1. Winter Wrap-Up

A small group of pegasus ponies crowded on a broad ledge deep within the Percheron Mountains, their manes and tails tousled by an icy wind. Heavy clouds crowded down upon them and shrouded many of the highest surrounding peaks, but the snow was at an end for the year. Today was Winter Wrap-Up.

Winter Whisper stood toward the back of the group, nervously shuffling in place and fluttering her wings ever so slightly. She chewed her lip and glanced around at the ponies surrounding her, wondering how or even if she should say something to any of them. They chatted with each other, long-time partners in this weather squadron, while she was new to the team. Buck up, she thought. These are your squadron-mates. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward, pushing towards the center of the group. She passed Pinecone and Tailspin, two of the older squadron members, and among the best cloud-wranglers she’d ever seen. “Hi!” she said, waving to them with a wing. “You guys ready for Winter Wrap-Up?”

“Hey, kid,” Pinecone replied, returning the wave with a nonchalant flick of her own. “You know it, Winter Whistle!” Tailspin said with a grin and a nod. They resumed their conversation as Winter passed by wearing a pained smile.

Four months -- four whole months! -- and they still don’t know my name. Her false smile evaporated, and she drooped her ears, pawing at the ledge. I dreamed of this, she thought. She turned to look at the three snowflakes of her cutie mark. I’ve wanted to be on the Weather Patrol ever since I got that, and now I am. They don’t let just anypony into a Mountain squadron, either. You need to meet the standards, and they set the bar high. She’d done all that. The Squadron Leader accepted her quickly when she’d applied. As a group, the squadron had welcomed her when she joined.

But, then why was she the only one standing on the ledge alone?

Starburst, the Squadron Leader, began his briefing, and the chatter quickly ceased. Winter picked her head up and craned forward, listening. “As a Mountain squadron, our job in Winter Wrap-Up is to clear the slopes of snow,” he said as he paced before the assembled weather ponies. “Most of you grew up in towns and villages where everypony participated in cleaning up Winter and welcoming Spring.” He gestured out at the mountains with one hoof. “There aren’t many ponies living around here, of course, so the main work is the responsibility of the Weather Patrol. The mountains are always cold, this high, and the peaks are never fully clear of snow, but our work may be some of the most important in Equestria.”

He stopped pacing and turned to face the assembled squadron. “The snow we knock from the mountains is channeled into the valleys where it will melt all Spring and Summer, and that snowmelt will provide water for streams and lakes downhill. That water is used to water crops for all the ponies, and some of it is funneled back up to the Cloudsdale Weather Factory for use in rain and, come Winter again, snow.” Winter Whisper nodded eagerly, grinning, and spread her wings a little wider. She was itching to get into the air, and her excitement pushed aside her gloom.

Starburst continued. “The slopes will be cleared through avalanches, and you’ve all been trained in the thunderclap we’ll be using. Are there any questions?” Nopony raised a hoof or wing. “Excellent. Line up for your assignments.” Winter joined the squadron members as they arranged themselves in a line, and Starburst approached the pony on the far left. As he walked along the line, he gave each squadron member specific instructions about what part of this area of the mountains they would be responsible for, and how they should approach that assignment. As he finished, the ponies exchanged salutes with their wings, and the squadron member would leap into the air and circle just below the cloud ceiling. Many of them were joined in pairs, a lead pony and a wing pony.

“Winter Whisper,” Starburst said as he stopped before her. “Welcome to your first Winter Wrap-Up with Mountain 5 Squadron.”

“Thank you, sir,” she replied. “I’m excited to be a part of it!”

Starburst arched an eyebrow at her. “Don’t be excited, Patrolmare. The Ministry of Climate Control and Environment Management doesn’t pay you to be excited, they pay you to do your job properly.”

Starburst’s words stung her, and Winter Whisper fought to not appear crestfallen. Was Starburst no different than Pinecone or Tailspin? “Yes, sir,” she said again.

“You’ve taken well to your training, Winter,” Starburst told her in a gentler tone, “and you’re one of the few ponies here who can fly high enough to clear the top peaks. Because of that, you’ll officially be my wing pony, but you’ll really be working on your own. Up there.” He pointed up with one wing, indicating the sky above the clouds.

