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1. Centaurus4,604 words
2. Orion3,530 words
3. Monoceros5,246 words
4. Aquarius5,210 words
5. Draco / ᴉuᴉɯǝ⅁5,335 words
6. Pegasus2,873 words

4. Aquarius

One thing you learn really quickly when you become an employee of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation is that they throw a lot of parties.

The CWC takes Cloudsdale's reputation for partying and cranks it until it's beautiful. I’ve only been employed for a week, and already there have been two. The party I am at now is the third, the largest of them so far. They've even expanded the guest list to include some members of the general public, and the general public is eagerly taking them up on it.

Every party in Cloudsdale has a theme. Many of them are themed around the plethora of civic holidays or planetary festivals dotting the calendar, but when they run out of those, creativity goes wild. There are (to hear tell) positively ghoulish Nightmare Night parties, ludicrously overabundant harvest season fetes, and stately Hearth's Warming galas that will make your eyes water. I cannot wait to experience them all.

Today's party is thrown in honor of the Canterlot perigee, Cloudsdale's closest point of approach to the Mountain. And what better way to celebrate the day than to throw a "Canterlot" party? The quotes are there because there is a distinct air of farce and parody to the occasion. Good-humored unicorn nobles from the Mountain itself have been ferrying into the foreign quarter all evening on airships. So close is our position now that we are but a quick hop away, a reasonable distance for a soirée. The Canterlot unicorns are dressed to the nines, formal Equuish gowns and tailed tuxedos, vests included. And what do they meet when they arrive here? Not our usual light togas and dresses, but instead a distorted fun-fair mirror of themselves: tailed jackets that practically trail on the clouds, brilliant white spats, comical Derby-grade hats with far more than the required number of peacock feathers. It is ridiculous. Everypony laughs, and then they drink the Canterlot ciders being served in abundance (fountains of them!) and then they laugh some more. All the festivities are set to the just-barely-too-loud music of string octets. Why octets? It's double what you need. That's the only reason.

I am as dressed up as I have been in years, and I still feel like a model of restraint. My gown is of sparkling red, a true misstep in packing when I originally emigrated from Canterlot to Cloudsdale. It is a garment too gaudy to have been touched in all my months here. I pondered getting rid of it, but tonight, I am thankful that I did not. A feather boa originally completed the ridiculous ensemble, but I've long since relegated it to the cloakroom. I wear a lavish fascinator in place of my tiara, and, in an attack of silliness, I have adorned my Cutie Mark with a small red jewel directly between the lobes of the crystalline heart. I can sense Lt. Armor's disapproval. Decorating one's natural Cutie Mark with additional ornamentation is at best a social gaffe and at worst an act of abhorrent tackiness. Tonight, nothing is off the table. And besides, it's not as though Lt. Armor's disapproval is anything new. His dour bearing has become positively bleak in the past few days. He never smiles and rarely speaks, and even when he does speak it is usually to chastise me about something. Right now I have the strong feeling that Lt. Armor can take his disapproval and stick it in the deep crystalline vaults below Canterlot Castle, where the sun perforce does not shine.

I am dining with stallions.

Specifically, I am dining with the crew of the MV Comet, a privately owned light weather-hauling sloop on commission to the CWC. These are rough-and-tumble airponies, but they are also distinctly upper-class in bearing. One of them, a gangly pegasus pony named Graham Cracker, is technically a licensed physician, though I am unclear—even after an entire night of conversation over bubble-pipe foam—what exactly it is he practices. There's Kelvin, the chilly helmspony; Rainbowshine, the bubbly little first mare (not technically a stallion, but certainly One Of The Boys); a pair of deckhooves named Vapor Trail and Full Spectrum; and in the center of them all, last and not in the least bit least, Captain Sungrazer.

What to say about the Captain?

His Cutie Mark is astronomically-themed. A shooting star, or something similar. His coat is a burnished gold color, and his mane is blond streaked in red and gray. His face bears a near-constant, good-natured smile. And his throat is, I don't know how better to put it, awfully scarred all the way from side to side. I have no idea of the story behind what must have been a catastrophic wound at the time, and I get the sense that he is not fond of talking about it. The injury to his throat has permanently impacted his voice, and when he speaks, it ranges from a harsh, rainlike whisper to a gravelly roar.

