//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: Windcatcher // by Makitk //------------------------------// "I pushed myself up to sit on my butt, my tail swishing over the floor behind me as I looked around Triple's room. It was a simple room that took up all of the uppermost floor of the building. The ceiling moved diagonally down towards the sides of the building with support beams going from front to back every so often. Sliding panels had been placed near the lowest points of the ceiling, creating small cabinets in the space between the ceiling and floor behind them. It had been from one of those cabinets that the unicorn had produced the bottles of cider. There was a queen sized bed underneath the closed window near the front, and beside it was a workspace with the cable from the lightning rod on the roof leading straight toward it. Several technological contraptions were laid out on the wooden workbench, but I could not figure out what any of them would be for. It did appear as if Triple had inherited the inventor's gene from her dad. The rest of the room was sparsely decorated with some random objects laid out here or there, but nothing worth mentioning. Triple Lightning sat down on her bed, folding her hooves under her and lifting the bottle of cider to her muzzle to take a sip. I took her example and put my lips around the bottle on the ground before me, made sure my teeth gave it some extra support, then lifted it from the floor until the sparkling sweet liquid poured into my mouth. "So good," Windcatcher moaned at the taste, and I had to put the bottle down again and swallow to stop myself from choking on my giggling fit following. "You ok there, Wind?" Triple asked from the bed, tilting her head a bit as I tried to stop from coughing, and I nodded quickly. I could feel Windcatcher's blush at realizing she was the reason why we were suddenly out of breath, but couldn't really respond audibly until I'd calmed down. "I just got some of it down my windpipe," I finally answered Triple's question, to which Windcatcher sighed in relief. Triple accepted the answer with a big grin and nodded. "It's good, is it not? Cirrus' family gets it imported from Ponyville. They're related to Filthy Rich, you know?" I shook my head in disbelief. "I didn't. But when you say imported... how far away is Ponyville from here?" "I've heard it's half a day's flight or so? It takes longer by train," the unicorn shrugged. I looked back at my wings, frowning at them a bit. "Half a day's flight?" Triple Lightning coughed uneasily at that. "Don't get any funny ideas there. You need to get your strength back before you can go that far out, or you'll crash into the Everfree Forest." I blushed as I turned back to face Triple's concerned look, feeling my ears flatten a bit from embarrassment. "I'll keep that in mind." The unicorn flicked her right ear at me, then seemed to shrug it off. "Right, anyway, Unci will probably want to help you get your flying speed back," she muttered. "Maybe you can ask her to take you to Ponyville some time. You flyers are always going all over the place anyway." "Us flyers?" I remarked, raising an eyebrow. "Triple is a little jealous of us Pegasi," Windcatcher chuckled. "You should wave our wing at her." I snorted at the suggestion. "Oh, you're mean." Triple, not having heard Windcatcher, frowned at me. "Mean? I've had to patch up the roof twice now because a Pegasus crashed through it. And if it's not a Pegasus, it's the items they're carrying in their buttered hooves." I stared at her for a moment, not immediately sure what to say to that. I eventually just sighed and pointed my right hoof at my head. "Windcatcher said I should wave a wing at you to tease you. That's why I said she was mean." Triple blinked. "Oh. Forget what I said then." "Done," I agreed, then tilted my head a bit. "You were going to tell us about this Unci anyway?" Triple smiled up at the mention and nodded quickly. "Right! So, Unci is my special somepony. She's a Pegasus, and part of a rich snooty family up there in Cloudsdale. They claim they can trace their family's lineage back to before the three tribes settled in Equestria. Purebred Pegasi." I nodded at that. "That sounds like some of the snobs on Earth," I commented. "They used to be called aristocrats, but I don't think any of them are considered royal anymore." "Arts on cats?" Triple returned with a confused look on her face, and I giggled softly. "Sorry, go on." Triple frowned and took a thoughtful sip at her cider before continuing. "Right. So... Cirrus helped me get you to the hospital after I found you unconscious in the library. I saved the book, by the way. But I still haven't figured out how to translate those strange symbols on it." "Can I see?" I asked, and the unicorn levitated the comic book into view, laying it down on the floor in front of me. While I had been able to read the text just fine back on Earth, the words on the cover had turned into something unintelligible here in Equestria. Where I had expected Roman letters, instead I found mathematical figures and strange symbols. I blinked my eyes at the comic, rubbed at them in turn with my right forehoof, but the symbols were simply impossible to decipher. I could not place them in any alphabet from back on Earth, nor from Equestria. "Any luck?" Triple Lightning wondered, but I shook my head at her. "It's weird. Back on Earth I could read this alphabet without a problem. But here, in Equestria, I can't make heads or tails of it," I explained. "It was the same for me," Windcatcher chimed in, and I held my right forehoof up to my ear to indicate to her friend that she was speaking. "I could read the words on the boxes just fine. And on the books. But that was on Earth. I don't know what it says now either." "Windcatcher says she could read the Earth alphabet just fine while she was on Earth, but it makes no sense to her now either," I repeated for Triple