//------------------------------// // Chapter 33: Windcaster // Story: Sun & Moon Act II: A Crown Divided // by cursedchords //------------------------------// “Pegasus magic isn’t about memorizing incantations and formulas. It’s about feeling. The atmosphere and you are but pieces of a whole.” - Ancient pegasus proverb All three of Spry, Shine and Tin were looking skeptical, but the brown stallion most of all. “I hate to tell you, Wind,” he said, voice muffled by the beans that he was holding in his cheek, “but I don’t buy it. If those ponies on the ground had ever tried candied beans, I’m sure they’d appreciate them just as much as we do.” “Well… ugh, it’s hard to explain, okay?” Wind replied. The group had found their secluded spot, about a half hour’s flight beyond the city limits, on the perch of a small cloud bank with the lights of Cloudsdale only a small twinkle on the distant horizon. It was quiet out here, save for the whisper of the winds in his ears. “The same way, if you had been able to taste this soup, you would agree that it was the best thing you’d ever tasted!” Tin just shook his head and swallowed, resolute in his convictions. Meanwhile Shine, who was lying back on the cloud-top along with Spry, was looking more thoughtful. “How much do you remember of that earth pony tune? It sounds like it might be a fine thing to have for your Choosing.” Wind was hovering in place in front of them, the excitement of the story essentially preventing him from being able to sit still. Though the mention of his upcoming Choosing ceremony took his smile down a notch. “I could probably keep on the basic tune, but trust me, that’s the last thing that I want to be thinking about. That’s all my parents ever want to discuss, and we’re here to get away from them.” The words stung as soon as they came out of his mouth. He had been away from Sun and Snow for weeks already, and he had only gotten back this afternoon. Yet it was true, that was exactly what he was doing out here. “But you’ve only got a couple of days left,” Shine continued. “Your Choosing is pretty much the biggest event of your life! Of course my parents are obsessed with mine; they want it to be perfect, and so do I. Don’t you?” Wind looked away from her, out into the open sky, down to the darkened surface below. There was nothing much to see down there, save the occasional spots of dark brown that marked out the larger stands of trees. “It’s not that,” he admitted quietly. For a moment he considered telling her the truth, but then he remembered Spry. “I’m sure that things will go just fine. I don’t need to stress about it like everypony else does.” “What are you stressing about then?” Spry asked, sitting up. His left eyebrow was drawn down, not quite enough to form a squint. “I can tell that something is on your mind, man. Ever since we left the city you’ve been thinking about something, something that you’re not telling us.” Wind was glad to have somewhere else to turn the conversation. “Maybe what has me stressed is the fact that you’re still here?” he said, giving Spry the harshest glare that he could muster. “And please don’t tell me about how great of a guy he really is, Shine. He showed me his true colours the last time that I saw him, and somehow convinced all of you of his innocence.” Shine kicked herself up into a hover on hearing that, a classic sign of agitation from a pegasus. “That’s not even close to fair, Wind! You don’t know anything about him. You met for like, five minutes! And ever since then he’s been a great friend. Why would he do that if he was such a villain like you think?” Back on the cloud, Spry was looking uncomfortable at the outburst, and Wind zeroed in on him again. “I don’t know. Maybe he felt guilty after ending your chances in the race. Either way, his friendship is only going to last until the two of you are competing again. Then you can expect another knife in the back.” She looked stunned. “Never! Aren’t you at least willing to give him a chance?” She stopped for a second, thoughtful, before continuing. “Those ponies on the ground were wrong about you in their first impressions, but after enough time you proved to them that you really did know what you were talking about and they accepted their mistake. Well, most of them at least by the sound of it. Are you not going to be any better than that lousy Cottonseed?” Wind gritted his teeth at Shine’s valid argument. Did he maybe owe Spry at least a second chance? What could he possibly say or do that would erase the evidence of his nature? Then again, he didn’t want to risk possibly destroying his friendship with Shine without at least trying. “Okay, one minute, Spry. Convince me I’m wrong. Otherwise, one of us is going back to Cloudsdale.” They all turned to give the Master’s son a look: grim from Wind, apologetic from Shine and Tin. Spry took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before getting to his hooves. “One minute?” he said, sounding resigned. “Then I guess that I should get right to the point. Number one is that you were absolutely right, Wind. During the race, I knocked Shine out, so that I could claim the victory and guarantee myself a spot in the Flight Club. So yeah, you’re right about at least that much.” Wind absolutely hadn’t expected that to start things off. He looked at Shine right away. “See? I knew he was as rotten as a week-old bean! Now that we’ve got that cleared up we can leave off with this farce and send him back to the