Tales of a Cloud

by Cloud

Breath

Buried deep below the barren Equestrian Wasteland, lay the Stables. They were shelters from the all-consuming balefire above. Ponies live in some of them still. However, not all the Stables turned out so well.

There was a snick-snick of a lighter, and the Overmare’s office was lit briefly by a single flame. The round window overlooking the atrium, the large, gaudy promotional posters, the terminal bank sitting behind the desk – all lit by the flickering firelight felt… Lonely.

With a click, the flame was cut out, leaving just a glowing eye of a cigarette in the darkness. It bobbed slightly, its meager illumination revealing the Overmare’s jaw, but nothing more.

“…Mint Chip.”

“Yes Ma’am?”

“Do you know why I asked you here?”

“No Ma’am.”

The cigarette moved away from the Overmare’s face, obscuring here once more in darkness. She let out a long sigh. “Mint. You’re a smart cookie. You have always been a dependable, and I’ve always valued your opinion.”

The cigarette glowed slightly brighter for a moment, illuminating the Overmare’s downcast eyes. She looked tired. “Stable-tech has given me a choice.”
“You’ve probably figured out by now that the power outage wasn’t an accident. It can’t be fixed either. I said the engineers were working on it to try and allay fears. The generators were rigged from the start.”
“Aren’t there supposed to be backups?”
“Just an unfinished room.”
Silence filled the gloom. The glow of the cigarette bobbed slightly as the Overmare tapped off some ash. “It won’t take long for ponies to become restless. Our food won’t last long. Without pumps, we’re reduced to whatever water is already standing in the toilets.”
“There’s a bigger problem though.” The cigarette illuminated a foggy puff of smoke. “Air.”
“Without power, air won’t be passed through the scrubbers. We can’t reach the scrubbers, and there is no other way for air to get down here. The ponies on the upper floor will notice it first. Dizziness, shortness of breath. It won’t take long.”
“How much time do we have?”
The Overmare paused before responding. “A couple days before the air grows stale. Maybe a week, then we start dying. Suffocation or thirst, whichever comes first. The weak will die first, elderly and… Foals.”

It was quiet for quite some time after that. All that existed was the slight scent of smoke, and the glowing end of the cigarette. “Can we find another way to obtain water?”
“Possibly. A manual pump may be able to draw water from the aquifers. I set the engineers to look at finding a way to use the food recycler manually.”
“But air..?”
“There’s no way. The scrubbers are near the surface, and there’s no way to reach them once the door locked.”
The cigarette flickered as more ash dropped from its tip. From somewhere in the darkness, Mint Chip spoke: “Wasn’t the door supposed to have its own backup power?”
“It was supposed to. It was linked straight to the generator though. ”
“Do we have any other form of power supply? Perhaps we could route it to the door…”
“The stores are all empty. Even the PipBucks were bled dry. The only spark batteries are those that the residents brought in.”
“And..?”
“We confiscated them under the guise of ‘precautionary measures.’ It’s not enough to so much as budge the lock.”

Silence reigned supreme once more. The cigarette was slowly burning down to a nub, and it could be seen reflected in the Overmare’s eyes. “This doesn’t sound like much of a choice to me.”

The Overmare pulled an item out from behind her desk, hidden in the pervasive darkness. “This is my choice.”

“It was found where the secondary generators should have been. It came with instructions, addressed to me.”

“’You’ve been selected for an important social experiment,’ it said. ‘As you may have guessed, you are now living on borrowed time. The device before you has two buttons: the green will release a chlorine gas into the Stable. All inside will die quickly, and mercifully.

“’The red will lock the device, preventing the gas from being used in the future. This, of course, will only save the collective lives of your charges for a short while. The choice is left to you, Overmare.’ Bastards.”
The Overmare spat, the cigarette sparking as it hit the floor. She ground it out with an audible stomp. The only light that remained was the small trigger box and its softly glowing buttons. One, an ominous red. The other, an inviting green.
It was a long time before Mint Chip broke the silent tableau. “I’m sorry.
“I… I know why you called me here, but I can’t help you with this. I can’t make this choice. No pony should have to make this choice. But… I believe in you. I believe the Stable-Tech ponies had a reason when they chose you for this.
“I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you this: Whatever you do, I believe it will be the right choice.
“I’m… Sorry.”
The silence held for a moment, then there was the soft tap-tap of hooves as Mint Chip slowly navigated out of the darkened room.
“I’m sorry too,” whispered the Overmare once the hoofsteps faded into the perpetual night.

Snick-snick went the lighter, and the Overmare’s office was momentarily lit once again by a single, baleful flame. The Overmare reached for the trigger box, her hoof hovering over one of the glowing buttons. After an unending moment of though, her hoof shifted slightly to the left, pressing down with a click. The box stopped glowing, leaving only the soft orange light of the cigarette, as it illuminated a small cloud of smoke drifting on the Overmare’s breath.

Author's Note:

Hopefully this story carried across well. It was an attempt at proper dialogue and the creation of emotion - neither of which I'm skilled at. And yes, the ending is meant to be ambiguous. Based on what you now know of the nameless Overmare, what do you think her choice was? Was it the correct one?

The next story is another tale of a nameless mare, as you're afforded short glimpses of her life...