Whistle
The waiting area for tours was right around the corner from the castle’s main entrance, underneath an awning. We weren’t the only ponies there, three others waited in roughly the same area with hoofbands on, but they kept mostly to themselves. A tourpony came and collected them a few minutes after we arrived. They offered to take us, but Vinyl decided we’d catch the next one.
I watched Vinyl look around for a bench before deciding to just sit on the cloudstuff. “Is this museum too boring for you?” I teased.
Vinyl swept her gaze across the statues in front and walls behind us. “Yeah. Super boring. Want to skip to the part where I jump off the clouds?”
“No. I want to skip over that part entirely,” I sighed. After double checking, I added, “you don’t even have a parachute.”
“Only because you didn’t let me bring one.” Vinyl patted the cloudstuff next to her. Against my better judgment I sat, suppressing a surprised squeak as I sank into the squishy ground.
“Any particular reason you passed on that last tour?” I asked. “There was more than enough room for us. Now we have to sit for half an hour.”
“Are you in a rush?” Vinyl shifted slightly, leaning into me. “Excited for our dinner date?”
I repositioned myself, awkwardly failing to settle Vinyl’s weight comfortably. “More concerned that you explicitly chose to spend a non-insignificant amount of time sitting still when we could have been doing something.”
Vinyl shrugged, knocking me from my tenuous balance. She never responded though, so we sat in silence until a familiar voice called to us from the gate.
“You two the only ones in this group?” I looked over to see the small pegasus from the desk walking over, smiling. “I promise I won’t let you get lost.”
“Of course you remember that,” I said. I wiggled out from under Vinyl and rose to my hooves, shaking my hindleg to try to wake it up. “Is there a problem with our tour?”
“Not at all, I’m here to give it. My name is Dewdrop, and I’m your tour guide! Are you ready?”
I looked to Vinyl, then nodded at our guide. “When you are.”
She led us to the yawning gates of the castle, stopping at the map we had earlier to give us a basic rundown of our route. “It’s not a very long tour, to be honest, and I’m a little new at giving it. With only the two of you, there’s also a good chance we make it out in under an hour, I hope that’s okay.”
“It’ll be fine,” Vinyl assured her. “Tavi loves this stuff.”
Dewdrop smiled and took us inside. Our tour started in the most obvious place: the entry hall, though it was really more of a checkpoint. We passed through the large outer doors into a small chamber open to the air. Another door stood propped open in front of us, leading into the castle proper. “A defensive emplacement,” Dewdrop explained. “In the event of an attack the inner doors could be sealed and the attackers pinned in this room.”
“But it’s open to the sky,” Vinyl said. “And only pegasi can walk on clouds. Wouldn’t they just fly out?”
“No other part of the castle is open like this, and all of the windows are too small to get through. It also wasn’t just pegasi tribes fighting, the spell to let unicorns walk on clouds has been known for a long time.”
“Pegasi tribes? There wasn’t just one?”
Our guide waved us through the entryway, answering Vinyl’s question with a raised hoof and smile. We were led into a long, narrow chamber, dominated by a huge overly-ornate table. A dozen cloth banners fluttered from the high ceiling, each one emblazoned with a different design.
Dewdrop motioned to them with a wing. “These banners represent the twelve largest tribes of pegasi. They all claimed ownership of this castle at one point after it’s construction.”
She went on to explain that the pegasi fought constantly, before the events of Hearth’s Warming that drew the three types of ponies together. Castles like this used to be scattered around areas the pegasi claimed dominion of. Only two were still around: Cloudsdale, and this one here.
Our tour wound us through the center of the castle, then up the central turret. “It wasn’t originally open to the air,” Dewdrop said as we mounted the last staircase. “But since it isn’t really needed for defense anymore, we opened it up. This is the fourth highest point in all of Equestria.”
I gasped as the wind whipped into my mane and coat. I’d been pretty high up in Canterlot, but this… “Still want to jump off?”
