The migrating city of Cloudsdale was currently not far from Vanhoover, in the far north of Equestria. As such, even in the height of summer, temperatures, especially this high up, were barely above freezing.
Most of the group were the very image of bafflement as they were guided through the city’s famous weather factory. Intellectually speaking, they had all been told that pegasi controlled the weather in Equestria. They had even seen a few weather ponies pushing clouds across the sky during their outing to Ponyville the previous day.
Still, seeing clouds, snowflakes and liquid rainbow being made in massive vats was an entirely different experience. And of course the twins just had to try the liquid rainbow. Sunset had warned them that it was spicy. They hadn’t listened. Now everyone was laughing. After Ron and Sunset had applied a quick spell each to heal what little damage had been done, the twins joined in as well.
“I think a lot of people back home, muggle and wizard alike, would love to be able to do this,” Seamus murmured as they passed a room where they overheard a weather team planning out some light storms for Baltimare and Manehattan the following week.
Beside him, Lavender chuckled. “What? See how weather is made? Walk on clouds? Watch weather systems being planned?”
Seamus looked at her for a moment, then chuckled as well. “All of it, I guess.”
“I think he meant they’d love to be able to control it like they do here. Weather back home would be considered wild and untamed, which, well, it is,” Sirius said, his own voice full of awe. “Though knowing some folks, it’s probably a good thing we can’t control it.”
“Knowing wizarding history, and even muggle history, yeah, probably for the best,” Sunset agreed. She then smirked when she realized where their tour guide was leading them. “Oh, I know what’s coming next. This should be fun.”
Soon enough, they reached a door – it really was odd how quickly they had gotten used to seeing doors installed in a cloud – labeled ‘shipping’. Pushing it open, the worker giving the tour led them into a large room opening up to a hole in the wall leading out into open sky. He led them up a set of stairs on the side of the room onto a catwalk that overlooked the area, giving them an excellent view of the pegasi compressing raw cloud matter into larger, hollow clouds to use them as transports to supply the smaller weather offices throughout Equestria with the raw materials for their weather systems.
The natural born humans were quite baffled at the sight. They had understood that weather manipulation was a complicated matter and the pegasi had it down to a science, but this was something else. More than any other part of the tour, seeing this room made it clear that this was a large industry. Supplying a nation as large as Equestria with the raw materials for all its artificial weather was a colossal task.
They had been just as surprised to learn that the ponies of Equestria had to manually change the seasons as Sunset had been when she had found out that the seasons on Earth changed on their own. That surprise was also shared by their tour guide whom nopony had thought to warn just who it was he was showing around the factory.
After well over two hours touring the factory and a trip to the gift shop where both the twins and Hermione bought a bottle of liquid rainbow to take along, the group finally returned to the city proper. When asked just what they were going to do with their souvenirs, Hermione explained that she was going to give her sample to Professor Snape so he could see what he could do with it. It was, after all, an entirely unknown magical substance.
The twins, meanwhile, refused to tell. Privately, Sunset suspected they too intended to experiment with it. She had heard the explosions coming from their room back at the Burrow when she’d been visiting during the summer.
After having lunch in a restaurant not too far from the factory, the group continued on their trip through the city. Sunset, who was not only the one most familiar with the city by virtue of having been there before, but was also the one carrying the map, led the way at a relaxed pace giving the others plenty of time to look at Cloudsdale’s unique style of architecture.
She had to admit that it was quite a sight to see. Often times paths, buildings or even entire city blocks were just floating on their own with no solid connection to the rest of the city. Of course, seeing how the entire city was held together by clouds and magic, one might say that the same was true for the rest of it.
“I take it they’re not used to tourists from the ground,” Neville mused aloud as he and the others looked towards one of those very buildings just floating a short way off from the thoroughfare they were walking along.
Sunset nodded. “Yeah. The cloudwalking spell isn’t particularly difficult to cast, especially if you have somewhere to look it up from, but it’s like I said, most unicorns don’t bother learning more than half a dozen spells. Places like Las Pegasus even have unicorns on staff to cast those spells on visitors and refresh them regularly.”
“Wait,” Ron inquired, “that’s their entire job? Just casting that spell over and over all day long?”
Sirius shrugged. “I could think of worse jobs. It’s easy to do, probably a lot of free time between groups of tourists, and responsibility pays so they probably get a good chunk of bits too.”
When the other two adults in the group nodded, Ron just shrugged and continued looking about.
Before too long, the group reached a cloud formation shaped into a long bridge, leading to a large, roughly cylindrical building. Sunset led them across the bridge and turned around, smiling widely. “Welcome,” she said with an expansive gesture to the archway behind her, “to Cloudsdale Coliseum.”
The others slowly walked past her. Sunset noticed that everyone was still quite awed by the sight of such a structure, but the ones from a muggle background seemed more interested with a similarity she herself had already caught onto.
“Reminds me of the Roman coliseum in Italy.” Hermione said, with Harry nodding in agreement.
Seamus snorted a bit and said, “If you haven’t noticed, this place seems to have a lot of the Roman style in their buildings. Makes me kind of wonder again if somewhere, someplace, there’s been other visitors from our world to here, or here to ours.”
Sunset nodded. “Entirely possible. That would also explain why so many magical and non-magical creatures match in both worlds. But it must have been thousands of years ago. Maybe more than that.”
Harry walked a bit further into the large structure, to the edge of the balcony and looked down. “Huh, well there’s a difference. Pretty sure the coliseum in Rome has a floor.”
