//------------------------------// // Chapter 39: Perspective Witness // Story: Sisters of Willowbrook // by Starscribe //------------------------------// They let her out the next day. Firefly searched the school for any sign of Lilac, galloping to the library, that hidden spot under the bleachers—and everywhere else she thought her friend might be hiding. But she didn't find her, and her panic grew with every second she spent running. On the edge of desperation, she finally found someone who might actually be able to help: Risk. He looked particularly solemn and boring today, walking alone from the library with his head down and a saddlebag full of books. That meant he wasn't watching for her, and stood no chance of escaping her. Not that any unicorn would have much luck with that, without some high-level magic. "Risk!" she said, loud enough that he winced and his ears pressed flat. He walked pointedly past her, without even the pretend nod of respect he usually used. She scampered to follow, earning a harsh, backwards glare. "What do you want? I'm busy." "School is already over, what could you be busy with?" She lowered her voice, leaning closer to him. "Where's Lilac? I didn't see her in Grammar today." "Gone." He looked up, glowering at her. "I cannot remember what happened, so I assume this must have something to do with you. I know you were there, that's been etched deep in my mind. I thought you were going to be punished with her, yet here you are." Her wings opened involuntarily, flaring out slightly to either side. She pawed at the ground, annoyed. "I saved your bucking life, jerk. One of us completely lost control when there was a demon around, the other was a total badass and saved the day." He scoffed, then started walking again. "Convenient. I've been training my will since I could walk, yet it's the weather pony who retains her memory. What a coincidence that it glorifies her own contribution while being impossible to verify with someone more objective." She was halfway to coming up with a few more unique insults before she realized the futility of the conversation. Little Risk might be acting as sour as ever, but there was nothing feigned about his memory. He actually didn't remember. Maybe that was for the best. Poor River hadn't even been at school today either. She trotted along to catch up with him, the anger largely gone from her voice when she spoke. "What happened to Lilac? They let me out before dawn, but she wasn't there. The guards said she left the night before." He stopped, rounding on her. Then he spoke, taking each word one at a time. As though selecting each one to inflict the deepest possible wounds to her. "She left this morning, on a Vale trade zeppelin. The route will take her away from the city for months." He slumped, anger vanishing. "We were supposed to go to the dance tomorrow, and now she won't be there. I can't prove it, but I know you must have something to do with this." "She let you take her to the Fetlock Fete?" She rolled her eyes. "Lilac still thinks she's a colt after all these years. She's not interested in guys. That's not how our brains are wired." She held one hoof up to her head, tapping against it for emphasis. "You couldn't understand, Risk. But if you'd come with us, you would. You'd be going through the exact same thing." Satisfaction spread over his face then, smug enough that she could punch him. She didn't of course, at least partially because ponies couldn't do that. Attacking another student in school a day after being partially responsible for a town-wide disaster was probably not a good idea. "Go ahead and ask her, Firefly. Lilac may have questionable taste in fashion, but that's only because of her dedication to her studies. In other ways, she's still a fine young mare, with an intellect worthy of her adopted house. If she had been born a unicorn, she would be one of the greatest minds of the age. Even with her disability, she accomplishes amazing things." Firefly felt the energy tracing down her wings, a faint crackle of electricity that briefly flashed off the polished floors. The same power she had summoned when she was fighting for her life against a demon from beyond time and space. Was this jerk of a teenager really worth all this anger? "Buck you, Risk. Buck this whole damn place." She leapt up into the air, startling several nearby students. They squealed and retreated from her, staring. Flying in the halls was strictly forbidden—there just wasn't enough space, not when school was in session. But Firefly had fought demons, she'd lost her best friend to unknown punishment as a result. Left on an airship, how stupid was that? She sped up, passing through the open front doors. She had to tuck her wings to fit, pulling her legs in close. She knocked the hat off a unicorn as she passed, but she didn't care anymore. She didn't care about much of anything. Her brush with death had done something for Firefly she didn't realize at the time. The well of power open to a pegasus who was surrounded by the sky and the wind and the air went so much deeper than she had imagined before. Maybe I can fly over to the airship and catch her. It was a stupid, pointless plan, she knew before she even started. But knowing in her brain and feeling in her soul were two very different things.  