Without an iceberg in tow, the Orithyia flew like a swallow. The angled envelope and gondola sliced through the wind without effort. Her fins, normally outspread to wrestle the air, were now retracted into special sheaths for high-speed flight. The twin gem-fired engines mounted to her stern hummed a content, high note, matched in tone by the wind singing through the ropes. Ponies for miles around heard the Orithyia’s song long before they saw her.
After so many months aboard Nutmeg’s ship, Rainbow Dash had learned to tune the sounds out. All she heard was the rip of the wind as it blasted past, or the creak of the ship when Nutmeg spun the wheel and set them on a new heading. The wood decks groaned in their own language, and she had grown attuned to their whispers and shouts. At night, when she lay in her hammock waiting for sleep to steal up on her, the pops and squeals of the cooling hydrogen and creaking planks was a soft, beloved lullaby that eased her gently into the dark.
They could ignore the insurance regulations that required a mare on constant watch as long as they didn’t have any cargo, so while Nutmeg steered the ship below, Rainbow Dash lounged in the crow’s nest. She’d stolen a few passing clouds and packed them like stuffing into the wood bowl, and now they formed a soft cushion for her nap. The sun was high overhead, and it toasted her belly nicely as she dozed her way to their destination.
She was in the middle of a pleasant dream whose details she couldn’t quite recall when the sound of hooves in the rigging caught her ear. Her eyes cracked open in time to see Nutmeg poke his head over the railing into her nest.
“Ahoy. Permission to join you?”
“Mm.” She scootched to the side, creating some room. “Permission granted.”
He scrambled over the rail and flopped onto the cloud cushion. He rolled around a bit, finding a comfortable position, kicking little bits of cloud fluff into the air. They quickly dissolved, leaving a fine mist that sprinkled her coat with dew.
“This is nice,” he said. “Too bad they freeze around icebergs.”
“S’good,” she mumbled. There wasn’t quite enough room for her to spread out with both of them in the nest, so she kicked her hind legs up onto the rail. It was still tight, but they both fit.
“We should reach Canterlot in a few hours. Before sunset, certainly.” He paused to yawn, then shook his head. “Mfph, far too comfortable up here, Miss Dash. I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep if I stay.”
“Hm?” Her eyes had drifted shut while he was speaking, and when she opened them she wasn’t quite clear how long he’d been silent. “Oh, uh, you need me to pilot for a bit?”
He chuckled. “No, but I’ll need you to start setting the rigging in about an hour for an iceberg.”
“Yeah, sure.” She yawned as well. “I’ll get it in, uh, ten seconds flat.”
Nutmeg was quiet for a moment, and Rainbow thought she caught his eyes drifting closed. But then he groaned and hauled himself back onto his hooves. His wings stretched to catch the sun, and she heard the faint squeal of the springs in his braces. Before that thought could distract her further, he clambered over the side again and vanished down the ropes.
About an hour, huh? She squinted at the sun, yawned, and closed her eyes again.
* * *
They arrived outside Canterlot as the sun dipped toward the horizon. Celestia’s castle, perched on the mountainside, caught the last of the sun’s rays even as the city below fell into the twilight gloom. The tall towers glimmered light pearls against the darkening sky, their ivory sides glowing yellow, then orange, then finally red before the sun flew for the night, and all was equal in the soft glow of the moon rising from the east.
Air traffic grew denser as they approached Equestria’s capital. Streams of pegasi soared beneath them, sticking close to the ground or the few cloud structures that hovered over the city. Pegasi rarely flew so high as the Orithyia – too much effort, though the view was beautiful.
Other airships joined them. From the ship’s rail, Rainbow saw the blinking red and green lanterns that marked their sides. On a clear night the lights could be seen for miles.
This was not a clear night, though. The muggy July air was thick with the promise of rain and sat on her tongue like wool. A gray haze blurred the horizon, broken in places by the peaks of mountains marching into the distance.
“This is like a second home for you, isn’t it?” Nutmeg called from the wheel. “Rainbow Dash, Savior of Equestria?” His words were light but not mocking.
Rainbow sidled over and gave him a gentle shove with her shoulder. “And don’t forget it, you.”
“With you around, Miss Dash, how could I?”
She smirked, but after a few moments of retrospection (a flaw she had never been given to before arriving on the Orithyia), she spoke. “You, uh… I mean, I don’t, uh, brag, do I?”
Nutmeg was silent.
