//------------------------------// // Part Nine: Cloudsdale (Princess Cadance) // Story: The First Time You See Her // by Skywriter //------------------------------// * * * The First Time You See Her Part Nine (end) Jeffrey C. Wells www.scrivnarium.net * * * I stand on the threshold of something wonderful. I mean this both symbolically and concretely. My little golden bell boots are in fact touching the line that separates the airship-port (legally part of the Heartland Weather Management Zone, thus, the Hegemony) from Point Cumulus, the very tip of the great City-State of Cloudsdale. The floor directly beneath me is of practical black basalt. Just a single step away is a broad sheet of shining, nubbly ice (textured for easy hoof-travel) connecting the airship-port to the Foreign Quarter of the greatest city in the sky. Directly ahead is a wide observation deck promising a commanding view of the entire metropolis, and directly beyond that—almost to the limit of my vision—is a broad, bustling arcade constructed of gleaming white stones (Polished snow-pack? Dense structural cloudstuff?) filled with services and refreshments for the weary traveler reaching her journey's end, or, stopping here for a layover en route to the sky kingdoms of the east. I am blessedly in the former category; this is the end of my journey. This is my new city. And it is beautiful. As of two seconds ago, I have a little tear in the corner of my left eye, which means that I can honestly report to you that I am literally crying from joy at the smell of the colonnaded hall before me. Nowhere to be seen are the dull boiled roots and Equuish grain-puddings that are our mainstays in Canterlot, where particularly avant-garde chefs are given uneasy glances for daring to include black pepper and where dietary adventurousness is measured solely in one's appetite for chutney. Pegasi don't have the patience to boil anything, and any food that doesn't seize their interest and seize it hard is soon left behind for the pigeons in favor of the next pick-up race or impromptu hoof-wrestling match. The sky-ponies have little time to chew, little time to digest, little time for anything that does not excite. So: Crispy-fried falafel on flash-baked pita bread, topped with stinging pepper sauce of shocking red hue. Huge vats of meaty olives, red, green and black. Great skillets of cinnamon-fried nuts served up in paper cones. Dense, sugary raisins and dates. Rich eggplant muffulettas on crusty, seedy rolls the size of grindstones. Crates of summery green avocados. Case after case of pizzas Margherita smothered in basil, tomato and thick, moon-like slices of raw mozzarella. A virtual sea of oil and starch and sugar. I want to buy and consume absolutely all of it until I catch sight of a busy-looking vendor serving melon-sized scoops of rose and grapefruit sorbetto on beds of crispy waffles, and then I just want that. Like, all of that. I make a mental note to covertly purchase fifteen, possibly donning humorous disguises to avoid question, and then consume them all. It's been far too long since my last alicorn feeding. Even my meal of oysters on the clifftop outside Reduit was kept intentionally modest, for Lieutenant Armor's sake. But I have little interest in holding back now. I swallow a gout of saliva that threatens to escape my mouth and spare a glance at the Lieutenant, who is busily arguing with a representative of the Port Authority about... some matter or another. Probably the precise disposition of my several steamer trunks. I have to admit that the riotous mix of delicious smells is making me not think too clearly. As I wait for the Lieutenant to conclude his business, I smile for the pegasus paparazzi busily snapping photographs of me from above. This is not the Hegemony. They do not prostrate themselves before my person. I am not royalty here. Instead, I am novelty, the latest in an endless series of shiny distractions, something to be giggled and whispered at rather than held in careful awe. I love it. The thought of it makes little fireworks of joy go off in my brain. After a nearly-intolerable amount of time, Lt. Armor trots up to my side. "All right, Your Highness," he says. "We've got things squared away with the stevedores, and I've managed to secure a delivery service to ferry your luggage to the embassy. We should be all set." "You look crabby, Lieutenant Armor," I reply, dreamily. "Anything the matter?" The Lieutenant shakes his head. "No, Ma'am." "I see the lie in your eyes, Lieutenant," I press, playfully. A brief, positively adorable