One Last Leg
Cherry Berry galloped from dial to dial as she made her final inspections before takeoff. Maud and Petunia awkwardly stood in the middle of the bridge in the hopes that they could remain out of the way. The room was covered with dials, levers, switches, knobs, gauges, and joysticks. How was one mare supposed to pilot this thing on her own?
Captain Berry suddenly stopped to put an ear on one valve. Twenty seconds later, she calmly walked to the captain’s chair and pressed the blue button. Magical static filled the air as she spoke, “Weather status for shipping route 43 with a diversion to Shady Shale Sands?” into the ether.
“G’day, mate! Captain Cherry Berry, you are cleared for takeoff,” announced a disembodied voice through the static.
Cherry announced to the air, “Takeoff in around one minute once the flywheel is at full power,” before stepping over to some sort of modified exercise bike and pedaling furiously.
Within thirty seconds, the static had changed into a resonant hum and Cherry hopped off the contraption and back to her chair. “Full steam ahead!” she exclaimed as she pushed the twin throttles forward.
Maud looked out the right window toward what would soon be a beautiful sunset. Petunia’s focus was on the captain. Her operating attitude filled Petunia with inspiration. Once they had unpacked the heavy equipment in Shady Shale Sands, Petunia could very well be the pony responsible for operating it. Maud had made it clear that she prefers to dig by hoof and leave machinery to the experts, but the layers with the relevant fossils were presumed to be deep enough that some heavy equipment would prove necessary.
An overtone filled the room as Cherry announced, “we have liftoff! Cruising altitude in approximately five minutes.”
Maud wasted no time in asking Cherry what her thoughts were about the necessity of Maud Pie being involved in the conversations between now and final landing.
“Petunia, Cherry,” Maud wanted to have their attention, “can you two make conversation while I finish reviewing this dissertation?”
Petunia was the first to respond, “I assumed you would nap and I would be the one to keep Cherry company.”
An uncomfortable pause later, Cherry finally looked up from the tubes and dials.
“As long as I have somepony up here. There’s only so much karaoke a lone mare can sing.” She made some minor adjustments and continued, “Once we’re out of the landing zone and into the airstream, I’ll unlock the map room for Maud’s quiet reading.”
The next minute or three passed notably fast. Cherry’s visual attention was fixed on the altimeter in front of her while her ears flicked wildly to take in all the magical and mechanical sounds. Her flight experience was on full display as Petunia and Maud tried to keep up with Cherry’s shifting aural focus. Cherry reared and grabbed a long iron rod with her forehooves and delicately pulled it until the yokes were in the halfway position.
“Slow craft forward on route 43,” announced Cherry over the broadcast system before pressing a second pair of yokes a quarter forward. She turned to face her guests. “Forward fans operate most effectively with gentle starts. OK, the vertical thrusters theoretically also work best when used gradually, but you’ll never have liftoff if you operated them with maximal service life in mind,” she explained before pointing her ears to address Maud directly, “I will unlock that room as soon as we have stable airspeed for stage two forward momentum.”
Cherry’s attention once again returned to the mass of controls and meters in front of her. Petunia let her gaze dissipate toward the windows. Her near-wraparound vision showed her the beginning of the sunset. Maud followed her student’s lead to take in the fiery rainbow along the horizon. Predatory species couldn’t possibly have engineered an airship as fit for purpose as this. They would save too much on construction costs by forgoing a full 5.2 radians1 of tempered glass windows. Even Cherry took a second to look up from the dials and tubes to appreciate the flares of color. Maud pawed at the ground and then scrunched her legs together and sat down.
Moments later, Cherry, evidently satisfied with with the progress, pushed the second set of yokes to their halfway mark. She turned around to face Maud rolling on her back. Maud glanced up from her upside-down position the ground and whuffled softly. Cherry couldn’t help but release a full-toothed grin. Surprisingly enough for a daredevil earth pony with a cutie mark in fruit, all twelve of her incisors were in ship shape. The good mood proved to be infectious as Maud and Petunia joined their captain in full-frontal grins.