She plowed on. “Like, you remember Rarity, right? She brags a lot. I mean, I guess she doesn’t walk around saying ‘Hey everypony look at me, I’m the most prettiest pony in Equestria!’ but that’s kinda what she’s saying even when she’s not saying it exactly like that. Right?”
“Well, Miss Dash, I—”
“I don’t go around saying ‘I’m the fastest pony in Equestria!’” She paused for a moment and frowned. “Well, sometimes I do, but only because it’s important. Because we’re in some kind of conversation where it’s important for ponies to know how fast I am. Like, when I’m meeting somepony for the first time? That’s important. Or if it’s been awhile since I’ve seen them and maybe they forgot? That’s not really bragging and even if it kinda maybe was it’s not, like, an actual character flaw or anything it’s just part of what makes me so awesome but I guess I’ve been talking a lot and now I’m just kind of babbling so I guess I’ll stop.”
Nutmeg smiled at her, then turned back toward the prow. “Are you concerned about how ponies perceive you, Miss Dash?”
“Duh, no? Who cares what other ponies think?”
He raised an eyebrow at that, though he kept his gaze forward. The spires of Canterlot, dimmer now, were only a few miles ahead.
“I mean, uh.” She frowned and sat beside him. “Okay, I see what you’re saying. You’re suggesting that ponies who brag a lot must do so because they really want other ponies to think good things about them. That they need their, uh… Validation! Because they’re insecure. That’s what Twilight says.”
“Twilight Sparkle says that?”
“Yeah, she says I brag too much.”
“Oh.” He coughed quietly, and Rainbow suspected he might be hiding a chuckle. “Well, I wouldn’t say you brag too much, Miss Dash.”
“Too much?”
He shrugged.
Rainbow waited for him to clarify, to explain that she didn’t brag much at all, or ever, and that it wasn’t really bragging when she did. But Nutmeg didn’t say any of those things, he just stared ahead, occasionally giving the wheel a little nudge that changed their course a few degrees, always keeping in line with the traffic flowing toward the darkening spires ahead.
Oh. Rainbow’s ears folded back, and her posture slumped. “I do brag a lot, don’t I?”
Nutmeg had no answer for that. Or if he did, he kept it to himself.
They proceeded in silence with the Orithyia to Canterlot.
* * *
The morning found them tied up to one of the castle’s zeppelin anchors. Several other airships bobbed around them in time with the wind, and together they looked almost like a bunch of balloons from one of Pinkie Pie’s parties, all straining at the ends of their tethers. Unlike the Orithyia, the other airships were painted in riotous colors, or gilded with silver and gold. They shone like stars in the morning light.
The Orithyia, for reasons Dash had never pursued, forewent such decoration. Her envelope was painted with the muted gray of weather sealant, and the decks were varnished to a loving shine. Other than the Equestrian flag flying from the ship’s stern, there was no gilt or unnecessary color to be seen.
We should paint some racing stripes on her envelope. That would be awesome. She made a mental note to suggest that to Nutmeg the next time they were in drydock.
“All set, Miss Dash?” Nutmeg called out from belowdecks.
“I’m good,” she answered. She glanced at her saddlebags once more.
Nutmeg popped up onto the deck and secured the hatch behind him. “Excellent. You have the note?”
“Yup.” She tapped her saddlebag with a wing. Inside was an envelope from the Typhoon city council, within which was a promissory note for more bits than Rainbow Dash had ever seen in her life.
“Very good. See you on the deck, then!” So saying, he stepped to the side of the ship and jumped over the rail. His ankle snagged the tow line connecting the Orithyia to the tower, and he shimmied down it like a winged monkey.
Rather than emulate his gymnastics, Rainbow Dash did the sensible thing and flew. The wind felt sore against her broken feathers, and she actually wobbled a bit as she came in to land. She disguised it with a bit of a dance and glanced back to see if Nutmeg had noticed.
He hadn’t. Awesome.
The first order of business was the bank. They walked together through the public areas of the castle, winding down the towers and keeps and through the gardens to the main road leading to the city below. If she were alone, Rainbow Dash would have simply leapt off the side of the mountain and glided down to the city in the valley, but Nutmeg couldn’t very well follow if she did that, and it was a pleasant morning for a walk, so she was content to go the earth pony way.
“So, do you have a separate account here?” Rainbow Dash asked as they reached the city’s business district. Their destination, a towering, columned marble building apparently built in imitation of a mountain, was just opening its doors. A pair of guards stood on either side of the stairs leading to the bank’s entrance.