I am sorry for Captain Sungrazer's injury, and am trying desperately to tamp down the fact that his raw, dangerous voice is making something in my belly do jumping jacks.

Like everyone here at the party—everyone except, predictably, Lt. Armor, who merely wears one of his many sensible uniforms—the crew of the Comet is dressed in over-the-top formal wear. Graham wears a full wedding ensemble, complete with top hat; Kelvin is in a pompous navy suit; Rainbowshine wears a silly rainbow-colored gala gown; and Sungrazer has a khaki military uniform with a sarcastic quantity of medals attached. None of them are real. I am certain he has never even served. He jingles like sleigh bells.

We are in the process of stuffing ourselves with stylized Canterlot foods, served in portions suitable to Cloudsdale. Plates of what would be tiny tasting-plate entrees (miniature hot vegetable skewers, tiny savory soufflés) are here produced in tureens, to be spooned up like casseroles. There are whole buckets of fairy cakes. It is high-class Canterlot cuisine in ghastly excess.

I am eating my fill. In public.

I am ... not ashamed anymore.

In fact, I feel a blossom of pride in my breast as I realize that even the stallions are unable to keep pace with me. Graham tries, bless him. Eventually even he must excuse himself for a moment of privacy, presumably to visit one of Duchess Portolan's civilized chamber pots, only to be outmatched a second time an hour later by my ferocious ability to consume.

They don't think I'm weird. They are smiling at me, laughing with me, urging me on, amazed at my capabilities.

"More tarts?" offers Rainbowshine. Sungrazer waves her off, and Graham looks a little sick.

"Yes please!" I say, to another round of laughter. Rainbowshine empties a deconstructed mixing bowl of tart ingredients all over the plate in front of me, just cream and cake and fresh fruit everywhere, and I tuck into it, just hitting my stride.

Friends! These ponies could be friends! I might not have to rely exclusively on my sourpuss white shadow of a household guard for socializing!

Speaking of whom, the Lieutenant's mood has only been worsening all evening. A less emotionally aware mare might not see what's going on here, but I don't even need to use my second sight to see the jealousy sizzling off him like sauna steam. That's fine. He can learn to live with me socializing a little.

"Digestifs!" Kelvin calls out.

Graham turns a rather unwell shade of olive. "None here. Would almost certainly have the opposite effect." He fails to stifle a burp.

"Ey, Cracker," says Sungrazer. "These aren't the normal drinks. These are the special ones."

"Ooh, the special ones!" says Graham, suddenly brightening. "Yes, please, then!"

I look up midway through tart-vacuuming. "Excuse me?" I mumble around a mouthful of fruit.

Sungrazer grins at me. "Oh, Princess, have we got something for you to see," he growls. "And taste, as well."

Vapor Trail flags down one of the circulating staff, whispering something in his ear. The waiter nods briskly, and eventually returns with half-pint glasses filled with a swirling sherbet liquor of some kind. They fizz and bubble, spilling thick, cold steam over the rims of the glasses and onto the tray.

"Ooh!" I stick my face right up to the glasses. "Pretty!"

Sungrazer laughs, and it sounds like a branch cracking in a storm. "Pretty, yes. But the drink itself isn't the great part. It's what we put in it."

My curiosity more than piqued, I lick up one last smear of tart and select a glass, staring down into its smoky depths. "What ... how do I..."

"Just drink it," says Kelvin. "But get a good breath of the steam."

I nod, putting my well-being in the hooves of strangers for not the first time. I pull steam into my nostrils and gulp down the swirling sherbet.

The vapor roiling off the drinks is like nothing I have ever taken into my body before. It's cold, harsh, and pleasingly floral, with a humming aftereffect. My eyes go wide as I drink it all in, and then I sit back, startled.

I hiccough. Blue flame plumes from my nostrils.

The table erupts in laughter as I hiccough again. I have no pride in this moment, and laugh along with the joke. "Fire breath! Amazing!"

