//------------------------------// // Clear Night // Story: Clear Night // by Strays //------------------------------// It was a calm night with the stars sparkling gently and a large beautiful moon graced the sky. There was a slight breeze that was warm, yet dry, but that was Appleloosa for you. The desert was expansive-looking even from my spot a couple miles in the air. I shook my head, wondering who would live out here. Not to mention how they lived out here. Looking down, I answered my own question as my eyes traced the single river that cut a lonely line through the desert.   My eyes continued down the river until it reached the town. Well, what was becoming a town. A lot of the buildings were still under construction, the train station and the apple farm being the exceptions. Thinking about the apple farm seemed to magically summon one of the farm ponies. A yellow stallion that sported a brown vest and cowpony hat caught my eye and seemed to give me a disapproving stare. Blushing in embarrassment, I fumbled with a random cloud above his farm to make it look like I was busy.   This seemed to mollify him and he went back into the farmhouse. Wiping off some of the moisture on my forehead, I went to find another storm cloud to finish the scheduled rainstorm for the night. It wasn't my favorite job, even though I was a pegasus, because the storms covered up Princess Luna’s beautiful sky. I loved looking at the stars while lying on a grassy hill and clouds typically got in the way. Sighing, I grabbed the last cloud I would need for my portion of the storm and hurriedly pushed it back to where the rest of the clouds were resting peacefully in the sky.   I took a deep breath and sighed sadly, “Why does such a beautiful night have to be ruined by a rain shower?” I pushed the cloud up to the storm bundle and merged it with a little Pegasus magic. Looking above the rain clouds, I noticed that the storm was almost ready as a few of the other nightshift weather ponies flew in with the last of their clouds.           Feeling relieved at being finished for the night, I went in search for a little patch of cloud that hadn’t been used in the storm to relax on. Spotting one just a few hundred meters away from the storm front, I flew over, landing awkwardly with a small oomph. For some weird reason, I could never land right. When I was just a filly, I had thought that I just needed more practice. It turned out that the more practice I had, the worse they got.           Putting that aside, I hopped on the cloud a little to flatten the top and laid down on my back to look up at the stars. It wasn’t long before I had started daydreaming, or would it be called night-dreaming, about flying around in the cool night sky. The breeze whipping my dark blue mane with light purple highlights back behind me. The rain on my light blue coat, trickling down my... wait a minute!           “What the hay!?” I spluttered shaking myself awake underneath the storm cloud that had just been made. Hovering above me was Frosty Skies, my foreman for the group of nightshift weather ponies I was a part of. She had a very light blue coat that was often mistaken as white late at night,and her white mane was very short, hardly needing the little rubber band she wore to hold it together. Her cutie mark was a full moon obscured slightly by a snow cloud, but I wasn’t exactly focusing on that. I was focused more on the hard gaze she was giving me with her cobalt eyes.           “‘What the hay’ indeed, Miss Clear Night. Why are you not watching your part of the storm?” she asked in a chillingly neutral voice.            “Ma’am! I was just, um... resting my eyes! Yea, that’s it.” I grinned sheepishly. Smooth, I thought sarcastically.            “Really now? So snoring is a part of ‘resting your eyes’?” Her gaze was penetrating, making me feel colder than while I was under the rain. Knowing that there really wasn’t a chance of talking myself out of this one, thanks to my amazing quick thinking skills, I mumbled an apology and took my place at the side of the cloud. The rest of the night was spent carefully measuring and producing the amount of moisture necessary for the trees to survive, but not create a mudslide. And during those four long hours, Frosty Skies never left me for more than five minutes.            “Alright everypony, listen up!” Frosty called, although it wasn’t a shout every pegasus that had been working over the farm had heard. What little rain had been falling ceased immediately and the other six ponies came to hover next to me in front of Frosty.            “Time to break up the storm and head back to Cloudsdale, it’s going to be daylight soon and you all look like you need some shut eye.” The pegasi all started to get into position to buck apart the cloud when Frosty stopped them, “Because Clear Night here decided she was going to take a nap on the job, you are all free to head back home. She’ll clean up here by herself.” With that, the pegasi started flying off, but not without glancing back at my downcast face.           During the next hour I swooped left and right, bucking little pieces of the storm away. With one last kick, the storm cloud had completely disappeared and I breathed a sigh of relief. At that moment a light blue hoof fell on my shoulder, eliciting a small, “Eeep!” from me. I spun around to find Frosty Skies smiling apologetically.           “Sorry for being so harsh on you,” she sighed, “but you know how I get about a job.”           I glared at her for a minute or two before finally I looking away, “I know,” I mumbled, “but did you have to leave me here to do it by myself?”           “I couldn’t just say that you had to do it by yourself and then start helping you could I?”           I shook my head, “I guess not.”   “Besides,” she said, her face breaking into a grin, “tomorrow night, we’re going to hit that new bar they opened up last week, and party until the sun comes up. Speaking of which...” she pointed somewhere behind me. Turning, I saw a beautiful sunrise coming over the horizon of the desert. The colors at the horizon were a rainbow of yellows, oranges, and reds. The part where the sun shone on the ground gleamed as though it were reflecting gold. Where the sun hit the apple trees, it shone emerald green with circles of rubies where the now watered apples were still hanging.   Seeing the desert and all its splendor, I had to put a hoof to my mouth and... I let out a loud yawn, “I think that’s my cue to fall asleep, where’d that fluffy cloud run off to?”   “Come on, let’s get you home.” Frosty said with a roll of her eyes, and together we flew back to my cloud house on the edge of Cloudsdale.   ________________________________________________________________   “Ugh,” I grumbled. “Why can’t I just wear my mane in a ponytail? It’s a hay of a lot easier than any of these curlers. OW! Hurts a lot less too.” I was in my house and Frosty Skies was busy fussing over my mane like she usually did on our nights out on the town. But for some reason this time she insisted that I had to wear my hair up in something other than a ponytail. Even my argument about it hurting seemed to be ineffective tonight.   “Because it’s a new place, and it’s Friday night. You want to meet a special somepony don’t you?” Frosty replied.   “I don’t know Frosty; I just don’t think a club is the kind of place that I’m going to find a special somepony. Besides, wouldn’t you rather get your own before fussing over mine?” I said, rolling my eyes.   She giggled, putting in another curler. “I already have a target in mind my dear, that’s why I’m here helping you.” I sighed. Apparently, I wasn’t going to get out of this one that easy.   “Fine, I’ll go along with the curlers, just as long as you throw ponies after me just because they’re single.” I offered.   “Deal!” she shouted victoriously and scurried off the get more curlers. I idly wondered if I had somehow hidden them all, if she would let me go, or would she come up with something else to curl my mane with. Absently, my eyes drifted over myself in a mirror. I had a mostly light blue coat and solid blue mane highlighted by light purple streaks. Those same highlights from my mane also highlighted the joints on my wings where they connected to my shoulders.   But by far, the strangest thing was on my legs and the tip of my muzzle. My hooves looked like I had been bouncing around in some ashes, but the light grey stopped half-way up my legs, making some ponies think that I was always wearing socks. Also the tip of my muzzle had the same odd light grey quality to it as well, like I pushed my muzzle into the same ashes that I hopped into. It was an odd coloring in my opinion, but I didn’t know anypony with red eyes either.   All of this put together made trying to talk to somepony a little more than slightly awkward. Mostly because most stallions thought I was wearing socks, and kept trying to put moves on me, but backed off after a glance at my red eyes.  I had on a necklace given to me by my mother that was silver with a small ruby embedded in the front. I was also wearing a deep blue saddle that, Frosty had said, would accent my mane. Finally, my gaze rested on my cutie mark, which was a crescent moon with a star on the bottom point. I raised hoof to the ruby and took a deep breath.   Frosty came flying through the door and smiled beatifically at me, squeeing in delight about how adorable I looked and continued to rearrange the curlers in my mane.   “Seriously, Frosty, why do I have to wear a saddle? We’re just going to a club, not to a royal wedding.”   “Because the first step to finding your true love is to always look your best. Now stand up and hold still.” Grumbling I obliged and stood in front of her. She moved to my side and grabbed one of the saddle’s straps in her teeth and yanked... hard!   “Can’t...*cough*... breathe!” I managed to wheeze out before she let the strap snap back, which coincidentally dropped me unceremoniously onto the, thankfully, soft floor.   “Sorry about that, but we don’t want it to come loose do we?” she said, smiling innocently.   “Of course not.” I muttered, rolling my eyes. “But don’t you think that by getting this dressed up, somepony might think that I’m just looking to bang?” I flushed slightly red.   “I suppose you do, don’t you?” she said with a smirk, causing my eyes to widen and my cheeks to flare bright red. At the look on my face, she collapsed on the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter.   Giving her the best death glare I could muster, I pulled the saddle off of my back and threw it back into my closet. “Are you ready?” I asked.   “Whew!” She stood back up, giving herself a glance before nodding. “Yeah, I think so.” Her smile seemed a mile wide. “After you my dear,” she said with a motion of her hoof. I rolled my eyes and we left the room into the night.   _______________________________________________________________   This club, like most clubs I’ve been to, was loud to say the least. I looked over and raised an eyebrow at Frosty, but she had already sped off somewhere, so I was left to my own devices. Not being terribly social, I went to the bar and ordered some cider. While I was waiting I looked, or tried to anyway, around the club.   Most of my view was blocked by bouncing ponies listening to the beat of some electronic song that I wasn’t familiar with. Looking over to the DJ, I was astonished to see it was a white unicorn. The most noticeable thing about her was her electric blue mane and her sunglasses, which I thought was odd until a light shined directly into my eye startling me out of my chair.   Rubbing my flank I climbed back onto the chair and looked around sheepishly. At that particular moment, a stallion trotted up to me and asked if I wanted to dance. I nodded and followed him onto the floor.   As we got out onto the dance floor he looked at my hooves, but didn’t mention anything, although I would have sworn there was a smirk on his face. Eventually we started getting pushed together as more and more ponies swarmed the dance floor, to the point where we could only sway in time to the music.   Somehow, I managed to do a little spin and half way through it I felt a hoof drop onto my flank. A little flushed and more than a little angry, I spun to find the stallion I had been dancing with had a goofy smile plastered on his face.   “What do you think you’re doing!?” I yelled at him, although with the amount of noise around us, the effectiveness of the shout was diminished quite a bit.   “Nothing much, just getting a feel of tonight’s entertainment.” He stepped forward, causing me to step back. “Isn’t that why you’re wearing socks?”   I gave him a deadpanned stare, “These aren’t socks doofus.”   “Of course they are! Look, they don’t even match your coat.” As he bent forward to try and tug off my ‘socks’, I promptly bopped him on the top of the head with the other forehoof he wasn’t paying attention to. While he was slightly dazed from the unexpected blow, I snaked my way through the crowd to avoid him seeing where I disappeared to.         The night moved on, and after an hour or so of dancing and dodging some of the more forward stallions and mares, I went back to the bar again to get some more cider. As I was ordering, I noticed Frosty was at the bar looking slightly downcast. I trotted over, noticing that she had about four or five empty shot glasses and a bottle of Applejack Daniels, and put a hoof on her shoulder. Giving a start, she looked around for a second before managing to focus on me. She gave me a small smile and said, “Hey, best club ever, am I right?” “You okay? You look... pretty bad. Do you want to talk about it?” Her face fell as she gave a heavy sigh. “No, that’s why I suggested coming here with you. I didn’t even want to think about it.” “What do you mean?” She poured herself another shot and looked back at me. “Well, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you this until tomorrow, but I guess some things can’t wait can they?” she said, smiling apologetically. “What are you talking about Frosty? Tell me what?” I asked. “We’re being transferred, Clear Night.”