The Sky Above

Twilight squirmed under her blankets, rolling over again for the umpteenth time. Judging by the fledgling light bleeding through the heavy curtains, she guessed it was not an hour before sunrise. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, she rolled once again onto her back to stare up at the low, beamed ceiling. The day before had gone about as well as it could have, all things considered: she’d entered a new town, met new peoples and commited plenty of new faux pas.

The fact that all the changelings she’d met seem to be able to adapt to act pony-like in the blink of an eye should have been comforting – she knew that – but she couldn’t help but find herself feeling... irritated that she couldn’t seem to get a handle on them when they were just being themselves.

She also couldn’t help but feel a tad jealous of Rainbow for how easily she could.

Grumbling, she rolled upright and tossed aside her duvet, snatching up her nearby jackets the moment she’d done so: the room was chilly, though only just – insulation aside, it was the wind that really bit. Their gear was strewn about the little room, wherever they’d happened to drop it the night before; taking care to weave around it so as not to wake the others, she crossed to the door and slipped out.

The hallway was short, with only a few doors on the one side and a bank of windows lining the other. A quick glance outside showed little more than a pair of ‘lings crossing the stony alcove in the bluey predawn. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she continued on towards the main room and its cozy couches, dimly hoping that the change of scenery might help calm her nerves.

Stepping up onto one of the windowside couches, she curled up into a tight ball and took to staring out into the valley below. Somewhere out there, beyond a distant bend and up the frozen streambed, lay the little gully they were looking for. It was supposed to be marked – for what that was worth in this weather – but the twisting gulches beyond were, from the way the doe had described it, all navigated by visual cues alone.

She shuffled into a comfier position, her tail swishing close enough to nuzzle into. This would be the last of it, she figured – either they’d strike big and find the sliver, or they’d fail and go home. Being so far away from the city, to say nothing of how far away she was from her home, was simultaneously exhilarating and frightening, a balance leaning all the farther to the latter the further into the backcountry they roamed. As much as she knew she’d be disappointed if they ended up finding out the sliver was just in the next town over or some such, she needed to draw a line somewhere, and that somewhere was here.

It certainly didn’t help that the thing might end up being a bust for her Everfree plans, either.

Twilight jerked awake, shaking her head briskly as she looked around herself. The dawn sun lit the room in its weak glow, while the shuffling and banging of someone working in one of the backrooms filled the quiet air. Lurching unsteadily to her hooves, she hurried back to their rooms, hoping that she wasn’t missed and the other two weren’t fretting over her.

Reaching the door, she tentatively pushed it open. “Hello?”

She snorted, wondering why she was even worried – both of them were still asleep. Turning back around, she looked out the south-facing windows to try and get a better sense of the time.

“Sun’s half up,” she muttered as she swivelled back to the room. “More than late enough.”

Striding past Squirrel’s prone form on the couch, she made straight for Rainbow in the second bed – the little room really was cramped – and gave her a nudge. “Up.”

Without waiting for a reply, she stepped over to Squirrel and gave her a poke of her own. “It’s well past first light: up!”

Squirrel, at least, had the decency to wiggle a bit before slowly crawling upright, but Rainbow? “Daaash!” Twilight whined, trying a different tact as she crossed right back over and started rocking her back and forth. “We’re going to be laaate!”

The lump under the blankets snorted before an arm appeared from beneath the duvet and started batting at her. “Geez, whatever happened to just asking?”

Twilight didn’t cease kneading into her side. “Since when has that ever worked with you?”

Rainbow twisted around fully to sit up, knocking away Twilight’s arms in the process. “Fine, I’m up, I’m up,” she grumbled.

“Good,” Twilight said primly, pleased that her tactical pouting had worked so well. “Both of you get dressed – we’ve a long day ahead.”

“We’ve gotten good at this, haven’t we?” Rainbow said, shivering briefly as they crossed the alcove. “Took us barely ten minutes this time.”

“More like twenty,” Twilight grumbled, but it seemed to be more out of habit than anything else. “I’m still hoping to get back here before it gets dark.”

Rainbow wasn’t so certain about that, considering how slow moving through snow could be. “Sooo when should I get in the air? Hard to do it in soft snow.”

“Best wait til we get to the edge of town.”

Rainbow nodded along – it’d be less tiring that way, given she’d need to carry all her own gear for this one. “Right – need to keep you safe in case of any changeling attacks while we’re here.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Squirrel was quick to agree. “I could get distracted easily and then bam! You’re kidnapped.”

