White Lightning, one moment galloping around the corner and onto the town green, skidded to a halt and stared. The box and letter on her saddle bounced off the back of her head.
Pink paper hearts dangled down from the parasols, and every table had a pony to it: mostly, she noticed, pairs or quartets for double dates. And why wouldn’t they be out and about? Scarcely a cumulus to be seen between them and the blazing blue sea overhead. Even if there had been no one else sitting outside at the café, however, her gaze would still not have flitted any faster to the one table at the edge.
She took a step back, and then held up both wings to support the box package in case it fell off.
Sipping from a straw – doubtless, he’d be sampling the finest fermented grape juices that Berry Punch and Cherry Berry had to offer – adjusting his top hat, and clearly shuffling under the ridiculous dinner jacket and shining golden tie, Ponet the unicorn turned his gaze back to the skies.
Narrowing her eyes, White Lightning followed suit. Pegasi zipped back and forth, many with partners but some without. Not a few single mares passed by.
She glanced back at Ponet. What was his expression? Even from here, she recognized the curving eyebrows, the tiny downward tips of his mouth, the creakingly slow lowering of his expressive ears. He didn’t seem to have picked out any particular pegasus, but there were mostly mares up there. No doubt about that: her keen pegasus senses could take in the full contours of a cloud-splashed rainbow, and then tell from that alone that it was sunset.
Of their own accord, her teeth bared, but then White Lightning shook herself down.
That’s not fair, she thought guiltily. You know him. Maybe he’s just looking for inspiration, or maybe he’s bored. Maybe he’s trying to spot me among the flocks. Whatever she tried, however, the boiling pit of acid bubbled away inside her stomach.
He’s not the sort. I’ll prove it to you. Watch.
All the same, as she ambled forwards and winced at the jarring of her hooves against the brickwork bridge, she wished he hadn’t donned the Canterlot look. Oh, it was fine enough, the golden ribbon serving as a rich accent to the top hat’s dark brim, the way his frizzy golden mane so perfectly complemented his brass buttons and the golden cabochons of his tails. Despite herself, she imagined her own aquamarine ensemble cloaking her in turn – a true Canterlot lady! – and she swung her haunches a little to show off the imaginary hemline.
And yet… and yet…
Her lumpy fringe bounced off her brow under each step. She had nothing but the whiteness of her fur, and even that felt slick under the morning’s weather-work and under the midday sun. Why oh why hadn’t she taken a bath first? She looked like she was meeting just another Cloudsdale stallion.
It took forever to cross the grass and see the table looming up before her, but then Ponet looked down and suddenly forever wasn’t long enough.
He smiled at once. Not the stiff, glazed-over smile she’d seen him wear at garden parties or while listening to some stuffy unicorn at a Star Swirl convention. It was the smile a puppy would’ve given.
“White!” Ponet stepped around the table, jolted it accidentally, winced at his gaskins, and then carried on and wrapped a forelimb around her crest. “Such dreadful timing, as usual!”
He chuckled, and she breathed the relief out of her chest.
“Ah well,” he continued, “can’t help how we’re made, what? Can I get you a drink? Pomace d’Appleloosa? Cherry Hill Ranch Supreme Cider? Ooh, ooh, you must try the latest concoction from the Golden Harvest Plantation: the Sweet Celestia Carotene Kick! I hear it’s all the rage in the rustically minded districts of you-know-where, ahaha!”
Inside her own head, White Lightning giggled. Lady Lightning, and her gallant gentlecolt. Never change, Ponet.
For a moment, she considered graciously waving a hoof to decline, but then the dryness of her mouth sucked her brain dry too, and she grinned sheepishly and nodded.
“Oh, you like that one, do you? Very well.” Ponet tapped the tabletop and returned to his seat, barely placing his coat-tailed haunches on the grass before a waiter materialized beside him. “Garçon, one Sweet Celestia Carotene Kick for my very special somepony. Extra sweet, I believe. Toute de suite, s’il vous plait!”
Airily, the waiter about-turned and strode away, muzzle a little higher than White Lightning thought was entirely warranted. In spite of the package slipping down to her left flank, she was as light as a songbird. Both wings had to be forced still.
