“Just a little bit further. Keep your eyes closed!” Cirrus said, stepping backwards. “And no peeking!”
Slowly following her was Slatescale, faithfully keeping his eyes closed while following the sound of her voice. A few days had passed since he got his house and hoard back, but now, Cirrus had suddenly invited him to come back to the clearing where they used to meet up. Very strange, considering she’d always come meet him at his own home. At an odd time as well, considering it was already well into the evening.
“We’re here!” Cirrus said. “You can open your eyes now.”
As soon as Slatescale opened his eyes, he was met with a deafening shout of “SURPRISE!” The sheer volume of it caused him to rear in surprise. There were countless ponies gathered in the clearing, probably the entire population of Ponyville, and there were lots of wooden stands and tents, all of them containing food, games and other things. Slatescale looked down at Cirrus and raised an eyebrow.
Cirrus chuckled. “Do you like it? It’s—”
Before she could finish her sentence, a pink pony crashed into her side, causing Cirrus to tumble a few steps away. “It’s a Pinkie Pie party, and it’s totally... Uh... Pawesome!”
“Uh, yes,” Cirrus said, stepping next to Pinkie Pie. “For you, Slatescale!”
Slatescale briefly looked at all the festivities again, then looked at Cirrus again and tilted his head in confusion.
“Because you never got a ‘Welcome to Ponyville’-party!” Pinkie Pie said. “Or a ‘So sad you’re leaving Ponyville’-party. So we’re doing both! And maybe your birthday, if that happened somewhere in between. Did it?”
It took Slatescale a while to process the question, but when he did, he slowly shook his head. He was still trying to comprehend this whole party. All of these ponies looking at him with happy expressions, all these festivities. Last time he came to town, they were terrified! Slatescale was pretty sure the usual pony party wasn’t this big, either. This was more like a fun fair than a party. He pointed at all the tents, then held his front claws far apart.
“I know, it’s so big!” Cirrus said. “And you haven’t even seen everything yet! In fact, I haven’t even seen everything yet. Pinkie Pie here took care of the organization.”
Slatescale smiled, giving Pinkie Pie a small, polite bow.
“Hey, it’s what I do!” Pinkie said. “I also do baking, music, entertaining, clowning around, saving Equestria—”
“Um, I think he gets it, Pinkie,” Cirrus said with an awkward smile.
“Oh, yeah,” Pinkie said. “Hey, why don’t you two take a look around? There’s a whole lot of fun things to do!”
“Yeah, why don’t we do that?” Cirrus said, jumping up and flying to Slatescale’s head. “Come on, I’ll lead you around.” She flew off, shouting a quick “See you later!” to Pinkie Pie, with Slatescale following after her.
Often, the two of them took a moment to stop, looking at some kind of stand. Slatescale was a little bit disappointed he was too big to participate in anything, but there were still lots of ponies who wanted to talk to him for a little bit, some even wishing him a happy birthday. Cirrus then had to point out that it wasn’t his birthday, but then again, the sign saying ‘Welcome to and also farewell from Ponyville and maybe also happy birthday Slatescale’ was a bit confusing.
After a little while, they reached a large table, with a large pile of presents on top of it. Well, large for a pony, it wasn’t all that impressive to Slatescale. Most of the presents were either festively wrapped boxes or suspiciously gem-shaped packages.
“Whoa!” Cirrus said, landing next to the table. “I didn’t know there’d be this many presents! I wonder what’s in ‘em.” She grabbed a random present off the table, one that was diamond-shaped. After a second, she put it back. “I think I know what’s in that one.”
Slatescale carefully picked up one of the presents between his thumb and index finger. It was so small, he didn’t even know how to open it without damaging the contents. He put the present back on the table again, as opening them would be a dilemma for later. Maybe Cirrus could help.
“There are a lot of gems in this pile,” Cirrus said. “Where’d they all come from?”
“That’d be Rarity!” a voice came from within the pile. A second later, Spike popped out. “Hi C.C.! Hi Slatescale!”
Slatescale took a step back in surprise. What was it with the inhabitants of Ponyville and popping up unannounced?
“Hi Spike! Uh, what are you doing in Slatescale’s gift pile?” Cirrus asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, sorry,” Spike said, hopping out of the presents. The young dragon was drooling slightly. “It just smelled delicious, so I... I was looking around to see if there was anything Slatescale would miss?”
