Chapter 3: Shadow over Ponyville
Rarity eyed the cloud-construct critically and moved her hoof across its surface, huffing quietly. She pushed against it a few times, nodding as the cloud bounced back to form instantly. Finally she stretched the construct to its limits, before letting it snap back to its original size.
"Well," she said at last to the two ponies impatiently waiting her judgment, "'tis a start, at least." She turned to Twilight, who had a checklist ready to mark off the achievements and further developments. "It has the elasticity of lycra, the softness of the finest down and feels smoother than any silk I know of." She paused dramatically. "Visually, of course, this dull monotone of steam gray is quite unacceptable, and cut-wise, the best I can do with this is a jump suit."
"I'll mark the combination off as 'model 1 plain', then," Twilight said satisfied. "The thermal conductivity is actually even better than a same volume of wool, so half a hoof-width should be plenty thick for Windy. And the enchantment, as it is, should last until the next lunar eclipse in 1702, unless disturbed by excessive magical or physical wear-and-tear or the first song of a seventh daughter fed with the acorns of a Golden Oak." Twilight paused for a bit, checking her genealogy tables. "I'll talk to Golden Harvest about little Harmony's diet, just in case. Windy will have her first jumpies tonight, Rainbow Dash," she finished with a smile.
"Finally!" the mare in question burst out in exasperation. "We've been at this for hours! I don't even know how many cloud-constructs I made for you today!"
"One hundred and thirty-six, counting all the density variables for specimens six, thirteen, and thirty to thirty seven," Twilight said automatically.
"Don't forget you promised to help us test more fabrics, Rainbow dear," Rarity said with an uncompromising smile and gimlet eyes.
"Aw, do I really have to?" Rainbow Dash moaned just in case it for once would be enough.
"Absolutely!" Rarity said with a raised hoof. "Even if you don't care about what the cloud-couture could mean for the fashion industry, think about your poor daughter!"
"What d'you mean?" Rainbow Dash asked with suspicion.
"You do realize she will grow up in time, Rainbow Dash?" Twilight piped up before growing thoughtful for an instant. "For given values of 'up', 'time' and probability of 'will'," she added honestly.
"And she will go to school, socialize with other children and, eventually, want to go for her first date," Rarity continued. "She will both want and need to have clothes other than jump suits, and that means I need to have something I can actually work on. Something I can stitch, fold, embroider and dye. I need pleats, Rainbow Dash!"
"...Dates?" Rainbow Dash asked, her pupils shrunk to pinpricks as she stared into the horrifying unknown in her future, filled with social anxieties, grabby colts and emotional outbursts of a teenage windigo. She panicked slightly. "No, no no no no, Windy can't go on dates! I just found out I'm a mother, I can't deal with being a mother of a teenager!"
"Is it so bad?" Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow. "I mean, I just dyed my mane black and wrote existential poetry in Germane."
"Really?" Rarity asked Twilight with a raised brow of her own, picturing her friend with a black mane. "Any good?"
Twilight waved her hoof in a so-so gesture. "Anyway, since Windy is most likely the product of your magic, it's quite possible she takes after you personality-wise. So, if it comes to it, just think back to your own teen years." She paused. "Come to think of it, you only barely disqualify for being a teenager yourself, so it's not even that far back to remember. Did you date at the time, Rainbow?"
Rainbow Dash was blushing furiously, feeling anxious and embarrassed enough to cry, but she gritted her teeth together and frowned in an effort not to let anything like that ruin her famous cool. The lanky colt on the other side of the coffee table, wearing his father's old prom suit, was staring at her open-mouthed.
The stupid boy looked so stupidly hot with his normally scruffy mane swept back and with the stupid red roses stupidly in his stupid hooves. Rainbow, on the other hoof, felt uncomfortable in the tight dress she had found in her mom's drawers, her hooves in the high heels she had insisted she wanted to wear for her first date and her mane tied up in imitation of a style she had seen Spitfire, the new awesome Wonderbolt from Cloudsdale, wear in a cover of a magazine.