The castle stood at the edge of Las Pegasus. Civilization stretched out behind us, a picturesque backdrop of metal and cloud built around a lake. Boundless fields and forests rolled in the other direction, miles upon miles of the natural beauty of Equestria.
Vinyl climbed from the turret next to me. She looked out and whistled, the soft sound lost to the wind. “Kind of, yeah.”
“Please tell me you don’t have parachutes up here,” I said, looking around the turret top. To be safe I checked Vinyl again.
“We used to,” Dewdrop said, “but too many unicorns and earth ponies didn’t survive the drop.”
“That doesn’t make me want to jump any less you know.” Vinyl looked over at me and grinned.
“Pick one, either dinner or jumping,” I said.
Vinyl pouted. “Do I have to? It’s a really hard choice.”
I leveled my best Philharmonica glare at Vinyl, hoofed down for generations. The effect was somewhat lessened by my squinting in the harsh light, but I think it came across well enough.
“I can recommend some good places!” Dewdrop said, smiling. “For dinner or for skydiving.”
“Maybe somewhere that does both?” Vinyl asked, barely turning enough to face our guide.
I shook my head and moved to the edge of the tower. The view was stunning, inspiring. I tuned out Vinyl’s gentle teasing of our guide, focusing instead of the wind whistling through the castle, the leaves rustling on the trees further out of town. It all swirled together, from the birds above to the trees and cloudstuff below, turning into an orchestra of nature.
“Whatdya say, Tavi?” Vinyl asked, snapping me from my thoughts.
“I didn’t say anything,” I responded, cocking my head to one side.
I turned to look at her, shivering as the wind blew right past my coat to my skin. Vinyl hurried to my side, standing between me and the cold touch from the forest below. “Yeah you did, something about nature?”
“Ah…” I sighed, slightly embarrassed. “Listen.”
She perked her ears obediently, protected from the wind by a pocket of warmth between us. I already knew what to listen for, so it didn’t take much time at all to key back in. Vinyl only took a minute or two longer. I knew as soon as she’d figured it out when she gasped. “It’s like… like…”
“An orchestra of nature?” I supplied, smiling.
She nodded, turning back to face over the parapet. We stood unmoving until the chill started to seep through us once again. “Neat.”
“How eloquent,” I said, turning back to our guide. “We’re ready to… Dewdrop?” I called, not spotting the small pegasus.
Her head popped back above the trapdoor leading back into the castle. “Sorry, I don’t deal well with heights. If you’re ready…”
We followed her back down the tower and out into the relative warmth of the courtyard. “That concludes our tour,” she said. “I hope you had a great day, and we hope to see you soon!”
“Thank you, we did,” I said. I started walking out, hooking Vinyl on reflex.
“Hey!” she protested, wriggling to escape my iron grasp. “Hey, Dewdrop, gimme a shout, where can I jump from the clouds?”
“I’ll give you a one way trip down if you don’t stop wiggling,” I threatened in a sweet voice.
Vinyl stopped struggling immediately.
Our plans for the rest of the day started with our descent from the cloud layer. As much as Vinyl wanted to hoof it all the way back to Las Pegasus on the spongy ground, I wasn’t looking forward to the long walk. It was also unlikely that the reinforced cloud we could walk on stretched that far, but that was beside the point.
We descended the tower we’d initially climbed, flagged down a carriage, and settled in for the long drive back. Evening was well underway by the time we were dropped off at our hotel. With a suitable bribe, our driver went off duty long enough for us to walk upstairs, get suitably dressed up, and return for our trip deeper in the city.
Vinyl directed our driver to one of the towers dead center in the city’s entertainment district - a massive expanse of theaters, bars, and other establishments that Las Pegasus was known for. For the second time that day we climbed an extremely tall staircase, passing dozens of landings subtly calling for our attention, and bits.
As we passed the cloud layer we were stopped by a suited pony with a clipboard. He smiled and asked for our name and reservation. I was expecting to be sent back down, but to my surprise Vinyl provided her name and a small slip of paper. Our host smiled and motioned for us to wait for a seemingly random amount of time.
