At last, after months of preparation, the day has finally arrived. Excellent weather, many long hours spent poring over spellbooks and even more hours of lifting heavy things all around the town have at last come together, and now the ultimate goal of all these things is within reach.
Glaive and Falcata stand on the walls on the edge of town. The sky is mostly clear, save for a few clouds; the weather is perfect for what they had planned.
Glaive is wearing a thick cloak, unusual for him on such a nice day. Additionally, he has a saddlebag, tied tightly to himself, laden with food and drink for the two of them to share. He is feeling nervous, but also excited to begin. The lump of metal in the cloak’s inner pocket weighs heavily on his mind; he’s both hopeful and fearful of what her reaction to it might be.
Glancing over at the bearded unicorn, Falcata notices his anxiety. Attributing it to an understandable fear of flying without actually having any wings, she drapes a forehoof across his withers reassuringly.
“Hey, chin up. I promise I won’t let go,” she jokes, flashing him a teasing grin. “Oh, yeah, and keep a hold of your food when we’re up there, won’t you? You and I might find the cloud solid enough, but apples, cupcakes and such won’t. Trust me, I know from experience.”
Glaive smiles. “I know you won’t. Are you ready to go?”
Scanning the air one final time for the perfect cloud, Falcata’s gaze alights once again on a medium-sized comfortable-looking little beauty floating some distance away. It was the perfect day for this sort of thing, really. Not sunny enough to impair her vision while in flight, no rain to be seen, and a wide selection of plump, creamy-white clouds hovering in a clear blue sky. She’d intended to prepare a cloud especially for the occasion, but wasn’t going to take any chances with fatigue while carrying such important cargo.
Shrugging with an attempt at nonchalance, she flares her wings, preparing for takeoff.
“Ready if you are. I’m just flying like I normally would; it’s you who’ll be maintaining a spell. Are you ready?”
Glaive reaches stealthily into his cloak, making sure the mysterious item would not fall out. Once he’s sure that it would stay put, he says, “Okay, I’m as ready as I ever could be.” His horn pulses with magical energy, and an aura of light envelops the unicorn, his cloak and hair beginning to billow a bit as if everything was being pulled upwards. While lifting his full weight is beyond his magical ability, he manages to successfully cut his effective weight by half; a rather impressive feat, more than most could do, but he only hopes that it would be enough. “Okay, I should be easier to carry like this, but I can’t keep it up forever. Let’s go.”
Without further discussion, Falcata lifts off the ground, manoeuvering herself into position above Glaive. Like a mother would embrace her foal, she wraps all four legs around his midsection, making certain to have as firm a grip as possible, given the unpleasant ramifications if he slipped from her grasp. Certain he’s as secure as she can make him, Falcata slowly lifts the unicorn into the air, wings flapping furiously to provide the necessary lift. Not as hard as I was expecting, she ponders, with a hint of relief. At least, as long as the spell holds. She briefly considers checking on her passenger’s state of being, but, recalling his slightly ominous statement about the spell being temporary at best, she decides not to waste any time and begins their ascent, flying both of them slowly and with the utmost care towards her chosen cloud.
As the two ponies ascend into the sky, Glaive manages to enjoy the sights even as he concentrates on the spell. It was beautiful, looking out from this height away from Dawnpick at the untamed wilderness outside the walls. He could see for miles as they got higher and higher. Glaive looked down at the ponies of the village below; they looked like a bunch of multicolored insects skittering about in their wooden and stone nest. He glanced upwards at Falcata; she was clearly having to work to lift him, but she seemed to have it under control, so long as his magic could hold. But he had trained well for this, he could reliably hold the spell for about a half an hour before he would have to drop it; more than enough time for what they had planned. Glaive refocused on his magic, while waiting for Falcata to choose a cloud to land upon.
A short while later, and now beginning to feel the strain of lifting half a unicorn’s worth of weight a few hundred feet up in the air, Falcata finally brings herself and her love to a rather wobbly suspension just above the thick, fluffy clump of wooly material. Delicately, she allows herself to glide down towards the hopefully-unicorn-impermeable cloud while alerting her love to their imminent arrival.
