“You know, I'm glad you invited me over for breakfast, but are you sure I can't help?” Wind Shear wheedled.
“No,” Morning Glory said firmly, stirring the pot on the fire. “After your attempt at dinner last week, I'm not trusting you with anything more complicated than cold cereal. Which, need I remind you, is not good for me in this weather.” She cast a quick glance at the sky and scowled.
“I said I was sorry,” Wind Shear sulked. So he'd gotten distracted talking with her and dinner had caught fire. Who hadn't done that at least once?
One of the snake heads flicked its tongue at him. “You'd’ve been sorrier if your house had burned down,” she retorted.
Wind Shear snorted, forced to concede this point. He glanced around at Morning Glory’s house. If it could be called that, anyway. She'd lashed (turns out that also meant ‘tying’, something he’d never had to do with clouds) poles together in a sort of lean-to setup under a big evergreen tree, with thick tarps (that he'd had to acquire for her) to block the wind, and it actually worked pretty well. The tree seemed to be a natural insulator from the top, and it smelled faintly of pine.
She pulled the pot off the heat and stirred again before looking down. “No, I did appreciate you trying, though,” she added softly.
Wind Shear grinned. Those softer moments of hers were getting a bit more common as time went on. She was a kind and generous mare under her gruff exterior, and he hoped to see more of it. Hay, this invitation had been a soft moment, wrapped in a ‘you'd starve without the mares in your life’ dig; but it had culminated in letting him see where she lived, no blindfold this time. It felt like he was privy to one of her most closely-kept secrets, and he loved that feeling. “You sure you don't want to come into town with me for lunch?” he asked, referencing their earlier conversation. “You'll get food prepared by somepony who's competent and not you. And no dishes,” he added in a singsong voice.
“No,” Morning Glory said firmly, pulling out her mismatched bowls. “And you're doing these dishes. I'm not a freak show and I have no intention of becoming one.”
“I'm sure they'd love you once they got to know you,” he tried.
“Yeah, love to put me in the window as a living advertisement,” she said darkly. “Pass.” She ladled the steaming oatmeal into his bowl. “If I wanted that, I'd start my own shop and be my own mascot.”
“Alright. I'll bring you something back, then.”
“Grab me one of the me-breads, would you? I've been wanting to try one.”
Wind Shear smiled. “You got it.”
The pageant had ended, and Wind Shear ran back on stage, enjoying the sound of stomping. He wore costume armor reminiscent of pre-unification times. As he ran, he scanned the audience, but did not see the pony he looked for. He hid his frown. She may have just left early. Or she was hiding really well. Or she may not have come at all.
With a quiet stomp from Happy Trails (who was in the center of their line, playing Smart Cookie), they took the cue and bowed in unison, and then took a step back as others came on for their bow.
Smaller town life is great, he reflected. Nowhere else would he have been gotten the opportunity to play Commander Hurricane in the traditional Hearth's Warming Eve pageant.
Their curtain call completed, they all headed off stage as the curtain closed. He congratulated the young filly playing Private Pansy (she blushed and giggled; it had been her first acting gig), and he headed out the back door. There were quite a few ponies in the audience he didn’t recognize, most of them mares, and he sincerely doubted they were all there for family. But he knew he wouldn’t be bothered once he got out of sight of town hall; any visitor would be hopelessly lost in the mess of streets that was this little town, especially with all the snow that had fallen. Talk about a home field advantage!
And then a voice broke into his thoughts.
“Turning into a regular pillar of the community, aren't you?” Morning Glory said, falling in step right next to him.
Wind Shear shrugged, unable to keep the smile off his face. It had been a couple weeks since she’d come back, but he was still always happy to see her. “I try. It's my home now, after all. Better make the most of it.”
She shivered, but she did her best to hide it. “Wonder how many ponies came just to see you perform, oh mighty Commander Hurricane.”
“Hopefully not many. I'd hate to have disappointed them.”