"Not always!" says Kelvin, with a grin.

"What do you mean?"

Rainbowshine giggles. "When I drink one, it reverses my gravity! I can stand on the ceiling! Have to stand on the ceiling!"

"Spectrum's wings get all tiny," says Kelvin.

"Let's not talk about my wings, okay, ponies?" Spectrum says.

"I can't stand up for five minutes and have to wiggle around on the floor!" Graham pipes up.

"Sure that's not just the alcohol?" says Sungrazer.

"Not entirely?" Graham replies. "But mostly sure!"

I smile wickedly at Sungrazer. "And what about you, Captain?" I ask as the thin flames slowly vanish from my nose and mouth.

Sungrazer downs his exotic drink. Instantly, his coat shimmers in patterns of vertical stripes.

"Ooh!" says Rainbowshine with facetious awe. "Aah!"

"You know you love it, 'Shine."

"We've never seen fire breath before, though," says Kelvin. "Everypony gets a different effect."

"It lasts just a second or two," says Graham, also downing his drink. "And it's nothing dangerous! Just funny!" He instantly collapses to the floor in an apparently involuntary comedy pratfall. "Ah, that's the stuff!" he says, his voice muffled by the floor.

"What is this magic?" I look around our little group. "What's causing it?"

"Ice," says Sungrazer. His stripes slowly shimmer away. "The ice in these drinks is hailstones harvested from unmanaged weather that circulates the darker places of the earth."

"Pollen in the ice, more specifically," says Graham. He worms his way over to me at floor level. "Old magic gives rise to plants with some odd properties. We think the pollen from these plants gets aerosolized and seeds the hail. This is the last of the stock from last year's perigee. We take it from over the Everfree."

"We'll be going again in a few days, now that we've moved into a proximal position. You should tag along, Princess."

"To the Everfree?" The sweet sherbet turns sour in my belly. "Aunty—I mean, my—I mean, Princess Celestia always said I should never go in there. Said there were 'secrets there better left undisturbed.'"

"We're not going into the Everfree," says Kelvin. "Just the airspace above it."

"Nothing more than a routine hail-gathering expedition!" burbles Rainbowshine, from above, as she holds onto a chandelier for dear life.

"With a bit of a thrill mixed in," Sungrazer rumbles.

"Her Highness will be declining your generous invitation," says Lt. Armor, who eyes the tray of drinks as though they were brewed from pure hemlock. "She has a job now, don't you know."

"As do we all, little stallion," says Sungrazer. "This is our job. I gather water products. I draw pay. I see nothing wrong with Corporate's new ... what, Associate V.P. of Public Relations?"

"That's correct, Captain."

"...tagging along on a hailing expedition to see how CWC contractors work in the field."

"No," says the Lieutenant.

"Lieutenant," I say, "you will not order me around."

Lt. Armor's neck muscles could probably deflect arrows at this point. "I am sorry, ma'am," he says eventually.

I sigh. "Regardless, Lieutenant Armor is right, even though he's being my Fun Police again. I am a Princess of Equestria and, now, a CWC executive. My public image is tied up with both this company and the Hegemony at large. This is not something I can just agree to do on a whim. Certainly not with just a few days of planning." I smile gently at Lt. Armor. "Lieutenant, you wouldn't be able to go fetch my feather boa, would you? All the cold drinks have me feeling a little chilly." I give a little shiver.

He nods curtly and makes his way back toward the cloakroom where I deposited my boa.

When he is out of sight, I lock eyes with Sungrazer.

"Unlike the Lieutenant, I'm capable of recognizing a diversion," he says.

"Obviously," I reply with a grin. "Captain, would the Comet be ready to fly tonight? Instantly?"

"The Comet is always ready, Princess. I keep her burner fueled, even in port. She is hot, around the clock."

Graham leaps from the floor to his hooves, his drink expended. "Wait, we're doing this? Now? Really?"

"Second thoughts, Cracker?"

"Barely have first thoughts even on a good day, Captain!" Graham replies with a salute. "Much less second ones!"