“Yep,” Rainbow chirped. “Exactly.” She wasn’t certain teasing was actually going to help anything, but Twilight made it way too easy sometimes.

“Uh huh,” Twilight drawled. “Sure. You know, I’m feeling oddly tempted to shuck some of my gear off to you, Dash – so that I could flee faster, of course.”

“Nah – a bit of sexy kidnapping would do you good.”

Twilight made an exasperated noise and gave her a flick of her tail. “Let’s just get going.”

They passed only a few people on the way down and out of Shade, taking the route that saw them turning and hooking around the skydock, such as it was. Rainbow shared a look and a nod with the other two before veering off up a side path, figuring the simplest way to get airborne at this point was to leap off the scaffolding; certainly she couldn’t take flight here, with the walls of snow either side nearly taller than she was.

She moved quickly, not liking the idea of losing sight of the others for too long. Scampering up the icy steps, she hurriedly cleared what little needed to be to get enough of a runway across the top before bounding right off, her wingbeats kicking up whorls of snow-dust as she pumped hard to get lift.

She circled low and fast, striving to gain height despite the added weight of her satchels and clothes. Finally getting enough speed, she hurried up the couple hundred feet she wanted to to get a proper view of things.

Below, she could make out Twilight and Squirrel passing by the very shop they’d checked out the day before, with its winterized sawmill and water wheel behind. She tried to make out their destination, far down the mountain valley, but the snow was making everything look the same – just blues and browns and whites. A dark and irregular line meandered down the centre, betraying the small ice-covered river that ran past the town and towards the distant Snowbound. The valley’s sides alternated freely between sparse evergreen forests and sloping meadows, with rough cliffs and mountain ridges topping them all the way into the distance, where Rainbow could just make out what she thought was the glacier at the head of it all.

Apparently, there was some sort of side passage in one of the western cliffs a ways down, but it was as good as invisible from here. Looking down again, she could see the other two had finally left the town’s peripherals, trudging now through a rough-plowed path that stalked the river. Taking care to keep them well in sight, she took to scouting the ground ahead, moving in wide, slow circles as she went.

“She sure stands out more in her jackets, doesn’t she?”

Twilight blinked and looked up, quickly spotting the dark, loosely-spiralling smudge well above. “Yep. Maybe she can see where we’re going? All the directions I could get out of the doe was to just follow this trail and watch out for painted markings somewhere past the halfway mark.” They’d all gone over the route the day before, but Twilight still found herself nervous with just how vague it was.

“Rainbow’ll help us,” Squirrel said confidently. “Worse case, we can’t find it before evening and we end up turning back around.”

“I know,” Twilight wilted. “I just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

They had to pace themselves as time crept by, knowing that any sweat needed to be avoided if at all possible; however, given their many layers and the simple difficulty of crunching through the frost-hardened snow, this meant they weren’t moving nearly as fast as Twilight had hoped.

Judging by the sun, they’d been walking for at least a few hours when Twilight stopped short and reared up to look back the way they’d come.

“What’s up?” Squirrel asked, pausing a few paces ahead.

Twilight huffed. “I can still see Shade.” The town looked to be little more than an hour’s leisurely walk away, its dark walls and puffs of white-grey smoke easily visible on its rocky rise.

“Well, yeah,” Squirrel said, sounding as though she thought she was being silly. “Can’t move fast in this stuff.”

Twilight fell back to all fours with a grunt. “Reeeally wish we had wings, right now.”

“No kidding,” Squirrel snorted. “Come on – we’ve gotta be close.”

That did make Twilight feel a bit better, and a quick glance showed it likely true – they weren’t too far off now from the valley’s cirque. “Alright,” she began, hurrying the few steps forward to walk abreast of Squirrel. “We’re looking for dark stone – basalt or andesite, perhaps – with faded red streaks painted on it. There’ll be cairns about, too, though I’m worried they’ll all be buried.” This far out the snow was mostly untouched, with only a bare few shallow animal trails criss-crossing about. Bar the occasional tree or copse, everything looked muted and flat.

“Any idea if Rainbow’s noticed anything?”

“I’m afraid we don’t have any secret signals she could have surreptitiously sent me, Squirrel.” Rainbow had been a near-constant shadow overhead, only occasionally disappearing over the valley edges before reappearing somewhere else. Twilight trusted that if she’d spotted something – or anything, really – she wouldn’t have hesitated to do a quick flyby and shout down to them.

“Dang.”

