About a month later, and Hayden was shuffling nervously back and forth in her room, fussing over what she’d packed into her saddlebags and wondering how long she would have to wait. She had packed everything she could think off—her old belongings were more than enough for survival in the wilderness when she’d been human, but there was no telling how useful they might be, or how much they would even be needed.
We’re not camping, we’re not crossing the wilderness. It’s okay. It’s only a day’s flight away. A day’s flight was part of why she was so nervous in the first place. Flying had gotten easier for her—not so much because anypony had taught her as the movements and gestures always seemed to come to her when she wanted them. As though she were accessing deeply recessed memories, ready to rise and serve her as soon as she needed them.
But having to fly for a whole day straight, on my first day out of the palace… Still, Hayden had started this path. She could’ve pressured Luna to send her back to Earth, and she hadn’t. She could’ve kept her stupid hooves to herself and not gotten herself into a relationship with Nightbreeze, and she wouldn’t be out here either. Nightbreeze would have known how to set this up, Nightbreeze would’ve known closer bases than Fort Defiance to try out Hayden’s instructions about food preservation and water sanitation.
“But you have to see it!” Sunspot’s letter had read, only two days before. “Not one pony in the whole fort has been sick for a week! No deaths in winter, with such bad air and bad climate… it’s almost impossible to believe. I wonder if there is more that could be done, but I suspect your personal visit would help with that. Visit and see, then maybe you’ll have better advice. I’m sending an escort, and I have already obtained the princess’s permission on your behalf. Your escort should arrive a day after this message finds you.”
Well, it had been another day, and sure enough Luna had confirmed that she was being allowed to visit the fort so long as “You remain with the escort at all times and travel the most direct possible route to and from the fort.” Luna had described this trip as a low-risk way for Hayden to earn back some of her trust. It was within Equestria’s borders, not near any of the contested areas where conflict might arise, and far from a civilian population that might react badly to such a strange pony visiting them.
Someone knocked on the door, short and sharp. Hayden shifted once more in her winter coat, flexing in her warm boots affixed to each of her hooves. She liked the contrast the white fabric gave to her coat, even though she never would’ve admitted it. Pinstripe hadn’t ever been told why Nightbreeze had been dismissed, but she like much of the castle suspected Hayden had ordered it.
And in a way, she had. Having half the castle hate me is far better than the alternative. I’m the one who deserves it, anyway.
“Come in!” Hayden said, standing as straight as she could. Warm jacket and boots did not cover her wings, which did unnerve her a little. With so much exposed skin instead of warm feathers, she was quite nervous about what the effects of cold exposure might be. Nopony could know—except maybe Nightbreeze herself, but she hadn’t returned any of Hayden’s letters since arriving in Icefalls.
The door swung open, and a towering stallion walked in—a pegasus so tall, he would’ve been almost as tall as Luna herself, sans horn. His armor was bright gold, his spear and lance both sharp, though both were sheathed. He also wore tight saddlebags, and smelled like he’d been flying all day. “You’re Lady Evening Star?” His coat was almost as white as her jacket, his eyes gold like a bird of prey. The smell was almost more overwhelming.
“Y-yeah,” she squeaked, looking away. “That’s me.” He didn’t stare at her wings, as so many others had. Didn’t even look at them. “You’re my escort?”
He nodded. “My name is Captain Lodestone—I’m the officer in charge of Fort Defiance.”
Hayden’s eyes widened, and her attention snapped instantly back to him. Why would the officer in charge be here? Acting like a grunt… did something go wrong? “What happened?”
He blinked, startled. “What happened?” He walked up beside her—a fair bit taller than she was, despite her height. She looked away, tried not to smell him, and that helped a little. “I’m told you’re the pony responsible for the changes at Fort Defiance, is that correct?” His tone was flat—no hint at what he might mean.
She nodded timidly. “Y-yeah. Those are… s-some of my discoveries.” A little lie—and some part of her felt guilt for taking personal credit from so many human inventors. But going into detail like that with the average pony—explaining Pasteur and Fleming and the others, well… that would complicate matters far further. It was easier for them to believe that an eccentric genius had come up with things than a traveler from another universe.
“How much did you know about Defiance? Did the princess tell you it is the most important fort in all Equestria? That more than half our troops pass through there during their training? That more soldiers live there than in most cities?”