grunt. "I just hate these places, Ma'am. Airship-ports. Worst conceivable places." "Well, we're almost free of it," I say, gesturing with my hoof at the line below me where stone meets ice. "I've been waiting for you." "No time like the present," says Lt. Armor, shouldering his carry-on duffel. "It's been kind of a trek, and I'm expecting a message from my superiors at the embassy." His sharp blue eyes scan the crowd, for a moment, both on the ground and in the air above. "There was... someone I met shipboard. A griffon, the one we saw at Reduit. I really wanted the two of you to talk. He's got some really interesting things to say that I want you to hear, but he's flown the coop now and I can't find him anywhere." "Well, he knows where we'll be staying, right? He'll catch up." "I suppose," says the Lieutenant, uneasily. "So, straight on to the embassy?" "Are you kidding?" I say, glancing at him over my shoulder, my smile almost too wide to be contained by my mouth. "We're in Cloudsdale, at last! I'm not going to dive straight back into the one part of it that's legally Canterlot. If I'm living here, I'm going to really live here. At least for a bit. This is my city, now." "Just to check," says Lt. Armor in a wary tone of voice, "and this is not something I'd normally say except for the fact that you specifically told me to say things like this, you do realize that you're in a minor diplomatic post, right, Ma'am? This is the Senate's city, and that probably technically means that it's the Weather Corporation's city. Not 'yours.'" "Of course," I say, briskly. "I don't mean 'my city' like it's mine. Just... 'my city.' Like 'my hometown.' Right?" "As you say, Ma'am." I nod. I take a deep breath. I glance down at my hooves. Suddenly, it is decades ago, and I am hesitating at the open gates of Reduit, on my way to confront the wicked witch who had brought my town low. Now, as then, I am taking a step far more profound than its simple length. But there are no witches to face today. There is only the future. I step over the line. One hoof. Then another. My entire body tingles, then fills itself with a warm, sustaining heat, a river of gold in my muscles. I giggle at the sensation. Then I laugh outright, and break into a mad gallop toward the observation deck, my momentum carrying me straight over the rail. My outsized and only dubiously-strong wings throw themselves wide on reflex alone, and then I am flying, looking down over my new home. There, the billowing mass of Point Cumulus, stretching all the way down to the Bahamoot, a legacy capital airship of old Unicornia, practically the size of a small town in and of itself. Formerly the personal luxury vessel of Duchess Blueblood, Chairmare of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation, now in permanent drydock and completely embedded in the cloud mass. Its many ironwood decks now serve as headquarters for the C.W.C. and furthermore make up a good portion of the Foreign Quarter itself. Below that, the Forum Magnum, Cloudsdale's center of art, culture and government, its buildings blue-white and resplendent in the ascending sun and all watched over by the Horseologion, the tallest water-clock ever built by hooves. The Cloudiseum, an immense stadium where the citizens of Cloudsdale gather to witness fierce mocked-up airship combats and the dreaded gladiatorial games, a terrifying pony-on-pony struggle to see which of two combatants can make his opponent more glad. Its sister-structure, the Cirrus Maximus, the most extravagant racetrack known to ponykind. Icicle galleries. Open-air shopping emporia. Hoofball fields and hoofball courts. And, lurking far back behind the cloud mass, the mysterious and abandoned Weather Factory, decommissioned for inefficiency but never demolished by the C.W.C. What secrets of the pegasus weathersmiths might be hiding there behind its locked and barred doors? I want to know it all. I want to see it all. I smile crookedly at the Lieutenant, who waits at the edge of the deck, his eyes wide with some nameless concern. Shining Armor's ensorcelled breastcollar gives him the power to walk on the thinner clouds beyond the Foreign Quarter, but it's still a poor second to wings. My tiara has been knocked askew by my aerial tumble and I poke the hateful thing back into place with one hoof... ...and then, on a mad whim, I knock it all the way off the other side of my head, catching it in my telekinetic aura. I suspend it over thin air for a moment. "You know something, Shining Armor?" I say, rolling the arc of metal around like a hoof-clipping. "I