They shifted their course to run a little higher up the slope, eyes peeled and scrutinizing every crack and pillar for any sign of entry. The task was just beginning to become frustrating when the whistle of wind sounded close behind them. “Finally,” Squirrel grumbled as Twilight turned just in time to see Rainbow streak slowly past and hook into a tight spiral above.

“’Bout a hundred metres ahead!” Rainbow shouted, her grin evident even from this distance. “In a copse – look for a cracked tree!” And with that, she was off again.

“Could’ve just landed and walked with us,” Squirrel huffed at her retreating form. “Not like she can keep flying past this point.”

“I’m not sure the snow here’s hard enough for her to take off again if we did somehow miss it.”

As they moved towards the small copse of evergreens, the ground began to roughen, with bare, slick rock showing up in uneven patches. “Careful,” Squirrel cautioned, still in the lead. “It’s wet – I think there’s a creek nearby.”

Coppery-brown sludge and small, foamy puddles became common as they neared the weathered cliff, its face damp with water and dead moss. Standing at the base of one of the countless piles of cobbles and scree, in the lee of a shattered hemlock, was Rainbow.

“There you are!” she called down to them. “Mind your footing! Bit of a stream coming out of the rock here.”

“We’d noticed!” Squirrel called back to her. “Give us a sec!”

She and Twilight spent the next few minutes switchbacking up the slope, taking care to keep from splashing. “Can’t believe this isn’t frozen,” Twilight said once they’d reached Rainbow at the top.

“Maybe the dragons keep it warm? Somehow?” Rainbow guessed.

“Maybe.”

“We should rest up,” Squirrel said, stepping over to one of the many boulders lying about. “I’m hungry.”

“I suppose we did miss breakfast, didn’t we,” Twilight said, a tad guiltily – she was so gung ho on getting them out early that it didn’t even occur to her to allow time for something to eat.

“No kidding.”

They all began rooting through their gear for their oatbars and canteens, huddled close together in the cool shade. The water trickling over the ground was decidedly undrinkable – even without the rust a sulphurous scent hung over it – and with no good means of heating snow they’d need to take care to watch their canteens.

“How long do you think it’d take us to get back?” Twilight wondered aloud. “We wouldn’t have to meander or go slowly.”

“Think we’re about three or four miles out?” Rainbow hazarded a guess. “You two’d probably take an hour, tops.”

Twilight nodded thoughtfully as she tried to work out a timetable of sorts.

“We really are close, aren’t we,” Squirrel noted, staring off in the direction of the town. “Wouldn’t’ve thought dragons would be okay living so near to others.”

“Dragons are fiiine,” Rainbow said, waving her off. “They’re like big people – no reason they can’t live near non-dragons or anything. They just think weird, is all.”

“I’m just worried – Tern could’ve told us why they couldn’t just get the talon themselves, but didn’t. Why? I don’t like this.”

Rainbow reached over to give her a shove. “It’s called ‘drama!’ All the ‘lings back there were being silly and over-the-top – the mayor’s probably just the same way.”

“Is that normal? The way they were acting?” Twilight asked, having noticed how utterly at-ease all the changelings they’d spoken to had been.

Squirrel nodded. “They’re good at blending in, what with how super-sensitive they are to body language and stuff. Means they’re always dead-easy to get along with if they want to be.”

“Sparrow seemed more normal when she dropped the act with me,” Rainbow said. “I think, at least – I’m really not used to reading ‘lings.”

“Be weird if you were.”

The crack was a short ways down the cliff face, nearly hidden by the growing foliage. The ground about it was wet, with a faint, fetid stench lacing the air; wides daubs of ruddy, faded paint slashed the walls either side, while a parade of short, head-high cairns led back down to the valley below. “It’s not very wide, is it,” Twilight muttered; at little more than a few metres across, its bottom rough, rocky and slick, the passage looked dark and forboding.

“Would make a pretty lousy crevice if it was,” Rainbow said. “You said light rocks on the right, right? And darker on the left?”

“Yeees,” Twilight nodded hesitantly: from here, at least, both sides looked identical – dirty and lichen-stricken. “Shouldn’t make a difference until we hit the first branch.”

They stood and stared down the passage, their enthusiasm thoroughly dampened. “I don’t suppose you managed to scout out anything ahead?” Twilight asked.

Rainbow shook her head. “With how bushy it is up top I barely even saw the thing at all. Didn’t help that everything around it just looks like every other mountainy bit around here.”

“Figures,” Twilight muttered before taking a deep breath. “Welp – nothing else for it.”

And with that, they were off.