“My back hurt,” Maud explained as she rolled herself upright.
Cherry gave her a moment to push herself back to standing before letting her know she now should have ample free time between tasks. The two mares walked to the rear of the bridge to a blue door where Cherry stopped to push a pattern on the floor with the hoof. She then gave Maud a nod and Maud nudged the door open with her shoulder.
A veneer of mahogany provided solidity over the balsa table. Maud inhaled the light must of the ship’s cartographic library and ambled inside.
“There’s a water trough and some hay at the back of the room, in case you need a snack,” informed Cherry. She continued, “I’m going to half-close this door so you can have some quiet. We can hear you if you shout if you want our attention without leaving.”
Cherry shut the door and turned to Petunia. “It’s just us two. Do you like karaoke?”
Petunia’s look of surprise informed Cherry of all she needed to know. Perhaps she would be willing to sing tonight, but not until later.
“I’ll give you a tour of the bridge after I check back on the flight path,” Cherry said as she put her pilot hat on and took her aviator goggles the rest of the way off. She glanced around to take readings off the instrumentation panels before staring blankly to take in the panoramic sunset. Satisfied with her work, she returned her attention to Petunia.
“As Maud demonstrated, the foam carpeting is ideal for a nice roll.” Cherry then walked over to the bridge’s sink. “There’s food here as well as water buckets. If you need to massage your frogs, the floor here has special bumps to stand on. Shift your weight around and get that relief!” she had worked herself into a full whinny by the end of her sentence at the thought.
Petunia’s ears indicated great relief as she stood in front of the refrigerator and shifted her weight around. Her tail swished in excitement as she raised her energy. Finally, she vigorously shook her head and nickered.
“Thank you for pointing that out,” Petunia said.
It was then that Cherry realized Petunia’s youth. She had barely stopped being a filly. No wonder she was not talkative.
The mares stood in silence for several minutes to watch the rest of the sunset. Their ears filled with the soft magical hum interspersed with the muted thwack of the propellers cutting the airstream. Petunia took in the neutral scent. This ship would have been an olfactory feast of wood when it was new.
“Correction: the scent was not quite so neutral,” Petunia thought when the fresh-cut hay entered her attention.
Cherry had pulled three flakes out of the cupboard and spread them into the food trough. Petunia joined her for dinner. The young mare had a pleasant shock at the first mouthful. It was hay combined with a salt block. She swallowed and grabbed another bunch.
“Pace yourself,” Cherry intoned. “The water bucket should be your friend right now. I don’t want to have to do an emergency colic rescue while flying.”
The “bucket” was a circular trough with a recirculating fountain drizzling in the center. Once Cherry joined her, Petunia counted that it could fit four ponies. Six ponies if it were in the center of the room. The water, unsurprisingly, tasted like fresh rainwater.
“This must be supplied by the tanks the crew refilled before landing,” Petunia noted once her thirst was finally quenched.
“With an astute mind like that, no wonder they admitted a filly like you to study for her rocktorate,” replied Cherry. “Let’s make funny faces,” she suggested before smiling into a flehmen.
Petunia opened her mouth in silent laughter. Her captain had a sense of humor about her. She would either have been best friends with Maud if they had grown up together or they would have been bitter rivals each confused at the thought that the other one was considered to be funny.
Cherry calmed down before turning serious. “This is your first Hearthswarming away from home, isn’t it?”
Before Petunia could respond, Cherry continued, “If you want to talk mare-to-mare, I’ll be all ears in ten minutes. There’s one more thing I want to show you first.” Cherry was once again excited and trotted a circle around the entire bridge before arriving at a pair of horizontal levers. “I never open these during daytime. Holler if you get vertigo,” she said as she grabbed the far one with her right hoof and pushed it all the way.
