Ponies All Day-Writing Challenge

by ThunderTempest

14:00-14:30 "Last Week On The Job"

One week. That was all she had left. Then she could finally nap, and do all the awesome things that she never could before. Rainbow Dash could hardly wait. One week, and then her compulsory three years’ weather service was up. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like an easy week ahead. Monday had an all day shower schedule, and that meant a long day of careful monitoring cloud cover and getting wet. Rainbow briefly wondered if she could trade with Raindrops for that day. No, best just to get it over with. Tuesday at least looked better-nothing but fine skies, minimal cloud cover. Exactly the kind of day Rainbow Dash liked-minimal work, maximum nap and practice time. But yeesh, Wednesday was looking horrible. Winter prep Thunderstorm. Ouch. That was going to be a ten hour day, easy. Thursday wasn’t much better-stormy morning, clearing steadily in the afternoon. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all had medium cloud cover slated, so more days of a lot of waiting and careful bucking. And none of this was even beginning to take into account whatever the stupid Everfree would do, because that forest was the bane of her, and every other weather pony’s life around here.

The week passed too slowly for Rainbow. She could feel time inching its way foward as she sat under the constant drizzle of Monday’s shower. Tuesday she more or less napped away. At least the Everfree was behaving itself.

Wednesday and Thursday progressed at a crawl as Rainbow set up and bucked clouds as the foreman called them out. Friday and Saturday were not nearly as bad as she feared, as they’d been downgraded from medium cloud cover to light medium, which meant less time monitoring, more time napping, and that was just fine by her. Sunday, compared with the rest of the week, almost seemed to blur past. One minute, she was clocking on, the next, she was putting her last timesheet in the inbox of her boss’s office, and giving him a last verbal jab.

That was it. She was free! No more bucking clouds, monitoring rainfall or constructing storms. Now she could nap and work on her routine for the Wonderbolts all she wanted.

A week later, she was bored. A week after that, she walked back into her boss’s office and stated that she wanted a job. He made her assistant weather captain and told her to make the weather plans for the next month. Six months later, she took the position of weather captain when her boss retired, and Ponyville celebrated its most efficient weather schedule ever. The others, especially the new kids, were amazed that their weather captain was bucking clouds right alongside them. Dash could never quite bring herself to admit that the reason she made it so she was on weather duty nearly every day was because she liked bucking clouds.

Author's Note:

Written for Prompt #75: “Seven More Days”
X only has one week left before retirement.