Dusty Sprocket had been waiting years for a chance to visit Skijoring. The mountains hosted a resort, reserved only for the wealthiest of Canterlot’s elite. Unfortunately for Dusty, he wasn't the kind of pony with a fancy name and enough bits to fill a swimming pool.
But love, as it turned out, could solve all kinds of problems, even the ones he never imagined had solutions.
The day he met Calamine was when everything changed. Having another pony in his life—someone who shared his passions, his hopes, and his failures. Oh, he'd been with mares before—hardly a stallion in Equestria could grow up without having a few adventures.
But nopony had ever stuck with him the way Calamine did. Once they were together, obstacles that seemed insurmountable suddenly fell away.
Their families weren't terribly happy that they weren't with somepony "from the tribe." One good meal together at Hearth's Warming solved that problem, and now their parents were on speaking terms. She didn't have a place of her own, and he was stuck in a cloud-house he'd built himself, one that she couldn't visit—one problem proved the solution to another.
Calamine was a park ranger. When they were together one afternoon sharing a casual lunch, she happened to be listing off locations for winter assignments, trying to match against his list of weather team openings.
"That's everywhere south of Canterlot," she said, furrowing her brow at the list. Calamine couldn't even be upset without looking cute, her light pink mane flopping down over one eye. It happened every time, and she hadn't noticed in almost a year of being together.
"I know you said you didn't like making snow—" she continued. "But we might have to. What's your list look like in the north?"
He flicked it with a wing, careful to keep the motion slow. Wouldn’t want to blow his coffee right off the table. "Tons and tons. Nobody likes snowy winters. It's the same thing every day—"
As he spoke, he watched her deflate, sagging into her chair. Did she think he would leave, just because he didn't like making snow? "What do you have? There has to be some overlap."
She scanned the list. "Never... heard of any of these places. Wintercrest, Willowbrook... Skijoring, Trottingham Nature Reserve. Okay, I know where Trottingham is. That reserve is awful. The whole thing is frozen in winter, and it has no visitors."
But Dusty was hardly even listening. His ears had seized on one particular word, drawing him in like a gyre. "What was the place before that? Did you say... Skijoring?"
She nodded, lowering her glasses closer to her nose. Because everything about her was cute, that even meant little pink flowers on the rims. "Yeah, looks like it. Skijoring is... adjunct naturalist in connection with migrating undulates and resource-sharing of game trails with winter sports arenas. Deer are always interesting, but I'm sure that sounds awful to—"
She trailed off, staring. Sprocket had gone from vague disinterest to panicked intensity, flipping urgently through every page of his spreadsheet. He had to compare against the weather distribution map to be sure—but yes, there it was.
Weather at a resort would require enormous precision—perfect powder, all season long. But who better to appreciate the demands than someone who actually participated in the sport?
"Sweet Celestia, that's amazing! I've wanted to go to Skijoring my whole life! There's usually lines ages long, and the resort there costs more bits than I make in a whole season. But we wouldn't need to pay all that, would we?"
Calamine flipped the page over. "Looks like I'd have a whole cabin to myself, and I'd be able to visit the mountain when I'm not on duty." She looked up. "I've never skied before. Could you teach me?"
It was really just a formality after that. Send a few telegrams, board a few trains, and they were on their way north to Skijoring.
The details could never work out perfectly. Weather duty often meant early mornings or late nights, while her schedule varied with the proclivities of the passing deer. Sometimes she went a week without having to work at all, then he wouldn't see her at all for days at a time.
But it was all worth it, if it meant they finally got to live together, and in one of the most amazing places in the world.
Granted, there were some scuff marks on their perfect first home together—because it was more of a dingy shack. The Equestrian Ranger position had an entire acre of land near the peak of Foal Mountain, less than fifty meters from one of the best runs in the park.
It was also exceedingly close to the most important migration routes for deer and caribou.
But it looked like no proper Equestrian contractor had ever seen the place. Rather, it had been shoddily constructed by whoever had occupied it in the past, then expanded by a dozen different rangers over the years.
It was a true passion project, a cabin built from logs that ponies had probably cut with hoof-tools, then dragged in one at a time. It was more than one room—a sprawling, multistory affair, surrounded by gardens buried in snow like everything else.
Of course they didn't mind—even without electricity and water from a well, they could still make the little house feel like heaven. Whenever they were together, cuddled under a blanket by the fire and watching the snow outside, Dusty didn't care that he had to make a ten minute flight to buy groceries, or that his job was the same every single day all season.
There were so many other benefits—teaching Calamine to ski, and those rare hours when their time off lined up, and they could go out onto the slopes together.
But more often, he flew home from work late into the evening to find that Calamine was out joining some ritual for the local deer tribe, or monitoring the hare population to see how they were weathering the season, or something even more esoteric.
It was too late to go out onto the slopes, and so he ended up inside. That was where the trouble started.
