High Winds began her search for a cloud to lay on.

Today had been stressful on her wings. Between the early flight to the HQ, and the rigorous practice Spitfire had put her and the rest of the team through to prepare for the upcoming show in Canterlot, High Winds hadn’t had a chance to rest. Her wings burned with every flap, even when she had grazed wingtips with Soarin’ on a flyby, while her heart raced with the gust that carried her into the next trick, where she and Fleetfoot would twirl around each other in a helix. Unfortunately, High Winds had bumped into Fleetfoot by accident, which made the blaring of Spitfire’s whistle all the more humiliating as her hooves skidded against the dirt.

High Winds felt a tug at her lips as she flapped once more, before gently letting her wings extend to glide among the clouds. She didn’t need a reminder on how poor today’s practice went when she was trying to find the cloud that she’ll call home for the next hour! She needed to focus on finding the fluffiest cloud in all of Canterlot, even if it meant abiding by her nickname and shoving a hoof in her mouth. That's what she deserved and—

She gasped. She spotted the cloud. She stared at it with glee and flapped her wings, putting enough energy into them so she could soar the rest of the way there.

It looked like the fluffiest and poofiest of clouds. It was plenty for her to flop onto and snore away. It also had a bit of a gray tint to it, which made her think it just got done raining down on somepony’s land and was ready to have a pegasus like her to make sure it was all rung out. With a smirk, she dove down further and set her wings into a glide.

Easy does it, High Winds.

Spitfire words tickled her ears, but the timbre they carried made it feel like High Winds was being taught how to glide again, something even a foal could learn.

She groaned and shook away those thoughts. The competitive side of her was emerging again, and she wasn't needing this or Spitfire's help right now.

Gently she lowered herself further to make sure she was hovering above the cloud. Then, she landed on it somewhat graciously, if by gracious she meant absolutely tip-toeing her way across the cloud before yelping and landing on her flanks with a loud PLOOF. She managed to upright herself, before nuzzling into the comforts of the cloud, its vapor misting her with water that—

“Hey! Who poured a bucket of water on me?”

High Winds’ eyes widened and snuggle-shuffled her way to the edge of the cloud, peering down at the pony below—wait, that’s not a pony!

Below her was… something. A tall yet skinny (probably malnourished) yeti thing. It looked around, not sure what hit it and its bench that it was sitting on. She didn’t know what to call it—she recalled that Rainbow Dash interacted with it. What was its name? Anoon? Anun? Whatever its name was, his voice was deep and he was not happy that his mane was droopy from all the water he got hit with.

“Anoon?”

The yeti looked up, spotting probably her mane (the rest of the cloud was covering her, sorta). “Uhh, you mean Anon?”

She was so close, but just like practice, she fell short. “Heh, yeah." She tried moving her wing but it twitched in place. She'd deal with that later. "Sorry, I didn’t mean to do it!”

Anon folded his fore… arms against his chest while he sat on the bench. “So you poured water on me?”

She shook her head. “No… the cloud did.”

“But it wasn’t raining earlier,” he remarked, tilting his head.

She facehooved. “I landed on it!”

“Oh.” He picked up whatever blue square-shaped thing he had sat beside him on the bench. It looked like a book but… “I keep forgetting you pegasi can do whatever you want with the weather.” Whatever it was, he was holding it close to his chest. “So, do you have any towels?”

She didn’t. “No, I don’t.” He said something shortly after, but High Winds couldn’t understand what he said. It sounded like he was trying to say the word ‘duck’ but it was way more aggressive. “Are you okay?”

Anon shook his head. “Just having a bad day.”

That made her stand up on all fours and begin her descent from her perch, choosing to glide her way down since her wing was still not cooperating. “You too?”

His eyes widened as he stared at her. Was something behind her? “Anon?”

He shook his head and blinked rather rapidly at her. “Yeah?” A gasp escaped him before he continued, “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to fly down to my level.”

She chuckled and sat on her flanks against the concrete. Where was she at again? Wait, the castle? “It’s the least I could do after raining on your parade.”

“Not much of a parade to rain on…” his voice trailed off as he pointed over at her and threw a digit of his into a circle, which she snorted as he couldn’t simply say the question he had on his mind.

“High Winds,” she said with a tired smile (that’s how she felt). “Sorry about the sudden shower.”

He waved her off with a… claw? “It’s all under the bridge.” What bridge? They were near the castle (she was still confused how she flew this far into Canterlot without noticing it) and the only bridge she knew about was not even that close to them and—wait, that's probably a turn of phrase or something!— “Besides, I could use a shower.”