Winter suppressed a grin and nodded, her brief moment of doubt at the Squadron Leader’s faith in her dispelled. “I understand, Squadron Leader.”

The older pegasus stallion watched her for a few long moments. “Good,” he said. “You will be responsible for the western half of our range, six peaks in total. As I said, the top peaks never become snow-free, so don’t try to clear them completely.” He saluted her with his right wing. “Take your position.”

Winter returned the salute. “Yes, sir!” As Starburst moved on to the pegasus beside her, she leapt into the sky and climbed towards the clouds in a great spiral. She passed Thunder Roll and Zephyr and waved at them, but neither paid her any mind as they chatted, eagerly awaiting the signal to start. As she rose she passed two more pairs -- Pinecone and Morning Glory, and Tailspin and Sunbeam -- and none of them seemed to notice her, either.

She tried to push aside the fact that none of her fellow squadron-members said much to her. She was a rookie, after all, joining only just before the Winter season began, and the Mountain 5 Squadron was responsible for an enormous swath of the Percherons. The patrolmares and -stallions of the Squadron spent so little time around one another that it might be natural that they weren’t all the best of friends. It hadn’t been that way at the Patrol Academy, where all the trainees lived and worked nearly piled atop one another, but today’s meeting was only the second time she’d seen the whole Squadron assembled.

She reached her position just below the leaden clouds and hovered, looking back down at the ledge. Starburst was the only pony remaining on the ground, and four pairs of pegasi hovered between Winter and him. The black-and-yellow pegasus finally leapt into the air himself and let forth his namesake burst of light, the signal to begin.

Winter shot up into the clouds, climbing vertically to avoid any possible collision with a mountainside, even though she knew the nearest cliffs were no less than several hundred paces away. She beat at the air with powerful strokes of her wings, and rose quickly. She wasn’t the fastest flier in the Squadron, not with her stocky, barrel-chested body, thick, stumpy legs, and shaggy pelt that did nothing but create drag, but she was strong. Starburst was wrong; she wasn’t one of the few ponies who could fly among the highest peaks, she was one of only two. Starburst himself was the other.

She burst through the clouds with a whoop, soaring into bright sunshine. The ice-blue vault of the sky matched Winter’s pelt perfectly, and the glittering snow-capped peaks surrounding her did the same with her mane and tail. She corkscrewed upwards, reveling in her flight, and the feeling of the sunlight on her face. The air was calm but frigid and grew colder the higher she climbed, but the warmth of the Sun was always there. She grinned, soaking in the greatest gift Celestia gave her ponies.

She pulled out of her spinning climb and oriented herself to the mountains. Mountain 5 Squadron’s patrol range included fourteen peaks that pierced the cloud cover, like islands rising from a churning gray sea. Six of these were in the western half, and were Winter’s responsibility today. One of these was the Mareterhorn, the highest peak in all Equestria, and even as high as she was now, the mountain’s steep sides rose far above her. “I’ll save that one for last,” she said to herself. She flew two tight circles, then rocketed off to the northwest. Her first target was Glimmercleave, a mountain whose original peak had been sheared off ages ago in a way that even the deepest legends didn’t speak of, and whose slopes were heaped with the rubble of that disaster. A broad, deep cleft ran from northwest to southeast along the new, flatter peak, and over the intervening years it had filled with ice and snow, forming a glacier. As the Sun passed overhead, it often caught the surface of the ice in the chasm, sparkling and shimmering and giving the mountain its name.

As she approached the slopes of Glimmercleave, Winter could hear the rumble of multiple thunderclaps rising from below the clouds. The other teams were already clearing their responsibilities on the lower mountains, sending the excess snow toward the valleys. She swooped in close and made a few passes, gauging where best to apply her thunderclap to produce the most efficient and effective avalanche. As she flew she channeled her weather magic to create a thunderclap. Her hind legs tingled as the electricity collected, building into a charge that would be released in a brief burst of lightning and the necessary thunder. She passed round and round the mountain, the charge growing, her hindquarters crackling audibly.

