Overhead, the domed roof of icy blue was scratched and carved with artistic curls like skater’s tracks on a rink. Beneath her, the stratus quilt oozed and groaned under her lowering weight. Around her, the frozen whirlwind of her bedroom was throwing half-open books and slumped frilly saddles and rotting fruit on untouched plates.
White Lightning folded her wings tightly and peered at the cover. Coldheart’s Guide to the Fashionable Lady’s Courtship of the Gentlecolt. It was new, and therefore relatively undamaged. She dumped it on the bed and rested her ergots and chin on the pillow. Irritatingly, the page began to turn over of its own accord, and she stuck out a hoof to stop it.
“Most stallions,” said the crisp, legal-document page with its tiny writing, “will remain obstinately oblivious to even the most blatant and uncouth of affectionate demonstrations; hence, it would seem to the untutored eye, ipso facto, that no manner of courtship, however elaborate or explicit, would be sufficient to warrant, much less maintain, their romantic interest.”
Oh good grief, no. Not a chance. She clipped the book around the back cover. Flipping, it sailed over the edge and thumped on a pile of uneaten apples. What was I thinking?
Without hesitation, she picked up another book and settled back into position: On the Nature of Young Mares, and the Purposes and the Pursuits of the Good Life.
“Traditionally, there are three stations in life which a young mare – indeed, any pony of sufficiently mature age – must consider and reflect upon before she can hope of enjoying the good life. The first being: the domestic, that which maintains or nourishes those within the sphere of the home.”
Face carefully blank, White Lightning took in the unopened letters heaped on her desk. Dust lightened the few bits that could be seen.
I think the boat’s sailed on that one, she thought, and she jumped ahead to the next paragraph.
“An easy one for the common mare to dismiss out of hoof is the second station, this being the nature and purpose of her leisure activities. Yet, what is considered mere frivolity and emptiness by many is, in point of fact, one of the most crucial and sophisticated of all, for in lowering our inhibitions and relaxing the pretences of quotidian life, our approach to leisure is our purest expression of inner character, and thus of the nature of the life we intend to lead. This profound insight –”
Hoof stretched out as a bookmark, White Lightning closed the tome and let her gaze stray to the open window. Beyond, the stars came and went, but the edge of the moon stared on, utterly indifferent to her tiny, insignificant mind.
Would going to shows and things count? On the calendar pinned to her wall – one of the calendars, for she hadn’t taken one down in years – one or two days for the month were circled, and she found herself drifting off to the next Pinkie Pie party, and then to the following fan club meeting for Rainbow Dash Raconteur Day. And maybe it wasn’t too early to think about the Grand Galloping Gala, or maybe she could persuade a certain unicorn to take her to the Canterlot Garden Party.
Yes, very nice, but what did she actually do there? Last month, she’d gone to Canterlot with a few unicorn friends for the latest in good eating. What a night out that had been! Exotic curries at the Tasty Treat, burnt crunchy bits at the Smoked Oat on Restaurant Row, and a little sweet-tooth action at Doughnut Joe’s. She hadn’t said a word throughout the whole thing. Half the time, she’d been a white shadow hovering over them.
Any other time, there was so much weather-work, and the push-ups, and for some reason this year’s Best Young Flyer Competition was being bumped forward to springtime instead of its usual summer slot, and she had no idea whether she was too old to audition for it –
Shaking her head, she opened the book and jumped again to the next paragraph.
“Lastly, the most widely feared station is that of employment: how one justifies one’s purpose to society for the common benefit of all –”
Under her cold glare, the book snapped shut. She batted it off the bed and didn’t even care when it bent a few pages landing on the previous book.
Work, work, work.
She hovered over the bed and cast about for another title to read.
I used to like Exercise Hour, but Rainbow’s gone insane. We’ve done more push-ups this week than we’ve done in the last two months combined. It’s not like it would do anything even if we WERE applying for the top tier. Cloudchaser and I managed to get into the Wonderbolts Academy just fine before all this “intensive initiative” nonsense.
