//------------------------------//
// Between Storm Clouds 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

"Yeah... I really don't wanna stick my head down there," Valey muttered, staring at the soup of thick gray rainclouds beneath her dangling hooves. "I could risk it if I was desperate, but my cutie mark is kinda giving me a big no. I've flown in Ironridge rain before, but this is really gross. Or maybe I should go ahead and do it? All I've gotta do is hit one little boat deck, but..."

With a giant crackle, the clouds arced with electricity, throwing out a sheet of white glare that completely blinded her. "Yow! Okay! Point taken!" She fluttered back, scrubbing at her eyes with her forehooves. "Deeefinitely not going in there."

"What happened?" Amber's voice asked from under her hat. "That sounded like thunder."

"Pretty much." Valey hovered higher, curling a lip at the ornery stormclouds. "Doesn't take a degree in lightningology to tell these clouds are bad news. So, uhhh... options, here."

"Could you wait out the storm, I guess?"

Valey glanced back at the cliffside. "Yeah, there are enough ledges and stuff where I could sit that I could just wait and not get tired. Not sure if they're going to wait, though. Still beats me what happened, but they're slowly moving. At least... Starlight is. You think they didn't notice I'm gone, or what?"

Amber paused. "I don't know, Valey. Why would they fly below the cloud level instead of above it?"

"Beats me." Valey stared into the distance, fidgeting. "You don't think... Nah, couldn't be. If they're moving, though, I should probably be too, right? Whatever's up, the storm will dissipate or they'll reach the edge eventually, or it'll thin out enough that I can just fly through no problem. Sound like a good plan?"

"It sure is better than doing nothing."

"Cool." Valey adjusted her hat, flapped for altitude, and set a slow, winding course east, following the trajectory of the Dream below.





Thunder crashed again, Valey's cutie mark warning her just in time to close her eyes and avoid being blinded a second time. The storm clouds had no edge in sight, and below, Starlight's signature was keeping its slow and steady progress. Valey sighed, spiraling to avoid outstripping the ship, though she half-considered soaring ahead anyway since it wasn't likely the boat would change courses any time soon.

"You think they saw something above the clouds they had to run away from?" Amber's voice chirped, keeping a constant and welcome presence on her head. "Or maybe something malfunctioned? They could be sailing now and unable to fly, period."

"It better not have," Valey muttered back. "Sparky spent crazy amount of time polishing it to get it as good as it could be. I guess she could have made a mistake, though..."

"Maybe. Or maybe it was something that wasn't her fault at all? Like..." Amber hesitated, thinking. "Maybe they discovered something else bad about being high-altitude, or they want to be low-down to see when they approach land, or...?"

Valey sagged, letting her entire body save for her wings grow limp. "Then they wouldn't need to keep checking for two hours. Blehhhh! It's getting too roasty up here. Sometimes, I wish my coat wasn't the best color for absorbing sunlight."

"But it makes sunbathing funner when you want to, right? At least there's a bright side."

"Something like that," Valey sighed, imagining naps and trees in the earth district. That led her stomach to growl, and she glared unhappily at it. She just had lunch! And like this, conserving her food was probably a decent idea...

Amber was silent, leading Valey's brain to wander further. "What if pirates got them?" she mused, grinning to keep the possibility a joke. "Harpooned them out of the sky, or something? Dragged them down below where nobody would look..."

"L-Let's not joke about things, Valey," Amber urged, and Valey suddenly realized the possibility had been on her friend's mind as well.

"Sorry," she quickly apologized. This wouldn't be a good time to remember how her cutie mark worked only for herself, and couldn't detect danger to her friends, and...

Suddenly, it started tingling. Instinctively, she glanced around, checking her sides and rear and below her, but nothing was out of place. There wouldn't be anything above... but she turned her neck upward, and there it was: a fresh wall of clouds billowing down from the clifftop however many miles above. That was definitely unwelcome.

"Okay, I got trouble," she announced, suddenly scanning the cliff once again for shelter. "There's another storm rolling in, and it's about to fall right on my head, so hold the phone for a sec because I need need need to either find a cave or scram to the north."

Amber gasped on the other end, then held a grim silence, allowing Valey not to waste breath on talking. The empty sky to the north was so tempting... but she had no idea how far out she'd have to go to be safe from however the storm landed. What would it even do? Spill down the cliff like an inky waterfall, or glide out for hundreds of miles before reaching the water? No matter what, she didn't feel like flying for hundreds of miles. Maybe trying to reach the ship was a more tempting option now... Once again, lightning flashed, reminding her why that option was off the table.

"Uhhhh..." Valey scanned the cliff wall, chin slack, backing up far enough that she could get a good look at it. She needed more than a crevice; this would take shelter, like a cave. Were there even caves in a geological structure like this? There had to be, right? Dark spots. She needed dark spots that might be indicators or larger recesses, but the wall was annoyingly smooth, with even small ledges like the one she had relaxed on earlier a rarity... There! Significantly above her current height, a long, vertical slice stood out as discolored on the wall. She had to check that.

