She moved through an elevated corridor of Sun-lit false safety as the half-thwarted storm grew, and thought about how artificial the pony-enforced peace truly was. How... fragile. Because she was on her way back from the one place where she was supposed to be honest, and it somehow made her feel as if she was flying through a world made of lies.
(She blamed Dr. Lorem. Every time.)
Long before the first train had ever made its way down the rails, there had been roads. Ponyville's oldest travelway was a cleared ground corridor of spell-arranged relative protection which went from the settled zone to the base of the mountain which hosted the capital. The train tracks followed that original path, while leaving plenty of space on both sides for ponies who had carts to haul, or who just wanted to take the day trot. Almost exactly a gallop of distance to cover, and then the routes would diverge: the train heading for the series of carefully-cut tunnels and switchbacks which would bring it up the slopes, while hoof traffic was diverted towards Seabiscuit Bridge and the older ascent.
Train tracks. Roads. But the pegasi had their own travel needs, and so there was also an air path: a techniques-carved route through the atmosphere, paralleling the old road from above while offering its own protections from the monsters which could chase those who made their way with wings.
And where you had air paths, you sometimes found air carriages.
It was spring, and the palace had switched Fleur's transport to a more classic model: something which lacked the fabric dome which had gotten her through the winter. She had the option to stand at the very front of the passenger area (because it was just her, plus a pair of hauling pegasi attached by half-flexible harnesses, flying about four body lengths ahead), right up against the partial enclosure: the highest point on the failed wall was just short of her sternum. It was the location which supposedly afforded the best view. A position which, in the theory only retained by those who'd never actually used that form of transport, would have had the wind...
...but that was the first of the lies.
(Her first air carriage ride into Ponyville had been within a more enclosed carriage. Something with full walls and a roof, because that had been seen as a way to keep her from making a break for it before the thing could fully achieve altitude. What it had possessed in barricades had been countered by the total lack of viewing panels. And then the palace pegasi had quite literally dumped her into Miranda's yard.)
If she moved up to the front, and looked...
The air path was directly above the railway, and that shared its space with the old road. Looking down granted the possibility for catching some glimpse of the train, and Fleur could take the chance because they were too high up for the steamstack ventings to reach her fur and mane as anything more than a tiny increase in the humidity. But she usually didn't get to look at the linked rail cars for long. The air carriage moved faster than the railway, usually overtook it in less than a minute. Any ponies providing the old road with a share of hoof traffic were generally within her view just long enough to almost be identified. At most, she could occasionally guess when a cargo cart was on its way to the World's Stupidest Store: the sofas tended to shift awkwardly within the holding area and if there were any gaps in the wood, the cart would inevitably stop to retrieve lost quills.
Glancing back located the capital: the palace and Gate stood out, but the little dip of the plateau which took place just behind the latter made it impossible to spot the Heart. Turning her attention straight ahead found the ring of farmland which made up Ponyville's truest border -- and at her current distance out, when it came to distinguishing features for the residential portions of the settled zone, it was just about all she could see.
A few major landmarks were always visible: she never failed to find the dam. But with buildings? It was a cluster of colors near the center of the land which had been won in the Founders' war against the wild zone. She could take a guess at which blotch represented Town Hall, and tilting her gaze in the proper direction from there might lead her to the Boutique. And she always knew which way to look in order to find the cottage, but...
It was spring. She was still too far out to spot the cottage itself: the grounds were camouflaged by the surrounding greenery, and having all of the sod on the roof didn't exactly help. But there was a new path which had been carved out of the forest or rather, crushed into existence. The debris created by the march of monsters had been cleared away -- but the gap had yet to fill in.
Fleur couldn't see the cottage. She could only make out part of the gap which just barely curved around the grounds, a reflection of Sun's light from the new river, and -- if she looked at exactly the right moment -- a somewhat larger vacancy within the woods. The place where something else had once been.
She could freely regard all of it from her position at the very front of the carriage's half-open enclosure, with every last portion illuminated by Sun's light. And when she did, she felt as if she was staring into falsehoods. Something which should have been an affront to Honesty, instead of serving as its home.