city.” Shine was nonplussed, however. “Do you think I didn’t know? He told me that weeks ago. Maybe let him finish?” “Yeah,” Spry continued, drawing Wind’s gaze again. “Everypony in the city had heard about you after only a couple of days. And of course I knew that you had been ticked off at me before it all happened. Once we all realized that you really seemed to be gone for good, these two took it really hard. Meanwhile, all that I could wonder was if what I had done was part of the reason why you left.” The thought of what Shine and Tin would have gone through over the course of the past months put a damper on Wind’s anger. Naturally, he’d thought about it before, but seeing the melancholy on their faces now brought it all closer to home. “So you did feel guilty then?” he said, drawing back his glare a touch. “Of course!” Spry exclaimed, now looking offended at the implication. “You had every right to be on my case, after all, but Shine didn’t know it. I had to try to help her through this thing, but I also had to keep my secret, and that turned out to be just impossible. So yeah, maybe a week after you left I told these two everything.” This time Shine broke in before Wind could say anything. “And yeah, right then I was pretty peeved for your information. On top of what I was going through, wondering if I was ever going to see you again. It took me a couple of days to cool off, but eventually I did realize that I couldn’t blame Spry for what he did.” “Really?” Wind couldn’t hide his surprise, unable to understand the logic. “After throwing away his honour like that? Any life that he earned by dishonesty would have been nothing in the end.” She nodded. “Yeah, really. Cause, if I was honest, and put myself in his position, I would probably consider the same thing. Heck, a few times in the past I even have.” Sighing, she took a look over at Tin. “You and Tin are lucky in a way. They’ll always take more pegasi up in the fields, and whatever you choose, Wind, your family will get you set up right. But the Flight Club is only for the best. The thought of knowing, deep down, that flying is what you want to do, but not making the cut? Then spending every day doing something else, knowing that it was wrong? It would be a nightmare, and I’ve sometimes wondered what I would do to avoid it. Lucky for me I never had to face that decision.” She turned to give Spry a smile after finishing, and this time Wind had no snappy retort. There had been something very familiar in the story that she had told after all. The sense of dread at ending up with a destiny different than the one he truly wanted was something he understood very well. He’d approached the problem in a different way than had Shine or Spry, but then they both had an answer to the question that still stumped him. “Plus,” Spry added, “I hope that by now you’ve realized that even life up here isn’t as simple as they tell us in school. Honour and honesty are important, but they won’t get you that far in life. After I confessed to Shine, of course I told the story to the Flight Club too. They appreciated the honesty, but they kicked me out just the same. When I got home, my dad was pretty mad at me for the whole thing. But eventually I realized that he actually didn’t care about the cheating.” He gave them a wry grin. “What actually set him off was that I had let the truth out afterward.” At that Wind had to chuckle. For of course he had to wonder how Snow would have taken the story, and he couldn’t help but think that his father might have reacted the same way. A son who had kept his heart pure was one thing, but a champion flyer in the Flight Club would present all kinds of opportunities for more parties and luncheons like the one going on at their house right now. And maybe, just like Spry’s father, Snow could have made his problem go away with only a few words if he had really wanted to. “That’s probably all for my minute,” Spry said, looking relieved to finally settle the matter. “But that’s basically all that I can say. It was good enough for these two, how do you see it?” Wind had to think about it for a moment. On the one hoof, he had been right all along, and everything he had thought he’d known back then had turned out to be true. But how much did any of it really matter? If Shine could be okay with knowing the truth, then maybe he could too, knowing that in reality the society he had thought he knew was a totally different place than he had been brought up to believe. The way they had been taught, in Cloudsdale, everypony was measured solely by their worth to the tribe, and a cheat wasn’t worth anything. As it turned out, that life wasn’t so simple, and he did have to admit that after the incident with the race Spry had been a nice enough pony. He really owed Spry a lot for consoling his friends in his absence. And looking at him now, the easy, endearing smile on his otherwise high and noble features, Wind could imagine that maybe it would be okay to call him a friend. “Sure,” he said, looking down for a moment. “I, uh, I guess I owe you an apology then.” Spry shook his head solidly. “Absolutely not. You were right after all. And even if you still want to apologize, surely mine and yours will cancel each other out. So we’re square.” He offered a hoof to shake, and Wind took it. “Now come on. I tend to pay more attention when my father is talking business, and I can tell when a pony isn’t telling the whole truth. Now that we’re all friends, is there anything