Valey beat her wings, flicking herself upward with an urgency reserved for flashes of her cutie mark. The sky below her rumbled again, and she skimmed past countless meters of rock, like the wall was the floor and she was moving forward.

Suddenly, the rock before her hooves changed for the blink of an eye, and she doubled back, realizing she had passed it. Valey settled into a hover... and scowled. What she had taken for a discolored patch of rock that might be a shadowed crevice was, in fact, a discolored patch of rock. And water droplets suddenly brushed her ears, informing her that the rain had finished its fall to her altitude.

There was nothing for it. Valey flung herself against the rock, clinging with all four legs and hoping some concavity somewhere in the cliff face would let it shield her from the falling rain. And it did... a little. Droplets rushed past close enough to her back that her fur stood up from proximity, and all it would take to change that was the tiniest breeze in the wrong direction. She gritted her teeth and shuddered.

"Valey?" Amber asked from beneath her hat. "Your breathing is slower. Are you all right?"

"Technically," Valey replied, body unsure whether to be tense or limp in resignation. "I'm hugging a cliff. Not getting rained on at the moment, but I'm probably still screwed."

She could practically hear Amber bite her lip from across the sound stone.

"Let's see..." Exhaling, Valey looked straight up. There was what was protecting her: a tiny outcropping that hung upside-down, acting as a roof rather than a floor not too far above. Her odds would be better the closer she got, though, and since she was already beating her wings to stay against the wall... She adjusted her body and propelled herself up, coming up against the ledge.

It wasn't a normal protrusion so much as a boulder half-embedded in the cliff face, probably somehow lodged in the rock since the mountains had formed. On the one hoof, that meant it would have room on top she could rest on... but that would put her squarely in the rain, as well.

She nudged the boulder's bottom with a hoof, and was rewarded with the tiniest prick of danger. Wait... Her face lit up. Was it unstable? Could she knock it down? There would be at least a little crevice left if she could, and that might mean a niche she could rest in! Valey tapped it harder, earning a faint grinding of dust from beneath. She'd need to hit it hard, and be out of the way for when it fell... but that meant going in the rain. She shuddered, but it was her best choice. "Here goes..." she hissed under her breath, too low for Amber to hear.

Pumping her wings, Valey jetted out to the side, moving swiftly enough that the water wasn't an immediate threat. Immediately, she reversed course, built momentum, pulled back her forehooves... and slammed into the boulder from the side with a two-hoof punch. It creaked, groaned and shifted, but didn't fall.

Starting to get wet, Valey wasted no time in soaring back to strike again. This time, the boulder moved visibly, and she was already skimming away before it could settle. Crack! her hooves struck a third time, this time from the top... and the boulder creaked, teetered, and collapsed, chipping the rock around and above it and toppling out of the mountain face.

Valey waited as several more broken rocks fell free from the recessed area, then darted inside as soon as her cutie mark allowed it, not stopping to watch the boulder tumble to the sea. The cavity was incredibly shallow, with a floor that slanted toward the opening and just enough depth for three mares to pack in if they hugged each other and pressed up tight, but it was shelter. Valey leaned against the back wall, brushing out dust and inspecting her coat: wet on the surface, but the water hadn't reached her skin. She wouldn't freeze that day.

"I made it," she exhaled, taking off her saddlebags and using them as a cushion against the stony floor. Both were rough enough that there didn't seem to be a danger of tumbling out, and the rain brushed the crater lip but didn't come far enough inside to tickle her so long as she held her tail close. "Think I'm gonna be safe. Urgh. This unprepared survival stuff is not fun."

Thunder boomed again outside, and the sky darkened as an increasingly-thick curtain of rain separated her from open air. "Wonder if Starlight had to deal with stuff like this crossing the mountaintops," Valey mused to keep herself busy. "Of course, I have wings and she doesn't, but you know... I bet she did. And I guess this is how she did it. Stubbornness and just enough good luck to make it possible to survive the bad. Heh... I wonder how many of these I'd have to find to fly to the top? Think it's been done before. I could go on like that. Wouldn't that be a pointless ride... and it almost sounds like something I'd want to do. I'm crazy. I gotta get back to the ship..."

Beneath her, Starlight's scent slowly continued its way eastward. "I wonder why I can tell where she is like that," Valey thought aloud. "Never really questioned it because it's kinda convenient, but now that I think about it, it's also kinda weird. Don't you think, Amber?"

No response.

"Amber...?" Frowning, Valey took off her hat. It was slightly wet, having taken the brunt of the rain for her mane, but the sound stone was safe as ever beneath, pulsing with the internal vortex of an incoming call. Valey frowned harder, shaking it... but nothing happened.

Of course. The stones required magic from a unicorn or mana battery to function. She had been using it for hours already, and now hers was dead, with no way to recharge it.

With no purpose left for it, Valey put the stone back in her bags for safekeeping and laid down to wait out the storm, suddenly more alone than she had felt in a very long time.