“Not as such. The bank we went to in Cloudsdale is a branch of this bank. We can use the same account at both.”
“Oh, neat.” Rainbow paused for a moment as they passed through the entry. The bank’s foyer was larger than a dragon’s cave, with tall, narrow windows that let in thin rays of morning sunlight. The checkered marble beneath her hooves was polished to a mirror shine. “This place looks pretty expensive.”
“Well, they have to keep up appearances, Miss Dash.”
They waited briefly in line before the cashier’s window opened. Rainbow Dash passed the promissory note through the bars, and then she and Nutmeg had to turn to let the cashier inspect their cutie marks. Finally, the mare nodded.
“Do you want to cash this for bits, or deposit it in your account?”
“Account, please,” Nutmeg said. “Split equally.”
And so Rainbow Dash found herself with more money than she’d ever possessed in her entire life up to that point. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was more than she made most months on the Ponyville weather team.
Was she supposed to start acting rich, now? Walk around with her nose in the air? Ride in an air carriage instead of flying?
“Hey, Nutmeg? What do rich ponies do?” she asked as they walked back out into the streets of Canterlot.
He tilted his head and took his time before answering. “I’m not sure, Miss Dash. The same as the rest of us, I suppose. Follow their dreams.”
“Oh.” Yeah, that made sense.
Rather than head straight back up the mountainside to the castle, they chose to amble through the city’s business district. Shopping was more Rarity’s thing, but even Rainbow Dash could appreciate the high-end stores around them. And for once she actually had enough bits to consider buying something of her own. Something nice, not like the cheap second-hand furniture or plastic shelves she had back home.
Huh. She paused outside a boutique and studied the mannequins in the picture window. One wore a bright yellow sundress, simple in design yet elegant. Nothing she could ever imagine wearing – it didn’t even have holes for wings – but she could, if she wanted to, walk into the store and purchase it right now.
Or, actually, not right now. The store didn’t open for an hour. But whatever. She could come back
“See something you like?” Nutmeg paused by her side, inspecting the sundress as well.
She shook her head. “Nah, just looking. Hey, do you think there’s a bookstore around here?”
“I’m sure we can find one.”
They did find one, and soon enough Rainbow was in possession of two more books: Daring Do and the Lost Lantern of Lith, which she insisted on finishing even though the stupid privateer colt had ruined the ending, and The Board, not the Pieces: A Guide to Chess Strategy. Nutmeg raised an eyebrow at that but kept his peace.
And that was worrisome. What if he’d already read this book? She’d be playing into his hooves! For a moment she wrestled with the urge to fly back to the bookstore and return the book for a different one, but common sense soon won out.
After all, if he’d already read this book, then she’d have to read it just to catch up.
Chess was complicated. But one thought led to another, and soon she arrived at an entirely different problem.
“Hey, Nutmeg?”
“Hm?”
“Are there any stores that sell chess boards?”
* * *
There were, it turned out. They had to ask around, but soon they found an out-of-the-way shop in the city’s Arts and Crafts section, which wasn’t even a section Rainbow Dash had realized existed but when you think about it Canterlot was a unicorn city and they liked stuff like art so in a way it made sense. They wandered past fabric and woodcutting and paint supply stores, and finally reached their destination.
The Flower Peddler was an incongruous name for a game shop, since as far as Rainbow could tell it sold neither flowers nor pedals, but the windows were filled with various boards and cards and little figurines, so it had to be the right place. She muscled Nutmeg out of the way and pushed through the door.
It was dim inside, and her eyes took a moment to adjust from the summer’s brilliance. The rustle of shifting cloth caught her ear, and she turned to see an older stallion behind a wide counter. A felt mat was laid out before him, and several tiny pewter figurines lay on it in various stages of painting and construction. His horn glowed, and the tiny brush hovering before him darted down to dab a tiny spot of color on a pewter griffon’s chest.
“Good morning!” He gave her the kind of smile that all grandfathers seemed to have. “Looking for anything in particular?”
Nutmeg stepped in behind her, just in time to catch the question. “Chess sets, if you have them, please.”
He did have them. A entire section of the shop, which was much larger on the inside than it appeared from the street, was dedicated to “traditional” pursuits, which included chess, checkers, and something Nutmeg called ‘backgammon.’ She sniffed at those odd boards, with their thin triangles and beads, but quickly found herself drawn onward.
More chess boards than Rainbow Dash knew existed filled the tables. Simple painted wood boards, marble and onyx boards, ebony and ivory (real ivory, she realized with a start), and even boards that had abandoned the conventional white and black scheme she had assumed was universal. A scintillating jade-and-aquamarine board caught her eye, and she nearly missed the shopkeeper’s words.
