof to strike her, then relented. There was no point.
***
“We have solved the problem of rainclouds,” Commander Hurricane told the envoys. Not that he needed to; the sky was grey and the rain driving down. The crops were saved.
He’d never admit it was a weasel in the factory, one of his own who’d started the sabotage, although he supposed they could see it in his eyes.
Still, they said nothing, just nodded. “If you can keep the rain up, we can make up for lost time and get a nearly full harvest in.”
“I can,” he assured them. “I will. And with that, our villages will thrive.”
“Our people will thrive.” They all broke out in smiles as the rain came down.
Author's Note
Abbreviated author's notes this time, 'cause I didn't have much time for research.
For those of you who don't know, every year Everfree Northwest holds what they call the "Iron Author" contest. You're given three prompts which must be used in the story (meaningfully; you can't just throw the word in the text) and two hours in which to write, and then all the fics are judged.
This year the prompts were smile, weasel, and gubernatorial.
My first instinct was to ponify the current American election, but that wouldn't have made for a good story, so I wracked my brain and eventually came up with the idea of Commander Hurricane and the early days of Pegasopolis.
This fic won an honorable mention from Horizon.
It is presented exactly as it was submitted (except for fixing two spelling errors).