“I’ve just had the most splendid week.” Ponet removed his top hat, and she marvelled at how even his wavy fringe seemed to invoke the caramel sheen of liquid gold under a sunset sky. “Miss Rarity hosted the most exciting fashion show in her boutique. I hear she’s taking inspiration from her Manehattan branch, and let me tell you, the artistry, the exquisite yet quirky melange of urbane modernity and old-timey class frankly has Hoity Toity’s World Culture Wonderful Couture beat, hooves-down. It certainly made for a good tonic to that poisonous freakshow she came up with last time. Do you remember me telling you what I read in Cosmare the other day…?”
Opposite, she could see him circling his heel and tapping the table and stretching his forelimb wide in a sweeping gesture. His face flitted naturally from beaming smile to curl-lipped frown to rolling-eyes disdain while his voice tap-danced from one register to another.
This is where I belong, she thought, and she sighed, elbows on the table, hooves pressed against her cheeks. I just wish I could understand half of what he’s saying.
The waiter dropped her glass onto the tabletop. Despite herself, she frowned slightly at the drops sliding down the outside. No unicorn would get such a disrespectful drop. Even as she watched, the same waiter switched Ponet’s drink for another without a single tremble or splash. She watched the snooty-looking popinjay shuffle off smoothly, with his oil-slicked mane and his too-good-for-the-likes-of-her jacket and vest.
White Lightning turned back to the speech, and groaned and buried her face in the table’s varnish. Sometimes, he does go on. And on and on and on and on…
“So anyway, one too many sour grapes for my liking,” he finished, and she wondered if he even knew what the phrase meant, “but overall a splendid bushel of a week. Oh, I say, new drink. Ha! I didn’t even notice.” A slight sip preceded a pause. “White, are you OK?”
Feeling the blush squeeze her cheeks, she forced her face up and offered another grin. He was looking at her almost warily, eyes wide and mouth small again.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “This must sound incredibly boring to you. So, how was your week?”
The coach was sure timing her now. White Lightning straightened up. How do I begin to describe it? Push a cloud. Kick lightning. Do a few Wonderbolts-inspired exercise routines… yes, Rainbow Dash joining the Wonderbolts doesn’t bode well for the rest of us. I swear she sees us as just another squad. We’re only weather ponies.
I’m only a weather pony, she thought sadly.
To him, she screwed up her face and tilted a hoof in midair.
“Oh, well,” he said, casting about as though he’d dropped something. “‘Fraid I can’t help you there. Pegasus life is a closed book to me, what?”
He tried a nervous chuckle. She wished he didn’t. It was worse than the monologuing; at least he had his heart in that.
What do I do, come to think of it? I haven’t been to a decent gathering in ages. It’s all just drill, drill, weather, drill, exercise, weather, drill. I can’t remember the last time I went to see a maiden voyage. Those airships, such feats of unicornian design, such majestic magical machines. Of course they’d figure out how to join us pegasi in the air. Meadowflower herself worked on spells to defy gravity, and oh! If she had just gotten the formula right…
“Hello?” A hoof waved in front of her, and she noticed it was Ponet’s. “Anyone at home?”
Guiltily, she blinked out the daydream and focused on his rising eyebrow.
“I was just asking,” he said a little stiffly, and something small in her heart wilted, “whether you had any plans for today?”
Uh oh, she thought. A shrug and a crouch combined into one shrinking gesture.
Ponet blew sharply between his lips; he was far too genteel to actually spit, but a few microscopic flecks arced out briefly. “I see. I see, indeed. Once again, it’s up to the Elite Pony to draw up a schedule. You promised last week you’d rustle something up, and you had all week to do it. What were you doing?”
By way of explanation, she flapped her wings. For a moment, his glare softened and he stared at them long after she’d folded them. She wished he didn’t. From a pegasus, it would seem intimidating. From a unicorn, it just seemed random.
“Well,” he said, a little more charitably, “I suppose I can’t blame you. Always late, never without a plan, sometimes” – his gaze flitted to her fringe, and she raised a hoof at once to cover it – “uh… too… free-spirited to fuss over the small details. Actually, I don’t mind telling you how nice it would be to let my mane down sometimes.”