“Glaive,” she calls urgently, “there’s the cloud. Is your other spell ready?”
Glaive’s moment of truth had come, he believed he had the cloud-walking spell perfected, but this would be the first real test. He’d been using it to touch clouds that pegasi would fetch for him in training, sure, but this would be his first time actually standing on one. “Falcata, I’ll have to stop lifting myself for the moment I cast the spell. I’ll need to you hold on tight, if it doesn’t work I’ll start lifting myself again immediately.”
“Okay, Glaive, got it. Switch the spells when you’re ready!”
Glaive releases his telekinetic lift, and casts the spell as quickly as he can.
Caught off-guard by the increase in weight despite having somewhat anticipated it, Falcata is only partially successful in keeping the two aloft. She keeps a firm hold on her passenger, but the two lurch drunkenly downwards towards the cloud. Before she even has time to cry out, though, they impact with a soft poof, landing softly but messily on top of the apparently safe cloud. Extricating herself from the tangle of limbs, Falcata lets out a huge sigh of relief at the sight of Glaive perched on the cloud beside her. She’d known his spell had worked as soon as she’d felt him collide alongside her, of course, but it was still reassuring to actually see the unicorn safe and well hundreds of feet above the ground with her.
Glaive had hit the clouds a bit harder than he expected, but fortunately the clouds were soft, almost like a giant marshmallow. He gets to his hooves, and feels for the object in his pocket; it’s still there, good. He begins to look around. He sees Falcata pulling herself to her hooves next to him, but once he’s sure that she is also unharmed by the impact he begins looking all around himself. ‘I’m on a cloud.’ he thinks to himself, barely containing his joy. He wants to bounce around like a foal on Hearth’s Warming Morning, but contains himself. He quickly moves up to the edge of the cloud and looks out. No longer needing to concentrate on his magic, he could finally truly enjoy the sights. It was everything he could have hoped for. A number of songbirds, as if on cue, fly by the scene, singing a lovely melody. Glaive looks to Falcata, his eyes slightly moist from joy. “Thank you Falcata, this is the best thing anypony has ever done for me, thank you.”
Bouncing across the cloud to his side, Falcata grins from ear to ear. “You did it yourself, Glaive. You gave me the idea and provided the magic to make this possible; all I did was a bit of lifting. And here we are.” She gazes out across the landscape below, taking in the magnificent vista. Rivers, streams, trees and meadows; the view is breathtaking, although in itself it is nothing special to the flight-accustomed pegasus. No, what makes this moment so special is the unicorn by her side to share the sight with her. Recognising the expression of wonder on her love’s face as he regards the world so far below, her smile gets even wider. She knew how he felt; it was the same feeling every pegasus got on his or her first flight, although most ponies experienced it at a much younger age than Glaive currently was.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” she murmurs softly.
“It’s amazing Fal, and it’s even more wonderful than I had ever dreamed,” Glaive moves closer to Falcata and wraps a foreleg around her withers, “all because I’m here with you.”
Leaning affectionately into his side, she feels a shiver of pure joy run down her spine. She could hardly believe it herself; never in her wildest dreams would she have thought she’d ever find herself up in the sky with Glaive, let alone that it would be so... so perfect. Even the wind had been compliant today; normally she could expect at least a bit of turbulence during a flight of this length, but the air had been completely still during their entire ascent. Even now, at a height where the fiercest of gales could often be found, there was merely a pleasant breeze.
Glaive takes out the bag of food and drink, careful to remember that it isn’t under any magic yet. He casts the spell again, this time on the object, and gently places the bag on the clouds surface, only letting go when he is sure that it will stay put. He unwraps the bag and lays it out flat: bread, cheese, wine, and some fresh cupcakes for dessert.
Raising an eyebrow, Falcata feels slightly envious of the unicorn’s magic. “That’s a neat trick. Might have come in handy a few times for me if I could make other things sit on clouds, I can tell you.”
