Desert Getaway

by TikiBat


Epilogue - "A Pony of Storms"

Silver trudged towards his room, feeling like he had been run over with how sore he was from being on the move since he woke up. Stopping at his door, he couldn’t even raise a hoof to push the door open, so he just decided to use his forehead, but couldn’t muster the energy even for that. He stood there for a moment just resting his head against the wood and almost falling asleep. The desire for his own bed won out against the urge to just lay down and sleep in the hall, so he pulled himself together enough to open the door. 

Just in time to nearly be ran over by Diamond Glider “Silver! We need you outside, NOW!”

“Can’t it wait a few hours?” he slurred, gazing longingly at his bed. 

“Listen man, it really can’t!” Diamond shook his head and hurriedly spun him around before pushing him back down the hall the way he had just come.  

Deciding it’d be easier to move two limbs over four, he flapped his wings enough to hover a few inches off the ground, and let Diamond push him back outside. ”It’s really dark out today, it’s noon isn’t it?” he wondered, only having to squint a little bit against the sun’s light.

Most of the office staff were all outside together looking up and muttering to each other. Silver looked skyward finally to see what was causing such a commotion and his eyes widened in alarm as he dropped back to the ground with an awkward landing. Looming only a couple hundred feet over the entire town was a deep black rain cloud that covered almost the entire sky. Several flashes of lightning from within the storm cloud and the deep rumble of thunder silhouetted a lone blue pegasus mare with silver mane and tail floated halfway to the cloud looking down at them. 

Art by: https://www.fimfiction.net/user/336215/Lawra 

“Okay, I guess this can’t wait,” he commented in awe, having never seen a storm that size purposely holding its place ominously overhead before. 

The pegasus dived downward then with a quick flap of her wings shot back upwards. Becoming a blue streak of motion too fast to follow, she ricocheted off the storms boundary, punctuated by a flash of lightning and a deafeningly loud clap of thunder. Silver stared in shock as the massive cloud formation recoiled from the strike and actually began to move. An increasingly intense rain began to fall, the storm needing no further pegasus intervention to continue moving on it’s own away from the town towards the river. 

The pegasus circled once at incredible speed creating a literal contrail of blue behind her before shooting directly down towards the ground. Cries of alarm went up from several pegasi on the ground but the mysterious pony pulled up close to the ground and shot straight towards him. Nervously backing away, the mare came to a jarring halt an uncomfortably close distance to him, and a burst of wind nearly bowled him over. 

She delicately landed but left her wings spread wide to look more imposing allowing him to get his first good look at the pegasus causing such a huge disruption to the Oasis. As gracefully as she landed, it belied the impressively toned muscles that visibly rippled under her blue coat. She was quite tall for a mare, which left him looking up at her making her seem even more imposing. Her piercing hazel green eyes bore into him and he struggled to meet her gaze, his eyes trailing along her flank to where he could make out the hint of a cutie mark made up of curved white lines in an abstract shape. 

“Silver Eclipse?” she asked calmly, singing his name more than speaking it. She wasn’t even breathing heavily from flying so fast, or from bucking an entire storm she must have worked hard to create in an arid desert.

“Of all the ponies that could be pissed off at me it has to be an equestrian, Well this is just great!” He mentally screamed in alarm as he realized what her singing pronunciation and odd verbal inflection of his name meant. Silver nervously gulped before nodding with a stuttering reply. “Yes, can I… uh help you?”

“We need to talk.”


“S...sure. F.. follow me.” He anxiously said as he began to lead the furious pegasus into the conference room. “It’s just up this way.”

He walked through the now empty office, up a flight of stairs, and into the empty conference room at the top floor. He nervously stared out the large panoramic windows, watching the powerful storm continue down it’s path towards the river. The weather team flew up to the windows, frantically gesturing towards the raging tempest flooding the valley that they were unprepared to deal with. Unsure of how to respond to them he quickly waved towards it, hoping that they’d get the message to try something. Much to his relief a band of them, led by Zipper, raced towards the storm while a few stragglers remained hovering outside the window staring in disbelief.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” She sternly asked.

He slowly turned back towards her, trying to keep the team in his peripheral vision, afraid of how dangerous it would be for inexperienced pegasi to deal with such a storm. “I… don’t really know what it is that I did,” he gulped. “I don’t even know who you are. Please, if you’re from Equestria, I swear we haven’t done anything wrong. If the Princesses think we did, it’s all a horrible misunderstanding.”

