House of the Rising Sunflower

by kudzuhaiku


Sky or die!

For the first time in quite some time, Sundance awoke well-rested. The crate wasn’t exactly spacious, at least in width, and he didn’t have room to kick his legs out. That didn’t matter though, as he was quite comfortable curled up and he had plenty of room to stand up unimpeded. It was warm in here, far warmer than Sundance thought it would be, and the pleasant, fragrant reek of cedar tickled his nostrils as he gathered his senses.

His mouth falling open, he yawned.

“Forgive me, Milord, but it is almost dawn. Breakfast must be served.”

Sitting up on his haunches, Sundance smacked his lips, wished he had a cold drink of something, pushed open the lid, and poked his head out. How did Cucumber know when to wake up without an alarm clock? The old unicorn’s horn was glowing with glittering, steady light while he moved about the room, preparing the dining space for breakfast.

“Oh look, the early bird emerges from his birdhouse, so he does.”

“Say what you will, it’s comfortable,” Sundance replied.

“Too much like a coffin, Milord, so it is. Plus, I don’t much like the stink of my own farts. I’d rather they go up and out the chimney.”

Though he tried to fight it, Sundance found himself chuckling. With a supple, lithe movement, he slipped out of his bed box and began to stretch his legs while also flapping his wings. Not as many pops, cracks, and creaks this morning, which was a good sign. When all of his joints were sorted out, he gave his neck a good twist from side to side, and delighted in the pleasurable tingles that bebopped down his spine.

“What’s for breakfast, Cucumber?”

“Oatmeal… but with some of that dried fruit you brought back, Milord. That strange, weird fruit.”

“Oh, the pineapple?”

“I reckon so, Milord? I don’t recall the name. Pure sugar, so it is.”

“In oatmeal?” Sundance’s head tilted off to one side and he folded his wings against his sides. “Eh, whatever. It’s food. What’s the weather like outside, Cucumber?”

“Sire, it is dark, but if our luck holds, we’ll be blessed with rays of sunshine. I expect the dark to return though. Sun comes and goes, but the darkness is eternal. Such gloomy weather, so it is.”

Pressing his lips together, Sundance scowled, but only to keep from smiling.


In what he felt was sure to be record time, Sundance made it to Canterlot. Now he circled, waiting to land. There were lots of other sky trucks out, and dozens upon dozens of chariots, all waiting to touch down. Several flight controller pegasus ponies shepherded the traffic, and kept a watchful eye out for anypony too tired to keep circling.

That was the issue with hauling any sort of cart, wagon, chariot, or sky truck. Speed had to be maintained; fly too slow and down you go, as the old adage went. One could not do much gliding, so this was a constant, endless effort for as long as one was airborne. Circling was taxing, but Sundance was grateful for the workout.

Down below, an intricate song and dance number played out, with pegasus ponies landing even as other pegasus ponies were taking off. It was as graceful and complex as any song and dance number in the theatre, and required an exquisite attention to detail. When the wind picked up a bit, Sundance banked into it so that he could maintain his current flight path, which had him keeping pace just behind a fully loaded sky truck that was identical to his own.


Touchdown was utterly uneventful with nothing exciting happening at all. Sundance cleared himself from the runaway, remained aware of everything around him, and followed the instructions of the ground traffic director. Yesterday wasn’t so bad, but today, for some reason today was hectic and everypony was stressed. A bad mood was in the air and being a creature possessed with powerful herding instincts, Sundance could not ignore it.

“Say, would you happen to know what’s going on?” he asked of a passing guard.

“Move along—”

“Look, I just wanted to know if I came at a bad time. Scram was expecting me.”

“If you must know, last night we got in a delivery of corpses from the front lines. Now we’re shipping them off to their families, so everypony is on edge. Our brothers and sisters came back, some of them unrecognisable and hacked to pieces. It’s put us in a bad mood. You’ll find Scram at Supply Depot Three. Avoid Depot One at all costs, you might get detained. Mind the orange cones. Now move along.”

