The march to Grand Acorn continued unabated, the sun relentlessly climbing higher and diminishing the length of the cart shadow Starlight had to stand in. Sticking to the shade meant putting herself so close to the wagon that she could touch it with her tail... not that she wanted to. It was rough, and that was a perfect recipe for getting splinters. She walked single-file behind Jamjars, the other filly too spent to continue talking, perhaps emotionally or more likely from the heat. It wasn't something Starlight felt like complaining about.
Every so often, she let her eyes wander skyward, trying to measure time by tracking the progress of the sun. It felt like a skill she should have had, having survived a mountain journey through the wilderness, but truth be told the entirety of her mountain travel had been under cloud cover, at night, or inside caves... and even then, it had been cloudy the last time she walked that road, so she would have had nothing to measure it against. Still, the act gave her more solace than doing nothing, and she was starting to feel frustrated. They had made the same journey the previous night, after an entire day of walking. Why weren't they there yet?
Swooooosh!
A winged shadow blotted out the sun for a fraction of a second, and with a shower of dust a griffony form touched down on the roadway ahead of them. Gerardo Guillaume straightened up, shaking his head to clear his eyes, and beamed. "Aha! It seems I've found you!"
Starlight stumbled ahead, muscles threatening to cramp at the extra exertion as she left the shade behind, wanting to be in on any conversation Gerardo was going to have with Maple.
"Hi," Maple puffed, voice cracking under the heat. "Did you put the...?"
"I did as you asked," Gerardo replied, falling into step beside her. "And I was met with pleasantly little difficulty. Here's your key back, though I'm half-tempted to hold onto it until this trek is over. You seem to have more than your share of a load..."
Maple's head bobbed from exertion. "I'm... holding up. It's not so bad. Not so bad. Not so bad..."
"Everything is peachy in my corner of the court!" Howe proclaimed, somehow managing to keep up his bravado despite visibly flagging. "I'm good for a whole 'nother year of this stuff! I think..."
"Are you sure?" White Chocolate's voice echoed from inside the wagon bed, full of concern. "I feel so bad about making you two do all this work... I should be out there, helping and giving one of you a chance to rest!"
"You," Maple managed sternly, her sopping mane dangling into one eye, "are not fit to pull this cart. We're helping you because we want to, and don't try to tell us you'd be fine without it."
"I do have to concur, though," Gerardo pointed out, nodding up at the wagon. "Are you really going to pull this all the way by yourselves? I assure you, I'm more than fit enough to take the next shift if either of you needs to rest in the wagon bed."
"...Not feasible," Maple panted, failing to break stride. "The wagon's packed. Starlight and Jamjars are already walking because there's no room."
Gerardo peered over the rim of the wagon bed, and frowned. "Indeed there isn't. That is... a truly impressive amount of foals. I'm almost tempted to call it less of a family and more of a litter!"
White Chocolate laughed weakly from within. "Trying to raise them all, it certainly feels like it."
At that, Jamjars frowned.
Gerardo looked back at her and Starlight, and scratched his chin. "Hmm..."
"Huh?" Maple's ears shifted, though they remained limp.
"Oh, just a thought." Gerardo resumed pacing along, though he kept his gaze on the two fillies. "I would hate to abandon you so soon after you've returned, but I could very well take those two and fly on ahead to Grand Acorn. We could attempt in advance to find a place for Miss Chocolate's family to stay, hopefully getting better dibs through being earlier and sparing a little bit of hoofwork in the process. I could remain with them, retrace my route to rejoin you... or attempt to find our Sosan friends and assist with the preparations, if I'm not elsewhere needed. What say you?"
"Yes!" Jamjars instantly demanded. "This sun is stupid! And we need as big of a room as we can get for all of Mom's kids, too!"
"Starlight?" Maple asked, looking over her shoulder. "Would you be fine with that? We might not get to see each other again for a while..."
Starlight shrugged, muscles aching, yearning for the rest despite Maple's apparent reluctance to be separated. "I'll be fine. How much further is it, anyway? We have to be almost there!"
"At the moment, you're about two thirds," Gerardo helpfully replied. "Though the last leg may be the longest. I... witnessed traffic slowing down ahead as I scanned the road for your party. It's quite possible ponies are arriving faster than they can assign space, and creating a bottleneck. Furthermore, there's a relatively steep hill to climb..."
"Are you sure you'll be alright, carrying two ponies?" White Chocolate's concerned voice came from within the wagon.
Gerardo winked. "So long as that daughter of yours doesn't have a bevy of anvils hidden within her magnificent mane, I think I'll be perfectly fine with two children. Don't you worry about me."