“What? I’m not Equestrian, I’m an Earthling just like you, my name is Sapphire Sky,” she corrected with an annoyed snort. “Listen, just tell me why after breaking several federal laws to help you while I was away, I come back to find out that you’re trying to recruit my own ponies and threatening them with releasing information about what they did to the feds if they don’t!”

“You’re that Sapphire Sky?! Well it’s very wonderful to make your acquaintance, hope you had a great time in another dimension, seeing a whole new world and all must have been really fun, and you already know my name it seems,” he started with heavy sarcasm, “What gives you the right to come here and imply that I’d betray somepony else like that?! If anything I owe them for helping us and not going to the feds when we first brought it up with them!”

“So you’re blackmailing them preemptively to cover your tracks, I see how it is!”

“It’s nothing like that, I promise you! I only ever called you guys once and that was to only see if you’d be willing to help a bunch of desperate desert ponies who couldn’t figure out how to manage their own weather properly! I haven’t even had time to send them a proper thank you card yet! Let alone come up with some scheme to blackmail them!” He shouted back in anger and frustration.

The glare she shot him caused him to flinch back in fear, “Uh huh, and next you’re going to tell me that you have nothing to do with UMAD?”

He raised an eyebrow in confusion, “UMAD…? Uh… no… actually we do, they’re the company that is set up to manage things while we are establishing the town and working out our own contracts… But can we just sit down and talk about this like civilized ponies, I’m sure this is all one big misunderstanding.”

Sapphire’s glare softened and she moved at a relaxed pace to sit down on one of the conference room cushions, making a big show to wrap her tail around her legs and settled her wings against her sides. “Explain it to me.”

“Look, we’re just a bunch of nobodies out in the desert trying to make the world a better place. We needed help training our weather team so we could actually have a shot of self sustainability out here. I had heard about this big government weather program up north and figured that it wouldn’t hurt to at least try and talk with them, the worst they’d say is no, that’s all.”

“Nobodies? You expect me to believe that a bunch of nobodies, bought up all this land, a town, and have enough left over to begin your own construction?”

“I… admit that it looks… not great when you put it that way… SPEC agreed to give us some funds in return for partnering with them for a few projects. BUT, we run this place ourselves, I have no reason and would never attempt to blackmail other ponies, that’s just completely against what we stand for here!”

“So what do you stand for?”

“Doing what’s right and trying to make a better world for all of us to live in. It’s not an easy task and it’s kind of impossible to really ever do on our own which is why we’ve had to resort to partnering with other groups just to fund this. We’re funded by SPEC for now, but that doesn’t mean we’re onboard with their ideals. I don’t really care much for the whole Shimmerist agenda, I’d rather we all just work together to at least try and make a better future for ourselves.”

“SPEC has a Shimmerist agenda?” Sapphire asked and arched an eyebrow.

“Yes… kind of, didn’t you know?” he nervously admitted, worried by her reaction. “But not like SHIMMERIST Shimmerist, all the world needs to be ponies yesterday kind of stuff. They’re more into long term get humans to want to become ponies through good examples, not force… I think.” 

The blue mare didn’t say anything for an uncomfortably long time, sitting still except for her wings stretching out then returning to her sides. “Sorry, it feels like I’ve been gone a very long time and came back to a world that’s a lot different. I wasn’t aware that they were actually Shimmerist, I thought they were more apolitical,” she said in a small unsure voice.

Silver was slightly taken aback by her sudden shift in tone, “It’s… understandable. I’ve been here this whole time and I even feel like I’m in a different world sometimes… I hate to break up the nice mood though but what about the storm that’s currently rampaging through the countryside, the desert soil’s way too dry to handle this much rain. Will you help stop it so all of us don’t lose the homes we worked so hard to make? Please?”

Her muzzle split into a big grin and with a little hop was up floating above the floor. “No need to be melodramatic, I was just thinking of the best way to correct my mistake.”

He gestured to the small grouping of Pegasi out on the balcony, “Well you got a whole group of recently trained Pegasi out there who may be able to help, a few even jumped into it already.”

Sapphire looked around at the frightened weather ponies who hadn’t flown off to chase the storm and then back to Silver. “Well... I wouldn’t say a week of general instruction counts as training,” She flew out past the balcony to hover in the air, quickly inspecting the group. “Listen, all that,” she turned slightly to point at the storm. “Looks really bad because you don’t have the experience of dealing with something that big. But I’m going to talk you through how to deal with it, consider it a free lesson, one I learned from some of the best in Equestria.”