Her gaze met Top Ten Most Magnificent Flying Feats, 986th Edition before she snorted at the pegasi on the cover. On the other hoof, the one next to it was an old friend, both earth ponies on the front poised and elegantly undulating for their upright waltz: Ritzy Razzmatazz and the Hottest Hotshots of Modern Manehattan.
Her hoof reached down for it before she caught a glimpse of the cover underneath, and instead she slipped the book across and aside. Sternly peering back at her was the face of Princess Luna under the silvery curls of the next title. But she’d read Reputation and Rank: A Royal History literally a dozen times. Even the best bits were starting to feel a bit stale.
No, she thought, rising up. I simply can’t decide.
I might as well leave it for a bit.
In any case, that’s how it always ended. Halfway through a book, she’d flit over and pick up another one. She was starting to run out of bookmarks.
Opposite her, the wardrobe gaped. A space large enough for two dozen dresses boasted only two. Neither of them were aquamarine.
Oh, who do I think I’m fooling? White Lightning drifted over to the window, batting aside the pile of letters until they cascaded onto the floor. I’m background. I always have been, and I always will be. What on earth does Ponet see in me? Can’t clean up, can’t have real fun, can’t even like my job anymore. What was left when you’re done with all that?
What was left, now?
Beyond the blinding sheen of Cloudsdale’s puffy plains, the land below was nothing. Only the rounded mountaintops and jagged forests on the horizon marked where land ended and the fresco of stars began. The eye of the moon continued to stare, but where she’d squirmed or grimaced under it, now she found it oddly reassuring.
True, the cosmos itself agreed: she was insignificant, tiny, barely worth the speck of time and stretch of space against the empty infinity. But at least it noticed her long enough to agree.
Maybe this is what being an artist feels like all the time, she thought. Her chest rose as though to merge with the empty space, to fill it. Ideas twinkled inside the shadows within her skull. She gave one last look around the warzone of her inner life, and then stuck a tongue out at it and flew outside.
Cold air flowed over her, bright lights reflected off her barrel, and then she was past the edge of the cloud and into the void.
White Lightning closed her eyes.
Turbulence moulded itself around her wings. She took a breath, and the pattering scents of moon flowers rained down on her nostrils and trickled down into her lungs. Opening her mouth to taste it, the steel-cold grip of the night petrified her tongue and scoured her gums. She winced; a few sensitive teeth had been stung.
From sheer muscle memory, she knew where to go. No one else could know about this secret place, but then pegasi hardly ever flew around at night.
After all, it’s their fault if they don’t understand where I’m coming from. It’s hardly a secret. They just can’t accept it. As if it makes me any less of a pegasus anyway. Who can say what can and can’t be done here in Equestria?
Nevertheless, the burning bit against her frozen cheeks.
She shook herself down, and opened her eyes.
All about her was darkness: not that it impeded her in any way. No sign of Cloudsdale. Under this moonlight, the pegasus city would shine like a beacon. Mountains spaced out all around her; though she couldn’t see them, she could feel the upward rush of deflected air, and knew she was in the right spot.
Focusing her stare, she found the merest patches of grey against the blackness. White Lightning rubbed her hooves together.
What a bunch! One by one, the clouds drifted into her consciousness as she spotted each in turn. I knew I still had some leftovers from last night.
Which was just as well, as smuggling them out of the factory always left her in a sweat. No one frowned upon it per se, and there was no danger of a foremare lifting her wings up and tutting, but they would ask what she fancied doing with them. Lying wasn’t an option.
Dad never approved of lies. Even when her brothers and sisters said “thank you” to a gift they clearly didn’t want, he’d glare at them. He might not do anything more than that – he was a gentlecolt, after all – but it clearly hurt him.
While she worked, White Lightning practically heard the doubtful humming. Mom had no problem with wings or clouds in themselves, but she was a lady. She’d be darned if her daughter was going to just throw clouds around any old how.