Stunned into silence, Sundance moved along and was mindful of the orange cones.


Supply Depot Three had a lot of goods being moved into it, but Sundance doubted they were corpses. A great many wooden crates—identical to the ones he possessed—were being hauled into the brick building with the dull tin roof. Earth pony guards moved in neat, orderly lines, leading to the feeling that this was all somehow orchestrated by some unseen conductor.

“What luck,” Scram said upon spotting Sundance. “Yer Lordship showed up on a black day, a black day indeed. Never you mind the pall, Lord Sunfire. Come looking for work, have you?”

Sundance could not help but notice that Scram’s mood seemed a bit different today. Or perhaps not, it was difficult to tell. Up on the roof, somepony shouted, there was a groan of machinery, and then with a lot of clattering, the roof split open, the two halves spreading side to side. Agape, the awestruck pegasus stared.

“Airship’s coming in so we can ship rations out. I don’t like the new rations, they’re vile. Tastes like they’ve already been eaten and shat out.” Scram wore the weary expression that only a career soldier had, and he made a broad sweeping gesture with his hoof. “Not a buckethead I know that delights in dehydrated cabbage flakes and turnip cubes. Not a one. Disgusting, that’s what it is. Right. Now what sort of job did you come looking for?”

“I’ll take whatever pays well,” Sundance managed to say after pulling himself together.

“A real go-getter. Well, as luck would have it, I have a crate of medicine that needs to be dropped off in the Froggy Bottom Bogg. Now, before you have yer say, understand that there are no runways. There’s no putting down in the Bogg. And the delivery involves intentionally crashing, and then recovering, before you drop your package.”

Sundance shrugged. “Tell me more.”

Scram’s eyes narrowed. “I think I’ll be getting you some brass polish for Hearth’s Warming. Right then. The crash zone will be marked by colourful flags in a circle. That’s the thin place in the tree canopy. Now the trees of the Bogg, they’re a bit odd, as they don’t like the sun shining on their roots. So the canopy never stays open no matter how many times it’s trimmed.”

Listening, Sundance nodded so that Scram would continue.

“Once you crash through the canopy, you’ll find yourself in a narrow flight path. No room for errors. A bit of a tight fit. Tighter than a schoolfilly’s cunny. You’ll have a hundred feet at most to recover, and not crash into the murk. Fly through the long, narrow gap, and you’ll see a hillock covered in shacks and what not. That’s your target. As you fly over, kick the release on your cart, shimmy the crate loose, drop the package, and pull up like your life depends on it, ‘cause it does. The narrow gap between the trees ends and you have to crash your way free through the canopy. Think you can do that, flyboy?”

“Yeah… I can probably do that.” Sundance felt a cold prickle of doubt and wondered if he could actually do it. “What am I hauling?”

“Medicine for hoof rot. It’s been a while since they’ve had any. The last pilot, well, he failed spectacularly. Crashed right into a tree. Got his skull lodged into his pelvis. Was the damnedest thing I’d ever heard about. Now, don’t you go doing that. The Big Bird would go off her teats if you crashed and I’d catch a lecture. Now, I’m not keen on that, so don’t do that to me. Aye?”

How did one manage to get one’s skull lodged in one’s own pelvis? Sundance shuddered and struggled to recover his shaken confidence. “Aye aye, I can… I can do whatever needs to be done.”

“A real go-getter. Lookit you. Right, now pay attention. You’ll be flying due south out of Ponyville. Keep an eye out for flags. They’ll be markers along the flight path. Like I said, look for the ring. Now… would you like to make a bit of extra money? Smart fella like you, I’m thinking that you would.”

“What else am I hauling?” Sundance asked, playing it cool.