Silver hastily ran out after her, “Wait… You mean you can’t stop it on your own?!”

“Sure I could, but if I did, what are you going to do the next time a non-magically created storm rolls through? I’m life and I just gave you lemons, what are you going to do with them?” she asked in a grand theatrical way.

“Make you take the lemons back?” Golden Atlas, a gold pegasus stallion answered timidly. 

“Yes!” Sapphire nodded and pointed towards the stallion. “Now come on before the bat has an aneurysm,” she turned and took off after the storm ignoring his glare at the derogatory name for night ponies. 

Silver continued to glare at her rapidly retreating form towards the storm before noticing that none of the pegasi were following, and were instead looking to him for orders. “Well you heard her, get moving, you’re all on the clock! GO! GO! GO!” he shouted and flew up behind the quintet with several loud flaps of his wings and a high pitched whinny. 

The five pegasi beat the air with their wings as they took off as fast as they could to try and catch up to Sapphire Sky who hadn’t slowed down to wait for them in the slightest.


Zipper grunted as he struggled along with Ocean Breeze and Blue Spring to push a mobile home sized chunk of cloud away from the storm’s mass. “Alright, this should be far enough!” he called out and turned to prepare to buck the raincloud. “Three, two, one!” he shouted and they kicked the cloud as hard as they could. A crack of thunder erupted in protest but it began to rapidly move away from the town and river. 

Catching his breath, he motioned for the other two to follow him so they could cut off another section. Just as they finished cutting it away, their attempt was interrupted by the blue and silver mare that had started all this mess come in for a graceful landing on their recently separated cloud segment, halting it’s motion much to Zipper’s annoyance, “So is this how you think you should handle a big storm?” she asked.

Noticing behind her that the rest of the weather team were slowly arriving, his trademark smile immediately dropped, “Gee so nice of you all to finally join us, it’s kind of hard for three ponies to break apart something so big you know? So you wanna tell us how to break this up or are you just up here to get a front row seat and treat us like a bunch of foals?”

“I’ll help but it’s impossible to do it like how you’re trying to.”

“Are… are you serious? Just who the hell are you?!”

“Sapphire Sky, nice to meet you.”

He was taken aback by her cheerful demeanor, muttering out a weak response, “I’m Zipper… Can we skip the pleasantries and talk when this is over?”

“Right. It’s not that the storm’s too big, you’re just thinking of this way too small, we need to tackle this from the center as a team. We’re going to spread out its surface area, it’s far too condensed right now to tackle like a simple rain cloud.”

“O… kay,” He raised an eyebrow not understanding what that would do to help more than just breaking it up from the edges. “Alright, everypony to the center, it’s gonna be a real doozy but I know you guys can do it. Let’s follow the angry blue pony who set this nightmare upon us and see if we can’t clear it up.”

“Yup, what he said,” Sapphire agreed, launching herself from the smaller crowd with enough force that it was sent downwards at least fifty feet. 

Zipper didn’t immediately move, his jaw dropping at where the cloud had been in front of him. It had been hard enough just to push the cloud with help. “Okay, I see why Dazzle’s group mentioned her.” Shaking his head he flew around towards the rest of the weather team to get their attention and head off after the monstrously powerful pegasus. 

His team followed after him up over top the storm and into the sunlight above, finding the blue pony already having reached what looked like the center. His group of ponies reached her and she started flying around positioning them in a vague circle before resuming her place at the center.

“Kay so this might sound counterintuitive, I want you to push down on the storm as hard as you can, and then push it out from where I am as far as you can. You’ll repeat and repeat until you reach the outer edge. It’s like a big giant wad of cookie dough and we’re going to spread it all out so we can divide it up into smaller cookies. Just for the first time I’m going to remain here anchoring it so nothing moves. Got it?”

Zipper mulled over the instructions in his head. Technically it would spread the storm out over more of the valley but at the same time it would lessen how much rain was being dropped in this one specific area. It would also make the storm less dense allowing them to work with it easier. “We can do that, right everypony?” he asked and received nods and verbal affirmatives.
 
“I know you can, it’s going to be easy as long as we work in a team,” she reaffirmed swinging around in a circle to look at all the team. “Let’s get started, on three.”


Silver sat down and breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the weather crew finally spread the fearsome storm apart until it was so thin that only a light mist of barely noticeable rain was falling over the entire valley. The main battle was over, there were a few straggling clouds left for the exhausted team to dissipate. After a few minutes he stood up and hesitantly surveyed the damage, his heart sank as he gazed over the washed out landscape. Miraculously the storm had only started to rain in earnest outside of the town limits, something that at least eased his fears. 

