Fog
Admiral Biscuit
November 2012
Thunderlane pounded a hoof on Rainbow Dash’s door, to little effect. Cloud houses were, unsurprisingly, springy and supple, thus rendering knocking a fairly useless exercise. Some pegasi hung a board on the front door for this very purpose. Rainbow, preferring to sleep in peace, had not.
Thunderlane was faced with a dilemma. On one hoof, he was unable to make enough noise to wake Rainbow by knocking and shouting. On the other hoof, he had little choice but to wake her, since she was chief weather pony for the Ponyville region, and there was a weather-related emergency.
The simplest, most effective solution to the lack of a response was to go in and wake Rainbow up, Thunderlane decided. Since cloud homes weren’t very secure against other pegasi, he simply pulled the door apart, and walked through. He paced up the stairs nervously, somewhat worried that he might catch her in an embarrassing situation, as well as the fact that it seemed morally wrong to be walking through somepony’s house uninvited. He was relieved that he could hear the sound of snoring as he got to the second floor. Following it to its source, he flew quietly into Rainbow Dash’s bedroom.
A giant clump of brilliant white cloud filled the center of the room, and in the center, Rainbow was curled into a tight ball, her head tucked between her forelegs. Thunderlane poked her on her forelock.
“Just five more minutes, mom,” Rainbow muttered softly.
Thunderlane looked around, then poked her harder.
“Ow! What the hay? I said I’d get up in—“ She opened her eyes and looked at Thunderlane. “What are you doing in my bedroom?” She started to glance around the room. “We didn’t—“
“Boss,” Thunderlane interrupted, not wanting to know what she thought they might or might not have done. “We’ve got a weather problem, and you’ve gotta handle it.”
“Ug.” Rainbow stood up, stretching. She rubbed a hoof through her bedmane, which accomplished nothing as far as Thunderlane could see, and walked over to the window. She looked around at the lightening sky, instantly spotting a half-dozen pegasi flying aimlessly about. There was not a cloud to be seen.
She looked back at Thunderlane. “Ok, good prank. Well, not really that great.”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s not up here, it’s down there.”
“Down there? Like, in Ponyville? Did you lose a cloud?”
“Worse than that,” he muttered, as she looked out the window.
Below her, the ground was obscured by a nearly flat sheet of grey.
“Tartarus’s bells. Is it all the way down?”
Thunderlane nodded. “Had Flitter check it. Whole town’s covered, all the way up to the Everfree.”
Rainbow shook her head. “Guess night crew’s gonna be working overtime. I’ll have to get everypony on this. Mayor’ll have my tail for this.”
“Nothing we could’ve done,” Thunderlane reminded her.
“I know. That’s what makes it suck.” Both pegasi knew that sometimes when the weather was just right, fog formed, and it was Cerebus’ own job clearing it. It got tangled up in everything on the ground—buildings, trees, bushes—and had to be cleared around them in chunks. Nopony wanted to risk going at it quickly, since it was too easy to misjudge distance to the ground, and where structures were, so it was pretty much a matter of clearing it on hoof. If it was thin, the sun would burn it off fairly quickly, but this stuff looked thick enough to cut with a knife.
“It’s standard cloud density four,” Thunderlane muttered, to which Rainbow stamped in frustration.
“Four? We’re gonna be at this all day. What did the schedule say?”
“Sunny, scattered standard whites, zones 2 and 4, add zone 5 midday, clear zone 2 prior to sunset. Clouds are pulled by the warehouse. We’ve been too busy checking on the fog to push them out.”
Dash nodded absently. She was already dividing up the teams in her head, mentally assigning them to zones. “Alright. Night team clears between the Everfree and Ponyville, my team’s gonna clear the west side of Ponyville, afternoon team gets the east half, and thunderstorm team can take the orchards, ‘cause they’re careful. Have somepony send a letter to Cloudsdale informing them of the incident, and to tell them we aren’t putting up today’s clouds, make sure they don’t overstock the warehouse. I’ll tell the teams their assignments.” She looked out the window again. “Nopony’s gonna be happy,” she muttered.
~ ~ ~
Rarity opened her shutters, and gasped in surprise at the thick fog that rolled in. With a shriek she pulled them shut again. She sighed dramatically, even though nopony was around to hear. Fog meant that nopony would be out today, and school would be closed. That meant that Sweetie Belle would be cooped up with her all day long, which meant she wouldn’t get anything done at all, unless she could come up with some way to amuse Sweetie that didn’t involve the destruction of any of her things. She supposed she could send Sweetie to play with Apple Bloom, but she knew what Applejack would think about that idea; she could almost hear the words in her head. ‘Ah cain’t believe ya’d send yer own kin all the way out ta the farm in a thick fog.’ Of course, AJ and Big Mac would be out in it, working like they always did. They might stick closer together, but they’d be out there.
“I suppose I could take her to Sugarcube Corner,” she muttered out loud, “but then I’d have to go out in it as well, and it would simply ruin my manestyle.” She shuddered at the thought. “Well, perhaps it isn’t a loss. I suppose I could try to teach her to sew with some of the leftover fabric I have from that last dress order.”
~ ~ ~
“What the hay?” Twilight looked out her window, rubbing her eyes with a hoof in disbelief. Instead of the bright rays of the morning sun, the view outside her window was a featureless grey. She got out of bed and grabbed the doors to the balcony with her magic, pulling them open. Much to her surprise, some of the grey started to drift in, like particularly sluggish smoke. Intrigued, she walked over to it, running a hoof through it, watching as it shifted around in the eddies of air. It looked like the fog that pervaded the Everfree Forest, but what was it doing in Ponyville?
“Where did this come from?” she mused to nopony in particular.
“Oh! I love guessing games! Did it fall out of the sky?”
“Pinkie? What are you doing here?”
“Spike let me in.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Spike let you in? At this time of the morning? Is he even awake?”
“Oh wow, that’s a bunch of questions, all at once. Well, technically, no, he didn’t let me in, ‘cause I bet he’s still asleep because he’s a dragon and dragons sleep a lot, like pegasuses, because they can fly, also like pegasuses, so he’s probably in his room asleep right now, but I know he would have let me in if he had been awake, so I just came in on my own, because my tail was twitchy and my mane was going flat.”
“Did he leave the door unlocked again?”
Pinkie looked around behind her guiltily. “Maybe? I dunno.”
“But you came through the door, Pinkie.”
“I did?” She looked around, confused. “Are you sure?”
“Well, how else—you know, never mind. Pinkie, what is this stuff—this fog—doing all over Ponyville? It was supposed to be sunny today.”
Pinkie’s ears flattened. “I dunno. It just happens sometimes. Nopony knows why. Someponies think it happens when Cloudsdale messes up on the cloud mixture, but I don’t think so, ‘cause yesterday it was clear, so where would it have come from?” She zipped past Twilight, and pulled a small chunk free, then rolled it into a sphere, which she began to toss from hoof to hoof. “It’s kinda random. I don’t know why, but I really like that.” She began bouncing it on her head. “You should totally try this.”
“I don’t want to play with it, I want to know where it comes from.”
“Well, I can’t help you with that. Oh! Gotta go, cupcakes are burning!” With a leap, Pinkie soared off the balcony, landing with an audible thump in the cloudstuff.