His face exploded with panic.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with frumpy – er, I mean with different manes, of course. I mean, some of my best friends are manes – wait, what!? No! Why would I even say that? I wouldn’t say anything so silly. I meant to say that it’s hardly my place to – I mean, uh, different strokes for different folks, what?”
She folded her forelimbs and glared him into silence. Sometimes, just sometimes, it would be nice to go one drink without him acting stupid.
Curling her wing round – she caught his gaze and glared until he apologized and turned away – she held up the glass and, in defiance of the little Lady Lightning in her head tapping her hoof meaningfully, quaffed the orange slop. Dribbles ran down either side of her cheek.
Then she woke up. Hastily, she wiped the running cold off her face and swallowed. Sweet had been right, she thought. I might as well be drinking caramelized sugar. A shudder of sugar rush ran through her jaw. With a plonk, she put the glass down.
“Here.” Ponet summoned a lacy handkerchief from his breast pocket, his unicorn horn aglow. “You appear to have a bit on your chin.”
Any other way, she’d have plucked it from him and dabbed it herself, but she found her gaze wandering to his glowing horn, to the sparkle along its length, and to the wonderfully slight sound of magic charging and crackling against the air. She let him dab her chin, without any resistance whatsoever.
Then she caught his gaze, and hastily looked down at her drink. His expression was the specialist hauteur eyebrow mixed with wry smirk. She’d always found it a little too knowing for her liking.
Beaming up at him, she gripped the package in both hooves and reached across the table. Not that the contents were heavy, but it was a large box and she winced at the stretching tendons in her spine.
“What’s this?” he said theatrically, as if he didn’t know. “Oh my, a present for me?”
Now the smirk’s on the other muzzle, she thought, though she nodded as regally as she could. Lady Lightning was owed big time.
Ponet levitated the box out of her grip. At first, he began telekinetically peeling back the wrapping paper and sliding off the ribbon, but then he lowered it onto the grass beside him and cut out his magic.
I wish he didn’t do that, she thought. Maybe he’s trying to make me feel comfortable, but honestly, I’d be more comfortable if he’d just use his magic. Maybe that’s why he stares at pegasi: to find out more about them. Canterlot living is part academia, after all. Studying would be very… Ponet of him. Or it could just be his inner artist.
His gaping excitement closed. Squinting inside the box, he hummed. It wasn’t an encouraging hum.
She felt her ears droop of their own accord. Now that she was actually giving it to him, it seemed a bit, well…
“Oh ho ho,” he said gamely, forcing a smile onto his muzzle while his eyes drew up the lids protectively. “I see. How very interesting.”
Out of the box, he levitated her gift.
“A garnet-tipped Enchanted Enterprises modern sceptre-cane,” he said, and now his game chuckle ran like blades across iron bars. “How very… quaint.”
Oh dear. Inside her head, Lady Lightning thumped her own face with a hoof.
“Quaint.” That’s Ponet for “It’s awful, but I’m going to pretend it’s still a good gift.” And not some cheap knock-off of a real museum-worthy work of artisanship. Not some shiny, over-glittered, mass-produced, barely weeks-old bit of tourist kitsch only a foal could love.
She wanted to give him something like the Staff of Wiseacre the Smartmouth, or like the enchanted cane of Grim Tidings the Dark Mage. Even outside of the history books, she’d seen palaces of shops with magical artefacts discreetly arranged as though it were simply a jeweller’s, or a tailor’s fit for Princess Celestia herself. They had class. They had style. More to the point, even a non-unicorn could wield one or two of them.
Unfortunately, she’d taken one look at the molehill of coins in her bank vault and knew they were a million years beyond her. Besides, if they turned you away at the entrance, then by definition you were not the kind of pony who belonged in the enchanted emporium anyway. Think of all the spells a pegasus could perform if they just had a hold of one of those amazing artefacts.
Her eyes lit up under the parasol, and through the light she could see herself with a festooned wooden staff in her hooves. It wouldn’t be as good as the real thing, but think of all the everyday mugs she could levitate without raising a hoof, think of all the strange devices she could slip her magic through instead of forcing her clumsy wings in to get stuck.