She could only hope the amount of make-up she had plastered inexpertly on her face would keep her embarrassment hidden.
"If you laugh, I'm going to punch you, Thunderlane," Rainbow Dash growled at the colt, staring at him with what she hoped was a warning glare.
"You... are... beautiful, Rainbow Dash!" Thunderlane burst out, clearly not even aware of himself.
Rainbow Dash felt her blush double, while at the same time the rest of her went numb in a freeze. Hey, maybe this isn't so bad after all, some unaffected part of her mind said to rest of Rainbow Dash.
"Um... thanks, Thunderlane," she managed to say after a while, then blew air out of her lungs and closed her eyes, trying to relax. "I-" she started to say.
Then suddenly, something evaded her mouth. Her eyes sprang open in shock, focusing on the colt suddenly right in front of her. Clumsy hooves were gripping her flank, a sloppy tongue trying to gag her.
The punch she gave to her hopeful date became a legend in Cloudsville Junior High, ruining her dating life for whole two years before the next colt managed to gather enough courage to ask her out.
"Any colt tries to touch my little girl, I'm going to kick their flank so hard!" Rainbow Dash growled menacingly. Then she paled and slammed her head to the desk. "Again?!" she wailed suddenly. "That's the third time today!"
* * *
"Windy?" came the raspy voice of Rainbow Dash accompanied by the jingle of Sugarcube Corner's door opening. "Mommy's here!"
She was answered immediately by the excited, high-pitched whinny of Windy, softened by its resemblance to a baby's coo, reverberating eerily in the dark recesses of pony psyche. The baby windigo floated upside down through the backroom door at wither-height, head rocking rapidly back and forth in Windy's attempts to move, her glowing eyes fixed at Rainbow Dash and her breath leaving almost unnoticeable little tufts of frozen water vapor behind her as she gasped excitedly at the sight of her mommy.
"Who's my little baby?" Rainbow Dash cooed at her, sweeping Windy up in her embrace mid-air. "Who's my cute little demon girl? You are! Yes, you are!"
Windy the windigo cooed happily back, nuzzling Rainbow Dash with furious intensity, and giving her little baby kisses of unholy cold that seemed to momentarily suck the life out of Rainbow's skin. "Mah! Mah!" Windy barked softly as a kitten.
"Yes! Who's your momma? Who's your momma?" Rainbow cooed with a wide smile, rubbing her muzzle to Windy's deathly cold one, while Rarity and Twilight looked on with a mixture of bemusement and adoration.
From the door to the backroom, Pinkie gasped excitedly. "Did you guys hear that?!" she half-shouted. "Windy just said her first word!"
"She's half a day old, Pinkie," Twilight said evenly.
"She could be an early developer!" Pinkie argued back.
"You're a clever girl, Windy!" Rainbow cooed, bouncing giggling Windy up and down in her hooves. "Yes, you are! Did you miss mommy?"
"Oh, she was fine, Rainbow!" Pinkie said happily. "She clearly did start to look for you after a while, and would have become sad if Pound and Pumpkin hadn't done the trick with the flour at her. Then she slept for a while again, and only just woke up an hour ago. We were playing charades!" Pinkie bounced next to the giggling windigo and gave her a mock stare. "And she's good!"
"Look what Auntie Rarity and Auntie Twilight made with your mommy, Windy!" Rarity said levitating the newly cut cloud jumpsuit next to the windigo foal. "It's your new jumpies!"
"Oh, right!" Rainbow Dash said. "I bet you're eager to get out of that cocoon already, huh, Windy?" She struggled with the cloud for a while, before turning to Twilight. "A little help, Twi? What did you do to this cloud?"
"Hm?" Twilight said, distracted by the sight of the baby windigo trying to munch on Rainbow's mane. "Oh! It should be fine, let me just...huh, look at that. It's frozen from the inside."