Petunia felt momentarily just as fine as she had before. Then she saw the roof disappear out of the top corner of her vision. Where there had been wood paneling, there was now a checkerboard of dimly-glowing wood and deep sunset purple.
Cherry paused for a moment and craned her neck to look back at Petunia. Petunia looked slightly confused but decidedly not panicking or sick. Cherry pulled the other lever with her mouth.
The only remaining lighting in the bridge was the ambient lighting at the control deck and kitchenette as well as the beam out of the doorway to the map room. The mares traveled on in silence for a short while.
It was Petunia who broke the quiet. “Luna paints a very different picture down here,” she observed.
Cherry’s ears and tail perked up and she began trotting in place. “It’s my third-favorite perk of the job.”
“What are the first two?”
“Tasting the different grasses from around the world and meeting the other pony species that don’t often visit Equestria. Which one is number one depends on where I visited most recently.”
“Where do the brumbies fit?” Petunia was curious about her hosts for the next few moons. “Do you like visiting ponies with hooves that grow from their heads?”
“I haven’t met them for long enough to have an opinion. That oceanic pre-salted hay puts up stiff competition,” Cherry answered before once again surveying the controls and making small adjustments. Petunia did not notice that she had elided the question about unusual hoof placement. The unusual patterns of stars retained too much of her attention to process words fully.
“I hope you get to meet them with us when we land,” Petunia said.
“I’ll live with them just like you, only for a shorter time.”
Petunia reared in surprise that that news.
“You’re not just going to fly off?”
“Nope. I’ll stay with your excavation camp for a week before flying back to pick up the other passengers and returning to Equestria. On the way back, we’ll stop at a desolate point in mid-ocean to view Luna’s testing ground. Some of these ponies paid a premium to be the first to see new constellations as well as those left on the cutting room floor.” Cherry did like to talk as soon as she had another pony to hear.
“Isn’t that part of the magical route to legendary villages so far west that the only way there is to fly east?” Petunia asked, remembering the fantasy novels she read as a filly. “I thought that was fiction.”
“It’s reality,” Cherry proudly answered. Equestria had a habit of fiction turning into truth. Cherry continued, correctly guessing that her guest wanted to learn more, “If you’ve ever heard of the Kirin and thought they lived far away, the Kiang are that much farther.”
Kiang, Kirin, and Roos: Petunia had learned of three new species today.
Cherry was not done blowing Petunia’s mind. “Luna pointed out the best viewing spots for her proving grounds while we flew on a diplomatic mission to the Kiang homeland. Their grass is like a dry white wine.”
“What kind of creatures are Kiang and Kirin?” Petunia retained her filly-like curiosity, as any budding scientist would.
Cherry twisted a small knob then left the control desk. She trotted over to the door to Maud’s lair and gave it a courtesy knock. She received no response and knocked again. Still nothing. Cautiously, she pushed the door forward.
Petunia and Cherry paused as their eyes adjusted to the light flooding out from the room. Maud had the table covered in pages and was fast asleep with her pen in her mouth. They tiptoed in and Cherry pulled out a binder from the top shelf. She carefully placed it on the far end of the table over the assorted leaves of dissertation and opened it. After scanning the table of contents, she found the index of the color plate she had in mind.
Plate 56 was a color print of a photograph. Princess Luna’s presence was obvious. Behind her Cherry wore her helmet and goggles in the background. Next to Luna stood a giant donkey. Or was he a grey mule?
“Yes, that’s portrait of a real live Kiang,” Cherry whispered while she gently placed her hoof under him. “I’ve never met a Kirin, but I have seen portraits of their nemesis, the Nirik.” She then grabbed a thin volume from a lower shelf. On its cover was an ungulate monster of darkest fire.
Petunia immediately understood the implications. “I may get to study them one day. The Nirik must have hunted the Kirin to extinction before running out of food and going extinct themselves or becoming a different species altogether.” Petunia wanted to return the favor of long explanations to her companion.
Maud remained asleep, though her ears indicated dim awareness of the presence of other ponies.
