TCB: The Heart of Everything

by Madrigal Baroque

7. Down With the Thunder

Madrigal Baroque loved being a pony, even if she seemed destined to be quite literally a head above the crowd–even standing on solid ground. With her long neck and longer legs, she was a good two hooves taller than any other pony at the Bureau.

Still, that made little difference to her friends, or to her beloved grandmother. Harmony and Madrigal still shared a room, which was more spacious than ever once the two bunk beds were traded out for a single wide foam pallet. They spent late nights talking with Lilac and Featherfall, imagining what they would do once they got to Equestria.

"I'm going to have a flower shop," Lilac said. "I'm the best in my class at floral cultivation. If it's got petals, I can make it grow! And not only can you eat them, they're pretty and they smell nice, too!" She admired her cutie mark, a four-petaled purple flower. A lilac, of course.

"I was a dancer in my old life." Featherfall smiled a bit, studying her hooves. "Ballet. I'm used to moving about on my toes. And now I have dancing shoes I never have to take off."

"I just want a nice little house with a herb garden all my own." Harmony was enjoying a peach saved from supper. "I learned plenty about home remedies from my oma, and I'm getting very good at healing spells." She had a cutie mark, too, now: a bright red five-petaled flower surrounded by four groups of black lines.

Lilac peered at it. "You have a flower, too. But what are those funny lines?"

"That flower is a hibiscus. Very important in Korean folk medicine. And those aren't 'funny lines'; they're pakua. They used to be on the flag of my country. They stand for the elements, the seasons, the four directions…all representing…harmony." She tossed her head.

"I hope I get my cutie mark soon." Featherfall sighed and rested her chin on her fetlocks. "It'll have something to do with dancing, I know it."

"You never know," Harmony said. "You two have just started your flying lessons. Maybe you'll be an acrobatic flier, or a weather pony."

"I don't have a mark either," said Madrigal. "But at least you have a primary skill that you can use in Equestria. There's not much call for code janitors inside the Barrier, and I'm not much good at anything else."

"Damp rot!" Lilac seized a pillow in her teeth and tossed it at Madrigal with a twist of her neck. "You're a fantastic singer!"

"Lots of ponies sing."

"Not like you, Maddie." Feather nipped playfully at her flank and dodged the responding, half-hearted kick.

"All I'm saying is, singing isn't a rare skill. Now, dancing? Not a lot of ponies can do that. And me? I can barely keep my hooves under me."

"You have new skills to learn, child. Flying, making weather, surveying the new lands they're making out of our old ruined Earth…" Harmony nuzzled her granddaughter. "You're very smart, pretty filly. You'll learn."

She looked at Feather. "I hear there's a flying acrobatic team in Equestria. The Thunderbolts, they're called."

"I don't want to be a stunt flier," Feather protested. "Maybe I'll form the first Equestrian corp de ballet."

"Ponies in tu-tus?" Chip said from the open door. "That'll be something to see."

"What do you want, smarty-flanks?" Harmony demanded. "You gonna be Equestria's first stand-up comedian?"

"He'll need better material," said Feather.

"I was just stopping by to say hi," Chip said. "But if I'm not welcome–"

"Oh, get your rump in here!" Lilac laughed. "Come join the party."

A soft chime rang from the ceiling. "No more party tonight," Harmony announced. "It's lights out. Sleep time is now."

There was a general chorus of awwws. "Can we sleep over?" asked Lilac, her eyes pleading. "Pleeeeease?"

Harmony chuckled. "Half the time you girls don't even stay in your own room."

"That means yes!" Lilac bounced happily, jiggled everypony else on the mattress.

"I just got here…" Chip sounded forlorn. He hung his head, ears drooping.

Madrigal laughed. "Okay, sad sack, come on. You can stay too."

"There's not enough mattress for five oof! Chocolate Chip! Watch who you land on!" Harmony bumped Chip off of her with a stern head-butt.

"There's plenty of room if we cuddle up," Feather suggested.

"Yay! Cuddle puddle!" Lilac snuggled down between Featherfall and Chip and laid her head across Harmony's back. Madrigal curled up against her grandmother's belly.

Harmony chuckled again and lay her head down. Feather was right. There was plenty of room on the mattress for a cuddle puddle.

Together the five of them were forming a happy little herd.

***

The thing Madrigal loved best about her new life, other than the prospect of a future in Equestria, was flying. The first time she flapped her wings and her hooves lifted off the ground, she whooped with joy and took off. She swooped over the roof and inadvertently buzzed Roselyn Pastern, who'd slipped up there for a rare quiet moment with her coffee. Startled, the physician dropped her cup and almost fell on her rear end. Only a frantic grab at a railing steadied her.

"Sorry, Doc!" Madrigal called, circling around.

Pastern laughed and waved an arm. "It's all right, Maddie. The coffee was lousy this morning anyway!"