"Frozen?" Rainbow Dash asked incredulously.
"Er, yes," Twilight confirmed. "The reverse cloud-walking spell prevented it from snowing, so it just...froze solid."
"So, how do we get her out of this, then?" Rainbow asked.
"Bath-time for Windy!" declared Pinkie, hooves suddenly full of bath toys.
* * *
It had taken three attempts and some carefully timed application of hot water to get the enthusiastically playing windigo out of the tub before she got stuck in a new ice-cube of her making. After that, Windy's enjoyment at long last being free to fly again made any effort to dry her moot as she zipped around Sugarcube Corner, snowing inside to the cheer of the Cake twins. Finally Rainbow Dash had managed to coax her to stay still long enough for Rarity to manage slipping her into the newly cut and shaped jumpie and the little hat and tiny boots she had made from the left-over clouds.
Being exposed to the cold and magic of the windigo had the unexpected side-effect of turning the dull gray into a swirling frost-white that steamed ever so gently around her.
"Oh my dears!" Rarity squealed. "She looks absolutely adorable! And it's beautiful and exotic and just...ohh!"
Windy was suddenly grabbed in an enthusiastic hug by the unicorn, who insisted on letting out high-pitched squeals and rubbing the windigo foal wrapped in soft cool cloud to her cheek. Windy didn't seem to mind too much, though she struggled faintly in an effort to get to fly again.
"Huh," Twilight said, making a note in her notebook, "I'd say that makes this a success. Would you agree, Rarity?"
"Oh, absolutely!" Rarity sighed before levitating a Windy-sized mirror from the bathroom next to Windy. "How about you, darling? How does adowable widdle spiwit of dawkness find her jumpies?"
Windy's eyes flashed as she spotted her reflection and she flew to it trying to give it a hug. Eventually she resigned to just look at it. When she made a little proud pose, with one foreleg up, all the adults in the vicinity, including the senior Cakes, gave a 'd'aww' of adoration.
"Oh, I wish we could make the fabric like that all the time," Rarity sighed.
"Well," Twilight said, "I could probably eventually imitate her magic and copy it into a focus for magical energies that then could be embedded into the clothes."
"Focus," Rarity said, "like a diamond, perhaps?"
"Exactly!" Twilight said. "Actually, they could also serve as a fastening tool, allowing you to make folds and buttons with them!"
Rarity grabbed Twilight's head with her hooves and looked her deep in the eyes. "Twilight," she said slowly and deliberately, "I'm going to kiss you now and then you will marry me."
* * *
Dear Twilight,
oh, how happy it makes me to hear from you!Generalizations and other assorted knowledge I and my sister have gathered over millennia, may, in this particular case, prove to be less than useful to you. The being created by Rainbow Dash's very essence is by all accounts something we have not seen. Whether all the windigoes we have ever met started like this, or Windy is a new being altogether, I do not know.
Magic has still, after years of study, retained in its core a certain unpredictability, even something you might call unknowability. Dealing with magic is always personal and heuristic.
Surely you have learned much of this lesson by now. Still, in a case such as this, this principality implicit to all magical things is a great comfort. This is because of the unspoken guarantee that in spite of any circumstance, there will always be hope for change, for a better future. The pertinent thing in Windy's case would be her diet. As far as windigoes go, one could say that their desire to eat is what defines them. The ponies of old gave them their name in significance of the actual rapacious hunger they embody and represent.
Kindly take note, that remaining unfed should in no way make a windigo, even an uncommon one, ill and it would be pointless, or indeed rather counterproductive to feed the windigo with strife, as she would only grow in size to compensate for the intake of hate, thus increasing her hunger for such emotions in the process, and grow colder as well. Still, it cannot, and in fact should not be expected, that Windy will forever remain separate from the darker side of pony nature. To attempt such an undertaking is simply unrealistic and another solution must be found.