“Was there a particular type you were interested in, Miss?”
“Well, uh, you know.” But of course she didn’t know – she hadn’t given this much thought, a process that had bitten her in the flank in the past and surely would again. “Something nice. Fancy.”
“Mm, well, we have those.” The stallion’s horn glowed, and several boxes floated over. He popped the lid off one, revealing a felt-lined, cushioned interior, on which rested two sets of pieces.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed more than spoke. It was a traditional set, carved in the same shape as the pieces in Nutmeg’s set aboard the Orithyia. But rather than painted wood, these were carved stone polished to a glimmer. She touched a pawn with the tip of her hoof, and her iron shoe rang in response.
“Or these, if you prefer something more unique,” the shopkeeper offered, and opened another box. Inside were figures Dash had never seen before – a row of tiny wyverns, a hoofful of chimaera, timber wolves, and manticores, and four majestic dragons, two male and two female. A monster’s chess set, she realized.
“Uh.” She stared at the new set, and then at several more as the shopkeeper opened them. Spun glass, cast metal, porcelain and other materials she’d never imagined could be used for chess filled them all. “Nutmeg?”
He got the message and stepped up to her side. “These are all very nice, but what do you want a new set for, Miss Dash? To play, or to display?”
“Play.” Duh.
“Very good.” He nosed aside the more esoteric sets. “You want pieces that are easily distinguished and won’t confuse new players. You want something interesting, but not a niche you’ll grow bored with in time. Perhaps a well-crafted but traditional set?”
“Yeah.” Her eyes drifted over the boards again, and finally settled on one off to the side. Rather than the white and black spaces of a traditional board, its checkers were in two shades of blue, a powder blue so light it seemed stolen from the noon sky, and a deep sapphire like a midnight lake. A felt box rested atop it, and she lifted the lid with the tip of her wing, revealing a set of traditional chess figurines carved from stones of the same color and material as the board.
“Say, uh,” she set the lid back down. “Do you think, you know…”
Nutmeg smiled. “I think it’s beautiful.”
* * *
Later, with chess set wrapped and perched upon Rainbow Dash’s back, the two found lunch in a bustling cafe near the riverfront. Working class ponies mixed with merchants and minor nobles, and the air around them filled with conversations as varied as the latest on the annual tornado scheduled for next week, grumbling about soybean prices, and heady speculation concerning political maneuvers ahead of the August parliamentary elections.
Rainbow Dash paid it little attention. Her salad – a simple spinach and arugula mix with pine nuts and dried strawberries – occupied her full attention for the few minutes it survived. Satisfied, she leaned back in her chair, belched quietly, and let out a contented sigh.
Nutmeg was slower to devour his meal, but then, he’d grown up on the ground. Earth ponies and unicorns took forever to eat, Rainbow Dash had noticed. Sometimes she thought they’d spend all day nibbling at their meals if she weren’t there to hurry them along.
“So,” she said. She stopped to try and worm a strawberry seed out from between her molars with her tongue. The damn thing was jammed way up there, and she could feel it whenever she closed her jaws. “What next?”
“After lunch, you mean?”
“Uh huh.” And maybe after dessert, too. If he would hurry up and finish his salad.
“Back to the castle and the Orithyia, then to the drydocks. We’re putting our bits to good use.”
“Mhm.” She glanced over her shoulder at the mountain looming above them. The castle shone like porcelain, and the Orithyia was one of many airships tethered to its masts. “How long’s it take to redo the engines?”
“Just a few days. It’s just a matter if dismounting the old ones and—”
A brilliant green flash, so bright it briefly washed out the sunlight, burst over their table. A swirl of sulfurous smoke followed, lingering for a moment before slowly drifting away in the wind. The customers around them coughed and gagged and scowled in their direction.
“Sorry, dragon mail!” Rainbow Dash said. She plucked the scroll off the table before it could absorb too much vinegar from her bare salad plate. “Sorry folks.”
Nutmeg fanned the air weakly with his wings. “Message from home? Not another friendship quest I hope.”
“Ugh, don’t even say it.” The scroll had a purple wax seal embossed with Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark, and Rainbow snapped it open.
Dear Rainbow Dash,
I hope this letter finds you well. Rarity returned last week and reported on your success in Fillydelphia, but she made it clear that the quote-unquote friendship problem you encountered at the fashion event was underwhelming, and it certainly did not require the personal involvement of two Elements of Harmony. In fact, the way she describes it, a simply worded missive could have solved matters in just a few minutes.
