Windcatcher

by Makitk

Chapter 7

With Cirrus Uncinus staring at me like I was a foul something she accidentally stepped in, and with Triple Lightning looking like she was taking mental notes for reasons of SCIENCE!, I recounted the tale of Windcatcher and me meeting back in the storeroom on Earth.

It was a bit tricky to get it all out in one piece due to our double viewpoint, but we managed to get the big lines of the story across, leaving both other ponies in the room looking confused and distraught by the time we were finished.

Cirrus was the first to speak, asking Triple to hand her her bottle of cider, and the unicorn levitated the bottle over to have Cirrus down it in one go.

I just sat idly scraping my right forehoof over the floor while waiting for the inevitable flood of questions to come, only to watch in confusion as Cirrus put the empty bottle down on the ground, walk around it, and climb up on the bed beside Triple.

"So, er," I started, flicking my tail anxiously behind me. "What do we do now?"

"I'm thinking," Triple muttered, wafting my question away for the moment.

Cirrus just leaned into her girlfriend, moving her wing over Triple's back, and frowned thoughtfully as well.

"If it wasn't for that store clerk, we wouldn't have been stuck like this," Windcatcher sighed, and I nodded silently to her.

"If it wasn't for that store clerk interrupting you guys, Windcatcher would have had more time to prepare the return spell," Triple Lightning suggested, and I nodded again.

"Do you think it was only the time constraints that did it, Light?" Cirrus wondered, and the unicorn shook her head.

"As far as I can tell, Windcatcher hugging herself to the human made the spell think they were the same pony," Triple explained. "If they had been standing a little farther apart, they would have arrived as two different beings."

I nodded again, as her words made sense.

"I don't know if the human would have ended up a pony or not. The spell was not designed for them," Triple decided, frowning deeper. "I would need to do some calculations, re-read the spell, see if I can find out how to pull them apart again."

"Pull us apart?" I meeped, shaking my head quickly. "I don't think I like the sound of that!"

"It wouldn't be a literal pulling," Triple sighed, rolling her eyes at my response. "It would most likely involve a temporary displacement of the two of you, after which your seperate bodies would reform."

I just stared at her at that until she realized I didn't understand a word she was saying.

"I'm sorry, can you say that again?" I asked, and this time the sigh came from Cirrus.

"It's not that difficult to understand, human," she started. "Triple would make two versions out of the one of you and give our friend her own body back."

I stared down at my forehooves, then frowned at the pegasus' words. "I'm not a human anymore, you know?" I snorted, and Windcatcher let out a giggle. "I don't care if this body belonged to Windcatcher alone before. I'm just as much trapped in it as she is. And I'm pretty sure that makes me as much of a pegasus as you are."

"Oh, really? Do you even know how to fly?" Cirrus retorted calmly, raising an eyebrow.

"I," I started, then looked back at my right wing as I slowly extended it beside me. "I think I do. And if I don't know something, Windcatcher will help me. So yes, I think I know how to fly."

The purple pegasus on the bed just stared at me, while Windcatcher nuzzled up to my side.

"I would teach you everything about flying that you don't know, yes," she offered in a soft tone, "If only to keep us from plummeting into the ground breaking another wing in the process."

I smirked at that, and looked back up to Triple. "So, do you think it would work?" I asked her, still not entirely sure about that whole magic thing.

Triple blinked out of her thoughts and focused on me again. "Huh? What? Oh.. Yeah, probably. If I get the spell right. I'll have to look some things up in the library this week, but it should be fine."

"Triple, darling, have you found Windcatcher a place to stay yet? You know she can't fly up to Cloudsdale with her wing in this mess," Unci wondered of her partner, and Triple's thoughtful frown deepened.

"What do you mean 'have I found her a place to stay' yet?" she queried, "I thought she could share the bed with us. It's big enough."

"I'm not sharing my bed with a human." Cirrus decided, glowering my way with her ears low in a display of anger.

It was clear she did not like humans, or creatures other than the fullbred Pegasi like her and Triple Lightning, but the air she was giving off was getting on my nerves. I stood up to my full height and finally asserted myself.

"I'm NOT human anymore," I decried! "I'm as much a pony as anyone else in this room!"

"You tell her," Windcatcher whispered. "If you weren't, I would have been stuck in this orb with a human instead of my twin."