The Comet's crew and I look at one another for a moment, in giddy disbelief.

"Last one to the ship's the foal of a mule," says Vapor Trail.

We scarper, overturning chairs in our haste.

Laughing, practically tumbling over one another, we rush away from the foreign quarter en route to the docks, our ridiculous gowns and tuxedo tails catching the wind. Half-flying, half-galloping, we find ourselves in a riot of noise and light and color. Between the Bahamoot and the docks lies a series of amusement piers, a riotous maze of skywheels and carnival lights and ball-pitching games. The atmosphere is soaked with the sound of steam calliopes, driven by pressurized CWC-brand steam. I am thrilled beyond the capacity for rational thought. There is a tense knot of yellow-gold joy in my breast, and I am clutching it for dear life.

"This is so crazy!" I do not know how to get the words to come together any better.

"Crazy is what the boss here does!" says Rainbowshine. Graham nods, mouth full, having obtained cotton candy from one of the many brash hawkers lining the piers. He presumably has purged his dinner once again. I can't even bring myself to worry about whether the deed was done somewhere sanitary or not.

"Lies!" roars Sungrazer. "Everything I do while on the job is perfectly in keeping with the CWC Employee Handbook."

"That's a meaningless standard, and you know it," says Kelvin.

"One time, Cap'n had us bind our wings all up and leap off the side of the ship to fetch water out of a river," Vapor Trail offers.

"Excuse me?" I blurt out. "Why in Tartarus would you order your crew to do that?"

"Wasn't an order," Sungrazer says. "Just suggested it. Thought it'd be fun. The boys were on board."

"We tied giant elastic bands to the side, just exactly long enough so's we wouldn't hit the ground," says Spectrum.

"Despite that, I think my earlier question generally stands!"

"Why?" Sungrazer leaps into the air and throws his forehooves wide. "Why not? Most everypony in this entire world goes through life not knowing what a rush it is to come within a hoof-width of disaster. Even in Cloudsdale! Especially true in your Hegemony."

"It's not my Hegemony anymore!" I holler. "I'm a Princess of Cloudsdale!"

Rainbowshine whoops, thumping me on the shoulder. Sungrazer grins. "In that case, Princess, I'd say that means living as Cloudsdale ponies do. Taking risks. Mastering the limits of your body. Pushing the envelope."

"I am all about pushing those envelopes! I’m like one of my Aunty's majordomos directly after taking down a dictated letter!"

"Good energy," says Kelvin. "Next time, tone down the cringe a little."

"You're out of line, Mister Kelvin," laughs Sungrazer. "I thought it was sweet."

I feel a flush in my cheeks. It is invisible, thank goodness, since my face is lit with a riotous rainbow of colors from the nearby carnival lights. "Hey! Captain Sungrazer?"

He pivots toward me. "Yes?" he rasps.

"Silly question! Bear with me! What's the nature of love?"

Graham laughs so hard that he chokes on his candyfloss. Sungrazer's eyes twinkle at me.

"Ooh, Cap'n got so drunk at dinner that he's going to get poetic on us."

"Hush up, Vapor," says Sungrazer. "The lady asked a serious question and it deserves a serious answer." Sungrazer returns his attention to me. "I'd say that perfect love is like perfect freedom. It means finding someone who'll help push you past your fears and your doubts. Somepony who can get you past the things that hold you back from being the best 'whatever' you can be." His smile turns sly again. "And, it can't hurt if she's a warm body on a cold night, ey? So, Princess, are you going to instruct me how I'm wrong? Rumor has it you're an expert on the topic."

"I'm not teaching you the right answer," I say. "I'm hoping you can teach me the right answer."

"Aha," says Sungrazer. "Was that the right answer?"

I roll it over in my mind. "Freedom?"

"Yes."

"I think," I say eventually, "that it's a good enough answer for tonight."

"Sometimes, the night you're in is all that matters."

"I'm on board with that.” We resume our gallop to the docks.