“Nothing illegal, mind you,” Scram was quick to say in response. “Certain items are hard to get in the Bogg. And being the clever pony I am, and I am a clever a pony, let me tell you, I use opportunities like this one to deliver some goods.”

“That doesn’t tell me what I’m hauling… or if it’s actually legal.”

“Smart feller, like I was saying.” Scram coughed, glanced around, lowered his voice. “Nothing illegal, I promise. A small cask of brandy, a bale of fine pipe tobacco, a sheaf of grotty skin mags, and a ten pound tub of lubricated condoms. All which will also ride in the crate with the hoof medicine.”

Grotty skin mags? A ten pound tub of lubricated condoms? What did these ponies do in the swamp, anyhow? Thinking about it, grotty skin mags were a luxury; why, his own peasants had to draw their own lewds. They had no glossy centerfolds. What would his peasants do with grotty skin mags? Sundance could only imagine, but he suspected that no work would be done for a week or more while certain peasants secreted themselves away inside their thatched roof cottages.

“Look, there’s extra room in the crate, and not filling it with goods would be wasteful.” Scram now wore a shrewd smile and his eyes fairly gleamed with delightful mischief. “We both make a bit of extra money by making use of that space. We do have to keep this off the books though, or else we’d get our assholes royally reamed by the Night Lady herself. Well, I would. You’re not enlisted, but good mates stick together, eh?”

“Just so long as I get paid. I’m as loyal as money can buy.”

“Right then, that’s a smart pony.” The enterprising earth pony glanced around, his eyes shifty, and after a few moments of indulging his paranoia, he nodded. “I prefer dealing with mercenary types, money being the motivator that it is. Come with me, flyboy. Bureaucracy awaits and then we’ll have you back up in the air. Been a real pleasure.”


Behind him was a bright yellow crate, made of some material that he was unfamiliar with, but probably some kind of plastic. Waterproof, designed to float, and with a registered monster bite resistance of three, it would survive being plopped into the swamp if something happened. All kinds of things might happen. He might crash into a tree and get his skull lodged in his pelvis.

That was a thing that could happen.

Below him, Ponyville stretched out in all directions, a vast sprawling city that also doubled as a bedroom community for Canterlot. Twilight’s spired library castle was the largest structure in the city, rivaling even Canterlot Castle for size. Paved streets were packed with traffic, considerable traffic, and Sundance pitied anypony stuck on the ground.

At some point, he was going to have to visit Ponyville to make some friends.


The postal pylon was a tall, almost whip-thin rod of metal with a somewhat tattered bright yellow flag on the tip. Sundance had seen these before, and recognised them; they marked flight paths for the Royal Equestrian Mail Service, markers along a route so that new mail carriers could do their job.

And what a job they had. Delivering mail was something of a dream job and Sundance had considered a position. The experience was the tricky bit; at least the Baltimare branch demanded some considerable experience, which left him working as a medical supply courier for the foreseeable future.

To fly with the Royal Equestrian Mail Service, one had to be brave, a daredevil. One had to be able to fly in any condition, any weather. The job was risky, as one could get eaten. Mail ponies, it seemed, were delicious, delightful snacks. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, or even hankering, hangry hydras stayed these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Sundance went blasting past the first postal pylon doing about ninety.


After a great many postal pylons, Sundance found the circle marker. Beneath him, multicoloured flags fluttered, a veritable rainbow of cheer flapping in the breeze. The canopy was a living mass of tree branches, clumps of moss, and what appeared to be crash debris. Other pilots had tried—and failed. Sundance came to deliver, and he would not be stopped by the common tree.

Or so he hoped.

Circling a few times, he studied his approach, and even found an arrow showing him his direction of approach. Thin ribbons of smoke found their way up and out of the canopy. Was this somepony’s fiefdom? It might be. Swamps were valuable in their own way, with raw alchemical ingredients and whatever else swamps produced. Perhaps a young baron could be found below, trying to make ends meet.

Banking into his turn, Sundance began his run.