else that you’d like to share about your time on the surface?” Wind felt himself flush, but he shook his head and did his best to sound nonchalant. “No, I think that was about it.” The endearing smile transitioned smoothly into a knowing grin. “No, it wasn’t. You were leaving out parts.” “Whoa, he really is good!” Tin exclaimed, “That’s something they sure didn’t teach us in school.” He sat up on the cloud, a fresh eagerness in his eyes. “Now you’ve got to tell us! And you know that he’ll be able to tell if you try to hide anything.” Shine sat up too. “I’ll betcha’ it’s something really juicy. Come on, Wind, let’s hear it.” There really wasn’t anything for it now. Maybe if Wind had known that the Master’s son was so good at detecting lies, he wouldn’t have said anything with him around in the first place. But of course he couldn’t have known. So he flew a little higher, till he was maybe ten feet above the group, and started filling in all of the pieces of the narrative that he had left out. Of course it felt right to tell the whole thing, leaving nothing out, all of the conversations that he had had with Sycamore about Cloudsdale, and all of the grim moments as she had wrestled with her family’s finances and the questions of what they were going to do. His heart bloomed as he went over the time they had spent working together on the farm, all of the evenings by the dried-up lake, and of course Reaper’s Rise, and his last good bye to her, just this morning. When he had finished, he opened his eyes to find Southoofton down there on the surface, only a collection of shadows in the moonlight, with a few stray lights that may have been candles or torches or whatever. Somewhere, Sycamore was down there, and hopefully she was looking up at the sky, watching and wondering what he was going to show her. When he looked back to his friends, it was difficult for him to identify exactly what emotions he was seeing on their faces. In the twinkle of the stars, he thought for a second he could see the bright sparkle of a teardrop in one of Shine’s eyes, but she blinked and immediately it was gone. He knew that none of them could possibly understand exactly what his feelings were toward Sycamore; maybe no pegasus had ever been in exactly his position before. But he had hoped that they could at least sympathize, and in any event even if Spry hadn’t been here to insist on the truth, he realized that now it felt great to say it all, perhaps to admit to himself just how much all of that experience had meant. Shine was the first to say anything. “Oh, that’s so nice to hear,” she said, a softness clear in her tone. “Though obviously that whole situation is still a sad story. It wasn’t looking good for them when you left, was it?” He nodded once. “I can’t say for sure exactly what’s going to happen, but I know that it’s not going to get any better. Not without rain, and even then it might not help. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Maybe at least we can look at each other each night and know there’s somepony else out there who cares.” “I almost can’t believe that you were able to leave,” she continued. “Knowing all of that…there had to be something you could do.” “It wasn’t my fight,” he said. He knew that the words sounded cold, but they were the truth, and he didn’t have to like that. “I am a pegasus of Cloudsdale, and she's an earth pony of the surface. If I could have done anything to help them, of course I would have, but otherwise my life is up here, and hers is down there.” He could see that Spry understood, though the Master’s son wasn’t too happy about it either. So he did his best to put on a grin. “But it is out of my hooves now. Sycamore will find a way. I know she will. And one day in the future I will find her again. In the meantime, now that that’s all told, I want to show you guys something.” “You mean what you did to make that rainbow at Reaper’s Rise?” Spry asked, the eager glimmer back in his eyes. “I’d absolutely love to see it myself, but it won’t look like much without sunlight.” “The Moon is full,” Tin remarked, propping his shoulder up on the cloud and reaching for another hoofful of beans. “It’s plenty bright. And I’ve never heard of a pegasus capable of making something like that happen. Moving clouds around sure, but making a rainbow out of a clear sky is just impossible.” He settled back down to watch, and the other two followed suit. Taking a deep breath, Wind flew on his own out into the sky, until there was a bit of separation between him and their perch on the cloud. If Sycamore was looking in the right place, she would have no problem picking out his form against the light of the Moon and the stars. He wouldn’t have Firedrop’s fiddle to go by up here, but the general tune of Dance of the Reaper still trilled along in his head, and in the sky he could hear the voices of the winds even stronger than he ever had on the surface. He knew that he had to give this everything. In spite of whatever he said to keep his spirits up, deep down he knew that this was going to be the last of him that Sycamore ever saw. The familiar beat of the winds served as the foundation of the music. It was slower than the fiery tempo he’d kept to on the ground, but still plenty good enough to work with, and Wind was free to work within it, using the forms that now came to him almost without thinking. A dip and a dive around, a flutter and a spin, and soon enough a well of spinning wind was wrapped around