Slatescale smiled, grabbed a random gem-shaped present from the pile and dropped it in Spike’s claws.
In the blink of an eye, Spike unwrapped the present and took a large bite out of the gem inside, a large, shiny topaz. “Thabks, bubby! Buh...” He swallowed, then tried again. “Thanks!”
“Spike! Are you eating one of the guest of honour’s presents?” a voice came from the side. Accompanying it was Rarity, who approached the three of them, giving Spike a stern look. “I thought I gave you enough gems before we got here!”
“But I was still hungry!” Spike whined. “And Slatescale gave it to me.”
“I’m sure Slatescale doesn’t mind,” Cirrus said. “I mean, I’ve seen his hoard. I think one gem more or less doesn’t matter.”
Slatescale quickly nodded in agreement.
“Sorry, Spike,” Rarity said. “I should’ve known you were polite enough to ask.”
“I’ll accept any apology from you, Rarity,” Spike said, clasping his claws together and holding them up to his cheek. His eyes seemed vaguely heart-shaped for a second, too.
Rarity simply ignored him and turned to Cirrus and Slatescale. “So, how are you two enjoying the party?”
“It’s amazing!” Cirrus said. “I can’t believe how Pinkie was able to get done with just that one sapphire.”
“You did give her the opportunity to throw two parties at the same time, and for a dragon, no less!” Rarity said. “Plus, there were a lot of ponies willing to help for free. I gathered all these gems, for instance.”
“F-Free?!” Cirrus said. “But that must’ve cost everypony so much time!”
“You’d be surprised what some ponies around here will do for a big party,” Rarity said with a wink. “Anyway, I hope these gems will make for a beautiful addition to your hoard, Slatescale. I didn’t know what kind of gems would fit best, so I got you a little bit of everything.”
Slatescale nodded, already trying to think of a place to put these gems.
Spike shook his head, clearing the hearts from his eyes. “Speaking of your hoard, I really wanna see that! We’re still practicing sign language later this week, right?”
“Of course!” Cirrus said. “But now that we’re talking about presents,” she looked around for a bit, “I’ve got a surprise for you, Slatescale. I’ll go get it. You stay here, okay?”
Slatescale nodded, watching Cirrus fly off and into a tent a little bit away.
When Cirrus was out of earshot, Spike spoke up. “Hey, Slatescale, is C.C.’s story true? That you beat up a wyvern to save her?”
“Oh, she told me about that as well!” Rarity said. “To have reached your darkest hour, with no hope in sight, and then suddenly, a stallion in shining armor comes in to save the day! How romantic!” She swooned for some extra dramatic effect. “Though in this case, I guess it’s a dragon in shining scales.”
Slatescale nodded, and blushed when Rarity mentioned the word ‘romantic’. That might be overstating it. He was simply defending a friend from mortal danger, that was all.
“That must’ve been so cool!” Spike said. “I mean, a dragon and a wyvern, it’s like the battle of the titans!”
Slatescale shrugged. It wasn’t that fancy. He just slammed an oversized lizard into the ground with the force of an earthquake. No big deal.
A few seconds later, the three of them could hear a loud groan. It sounded like a pony was trying to push something and only barely succeeding. It also sounded like Cirrus. Slatescale, Spike and Rarity looked at the tent she had disappeared into and each raised an eyebrow. “Uh, what’s she doing in there?” Spike asked.
Cirrus briefly slipped outside of the tent, rolling open the entrance and fastening it to the side. When she saw the confused stares of her friends, she blushed and gave an awkward grin. “Uh, don’t mind me. I’m just...” She pointed at the tent. “Grabbing something.” As quickly as she had appeared, she vanished inside the tent again.
Slatescale, Spike and Rarity simply spent a few moments giving each other very confused looks. Just when Spike opened his mouth to say something, Rainbow Dash landed in the middle of the three, skidding to a halt. “Hey, did you guys hear that?” she asked. “It came from over here, and it kinda sounded like a llama with I.B.S.!”
“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity chided. “That was most certainly not a llama! That was Cirrus!”
Rainbow blinked a few times. “Cirrus has I.B.S.?”
Rarity groaned. “No, she doesn’t.” She pointed at the tent Cirrus had vanished into. “She went inside that tent to grab something, but she seems to be having a bit of trouble.”
