It was one thing to walk on a cloud.
It was another thing to burrow oneself inside one like a pony-flavored cloud burrito.
Velvet blinked several times when a few drops of condensing moisture fell from her soaked fur and in front of her eyes. Her primal instincts insisted that she shake the water off like a dog, but she resisted.
“Do… not… precipitate!” Velvet gritted under her breath.
Reports from the airship’s weather team told them that rain wasn’t due for another five hours. If the mercs spotted one of the clouds in the area crying by its lonesome, Velvet and Daring’s cover would be blown.
“Remind me to never sneak aboard an airship with a crazy, impulsive pegasus!” Velvet spat at Daring Do. “I could use a hairdryer…or a wind tunnel.” Velvet frowned as the humidity and altitude made her voice whinier than she was comfortable with.
“Sure beats your suggestion,” Daring said as she shaded her eyes with her hoof and tracked four mercenaries patrolling inside one of the airship’s gondolas. When they disappeared behind a corner, a single flap from Daring’s wings sent the cloud drifting towards the airship.
“Hey! What’s wrong with stealing their uniforms and blending in with the mercs?” Velvet’s face contorted to a frown. “That way, at least I wouldn’t – I mean, we wouldn’t have to get all wet…”
“Passenger manifests and head counts are a thing, Vel.” Daring smirked. “Besides, pretty sure they don’t have any pants that fit that gut of yours.”
Velvet struck back with an even wider smile. “Same problem with your ass!”
“At least it’s all muscle!”
Velvet opened her mouth to respond, but a light thud interrupted the mudslinging. The cloud had drifted close enough to the gondola for Daring to tap the window. Velvet wriggled out of the cloud slightly, braced her front hooves at the window, and squinted at the lock. Time to shine…
“Can you get it open?” Daring asked.
Velvet breathed out as the lock began to glow in concert with her horn. “Thank Celestia, it’s just a latch. If this lock needed a key, we’d have to resort to smashing the window.”
From the corner of Velvet’s vision, Daring’s reflection cocked her head. “I-I’m sorry, what?” Daring snorted. “You can create a device that can detect an artifact miles away using nothing but a radio and a bunch of magic stones, but you don’t know how to pick a lock?”
“It’s not that I don’t know.” Velvet swung the window open with her magic, then scooted to the side to allow Daring to enter the window first. “You have to feel the tumblers with your telekinesis and manipulate them ever so slightly. It’s really intricate! Put too much pressure on one tumbler and snap, it gets jammed in place and you’ve made the lock even ‘lockier’ than before. Give me a good set of bolt cutters any day: much more dependable.”
After making her way inside, Daring helped Velvet step out of the cloud and wormed her way into the window. As soon as she landed, Velvet wasted no time shaking the water off her fur, forcing Daring to shield herself with her wing. After glancing at the mess she made, Velvet noticed a distinct lack of puddle under Daring’s hooves. “What the—how in Equestria do you keep yourself dry?”
Daring closed the window, silencing the howling of the outside winds before spreading her wings in front of Velvet. “Pegasus magic, my young apprentice. Come along, now.” She trotted down a hall that led towards the stern. “If we take a left and head up the stairs, we might be able to find a room to crash in.”
Velvet rolled her eyes before tailing after Daring. “First time you’ve set hoof here, and you’re acting like you own the place? Ever been in a UK-2642 aetheric-helium airship before?”
Daring looked behind and gestured with her hoof. “A what airship? Listen, Vel, I don’t give a flying feather about the names and specs of these pigskins. They all have the same room layout anyway.”
“Troglodyte.” Velvet pointed her nose in the air and quickened her pace to catch up. “Anyway, the UK-2642 airship is the newest of Fetlock Maretin’s cargo aircraft designs. Optimized for speedier trips and smoother flying than its predecessors, it even comes with a weather modulator so there’s absolutely no risk of flying into freak storms!”
“Well, look who’s fangirling over big things full of gas.” Daring mused in false excitement before turning and waiting for Velvet to join her at the top of the stairs. “You wrote an article about this, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did! Want to hear more?”