The unicorn was standing at the very front of an air carriage which moved faster than the train. Wind should have been blasting against her. Something which would hit her with enough force that she might have been struggling to keep her hoofing, dictating that she lower her body behind the scant protection of the half-wall simply to keep herself from being knocked out of the carriage. But copper wire wound through the metal, conducting pegasus magic, and... there was no wind. The vast majority of air flowed around the carriage, with just enough getting through to provide Fleur with a fresh current to breathe. It was barely enough to ruffle her fur. It was one of the many effects meant to keep her safe in a conveyance so exposed, directly accompanied by those which maintained a comfortable level of warmth at altitude. Additional enchantments stabilized the carriage itself, kept it from being jolted too harshly when the pegasi needed to shift in a hurry: the air itself seemed to act as a bracing cushion.
But it also made Fleur feel as if the only true sign of movement was the steady approach of Ponyville's horizon. As if the journey itself was at least partially a lie.
Her path, and Ponyville, were lit by Sun. That was what the settled zones wanted, and so that was what had been dictated by the weather schedule.
(She briefly wondered how much decision time Rainbow truly had. It would be easy for the Bureau to change its collective mind on the deadline, deciding to force the issue. When it came to some government agencies, paperwork could consist of the lies which had been written down.)
Equestria claimed a significant amount of territory within its borders. When it came to establishing some form of control, the settled zones totaled up to about six percent of the land. Ponyville, just like every other 'civilized' area in the nation, was surrounded by a wild zone. And Fleur, a unicorn who'd grown up in Protocera and so understood that there were places in which weather wasn't scheduled, who could translate 'forecast' without resorting to a dictionary and needing two hours to recover from the shock...
Looking forward found sunlight, and glancing back would gain a clear glimpse of the home of the mare who made sure the orb continued to provide it. Any true examination for the sides of the air path had to peer through the storm.
The corridor of the air path offered clear skies. To the left and right, clouds billowed, twisted as they tangled with each other, steadily darkening with the increasing burden of greater mass. Ponyville, a pocket of life in the center of it all, was scheduled for an overnight dusting of light showers: something else which was good for budding crops. But the cottage was on the fringe. Move around the grounds while fur was slowly being saturated by the warm kiss of a gentle rain, seek out the company of a drying device after. Step just beyond the pegasus-maintained border and stand within downpour: to look up on too sharp an angle might risk having a snout flooded to the point of choking. And no matter what Rainbow and the rest of the team did, some of the water would run onto the property, while the sound of thunder filled the air and carefully-placed lightning rods did their best to keep a truly unscheduled strike off the cottage schedule.
For some of the youngest animals at the cottage, it would be the first storm, and they would react accordingly. (In particular, kittens tended to seek out dark, enclosed, soft spaces. It was best to be very careful around any blanket with a small lump in it, lest the startled distortion try clawing back.) And Fluttershy would be awake for just about all of it, moving through the cottage, checking on the smallest and most vulnerable of her charges --
-- but every so often, the pegasus would have to stop.
Look through a window.
If it was one of the oversized, free-swinging Emergency Exit styles found in a few places throughout the cottage, she might use the new gap. Otherwise, there would be a trot to the back door.
And then she would go outside. Out into the rain, up to the very border of the storm.
Checking to see exactly where that border currently was.
Prior to Fleur's arrival and -- a number of events, the cottage's finances had existed at the edge of a financial catastrophe curve. Fluttershy had perpetually been one hard push away from permanently going over the edge, and no amount of flight would have done anything to keep the bookkeeper's ink from crashing into the red. Keeping the grounds intact, the animals fed, and the cottage itself at a manageable level of perpetual repair had required multiple forever-fraying support ropes: veterinary services, kennel hosting, pet grooming, selling extra eggs to the Cakes...
It had taken Fleur some time to untangle all of it, figuring out which bits were coming in from where: stabilizing the flow had required considerable effort. But she hadn't found the strangest binding until the middle of her first winter in the cottage, when the Everfree had been going through its first truly heavy snowfall of the season. When she'd discovered Fluttershy beating the bounds.
Wild weather, pushing with sufficient force against pony magic, could weaken the border. A closely-packed series of moderate storms had a chance to bring the standing charge down over time: a truly powerful deluge might just break through directly. And so the cottage had been set up as a first-alert station, with its mistress examining the fringe to see if anything was on the verge of crossing over.
Most of that inspection was visual. When it came to pegasus techniques, Fluttershy had very little natural magic: enough to fly, stand on clouds, mold a little vapor (although it rarely held the shape for long), and to contribute a small share into any group waterspout effect. She had no ability to negate a storm on her own, or even slow one down. But she knew how to judge them. A number of strictly mundane items assisted with her evaluations: a windsock here, with a rain collection jar waiting nearby. And when all the signs said something was coming through -- that was when she sounded the alarm. Letting Ponyville's weather team know that there was something to stop.
