The compacted dirt road cracked audibly under Cherry's hooves as she made her way through Ponyville, away from the town library. The street was mostly empty, barring a few straggling ponies here and there that were off to fill out their weekend with activities.
Her first attempt to find the orphanage mare had been a bust.
"Sorry Cherry! You just missed her! She dropped off one of the girls about an hour ago," Spike had said.
Spike had invited her in and described how Madame Care and her entourage had appeared at their doorstep, ready to leave one of the foals to spend the day the day with Twilight. Her discussion with Twilight and the filly had provided little information as to where Madame Care had run off to.
"Yeah," said the filly that had introduced herself as Incognito, "She's probably already dropped off John, but I don't really know where she and Anon were headed to. You could maybe wait a bit and try The Orphanage?"
So, after thanking the group, off Cherry Berry went to aimlessly wander around town.
Twenty minutes of blind searching yielded no results.
Cherry wrinkled her nose, glancing around the street that likely hid the target of her search. Scanning a particularly large herd of mares making their way out of a nearby antique store, she let out an exasperated sigh.
Amongst the busy weekend crowd, it would be impossible to single somepony out. No, her best bet at finding the old mare would be to get away from the hordes of shoppers. If that failed, she'd just have to give up and visit their orphanage later.
Breaking into a brisk canter, she set off again.
It didn't take long before she had circled half the town. The crowds had thinned out a good bit near the outskirts, reassuring her in her decision to move away from the market. Despite that, the mare in question remained just as elusive. Peering between a few sets of houses and seeing only an empty alleyway, she flicked her tail in irritation before trotting off again.
This was getting ridiculous.
Rounding another bend in the long line of houses, Cherry Berry was finally greeted by the apparent end to her search. There by the stream, with her back turned to the town, sat a pale, cream colored mare.
Cherry broke into a trot. 'Finally!'
With an upbeat in pace, she quickly made her way across the field to Mrs. Care. Only a moment after spotting her, she found herself just a few hooves behind the old matron.
Tender Care was sat on the edge of the creek, softly speaking into her own lap.
"Don't worry. We can stay here as long as you need."
Cherry abruptly came to a halt. In front of her, Tender Care sat upright on her hind legs, gently rocking back and forth. Was this mare talking to herself? Turning her head, Cherry scanned around the stream. Besides a few stragglers a good distance behind them, near the houses, there was nopony else around.
Cherry hesitantly took a few steps forwards.
Tender Care's ears perked and swiveled to better pick up the sound of the softly plodding hoofsteps approaching from behind her. Turning and spotting Cherry Berry, she offered a polite yet startled greeting to their new visitor. "Oh! Good afternoon, miss...?"
With the upper half of Tender's body now turned towards her, Cherry finally realized that the mare had, in fact, not gone crazy and begun having whispered conversations with herself. There in her lap, still somewhat obscured by the older mare's body, laid a foal with the signature green coat and black mane possessed by all of the orphans that Madame Care had been charged with taking care of.
"Sorry, you haven't met me before. My name is Cherry Berry. I think you may have spoken to my cousin a few days ago, Cheerilee?"
"Oh, of course! Cheerilee and I had a wonderful conversation about her foals and the local school." Tender responded, a smile lighting up her face. "And unless I have the wrong mare, I do believe that you came up once or twice during our discussion, as well."
A perfect opportunity to clear this up."Actually, that's part of the reason I came to find you. See, I–"
As Tender Care shifted to face her, Cherry Berry abruptly cut herself off. Tender Care shimmied and spun to better address their new visitor.
There, in her lap, laid a tiny Pegasus. Cherry Berry found herself suddenly speechless.
Anon's eyes were bleary, and her cheeks still wet. She had been crying recently — likely still as she had rudely interupted the two. The small filly was held tightly to her pseudo-mother's chest, and her watery gaze locked on the unfamiliar mare that had approached them. Two equally tiny wings sat curled up against her body.
"I'm sorry, you were saying why you stopped by?" Tender inquired, following Cherry's eyes as they flicked between herself and Anon.
She couldn't do this. "Uh, yeah, I actually wanted to talk to you about that thing Cheerilee had mentioned."
Not missing a beat, Tender Care nodded in understanding. "That's perfect, actually! We were just looking for some local ponies with jobs that wouldn't mind giving the girls a little inspiration on what they would like to do for a living. Would you mind telling us about what you do for work? If I understand if correctly, Anon here may find quite interesting."
A tingle of fear crept up Cherry's spine as she looked around for some sort of escape. The situation was deteriorating fast. Racking her brain for a way to politely shift the conversation back to the reason she had sought out Tender in the first place, she was blanking. 'Just bring it up later'.