Lightning, who nodded. "It must be something to do with the spell then," she mused, and emptied her bottle of cider in one long swig. A loud crash from below made both our heads turn toward the trapdoor, and Triple lifted it a little with her magic. A high-pitched female voice was all-but screaming, and we could easily make out her part of the conversation going on two floors below. "AGAIN?? You blew up the house again?? Why don't you ever learn to do these things in a safe environment? Like on a rock farm or something? Some place where it doesn't matter if you destroy the place?" I looked up as Triple chuckled, and she nodded her head to the trap door. "Unci," she said, and I perked my ears up at that. "I'm not going to pay to get this fixed!" the voice of Cirrus Uncinus continued, "You're on your own this time! Light and me will move out of this place if you make another mess, isn't that what I said last time? And yet I come home and there's glass everywhere! You haven't even bothered to clean it up and you're already working on another contraption!" "She lives here?" I asked of Triple, who shrugged. "She keeps up appearances of living in Cloudsdale, to keep her family happy, but she comes down to spend the night here every so often," the unicorn explained. "Ah," I replied with a nod. "You're unbelievable, you know that?" Cirrus' rant continued, "Ok, fine. I'll pay for it this one last time. But if you do it again you're on your own!" "She'll be up in a moment," Triple offered, pulling another bottle of cider from the cabinet and putting it down on a bedside table. I stared at the trapdoor as I heard hoofsteps lead up to the first floor, then winced as Cirrus' tirade continued while she was standing on the landing, "And don't think I won't do it! If you destroy the house again, I WILL take Light and move out with her! There's plenty of property for sale over in Manehattan!" Triple winced at the thought. "Erf... Manehattan is SO not my crowd." I was still giggling at Triple's expense as Cirrus' moved up the stairs and joined us. Her purple coat was shining in the light. Her lighter mane was combed in a regal-looking curl which wouldn't have looked bad on Rarity. And her feathered wings looked to be freshly preened, with not a single feather out of place. She walked straight by me to lock lips with Triple, who was still sitting on the bed, and I got a good look at the cloud she sported on her flank. After a moment, she turned to face me with a stern look in her dark blue eyes. "And as for you," she started, in a similar tone as she had used to berate Bright Spark, but then her facial expression softened and I suddenly found her hugging her forelegs around my neck. "I was so worried about you! Why did you have to go do such a stupid thing? Didn't I warn you that unicorn magic was dangerous?" Triple straightened up at that in surprise. "Hey now, I'm right here." Cirrus turned her face back to frown in Triple Lightning's direction. "Yes, you are. How could you send her away to some unknown place like that? If I'd known you were planning to do that, I'd..." "Tried to stop us. That's why I didn't tell you, hun," Triple finished her girlfriend's sentence, eliciting an annoyed snort from the pegasus still clinging to my neck. "I'm doing ok, really," I tried, to which I received a snort from both Windcatcher and Cirrus Uncinus. "No, we're not doing ok," Windcatcher started, and I drooped my ears at the angry tone in her voice, "I'm stuck inside my own body while somepony else is driving it. That's not 'doing ok'." "You're not doing ok, hun," the purple pegasus added, not having heard Windcatcher. "Just look at your poor wing!" Having said that, Cirrus moved to my left side and pulled my wing open with her forehooves, making me wince a bit from the feeling. "You poor dear, several feathers are missing. And what's this? Glass?" Cirrus muttered as she sat beside me holding my wing, and I felt her move in to pull the glass out from between my feathers and spit it toward the staircase. "Won't your father ever grow up, Light?" "He's doing his best, you know?" Triple mumbled from the bed, having moved to lay down flat on it, her ears turned down on her head. Windcatcher snorted again. "She sounds like her mom." "Who does?" I asked, and Cirrus tilted her head at me. "Cirrus does," Windcatcher replied to me, while the pony in question slowly leaned forward into my field of vision, studying me with one eyebrow raised. "You do know Bright Spark, right? It's not like you're having amnesia or something?" the pegasus wondered, moving a hoof from my wing to my forehead, effectively allowing me to pull my wing closed to my side again. I moved my head away from her hoof, then nodded at the question. "I've met Bright Spark, yes." Cirrus frowned at me, and Triple sighed out deeply. "She's not our Windcatcher, Unci. Well, she is. But she's not. It's difficult to explain." Cirrus' confused frown turned into one of anger, and she leaned in to get a closer look at me. "Try it anyway," she grumbled, and I flattened my ears. "Windcatcher's here, with me, in my head, but I used to be a human?" I recited, and Cirrus pulled back with a snap, a look of disgust moving across her face. I shuffled back a bit as Unci's facial expression changed between disgust, anger, and several other emotions, but the most scary of which was what she ended up with; a blank stare with her pupils looking very tiny. "Run that by me again?" She asked with little to no emotion in her voice, and I looked up hopeful towards Triple on the bed. The unicorn sighed out and rubbed her hooves at her temples. "Windcatcher went to Earth to retrieve a booklet. But something happened there and now there's two of them in one body. And we hadn't gotten to the point where she explained what happened yet." Cirrus' face went dark and her pupils grew in size as she turned her eyes back towards me. "Now would be a good time to do so then, don't you think?"