Analysis of Windy's magical make-up might be a good first step. It should help to understand her nature and needs; whether she truly is a spirit of greed, a demonic expression of ponykind's own dark hunger for possession and power, or merely outwardly similar in appearance.
Mind you, studying a creature that is innately almost all magic proposes its own limitations for the analysis. Any invasive method, such as magical scanning would change her in the process. Thus, kindness demands your observation must be passive. And, whatever your results, it may not be easy to determine the right course of action afterwards.
Having her raised by ponies might very well be the best solution. The sympathetic influence of exemplars of Harmony should resonate in the core of any magical creature. You might be able to reclaim her by your very personalities. I will keep in touch. Luna will see you as well, later.
With love,
ever your friend,
trustingly, Celestia
* * *
Twilight folded the letter carefully and lay it down in a messy pile of notes mentally marked as 'sources - contemporary'. Then she opened her notebook and scribbled a few words in the section titled 'the demonic nature of windigoes'.
Sins of excess made manifest - interaction between the resonant magical field and pony nature? Culture: a guilt internalized by upbringing causes a tension in the psyche, resonating within the magical field. Re: Ego, Super-ego and the Id, by Sigmund Furlong, The Imaginary by Jacques Lacanter and The Memory of the Herd in Magic, by Colter 'I-am-not-in-love-with-Princess-Luna' Jung.
Hypothesis: Rainbow's extreme pegasus magic somehow gave enough energy to bring a proto-demon in Ponyville's vicinity to full existence.
- lemma: Windy is a magical construct reflecting the internal rejection of a pony instinct by the herd morality; something we want to do, but feel guilty about, thus 'demonizing' it
- lemma: Windy is also, to unknown extent, made out of (Rainbow's signature) pegasus magic. Does this carry with it the remnants of Rainbow's personality? Her cutie mark? Elements of Harmony?
- lemma: Windy is the product of mind-magic in its most primal and instinctual form, as close to a genuine personality as one can get accidentally, subject to psychological influence in all senses
- dilemma: to what extent is Windy vulnerable to such influence; i.e. do we harm her intrinsic being by attempting to 'grow her out' of her demonic nature?
- dilemma: to what extent is Windy vulnerable to ponies' baser instincts; i.e. do we risk losing her to wanton hunger if we do not attempt to curb her assumed appetite to hate and jealousy?
To do:
Measure the stability and consistency of Windy's identity. Problematic if, as it appears, she is in her formative years.
Also, devise test for the hypothesis. Repetition of Rainb Removal of the magi Resonant harmonic measurement. Compare to existing windigoes (?) and to RD, separately.
Devise instrumentation for harmonic resonance in the magical field capable of recognizing the constructs of collective psyche.
Twilight stared at what she had written for a moment, then added another line to the 'To do' -list, apparently a necessary requirement.
Revise and improve the whole field of psychology.
Twilight groaned and planted her face in the notebook. The candle, the light of which she was working by, supplemented by the crescent moon in the night sky, sputtered and flickered as she sighed and rubbed her eyes.
A sudden presence a hair's width away from her made her stiffen. Slowly her eyes crept to her side where the dark blue form of Princess Luna was reading her notes, so close to her they were almost touching.
"It looks promising, Princess Twilight," the princess said without moving or looking away from the notes.
"Um," Twilight answered.
Luna turned her gaze to Twilight. "But you shouldn't stress too much over definite facts and perfect solutions," Luna said softly with a smile. "Both ponies and magic work with feel and response and growth. To analyze, petrify and dismantle them would accomplish you only the mastery over a dead form, dear Twilight."
"Heuristic," Twilight whispered.
"Oh, there's a word for it now? No matter," Luna said and took a step back, raising a hoof to her chin. "It might be possible to find you an actual windigo to study, however."
"Really?" Twilight asked excitedly and perked up. "Where?"
"Oh, they're around," Luna answered with a nonchalant wave of her hoof. "They never went away, as I'm sure you can understand based on what you seem to have learned about them today. They are for ever a part of this world as much as what births them remains part of ponies. Hate, greed and jealousy do not exist in spite of our better natures but as dark echoes of our virtues.