“I have a present for you, too,” cooed Ponet.
Like a kicked cloud, the dream poofed out of existence. He’d just levitated another box across the table to her.
What a box! Finest silk ribbon from the Canterlot Carousel, wrapping paper like the pages of a glossy magazine, tailored and decorated – her heart fluttered and she fanned herself – with grey cumulus clouds discharging zigzag lightning. Her cutie mark.
Wings a blur, she shot over and tackled him in a winding embrace. She couldn’t squeeze hard enough.
Then she zipped back into place and ripped away and tore out and bit through and spat out every scrap before she realized what she was doing. What would it be? A volume on ancient unicorn lore? A noble genealogy catalogue like Dimwit’s Regally Impeccable Peerage? Jewel-encrusted aquamarine dress she’d always, always, always stared at through the boutique windows?
White Lightning flipped the lid aside, tipped the box over, and drew back.
She cocked her head. She narrowed one eye and stretched her brow over the other. She skewed her jaw.
“Ta da!” Ponet beamed around the upturned box. “I sculpted it just for you. Well, if I’m brutally honest, I asked Miss Twilight Sparkle to apply that famous cloud-walking spell over it, but I was in charge of the actual artistry. What do you think?”
Hooves shaking slightly, she reached in and eased it out of its bubble wrap. Indeed the cloud was hard as ice, yet warm as a fuzzy blanket crumpled into a ball. Gently, she upturned the sculpture and watched it in case it did anything.
It was a good likeness, she had to admit. And it was a very Ponet thing to do. More to the point, it was a kind of Canterlot-level artwork. But…
She put it down on the table and leaned left, and then leaned right, and then was upright again.
“I thought you’d be amazed by it,” said the smug voice of Ponet. “Pegasi love clouds, and I love art, so what better way to combine both loves than with a classic pegasus piece of style and sophistication?”
She hadn’t the heart to tell him pegasi carved clouds all the time. It was like handing an earth pony a rune-inscribed brick.
“True, I couldn’t quite get the fine detail of the face right, and I simply could not find a way to get the delicate cutie mark in place.”
It was a little sculpture. Of her.
A little White Lightning reared up on the small podium, wings spread in takeoff, front hooves reaching for the sky. The face was a cloudy mirror of her own, down to the serene smile and calm eyes. Vaguely, she wondered what on earth he saw wrong with it.
She bit her lip. Feeling like an utter traitor, she forced a smile onto her face and nodded keenly.
“Wonderful!” Rather more noisily than his wont, Ponet sucked the fermented grape juice through his straw. She noticed his gaze drifting to the pegasi flitting overhead. “I don’t mind telling you I was worried for a moment there. You looked so absolutely shocked by my statue. Yes, I know painting is more my style, but I wanted to go the extra mile. Exercise a little artistic freedom.”
Until she ducked back behind the box and the tattered paper, White Lightning continued beaming to mouth-breaking point. Out of sight, however, she pressed both hooves into her forehead and wiped down, smearing the slight sweat over her eyelids, pulling the ridge of her muzzle, and slapping her lips back. Her own wings drooped.
Once more, he began talking about his latest attempts to combine apples with acrylics, or something like that. How could he be so easy-going all the time, as if the last few minutes of whatever had happened… hadn’t happened? She had to knock the remains off the table herself. Moodily, she took a shot of the glass and stared at the tabletop.
Pegasi love clouds, he says. Fair enough, he’s not actually wrong. Nothing like a good storm cloud to get me out of bed every morning. Maybe if he’d sculpted one of those dark, brooding thunder-makers instead of the typical cumulus type, I’d have been more impressed. Or at least he could’ve sculpted me kicking or pushing one. That’s who I am. Not some generic flapper.
Whatever she thought, it didn’t stop her suddenly wanting to gallop away. His was still a perfect present. Hers was not. She wondered why she’d ever thought it would be.
Around her, the couples talked on and nuzzled each other’s snouts and laughed and sang and occasionally shouted arguments at each other. Beneath her, the grass crunched under her shuffling. Overhead, the sun beat down and the whoosh of wings went on.