Frowning, Daring shook her head as she walked further down the hall. “Um, actually–”
“Good!” Velvet beamed, ignoring Daring’s facehoofing as she turned away. “So, a couple of months ago, one of the chief engineers responsible for designing this baby invited me to Fetlock Maretin’s warehouse in Baltimare. Oddly enough, he started by showing off the emergency drop capsules. I asked him ‘Hey, why the fuck are you presenting this as your first impression?’ And then he goes…”
“...and then he told me to shove my flux capacitor up my spell field matrix!” Velvet’s voice raised above tolerable levels and Daring had to shush her.
“Thrilling, but let’s not bring the whole ship down on us just because he was bad at foreplay.”
Velvet snorted. Not like the components would have fit anyway.
Several minutes later, Velvet and Daring found a storage closet to stow away in. After settling in and placing their saddlebags on the shelves, Daring left the room in a rush, ostensibly to steal some food from the galley, leaving Velvet inside the closet. The only window in the storage closet allowed a small shaft of light to illuminate some dust motes off to Velvet’s left, who sat near the center of the room. The closet door was two body lengths to the right, while rows upon rows of dark metal shelves, filled with various boxes and bags, were bolted to the walls in front of and behind Velvet.
“Hmph.” Velvet snatched a pink towel from the shelf. “This is some honeymoon. Look at this dump. A backwater travel agency would’ve offered us a better deal.”
Muttering profanities to herself, Velvet wrung her mane with the towel held by her magic, extracting the last bits of cloudwater from the shiny, dampened locks. Struggling for a moment before she pried the window open, the wind howled through the compartment as she chucked the damp towel into the open air. “I swear: if I ever have to use cloud cover to break into somepony’s property again, I’ll settle down and become a doting mother.”
Levitating a small mirror pilfered from one of the duffle bags, Velvet primped the back of her mane before pulling it through a decorative hair tie. It wouldn’t do to appear in front of her fiancee while looking like a soaking wet weather pony. Hair tie in her telekinesis, Velvet bunched up the locks to bring them away from her face—usual Canterlot pony routines.
Once done, her telekinesis drove two wires up the sides of the mirror.
“And now the magic really begins…” Velvet muttered.
Her horn began to pulse light blue and deep purple as she layered a second spell on top of her telekinesis. Two flashes of light later, and a pair of steaming grayish granules joined the wires to the mirror bringing up a swirling gray static to play across the surface. Velvet’s face broke into a satisfied smile.
Usual Canterlot pony routines.
A pang shot from her horn to her temple, causing Velvet to wince. Rubbing the offending area, she gazed balefully at the wires. Conjuring aetheric solder for on-the-spot electronics wasn't all that difficult. However, conjuring solder while levitating something else, or doing any other magical operation for that matter, required twice the energy and three times the level of concentration.
Velvet checked a nearby clock—11:00 am—just about lunch break at the Canterlot Observatory. Night Light never failed to sneak into the stock room and await updates from his fiancee, and now was an especially important update. She told him that she would only spend two days in southern Equestria. Velvet hadn’t foreseen the trip to the Orient. It would take three days to cross the Luna Oceans, and once they got there, she had no idea how long it would take before she could contact him again. She had to make this count.
“Oh, Night Light…” Velvet sighed. “I’m not usually this late.” Usually, ugh.
Satisfied with her wiring, Velvet's horn came to life, pushing her aetheric electricity into the mirror. She smiled as she hit upon the right frequency, and opened her eyes.
"There we go."
A sea of static was still flooding the mirror.
“…or not.” Shaking her head, she nickered. “Kick it up a notch, I guess?”
Velvet once again focused her eyes on the mirror. Her horn brightened, flooding the mirror with a stronger current as her body instinctively leaned towards it. Blinding light filled the storage closet.
Static was still flooding the mirror.
“No. No, no, no, no, NO!”
