In Port Jouster the storms came only once a year. But when they came, they roared.
The ocean's vast strength was not something that a typical weather-team could tame, let alone one that could be fielded by the modest seaside town. So they built high above the waterline, and when the storm warnings came in, ponies ran.
All except for Clear Reason. That was his name now, Clear Reason. A good name, one he'd been given on a day much like this one. The day of the greatest storm that Port Jouster had ever seen.
He faced into the gale, smacking his face into a sheet of rain like molten glass. It battered him back, probably would've lifted him right off the ground. But hooves were steady things, and having four of them gave him four ways of staying grounded. He soaked through in an eyeblink, but didn't go flying.
"Father!" This was different—there weren't supposed to be others about. No other creatures dared to face the storm.
The sky lit up, and midnight turned to noon. He curled back reflexively, strange flexible ears folding back against the surge that would follow. He counted down, even as he heard a second set of hooves hurrying along behind him. The cobblestone was loud enough, or maybe he'd just learned to recognize those particular hooves.
His daughter hadn't always had them either, but she'd adapted to all this far better than he had. She cut through the rain and water, drawing on the same strength that kept him standing. But despite being half his height, she faced into the wind without flinching. No gust would be lifting her off into the roiling blackness.
"Amity, you can't be out here! We can't—"
BOOM! Thunder muffled whatever he might've said next, drowning him in sound. Even expecting it, his ears still ached from the noise.
It lasted for several seconds, far longer than you expected thunder to endure. Assuming you didn't live in Port Jouster. Then you knew.
In that distant explosion of air, Clear Reason thought he could hear another sound. The floor of a metal room buckling beneath him as the aft gravity-lense went up in a flash of light, taking everyone in G-wing with it.
"What are you doing out here?" said Amity. Her voice was so small, yet somehow it cut through the storm. "Father, come back into the shelter. We're making popcorn, remember?"
He sighed. "Go home, Amity. Enjoy popcorn with your uncle. There's somewhere I have to go."
"Now?" she shouted back, indignant. Her bright yellow mane illuminated with another flash, like she'd become lightning herself. He began counting in his head. "You always said the storm isn't safe!"
"I know!" He pushed against her shoulder with a hoof, shoving her back towards their shelter. It was more recently built than the others on their street, with smooth concrete and a steel skeleton instead of mortared stone. Half the hillside town could be ground to dust, and his shelter would still be there. "That's why you have to go!"
A few years ago, that would have been enough. Amity loved him, and that was enough to obey uncritically.
But she was older now. Now she wrapped one foreleg around his. "I'm not leaving you!"
Clear almost went back the way he'd come, right back into the shelter. But he'd been keeping a vigil at these storms for a decade now. Could he just let Jessica go?"
"If you come with me, it will be very cold, and very scary. You must never climb anything, or else weaken your earth pony magic and get swept away. You must stay beside me. Can you do that?"
He shouted each instruction in turn, feeling increasingly irresponsible with each one. But Amity had her cutie mark now, and had for years. By the local definition, she was grown, enough to make her own decisions.
She nodded, and he couldn't tell if that was water running down her face, or tears. "I'm not... I won't leave you."
One last dagger in his gut about the man he ought to be, giving up his ghosts and walking back inside. He didn't.
"Follow me. We have to go all the way to memorial pier."
Thunder echoed overhead—more distant this time, and a little quieter. But it continued for fifteen seconds at least before the wind finally returned.
They walked together through the storm. Clear would've been first, breaking into the wind for his daughter. But then how could he know if she was struggling, or if her magic had begun to fade?
So he walked beside her. Instead, they cut diagonally across the streets.
Port Jouster was already prepared for the downpour, and they'd built their city for the storm. Windows were boarded, and anything that could blow away was thoroughly battened-down.
Even with the incredible durability of an earth pony, Clear kept his eyes alert at every moment. What would they do if a whole house got ripped up, or a storm-surge wave broke over the sea-wall and flooded the town?
But that didn't happen, and soon enough the pier came into view. Well, the entrance did—that much was impossible to miss.
This was one of the few lasting pieces of a life that wasn't. Here, a chunk of twisted silvery metal had torn its way free of the ancient craft, then smashed through the street and the dock all around.
Impregnated nanosteel was tough stuff—once it was in there, even an earth pony crew couldn't pull it loose. So they'd given it a twin on the other side and an arch connecting them, forming the entrance to the Memorial Pier.
The old nanosteel didn't so much as twitch in the storm. Lightning flashed up against it, and its metal duplicate flopped and bucked in the wind, staying standing only thanks to thick bonds between them. Yet they both stood, leading out onto the pier.
"D-do we have to go out there?" Amity yelled. But though the wind was still fierce, this latest peal of thunder came even slower than those before. This year's storm season might not last even a single night.
"No." He gestured through the archway, into the shadow of the dockmaster's hut.