It was Cherry’s turn to be curious as they exited the map room. “You meet all kinds of creatures from far away as well, right?”
“I’ve never made living friends with one,” Petunia pointed out. “Take the distance to the Kiang plateau, turn it into time, then cube it. That’s the scale distance I study.”
Cherry stared blankly. Those distances made no sense at all.
Petunia noted Cherry’s confusion and asked a clarifying question, “You know that I was only recently transferred to be Maud’s student, right?”
Cherry nodded and twisted a knob.
“Professor Fossil reassigned me as soon as Maud officially earned her rocktorate. The civilizations I study are far enough down in the regolith that Maud was a better expert for me.”
“Can you tell me more about the creatures you uncover?”
Cherry was not prepared for the enthusiasm of the answer.
“You know how you said that the Kiang are even farther than the Kirin and have a second Peaks of Peril to cross?”
Cherry nodded once again.
“Think of that as the time gap between the societies. They’re both mostly populated by a great diversity of flightless dragons. Emphasis on mostly. Some species in the older layers had wings. The unique species in the top layer has a tail much too short to be a dragon. Here’s a fact that can blow your mind: creatures from the older layers can travel time.”
“So can some unicorns,” Cherry observed.
“Not like that. Travel as in jump directly across all Equestria except time. Imagine if a unicorn could travel back to warn Luna that she would be welcomed back after spending 1,000 years on the moon. Imagine that except going forward.”
“Like the Princesses only more powerful?”
“Unbelievably so. However, they can only travel long-distance. There is a gap between the two civilizations that is many moons longer than the entire history of Equestria, including its geologic past. There are no traces of the old dragons between the sudden end of the old society and the emergence of the new species.”
Stunned silence filled the room. Petunia was every bit as much of a traveler as Cherry, who now thought back to when she earned her cutie mark.
Before Cherry could think of any specific story, Petunia resumed her monologue, “What we’re hoping to discover is why there is such a long gap. One hypothesis is that scientist dragons in the ancient world discovered a loophole in magic that let them jump so far ahead but prohibited medium-range travel. There is a fringe theory that explains why the second civilization ended so quickly. It’s full of holes, but it’s the only theory that isn’t immediately contradicted. The new species is the result of scientific experiments performed by the ancient dragons. After discovering the time jump, they used the time long after their civilization’s end as their research laboratory for creating new species. Nopony knows why they ended the experiment that suddenly.”
Cherry suddenly felt like a filly stuck on a cloud over the ocean. Her hooves were anchored on the floor. Shutting the ceiling would not cure this vertigo.
BEEP BEEP
The altimeter grabbed Cherry’s attention. The vertical thrust needed adjustment from halfway to ⅜ or else the magic and reserves would be diverted into oxygen production.
Instead of stunned silence, the faint magical hum and a mechanically descending Shepherd tone hung in the air. Tonight, there was no moon to compete with the stars. Both mares took in the panoramic nighttime view as they digested their newfound knowledge. The mechanical pitch of the drivetrain finally settled on a note around a major sixth lower than before.
Cherry lazily walked into the middle of the room and dropped to her knees and rolled. Physical adjustment always did unlock the mind when it got stuck in colic.
Roll to the right side, roll to the left. Left again, left, right, right. Cherry relaxed as the subsiding tingle of ambient magic straightened her spine.
Finally, she stood back up and shook any remaining confusion out of her mane. Her next move was a trip to the watering station. Petunia joined her in the kitchenette to munch more salty hay.
“If my calculations are correct, dawn will bring your first Hearthswarming Eve away from home to both you and Maud.”
Petunia jumped at the break in quiet. Cherry softly nuzzled Petunia. “Sorry for distracting you,” she nickered.
“How did you know that?” asked a confused Petunia.
“I talked to Pinkie Pie before we left. She put together an early Hearthswarming celebration for me. She mentioned Maud is used to ponies being gone for Hearthswarming but she’s never been the missing pony before. I just guessed about you due to your age.”