It had taken Fleur most of a season to learn about that piece of extra responsibility, and Fluttershy still hadn't said anything about how she'd gotten the job in the first place. The former escort had decided it was likely a combination of two factors: being the only pegasus who resided in that area -- and her love's parents. A pair of veteran emergency stormbreakers who possessed enough pull with the Bureau to have reserved a place in weather college for their daughter prior to the actual birth -- and then their child had demonstrated a level of power which, when it came to weather-related employment, made her most suitable for schedule delivery. On hoof. Something which would have required far too much time away from the cottage.
Arranging for Fluttershy to gain the only ground-level position she ever could have held with the Bureau had probably been an attempt to help their beloved (but not understood) daughter in the only way they could. Fleur had occasionally wondered what else the parents were capable of managing within the bureaucracy...
She was inside the air path, moving through the clear space between storms. Every so often, a free-flying pegasus would pass her: heading for the capital, or returning home at the end of the day. A few waved, because doing all of the work with wings freed up the forelegs for something else. One paused, double-checked the date of her companion's next appointment, groaned, and then accelerated under the thrust of sheer embarrassment while knowing no amount of speed was going to let her catch up to last week.
Humidity to the left. No wind at the front. On the right, fast-building ions. And a zeppelin.
You got used to the zeppelins after a while, if you lived near the capital. As modes of travel went, they weren't all that efficient. Zeppelins were slow. The sheer gaseous bulk of the lifting envelope didn't allow it to support all that much in the way of solid mass. Under the one hoof, you did have the advantage that maneuverability was just about perfect and under one of the other hooves, any change in direction required about four minutes of lead time.
When it came to crossing the nation, zeppelins were just about useless. Just about any pegasus could outfly one. The majority of earth ponies were capable of outpacing the shadow, and the physically weakest of unicorns still had the privilege of looking at any gasbag which had been caught against a headwind and laughing at the slowpoke.
But in the capital, zeppelins could be a symbol of luxury: the mountain was nowhere near an ocean and if there was no point to the richest ponies buying a floating yacht, they could at least acquire a flying one. A few had a place in Equestria's military, because there was a trace of tactical advantage to being capable of surveying the battlefield from a near-stationary place in the air -- presuming you could keep anything from hitting the Very Large Visible Target, also known as the lifting envelope.
And then you had the tours.
Touring zeppelins took on passengers. They had bedrooms, kitchens, and all sorts of amenities offered to their guests, usually at a Slight Additional Charge -- per amenity or, when it came to some of the meals, per bite. And when it was Canterlot -- some of the airships took slow trips around the capital, letting ponies see what it all looked like from above while doing so at a speed best described as Slightly Mobile Hover. Others did the same thing for the entire mountain, and even pegasi would take that trip: the number of wingbeats required to do it naturally would generally wear them out before they got a fourth of the way around the curve. The onboard guide always tried to get a shiver out of ponies as the shadow moved over the prison.
Residing in Ponyville, however, usually meant getting a distant glimpse of the Everfree Experience.
The name didn't quite reflect the actuality. Fluttershy got more of an Everfree Experience just by checking on the property borders, while Fleur had approached some degree of the real thing through accompanying her love to visit a zebra. (Pundamilia Makazi didn't experience major snow accumulation, the hut's lone resident refused to temporarily move into town for anything short of a blizzard, and somepony always tried to check on Zecora after a storm.) The touring zeppelin followed a carefully-managed, scrupulously-maintained air path of its own design. Making sure nothing could readily breach those protections was a considerable expense, and justified as much as a fourth of the Additional Charges. The overnight tour of the Everfree Experience was for those who wanted to say they'd looked down towards danger once, and had almost risked seeing some. Most of what reached the zeppelin were distant growls, and ponies who currently existed within somewhat more security than was found at the average horror film delighted in telling themselves they were scared.
It was the illusion of having taken a chance.
Or, looked at another way, the lie.
The weather along the Experience corridor was managed, which meant that having the airship go out into a storm just served to enhance a different kind of atmosphere: after all, what could possibly be a better way of dealing with wild weather than through not truly meeting it at all? The normal path looped almost all the way to Ponyville, coming within a tenth-gallop at the furthest end of the curve -- and the protections for that last portion of distance weren't activated unless the airship needed to make an emergency landing.
You couldn't really use the zeppelin corridor for a commute. But pegasi still flew within it.
