//------------------------------// // 20 Weather Blues* // Story: Alternate Beginnings: Year One // by Doug Graves //------------------------------// May 2nd, 993 Rainbow slowly flutters down to a stop, landing next to Doug. She shrugs the saddlebags off her back, lowering them onto the ground. She opens each compartment, taking the thick manuals inside and passing them to Doug, who glances at the titles and arranges them off to the side. “Are you sure you’re up for this, Doug? These were some of my least favorite courses in flight school, and while I know this stuff because I’m awesome, I don’t know how much you’ll enjoy it.” Doug gives Rainbow a reassuring pat on the head. She trembles a little at the contact and smiles at him before grabbing one of the books. She lays down next to him, draping a wing over his back. Rainbow opens the book, scanning the table of contents, while snuggling a little closer. Doug asks, “How many other students do you think enjoyed the material?” Rainbow scoffs, “Probably none of them in my class. Even the teacher had to act interested. There were, I dunno, two stallions in the whole school that enjoyed the class. Eggheads. Even so, they didn’t get their cutie marks there, so I don’t think they kept up with it later on.” Doug looks mildly disappointed at the egghead comment, but soldiers on, “Well, even so. I think the best method to learn, or in this case, to relearn all this material is to teach it to somepony else.” He gives Rainbow a big smile, which she smirks at, rolling her eyes. Doug takes this chance to move in and gives her a kiss on the lips, surprising her. When she tries to plant a kiss on him, he chides her, saying, “Hey, no getting distracted.” “What? It’s you trying to distract me!” “Hey, I’m not the one pointing fingers here.” Rainbow sputters as she looks at Doug incredulously. “Oh come on! You’re the only one with fingers here! Therefore, it has to be you pointing fingers!” “Semantics, my dear Rainbow. Now, where were we?” “I think I was about to blow this off and go take a nap,” Rainbow says in a low voice. Clearing her throat, she says, “Alright, so as you know, most clouds are white.” She looks at him with an exasperated look in her eye, waiting for an offhand comment. When he looks back at her expectantly she asks, “What? No smart remark on that?” “No, I expected you to continue about how it being white means it reflects a lot of the heat and light that would otherwise go to the ground. We are being serious now, right? Or should I start tickling you?” “No tickling!” Rainbow flinches away from Doug, but at the lack of incoming tickles she settles back next to him. Though a part of her desperately wants more contact with him, even if it isn’t that intimate. She sighs as she presses her body against his, hoping again he gets the message. “Ahem. Actually, that’s basically exactly where I was going with that. You see, managing the weather is all a giant balancing act. You need water to make clouds; it’s easier to get water to make clouds when it’s hot, but clouds decrease the temperature. They also lower the humidity in the surrounding air when you create clouds, but can increase it afterwards. You can release this water onto the ground, and each cloud holds somewhere around one to ten inches of water, depending on the height. To keep from flooding an area, you need pegasi teams to either dump water beforehoof or release water while in transit. There are a bunch of other factors, and these books give us the actual numbers as to how each factor impacts the others.” Doug replies, an intrigued expression on his face, “Wow, this is way different than how weather works where I came from. There, nopony controlled anything, so it was more a matter of predicting how different areas of weather would interact with each other. Lots of guesswork and models, but very little actual implementation of ‘what you want the weather to do’, more like, ‘how do we react to it’.” Rainbow gives Doug a perplexed look, “Wow, your weather is weird. That’s… nothing like this. This is more like a construction job, but in the sky.” She raises two hooves to the sky, her wings beating to keep her front end off the ground. “Guess I have a lot to learn then.” Doug and Rainbow say at the same time, “Good thing I/you have the best teacher.” They both look at each other, yelling “Jinx!” before an impromptu wrestling session breaks out. Minutes later, a grinning Rainbow Dash is holding a textbook, sitting on top of a defeated Doug. She props the book up on the back of his head, reading aloud, “Alright, chapter one. The different kinds of clouds.” Doug groans and Rainbow thumps him lightly on the back of the head, shifting her hips around. “Quiet you! Now, where were we? Oh yeah, chapter one, the different kinds of clouds.” After a few minutes of reading to him Rainbow tries to show Doug one of the illustrations depicting the different clouds, but his face is still planted on the ground. She sighs as she lets him up; at least he hasn’t fallen asleep or anything. They move to a more comfortable position: Doug sitting against a tree and Rainbow spooning in his lap, wings folded against her sides. Rainbow happily snuggles closer to him, wondering how long it will be before they get distracted again. Aside from when she joined the herd and a couple times where she had nearly begged him they hadn’t gotten physical together and it is really starting to bother her. Maybe now that the interview has passed and she doesn’t have to worry about it any more? Maybe it is more like what he said when she had joined the herd. If he doesn’t love her… or maybe, this was closer to how he dated? She never really asked him how dating works with humans. He could just be trying to get to know her better before they move to the more intimate aspects of a relationship. But, they are already at that stage! Past it, even! And she really wants to get back to more of it, she loves how he feels. Is he not really interested in her any more? Rainbow feels a tear forming in her eye as they continue on to the effects of different clouds on their environment. The pages have a lot of tables and charts, maybe she can let him read those on his own and he won’t be able to tell she is on the verge of breaking down. She should talk to Applejack about this, tell her how she is feeling and if she has noticed the same things. Applejack had mentioned in passing that Doug seemed more distant, but Rainbow hadn’t made anything of it at the time. If the same thing was happening with Applejack, then it might not be anything wrong with her specifically. Maybe he has some sort of aversion to pregnancy? Rainbow shudders at the thought as they move to the next chapter. She lets Doug take over reading, still staring blankly ahead of her. If Doug isn’t