“You’re experienced with being away?”
“For sure. Pay is double, so I spend every holiday I can in the sky. It lets me spend more days each year with my colt than working a normal schedule and being home for the holidays.”
“You have a colt?” Petunia was continually surprised at the inner lives of ponies in that odd gap between her dam’s age and her own.
“He lives in Cloudsdale with his dad. I’m the only reason you’ll ever see him on the ground. For that matter, he’s the main reason Ponyville is my home base. It’s the only ground town that Cloudsdale remains consistently close to,” Cherry had not shared such personal details with a new pony since she hired Amy into her crew. It felt good.
“You’re an airship pilot and an earth pony. How the hay did you end up with cherries on your flank?” Petunia changed the subject to a different personal matter.
“I’m an earth pony,” she wasted no time to brag, “it takes serious cherries to fly these things. Doubly so when they’re small enough to fit only one pony.”
Petunia was impressed and wanted to hear more tales of bravery.
“Have you ever been inside a cave?” she asked.
Cherry shied away from the imagined cavern and perked her ears nervously.
“Those, those need a different berry to enter. I’m not a unicorn or a pit pony.”
“Am I a pit pony?” asked Petunia.
“Do you enjoy caverns?”
“I often dig my own.”
“You’re a pit pony for sure.”
Petunia still wanted more bravery inspiration.
“What about Amy? Her name has nothing to do with berries yet she’s a pegasus brave enough to join you over the open ocean.” Petunia’s knowledge of fantasy did not lack in its ability to educate its reader on the dangers of seafaring.
“Amaretto Apricot. It takes the calm gravity of a giant pit to fly in a search & rescue unit in Equestria’s coast guard,” Cherry said before a brief pause. “I was able to hire her to be my first mare thanks to their absurdly young mandatory retirement age. She clears the way so I can fly without worrying about the guests. If you want an even bigger earful than I can give, ask her about the Wonderbolts she’s your crew on your return journey.” Cherry paused once again, “When is your return journey?”
Petunia answered with uncertainty, “Winter Wrap-Up? You’d need to ask Maud whether that is our last working day or arrival in Equestria.”
“My schedule is booked only two moons at a time. If I am not your captain on your return, feel free to say hello to me when you get back to Ponyville. You do live in Ponyville?”
Petunia shook out her mane in assent as the first purple of dawn twilight graced the horizon.
“Where can I ask Amy about the Bolts if she’s not in the return crew?”
“Who knows?” replied Cherry. “I’m 80% certain she doesn’t have a fixed address. She either works for other captains when I’m home or else she sets up shop in a different city each time she’s in Equestria. Life must be so simple for a pegasus: find some spare structural clouds, slap together a hut, and you have your house for the next four months.”
Petunia watched a star disappear as pink joined the violet. Cherry searched the database on the karaoke system.
“Petunia, what range are you?”
“What?” Petunia replied with confusion.
“What is your vocal range? We still have two hours. Let’s celebrate Hearthswarming.”
Petunia squeaked out a few quiet notes.
“Mezzo-soprano. I can work with that,” Cherry said before fidgeting with a bag.
She trotted over to Petunia. “Sugar cube?” she offered.
Petunia’s lips grabbed the cube out of Cherry’s hoof. As it dissolved in her mouth, she stuck out her tongue to savor the sweetness.
“Once you have some water and the backing track kicks on, you’ll sound just fine,” Cherry reassured Petunia as they made one more visit to the water trough.
Pounding four-on-the-floor rhythms started up and Cherry began to belt out a strange rhythm to a traditional Hearthswarming song at the low end of her contralto. Petunia heard the pitch-shifted hi-hats tickle her ears. There was just enough room for her to sing the traditional melody as a descant to welcome the new day.
- About 300⁰—ed.
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Maud!...
..Thank you for the story!
I could go for a extension.
11144545
Now I need to dust off my extension notes and write it.
11145478
I look forward to it.