What was once an arid expanse of desert was now a path of eroded earth leading to a nicely sized and serene lake that the small river that had supplied all the water for the valley now flowed into. He was surprised at how cleanly it had ended up, if not for the bit of damage just out of town and the lake water needing to let it’s accumulated dirt settle, their new source of water could have always been there. Perhaps even had been there long ago but had dried up. “It could have been a lot worse,” he thought to himself.

It was at that moment that Sapphire chose to come to a land next to him, the rest of the exhausted weather team coming in behind her at a much more sedate pace.

She beamed with pride so much he could hear it in her voice. “You got a really good group of pegasi here. They did fantastic. You should really be proud of them, they’ve learned well.”

He slowly turned his head towards her, “That’s all you have to say? After all of this?!”

She shook her head, surprising the enraged night pony, “No, I definitely I owe you a huge apology. I’m very sorry, I shouldn’t have been so quick to jump to conclusions and to put your town at risk because I couldn’t control my temper. It’s something I’m working on but my counselor isn’t available in this plane.”

He dug deep trying to be angry but with her sincerity he couldn’t muster the energy. A pony forgave and she knew she had been in the wrong and seemed to genuinely regret her actions. He sighed, letting his anger fade, “I guess I owe you a little apology as well. You thought you were after the ponies who wronged your friends, and I can’t say you weren’t justified in that when I’m partially at fault for taking help from a pony I should have suspected had ulterior motives.”

“It seems that we both could have handled this a lot better.”

“Ya think?” Zipper muttered with a tired sigh.

He chuckled, lightening the mood a little, “Yes that’s definitely an understatement if I’ve ever heard one… that said, if I was in your shoes I don’t know what I would have done… though I’m sure it wouldn’t have been… all that.”

“Yea… I went too far. Sorry again.”

He nodded his head in understanding, smirking at the thought, “Look, I think we both got off on the wrong hoof. Sure, I’m a little frustrated that you barged in and did something so extreme but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed by it. That was a crazy amount of water to see out in the desert. And for all the bad it might have done, you may have also done us a favor or two.”

Sapphire raised an eyebrow, “Oh? What do you mean?”

He walked towards the balcony, gesturing out over the valley, “We have a lake now!” he gleefully announced with a small hop to a lot of glares from his weather team who were filtering past him to head inside. “Sure you may have rerouted the river by a lot, but in the long run it’s going to be a really useful thing for us to have, especially with it being so close to the city, and just imagine all of the plant life it’s going to bring with it. By tomorrow this place will look like a real oasis, and who knows, maybe we can keep it that way! Giz is gonna have to pull a little overtime for that but I don’t think he’s going to complain.” he lowered his head, letting out a sad sounding sigh, “It’s going to cost a lot to repair the systems we just installed that washed away, we’re already pouring almost every cent we make into buying the land back from Sunset Blessing.”

“Yea that sucks, but I’m not going to just walk away and leave you. I’ll pull some strings and make sure you get a new collection system. It’s the least I can do.”

“I really appreciate that, Sapphire,” he paused, “I think we could have survived that hit but even though this place doesn’t look like much, all of us here have put our heart and soul into making it a reality. It would be awful to lose it all over a nasty misunderstanding.”

“That would have been awful,”

He smiled, raising his head and extending a hoof, “I could stay angry at you for doing this, but as they say, a pony forgives. It wouldn’t be right to hold a grudge after you took the time to help stop the storm, I know we didn’t necessarily meet under the best circumstances, but I hope we’ll be able to keep in contact. You’re welcome back here anytime Sapphire.”

“Thank you,” she bumped her own against his hoof. “Not that I deserve it so quickly, but I’ll do my best to make up for this.”


A week had passed since Sapphire had paid her little visit, and Silver had calmed down quite a bit. However, being here and scheduled to meet up with her had sparked up his anger again. He forewent the usual meeting place, instead opting for a blank white landscape with a couple worn chairs set out. He was far too exhausted and angry to even bother crafting something else. It wasn’t fair to just blindly assign blame to Sunset Blessing, but this whole incident had her hoofprints all over it, it was just a matter of catching Tonya in a slip up and figuring out how to go from there.

The feeling of another dreamwalker’s presence entering his dream pulled his attention back to the task at hand. He put on his best poker face as the orange pegasus approached him with a smile. “So… you wanted to talk about something?”