Velvet slammed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. The deluge of magic pumping through her horn produced a dull, pressing pain—like her horn was going to cave into her forehead. Telekinesis, amperage modulation, calculation expediters: her horn coupled spell after spell onto the expanding vortex of magic. “Come on, come on!” Her heart raced in sync with her panting as she tried to extend the spell’s range. “Don’t do this to me! I’ve got…to tell…Night Light that…Daring Do’s taking me to the Orient!”
A wave of magic surged from her horn, punctuated by a suppressed shout. A loud buzz reverberated through the walls of the storage closet. Lightheadedness filled Velvet’s head as her vision darkened around the edges.
After another breath, everything went limp,
The mirror fell to the floor in a tinkle of broken glass. Velvet’s body slowly crumpled onto the hard aluminum floor, her eyes catching a brief flicker of the skyline of Canterlot before it went dark.
The first thing that greeted Velvet when she came to was the ringing ache in her horn. A harsh, yellow glare coming from a single bare ceiling bulb caused her to squint. The last time she had experienced a magic backfire this bad was in college, when her prank to sabotage a hookah belonging to her roommate Wheat Grass blew up in both their faces.
Sitting up and rubbing her head, Velvet noticed a different sort of yellow glare: Daring was leaning on one of the shelves, and she didn’t look pleased. Next to her, Velvet’s prior mess of electronics had been neatly tucked back into a duffle bag, the antenna poking out of the zipper. Velvet felt a chaotic mixture of clothes under her body slide across the floor, a black leather jacket especially chafing her fur. The clothing collective felt less like the improvised mattress it was supposed to be and more like sleeping in a giant, musty hamper.
Truly, five-star bed amenities worthy of a luxury cruise.
“Good evening, Twilight.” There was a slightly acrid tinge in Daring’s voice as she faced her companion. The brim of her helmet shaded part of her scowling face. “Any reason you were playing Radio Stable wannabe and blowin' stuff up while trigger-happy henchponies are wandering around wanting to give their Saturday-Night Specials a workout?!”
Twilight sat up a little straighter as she finally noticed the steam emitting from Daring’s ears. "Um, what?"
"I mean... you didn't even lock the damn door! You're lucky you're not sporting a few new holes!"
Velvet’s eyes then drifted to the wall clock—7:08. The blue darkness from the window only served to confirm just how long she’d been out cold. Combining so many spells on top of trying to increase amplitude all at the same time was a stupid idea...
The sound of something heavy wrapped in paper hitting the floor drew Velvet’s attention to the side. “Your bean burrito’s cold,” said Daring.
Frowning, Velvet looked at the brown paper bag before turning it over with a hoof. If the slightly fetid smell from the bag or her throbbing, nauseating horn ache weren’t enough to kill her appetite, the lingering guilt of her previous failure certainly was.
Daring’s eyes tracked over to the duffle bag, specifically the antenna poking out of the zipper. “Night Light again, huh?” Daring’s voice softened.
“Yeah.”
“I take it you weren’t able to make it work…”
Velvet huffed in a heavy sigh. “He was expecting me to get in touch with him today. And now that my travel plans have changed… rather drastically, mind you…” Velvet looked back out of the darkened window. “Don’t get me wrong: Nighty’s a patient stallion, but even he has his limits. It’s going to be days before I can even try to contact him again, and I’ve been misleading him up to now. What am I going to do?”
Velvet hung her head as Daring studied her, looking for something to say. A thick silence filled the room. Daring took off her pith helmet and let out a sigh. “Look. I’m… sorry that—”
“ —Don’t be.” Velvet gave a wan smile. “You didn’t put a gun to my head. I pushed you to let me come. Too late to turn back now.” Velvet gave another sigh as she lowered her head. “I just wish I knew how to get in touch with him…”
“Tell you what—” Daring gestured with her hoof “—once we land in the Orient, we’ll look for a messenger dragon and send your fiancé a letter. That sit well with you?”