A short rush later, I finally behold the Comet. She is sleek, with clean lines and aggressive propulsion vanes, made of solid-looking yellow oak. She looks like a vicious bird. I do not know what I expected a water-gathering sloop to look like, but this isn't it. Comet doesn't look like some kind of plodding old trawler. She looks fast. She looks agile. She looks sexy.

"She looks so ... new!" I rein in my descriptive language for the sake of propriety.

"Well, that's where you're wrong," says Kelvin. "Comet is pushing twenty years in-air. She's breaking all the time, tell the truth."

"On account of how much punishment we give her," says Graham.

"She only looks new because we keep replacing the bits that break with new parts. Must have replaced damn near the entire ship by now."

"So, in that case, she's not really twenty years in-air, is she?" I say.

"Ah, Princess Mi Amore is feeding us the Ship of Clew thought experiment!" says Sungrazer.

"Why, Captain! You're a stallion of learning!"

"Thank you, m'lady.” Sungrazer touches his cap. Graham facetiously mimics the gesture, but is silenced by a glare from Sungrazer. He looks back at his vessel, less with pride and more with critique. "Comet's the same ship she's always been, to answer your question. A ship isn't a collection of boards and rope. A ship is an idea. A ship is what you think of her."

"And what do you think of her?"

"She's a good ship. She takes abuse, but she takes it well, and she's never let me down for long. And that's what the Comet is, no matter how many planks we replace."

And then, totally unannounced, he grabs me about the waist. My eyes go wide as, with a few powerful beats of his wings, he hauls us both up from the docks. We land with a heavy thud on the deck of his ship.

"Deckhooves!" he shouts. "Prepare the lines! Rainbowshine, fire up the burners! Graham, unlock the propulsion vanes! Kelvin, to the helm! All hooves, begin preparations to leave port!"

He looks at me. I am vitally conscious of his hoof still around my waist.

"And Princess," he says, "hold on tight."

When it comes to high-performance air sailing, "hold on tight" is not just a dramatic thing to say. It is an important and extremely literal instruction. Sungrazer is apparently at least a little concerned that I am not holding on tight enough, because he keeps grabbing me whenever there's the least jolt. If I trusted Sungrazer any less, I'd say that he was using it as a convenient excuse to get his hooves all over me, but his touch isn't intimate; it's credibly cautionary. That doesn't stop me from getting all silly-flutters about it. I am over one thousand years old, and I feel like a giddy schoolfilly.

Comet slips smoothly out of port, her vanes propelling us forward uncommonly hard as soon as we hit clear sky. Her piecemeal nature was not immediately obvious on a surface visual inspection, but now that we are underway and straining at the traces, you can feel that her bits don't quite fit together with mathematical perfection. Her joints creak a little, her ropes slip a bit, and occasionally, I can hear something vibrate that probably ideally should not be vibrating. She doesn't feel unsound, as such, but the experience reminds you that the Comet is indeed, a collection of fitted-together parts, no matter what her captain feels about her.

I don't care. I am loving it. I am loving the feel of the wind in my comically outsized mane, flowing out behind me like a banner of war. I love the sting of the wind in my eyes. I love...

...I love not being constrained. Sungrazer's protective hold notwithstanding, I feel free, in a way I haven't felt in decades. I have spent my entire life as a relay baton being passed from caretaker to caretaker, from nuns to sorceresses to alicorns to lieutenants. Here on the deck of the Comet, I feel like I did on that dreadful day so long ago when the Heart-Eaters attacked the Fortress of Song. For one moment in time, as I stood on the edge of my fillyhood home staring out into a dark and twisted wood, there was a gap in the endless cycle of watchfulness. Just me; and before me, an unexplored world. I am sucking in this feeling like oxygen, like a legionnaire guzzling water at an oasis. Maybe Sungrazer is right. Maybe freedom is what love means.

Comet heels around, and the Canterhorn swings into view. Canterlot itself glitters like a lamp hung from the side of the great mountain. For a brief, mad second, I think of begging Sungrazer to do a brazen flyby of my Aunty's private chambers. I imagine rude things to say to her that I would never, realistically, ever say. But, no, that's not our goal. We're not headed all the way to Canterlot, but to old Everfree, a grim and tangled forest just a bit off the Canterhorn's base. A much smaller jewel of lamplight marks a settlement on its rim, probably the prosaically named "Ponyville" if I've got my geography brain on right. I dimly recall that they grow fruit there. Some towns just don't have a lot going for them.