interested in pregnant mares, then he will need to find his release somewhere. As the junior mare she would be the one to bite that bolt, though she will miss getting to the parts she really enjoys. Better than him straying outside the herd, right? Though, speaking of mares outside the herd, her best friend Fluttershy has expressed more interest in him than she has of any stallion in the past. Rainbow has known the shy pegasus from when they lived in Cloudsdale. They spent a lot of time in flight school together before they moved to Ponyville. Maybe she can convince Fluttershy to date Doug? Then Doug will have a mare that isn’t pregnant in the herd, and her friend will have a stallion in her life! Rainbow smiles at the thought; she will need to talk to Applejack for approval but she can’t see her lead mare saying no. Applejack can probably talk to Doug as well, prompt him to consider the option. Or to find out if there is something else going on, something else that's causing this rift between Doug and his mares. Rainbow looks back to the book; apparently Doug is a faster reader than she thought and she might have to reread those chapters later. Just as a refresher, of course. She looks backwards towards Doug, who looks back at her. “You getting all this, Little D?” Doug scratches her mane with his free hand, “Pretty sure I am. Everything seems to be coming together really well, though I do have a knack for this sort of thing. I was always the one, when my gaming group got a new game, to read through the rules and then explain them to the rest of the group. And sometimes the strategy as well, for a game we had never played. Speaking of, I noticed a lot of the numbers in this are for a full day of coverage, whether it’s clouds or rain or sunshine.” “Yup, that’s right, at least for a basics textbook. You might find some other ones that have more detailed information for partial days, but for the most part you have your weather for the day, you set it up, and then it’s just maintaining that weather until moonrise. Clear up any excess rain clouds or things you don’t want going on during the night. Why?” “Oh, was just wondering. Sometimes it seems a little wasteful, or inefficient, but I’ll hold off on the deep strategy discussions until we get to the end. Speaking of, do you have to decide the upcoming weather or does that come from higher up?” Rainbow shrugs, “Well, the weather is generally determined and scheduled locally. Ponies that live around here submit their requests; for instance, Apple Acres wants a couple inches of rain a week for their apple trees and double that for the new sprouts. They’ll submit a topographic map of their land, shaded to show how much rainfall they want in each area. They try to get that submitted a month in advance, though sometimes things need to change last minute. The head weathermare will craft a two week schedule then, so somewhere between two and four weeks of weather is known beforehoof. They publish that schedule at the town hall, though some ponies get a copy mailed to them.” Rainbow flips ahead a couple chapters, motioning with a hoof, “If rainfall isn’t needed most ponies prefer clear skies, but partially cloudy is tolerable if we need the cover to keep the temperature down. Most ponies want an absolute minimum of rain over Ponyville itself, at least during the day, but other ponies want some rain for the gardens they grow. Bit of a balancing act there, and generally it’s handled with an evening sprinkling with leftover rain clouds. It’s kind of hard to keep what you are doing accurate during the night, and most ponies want to sleep regardless, so not a lot of night activity.” Doug nods at this, having made some notes of his own while pulling another manual out, this one talking about crafting weather schedules. He asks, “How do you feel about some experimenting?” Rainbow raises an eyebrow, “Experimenting? How?” Doug motions to one of the charts on the textbook depicting rain clouds and their water storage, “Well, for instance, these rain clouds. It says here they hold ten inches of rain when delivered. If Sweet Apple Acres wants only three tenths of an inch of rain that day, what happens to the rest?” “Oh, generally the excess rain in dumped in one of the lakes or the aquifer. Those need a certain amount of water too, but it’s pretty small, and that’s all calculated by some eggheads in Cloudsdale that determine how many clouds to send to each town. They have to do all their calculations quite early in this process, plus it takes time to deliver the clouds. So it’s hard to get more rain clouds if you need them on short notice, but sometimes the Everfree provides. Or you shortchange the aquifer and build it up extra next time. Sometimes, for various reasons, Cloudsdale will need a bunch of extra water and we’ll make a waterspout to replenish their water tanks. Kinda sucks to have to do, but where else is that water going to come from? Besides, I was glad when I finished the cloud delivery part of my weather training. I could do it, but I hated those long distance flights.” “Wow, this is really fascinating stuff,” Doug remarks as he makes a few more notes on his paper. Rainbow looks over to read his notes and scratches her head. “What’s up with that? Why will you need to know how long it takes to empty the clouds or to get them down from ten to three inches remaining?” “Well, I was thinking about what you were saying with Apple Acres. Normally, you cover the entire farm with clouds that rain for three tenths and then sit there for the rest of the day. What if, instead, you move around a certain size of cloud that holds the entirety of the water the farm needs. After a section of farm has enough rain you move the cloud to the next part, etcetera, until the entire farm has enough water. That would let the whole farm have more light overall, you wouldn’t need to lose a day of sunlight in order to get enough water. Might mess with the temperature calculation though, so we might need some more overcast clouds nearby that don’t impact the farm’s light but cool it off enough.” Rainbow glances at Doug, a look of awe on her muzzle. “You got this after less than one day of reading a textbook? I can’t wait until you really know what you are doing. How about, once we finish this stuff, you make a mock weather schedule. Use these techniques and whatever else you come up with, I really want to see if this can work. I’ll make a more traditional schedule, just to get the practice and if we need a backup, but I really want to see this plan in action.” Rainbow gives Doug a kiss on the lips and looks at him seductively, “I think somepony needs a reward too, all this weather talk is getting me a little heated.” She kisses him on the chin and moves down, the next kiss planted on his chest.