The zeppelin line did their best to discourage winged passengers from leaving the ship, reasonably pointing out that nearly all legal obligations towards their ticket buyers flew out the window at the same moment the pony did. However, the government had rather reasonably pointed out that if a pegasus happened to be going above the Everfree for some Moon-touched reason and had to reach safety in a hurry, then there was an extra protected air path right there.
Some discussions with the tour company followed, and then the capital had announced that the corporate corridor was open to all, with the company's blessing -- during emergencies. Something which had rendered just about every flying resident of Canterlot aware of the extra air path which looped out over the Everfree. And some of them had decided that as long as it was there... well, who really wanted to pay a zeppelin cruise line, anyway?
It was something of a minor sport. Get into the air path without being seen by company management, fly as far as you dared and, if spotted by a zeppelin crew, fake an instant case of Ow, My Wing: the airship was then obligated to take you back into the capital and, to add insult onto injury, couldn't officially hit their extra, unbooked passenger with any Additional Charges.
Fleur could just barely make out the Experience through the thickening clouds, and that was mostly because the airship carried lights: all the better to highlight what the passengers weren't really going to see. But the radiance seemed to thin the clouds for some distance around the zeppelin, and... there was a flyer moving ahead of the airship. The unicorn couldn't determine much more than that, because there were too many clouds in the way. The twisting vapors distorted outlines, rendered the flyer's shape into something other than that of a pony. The brief offering of a miraculously clear and utterly narrow sight line let Fleur get a glimpse of brown feathers, and... that was it.
Possibly not a pegasus. But if it was in the corridor, it was unlikely to be a monster -- and the zeppelin, which almost had to be in view of the flyer, wasn't reacting that way to begin with. There was a chance that it was just one of the larger birds. Another migrator, just passing through.
(It wasn't.)
Her air carriage followed the government's arranged path, because diverting from it was more risk than the pegasi wanted to take on. And it left Fleur staring ahead, with no true wind rippling her fur and the sight of the familiar coming ever-closer. They wouldn't turn towards the cottage until they were across the border into Ponyville proper, which meant that just about all Fleur could see in the corridor between storms was Ponyville and...
...all she could truly make out was the settled zone. And it made her feel as if she was moving through a world made of lies, because she couldn't see the cottage and that was what made the emotion rise within her heart. Not the town.
She lived there. The majority of the residents had accepted her. She had a place.
But she took the air carriage back every time, because she hadn't quite been able to make the palace pay for the other kind of escort. Seeing the same vistas and, when she recognized the ongoing presence of the inner vacuum, having the same thoughts.
It was different once she saw the cottage. But when it was the settled zone, one personal lie never managed to arise.
It was last spring.
The palace arranged the trip. The other escorts relayed us through most of it, because they didn't want us to be away from the cottage for too long. And they needed to be capable of retrieving Fluttershy in a hurry, in case -- something happened.
Most of the distance was covered by teleports. But nopony had an arrival point set up for our destination. There was no gatehouse to use. So once we were across the border, at the end of the relays... it was an air carriage. And it was the type where you have to wear safety harnesses. Lines which play around from reels on the walls. Even if you're being careful and there's only two ponies inside, it's easy to get tangled.
Trying to get untangled was...
...I was trying to keep it all inside. To hold myself together. But the wind isn't controlled, and the insulation isn't perfect. The walls of the carriage rippled. There's some ventilation to go with the viewing panels and as we started to drop, a few of the scents got through. I smelled palms. It was getting warmer with every flap, and the wings finally sounded right. There was a coconut somewhere. And then I saw the baobabs, and...
...I couldn't stop crying.
Fluttershy had to nudge me off the carriage, because I didn't want to disembark. My legs wouldn't work. As soon as I got out there, the good part of the dream would end. They would see me, and they would blame me for everything just like they always should have, and...
...they were outside. Waiting for us.
I wanted to be stronger. Stronger for them. To trot out with my head high, moving slowly so they would have the chance to see me, recognize all the changes and...
...figure out what they wanted to do...
...but I could barely move.
I couldn't get my head up.
I wanted to be stronger. But the tears were what they needed.
There were gusts of wind. The backblasts from short flights. And then it was soft feathers pressed against me, contact and whispers and love from three directions.
I was
I was finally
The Protoceran looked towards Ponyville.
(Not the cottage. Not yet.)
And she wondered how many journeys would be required before she finally felt like she was coming home.