She flew up in a steepening parabola. Her legs tucked in again, and she lowered her flight goggles over her face against the wind. She pushed harder and harder with every second, fighting the stall. It took incredible strength to fly straight up forever, defying the very laws of physics and the principles of aerodynamics. She fought anyway, as stubborn as any young pony could be. A crackling trail of energy buzzed in the air behind her, gathering into clouds like an acrobatic vapor-trail. But she barely looked back enough to see it. With the weighing sun, the Cumulus Maze encroached again on the sky, gradually returning Willowbrook to its perpetually overcast state. But there were some gaps in those clouds—if she wanted to look for a departing airship, she would need to get through them. Her flight was slowed somewhat by the schoolbag hanging from her side, whipping violently in the wind. The strap strained from the speed, then snapped, sending a brief spasm of pain from her shoulder. That homework didn't matter—her school didn't matter, none of it did. The sky was above her, and her friend was up there, somewhere. She just needed to fly a little faster. She shot through a narrow opening in the clouds, though it didn't stay that way for long. Maybe it was the wind behind her, or maybe it was the magic—but something tore at the clouds as she passed, ripping through with tremendous force. The structure disintegrated, forming a complex spiral behind her that trailed away to mist. She ascended higher and higher, passing over the diffuse cloud-structure.  Not everything that drifted to this gyre to die were real cloud buildings of the past. Some were ordinary clouds, formed through atmospheric processes. Ponies had strange ways of describing these, like wild animals that had escaped their pens, and disrupted the orderly weather of Equestria. Most of what she saw were simple flat clouds, the kind she remembered from her life in that other place, with dull colors and people walking on two legs.  She didn't see an airship fading dramatically into the distance. Zeppelins were not entirely unknown in Willowbrook, not since the expansion brought more ponies from Los Pegasus, as the population grew. But they were rare enough that she would've noticed them instantly, and they would be easy to follow. What she did see was an approaching cloud wall, on the horizon but growing steadily larger.  There was still sun up here, but even so this particular cloud was an angry shade of gray, with little flashes of light inside. It towered larger than a city, a vast trunk rising high overhead, before flattening into a table high above her. Thunder rolled in the distance, a taunting, angry grunt that echoed over the horizon. It would bring a downpour of rain when it arrived, and a night of storms that would whip through her home and make her father pace about like a madman, checking his collection of a dozen different knives until it ended. Can a pony destroy a cumulonimbus cloud? There were notes about creating much smaller versions of these, concentrating the energy and moisture of the skies to make rain. That was basically what a weather crew did, creating rain where farmers needed it and removing it where other ponies wanted sunlight. But never in any of her books had she seen anything like this. Without realizing it, Firefly had opened both wings in a glide, flying in a wide arc over the ragged field of the Cumulus Maze. There were a few little cloud houses down there, most the shoddy craftsmanship of Los Pegasus vacation homes. Occasionally she found some bits in there, or souvenirs from visiting tourists. They weren't really worth the time to explore, considering just how boring their loot usually was. I should've asked Risk where Lilac’s airship was flying. Only the stupid Vale family would be rich enough to banish an earth pony to the sky. Without nature or a library, her friend would probably be tortured with boredom. Unless I can stow away. She spun around in a slow circle, searching the sky for a sign of a zeppelin. At least up here she would be able to see them at a great distance, even if the lighter-than-aircraft had been flying all day. But there was nothing, only the thundercloud blowing slowly into Willowbrook. She floated there in the upper air, letting the chill wind lift her feathers. She should probably fly back to the ground, recover her bookbag, and hope nopony important saw who had just flown around in school. Otherwise she'd be scrubbing chalkboards for the next week, and Lilac would still be gone. That thundercloud doesn't look so tough.  Firefly tucked in her wings, then angled into a brief dive, gathering speed before flying forward again. She skimmed along the cloud-tops, passing over natural and artificial structures alike. Many were hard to tell apart, so withered by their time in the sky that even artificial pony buildings looked like boring old clouds. She flew just low enough to let her hooves skim through the cold and the moisture, lifting wisps of the stuff to trail behind her. Firefly couldn't say just how far away the huge cloud was, but she crossed the distance in almost no time. She angled gradually upward as she approached, intending to crest the cloud and attack it from the center. She was ill-prepared for its scale. The thunderhead was massive beyond any cloud she'd ever seen, big enough to drown all of Willowbrook for a night or more. Lightning cracked down from above, passing through the air ahead of her and smashing down to earth below. Her goggles provided only modest protection against the light, which blinded her for a second. Then came the thunder, deafening her with nearly as much force. Her body recovered quickly, so quick that she barely sagged in the air. Silly as she once thought ponies looked, a pegasus was built for this. Besides, that flash of lightning illuminated something through the dark cloud, something she never would've seen otherwise. There were windows visible in the thundercloud, vast and stained with different-colored ice.  Somehow, impossibly, this cloud was a structure. A structure she intended to get inside. Wish you were here, Dad. But I don't think you could keep up with me. Firefly looked down, gazing through the last opening in the clouds beneath her. She saw a road down there, surrounded by green. She could almost make out a white carriage rolling along, pulled by a team of fine ponies.  She's on a zeppelin. Besides, that carriage is going into town, not leaving it. She wasn't going to find Lilac before she left, that goal was doomed. But maybe she could find something neat to bring home, something big enough to make her father forget how reckless and stupid she was.