“Well, there was at least one who came just for that.” She nudged him in the shoulder with her hoof. “And she wasn't disappointed at all.”
“That’s a relief.”
She shivered ever so briefly. “I think my second favorite part was when you threatened Private Pansy with court martial. I think your stomp actually scared her.”
“Yeah, I think so,” he admitted. “She jumped just a little bit.” He paused. “But what was your first favorite part?”
“My first favorite?” A devious smile flitted across her face. “When you flubbed the line about earth ponies and accidentally took Platinum’s line.”
Wind Shear winced. “I was hoping I salvaged that.”
“You did. Played it off well. And whoever Platinum was covered well, too. Hadn't heard that insult in a long time.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, she did. I heard she used to be on Bridleway, actually.”
“I could believe that. It just made me laugh. Anypony who doesn't know the script wouldn't have caught it.” She shivered again.
The happiness he felt at her arrival dimmed as he realized how cold she was. Being a pegasus, he was used to cooler temperatures; but the rumors that this was going to be the coldest winter in years were sounding more and more true. “You sure you're warm enough?” he asked.
“I'm fine,” she insisted.
Wind Shear shrugged, but then, in a fit of daring, he rested his wing on her withers. She tensed, but did not pull away.
“So, uh,” Wind Shear started, thrown off at her accepting the physical touch but wanting to keep the conversation going, “how do you know the script? Were you ever in a pageant?”
“No, I… Not exactly. I played Smart Cookie. Would have. I was her understudy. Never made it on stage. But I learned all the lines.” She shivered again, and leaned into him a bit more.
Wind Shear looked up ahead. He brightened. “Almost home,” he said comfortingly.
“Great. I'll make some soup.”
“I'll make soup,” Wind Shear insisted. “You're freezing.”
“And if you catch your kitchen on fire?” she challenged.
“Then at least you'll be warm again,” Wind Shear said with a straight face.
Morning Glory barked a laugh.
Thankfully, Wind Shear did not catch his kitchen on fire, and was getting better at cooking in general. He soon had a bowl of piping hot soup, and Morning Glory held it close to her body and breathed in the steam. The snake closest to where her forelock would have been emerged and neared the bowl, tongue flicking, enjoying the heat; and the others soon followed. “Thanks,” she said softly.
“You’re welcome.”
They ate their soup in silence. Wind Shear hadn’t realized how cold it was until he’d started. He looked at Morning Glory and winced. It must have been awful for her, and he debated wrapping his wing around her again. He made two false attempts before settling on a question. “Are you going to be ok?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re still shivering,” he observed.
“I said I’m ok,” she spat.
There was a long pause.
“What?”
“Just… remembering something from flight camp.”
“What?” she demanded.
“If a fellow flier is too cold, you warm them up, uh, with yourself.”
Morning Glory stared. “You do what, now?”
“You know, you make a little cloud cave, make a big cave and hollow it out, making the walls as compressed as possible for- for insulation, uh, take the armor off, both go inside?”
“Because I was an earth pony, no, I do not. I am fine. I am going straight home after this, and even if I wasn't, there is no way I'd let you in my bed, no matter how cold it got!”
Morning Glory scowled audibly over the sound of the wind howling outside, and crossed her forelegs over her chest and shivered again. The snow outside had escalated from a flurry into a small blizzard just during their soup, and even under the covers, it was still really cold. “Keep all your body parts to yourself, ok? Or your whole body will be stone hard in the morning. Got it?”
Wind Shear nodded from his position behind her. “Duly noted.”
She shivered one more time before falling asleep.
It had been slightly awkward the next morning. Suffice it to say that Wind Shear was very grateful the next morning that he’d somehow ended up as the little spoon.
Morning Glory mumbled a thanks when she got up and did not say much over the breakfast she made. But she did brush up against him with her hips as she went to sit down; and when she had to leave, she seemed to stare at him a bit longer than usual before flipping up her hood and walking away.