hate this tiara." Just like that, my aura winks out. The tiara catches the light for a moment, tumbling against the sky. Lieutenant Armor startles and makes a grab for it with his own pinkish corona, but he is just a bit too late and far away, and then it falls down into the cloud-mass and is gone forever. "I hate all tiaras!" I cry out. "I bucking hate tiaras!" I giggle, and it soon boils over into a full ebullient laugh as I face the winds and let them tousle my mane. After a moment, I settle myself back on the observation deck with Lt. Armor. Lt. Armor is staring at me. It is... different from his regular stare. "Okay, yes, I just tossed away one of the crown jewels of Equestria," I say, rolling my eyes. "Aunty will likely have words. I wouldn't worry about it braining anyone, though; it'll either lodge itself in the cloud layer or fall all the way down to the Blight. Nopony lives down there." For a number of reasons, it is viewed as inadvisable for earthbound tribes to live directly beneath any of the anchorpoints of the sky-city; work it out on your own. I give the Lieutenant an easy, calming grin. It doesn't seem to work. I blink at Shining Armor, giving him a quick all-over glance. He looks... shorter than I remember? "There's something weird about you right now. Are you wearing different horseshoes or something?" The stare continues. I flush, a little self-consciously. "What?" I say, at last, glancing down and around at myself. "Do I have something on my face, or—" I glimpse my wing. My breath catches. I frown at it, working the muscles, flexing and unflexing it, turning my head and looking at it this way and that. It's violet. Not all-over violet, mind you. Still mostly pink out there. But at the edge, right at the primaries, there is a dusky cast of evening purple. It's beautiful. It's also confusing. "What's—what's going on?" I stammer. I am answered by the memory of my Aunty, speaking to me over a torturous breakfast several weeks and a lifetime of events ago. "We are like dragons, you and I. We grow great when we are protecting important things, and not just in spirit." Hooves clattering against ice, I rush to the smooth white surface of one of the entrance columns and brush away a thin sheen of frost with one gold-shod hoof. I do not recognize the creature I see. The mare has my eyes, wears the same glittering asterite pendant at her throat. The delicate pink horsehair of her face is the same general hue. Her mane is the same color, though it looks thick and crowded and bunched in the little teal ribbon holding it up. I ignite my horn and tug at my own ribbon, and the strange mare does the same. Her mane falls like a river of silk, long and luxurious, the great heavy mass of it bouncing and swaying a little in the chilly high-altitude winds. The horn. The horn is an elegant, proud thing, jutting high from her forehead. Its whorls are fully double the number I remember having on my own. It is long, longer even than Lieutenant Armor's. She is very nearly as tall as the Lieutenant at the shoulder, and even taller at the horn. Her face is... square, a little coltlike. Very unlike my own perky, nicely-tapered fillyish muzzle. Except, of course, I no longer have a perky, nicely-tapered fillyish muzzle. I can barely recognize the mare in front of me. The me in front of me. A little cold ball of fear spins itself in the pit of my stomach. Marehood. I can't... I'm not ready for this. It's not time. Yes, I came here to find my own wings and escape the shadow of my Aunty's. Yes, I wanted a job and a title and a responsibility, something more than "Princess." Yes, I changed my name and everything, in an attempt to scribe a clear line between the Cadence of then and the bright, bold Cadance of tomorrow. But... none of that meant I wanted to stop being a filly, did it? It actually kind of did, says a deep, sensible portion of my brain (that I wish would speak up more loudly and more often). It seems to me you got exactly what you wanted. I look at her for a long time. The creature before me is no longer a pony who just happened to come out awkwardly sporting both wings and a horn. She is alicorn. A breath. And then, I smile, because I suddenly find that I love what I see. In love, at first sight. Here, in this reflection in this pillar in this crowded thoroughfare in this glorious city thousands of feet above the world, I can finally see who I am. Who I was always, always meant to be. For the first time. "Let's get breakfast," I say. Shining Armor agrees, and the two of us walk together into a new world.