Windcatcher

by Makitk

Chapter 8

You canter over to the door seperating the main room from your study. Pulling it open a little with your teeth, you peer out at the party going on there.
Half of Cloudsdale seems to have attended your party, and it takes you a while to spot Triple Lightning and Cirrus Uncinus standing together talking between themselves. Triple's face looks serious, and you notice she's wearing her saddlebag with a thick book sticking partly out of it.
"Please don't tell me she brought her magic tome with her," you groan to Windcatcher.
"No such luck; she brought her magic tome with her," Windcatcher grumbles.
"I'm starting to think it may be a better idea to finish writing before we meet up with her, Wind," you mutter, feeling your ears and tail sink down a bit. "I'm not sure I want to know what kind of spell she has cooked up for us just yet."
Windcatcher shirks up to your side and you automatically lean your head in that direction even if she's still not physically present.
"I don't either," she agrees, and you quickly close the door.

You walk back to the desk and stare at the bottle as you sit down again.
There's only one reason why Triple Lightning would bring her tome with her to your birthday party: She's been working so hard on a spell to seperate you two, testing them out whenever she thought she finally got it right, you've been starting to feel a bit like a guinea pig.
While it's true you wouldn't mind being your own pony, giving Windcatcher her own body back, you have also been feeling a great trepidation rise up with each new failed attempt.
Would you really want to lose that voice in your head? Would you want to risk getting sent back to Earth if the spell did work and you ended up being human again?
Would Windcatcher miss the connection between you two if she was loose on her own again or would she shun you as the one who hijacked her body?
You finally pick up the pencil and read back what you wrote to try and remember where you were going with this.

Once Cirrus had calmed down enough to give Triple another bottle of cider, rather than throw it at her with force to see how she liked it, we sat in quiet contemplation for a while as we each nursed our drinks.

Cirrus was the first to break the silence, nodding in the direction of my damaged wing. "I guess there's nothing to it; with my darling Triple Lightning suggesting you should stay over here, and with darkness setting in, I will have to consider this to be a proper sleepover then."

Her eyes narrowed as she stared me down. "No funny business, Windcatcher. The bed can fit all of us comfortably what with our lithe forms compared to those bulky earthponies and their ilk, but I expect you to keep your hooves to yourself."

"Yourselves," Triple helpfully corrected, and got a playful slap of Cirrus' wing in return.

"Either way, we should really get ourselves some rest. It is getting late," Cirrus pointed out.

"Considering Windcatcher's broken wing, let's all rest on our left side, then?" Triple pondered, idly collecting the empty cider bottles with her magic. "One of us will have to rest with their back against the wall."

"Oh, how kind of you to offer darling," Cirrus quipped quickly, then motioned at me. "I'll take the middle and have Windcatcher in front of me to keep an eye on."

Triple did a double take, then sighed. "Yes, okay, that's fine with me."

I smiled at the both of them. "You remind me of a couple of friends from back home. Nice couple. I always enjoyed the dynamic they had going on."

Cirrus moved a little to let Triple take up position behind her on the bed, then motioned for me to come closer. "Do tell? Hm, I can't very well keep calling you Windcatcher now can I?"

"Why not?" Triple asked from her new position on her bed.

"There's two of them. It's making a mess of my thoughts," Cirrus muttered. "Perhaps one of you should be Wind, then the other Catcher? Then we can still call you Windcatcher when we mean the both of you?"

"That's not too far off from what I was thinking," I suggested, walking over to the bed as Cirrus moved to lie down on it to leave me a spot before her. "I've been thinking of her as Wind for a short while myself."

"And that would make you Catcher then?" Triple suggested. "Who caught who?"

"Wind threw herself at me," I reiterated. "I had little say in the matter. She definitely caught me."

"Yet she's the one caught on the inside," Cirrus mused.

"Oh, haha," Wind mumbled inside my head, her voice somewhere behind me to my left.

"I'm not so sure Wind likes that joke, but I'm fine being called Catcher for now," I decided, crawling onto the bed as good as I could and flopping down on my left side in front of Cirrus.

The other Pegasus' right forehoof moved across my withers a moment, hooking around my shoulder to pull me a little closer to her until my back rested against her chest.

"There you go. Don't want you rolling off the bed in the middle of the night, do we?" Cirrus whispered at me, her warm breath flowing over my right ear.

Wind sighed and I felt her weight settle against my left side. "This is going to be interesting. I wonder if I can sleep tonight?"

"I hope so," I answered Wind's question, to which Cirrus coughed uneasily.

"What's that, dear? You hope to roll off the bed?" she queried.

"Just answering a question Wind asked," I explained, letting myself relax on the soft bed. "She's been having a few rough nights with little sleep inside."

"No bed," Wind pointed out to me.

"No bed inside," I voiced for Cirrus to hear.