Hayden swallowed and shook her head slowly. “W-what… what happened? Sunspot said…”
Lodestone’s expression broke, and a faint smile appeared on his face. “I came to personally thank you. If somepony had told me a year ago that I could keep troops in such concentration without losing them, I would’ve told them they’d been licking too much salt.” He met her eyes. “Now if you can just keep my stallions from going hungry through winter, we might have a statue made.”
Hayden forced herself to laugh. The sound came out a little awkward and forced despite her best efforts. “W-we’ll see,” she said. “The princess cares about your well-being, I’m just… her latest plan to help the ponies she cares about. Defiance was just the first place to get these changes—I want them shared with the whole country eventually.”
He got a little stiffer. “Yes, well. Harmony or even Canterlot might be able to benefit, but that’s not the decision of a pony like me. I was hoping I might be able to ask some questions about the method as we travel, in fact.”
“Sure!” She brightened a little, before walking over and settling her saddlebags on her back. It was good to be back in familiar territory. “Like what?”
“Sunspot only gave me instructions. She never explained what about making my men dig latrines away from the river or any of the other changes would work to stop ponies from getting sick. Which… I guess wasn’t much of a change. Unicorns never say how their magic works. But with so many sick, we just didn’t have the unicorns to go around. If you’re not an officer, you’d have to chance on honey water and hope you got better.”
“I’d be happy to explain it, Captain. I’m not a teacher though, so I’m not certain if I’ll be able to do so to your satisfaction. But I can try.”
“Then if you’re ready, follow me.” He gestured with a wing back to the open door. “We have a long flight back. If we don’t start now, we might be sleeping in the clouds instead of the quarters I had prepared for you. I don’t imagine the princess would be pleased to learn that.”
I wouldn’t mind sleeping on a cloud with you, she thought, or at least some deep, instinctive part of her brain thought. She choked it back as quickly as she could, letting her natural disgust drown out the unnatural emotion. I’m not going through this again. Hayden wondered idly to herself if Luna had some hand in the decision to send a stallion to escort her, which under most circumstances would’ve been the more unsafe option.
Unfortunately for me, Luna’s wrong about me being gay. Or maybe she wasn’t, depending on one’s point of view. It wouldn’t be easier, that was the point.
They took off from Harmony using one of the many balconies. Nopony gave them a second look, at least once they were a little way off the ground and Hayden’s wings could’ve belonged to anypony else. Hayden found it nearly impossible to look down at the ground without losing her confidence to fly, so she kept her eyes on Lodestone as often as she could. That was fine, in its way. There were worse things to look at in the world.
It was a shame she was too afraid to watch the city below very carefully. Even what little she saw suggested some of the most beautiful elfin architecture, buildings of white marble melded with the trees and somehow in harmony with them. Maybe that was where the name came from.
Flying north, they passed over sparse countryside filled with the odd farm, then over the provincial city of Canterlot, with its ugly stone fort atop the peak.
They flew close together, close enough that they could speak without the wind drowning out their conversation. Lodestone proved as intelligent as he was attractive, asking all the right questions and apparently understanding what she had to teach with minimal effort. But it would be hard to question the science after seeing his fort stop getting sick.
“Once I heard the symptoms I knew it would work,” Hayden continued, many hours later, when the sun had gone down. They were still flying, though Lodestone seemed to think their odds of reaching Defiance before it got too dark to navigate weren’t good. “I don’t really know how you’d have a similar disease, but that didn’t matter. Just breaking the life-cycle was all we had to do. There are… lots of other illnesses, but we’ll wipe out most of them just by keeping your stallions clean, isolating the sick, and washing their hooves whenever they do anything dirty.”
“Remarkable,” Lodestone said. “Sadly, more remarkable than my flying ability in this darkness. I know you’ve been blessed by Luna’s magic Lady Star, but I have not. Would you object to making temporary provision in the clouds? It’s too cold to do so on the ground, as you can see.”
She could see the snow, blanketing everything. It just looked like Canadian wilderness to her, broken by the occasional lone house or barn. Far too cold for any consistent industry. There weren’t even any roads below them, or if they were they’d been completely buried by the even blanket of white.
“S-sure,” Hayden squeaked, finding her voice suddenly came only with difficulty. “Yes, we can stop. I wouldn’t want us to get lost out here… though I was looking forward to trying whatever it is your men eat.”