There is a storm gathering above the Everfree, but not a single weather team in sight. It is so strange to see wild, unmanaged weather. Even in the failing nautical twilight, the clouds look ugly and bruise-black. Lightning flickers inside them, the bolts not lined up neatly for deployment but instead rattling weird and loose. I wonder for a moment how the rural weather ponies in the little town below deal with all that chaos right on their stoop. I wonder if they hate it.

"There we go," says Sungrazer, gazing at the massive cumulonimbus structures. "Hailstones for days. We won't even have the hold space. There'll be ice going spare."

"Enough to fully replenish Cloudsdale's strategic novelty party ice stockpiles," Kelvin says from the helm. He barks out a laugh.

"Laugh if you will, Mister Kelvin," I say. "I think it's grand that the CWC gathers all kinds of water, fancy novelty water included."

Kelvin snorts. I look at him crosswise.

"Don't be such a ninny all the time, Kelvin.” Rainbowshine bustles up. "Captain, Graham says we're on a good approach vector. Impact with the liminal edge of the first thunderhead in twenty minutes." Sungrazer nods his acknowledgement.

"What's there to be a ninny about?" I ask the little first mare.

"Some ponies with their heads way too far up their own tailholes have this theory that there's too much novelty water being collected. Boutique stuff. That there’s not enough, you know, just plain old water."

"Do the numbers, Shine," says Kelvin, in a tone that suggests this is not the first time this discussion has played out.

"I don't have to do the numbers!" says Rainbowshine. "You can see the tanker ships go out every day! With your own eyes!"

"Yeah. They make a big deal of it. Just enough to make it look like the numbers add up. But they don't."

"They're collecting water, though," I say. "They have to be. We're not running out of rain."

"See?" says Rainbowshine. "Listen to the princess, Kel. They're just really efficient with what they collect."

"It's not a realistic level of efficiency," says Kelvin. "It might not even be physically possible."

"Quiet, the both of you," growls Sungrazer. "Miss Shine, thank you for the update. Mister Kelvin, keep your mind on the helm."

"Aye, sir," says Kelvin. He squints into the dark, then whistles through his teeth. "That stormfront's a real looker, Captain."

"Pretty as a peach."

"A really old peach," I say. I join him at the rail. "More like a plum that's gone off. We're heading into that?"

A sidelong glance from Captain Sungrazer. "Cold hooves, Your Royalness? You want to head below?"

I stiffen my lip. "Absolutely not. Pegasus life!"

"Good. You have wings. You'll be fine."

"Hey, yeah! Just as well my unicorn retainer isn't here, right?"

"For a couple of reasons," says Sungrazer. He gives the storm, on which we are advancing, a steely glare. "Graham! What percentage of safe capacity are we running on the vanes?"

"Eighty percent, Mon Capitaine!" comes Graham's voice from below.

"Take us to one-twenty," Sungrazer calls. "See if we can't shave off some time. Get back before the bar closes."

"Aye, sir!" Comet bucks, shudders, then evens out, and we are carried at speed toward the pulsing maelstrom.

I am soaked. Absolutely soaked. My sequined dress practically sloshes around my shoulders, and my mane hangs heavily in my eyes as I am tossed rail to rail. I am dimly aware of someone shouting with joy. I am dimly aware that it is me. Lieutenant Armor would hate what I'm doing right now. Celestia would hate what I'm doing now. I don't care. Neither one of them is here. The asterite heart pendant at my throat shines like a searchlight into the dark.

It is our third pass through the main body of the storm. Comet's hail skimmer is out, causing the deck to lurch erratically every time a cross-gust takes us. Theoretically, the skimmer is supposed to be both tight enough and porous enough that it catches hail but not the wind, but with gusts of this intensity, it doesn’t entirely work. A chunk of ice as large as my hoof careens at my head and is deflected by the ward my pendant is emitting. It ricochets off, splintering a section of rail.