She sniffed the air. He didn’t smell too bad. “You don’t smell bad.”

He let out an airy laugh. “Thanks for the reassurance. Unfortunately, I have to deal with Blueblood on a daily basis. He tells me I smell like manure every time I walk into his ‘office’.”

High Winds’ eyes widened. “Wow, what a jerk.”

“You’re telling me!” He threw his claws up in the air, while still holding onto that book of his in his left one. “I work for one of the worst ponies ever. I keep telling Sunbutt to tell the Horndog he’s being neutered next week, but all I get is either radio silence or a ‘well he’s my nephew and maiming him is not in Equestria’s best interest’. What about my best interest? Just because I’m an alien doesn’t mean I don’t have any rights!”

She blinked once. Then twice.

Did she hear that correctly?

“Wow, you…”

Anon raised a claw to scratch whatever he said out of existence (that’s what she thought it was for). “Heh, that was inappropriate. I'm sorry—”

“No, hehe…” She was trying to restrain her laughter. “You’re… quite a…”

“Human.”

“Right,” she tilted her head as he wiggled his digits at her. “Nice claws.”

“They’re hands.”

“Hands?”

He nodded. “One of the only species in Equestria that have them, fingers and all. Well, I’m also the only one of my species, so there’s a—”

“Really?” Her ears perked up at that. “How did you—”

“Exist?”

His raised brow met the bobbing of her head. She was way more interested now in this soaked up human than she was when she accidentally doused him in rainwater. “Yeah! Did you walk through a portal or something?”

“No… although it would make more sense.”

Her wings shrugged while her head went sideways. “Did you go through the Everfree Forest?”

“No, although that place isn’t that scary. The weather there is like what the weather was like back home!”

High Winds’ felt a shiver race down her spine. Never again will she look at that place the same, and the fact that Anon said his planet was like that… “What about the Crystal Empire?”

“Read up on that place actually. Too cold of an environment for me to end up in.” His book-holding hand fell close to his side, while the other raised to scratch at his cheek. “No, I actually landed in a bush.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No joke!” His smile framed his face quite nicely—wait what? “I was trying to find this trail some boy had reportedly wandered into and was lost, but I was too busy figuring out where I was on the map and ran head first into the only bush even near the trail I was on. Apparently when I popped my head back up, I was right next to the castle.” He chuckled. “My luck is atrocious.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, I can relate.”

Anon raised a brow. “Oh?”

“Yeah, a little too much.” She felt the burn in her wing joints, but she pressed on, folding her wings to her sides as best as she could. She tried to stifle a wince but it came out as a grunt instead. “Sorry, my wings are a bit stressed.”

“Long flight?”

She leaned closer to him. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I feel like I’m always flying every single day. It’s a good thing if it’s in healthy doses, especially for a flier like me, but it hasn’t been healthy as of late. I’ve been dealing with the effects of lockwing.”

He stared more intently at her wings. “Lockwing?”

“When the wing gets too tense, it—egh—struggles to close.” She grit her teeth as she finally closed her other wing. A sigh escaped her. “Thank Celestia…”

A scoff emitted from Anon. “Still can’t believe you ponies use Celly’s name as a turn of phrase.”

“At least we stay consistent!" High Winds exclaimed in a flurry of giggles. She poked a hoof towards him. "And wait, did you just call Princess Celestia... Celly?"

"Yeah, why?" His raised brow rose to the ocassion, leaving her befuddled. "Is that wrong?"

Anxious bubbled up to the forefront as she sheepishly chuckled. "Well, it's not wrong, just... why?"

His nose scrunched up. “Best friends always give each other nicknames.”

"But she's one of the rulers of Equestria. Isn't there any, I don't know..." She brought a forehoof up to show her discomfort. "Respect given to her for that?”

"Would you prefer if I kept calling her Sunbutt?"

Her face fell flat. "I wouldn't like that either."

He shrugged, much to her confusion. "Besides, she's not royalty to me. She's just like anyone else, and anyone else that I'm friends with also get nicknames." He tapped a finger to his chin. "She's got quite a few, but I haven't reached ten names for her yet. Still brainstorming on the last couple."

A punctual eyeroll earned High Winds a laugh, which she promptly ignored. “Well, mines ‘hoof-in-mouth’.”

“Huh?”

“Hoof-in-mouth. Nickname?”

“Oh,” he breathed out. He looked at her a bit more intently, like he was spying a glance at her uniform. “Not sure how that relates to you?”

“Ponies always say that.” Her uniform tightly hugged against her fur, which made an annoying itch tear through her spine. “It’s a Wonderbolts thing, y’know? Team assigned nicknames after a first time flub-up.”