White Chocolate's head appeared over the railing, gazing down at Jamjars. "And you'll be fine on your own, too?"
Jamjars rolled her eyes and huffed. "Mom, this is a good thing. It'll give me a break from foals and from Snow and from walking. Just say I can go!"
"I'd like to ride the griffon, too," Snow remarked, popping up alongside his mother.
Gerardo raised a talon. "While you're very much correct that I'm a griffon, I do possess a name..."
"No way, Snow." Jamjars blew a raspberry at the cart. "I agreed to walk, I get whatever goes with it, so ha!" She blinked at White Chocolate. "Can I go, already?"
"...It's probably better if we get as good of a room as we can, then," White Chocolate decided, watching Gerardo. "They will be using rooms, right? If I have to keep track of all these foals in an open space..." Her ears folded.
"That will be something I'll endeavor to find out," Gerardo assured. "Now, if that's your permission, then with all due speed..."
White Chocolate and Maple both nodded. Seeing their agreement, Gerardo stopped, moving to the side of the road and beckoning for Starlight and Jamjars to follow. The cart rolled on, leaving them in its dust.
"Now," Gerardo asked, bending down when both fillies had reached him. "Have either of you two flown before?"
Starlight nodded, remembering with a shudder her accidental cliff diving experience in the mountains. Valey had tried to carry her and Maple in the Earth District, but that didn't count.
"Nope." Jamjars grinned. "Teach me."
Gerardo stretched out a wing like a boarding ramp. "That means Starlight will be on my back... and I'm sure you know to hang on. Miss Jamjars, I'm afraid that for maximum safety I'll have to carry you directly."
Two fillies and a griffon soared through the air, bypassing a long yellow road snarled with colorful ponies and dull brown wagons. Gerardo hadn't been kidding about the increase in traffic; between the lush emerald jungle borders the crowd went from an orderly two-lane solution to a complete pile, lone ponies and wagons all jammed together without order. Sosan lakewater stretched to the north like an inviting plateau, and the tower of Karma Industries loomed to the southeast, silhouetted against the lone, massive peak that formed the north face of the Water District reservoir.
At least it was cooler up high, Starlight thought as the wind raced through her soggy mane and her tail streamed behind her. Most of it was due to windchill from Gerardo's swift glide, but the air temperature was marginally lower, too. For a moment, she indulged in the delicious fantasy that the Earth District's signature wind barrier didn't exist, and they could swoop up to catch a breath of frost and make the heat feel inviting, for once. She held the griffon close, leaning in so the wind didn't threaten too hart to tear her away, and tried her best to forget that feeling of falling and weightlessness and enjoy the ride.
The same couldn't be said for Jamjars.
The yellow filly hung beneath Gerardo, all four legs dangling as his talons grasped her tightly around the barrel. Realistically, it was a position it would be impossible to slip from barring a very wiggly and deliberate escape, and Starlight almost envied her greater safety in the ride, but Jamjars clearly didn't feel the same. Her ears were back, her face was green, every single muscle in her body was rigid, and Starlight suddenly found herself entertaining a morbid curiosity about what would happen if a pony lost their lunch dozens of meters above a crowded roadway.
Fortunately for the ponies below, Jamjars kept it together, and they streaked onward towards the distant spire.
Gerardo circled, homing in on an entrance gate all the ponies were passing through. It appeared to be the real source of the bottleneck, the crowds beyond quickly dispersing into Grand Acorn's T-shaped outer plaza... though that was too full of equines to even move a wagon, too. Many sat abandoned, some stripped of belongings and others guarded by lone sentries, inevitably waiting on a loved one to scout out a hotel room or the like on their own.
The town sat at the top of a raised hill, built with artificial smoothness nearly three stories higher than the majority of the flat roadway leading up to it. Starlight hadn't been able to tell from the ground, but seeing it from the air, its sharp corners were alarmingly conspicuous. She began to wonder if Dangerous Karma had desired a basement for his headquarters, but been too lazy to dig the hole and instead piled earth around it to simply raise the ground level. It reminded her of Arambai's house and its unusual second-story entrance. Still, it was easy to see why it would be safe from a floor.
"Ponies," a distant loudspeaker was blaring below, "your attention, please? All the hotels are full, so stop clogging the street by looking! Right now, evacuees are being moved inside the Karma Industries tower..."
Starlight's ears flicked at the deep mare's voice. Whoever was running it definitely wasn't Dangerous Karma, Shinespark, or any Sosan she had met. An employee of Karma Industries, perhaps? Focusing again on the crowd, she saw a throng of ponies osmotically trickling into the myriad double-doors to the tower lobby... and Gerardo descended to join them.