He had slowed too much, hoping to reduce the severity of the crash through the canopy, and this might very well be his undoing. Hitting the treetops had been a bit scary, and it felt as though long, boney, skeletal fingers had clawed at him. But now, he faced real terror, the true terror, as he was about to crash into the swamp.

Flapping his wings, raking and slashing and clawing at the aether, he tried to recover lost momentum as the murky, bubbling green goo rushed up to meet him. The stench made his eyes water, and with his goggles on, he couldn’t wipe them to clear his vision. He found himself in a canyon of trees, a narrow canyon indeed—there were no words to do it justice as to just how narrow it was.

Scratched, bleeding in several places, Sundance flapped for his life, scrambling, struggling to pull up in the scant one-hundred feet or so he had to work with. Suddenly changing directions with a load was almost impossible, and he wasn’t sure if he would fly away from this one. Tin roofed shanties built on rafts floated in the muck below and smashing into one of them seemed a very real possibility.

He wanted to  go forwards but the sky truck insisted on pulling him down.

It was now do… or die.

Summoning all of his strength, Sundance dug his wings into the air and began scaling it as though it was a vertical cliff face. He was gritting his teeth so hard that it felt as though they might all shatter from the strain. His gut muscles burned with strain and he could feel the blazing agony of effort in every fibre of his being.  

One wheel dipped into the green goo and this was almost his undoing. The sudden drag and resistance was almost enough to arrest the momentum from his recovery efforts. For a second, his life hung in the balance and his wing tips slashed mere inches away from the bubbling slime of the water’s surface.

“No! No! Not like this!”

So began the slow crawl back to speed. Skimming just above the water, Sundance somehow held it together, but was now faced with a new problem: the hillock just ahead. There wasn’t a lick of difference between crashing into the swamp and smashing into the side of a tar papered shack. Sharp edges of tin roofs were everywhere. He had to gain altitude, his life depended upon it.

The climb would be torturous.

He somehow avoided a swamp shanty by banking and angling away, but this cost him valuable momentum and almost put him right into the rooty, slimy muck. For the first time, he noticed the ponies, many of them standing upon shanty roofs, all of them cheering him on. Weaving in and out between shanties and shacks, somehow avoiding the sharp, dangerous edges of tin roofs, Sundance fought against the most dangerous of foes: gravity.

The hillock arrived all too soon and he wasn’t prepared. This was a crash in progress, it was live and going on, and though the impact hadn’t happened yet, it seemed inevitable. The clang of metal against metal jarred Sundance, it rattled his bones and the sky truck grazing a shanty almost yanked him from the air.

Even while terrified because he was experiencing a prolonged crash sequence, Sundance had the presence of mind to kick the release lever behind him. A ear-pricking ‘kebong!’ could be heard and he felt the sky truck shudder as the mechanical release was sprung. To his good fortune, he had more than enough skittering and bouncing about to shake the crate loose, and it slid right out the back.

The sudden lightness allowed him to surge upwards, but his guts, his balls, and his retinas were seized by the clingy bitch known as gravity, who refused to let go. His vision blurred and it was almost impossible to draw breath as he was crushed by some invisible force. He was running out of clearing and the chances seemed good that his skull would get lodged in his pelvis.

After all of the other close calls, that seemed a terrible way to go, and he refused that end.

Almost blind, a stream of urine trailing out behind him, Sundance brought himself up to ramming speed while also angling himself upwards. This was it, the end. He would either go smashing through the treetops and hit sky, or he would meet his terrific end and crash spectacularly. Terror, perhaps drained out with his urine, had left him, and all that was left was a surreal calm.

There was no point in whining and crying like a frightened foal. Death was a finish line of sorts, and like a pegasus possessed by twisty wind devils, Sundance surged towards his chosen end. He had learned from his first encounter with the canopy, and this time, he would cannonball through with every ounce of speed he could muster.

Sky or die!