Silver rolled his eyes, his usual cheerful and optimistic tone completely absent, “Well you could say that. It’s about those weather ponies that you were so eager to help fund.”

Tonya furrowed her brow. “You don’t really sound all that happy, it’s been a couple months now, I thought everything worked out well with them.”

He sighed, coldly replying, “Yes it did work out fine, everything went according to plan. They came, helped get us going, and then they left….” he began, voice beginning to rise in pitch and becoming sarcasting, “...and then their boss, Sapphire Sky showed up a week ago to pay us a visit. I’d like to think we’re just the best of friends now though, she even invited Scarlet and I to visit.” He paused for a moment, a look of mock sadness creeping across his face, “I hate to bring it up this way but I don’t think we’re going to be able to make our planned trip out to Riverview, maybe in the future though.” 

“Sapphire Sky came to the Oasis?” Tonya asked, ignoring the latter part of his reply, she continued, “We saw the report about the exchange ponies returning to Earth, what was she doing down there?”

“She wanted to come and test our weather team. Ya know, see that the risk was worth the result, and that we had developed since then.”

Her ears perked up as she began to hover in place, “I wish I could have seen it, a storm that big over the desert must have looked amazing!“

“AHA!” He jumped out of his seat suddenly and flew around her before coming to a stop in front of the confused pegasus. “So Sunset is spying on us!”

“I.. Sorry? What do you mean?”

“I never mentioned anything about a storm and it’s been kept quiet around here. Your wife knew about this didn’t she?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, big news like this kind of spreads fast.”

“Really? News about some massive storm in an isolated community full of researchers in the middle of the desert spread fast? By who? It somehow barely made the nightly news in Phoenix. It’s not going to reach all the way to Riverview without you having some sort of mole. The cat’s out of the bag Tonya, just be real with me, did Sunset try and recruit those ponies through blackmail or not? Because whoever did, royally screwed us over and I’m not happy about that at all.”

“I really don’t know what you mean,” she answered avoiding answering any of his accusations.

“How much are you going to make me spell out? Someone from UMAD’s office tried to recruit those ponies under threat of blackmail for the work they came here to do under Sunset’s nose. Sapphire was NOT happy to hear that her friends were being threatened after they risked their necks to help others. I sure didn’t order a call from here and Sunset’s the only pony in the know who has any kind of major sway in that office.”

“Alright fine, I’m very sorry that you got dragged into this but you’re not the only group we work with. Obviously Sunset wants you to succeed, but she also has every right to try and network with other ponies that may prove to be useful assets.”

“Networking is not blackmail! Tonya, if this is what we might run into every time you get involved, I have to tell you now that we’re not capable of handling this kind of… backdraft. Sapphire summoned a storm the size of the Oasis in the middle of the desert just to show off, and sent it flying across the valley effortlessly like she was kicking a ball! Do you realize how much the damage is going to set us back?! We even had a few humans show up to serve us lawsuits because the overflow flooded areas outside the valley. I’m half tempted to just part ways entirely if this is how we’re going to be treated!”

“Huh, that’s interesting, she definitely shouldn’t have been able to do that before,” she started, completely dismissing Silver’s concerns, “Her file clearly showed that her PREQUES rating was only slightly above average. Do you happen to have any security footage of the event? I’d love to see… I mean have some of our pegasi analyze it.” 

He began to tap his hoof on the ground impatiently, “What kind of help are we going to get to deal with the damages?”

“I can’t really promise anything right now.”

He face-hoofed, trying to keep his anger in check, knowing that she was only the messenger, “Look, I really shouldn’t be surprised, Sunset offering to help us without asking for anything in return upfront should have been the first red flag that we might eventually get the short end of the stick. I’ll tell you what though, you get us some funds and I’ll send you the footage and going forward we’ll pretend like this whole incident never even happened. Does that sound fair to you?”

“Is the damage really that bad?” 

“Well, her storm dropped so much rain that then rerouted the river and created a small lake in a few hours, we’re looking at some serious water damage with the flooding along with needing to alter our plans for the Oasis pretty significantly which will take time to redo.”

The dreamscape suddenly shifted into a wide desert expanse caught in a torrential monsoon, catching Tonya off guard and making her fly up into the air with a surprised squeal. Arcs of lighting danced around an immense cloud that dwarfed the town below. The terrifying show of force replayed in the dream, racing through the landscape and dumping torrential rains that washed away everything in its path apart until it finally reached the river and then the dream came to a pause, holding around that moment with the storm hovering in place.