Barely seconds later, White Lightning had a ring of clouds around her, a grey necklace, and – she giggled into her hoof – a magic ring on her left leg, in the manner of the Great Perlino, most artistic of all magicians. Or, at least, it would be in that manner soon enough.
She raised a hoof.
Then, she lowered it. Not stylish enough.
With a twirl of her fetlock, she brandished the rear hoof and then stretched out, according to the axioms of ballet. Poised, graceful, with punch.
At once, the thump of the cloud was lost to the boom. Arcs of lightning flared into life, zapping the clouds neighbouring the first. They boomed. More lightning chained along the ring, the booms rivalled by the brilliant links. Crackling, writhing, sizzling arcs of white and yellow and red and blue blinked and blinked and blinked, surrounding her. They never stopped; each burst triggered more bursts, which triggered more bursts. Only by intuition did she understand this; the real display was too fast for her to keep up.
Like magic.
Weather and magic, combined as one.
White Lightning couldn’t help herself. She clapped her hooves so fast they were simply vibrating into each other. The grin stretched up to her wide eyes. Thousands of afterimages built up until she was surrounded by a wall of purest purple.
Like magic, the spell of lightning burned away the lingering aches and chaotic mess. Everything was so much simpler, so much more beautiful, with lightning. She could stay here until the dawn went on somewhere else, and then stay some more to watch the rainbow sky of a coming day clash with the pure lights near her.
Then the clouds packed up.
Nothing but afterimages remained, yet they too faded away, and all was darkness.
Aches flared up again. Thoughts once banished now came tumbling back in. White Lightning groaned. Not a cloud remained.
I knew I should have gotten some more.
Dully, she flipped round and plunged back into a life she’d been shoved into anyway. At least this way, she could pretend she’d wanted to go back.
Cloudsdale loomed around the slopes, but she no longer noticed. Once she was through the window and under the ice rink ceiling, she barely remembered the journey back. Just blackness, and then whiteness.
Not that she needed to memorize it when she’d seen the curly profile of the cloud city hundreds and hundreds of times. Oh sure, it looked chaotic, but really it was a regimented mishmash of boltholes. Ooh and aah though the grounded ponies would, at they end of the day they were admiring a factory and a bunch of houses. They could get that on the ground. They weren’t even particularly stylish; just cloud swirls and cloud swirls and cloud swirls and cloud swirls and the occasional rainbow. Not even that much thunder and lightning. What kind of freedom was that?
After she landed on a pile of books, she noticed the poster on the wall. Wonderbolts grinned out at her, trailing blue due to the sheer speeds of their flight.
For a moment, she frowned.
Then, she remembered. A gift. Just got in this morning.
This morning…
The letter!
Clumsy hooves dived into the pile. Urgently, she threw aside bills, invitations, charity appeals, something that was addressed to next door, a leaflet for a new cloud cabbage shop, and… There!
White Lightning lifted out of the mass a single crisp, scented, pink envelope. Tape still clung to the back where she’d ripped off the package over breakfast.
Scraps of envelope rained down under her working hooves and teeth. Cringing, she unfurled the letter.
Why oh why didn’t I open this earlier? How could I have been so distracted? I knew I was going to do it. I just didn’t know when! And then I had to find that box for the sceptre-thing, and then I was running late for work, and then – Oh my gosh just read it already!
White Lightning hunched over the desk. Her gaze darted to and fro.
“Dear Little White,
“Thank you for the painting! Mom has already hung it over the mantelpiece, and we’ve had two guests already inquiring about its provenance. We have considered getting a connoisseur over to evaluate it, but whether they agree or not, either way this Ponet fellow is a hidden gem.”
White Lightning smirked and nodded. Did she know how to catch the right ones, or what?
“Your brother is doing splendidly. Recently, he discovered the Canterlot Archives and left home to move to the city itself. I haven’t heard from him yet, but knowing him it’ll be impossible to get him out of there without hiring the Royal Guard to drag him out.”
