The winter wind whipped the piney treetops below; the cold cut like a knife through flightfield and feathers and fur alike, its deadly chill stabbing at Storkie. Snow swirled from the blizard, dangerously reducing her visibility, until it was all the Pegasus could do to make sure she didn't smack headlong into some unseen hill. The clouds were ominously low, the ceiling dropping minute by minute; before long, she feared, she would have absolutely no visibility above treetop level. Then, any low flying would become extremely dangerous.
As a Pegasus, Sweetie Stork could theoretically fly above the storm, wait it out gliding high in the sky or resting on loud. But in a storm like this, that could be a deadly trap. The high airs were even colder than those in which she now flew, while shifting stormclouds would provide no stable surface on which to rest. She was no weatherpony to warp the patterns to her will. Storkie was a midwife, who used her wings mainly to get from one errand to the next, and she was out of her element in this storm.
Besides, the cold clouds held a subtler menance. If she could find a stable formation, and sink in grateful repose on its surface, she might well fall asleep. The frigid winds would softly steal away her life, leaving a frozen corpse to fall to the ground. The dead could not cloudwalk -- not that falling would matter to her much, after her heart stoped.
No, if the storm worsened, she would have to seek safety somewhere on the ground. Just where, she did not know -- she was over the deep woods of Northern Mane in midwinter, where towns, villages and even steadings were few and far between. Encountering other travelers would be improbable. What was worse, she had no clear idea of exactly where she was, and in this limited visibility it would be far too easy to fly right by a town, back into the wilderness, and find her own death.
When she had set out in the morning, the notion of her death seemed absurd. She was a healthy mare in the prime of her life -- 33 years old -- and this was nothing more than another routine call. Cookie Galley, a farmwife at a remote steading, was within a day of her time. Sweetie Stork had promised to attend her, if she got the word in time, and Cookie had a Pegasus colt working at her farm, who acted as courier and guide.
They had raced out there, arriving well before noon, and the Sun had shone brightly, though dark clouds already threatened on the northern horizon, where an Arctic storm was blowing off the Frozen Wastes on the other side of the Laurel River and the Crystal Mountains. The labor had taken a while and gone well, and the issue had been a healthy little filly. By then it had been late afternoon, and Cookie had offered to guest her midwife, but Stork, moved by some obscure impuse -- she couldn't even explain it to herself, as she had nothing and nopony awaiting her back home -- had deided to decline, to instead race the storm back home.
She had lost the race.
She had to acknowledge this to herself now as she cruised, ice starting to form on her wingtips, shaking free with each desperate beat, as she lowered her altitude, dangerously close to the treetops below. She had long since given up on making it home by nightfall -- night was now in fact falling -- or even of making it home tonight. Right now, ever making it home again would count as a victory, snatched from the jaws of a cruel and implacable Nature.
She didn't think she was anywhere near a town, or even a village. She doubted she was even near a steading. All she could see, ahead and passing by under her hooves, were acres and acres of primal pine forest, looking to have grown here, undisturbed, since the world was born. She would have given much to sight even a single structure -- anything with a roof and four walls, in which she might seek shelter from the storm.
She didn't expect to find one. Instead, she was searhing for a timber deadfall, or some conformation of rocks which would at least get her out of the wind. Snow was a good insulator, she knew, and if she could arrange some sort of snow shelter, maybe building a fire within from deadwood, she might last the night, and avoid serious frostbite.
Storkie thought wistfully of her big bed at home, complete with comforter. Were she there, she would light the fire in her stove, bake herself some nice filling pan-cakes, slather butter upon them and enjoy a cozy dinner. The hot coals would go in her warming-pan, helping her to sleep well under her comforter. The bed would be lonely, yes, but such was her fate now, possibly forever, as a widow with no good stallion presenting himself. Lonely, she could survive. What she needed was warm.
Wishing does no good, she chided herself, in the tones of her mother. The aphorism, which she had frequently heard her mother say when that worthy had still been alive, Stork had seen confirmed by numerous disappointments and tragedies. If wishing had worked, Stork would have still had a mother, and a husband, and two children. Instead, life was fragile -- and precious.
Now, her own death, in her early thirties, seemed quite likely. This would cap her record of failure. It seemed very unfair -- but such self-pitying thoughts were a waste of time, and wasting time right now was a luxury she coul not afford. Already, the treetops were hazing as the clouds dropped into them, and the last of the light was vanishing in the west.