Anon’s face lit up like a Hearth’s Warming tree at night. “You’re a Wonderbolt?”

Really? He didn’t notice her uniform? She cast a hoof out in front of her, even scooting the rest of her body to her left to show off the clothes' signature lightning bolt that cast all the way to her tail. “Wasn’t my uniform a dead giveaway?”

That hand scratched the back of his neck again. “Uhh, you’re right, I should’ve noticed it.” He let out a nervous laugh. “Seems that my attention to detail was also lost on me, no thanks to Blueblood.”

“Seems like it,” she touted back, shaking out whatever was tickling her neck and mane. “So you actually work for him?”

“Unfortunately,” Anon breathed rather shakily, his voice continuing to wither as he spoke, “It’s… a long story that I don’t want to bore you with. I only work for him because I want to repay Celly.”

“Repay her?”

A nod spurred him forth. “She helped me out of the bush for one, and then helped me get somewhat integrated into Ponyland’s society.”

“Ponyland—”

“Yeah, I know. Equestria. My nerves are shot, so let me have this.”

“O-Okay,” she said in-between her bout of laughter. “How did Princess Celestia help you ‘integrate’?”

He took the book in his hand and opened it, flipping it to a page that he was apparently reading before he got splashed by her rather unexpected rush of rainwater. On it was a section labeled, “Equestrian Nations: How Not to Agitate Equus’ Allies.” She skimmed the page a bit, and noticed that it was talking about all of them: Hippogriffs, Griffons, Changelings, Yaks, and even… Seahorses? Where were they even at? She hadn’t heard of them before!

She craned her head over the book and pointed a hoof at it. “This is a book about species in Equestria?”

He nodded. “It’s shocking to know that there’s so many of them that can talk. I’m still trying to wrap my head around a pony talking to me, let alone a lion with wings.” He pulled the book back toward him as he pulled out a somewhat dry notepad, the stains of where her water spritzed it made High Winds feel all the more guilty. “I was talking with one of them today thanks to her honoring me as a ‘guest of honor’ in every single political meeting she had. Probably to show me off as some type of trophy.”

Her muzzle wrinkled up at that comment. “Princess Celestia wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, well...” Anon tried to get out the words, but the shifting in his seat told her all she needed to know. She began to open her mouth to speak when he suddenly flipped that same notepad toward her, the page glaring at her with a few scribbles of what looked like Equestrian on it. “Was jotting a few notes on my notepad here before you uh… showered me in your cloudwater.”

She frowned. “I’m so sorry about that—”

“Like I said, it’s water under the bridge.”

She tilted her head. “Is that a turn of phrase for you?”

He snorted as he flipped the notepad to a close and set it to his side (hopefully that was dry). “I keep forgetting that some of my -isms don’t translate that well.”

“You probably aren’t used to what we say, either,” she said with a chuckle.

“You’re not lying, Female Soarin’.” Anon snapped his fingers. “Now I remember why I thought of the Wonderbolts! You look so close to Soarin’ and—why are you glaring at me like I just rained on your parade?”

High Winds felt her wings burn again as she stood up, puffing out her fluffy chest. This time for a reason all-too-familiar. A mix-up, a comparison so annoying that she felt compelled to bap Anon in the nose with her wing. She was going to wind one of them up like a professional buckball keeper saves a game with their wing or tail, but then she stopped herself. She couldn’t. Not in public. She had an image to maintain, even if she believed there were no witnesses to see her commit a wing bap in real time.

So, she growled instead. “You called me a female version of Soarin’.”

Anon gripped his shirt collar and nervously laughed. “Uhh… I’m guessing that was the wrong thing to say?”

She let out a brief blow. “Never compare him to me like that.”

“Noted,” he stuttered out and gulped down whatever was in his throat. “You’re not a female Soarin’.”

“Right,” she said, choosing to sit on her flanks once again, although she did scoot a bit closer to him as a result, for reasons she didn’t know. “I’m High Winds.”

“Right—ahem. Sorry.”

The rage imbued in her wings stemmed the tide, the itch no longer burning her joint. She folded it up by her side much easier this time, and she smiled at him with whatever energy she could lie with. “Don’t be. It’s… fine.” She nuzzled his side to make sure he knew. She looked up and saw a bit of red singe his cheeks. “Are you okay?”

He looked away from her. “Y-Yeah, just give me a moment.”

She leaned back and looked at her forehooves. Did she do something wrong? She didn’t know—talking with a human was completely new to her. Maybe this was how Rainbow Dash felt when she spoke with him too?