"Ah, right," Cirrus mused, moving her right hoof to gently stroke at my right cheek. "Maybe Triple can find a solution for that if she can't figure out a way to restore you two to your own separate bodies. What do you think darling?"

There was a notable absence of a reply from Triple.

"Already asleep, I'll bet," Wind chuckled, putting more of her weight against my left side until I couldn't figure out if the pressure I was feeling on that side was from our body resting on the bed or hers pushing against mine internally.

"Good night all," I muttered, closing my eyes.

"Hm, yes. Rest well you both," Cirrus answered, but soon we all drifted off to sleep.

You put the pencil on the desk again and eye the cider.
"Dreamsequence?" Wind wonders.
"Uh-huh," you answer. "I might need some cider before I can write that out properly."
"Think Cirrus would mind if you drank it without her?" Wind asks cautiously.
"We did make a promise to drink it with her, so I don't actually dare," you reply with a sad undertone to your voice.
"However much I'd like it right now... I would hate to face her after the fact," Wind agrees.
You put the paper you had been writing on aside and stare at the next empty one. Taking the pencil in between your teeth again you wonder how to start.
"The meadow," Wind suggests.

A meadow specked with various flowers laid out as far as the eyes could see, covering rolling hills and flatter lands under a sunlit blue sky.

The summer sun warmed my head, back, and wings as I stood in the tall grass, the wind making the grass tickle under my belly.

A pair of grey pony ears perked up in the grass some distance ahead of me, yellow eyes appearing moments later as a young filly looked around herself.

"Found you!" I cried out quickly, galloping over in her direction, my own short filly legs working hard to push me through the blades of tall grass.

"No you didn't!" The other filly cried out, fluttering her wings to lift her out of the grass so she could turn away and flee from me.

I fluttered my own wings in an effort to keep up, misjudged the lift I got from them, and planted myself face-first in the grass before me.

I could hear her giggle at my plight as I got my hooves back under me and sat up.

"Ow, my nose," I whimpered as I reached up with my left hoof to rub at it.

The other filly stopped laughing and approached with a serious look on her face.

"Hey, you okay?" she asked, but then her facial expression blanked as if she realised something.

"What? Did I break my nose or something? Is it still on?" I asked with growing concern, trying to see the tip of my muzzle.

The other filly sat down and shook her head, her brow furrowing. "No, your face is fine. It's... my face."

I stared up at her, not understanding what she was saying, but lowered my hoof to the ground again. "What do you mean?"

"Who... who are you?" she asked cautiously, her ears flattening.

"I'm Windcatcher," I stated honestly. "Why?"

The other filly shook her head at that. "No, I'm Windcatcher."

"Yes... but I am also," I started, but stopped as I realised something was off.

"Catcher?" the filly asked, a pensive look on her face.

"Wind?" I returned, lowering my own ears. "Why do we look like a pair of fillies?"

"I don't know," Wind responded.

"Are you real?" I asked, taking a careful step forward. "Can I touch you?"

"Yes, I'm real," Wind answered, raising an eyebrow.

I took another step closer so I could poke her left side with my right hoof.

"Hey," Wind protested, moving away from my prodding hoof. "Clearly you can touch me."

I followed along with her motion and poked her in the side again. "Good; then I can take revenge for your constant poking my side!"

Wind tried to evade my poking, fluttering her wings. "Hey now, that's not fair!"

"Why not?" I asked, also fluttering my wings while trying to keep up with her. "You've been doing nothing but mope and poke me for days now!"

"There's nothing else to do, you daft filly!" Wind protested, now also trying to poke me as I continued the assault upon her.

With our wings fluttering and hooves poking at one another, we were slowly flattening the grass in a circle around where we were standing.

Soon enough I found myself giggling from the weirdness of it all, Wind catching up a moment later, and we fell over beside one another on the ground.

It took us a minute to catch ourselves again, and I just stared at the few white clouds lazily drifting by.

"Hey Catch," Wind started, her head inches away from mine.

"Yeah Wind?" I answered.

"I think we're dreaming," she realised.

"I hope we remember this in the morning," I spoke truthfully.

"Why's that?" Wind wondered.

"I'd like to know if this happens again," I suggested.

Wind tilted her head to look at me, and I tilted mine to face her as well. With our noses inches away I could feel her breath passing by the hairs surrounding my muzzle.

"For a dream, it's really realistic," I mused.

"Maybe princess Luna is responsible for this," Wind reasoned.

"Why would Luna do this?" I asked curiously.

A shadow fell over Wind and me as we contemplated this and we both turned our heads to see a tall blue alicorn towering over us, her dark mane waving in the wind.

"Perhaps because it is the first time we know of a pair of ponies sharing a dream in this fashion?" Luna asked calmly, looking curiously between us. "We are very interested in hearing the details."