She caught sight of a snowy overhang. “Right there,” she whispered, and dove in. Skimming no more than two body-lengths above the snow, Winter closed in on her target. When she reached directly overhead, she gathered her rear legs beneath her then bucked out, releasing the thunderclap. Lightning arced between her hooves. A sharp jolt ran up both of her legs, just shy of actually painful, and thunder boomed out behind her. She peeled away from the mountainside, banking so she could judge her work. The overhang had collapsed as intended, and a roiling mass of snow tumbled down the mountain to disappear into the cloud cover. She cheered and searched for the next spot on Glimmercleave’s flanks, building up a new thunderous charge.

After several passes over Glimmercleave she moved on to the next peak, Mount Reinier, and repeated the process. The air was filled with rolling thunder, trailing in her wake, rumbling up from the lower reaches below the clouds, and away in the distance where Starburst did his own work on the other eight peaks in the Squadron’s range. She moved on from Mount Reinier to the Old Mare, then the Lipizzaner. As the hours passed, Winter faded into the reverie of flying as fast as she could, letting her flying magic guide her body while her mind and spirit focused on the thunder. The magic connected her with the air, as it connected all pegasus ponies, as all ponies had magic that connected them with the world. As she extended her magic out she could sense the movements of the air, calm high where she flew but gusting heavily below the clouds. She could feel it eddying and reflecting from the mountainsides, and her flying instincts kept her safe from collision. Meanwhile, she let out burst after burst of thunder, loosening the snow and sending tremendous avalanches into the valleys below.

She completed multiple circuits around Pegasi Peak and the Roanwaldhorn and with each loop around a mountain her awareness of the physical world faded and she plunged deeper into the bodiless euphoria of her magic. She finally swung around the Mareterhorn, grinning, eyes squeezed shut but watering in the stinging air, legs outstretched before and behind, wings pumping furiously to drive her further and higher. She spiraled upwards, following the mountain’s peak, enormous bursts of lightning and deafening thunderclaps rolling out behind her as fast as she could buck them out.

Time had no meaning for her in this state and her body was nothing more than a vague recollection, but as she flew Winter gradually noticed another pegasus rapidly approaching, although terms such as up and down, left and right, and before and behind had little meaning in her present state. Every pegasus’s magic reflected differently on other pegasi, and Winter identified Starburst racing toward her. She drew her magic back to become more aware of her body and where it was. As she did, she realized that she circled the very top peak of the Mareterhorn, far, far higher than she should be. She noticed that the Sun was far lower in the west than she’d expected. She heard Starburst furiously calling her name. And before she could answer him, she saw great bare patches on the mountain’s flanks, areas where the snow should have remained.

“Winter Whisper!” Starburst bellowed at her. “Winter Whisper!” Even from this distance she could see his clenched teeth and the angry fire in his wide blue eyes.

Winter banked into a tight downward spiral, stopping to hover and gape in horror and consternation at what she had done to the snowpack. Her wings slowed, beating just enough to maintain her altitude as Starburst rose to meet her. She scanned the other mountains she’d been assigned, searching for similar bare patches. Was there one on the Lipizzaner? It was too far away to be clear. A few on Pegasi Peak? She thought so, though nothing as defacing as what she’d done to the Mareterhorn. It didn’t matter, though. Any of them would be a problem by itself. Together, they indicated ruin.

She imagined what the other members of Mountain 5 Squadron, flying unaware below the clouds, had done when tons upon tons of snow burst upon them from above. Were any of them hurt? Or worse? Tightness crept across her chest and she panted and rolled her eyes, gripped in cold iron talons of panic. “Oh, Celestia,” she whispered, shocked. Her wings faltered, just for an instant, but enough for her to drop from the sky.

Before she fell more than five paces, before she could do more than inhale for a scream, Starburst caught her. “Fly, Winter Whisper,” he said brusquely. “Fly.” She complied, and resumed hovering.

The two pegasi hovered beside each other, the black stallion glowering at the ice-blue mare, who stared down at the clouds below them. “What have you done, Winter Whisper?” Starburst asked, his voice tight with anger and fear. “What have you done?”