While the cabin might be made with love, expanded by years worth of rangers, its shoddy construction meant it was poorly insulated. It meant that even for a pegasus like himself, it just couldn't quite stay warm enough.
He tried everything; patching every hole in the roof he could find, lighting up all three of the fireplaces with positively wasteful amounts of wood. That helped, but it inevitably meant he'd be trapped in just one room, a single shelter from the biting chill outside.
The eventual solution came by accident one early morning. He had the day off, but Calamine had been on assignment for ages. He decided to surprise her, cleaning the cabin to spotless perfection so she would have somewhere nice to come back to.
Tossed into the corner of their bedroom, he found the solution he never knew he needed: a pair of striped stockings, fallen from Calamine's drawer. It was only when he picked them up in his mouth, intent on putting them back, that he realized just how incredibly soft they were.
These weren't the skin-tight lace worn by fine unicorns in Canterlot—these were thick, probably woven from alpaca or something equally adapted for the mountainous chill.
She always dresses like this when she goes out into a blizzard. Maybe it wasn't just Calamine’s earth pony toughness that facilitated her remarkable endurance. Maybe she knew something he didn't.
Getting them on was a chore in itself, one that would probably have been impossible were it not for their specific tribes. Another pegasus mare would've been too thin and lithe for her stockings to fit—but his flier's proportions and Calamine’s earth stoutness were an almost perfect match.
The back legs were the hardest, requiring him to jam one hoof deep, while reaching back to pull up with his mouth. Not many stallions could've managed, but he did. Ten minutes of struggling later, they were on.
He stared back at his reflection, tan colored fur interrupted by yellow and pink stripes all the way up to his torso. They looked absurd, so silly he almost tossed them off right then.
There was just one problem: he wasn't cold anymore. No jacket he owned could keep his legs from freezing and his hooves from eventually going numb, particularly on the ground floor. But as he stepped out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen, the coldness just couldn't reach him.
An hour of chores later, and he was still toasty warm.
Calamine’s stockings were the perfect solution to something he never dreamed could be solved. Therein was the problem: how could he possibly get away with it?
Rare indeed was the occasion that required a pony to wear shoes. Even rarer, the stallion who could get away dressing like this. It was a good thing the weather factory kept everything properly insulated, or else he'd be well and truly doomed.
Dusty knew in that exact moment a truth as absolute as Celestia's sun rising in the east, and setting in the west. He knew beyond all argument and doubt.
He could be comfortable when he was at home, despite the worst cold of winter. But Calamine must never, ever know.
This was easy at first. When they were together, he could always rely on their proximity to keep him warm. So long as Calamine’s schedule was clear, he could “borrow” something to wear with ample time to wash it again before she returned home.
But being a ranger meant having a predictable schedule was a rare luxury for Calamine. Sometimes that was an advantage, giving them plenty of time to spend together. Unfortunately for Dusty, it also meant that time off was completely unexpected.
That was how she finally caught him, in the end. Less than a week from the end of the season, when he thought she'd been busy preparing for the spring thaw, she returned early from work one evening and found him in the middle of cooking dinner.
She stepped out of the snow and into the kitchen. Dusty had a wooden spoon in his mouth—and her pink stockings on his hooves.
She froze, mouth hanging open. She hadn't even shut the door, letting a billowing torrent of snow rush in from outside, filling the entryway and stealing what little heat remained.
Even in the stockings, he felt the cold. "H-hey Calamine." He stopped stirring, making his way past her to shut the door. "Good to see you, uh—back from work early? Guess the red foxes were easier to find than you expected?"
"You're, uh—" She struggled to form words. "That explains a few things."
He finally managed to shove the door closed. He retreated from the little pile of snow in the entryway, so he wouldn't get the stockings wet as well as cold.
Why was it so hard to make eye contact with her all the sudden? "I meant to tell you," he finally said. "But you don't know how cold it is in this cabin! I don't have your earth pony strength, and—"
She embraced him, wrapping one leg around his shoulder. Considering she was covered in snow and had been marching through the mountains, that was enough to make his chest feathers puff out in a vain attempt to keep him warm. But it didn't matter.
"Dusty, I don't care if you want to wear socks in the house. They might even look cute on you, if we could find the right color." She let go. "But do you think next time, you could ask?"
She let go, so she could stare at him, looking stern. "I really don't mind sharing. But you're not as sneaky as you think, Dusty. First I thought all those little brown feathers I found in my stockings were just from being together with you. But I kept finding them stuck on the inside.
His blush deepened, wings folding limply to either side. Dusty had been seeing shed feathers everywhere his entire life, that was part of being a pegasus. How had he missed something so obvious?
"Maybe you can help me pick out my own," he finally said, sheepish. "If that's okay."
She laughed, embracing him again. "Course, Dusty! We'll find you something that matches next time. Pink with brown, honestly..."