"And they have their independence as well. The older and bigger they are, the more they resemble beings of malevolent motivations of their own and less mere manifestations of our sins. There is not so much a line dividing a 'true windigo' from a 'proto-windigo', as you seem to believe, but a continuum of spirit from an echo of regret to a demon of hate.
"When I first noticed this ...Windy, I was in fact at first under the impression that such an older spirit had possessed a pony. Of old, this was the only time I could enter their dreams."
"You can visit her dreams?" Twilight asked excitedly. The data she could gather about Windy this way would be enormously useful.
"It would seem so, indeed. And that gives credence to your theory of her being a mixture of pony and spirit, and as such, the attempt to find out exactly what she is would be as futile as it is to see exactly who somepony is."
When Twilight merely blinked, Luna sighed. "What I am saying, my dearest Twilight, is that you cannot take a pony apart to see how they work. You can merely interact with them and learn how they are."
"Oh," Twilight said. "So," she stretched the syllable, "we should hang around, let her grow up and try to raise her as a pony."
Luna nodded.
Twilight sighed. "Well, that was my first idea, Celestia's suggestion and now yours, as well. I suppose I should leave it at that. I just hoped there was something more to be done. I mean," she said waving her hooves in the air, "it's fine to try to raise her like a foal, but the thing is, with her a bad upbringing might have apocalyptic consequences! After all, with most ponies you don't have to fear them suddenly turning into demons of jealousy and hatred!"
Luna frowned and looked down.
"Oh!" Twilight said, stuffing her mouth with her hoof for a moment and blushing to the tips of her ears. "Oh, Luna! I'm so sorry! I didn't think!" she said and threw her hooves around the other alicorn in a hug.
"It is no matter, Twilight," Luna said separating them courteously. "It will serve you as a reminder of how little difference there might be after all, appearances aside. And we do have other means of observation in this case. I will keep visiting her dreams, and your idea of the harmonic resonance in the magical field is a valid one, once you learn how to measure and compare it to that of ...natural windigoes'."
Twilight hesitated. "Would it be possible for you to visit Windy's dreams right now, please Luna?" she asked levitating a quill to the notebook. "They could serve as an invaluable insight into her nature."
Luna was silent for a moment, concentrating. "She slumbers beyond dreaming at the moment. I can only sense Rainbow Dash, and I wish to take no part in her dreams at the moment."
Struggling against the chains of ice holding her down, Rainbow Dash avoided the accusing eyes of her mother.
"Rainbow Miriam Dash," her mother said in a tone that made Rainbow flinch, "I am so disappointed in you." The older mare took a few steps closer and looked at the suddenly filly Rainbow down her muzzle. "You should have known better than to fly unprotected."
"Hey!" Rainbow Dash argued back. "It's my life! I can fly however I want, as often as I want!"
"And now you have a foal," her mother said, shaking her head sadly, "with that vacuous no-good lay-about!"
"Don't talk about the sky like that, mother," Rainbow Dash hissed. "I love him. Do you hear! I love the sky!"
"Oh, I can see right through him," her mother said back. "Do you think you're the only mare in his life? Do you know how many mares he carries in his winds every day?"
"I don't care," Rainbow Dash sobbed quietly. "There's never been anyone else but the sky in my life. He's my one true love!"
"Yes," Luna said distantly, "we should definitely leave her to her privacy." Then she shook her head. "Anyway, I'll check around Canterlot if there are any windigoes present.
"In Canterlot?" Twilight asked. "Why would there be any windigoes in Canterlot?"
Luna laughed bitterly. "Oh, one of Celestia's brighter ideas: collect the most obnoxious ponies in Equestria and call them 'nobility'. Having them jostle for her favors keeps most of the troublemakers right in sight. Trust me, Twilight, if there is a center for jealousy and greed in Equestria, it has to be Canterlot."