“Huh. I’ll see what I can do,” Rainbow said, walking inside the tent. Some mumbling came from the entrance, and after that, more groaning. Though this time, it sounded like both Cirrus and Rainbow at the same time, and it wasn’t nearly as loud.
Little by little, something appeared from within the tent. Something black and red, and strangely enough, it floated. It was pretty large, taking up most of the tent’s entrance, nearly brushing against the sides. After a while, it became apparent what the object was: a large, pitch-black cloud sculpture.
It was about as big as a small shack, and it looked exactly like Slatescale, curled up with his head held high. The body was made up of one big, black cloud, and the spines, claws and eyes were made with clouds that were somehow coloured red. The whole sculpture was very smooth and, strangely enough, a little bit shiny.
After it was fully outside and floating in front of Slatescale, Cirrus fell to the ground in exhaustion and collapsed, while Rainbow landed normally, panting.
“Oh my goodness!” Rarity said. “Cirrus, darling, are you alright?”
Cirrus slowly picked herself up, gasping and panting. “Yeah, yeah, just give me a moment.” She shook her head and jumped up, hovering in the air. “Look, Slatescale! I made this for you.” She waved her front hooves at the sculpture in a tired, half-hearted attempt at a dramatic reveal.
“Wow,” Spike said. “That is one big cloud sculpture. How’d you even make it?”
“And how did it get so heavy?” Rarity added. “It’s a cloud, how can it be so hard to move?”
Cirrus cleared her throat. “This sculpture was mostly made out of a single cloud, donated by Miss Rainbow Dash here.” She pointed at Rainbow and gave a little bow. “It’s a particularly volatile kind of storm cloud, one I’ve never had the... pleasure, I guess, of working with before.” She giggled briefly. “You should’ve seen the scorch marks I had after about an hour of work.”
“As for the spines,” she continued, “they were made with regular white clouds. They gained their red colour by being infused with a bit of distilled rainbow. Difficult, but as you can see, it creates beautiful colours! But that’s not all!”
She flew up to the head and lightly pressed on its cheeks. The cloud-Slatescale’s mouth opened slightly, several loudly crackling lightning bolts escaping from it. As soon as Cirrus let go, the mouth closed again. “This was really hard to do. I even had to check some of my old sculpting books again to make this work!”
She dropped to the ground. “Oh, and it’s so heavy because I just applied a special sculpture-preserving technique. Special cloud-compression thing. Preserves the sculpture because it makes the cloud resist movement!” She awkwardly kicked at the ground. “I just forgot that it makes the cloud really hard to move.”
“It’s beautiful!” Rarity said. “How did you make this in only a few days?”
Cirrus blushed and looked awkwardly at the ground. “It’s not that hard. The really difficult parts were only tiny. This is more of an intermediate thing. I could’ve done a lot better with a bit more time.”
“Even better?!” Rainbow said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before! This is awesome!”
“Yeah, it’s amazing!” Spike agreed. “What do you think, Slatescale?”
Slatescale stared at the sculpture for a while. He looked around at the ground, looking for some space to write on, but no such luck. Trying to express his thoughts, he went through several half-completed gestures, like a thumbs up, and holding his claw over his heart, but he eventually put his claw down with a frustrated frown.
Cirrus chuckled. “I guess you’d normally say you were speechless, but that’s not really the right word now, is it?”
Slatescale nodded vigorously, then held his claws far apart. He still wasn’t content with that gesture though, as his frustrated frown briefly returned.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Cirrus said. “Even though we’re friends, there’s not a whole lot I can do for you. I wanted to teach you sign language and I wanted to help you get your house back, but those were things I couldn’t do on my own. But I’m glad I couldn’t, because I wouldn’t have all my friends otherwise!”
“Darling, we’d be your friends regardless!” Rarity said, something with which both Rainbow and Spike agreed, both giving a quick nod.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’ve been a bit silly, trying to do everything on my own,” Cirrus said. “But I guess I did pretty well on this sculpture, don’t you think?”
Slatescale nodded. He scratched his chin for a few seconds, then pointed at the sculpture. He held his arms out and pushed, then pointed at the mountains in the distance.
“Y-You want me to push it all the way over to your cave?!” Cirrus asked. “Sure, I can...” she looked at the sculpture for a second and gulped. “Just give me a moment.” This would require... A whole lot of pushing. Even thinking about it caused Cirrus to collapse out of exhaustion.
Rainbow sighed and rolled her eyes. “I guess I'm gonna have to help her with that.”