High Winds shook her head. Even though he was a bit of a dunderhead, there was something about him that made her wonder if she had her head in the clouds. She was getting a bit distracted, probably because she was still dealing with all that flier fatigue. She wanted to nap on a cloud, not talk to an alien! Those hands of his could probably get this stupid itch that came with her uniform. She would ask but it felt a bit inappropriate. Way too inappropriate!

A heat rose to her cheeks and she looked away from him too. Focus, featherbrain!

“Uhhh, High Winds?”

She spared a glance over at Anon, who still had remnants of a blush on his face. “Y-Yeah?”

“I know this is sudden, and you’re probably a bit confused…”

“Hmm?” She tilted her head. “Why would I be confused?”

“Well…” His hands fiddled with themselves. “For starters, I think it’s cool that you’re a Wonderbolt. Knowing what Rainbow Dash goes through, you all put yourselves through the ringer!”

"Rainbow Dash talks to you a lot, huh?"

"Yeah..." He licked his lips. "We talk a lot. Mostly about buckball and flying, even though I can't fly. She's the type to really dive head first into the Wonderbolts, so I know quite a bit."

She felt her lips tug upwards. “Except our uniforms…”

He facepalmed? "I will never live that down, will I?"

"Nope!" High Winds chirped, which caused Anon to let out a painful groan. She tittered despite seeing his 'pain' on his face. "But thanks, it means a lot that somepony appreciates me—"

"I wasn't done," Anon said, holding his hand out, the inside of it facing her. His fingers stood tall while he spoke, "Your wings are nice too.”

She blinked. “Oh?” She extended one of them out and pointed it at herself. “You really think so?”

He nodded and pointed at it. “Yeah! Do you preen them often?”

“I have to, otherwise my wings get messed up,” High Winds muttered, playing with her forehooves while her eyes found the ground interesting.

“I can tell, they’re—”

She interrupted him with a thought that escaped her before she could think on it. “Anon, are you trying to butter me up?”

“Uhh..." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was totally buttering her up. "Not really. I’m just speaking my mind.”

"Really?"

A hum that tickled her ears rang out. "Mmhm."

She thought about it. About him. About this whole situation. He was interesting, and if he was genuinely flirting with her and not absent-mindedly complimenting her, what was stopping her from entertaining the idea of being with him? Other than him being a completely different species, he was quite the flatterer, and flattery went somewhere with her. The distance? Well...

For Anon, it was a bit far off, but she was keen on meeting him closer, scooting herself even closer to him, her uniform rubbing up against his pant leg. “Then keep speaking it, if you don't mind."

“Okay…” That hand snuck behind his neck again, but those eyes of his lit up again, like he was staring into her with a candlelight nearby. “You got a nice mane. It’s so curly and—how do you keep it in place?”

“Lots of hair spray,” she said, giggling behind her forehoof. She could feel Anon wrap an arm around her back, which eased that itch momentarily as he pulled her closer to him. She squeaked before she continued, “Same with my tail.”

She flicked her tail toward him, which made him gasp. “Wow, your tail is the same!”

The compliments... they made her feel finally seen. And the fact it was an alien with some obtuse vocabulary made her wonder if she gained a new type.

There wasn't any time to dwell on it, though. He took a shaky breath in, and was biting at his bottom lip. A nervous habit of his? “I know we just met and all, but you wanna catch some food? I know a nice little hole in the wall down the road that serves a mean cucumber sandwich.”

“Bold of you to assume I like cucumbers," High Winds said through a smirk that morphed onto her face. She could feel it slowly turn into a grin.

“Most ponies like it from what I was told.” He anxiously breathed out a chuckle. “Was I right?”

She felt her tail sway behind her, but she ignored it.

Easy does it, High Winds.

Those words actually meant something to her this time around. She needed to take this slow. She didn't need to scare him off!

So, she plopped a hoof on that very same pant leg of his and gave her best winning smile.

"I'd like that."

Those words were all that she needed to say for him to stutter out a reply, “O-Okay. You’ll probably want to walk on your own though and—”

She giggled and let her forehoof fall back to the ground again in an unceremonious clop. “Better?”

“M-Much,” he curtly replied, unruffling the pant leg she climbed onto.

She watched as he gathered his things and hobbled to his feet. The stutter, the shaky legs, and the wobbly smile on his face made High Winds only think of one thing:

This was much better than napping on a cloud.

Author's Note

Challenged myself to write a character I wasn't used to even remotely. Why not a Wonderbolt with little to no information about her? Simple enough, right? Trying to make her sound like her own character when she says only one line in the entire show is very difficult.

Hope you all enjoyed!