He was big enough to clear out a landing space through sheer force, but instead chose to target an abandoned wagon bed. Starlight hopped off the moment she was low enough, already feeling the heat tickling at her scalp and hoping the line wouldn't move too slowly. Jamjars was deposited next to her.
"Urgh... haaaugh... hurrrff..." Jamjars hugged herself, still vaguely green, struggling heroically to regain her composure.
"Had a rough first flight?" Gerardo asked regretfully, perching on the railing next to them. "My apologies if you're nauseous. If if's any consolation, I've seen others fare far, far worse."
Jamjars glared at him. "No! I'm not nauseous. I love flying! I'm great at it. I just..." She fumbled for an excuse. "You squeezed my stomach too tightly, and I had a big breakfast. You should be more careful next time."
Gerardo grinned feebly back. "If that's your preferred version of things. Though somehow, I doubt you'd have been much happier had I held you more loosely."
Preferring not to antagonize the other unicorn, Starlight prepared to jump off the cart and into the sea of ponies below. They were packed tightly enough trying to reach the doors that she feared she would suffocate from body heat alone, but it was worth it to get inside, even if all it meant was shade. "Come on, Gerardo," she urged. "Let's go!"
Gerardo tapped a talon. "A perfect plan. I'm starting to feel uncomfortable in this heat, myself..."
After an almost-unbearable final wait, they reached the open doors to the fortress tower... and cold air burst around them. Starlight practically sagged with relief, panting and gulping it with big, greedy breaths, hearing Jamjars doing the same behind her.
The two of them were still riding Gerardo, using the griffon's broad back as a ferry to avoid getting trampled underhoof by nervous mares and stallions, many of whom were stubbornly trying to protect large quantities of belongings. Ahead, an even stricter bottleneck loomed, officials having set up retractable tape barriers to corral the ponies into lines so that individual evacuees could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Starlight watched as families would reach the front of their line, be questioned by a smartly-dressed worker, and led away into distant hallways, slowing things to a glacial pace but preserving the order and functionality of movement inside the tower.
"Heh heh..." Jamjars chuckled, rejuvenated by the cold air. "Mom's going to have fun getting so many kids through all this. Good thing we're here to get a room now, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't be so sure about an entire room," Gerardo cautioned. "I saw an identical mass of ponies entering from the east, where Copsewood is. Crowding will be severe, and... it's very likely that many will be given blankets and left to sleep in the hallways."
Jamjars blanched. "But what about... like... using the little filly's room? How long are we supposed to stay here, anyway?"
"With luck?" Gerardo grimaced. "It'll be all over by tonight. But for now, the only thing you can do is be prepared."
The line inched steadily forward, and eventually Gerardo was at the front, a haggard-looking mare of interning age with a blue shoulder strap sizing him up. "You're a griffon," she said.
Gerardo nodded. "How very astute of you. Moreover, I am not just any griffon: I am Gerardo Guillaume, griffon adventurer extraordinaire. However, at the moment, I'm here on behalf of a friend who is still trying to get her abnormally huge family through the traffic. We're hoping to get some space in advance."
The mare nodded. "How huge are we talking about?"
Gerardo gulped. "One mother and... eleven foals. Counting these two."
Starlight nearly corrected him, before remembering that she and Maple wouldn't be staying with White Chocolate. They had a boat to get back to. She wondered if Maple remembered that when agreeing to walk through the heat all the way to Grand Acorn.
"Eleven." The mare's eyes narrowed. "Look, sir, we get that there's traffic out there and ponies are getting split up, but you can't just lie to get more space. Nobody likes it, everyone's in it together, and there's a hundred ponies in line behind you who don't have time for this. I'm sure you remember how hot it is out there."
"He's not lying," Jamjars smugly protested. "Mom loves having kids. Wait until you actually see it. It'll blow your mind."
"Not helping," Gerardo hissed, before turning back to the mare. "What do you usually do for families with more young children than there are parents to keep them from wandering off or getting into trouble?"
The company mare shrugged. "There are some supply closets on the fourth floor we've been cleaning out. They have lights and doors, and are about..." She sized him up. "Big enough for you to stretch one of your wings in?"
Gerardo grimaced painfully. "If it's what's available, then we'll give it a look."
Jamjars scowled. Gerardo hummed, disheartened. Starlight looked away.
"Well?" The company mare kicked a switch, turning on a light. "Is this adequate? Because if not, I don't know what to tell you."