She spared but a single look around her before making ready to dive into the canopy.
And she saw it!
She saw it by the last of the dying light, at the edge of her limit of visibility. It was smoke rising from the trees, a single column of gray smoke, whipped by the winds and carried southeast as soon as it topped them. It might have been natural -- but Storkie doubted it, given the nature of the weather.
No, a Pony had built that fire, lit it, tended it. Somewhere down there was a house, a shack, a camp -- something of intelligence and civilization. Warmth and shelter -- of whatever sort, no matter how humble, she cared not at present. She was sure it would be friendlier than a lonely, icy death.
Quickly fixing the bearing and distane in her mind, Sweetie Stork dived into the treetops. Not blindly, of course -- she was no stranger to the demands of forest flying -- but with an eye toward avoiding treetrunks and major branches, she dipped below the canopy. A few twigs and a barrage of pine needles sprayed from her flightfield, whih easily absorbed the impacts.
Then, she was through the canopy, into the more spacious realms below. There was more room, but it was almost pitch-black here, as the light died in the West and what little remained through the clouds was swallowed up by the masses of branches and needles above.
Continuing to fly forward would risk bone-jarring collision with a tree trunk, so she stopped in midair, hovered on her flightfield, and -- as best she could while part of her wings were projecting the field, reached into her bags, pulled out a small, sealed survival lantern with an adjustable bullseye aperture. Holding this carefully in her forehooves, she then wobbled on one wing, and took out a morningstar match with one wingtip, managing to strike it without dropping either match or lantern.
She lit the lantern, crowing inwardly at her own success.
At which point, she mis-timed the motions of her wings, wobbled in midair, and dropped the matchbox. Indeed, she dropped it in the worst possible way: she saw the individual mathes fall out one after another, before the box followed it into the dark abyss beneath.
Luckily, she managed to not also drop the lantern.
The glow from the small lantern was feeble, but just enough to enable her to see the tree trunks and avoid hitting anything large on the way to the ground.
I hate close-quarters flying, Sweetie Stork reflected. She was a creature formed for long-distance open-air flying, not for dodging between trees or engaging in complex manipulation while hovering. Her long-legged slim build, which was duplicated in her wing structure with long, narrow wings, made that plain. Close-quarters flying was nevertheless sometimes necessary in her line of work, and she had gotten at least passbly decent at the techniques.
She touched down, hooves crunching into the new-fallen snow, and was relieved by the contact, though her frogs immediately began to lose heat to the chill surface. She had not packed snow-boots but she reached into her bags again and drew out a hooded cloak, which she donned. Her head and barrel, at least, were now well-protected from the chill air.
She needed this extra protection, of course, because when she landed her flightfield had automatically collapsed. Flightfields were the great strength and weakness of Pegasi; they provided not only levitation and propulsion in the air, but also protection from impacts, and even to some extent from wind and cold. But they required that the Pegasus keep flying, which consumed a lot of energy, and was downright dangerous in conditions of congested airspace and limited visibility -- conditions such as prevailed right now.
Now, there was nothing for it but to walk, like any Earth Pony or Unicorn, through the blizzard, making for the source of that once-glimpsed smoke column -- which she could see no longer, between the gloom and the surrounding forest. She put the lantern over her head by means of an insulated strap, and thus had light -- albiet dim light -- in whatever direction she turned her head. This was enough for reasonably safe walking, if she paid close attention. She tepped slowly and carefully, which was frustrating, and worse than frustrating, for the chill was cutting through her cloak and starting to bite its way through hair and hide. Soon, she was shivering.
This annoyed, but did not yet frighten her. A trained midwife, she was also a decent general healer, and she well understood the functioning of the equine anatomy. She knew well the purpose served by shivering: it was a way for a Pony to generate additional heat through involuntary muscular contractions, when she was losing too much heat to the environment. This was not dnangerous in and of itself.
Things would get dangerous when it remained cold, but she stopped shivering. That would mean that her body had given up on trying to keep her warm through muscular contractions, and was instead trying to conserve its remaining energy to keep her core temperature up by abandoning the extremities and all but the most vital organ functions. Then, she would feel warm, because her body would no longer be paying attention to nerve impulses from the exterior, and she would sink into a final sleep, from which -- absent rescue or a return to more bearable temperatures -- she would never awake.
Hopefully, she would find the fire she had seen before things got that far.
If she didn't, she would die.