Madrigal picked up quickly on the secret of flying. She'd always wondered how Equestrian pegasi managed to get airborne. Their wings were far too small to bear their weight. She assumed it was the magic that made flight possible, the same magic that Earth ponies used to make plants grow and unicorns to manipulate reality itself.

Magic was the key, but it was not as cut and dried as she had imagined.

Even when she was just standing still, she could feel the air moving around her. It was never still. It was always moving, almost whispering to her. She knew things about it she was just beginning to understand. She was learning its tone, its language. There were currents in the stillest air that she could reach out and touch and manipulate with every feather in her wings. She could feel the water vapor, the oxygen, the bitter tang of pollutants. In her weather class she was beginning to understand how to separate out the various components. When there were enough pegasi on this side of the Barrier, they would be able to clear the air, make it rain. Given enough practice, she would learn to filter out the bad stuff choking the atmosphere just as she used to extract bad code. Already she could condense water vapor into tiny clouds, and she was getting better all the time.

But the best, the absolute best, was flying. As her wings moved her through the air it sang to her, and often she found herself singing back.

She was on her second chorus of "The Big Sky" when she heard a voice nearby. "Having fun, Madrigal?"

She drew up short, hovering about thirty feet above the parking lot. The flight instructor, Slipstream, circled lazily around her. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself," said the pale green pegasus mare. "Great singing, too. But the rest of the class has touched down and I wanted to go over a couple of things before we head in for lunch. Follow me down?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Madrigal glided smoothly into Slipstream's wake, waiting for the instructor to land on the asphalt before coming in for her own landing. She righted herself and folded her wings, preparing to gracefully touch down with all four hooves at once, just as she'd been taught.

"Too fast!" Slipstream warned, just too late.

As usual, Madrigal misjudged her downward trajectory. Her front hooves hit the asphalt, but the back half of her kept going. She flipped forward, tail over withers, and spread her wings to try and compensate. It didn't work; her momentum sent her into a 180 flip and she landed on her back in a flail of hooves and feathers.

There was some laughter, but everypony still ran over to try and help. Featherfall was at the head of the group. "Maddie, are you okay?"

Madrigal flipped herself over and stood up. "I think so." She looked back at her wings–she'd lost a few pinfeathers, but there was no serious damage. She shook them straight, stretched them experimentally, then folded them carefully over her slightly aching back.

"One of these days," she said, "I'm going to learn to stick those landings."

***

Stormwalker was the pegasus weather instructor, a stallion with a coat the luminous purple-gray of thunderclouds ready to burst. This afternoon's class gathered on the roof at his direction. All were surprised to find the rooftop cloaked in a thick whitish fog.

"Slip and I spent our lunch hour gathering this together. It's cloudstuff. You've learned to handle steam and wisps of water vapor. Now you've got lots of raw material to work with. Pick an area and see if you can shape up a proper cloud, one big enough to actually shed some rain. Don't get discouraged; if you have cohesion issues, give a whistle and I'll come give you some pointers. Now, there's no need to get airborne right off the bat. I don't want you lot flapping around in the mist and flying into each other. It'll thin out as the clouds are shaped out of it. Wait till it clears up enough for you to see what's in front of you before you start flying. No midair collisions on my watch! Now, let's make some rain!"

Madrigal wandered through the thick white haze, trying not to impose on anyone who had already staked out working space. She thought of seeking out Featherfall so they could work as a team, but she couldn't find her. Finally she settled in a corner of the rooftop and set to work gathering water vapor together.

As minutes passed, she became increasingly more frustrated. Had she thought she was actually getting good at this? She was used to extracting bits of vapor into compact clouds, no bigger than grapefruits or cantaloupes. They were fun to play with and bat around, but not very practical. She gathered up hooffulls of mist, but she found that when she tried to join the clumps together they just bounced off each other. She tried dispersing the mini-clouds and recombining them, but that just made the cloudlets pop like fluffy water balloons and wet down the concrete.

She looked around to see what her classmates were doing. The air was clearer now, and she could make out her surroundings better. She saw a blue pegasus–Sora, wasn't it?--who was running around in a tight circle, using his speed and his wings to draw the mist together. He had constructed a mass about the size of an old Winnestream trailer, and it was getting larger a bit at a time.

There wasn't room in Madrigal's corner to run around like that, but she was well enough away from the main group so that there wasn't much risk of flying into anypony. It was much less foggy now, and a couple of pegasi were already airborne. She caught a glimpse of Feather about fifteen feet up, working to compress her cloudstuff, making it denser, darker.

Encouraged, Madrigal lifted off and began soaring in a tight, careful spiral, gradually moving upward. She was overjoyed to see that her chosen patch of mist was compressing into a thick whitish column easily ten feet high and about that wide. She was doing it! She reached out and gathered up more water vapor with her wings and hooves and will, speeding up a bit in an ever-elevating circle to add to her gleanings. It felt like familiar work, this gathering and compiling. It was like pulling code, only a million times better. Her father would be proud of her.