Tonya looked on in bewildered amazement, evidently not sharing Silver’s frustration. “She did that?! Amazing! Er, sorry I can get a little worked up over weather, I am a pegasus after all.”

“Uh huh, so about the repairs? should I just send Sunset the full bill or am I going to get screwed over with that too?”

“Unfortunately I can’t promise anything right now, It’s all going to depend on how much damage there is. She can’t just throw a bunch of money into some under the table operation like this.”

“So you’re saying that I shouldn’t hold my breath that we’ll have a repair budget soon? You know we still have projects to get done, projects that she specifically contracted us to do. Is she going to give us some leeway on those or are we going to get chewed out for not meeting her deadlines when we’re working in damaged facilities?”

“No, I just can’t promise anything right this minute. If SPEC’s ponies determine that the damage is too severe, I'm sure you’ll get some leniency. Sunset’s not cruel after all. You’ll just have to hang in there for a few days until Sunset can look into this.” She chuckled adding, “If you’re really that desperate for funding then maybe you could put your new lake to use, I’m sure it’d be a nice little vacation spot.”

He stepped back and threw his hooves up in defeat. “Alright cool. Just what I wanted to hear. Please do give Sunset my regards, hey, maybe she could even come give us a visit, I’m sure she’d enjoy our new lake. We’ve got plenty of beachfront property to spare now if you two want a little vacation house down here.” He continued to pace around in frustration as the bewildered pegasus looked on in disbelief. “What’s next? You want to offer us some of your wisdom about all this, Sha’am? I know you hear me, feel like making my night even better by gracing me with your presence?!”

As if on cue an irate voice echoed throughout the landscape. “Conduct yourself like a grown stallion and contain such foalish outbursts,” Sha’am’s voice barked.

The two dreamwalkers quickly jumped to attention, hurriedly shouting out their oaths in unison, “Psychic Calm, we promise ponies shall dream in peace, Yinyu Wu Yan, we shall not allow our passions to lead us to folly; Ghadab, the Wardens' anger is unyielding and just; Phobia Remedy, fear of the Wardens keeps us safe; Tikhiy Krik, we shall keep the secrets of the Wardens; Sha'am Maut, better to die than to face the Wardens' justice.”

The skeletal form of the Warden of Death materialized from a dark mist between the two, facing Silver and striking an uneasy fear in him with her empty socketed gaze, “What is this waking world problem that you drag into the dream demanding that I settle?”

“I apologize, Sha’am, but Sunset Blessing used me to try and blackmail a couple weather ponies into joining her program knowing full well that I’d take the fall for this. Their boss was understandably upset and went overboard in chastising us, causing serious damage to our home that they are refusing to help with. I’m just trying to secure funding so we don’t get shafted by Sunset’s mistake any more than we already have been,” he explained, confused on why he wasn’t just being eaten alive by a flock of vultures for calling out this particular Dreamwarden so rudely. She was everywhere in the dreamscape so she had to have been aware of their conversation but it didn’t seem like something she would bother to take a personal interest in even after he called her out as it didn’t concern her at all.

She turned towards Tonya, “Is this true?”

“Yes, but Silver is well aware of how we have to operate, we can’t just give him a bunch of money under the table and expect it to just work out fine. I very politely told him that he’d have to wait until we could investigate the damages ourselves,” Tonya reiterated as if it was a settled matter.

“Compensate the colt for your organization’s mistake.”

Tonya gulped but stood up very straight. “Again, we will have to investigate the extent of the damages ourselves and make an assessment of how much we are willing to cover, if any.”

“Immediately.”

“With all due respect, Warden. Sunset’s actions in the waking world are not subject to your jurisdiction, we really can’t do anything other than what I’ve agreed to do already, it’s already going to put a strain on our organization to send out adjusters to inspect—..”

The skeletal night pony somehow gave a disturbing bone-chilling smile, “You will tell her to respect our contract,” Sha’am commanded and her skeletal form quickly dissolved out into black mist that vanished a moment later. 

The pegasus nodded numbly and sat back heavily with a bewildered look on her face as the warden left, leaving them alone in silence for a few long minutes.

“Uhh… So… was that news to you too?” He hesitantly asked, breaking the silence.

The pegasus nodded her head, “She never mentioned anything about this to me.”

“Right… well Uhh... I think this meeting has been a real eye opener for both of us then…”

“Do you? Do you really?”