Sighing, she glanced at her own book minefield.
“Alas, your sister is not faring as well as she could be. This appears to be the same illness making the rounds, and I regret to say she might have caught it off of me just before I was completely recovered. She hopes to return to Manehattan once she is better, but there is talk of cancelling the Festive Feast this year, so I doubt she will go after all. Haute cuisine is the only thing that gets her out of the country home nowadays.”
White Lightning read on, a smile twitching on her face as she did so. In truth, she could only gloss over the exhaustive lists of opera shows and ponies who’d fallen from grace among the Canterlot elite. Still, she knew she’d have to read it in full sooner or later. Family was family.
Turning the paper over, she continued to skim the paragraphs. “Magic,” said one of them.
Magic?
At once, she stopped to read it fully.
“After we attended the Wonderbolt Derby, Mom and I found something else that might interest you. The Enchanted Museum of Alicorn Studies, which I mentioned in my last letter to you, had an exhibition open to the public this week to commemorate the upcoming Hearts and Hooves Day events. Princess Celestia recently donated a collection of magic items, and before most of them went into storage, we were allowed to see them on display.”
White Lightning frowned, but realization crept up on her.
“What a display! One of the rarest and most valuable was the Ascension Crown, which was apparently crafted by Princess Luna herself during the pre-Classical era in a bid to swell the alicorn ranks. Allegedly, the crown has the ability to give a non-unicorn magical powers.”
White Lightning gaped.
“I thought that would be right up your alley, as they say out in the country, so in case you did not have the time to come and see it for yourself, I have enclosed a photograph for you.”
Panic hit her. What photograph? She turned the paper over and over. She shook it down. She pounced on the wreckage of the envelope and saw nothing even vaguely like a torn-up photograph.
Give a non-unicorn magical powers… Oh, he must have forgotten to put it in again. He always does that. Why did he have to do it this time?
Groaning, she pressed her hooves into her face. Last week. This letter would’ve been sent last week; the postal service seemed to be getting worse. Now that it was Hearts and Hooves Day, that exhibition was almost certainly done by now. Besides, how much would it cost to get in? Did they let you in for free at the museums of Canterlot? She’d never been in one.
Glumly, she read the final paragraph of the letter, ignoring the storm crashing inside her head.
“Whatever the case, we all hope you are having a wonderful time in good old Cloudsdale – how I envy you and your special talents! – and may your Hearts and Hooves Day be a magical one. Mom wants you to know you are most welcome to visit whenever you have your next vacations. Let us know ahead of time so we can organize some fabulous days out in the city. I fear we did not do your last stay justice.
“Always proud of you,
“Mom and Dad.”
Always proud of you. They put that in every letter. Why?
White Lightning’s shoulders slumped. More than ever, she regretted flying up, all those years ago, to the lofty peaks of Cloudsdale. It had made sense at the time.
She glanced at her cutie mark. Dark cloud. Jagged lightning. Nothing else.
Sniffing, she placed her chin on the desk and covered her eyes with both hooves. It was stupid. They put it in every single letter. It was supposed to be dull to her by now.
Under her eyes, half-submerged in the mess of dust, one cracked picture lay where she'd knocked it over weeks before. It showed several ponies all standing in their best suits and dresses for the photographer. All unicorns. Except one.
Dots of moisture smeared the glass over her smiling filly face.
After a while, she gave a shuddering sigh.
Fake smile on her face, she straightened up and reached for a blank sheet. She placed a pen on top. She waited for inspiration. “Dear Mom and Dad,” she wrote, and then she stopped and stared.
Beyond the window, the moon had long since risen out of sight. Nothing remained but the emptiness and its feeble stars.
Instead, she pulled open a drawer and scattered coins over the page. Her puffy eye focused on the little numbers engraved into each one. Hoof patted the coins while mind crunched the numbers.
Better late than never, she thought. I hope. Even if it’s not enough…