him, reacting to his every move. Wind picked it up into the second verse, his eyes again closed, alone in the sky except for the music and the winds around him. In his mind, he held onto the image of Sycamore, strands of her golden mane waving in the breeze across her beautiful, clear face, her wide and deep eyes sparkling in the sunlight, her jaw slackened with wonder as she had seen his rainbow for the first time. If nothing else, it could be a sign that there was still somepony up here watching out for her. As Wind went back into the song’s chorus, the air around him grew colder and more humid as moisture materialized around his wings, growing out of the music, growing out of the winds. Drops of water floated from the tips of his feathers, leaving his skin cold, the feeling jolting his heart into the accents of the song. The raindrops built themselves up into cloud banks, mists at first but soon the telltale swirl of a building thunderhead, exactly like the one that had first thrown him to the surface those weeks ago. But this was different, because this time Wind was the storm, its every gust or breeze a part of him. Where the song called for a crash of thunder, the atmosphere answered, lightning arcing like a flash of silver, and the rumble of the sky’s basso voice following. Him and the atmosphere were playing out a duet, a melody and a counterpoint, each one supporting the other, the air an invisible partner for his dance. Only this time he was keeping up just fine, answering every stab of the music with another billowing cloud, another shiver of cool mist, another torrent of icy wind. And when the music reached its frenzied peak everything cleared, opening the space once again for the brilliant rainbow that followed, bright and clear even in the night. Wind was left gazing peacefully down at Southoofton once more, his heart still aflame with wonder at what might have been. He blew a soft kiss down Sycamore’s way, then closed his eyes. “Goodbye, Sycamore,” he whispered softly into the night. When he turned around Wind saw that for once, Tin’s mouth was empty. In fact all three of them were sitting awestruck, the wonder writ large across their faces exactly as it had been for the earth ponies down on the ground. He flew lazily over to the cloud bank and came down next to them. “Sure is something, isn’t it?” he said sheepishly. Shine was the first to find her voice. “Something? That was incredible! I’ve never seen a pegasus who could do anything like that! All of that from that song you learned on the ground?” “I don’t know,” he said, leaning back into the fluffy comfort of the cloud bank. “There was always something about the winds for me. It was just that song that made the rainbow, but I’ve heard similar things before. It all started with the storm that got me two months ago.” “Well, whatever it is, it’s awesome,” she affirmed, eyes still glowing with awe. “It’s too bad that you couldn’t do that for the rest of your life. But I guess it means your Choosing will be a real sight to see.” Beside her, Spry looked like he was just now getting his bearings, shaking his head as if to clear a fog. “You don’t even know,” he said quietly. Then he lifted himself up into an excited hover. “Don’t you understand, Wind?” he asked. “The showers, the thunder, the rainbow out of nowhere? You’re a Windcaster! Don’t you know what that means?” Spry looked excited, but it wasn’t registering for Wind. Maybe he should have paid more attention in history class. “Sorry, I can’t say that I do, Spry. Though it sounds like a good thing?” Beside him, Shine and Tin looked equally perplexed. Spry sighed. “I guess it is pretty old history, so it’s lucky that my father made me learn it.” He flew up to Wind, who could see something that almost looked like admiration in his eyes. “There hasn’t been a Windcaster born in Equestria in centuries,” he continued breathlessly. “No one remembers how their magic worked. But we do remember what they could do. They could create weather, out of nowhere! Rain, snow, lightning, whatever! And you’ve got the gift.” “I do?” Wind asked, starting to understand a bit. “So what you’re saying is that music was somehow related to Windcasting magic?” “It must be,” the Master’s son replied, his excitement only growing. “Again, no one knows how the Windcasting magic works. But still, I think you’re missing the bigger picture here!” He looked at Wind expectantly, clearly hoping that the bit would drop soon. And then it did drop, and it felt to Wind as if the Sun had just risen and blasted its light through every synapse of his brain. If he could create rain, then there could be hope for Sycamore and all of Southoofton yet. The excitement broke out on his face in the widest smile he’d ever made, accompanied by a light peal of laughter and tears of joy. “By the winds,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now. But how? I only know how to make a rainbow.” “Then you’ll have to learn,” Spry answered, giving him a reassuring tap on the shoulder. “And we’ll all be here to help. Right, guys?” Clearly Shine and Tin had figured it out too, as they both whooped in approval, before coming forward to offer Wind a big heartfelt hug. “We’ll do whatever we can,” Shine said. “You’ll get to her.” Wind almost couldn’t move with them all on him, but he didn’t care. His thoughts were back on the ground, wondering how much time they had. It didn’t matter. He was going back, and this time he was bringing the storm with him.