Velvet looked up. Her eyes shimmered before she leaped at Daring, pulling her into a tight embrace. “Whoa! Whoa!” Daring threw her hooves upwards, then attempted to wriggle out of Velvet’s grasp. “That’s if we even find a messenger dragon, as they’re kind of rare and—”
“—Th-thanks a bunch, Do Dare!” Velvet muzzled into Daring’s chest.
Velvet felt Daring’s body gradually relax, even going so far as to pat Velvet’s back. The hug had only lasted for a few seconds at most, but time wasn’t a concern for Velvet at the moment. The company of somepony—anypony—was all she needed.
Once Velvet’s hooves had released her, Daring sat back with a huff. “Look, I’m not so good at this relationship stuff. But I get the feeling you two will be okay.”
Velvet cocked her head to the side. Daring seemed to be wanting to open up about something, but it looked like such a thing was proving to be rather difficult.
“Well… This probably comes as no surprise to you, but I tend to get around… both with mares and stallions.”
Velvet only raised an eyebrow. “Yes? So?”
“So, I’m asking you to think about something: why do you think I haven’t settled down with anypony?”
The smirk fading from her lips; Velvet sat up and considered her words for a moment, stroking her chin. “Maybe because you never sit still?”
“Exactly. I mean, think about it. Waiting for your partner to return from trip after perilous trip… some of them going on for weeks on end? Each time leaving them to wonder…Will they come back at all? Disappear without a trace?” Daring shook her head. “Few ponies…or griffons, or other creatures for that matter…can bear such a relationship. I know it. Everypony I’ve slept with knows it.”
Daring paused, looking away for a moment before continuing. “It’s the lifestyle I’ve chosen for now. But you? You’re lucky, Velvet. You’ve found somepony you can lean on for emotional support—somepony that doesn’t mind if you can’t always be together physically.”
“And how can you be so sure?” Velvet scoffed. “What, have you slept with him too?!”
Daring got up and came over to sit next to the velveted window. She placed a hoof on Velvet’s shoulder. “Well, I know if he was feeling blue, you wouldn’t be able to tell, right?” They both shared a giggle, and Velvet took a deep breath before Daring continued. “I understand that you two have a really good thing going between you. Tell me: this isn’t the first time you’ve been away from Canterlot, right?”
“Right.”
“And this isn’t the first time you left him hanging on a video call, right?”
Velvet’s voice lowered into a little growl. “Yeah…”
“Well, there you go.” Daring gestured with her wing, smiling. “He’s already proven his patience. He’s proven his loyalty. If Night Light really loves you, he’ll learn to give you a chance.”
Velvet scoffed. “It’s not that simple! Everypony has their limits...”
“True. He’ll probably be angry with you. It might harm a lot of the trust you two have going. The fight you two are about to have might even delay the wedding date for a while.”
Velvet rolled her eyes. “You’re a real ball o’sunshine, aren’t ya?”
“Never learned the power of positive thinking in that fancy Canterlot school, eh?”
And with that, Daring got up and walked over to the light switch. They both met each other’s eyes for a few seconds. “Give him a chance, Velvet. I’m sure he’ll give you the same.”
Velvet dropped her gaze to the floor as she felt her eyes fill with unshed tears. The light clicked off without further preamble. “Goodnight.”
Velvet’s mind raced as she reflected on Daring’s words. They certainly weren’t delivered with grace or flowing prose. But there was something in her words that resonated with truth. Perhaps it was Daring’s perspective on things: it’s one thing to assure yourself into thinking your lover would stick by your side, but to hear it from somepony else?
“Maybe I was wrong…”
Velvet could feel Daring’s eyes on her in the dark.
“You would be a good self-help author.”
A snicker responded in the dark. “Pfft. Yeah, don’t flatter me.” As her eyes adjusted, Velvet could make out Daring’s smile in the dark as she leaned back, her forelegs crossed behind her head. The two exchanged stares for a few seconds, the droning of the airship’s propellers providing the only source of noise. After what seemed like several hours, Daring pointed at the brown paper bag.
“You ever going to eat that burrito?”
Suddenly, the broom closet was filled with muffled laughter.