Lodestone laughed again, though his voice was still subdued. He was clearly trying to conceal just how tired he was. By the sound of it, he flew through the night to get to me, then turned right around and started flying back. There were birds on earth capable of things like that, but somehow, she doubted many ponies had the build for it. I still don’t really understand how we can fly in the first place. Magic, obviously. Any question she didn’t know the answer to, that was always it.
Such as walking on clouds. Lodestone found a white, fluffy cloud for them, circling around it, and dragging one hoof along the surface until he called back that it was sturdy enough to sleep on. Hayden had heard ponies like Nightbreeze talk about walking on clouds, but until she saw it…
Hayden saw it then. Would’ve thought the captain was lying to her, were it not for how obviously his wings were folded. As she came in for a landing herself, she was surprised that she could feel the clouds quite distinctly on her hooves—like a particularly light snow, which would give under her weight, or compress if she put too much pressure on them, but otherwise hold steadily. “Are you sure we can just sleep on this?” she asked, as the captain flattened and cleared a section of clouds with formal, almost ritualized practice.
“Ponies don’t sleep on clouds where you’re from?” he retorted, not even looking up from his work. “You’ve denied yourself quite the luxury if that’s the case. No cot is as comfortable as a cloud, I promise you. And unlike fancy bed, any pegasus can have a cloud if he or she wants one. We’re more… enlightened that way.”
She almost argued that it was the world just happening to provide what was good for ponies, no effort on their part, but she didn’t see much point in that. It’s okay, it’s just for a night. I can keep myself from doing something stupid just for one night.
“We never did,” she admitted, though she knew the subject of her origin was one of those explicitly forbidden by Luna’s instruction. She couldn’t give specific answers, and being unable to answer questions was a great way for ponies to figure out that her whole history was a lie. It wouldn’t matter where it had come from, once the rumor got going.
“Well, I’ll remember what you said about sharing their food,” Lodestone said. “Our guests from the capital tend to say noble things, but doing them is…” He shrugged. “Maybe you’re different. We aren’t going through a constant cycle of sickness anymore in Defiance, so that’s different.” He sat down in the very center of the spot he’d made—such that there was nowhere for Hayden to rest without either being on the cloud she didn’t trust or being in contact with him. Is that the point? Is he trying to suggest we should do something together, or do ponies just have different standards about intimacy? “If the lady would permit me to ask a frank question?”
It was hard to generalize human history to ponies, particularly regarding sex. Magic had done thousands of years ago what automation and machinery had done to humanity—it was a powerful equalizer.
She nodded, before settling down onto the ground as far from him as she could without resting her weight on the still-fluffy parts of the clouds. It won’t matter if I fall through, I’ll just fly…
But she didn’t fall through. Just like her fear of the high-altitude cold, it appeared mercifully in vain. “Sure, Captain. But I can’t promise I’ll answer. The princess has placed restrictions on me, and I will obey her.”
“Of course.” He nodded. “I understand following orders. I just… and I know it isn’t my place to ask… but what compensation are you getting for this? What did Sunspot have to promise you to get your help? There are so many ponies who think the coffers of the military are endless… or that they’re too full, with no war presently raging. But Equestria doesn’t have those bits to spare. If they’re enriching you, then some soldier somewhere else doesn’t have a bed to sleep on, or grain in his belly.”
“Oh!” Hayden looked up from where she’d been staring off the edge of the cloud, gradually growing more afraid of heights. “Nothing, obviously. This isn’t even my world, I don’t care about your money. I just want to try and do what I can while I’m here.” Her eyes widened as she realized what she’d said, and her heart began to race…
But the captain didn’t react with any surprise. “In that case, I can respect you,” he said. “I hope you will forgive my skepticism, Evening Star. Equestria has had its fair share of well-to-doers over the years, so many that I’ve come to disbelieving them on principle.” Without warning, without invitation, he rested his wing over her shoulder. The gesture pulled her closer, though not with much strength. Or even much sensuality.
She stiffened at first, watching Lodestone with a growing sense of fear over what he might try next… but apparently, he had nothing in mind. He didn’t even look at her.
“I know you must be itching to get those boots off, or even your saddlebags. Don’t—they’ll fall right through. Just get what rest you can. I know your wings won’t insulate as well as mine. We’ll be off again as soon as it’s light enough to see.”
“T-thank you,” she croaked, though she wasn’t terribly cold. Only her wings felt the chill, and even then, not much. It was still nice to have something warm so close.