As the others approached to look down at the massive hole in the place of a floor as well, they started hearing a faint whistling noise from below. The source was revealed mere seconds later as a group of pegasi wearing blue flight suits came flying up from below through the hole before splitting apart and flying through a series of complex maneuvers, their flight paths crossing and interweaving in impressive patterns.
Sunset tilted her head. “Oh yeah. There were posters in town mentioning a Wonderbolts show here soon. Guess they’re practicing.”
“Yeah, we’re practicing right now.” A pegasus stallion in a suit like the ones the flyers were wearing came up to them, gesturing to the group who were now repeating their formation again. “That’s why they keep flying the same formation over and over. And we’ll have enchanted satchels to leave a trail of clouds with us during the show. Add to that a bit of lightning from our own magic and it’ll look much better than this. I’m Soarin’ by the way, nice to meet you.”
Sirius arched a brow. “And why aren’t you training with them?”
Soarin’ smirked. “Well, me and Misty Fly have our own part of that formation, separate from the others. And we’re currently on break.”
“Were on break you mean.” The aforementioned pegasus said as she stepped into view. “Our break’s just about over and then it’ll be our turn to practice our bit.”
Soarin’ blushed a bit. “Hey, we technically still have another two minutes left. I checked!”
Misty Fly shook her head. “How did you manage to end up second in command again? Whatever.” She turned to the visitors, pointing a wing at the flyers practicing above. “Like he said, this is nothing. If you want a real show you’ll have to … well, come to the actual show.” She tilted her head towards a door. “The office is that way. Pretty sure there should still be some tickets left.”
With a wink, she jumped over the railing, spreading her wings as she fell and gliding out across the arena. Soarin’ just grumbled something unintelligible before taking off after her.
Sunset gently stroked her chin with a hoof. “Well, this wasn’t part of the plan …”
Hermione, beside her, snorted. “We have a plan?”
Sunset shot her a glance and smiled. “I guess we don’t, do we? I mean, I figured I’d properly show you around Canterlot at some point this time around, but other than that, not really.”
“Soo,” Fred fell in, “anyone else up for watching this show they mentioned?”
“Me!”
“Figured you would be, brother.”
“Why of course, anyone else?”
Ron glanced to his side. “How about it Harry?”
Harry nodded eagerly. “Sure, who else?”
One by one, the whole group nodded their agreement. Finally Sirius and the Grangers turned to Sunset. “This cloudwalking spell of yours, how long does it last?” Sirius asked for the three of them.
Sunset tilted her head slightly, staring into the distance as she ran through some mental math, greatly simplified by a bit of arithmancy. “Probably about fifteen hours, maybe sixteen. But I can just refresh it, so it’s no real problem so long as one of us remembers.”
Fred chuckled at that. “I’m sure the threat of some of us plummeting down to our deaths-”
“-should be plenty of motivation for someone to remember to speak up when we start sinking through the clouds,” George finished, no less amused.
Emma rolled her eyes at the twins’ comments, but nodded. “Alright good. And I take it there are hotels in Cloudsdale?”
Sunset nodded in turn. “Sure. I mean, most visitors are pegasi and griffins, but there are still plenty of them. It’s not a tourist hotspot like Las Pegasus, but then again, most places aren’t. But yeah, we should be able to find a hotel no problem.”
“So then,” Sirius piped up. “Which way did she say the office was?”
Sunset smirked as she watched the rest of the group ooh and ahh at the aerial display. She had been to Wonderbolt showcases before. Sure it had been a few years since, but the routine hadn’t changed that much. She watched the new stunts with as much awe as the rest of them and nostalgically remembered those that had been removed from the program, but the rest of the time she found the expressions of those around her to be much more entertaining than the display above and below.
Emma, Dan, Hermione, Seamus, Neville and Sirius, had similar expressions of awe, though tinged with a bit of worry in some cases. Sunset found, however, that the others’ expressions much more closely matched the rest of the audience.
Seeing how they were in Cloudsdale, almost the entire audience was made up of creatures capable of flight. As such, like them, the pegasi of the group, as well as the one griffin, had a much better understanding of just how impressive the things the Wonderbolts were doing up there truly were.
The others could fly on brooms, of course – most of them anyway – but that was nothing compared to flight under one’s own power with actual wings. It was, she had to admit, something Sunset couldn’t understand, and likely never would.
Still, she was content to watch. Not only was it amusing, it also gave her time to think. And she had much to think about.
In flashes of teal and green, the group appeared on the grounds outside Canterlot Palace. Once again, Sunset had been guiding Hermione’s teleport, enabling them to take the entire group at once.
Another flash of light, golden this time, caught their attention. Those that had been momentarily confused by the sudden shift, especially because a teleport couldn’t perfectly adjust for the pressure differential after having spent two days up in cloudsdale, quickly turned their attention in the direction of the castle.
Sunset smiled widely and raced up to Princess Celestia who readily wrapped a wing around her just as another flash of light, this time it was magenta, heralded the latest new arrival and prompted her to smile benevolently at the filly that had appeared behind her. “I see you traced me, Twilight. Good. I thought this was a good opportunity to test your skill.”
“A test?! How did I do?”
Celestia chuckled lightly, joined after a moment by Sunset, Hermione and Ginny. “You did just fine, my pupil. Now, I believe you have some friends to catch up with.” She got up and let go of Sunset, letting her and Twilight talk, soon joined by Ginny and Hermione, as well as Lavender a moment later. Meanwhile, she turned to the rest. “I have had the same rooms prepared for you as last time. I hope you can find your way around?” When the others nodded, she smiled and turned to Sunset again. “Sunset, I would talk to you in my study later, if you don’t mind.”
When Sunset simply nodded before returning to her conversation, Celestia lit her horn and vanished in another flash of light.