After all the previous trouble we’ve had with the with the magical map, this was the final straw. I called the Ponyville large magical appliances store and had them send a technician. I had to wait four hours for the stallion to arrive, because they could only guarantee an appointment between 8 a.m. and noon. Spike said I should complain to the management because I’m a princess and they can schedule a more precise appointment than that, but I elected to disregard his advice. Just because I’m a princess doesn’t mean I should expect special treatment.
Anyway, once the repairpony arrived he popped the top off the map table and started poking around the crystal gears, and it only took a few minutes to find the problem. One of the geographic actuator control springs was all gunked up with cake frosting. He cleaned it up, added a bit of machine oil, and closed the whole thing again.
Almost immediately it send Applejack to Appleloosa. She left a few days ago, and I just received a telegram saying that she successfully thwarted a changeling plot to replace the mayor and use Appleloosa as a base to stage another invasion of Equestria.
Now, I don’t want to name names, but I have my suspicions about where that cake frosting came from. After Applejack gets back and I check to make sure she isn’t a changeling, you can be certain that we’re going to have a stern conversation with one of our friends soon.
According to the repairstallion, if we have future problems with the map table we should try turning it off and turning it back on again. He said that sometimes helps.
Be sure to write back soon. Rarity said you and Nutmeg are getting along very well. She actually said a lot more than that but this scroll only contains so much space and as a result I’m forced to truncate her observations. However I do look forward to meeting this stallion of yours if you two happen to fly by Ponyville anytime soon.
Your friend,
-Twilight Sparkle
Rainbow Dash read the letter, then – when it was clear it wasn’t an emergency summons by the magic map to save Equestria from fashion again – she read it again, slowly and deliberately. The final paragraph she read a third and fourth time, and afterward she scowled and imagined various uses of mane dye and how they would affect white unicorns with dark purple hair.
“Everything alright?” Nutmeg interrupted her musings. “You’ve been reading that for a while.”
“Yeah, everything’s fine.” Rainbow set the scroll down. “Sounds like they fixed the map, too.”
“Well, that’s good. Though, to be honest, I’m glad it sent you to Fillydelphia instead of somewhere dangerous.”
“Eh, I’d have been fine.”
“Yes, but I might not have.”
Hm, that was true. What if Nutmeg followed her on some adventure, and got hurt because of it? That wouldn’t be cool at all. She frowned at the idea and stared at the furled scroll on the table between them.
Finally, “You’d have still come, though, right? Even if I had to go somewhere dangerous?”
“Of course, Miss Dash. You’re a member of my crew.”
Yeah. Yeah, she was. The thought, and Nutmeg’s quiet, easy insistence upon it, brought a smile to her face.
Their conversation drifted off, and they made up for the silence with dessert. Rainbow elected for a fudge brownie, hot from the oven, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzled all over with caramel fudge. Nutmeg went for the comparatively simple mint gelato, and they swapped bites periodically.
The silence gave Dash time to think. And, as usual, that led to introspection, which led to frowns like the one she soon wore, even as she finished the last of brownie.
“Hey, Nutmeg?” she said.
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking. Earlier, when you said I cared about how ponies perceive me, that wasn’t after I’d been bragging. Yeah, we were talking about whether or not I brag a lot, which for the record I don’t, but you asked me that after I asked you if you thought I bragged too much. Which means, really, you weren’t asking if my bragging was a sign that I cared how ponies perceived me, but rather that I was worried that you thought I bragged too much, and that was the perception I was worried about!”
Nutmeg blinked at her. “Er, say that again?”
“You think I care what ponies think about me?”
“Well, don’t we all?”
“Yes, but…” She poked at her empty brownie plate wish she had saved a few of the warm, delicious chocolatey bites for this conversation. “What if I do, too much?”
“I imagine you’d spend your whole life trying to win adulation and accolades, then.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Do I? Do that, I mean.”
“Maybe sometimes.” He finished off the last of his gelato. “But I wouldn’t worry about it, Miss Dash. We all have our flaws, but we all have our virtues as well, and I think your virtues outweigh your flaws. Besides, if you’re worried that I think badly about you because I think you care too much what other ponies think about you, aren’t you validating your own fears?”
She blinked. “Uh, say that again?”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
Later, as they walked back to the Orithyia, Rainbow still wasn’t sure how that conversation had gone.