They were standing in an edge corridor at the side of the tower, one wall covered in windows overlooking a wall of trees. The other was lined in doors spaced evenly apart, most of which were already closed with light glowing from beneath. The one the mare had led them to, though, hadn't yet been claimed.
"This is the same size as our filly's room at home," Jamjars complained, looking into the meager, unfurnished, dust-ridden square that had once made a very nice closet. It looked like it had been converted from long-term storage not two hours earlier. "It could fit, like... four nice cushions and nothing else. And I am not sleeping in a pony pile."
"Like I said, it's the best you're going to get." The mare shrugged again, stepping inside and turning around. "Most of the others like it are already taken. Do you want it? Because someone else is going to say yes."
Jamjars sniffed the door in disdain. "It doesn't even have a lock. You call this privacy?"
"It's not about privacy," the company mare sighed, growing frustrated. "Nopony can afford that! It's about having a safe place to put young children! Take it or leave it, this is your last chance. I need coffee and I need to get back to somepony else's case. I can't believe the Sosans threw this garbage at us at the last minute..."
"We'll take it!" Gerardo quickly said. "I assure you, we're grateful for whatever we can get. Is there anything else we need to know?"
The mare ripped open her saddlebag and thrust a sheet of paper at him. "Here. The rules. Have a nice day." With that, she turned around and was gone.
"Rules, hmm...?" Gerardo quickly scanned the page, holding it in a single talon. "I... fail to see anything here that comes across as particularly problematic. You'd best peruse it for yourselves, though." He passed it to Starlight, then squared his shoulders and faced down the hallway. "Good luck on your own. I think I'll return to our other friends, now, and with luck begin ferrying more foals who are old enough to take care of themselves to lighten the load. I'm afraid some of your belongings may need to be left behind by necessity, though..." He gazed sorrowfully at the pitiful closet. "Ah, well. I'm off."
As he departed too, Jamjars rolled her eyes. "Great. That means we either get to deal with Snow or Hayseed next, and if Snow has to leave his magazines after owing me to let him bring them, he's going to be insufferable."
"So..." Starlight looked at Jamjars, then the room. "Should we read these rules, or what?"
Jamjars shrugged, then pranced into the closet. "Oh, there'll be plenty of time to do that while we check out our five-star accommodations! Come on, Starlight. Let's give ourselves the tour!"
Maple sweated, standing still.
"Well... this stinks," Howe proclaimed, seating himself on the hot earth beside her. "Royally so, I might add!"
The traffic around them had condensed to a point where only ponies on hoof could move forward, and even then at a snail's pace. White Chocolate gazed worriedly over the cart railing at them, ears folded and lip bitten. "There's nothing I can do, is there?"
"Nothing any of us can do," Maple sighed. "We're stuck. It's a..." She took a dry swallow, her throat feeling three times its usual size. "A good thing Gerardo went ahead to find room. They must be having trouble finding shelter for so many ponies..."
Howe shrugged. "Yeah. You would think Sosa would get their logistics right before doing a thing like this. It's like they thought, 'Let's evacuate!' and didn't even have a plan."
Maple stared at him, then looked away. It seemed the heat had finally taken its toll on Howe, too, because his bravado had finally faded. "I know you said we needed all this stuff, but..."
"This stuff?" White Chocolate asked, nudging a box. "Well, it is important..."
Maple let out an inaudible whine. "...Yes. But if it comes down to it, is it as important as ponies?"
White Chocolate didn't respond.
Suddenly, the wagon in front of them rolled forward, and Howe jumped up. "Hey, look! The line's moving again!"
Like an uncorked bottle, or a grain of sand reaching the bottom of a funnel, the crowd rapidly began to move around them, and Maple found herself suddenly picking up a much brisker pace than she had used before just to keep their cart from getting ran over or pushed off the side of the road. "What's going on?" She glanced curiously around. "Why is everyone moving again?"
"Don't question it!" Howe grimaced. "Good luck is... Err, I mean, the wings of providence have finally rejoined our side!"
Maple didn't question it... until the crowd suddenly veered down a smaller road to the right, completely ignoring the throng of ponies that were still bottlenecked at the gates to Grand Acorn. "Hey, wait! This isn't the way to...!"
Howe shrugged, racing along beside her. "If my knowledge of geography hasn't abandoned my side, it's a road to the warehouses where Earth District fruit is processed! Obviously, they must be in need of more space to house us!"
"But... But Gerardo and Starlight went the other way!" Maple panted. "And Jamjars! We have to... go that way..."
There was nothing she could do about it. The turn was too sharp, and they were far too close to the right side of the road to do anything but get swept along in the torrent of ponies and wagons, suddenly moving away from their destination.