Once he let us past I realized why. As my forehooves touched the next stair above the landing, they started to be pulled away. I jumped slightly once, then again as Vinyl pushed the rest of me up. “It spins,” she said. “Hurry up.”
I did so, providing enough room for Vinyl to follow. At long last we reached the top - roughly a quarter of the height of the cloud castle’s tower - and were met with another well-dressed stallion surrounded by a surprisingly sparse restaurant. It was visibly busy, but not as packed as one would expect a business of it’s reputation to be.
In the back of my mind I knew why we were spinning. The entire top of this tower was rotating, providing a full 360 degree view of both layers of Las Pegasus all around us. This was the tallest building in the town proper, providing an unrestricted view for miles.
Our waiter stood passively, likely used to the stunned silence of his guests. “Take your time,” he said softly. “The next group isn’t due for some time, we’re in no rush.”
Once Vinyl and I picked our jaws from the floor, he directed us up the thin step to the rest of the restaurant. Roughly two dozen tables dominated the middle of the room, everything else was located below the floor but before the cloud layer. A small groove ran around the exterior, wide enough for two ponies to pass side by side. Several couples stood in the groove, staring out at the night landscape.
“How did you find out about this place?” I asked Vinyl after our waiter left to let us peruse the menu.
“Midnight Oil,” she responded, flipping my menu open for me. “He got me the reservations too, his second cousin runs this joint.”
“You really thought ahead on this one, didn’t you?” I mused, shifting uncomfortably in my chair.
“I figured you’re a fancy pony, you like fancy places, I just wanted you to have a good time.” Vinyl smiled at me, the sweetest smile I’d ever seen.
My heart did a flip, unease boiling back to the surface. She’d thought so far ahead, planned everything out. I hadn’t even looked at things to do for the week we were going to be here; the cloud castle was something I saw on the way in, and didn’t even know if they’d given tours until late last night. Repressing a sigh, I looked down at the menu. “This is all pretty expensive. I hope I’ve got enough bits…”
“It’s on me.” Vinyl grinned, obviously pleased with herself. “I’ve been saving for awhile.”
We ordered shortly after, and started the long awkward wait on the food. “I’m starting to think we’re just going to spend this vacation high up.” I said.
“Where else can we spend time in the clouds?” Vinyl said. “Not in Canterlot.”
“I know your real game, Vinyl Scratch. We can explore castles, you can take me to expensive dinners, but we are not jumping off the cloudlayer.”
“Tavi,” she whined, splaying her ears. “I let you take me to a boring museum, let me jump off clouds!”
The rest of the evening passed by in a blur. We ate delicious, overpriced food and sat spinning high in the sky for the entire allotment of our reservation. She carried most of the conversation, excitedly chattering away about whatever came across her mind. I just listened with a smile, prodding her in a different direction when she started to wind down.
After dinner we walked back down the tower until we reached the cloud layer. Vinyl quieted down and stuck to my side as we strolled through the cushioned street. Neither one of us steered, we didn’t even know where we were going. Almost an hour later we ended up at the edge of a gap overlooking the ground city. We both put our forehooves on the ledge and peered over.
I sighed into the wind. Vinyl looked like she was having such a good time here, with me. Not to say that I wasn’t having fun, but I was having a hard time getting into the same carefree mindset. I just couldn’t stop thinking.
“Is something wrong, Tavi?” Vinyl asked me softly. “You seem a little… out of it.”
“Just thinking,” I replied automatically. “A-About the audition.”
“Ah, yeah,” she took the lie. “I thought you weren’t going to do it.”
“I’m not, but Father knows about it now. He refused to take back the recommendation, which means I’m going to at least hear about it from him, and probably Mother later.”
She took my hoof in her own. “Is there anything I can do? You helped me land my gig at Night-Glo, it’s the least I could do.”
I smiled weakly and squeezed her hoof. “Decide what we’re doing tomorrow? And no sky diving.”
“Yeah, I can do that.” She returned my smile with a brightness I couldn’t bring myself to match.