Well, it had been a hut once. After getting blown away each year, it was more like a bunker now, with slitlike windows and a face of cement bricks. It formed a narrow wedge into the wind, and a lathe of space beside it clear of the storm fall.
Clear Reason led his daughter into the shadow of that building, the last few steps on solid ground.
Just ahead of them, he saw the year's damage to the city's prized pier. An entire section of the dock had collapsed furthest out to sea—the old ones. But newer construction was made to be flexible, lifting and sinking again with the pounding surf in storm conditions. Those had held.
Amity settled down on her haunches beside him, then followed his gaze. Lightning still flashed, and thunder still rolled. But in this shelter, only a drizzle of rain found them. So little that his earth pony magic easily overpowered it.
Clear stared out over the water, into a cove that was vast and black. It moved so rapidly to the storm and rain that it was more like the constant motion of a cell under a microscope, not a single sheet of liquid.
Water poured in around him, voices echoed from narrow metal corridors. People stumbled over each other, tied in knots by clothes that no longer fit. Then the water got in, and the fires turned to steam, charring some alive.
"What are you looking for, Dad?" asked a little voice. Quiet now, that they had shelter. Barely louder than the rain. "Do you see something out there?"
He could make himself see it. Let his eyes lose focus just right, and there was the cylindrical body of the Eclipse poking from the water's edge. But though pony hammers couldn't break it, the impact from high orbit sure had.
She hadn't survived her first storm.
Probably for the best. Port Jouster deserved their view. "No," he said. "But I have to make sure I don't, every year."
She remained silent for a long time. Clear looked down, trying to judge the pony's feelings from the subtle adjustments to her animal body. But the crisp moisture in the air overpowered anything he might've learned from her that way. With the rain all around them and both of them completely soaked, they were both huddled, so other clues were gone too.
"What are you looking for?"
He didn't answer for a long time. Lightning flashed, and the thunder was quiet enough now that it was barely audible over the wind. As quickly as it had come, this year's storm vanished from the coast. "Jessica," he said.
"Oh." She clung to him a little tighter. For a few minutes, she said nothing at all. Another light appeared on the horizon, a single line piercing through the clouds. It grew wider by the second, lighting the gray and deep blue storm from behind. "Why now?"
"I shouldn't," he whispered. "But... you came out with me. Guess you deserve it."
She nodded sharply, the only answer he was likely to get.
"We arrived on a night like this," he said. "From somewhere else." The Eclipse seemed to take shape around them as he spoke. Flickering lights present only over fifth junction. Air-recyclers that smelled like sulfur, desperate people in threadbare uniforms.
"Do you remember?"
She nodded weakly. "I do! I remember it being... hard to walk. And there wasn't much to eat. We didn't have Hearth's Warming, because we didn't have enough mashed potatoes."
He chuckled, running one hoof through her mane. It was thoroughly soaked, but he didn't mind. So was he. You didn't have a hard time walking. You just think you would've, because you're so used to being a pony.
"We knew the Eclipse wasn't sound enough to survive a landing. But there was nowhere else to go. Our navigator... your mom... picked a little stretch of land with deep water right beside it for our landing. Right there."
Even through the nanosteel skin, even wrapped tightly in his crash-chair, he felt the impact as they smacked into the ocean. What approach energy still existed peeled away the ship's armor like a grape.
"And we made it out," Amity went on. "And we were drowning. The storm was so bad..."
A thousand desperate people, screams and cries and pleading all blended together in the chilly water. Clear had found only Amity that day, and kept her afloat on his back. Not everyone had the strength. Over half the ponies still alive were earth ponies.
"But Port Jouster saw us," he continued. "They untied their boats, and came to rescue ponies in need. Even though we weren't really ponies, and the wave of our crash had just leveled whole blocks of Port Jouster. They came anyway."
"I know that!" Amity tensed, glaring at him. "I go to school every day, Dad. We learn that like... three times a year."
He chuckled. "Well... you probably don't learn how many people didn't make it out of the Eclipse. We never found their bodies, sweetheart. Part of me wonders if the others on the command deck landed somewhere else, in one of the old escape ships. We didn't think they'd work, but... maybe they did.
"So here I am, every year." He pointed out over the water with one leg, expression distant. "One of these years, there might be an escape pod drifting this way. I want to be there when Jessica climbs out.
"Or..." And he had to admit, that was infinitely more likely. "Maybe one storm, some old part of the ship will break away, revealing where the command crew got trapped. Then I'll... want to be here too. To say goodbye."
Amity nodded once. Now there was no mystery—he knew tears when he saw them. "How long do we watch?"
"Until sunrise," he whispered, wrapping one foreleg around her. "Even if... even if we never see Jessica again, we're watching this for her. Finding a new home for us was all she ever wanted. At times like this, we should enjoy it for her."