"Oh... Uh, yeah! Totally! I run a little aerodrome out of my backyard. 'Got a pretty nice little hot air balloon that I use for sight-seeing trips and land surveying, for the ponies in town," Cherry explained.
Anon's ear's perked.
"I've also got this flying thing I built called a helicopter. It's sorta like a balloon or an airship, but it has these spinning wings on the top that lift it up off the ground. 'Mostly use that one for agricultural work, but I've been trying to expand into other areas, recently."
Anon squirmed out of Tender's hold and stood up her in lap. "Did you design the helicopter yourself?"
The filly that just a few seconds ago was a pitiful mess now sat a rapt attention, her tears mostly forgotten. A small glimmer of hesitant excitement flashed behind her eyes as she peered up at Cherry. For the first time today, somepony had managed to capture her interest.
"Well," Cherry explained, "I definitely didn't invent helicopters, or anything like that. The plans for the one at home are from two brothers out of Manehattan, but I've made a lot of little adjustments. Things like th– Uh, just some of the parts that make it fly." Cherry hesitated, struggling to simplify her work so that the young foal could understand.
Anon tilted her head, not satisfied with the explanation. "Like what?"
"Well, It's kinda hard to explain..."
"Go ahead and tell her, Ms. Berry," Tender took the opportunity to butt in. "She's very intelligent for a pony her age."
After shooting her an unintentionally dubious look, Cherry continued. "Well, the flight controls in the plans were pretty outdated. The Whirl Brothers were still trying to figure out the best way to setup the cyclic and – Sorry, the cyclic is the stick I use to point the helicopter up or down, or slide it left or right."
"How does that work? Does it, like, tilt the blades or something? Or is it some kind of magic thing?" asked Anon.
"No, you were right. No magic." Cherry paused, a bit taken aback by the series of questions. "How did you know that?"
Anon shrunk in Tender's lap and gave a small, sheepish look towards her caretaker. Madame Care, having quickly sensed the little filly's apprehension, gave her a curt nod of encouragement. Puffing out her cheeks slightly to steady herself for the discussion, Anon extracted herself from Tender Care's grasp to properly speak to the mare.
"There were lots of helicopters where I'm from, probably too many to count. Back home, they used them for all sorts of things. " She explained, "They were cool, but I never really got the chance to get any hands-on experience."
Cherry was flabbergasted. There were no more than two-dozen or so whirlybirds in all of Equestria – one less, if you didn't count Pinkie's pedal-copter – and there was about the same number of ponies that knew anything about them. To find somepony in Ponyville that claimed that they saw tons of helicopters at home was extraordinary. To hear it from a small, nervous filly was unbelievable. There had to be something here that she was missing.
"Really?" Cherry asked with a tinge of disbelief, "What kinds of things did they use them for?"
Anon scrunched her face in concentration and took a few moments to ponder the question. There were a lot of different directions that this conversation could go, and she'd have to tailor her answer if she wanted to keep it on track. "Mostly for the types of jobs that Pegasi usually do: Getting on top of high places like mountains, search and rescue, fighting forest fires, helping with agriculture, that kind of stuff. I think they were basically just fancy sky-chariots."
'Helicopters are not just fancy sky-chariots! I mean, I can carry as much cargo as four highly-trained Royal Guard Driving Pegasi, and carry it further and faster than them! I mean, sure, okay, it probably depends on what altitude we're operating at, and the maintenance is going to definitely be higher. But, with a small fleet that you could rotate out to work on, you could definitely keep enough aircraft functional for it to not be an issue!'
Anon watched as the mare in front of him mulled over his answer. Cherry's eyes rolled around indistinct portions of sky in some sort of strange contemplation of the facts presented to her. Further scrutinization of the mare revealed that she was biting the inside of her cheek.
Snapping out of her internal conniption, Cherry returned to the conversation. "So, were there not enough Pegasi to do those jobs or something? I'm sure your village could have put in a request with your Weather Services to get some ponies out there to help."
"No, not many Pegasi," Anon gave Tender Care a quick glance before continuing, "and I doubt we would have had much luck requesting any from the government."
Tender Care took that as her queue to chime in, "Ms. Berry, I know that this may be a bit last minute, but would you mind giving Anon and me a look at some of your machines? We've been looking around all day for somepony to show Anon their career, but unfortunately haven't had much luck until you arrived."
Cherry Berry analyzed the mare and filly in front of her. The gentle caretaker, politely inquiring on behalf of her foal. The small green and black filly peering up at her, ears perked as she awaited her answer.
'I'm gonna kick Cheerilee's ass.'
Cherry sighed, "Sure thing, I was just heading home now."