"Sorry!" I shout to Captain Sungrazer, pointing at the rail.

"No matter!" he bellows back. "It can be replaced! Everything can be replaced!" A shifting of the deck throws me bodily at him, and he catches me in his hooves.

"Captain!" Kelvin shouts, as he struggles with the helm. "How about putting the novice in the cabin?"

"Denied! I'm not a novice! I'm an associate vice president!"

"Captain?" repeats Kelvin.

Sungrazer sucks on his teeth. "Let her stay! She knows what she's doing!"

"Thank you!" I shout over the storm. First Auric and now Sungrazer, I am really striking it rich with folks trusting my judgment.

"Trawl net's filling up, Captain!" comes Spectrum's voice from the stern. "We should haul it into the hold!"

"Wait until we're done with our pass, Mister Spectrum! We can't shift our wind signature in this!"

"We're taking on too much ice!" he shouts back. "We need to open the flaps and jettison some!"

"Jettison some of what?" shouts Vapor, also from the stern. "The hail? The stuff we came here to harvest?"

"Just some of it!" Spectrum protests.

"Comet will hold, Mister Spectrum! Mister Kelvin, come about! Vent the envelope, Miss Shine! We'll get wetter the lower we get, but we'll drop below the worst of the convection!"

"Aye, Captain!" shouts Rainbowshine, her gown just as soaked as mine. Straining against the helm, Kelvin hauls us hard to starboard. We heel about again, and my heart rises to my throat. I have never, not once in my life, felt this viscerally alive. I want more. Need more.

I hardly realize what I am doing as I crawl, hoof over hoof, to the little railed platform just over the bowsprit. Nopony watches me go. Sungrazer is busy barking orders to his crew, and the rest of them are at stations. They're busy, and I trust myself. My position directly at Comet's bow grants me an unparalleled view of the frantic arcs of raw lightning ahead of us. They dance against the dark like the world's angriest fireflies, illuminating the great bluffs and chasms of roiling thunderclouds. It is like staring into a living canyon. I rise up and spread my wings against the storm. I close my eyes in exultation and laugh.

The trawl net rips.

In an instant, one quarter of the load of gathered hail sprays out behind us in a white ice contrail. Comet lurches ahead, suddenly under too much thrust for her reduced weight, and we are caught by a wicked cross-squall, made worse by our asymmetrical drag. I am thrown from the platform, clutching at the bow lines with my hooves.

My heart racing, I ignite my horn and focus my telekinesis on the bowsprit, hoping to give myself a point of leverage by which I can pull myself back on deck as the Comet rights herself. I struggle, groaning with exertion. A tiny part of my brain notes that I have gone from "viscerally alive" to "struggling for life" in the span of three heartbeats.

There is a crash of thunder, and suddenly a hailstone the size of a cinder brick shears the bowsprit clean off. No longer directly attached to the Comet and under the force of active telekinesis, the bowsprit hurtles directly toward my face. I reflexively snuff my aura, but I lose what little grip I had on the bow lines. I spread my wings to avoid disaster.

It is not enough. The broken bowsprit impacts my head, sending me tumbling away from the ship. I am briefly conscious of the sensation of falling, and then everything is blackness.

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j-grizz

j-grizz #1 · January 20th · 12 · ·

Shining Armor is not going to be happy about this.

Emptybee

Emptybee #2 · January 20th · 7 · ·

11804386
I do believe he's going to go all the way up to "cross".

gloamish

gloamish #3 · January 20th · 5 · ·

" Thank you!" I shout over the storm. First Auric and now Sungrazer, I am really striking it rich with folks trusting my judgment.

oh honey.

i love the dichotomy you've set up between love being freedom or duty - freedom is fun and exhilarating but i don't think it's gonna fish cadence out of the everfree in the middle of the night. shining armor, on the other hand... oh cadence, you're so pitiable. if only you wanted what you needed and didn't need what you want

i assume the plant that the pollen is from is poison joke (looks at the fic art again and it is, duh) and cady's about to land in a field full of the stuff.... dragon time

Dan