Glaive chuckles, “Heh, it’s simple to do when you know how. But still, that trick would be worthless to me without your wings.” Glaive pours himself and her each a glass of the wine, passing her on of the glasses, “Careful with that, I didn’t enchant the glasses yet.” he mumbles. Glaive thinks for a moment, “What were you doing in the sky that would have a made it handy anyway?”
She cringes slightly at the embarrassing memory. “Uh, well, it involved a chocolate cake, a thousand-foot drop, yours truly and a very disappointing birthday for somepony...”
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The two ponies spend several hours in each others company, enjoying the food and drink Glaive had brought with them. They talk and laugh and tell stories, until the sun begins to set, alighting the clouds with an orange and red glow, as if the sky itself was on fire. The two ponies sit next to each other on the edge of the cloud, watching the sun fall below the horizon.
Eventually Glaive knew the time had come. The setting was just perfect, the two of them alone together on this cloud with the most beautiful sunset Glaive had ever seen. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He was still nervous, he wasn’t sure how she’d react, but he was hopeful.
“Falcata,” Glaive starts nervously, “Meeting you was the grandest thing that has ever happened to me. You are everything to me.” Glaive reaches into his cloak’s pocket and pulls out a small steel box. “I love you more than the sun or the moon.” He opens the box, inside is a glistening bismuth bronze bracelet with a large cut diamond, seeming to glow gently with the fire of the setting sun, set in it. “It would make me the happiest stallion in the world, if you would do me the honor of being my wife.”
Stunned, Falcata can only gape wordlessly, first at the burnished bronze ornament with its immense, sparkling inset diamond; then at the unicorn perched atop the cloud beside her. Choked with emotion, it takes her a moment to fully regain the power of speech, during which her mind begins racing, a thousand thoughts, questions and answers passing through her mind in a millisecond. Doubts, fears and worries find themselves obliterated in an instant, and she finally manages to scrape together a couple of words.
“Glaive...Glaive, I- yes! Yes, I will!” Finding herself tearing up and unable to add anything more, she launches herself at the unicorn, wrapping him in a ferocious embrace, the possibility that the bracelet might not be enchanted for cloud-safety seeming utterly insignificant when compared to her need to express her love. Glaive would have thought of that anyway, and even if he hadn’t, they could always search for it later. Right now, she was mostly concerned with making sure her love knew just how much she meant that yes.
Glaive barely manages to catch the falling bracelet with his magic after Falcata hugs him. Once it was safe he hugs her back just as tightly. After a few moments of this, Glaive levitates the item back over to him and his love. “I’m sorry it isn’t gold. You deserve gold, but there is meaning in my choice of this metal.”
Glaive hesitates for but a moment, “You remember when I told you about how I broke my great grandfather’s axe, and how I kept a shard of it with me? This was made from that shard. The axe's name was Widowgrief, he used it in the old wars to slay many foes and then as an adventurer to make his fortune, my family’s fortune. This metal has built my family to what it is. But it has caused enough grief. It is time it was used to strengthen our family without slaughter. To be a symbol of love, not of war.”
Her vice-like hug slackening in intensity, Falcata looks at the piece of jewelry with a newfound understanding. “I would find it the most beautiful bracelet in the world no matter what it were made from, Glaive. From the cheapest wood to the most expensive, rare gold; what makes it so wonderful is the fact that you gave it to me. But it is all the more meaningful for the material you used, the history behind it.. It- it’s magnificent, Glaive. Truly. An instrument of war, reforged to unite two ponies who make their living in the same bloody profession. It’s...poetic.”
She carefully threads it onto her right forehoof, marvelling at how perfectly it fitted her. Somehow, he’d gotten the measurement perfect. She’d have to ask how, some day. For now, she locks gazes with him, her eyes still watering with emotion.
“I hope you know how much I love you,” she whispers softly.
Glaive whispers back, “I think I do, but I’ll always love you more.”
The two loving ponies, resting in each other’s embrace, in the clouds above their home, relax and just enjoy each other’s company, watching as the sun finishes setting and the moon rises, eventually falling asleep together in the sky.