"I'm cloudbusting, Daddy!" she laughed, and dropped into the very song that phrase brought to mind, extending her collection efforts even as her voice rang out through the clearing air.

The wind she was making sang with her. It was helping her! She rode it now, circling higher still. Her column was darkening, twisting, moving ever faster to keep pace with her as she rose up and up and–

"MADRIGAL!"

She barely heard her name over the voice of the wind. The call came from below her. Far below her.

She looked down between her front hooves and realized with a start that she was nearly a hundred feet in the air, farther up than she'd ever dared go. She turned towards her cloud and saw that it was not just a bundle of compressed vapor. No mere cloud spun on its axis with a rumbling hum like a train over steel rails. Her creation was wide at the top, narrowing almost to a point at the bottom. She recognized the shape, the sound, at once.

"What the buck?!" She could barely hear her own voice. "That's a tornado!"

"ACTUALLY IT'S A FUNNEL CLOUD!" Stormwalker was right beside her now, his wings working overtime to keep him in place with the wind buffeting him. "NOW DON'T PANIC, BUT WE'VE GOT TO DISPERSE THIS THING BEFORE IT GETS ANY BIGGER. DON'T TRY TO GO AGAINST THE ROTATION, JUST KEEP IT UNDER CONTROL AND YOU'LL BE FINE!"

"I'M SORRY, STORM! I DIDN'T MEAN TO DO THIS! I GUESS I GOT CARRIED AWAY!"

"YOU WON'T BE THE ONLY ONE CARRIED AWAY IF YOU DON'T GET A HANDLE ON IT! NOW, THE FIRST THING WE'VE GOT TO DO IS GET TO THE TOP OF THE FUNNEL, GRAB HOLD OF THE WIND CURRENT, AND COLLAPSE IT DOWN. IT'S NOT TOO BIG YET, SO WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DISPERSE IT IN THE PARKING LOT." Stormwalker's well-muscled, practiced wings were straining to hold him in place, fighting both the pull of the vortex and the velocity of the winds. "I'VE ALREADY SENT SOME OF THE OTHERS DOWN TO MAKE SURE THERE'S NOPONY THERE. WHEN IT'S CLEAR THEY'LL GO BACK TO THE ROOF. JUST FOLLOW MY LEAD, OKAY?"

"RIGHT!" Strange, but Madrigal wasn't having to struggle at all. She rode the winds effortlessly to the funnel's crown, and the pull of the vortex bothered her not one bit. She reached out with her wings and her magic to catch at the errant, violent gusts, as though to calm children who'd gotten a bit too rowdy at their games. Okay, kids, settle down. Playtime's over.

She circled the top of the funnel, spiraling downward this time, urging and coaxing the maelstrom she'd summoned to settle in the abandoned parking lot. Fierce as it was, the whirlwind was still no wider than fifteen feet or so. Thirty hooves, forty at most. Humming softly, she compressed and smoothed the column of mist and air as the velocity lessened, compacting it without letting the base of the funnel reach the asphalt. She knew from stormy days on the Coast how destructive a tornado touchdown could be.

More and more slowly she flew, shushing and humming softly, singing her tornado to sleep. At last the rotation ceased, and she came out of her own spiral. She landed in an awkward heap and lay there with her ribs heaving. She didn't care how silly she looked. She was exhausted. She was also soaking wet–whether from cloud-vapor or sweat she couldn't say.

Stormwalker landed right on top of her now-quieted cloud. It was thick and dark, and from its heart flickered a commotion of flashes.

Madrigal raised her head and stared at the thundercloud. "Did I...did I really do that?"

"I don't know any other singing red pegasi in my class." Stormwalker whistled up to the roof where a row of pony heads looked down in awe. "Come on, everypony. Let's let Madrigal catch her breath while we take this beauty up with the others. It's almost dinnertime, and it looks like it's going to be a dark and stormy night!"

As the rest of the class came down to help collect her contribution, Madrigal felt something like an electric shock run right through her. She looked where the sensation seemed to settle, and there on her flank she saw the unmistakable representation of a whirlwind bearing up three thundercloud-purple musical notes.

Madrigal Baroque had earned her cutie mark.

***

Author's Note:

Somehow it just figures that, having grown up on what was left of the Gulf Coast, Maddie's meteorological specialty would be cyclonic in nature.

The pakua in Harmony's cutie mark are taken from the flag of South Korea. They do indeed indicate a balance of harmony. These are more commonly known as trigrams, and are popularly used in I-Ching fortune-telling. Because each trigram is formed from three instances of a solid line or a broken line, they're a kind of binary code that existed long before computers were even dreamt of.

Comments

[Turbotune]

family and school moments! how sweet! i'm liking these vibes!