There was a long moment where Sky felt she could not breathe.
Not that she couldn’t sense she needed it. Her lungs practically burned with the lack of it. She simply couldn’t force herself to actually take a breath. Not to move. Not to speak. Not even to blink.
A complete terror. A fear that left her so completely frozen, so deeply parlyzed, that she could hardly even think.
She dropped the radio.
It thudded against the wood floor. A piece of its case pinged off in a different direction, clattering hollow and useless and fragile in the tiny room.
The sound of it is what shocked her.
She gasped. Long and deep. Her lungs filled once again, and she scrambled for the microphone on her desk, every sound now loud and sharp as a pitchfork in her ears.
“Has anyone found the lookout?” she asked, breathless and desperate. “She’s passed out due to smoke inhalation. I’ve lost touch completely.”
A pause.
A long pause.
“On approach.”
On approach.
So dismissive. Such a crumb of a response.
Sky batted the microphone away from her mouth and leaned across her desk, half-climbing, not caring about the instruments she trampled on the way. She squinted up at the bright August noon and watched for any glimpse of the incoming rescue team.
“Smoke’s pretty thick,” the speaker on her desk informed her. “You got any more location details?”
Sky growled to herself.
Isn’t this what they were trained to do? Find ponies in smoke?
She figured not everyone was Night Glider.
Then she figured that, since not everyone was Night Glider, she could at least try to even the playing field.
For the first time since her arrival in Smokey Mountain National Park, Sky turned from her desk and galloped out the beat-up screen door.
Her tower had a wraparound porch, and she circled it quickly, nearly skidding out as she came around each of two corners. But, soon enough, she stood on the corner facing the billowing smoke.
She could see, now, the tiny specks of distant search-and-rescue pegasi. They circled the area, darting in and out of the smoke, searching for a needle in a haystack.
Not all pegasi knew how to work the winds. It was a science and a skill taught only to those who sought it out. Only to those who needed it. The search-and-rescue team, though skilled, was more adept at diving in and out of difficult situations than they were at manipulating them. Sky watched as they tried to feebly reshape the smoke, though it seemed to slip right through their hooves every time.
Sky clenched her jaw.
She closed her eyes.
Her late husband’s face was there. It was every time she closed her eyes, but it was now twice as sharp.
She reached out, beyond the confines of her tower, and into the sky with a silly thread of magic. It twisted, glided, multiplied—growing bigger and stronger, weaving itself into a web, a fabric, a net that could catch and hold and pull away the cloud of smoke.
She felt it.
Different than a cloud.
A cloud was cool and soft, willing to be shaped, happy to be touched.
This was quite the opposite.
But Sky fought it.
She braced herself against the rail, tugging with all of her might, dragging this ephemeral thing away from the mountain. It bucked against her, but she held it firm.
Firm enough, at least.
Not quite clear skies, but the voice came through nonetheless:
“We’ve got her.”