"Windcatcher agrees with me, so there," I decided with a snort.

"Well, that certainly makes things a little easier on me," Triple considered, snapping Cirrus out of what would have otherwise been a snappy retort at my expense, I'm sure.

Looking back at her mare, Cirrus huffed. "And what's that supposed to mean, Light?"

"Well," Triple started, motioning a hoof in my direction. "If they're both ponies, I don't have to figure out a spell to make one of them human again. They would both just be Pegasi."

Cirrus considered the implications a moment, then sat down with a huff. "Unicorn magic... You're as bad as your dad sometimes, Light."

"At least she didn't almost blow me up moments after arriving here," I spoke to Triple's defense.

"Not anymore, no. She used to be taken in by her dad's experiments," Windcatcher revealed. "Her relationship with Cirrus grounded her in reality more."

"Hehe, a pegasus who grounded a unicorn," I chuckled, getting me an awkward glance from Cirrus and a hoofbump to my right flank from Windcatcher.

"Ow, hey, Windcatcher just told me something I thought was interesting, is all," I explained to the other two.

"Right, about that," Triple started, looking me over. "You say she's stuck inside of a bubble inside of your mind, but how much of her is there?"

I shrugged and put a hoof against the side of my head. "Let's ask."

"As far as I can tell I'm fully here," Windcatcher answered. "Everything from my nose to my tail, tips of my ears to bottom of my hooves."

"She says she's all there. Nose to tail, tips of ears to bottom of hooves," I repeated.

"Wings?" Cirrus asked.

"Both there, although one of them is definitely hurt," Windcatcher revealed.

"Both there, but she also has a hurt wing like the body has," I copied.

"And the copy of you in there, also a hurt wing?" Triple queried while frowning.

"Yeah, I've been avoiding that while bumping you in the side," Windcatcher stated.

"Oh yeah, I'm fully there, same as the body, as far as Windcatcher's concerned," I answered.

"So that would be two metaphysical representations of the body in the same metaphysical space, which..." Triple started muttering to herself.

"Oh no, here we go," Cirrus sighed, getting up from the floor to get herself another bottle of cider.

"...would potentially carry over afflictions of the body..." Triple continued to nopony in particular.

"Does she do this often?" I asked of both Cirrus and Windcatcher.

"Oh yeah," Windcatcher chuckled. "She actually voices her thoughts. I like it better than her dad just doing things without explaining himself. It's easier to figure out when to duck."

Cirrus waved a wing through the air to catch my attention. "Would you like some more cider as well?"

"YES!" Windcatcher immediately exclaimed internally, making me wince from the ferocity.

"I think someone is starved for cider in here, so I'll go with yes," I explained to Cirrus.

"...but we would have to test that by adding another affliction in order to be sure." Triple continued to ramble and I felt Windcatcher tense up.

"DUCK!" she decried, and I instantly dropped to the floor as an empty cider bottle took flight and zoomed inches over my flank to collide with the wall behind me.

"Are you KIDDING ME Light???" Cirrus exclaimed loudly, forcing my ears to flatten against my skull as she rounded upon her girlfriend.

Cirrus' eyes sparked with the fire of her rage as she took two steps back to Triple Lightning who looked like she had snapped out of a dream and was now faced with a nightmare.

You stop writing for a moment and peer at the page before you. Laying the pencil you're holding on the desk beside it, you sigh. "How much are we censoring this?"
"Probably safe to just censor all of it," Windcatcher replies inside your head. "It wouldn't be fit for publication otherwise."
You nod to that and allow a chuckle. "I learned some interesting words that day."
"There were one or two I had never heard until that day either, to be honest. Cirrus is a force of nature when she gets mad," Windcatcher offers back with her own chuckle.
"Oh yeah, I have to do her justice writing it down," you decide. "Likening her to a thunderstorm is not going to do it. She's more forceful than a gale force wind. Tropical storm, maybe?"
"A forceful hurricane might be better," Windcatcher posits. "As long as we make this short; that bottle of cider is not drinking itself."
You chuckle at yourself hearing that. "You and your neverending thirst for the stuff..."

Comments

[Early_dawn]

Had to re-read previous chapters to get up to speed again, but welcome back and look forward to more in the future.